Transliminal Group

 

Excerpts from MBM’s talk to the Transliminal Group, May 19, 1933.  This was a small group of four, who had been doing individual work with MBM in the pre-tutoring and tutoring stages.  Their task was to collect transliminal material, their own and others’, illustrating different types of psychodrams and to interpret and classify them, as part of the evidence MBM was beginning to assemble, to bear out her theses in connection with a philosophical psychology.     GB notes

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Q: re the “Mystic child”, the Individuality and the “New Self”.  (These are all stages of experience toward the end of a rhythm (usually a season’s work with the other side of being) if it has been rightly and steadfastly pursued.  MBM: Family relationships that appear at different places; have a binding “blood system.”  The individuality and the new self are more related than the mystic child.  The individuality and the new self have a closer relationship; more identical.

     “The mystic child is first seen as a vision and, speaking scientifically, the mystic child is born of the new self and the individuality into the living blood on another plane, when these are adults.  Think of this first as a vision of a fourth or fifth dimensional being, who, incidentally, has a body in earth, whereas the new self is in the earth.

     Therefore, we might say, if we were going to put it genetically, that the new self comes first, the individuality next, and the mystic child, first appearing as a vision, becomes very much later, the reality on another plane.

     The new self is more or less stabilized at the end of the octave.  The individual (ity?) may be only beginning.  The person is in the process of being changed.  When pretty well made, we have the individual.  When far along, the new self and the individuality may see the vision of the mystic child.

     It is difficult to hold the mystic vision steady.  The object is to make it substantial, the thing that is a vision.  The power to maintain a given state is an aid to it.  The mystic child is much more.

     The mystic child, to draw on Christian mysticism, has the germ of Christ consciousness; but that Christ-consciousness, in turn, is to grow.  But you will get to having it grow, by steadiness.  The soul is the first that expresses mystically.

(Note by GB: See list of steps in an “ideal rhythm” as given by MBM in her series (Series V) One Rhythm in the Pilgrimage of the Soul, which will be attached to these excerpts.)

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The soul may be compared to the acorn.  It must, therefore, ideally speaking, become first the oak tree.  Therefore, first, your fullness of expression is the fullness of the capacity of the soul.  Therefore, spirit only comes as the result.  The mystic child is connected more with the fullness of the soul.  You are not going to deal with spirit unless you have reached the state of the Gnostic.  Have modesty!  The evolution of the soul is vast.  After the tree has become full then begins the spiritual octave.  It is all toward that, but you are doing nothing about it except as you become the full oak tree.  The full oak tree is the Gnostic, the “kingly friend of God”.  He is more than the individual.  We have the individual quite early in the stage.

The work toward individuation is relatively close at hand.  The work about the spirit is very remote, and therefore we may refer to it.  The soul manifests, but also develops in and through manifestation.  We are going through them to develop them from the potential to the potent.  From the potential to the potent!  Say it often.  The soul, in a sense, cannot manifest except as it is evolved.  It is therefore potential.

The individuality is to be seen both psychologically and philosophically.  Seen psychologically, it is a further development of the soul in manifestation, and has great flexibility.  The individual can play many roles, whereas the personality is limited.  Therefore we might say that the individuality can be extrovert and introvert, sensation, feeling, etc.  If you can extrovert as well as introvert, with the same ease, you can tell how far you are toward individuality.  Philosophically, you might say that the individual is now the consciously evolving being, who knows what he is after.  He has become self-conscious.  He is then in the middle; has taken the first conscious step toward becoming the man on the cross.  Like the Buddha, – (seated) in the center, with the many hands going out to do this and that.  Won’t be a dead soul.

. . . . .

Soul consciousness comes a long time before soul image.  Even psychic sensations contribute to it.  A typical illustration of soul consciousness which does not fully understand itself, is when students find themselves happy, and yet weeping, and do not know why.  Nothing in the three-dimensional world gives evidence of cause.  With it, a peculiar sense of rightness and balanced with terrific pain and sorrow.  It is the soul now, with some of the veils withdrawn, which makes the human both glad, because he is meeting its first spouse; and full of pain because he is not free to meet it fully.  Not that that is in full realization, but with the flavor of the pain and grief of its (his) having been a prodigal, etc.  The joy of the return.  It may be very vague, and bring both suffering and weeping, joy and pain.  May come early or at any time.

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Wanderer   (Answer to Question)  Unless there are corresponding powers in the dreamer at this stage, the figure of the Wanderer would not appear.  At this time it would be very difficult for you or me to posit how much is contributed externally, is external, and how much is produced by the projection of the powers in the self forming an image.  To students working seriously in this line there are agents on the other side working too.  Sometimes that cooperation is given quite early, sometimes quite late.  Later, it is essential to differentiate — essential to adulthood.  It is just part of adulthood.  You grow to it.  You learn, as the little child does.  It is a process.  From the potential to the potent, in their just places.

Re physical conditions (Question)  Answer: It all depends.  Some persons’ activities are intensified by physical dilemmas; others halted by physical dilemmas.  Some productive workers in the world have worked under physical disorder.  One’s physical dilemma works on all planes, via correspondence, then that is auto-intoxication — meaning that the blood stream is loaded.  Makes it heavy.  On the other hand, there are some kinds of physical dilemmas that are extraordinarily painful but do not inhibit.  But that is partly due to the nature of the soul wearing that body.  If you are so loaded with poisons on the psychic, with hates, bitterness, etc., you don’t come into action at all.  Physical heaviness causes a reverberation in the psychic, and prevents the psychic coming through.  If that person has already worked, like yourselves – if your polarization is beyond the personal subconscious, it will go on, this activity;  (if too loaded) it can’t come through.  Remember that your brain is the last stage in the transmitter (and) you will get the analogy.  The blocking may be near at hand from the reservoir.  It is important to get the physical system clear.

Emotional disturbance will register in the vital.  Sometimes there is a hooking in from something in the physical.  Some disturbance in the physical that makes the patient depressed.  That is always to be seen as the result in the physical.  If the person has been embittered by it, there will be its affect in the psychic.  Then they are over-determined.  You must separate the functions (faculties).

Each step taken in the transliminal need not be worked out in the conscious.  But watch your step.   … It must, at the end of the rhythm, come back into expression (the new insights gained.)  Otherwise it has no validity.  For a period of time you are unrelated. . . . . . .For instance, if you have the mystic vision, and you don’t relate it, your dilemma is terrible, philosophically speaking.  The bigger the vision, the more the compulsion to turn it into life.  That is why Paul could not do otherwise than what he did.  Or Peter, James and John.

It is only after a failure that the pilgrim really goes on the Quest.

 

 

Meeting with MBM  January 21, 1934

 

The steps in the rhythm are always there, and are to be conceived of as behind our processes.  Or implicit in them.

But now a new approach to our material: Four types of dream analysis: 1) psychological; 2) metaphysical (includes spiritist); 3) mystical; 4) philosophical.

Philosophical  Under philosophical are all those processes that belong to the process of at-one-ment or, broadly speaking, redemption.  The mystical, a subdivision of the philosophical.  The psychological is analytic and synthetic.  Philosophical: such processes as are illustrated in that old Rosicrucian Parable, translated by Silberer; Masonic; alchemical, and many other kinds that we come across (Masonic and building) – they would all be under philosophical.

Metaphysical has to do with the phenomena of sensation in dreams: vibratory experiences, whirling; or anything that comes on the substance side; most experiences in the clouds; etc.; fantasy.  Freud would say it is anticipation of sexual pleasure.  We would put it somewhat differently.

     We stay on this side of things.  Only if you can prove that what you saw in the dream state actually took place in the three-dimensional world would you be justified in putting it under metaphysical (re being in some other place on earth, or with other people on earth, in the sleep state).  Belongs to all kinds of clairvoyance.  But mere flying in the clouds, etc. a commonplace in dream material.  You can project thoughts and feelings until they have an objective reality.  There are fabrications, as in the Seabrooke book (Magic Island).

If you make an image, and construct it into ectoplasmic material, that it has a temporary reality.  Lasts as long as your breath of life lasts in it.  The black magician does that.  We must make a difference between a temporary projection in an individual and that which has an objective reality.  In metaphysics be awfully careful.  We are relatively safe with philosophy and psychology.

Psychic research has two general approaches: one by Sudre and the other the spiritist.  These entities do participate, increasingly — project on the “lampshade.”  Increasingly with older students.  But these are difficult departments, – require all your discrimination.

     In the metaphysical there are certain things by which you will be able to demonstrate, to your own satisfaction, first: your collective satisfaction, before you have any right to present it (to the group?).  You can get some help from Muldoon (book on the projection of the etheric body in sleep state).

     The metaphysical has to do with the form side.  The philosophic has to do with emotional and mental experience, the life side.  Psychic research has to do with entities, that are not you, impinging upon you.

Re suggestibility in dreams.  We are studying them under peculiar circumstances, and the evidence we bring may appear to others pre-determined.  I want you to know how to answer it.

     For this purpose we must make a survey of previous findings about the so-called subconscious.  In the earlier stages of our modern research it was seen as something that was not mind; that it was highly suggestible, and would take any shape that was given to it.  Therefore, the question might come up: Is this work suggestible? (or suggestibility).  Answer: It is quite true, the unconscious, or subconscious, is highly suggestible.  You can see it from the metaphysical point of view, in that it takes any shape, like the ectoplasm, that is given to it.  It is for reasons of this kind that suggestion plays so important a part in certain phases of therapeutics, as with Coué, in early schools of hypnosis, New Thought, as seen in Thomas J. Hudson’s “Law of Mental Medicine.”  We know this is an ectoplasmic stuff and can take its own shape.

     A little later came the discovery, through observation and tests, that there must be intelligence in this subconscious; that there must be a kind of mind in it.  Because it seemed to be capable of giving answers to problems and of coordinating various ideas, in an orderly fashion, that the conscious mind could not coordinate.

     Then comes psa (psychoanalysis) showing that all the memories of the past are there!

     Now, if it is made of ectoplasmic stuff, we have the key to a lot of it.  That explains its high degree of suggestibility, its possible source of therapeutics; that is why it is therapeutic to suggest to it helpful patterns.  Also why memory is associated with it.  Also why mind is associated with it.  Because we see, metaphysically, that the ectoplasm can be the media for thoughts coming through from other planes, just as well as the physical brain.  Even better.

     Why are our results at Pojodag a little different than in psa, etc.  In the first place because, in the early stages, we use no suggestion.  We try, as in the early stages of psa, to hear from the subconscious itself.  But we go further than analysis — we go into deeper areas, – not merely the areas of painful memories, but deeper areas, which we also invite to speak for themselves.  And therefore our report of the nature and behavior patterns of this subconscious is bound to be different from the reports of those who work upon it giving it suggestions.

Place of suggestion in our work:  A difference between directed suggestion and inadvertent suggestion.  The whole environment is suggestion.  Christian Science is directed suggestion.  So is Couéism.  What about our lectures?  There are more than twenty different grades of suggestion: A walk through the woods.  Or you may go out into the country because you want to get influence from it.  In one case you open yourself to its suggestions, in another it is casual.  In that, the lectures, the books you read, the House, the people in it, are suggestion; but they are indirect suggestion.  The only direct suggestion I employ — and that, only with older students, is to take some dream at the point of sleep, and do it over; and impress the idea of that dream at the point of sleep.  That is direct suggestion.  I have never used suggestion in the form of hypnosis.

Different levels  What about dreams on different levels?  Might the higher one seem suggestion?  Answer: Our work is in terms of a process, and therefore I have to sense, with my “cat’s whiskers” what that student is moving toward.  And what he sought to be and is not, is that which causes the interpretation.  Because he, in his third dimension, tends to see it the other way, does not prove he is right (the high level).  He is wrong.  My job is to help, not via suggestion but through insight, how this link of his journey can be built consecutively on the road he is building from here to San Francisco.  If a thing is a process, I know, as the horticulturist, that the movement of the plant is toward bearing grapes, or cherries; and what he does is to aid that plant to deliver the cherries.  Because we already have a picture of the evolution of the soul. If we were doing psa it would be different.  You have to become sensitive to the reaching, to what the dreamer is seeking to do next.

     Here is where the psychoanalysts make some of their most serious errors.  They do not see that these were gropings away from (earth); because the analysts do not have any philosophy.

Question re sex in dreams.  Answer: If you go away in fear from sex, no law of philosophical life will permit that.  Evolution has no fear for the dragons of earth.  Therefore you have to go back.  It is indecent to thumb your nose at nature.  The price we pay to nature for our bodies.

Symbolism, a language; learn to speak it.  Re lectures on symbolism and re suggestibility: In order to be able to say or do anything well, we have to have an adequate language.  If a student has a musical soul they have to have the technique, or science, of musical production, or writing.  If I am condemned for teaching people symbols you are condemned for teaching people anything of music.  Why do you learn more words?  For a greater repertoire – gives you a richer vocabulary.  (Value of) the cultured life, or (being) a citizen of the world.  Because they can bring so much to everything they touch.  They are over-determined in suggestion.  Don’t get cold feet if people speak of suggestion.

Soul node dreams  Go at your own material.  Anything that you can find that indicates radiation from the soul node, put it aside.  Make a copy of it, date it.  In regard to radiation, see at least two divisions: 1) warmth and 2) light; 3) soul symbols.  Influence from the soul node might come via an emotional experience, – in a variety of ways.  I spoke of the steps to make you sensitive to patterns.

     Another subdivision, apropos of Wisdom-teacher figures, or Wisdom-teaching: sometimes that person appears as unmistakably a symbolic figure; often robed, and carrying a book, in which the dreamer senses there are matters of high import.

     Again, symbols of value; treasure-box; jewels to be found, etc.  And symbols of mystical animals.  These mystical animals are not the lower animals, but those like the rams, unicorns, the white horse; birds, depending what kind.  Also chemical transformations.

     Evidence of the presence of profound things of this kind is independent of environmental contact.

(Rule for the group: Always put down your initials, date and make duplicate copy of the material.)

Soul symbol and soul image dreams, sometimes with moon crescent symbol.

There may be a great conflict between anticipatory wisdom from the soul node and the conscious.

(At this point MBM read the group some “first material”, evidently psychological and tells group that the dreamer will be angry that they have been “so exposed” if given too bold an interpretation; that the tutor must see infinitely more than is there in the words.  Note by GB)

(Other material, further along: Dream of doing business in blue lines; in white lines.  Mental results.  Full material read by MBM not taken down. GB)

Transformations.  You will need another classification of material for transformations.  You can call them mystical or alchemical . They will be dreams such as being in a container.  Dreams of the (a) cell, and may have a strong affect.  These dreams (are) both mystical and metaphysical.  Nothing added to the ego.  They are dealing with what is already regarded as typical of those experiences, in that dimension.  Has to do with a change of state.

Test this dream:  “We find a stone cell.” The cell is introversion, inside of which isolation changes go on.  From now on, do your insulation in the name of the Great Light.  If that is the case, entities will help, in the changing of vibrational rates.  If such entities are helping.  We cannot prove that he (some entity referred to by the dreamer) played a part in this, but others are helping too in this change of condition.  If we get many dreams indicating that, or many experiences, we have accrued evidence of it.  The rest is evidenced in your own increasing sensitivities.  As though (you were touching) different departments in your own being.

Vital body  Think of your vital body as a nexus of vortices.  There are from time to time changes in a particular whorl.  Some of those whorls will have their speed changed.  Sometimes some are changed (heightened) and others, adjacent to them, are at a lower rate.  It makes for discomfort, out of gear; may make for dizziness.  When you know that, you can check up, as a doctor, with a disease.  You will say: it looks so and so; and you will be on the alert for more evidence along that line….And the conscious is identified with the one change, or other, as if they do not fit.  There is friction – a discrepancy between their rates.  Often you will find that there are shifts of this kind.

Some of the training you have already had, in the Accordance Group (this preceded the Penetralia meetings), the Penetralia, the working from below up, makes for your part in the cooperation, if it is true that Sri (a guide, or helper, or watcher of a member of the group) and others (out of the flesh) are doing these things.  And it is one of the things which entitles you to their cooperation, from the larger point of view.

Subtle bodies  All this is much related to the subtle bodies.  The vibrational rate when we are earth-bound is very low.  It has to be gradually heightened so as to bring us into closer juxtaposition where we can get through and have rapport for other planes.  What goes on when people sit to become mediums?  They become passive, so that entities on the other side can work upon them and make them plastic.  We don’t want that kind of plasticity, but we do know that there are other influences, who belong to the work we are doing, who are cooperating with me and enabling you, with greater speed, to experience certain changes that are mystical, typical, such as those in the Parable (the Old Rosicrucian Parable, treated on different levels of interpretation by Herbert Silberer, which MBM took up in the Study work in greater detail of symbolism and level of interpretation.  See Silberer “Problems of Mysticism and its symbology.)

In this dream (that of the stone cell) there are certain set-ups true of the introversion motif, isolation and insulation, and which therefore goes on in the mystical cell; which at the same time is to be seen as vibrational change.  Therefore (as MBM said in first taking up this material, see p. 6) metaphysical and mystical.

These symbols (as discussed earlier in this talk) occur in all types, if they are breaking personality type (psychological type.)  They are “on the way.”  If you start from New York or Albany (on the pilgrimage) you will have those experiences.

Soul node dreams  (influences from the soul node.)  May be a sense of power, strength and exuberance.  May be a sense of those qualities moving toward the dreamer.

Here MBM referred to a dream brought in to the group: It concerned a person “who was with a liar”.  This was a near-beginning dream.  MBM: This was a hunger for things in the unconscious.

Under warmth (as a soul node influence) comes a quality of being, that made for that inward transfusion that really is transforming.  Or it may come from the outside.  But all lightness is not to be seen as from the soul node.  In a sense, everything comes from the soul, even your worst act, which is distorted.  We are talking about the things which come directly.  One must get a sense of what that is, and how it looks.

Sometimes you have material that deals directly with the sun and the moon.

What I want to show you is: that once the soul node is uncovered, and the rest of the personality can stand it, and is built up, there is an eagerness for all those things.  It is hungry to augment its language.  Because it is potentially rich, and seeks to make its richness come into manifestation.  The personality has no use for it.  My thesis is: it would be turning greedy for them.  The thing is to uncover the soul node.  You can’t always do that so that the personality is overcome gradually and is not at sword’s point with this different kind of living.

 

 

Transliminal group with MBM

May 30, 1933 and February 1, 1934

 

May 30, 1933

Watch the “I” principle.  It must do.  It may only observe; or make gestures toward.  The material comes to a better conclusion if it acts.  Always see what the “I” principle is doing.  Judge it not only as you would in this dimension, but more philosophically.  The more the I principle is active in doing something the quicker that rhythm would be accomplished.  If the “I” principle dallies it won’t go.  One of the things that makes a rhythm more profound, the intensity with which the “I” principle enters into and accomplishes.  If you have suffered enough, and mean business, you will accomplish that which you set out to do.

The extrovert sometimes gets a discipline which, while in this world it may not make the transfer, is nevertheless a muscle which in the next dimension is richly able to make that transfer richly.  The capacity won is transferred to another plane (or other planes.)

The strength of the rhythm depends on the fullness with which the lower rungs of the Ladders have been worked out.

The ego wants to go far and high; identifies itself with profound things.  So it will vision a great deal.  Expectation in this is not a reality.  Be very careful to find out whether the things are commensurate.  Some of the mystics vision Deity and hierarchies of angels, etc; and their angels are the dead of earth gone on a little further, and come back and watch over their relatives still on earth, but (they see them) with regular wings, etc.  It becomes subtler the further you go.

Re Imagination  Dreamer A, who sat “on the top of the world.”  MBM: She had a flavor of something profound, which made her aloof from the third dimension at that time.  We do reach higher through our construction of ideals, and that is one of the uses of our imagination.  But it should give way to reality.  It is the doing that makes you aware of the value of.

Your imagination becomes a tool to prepare you to know reality, and you can’t come to Reality without imagination.  That is the awful part of it.  See “Voice of the Silence.”   When the true student is taught to make an image of the ideal, let us say of the master of their group, etc, what do you suppose that is for?  They say, it helps bring the master closer.  You may think it idolatry.  The Jewish race did a risky thing in abolishing idolatry.  The Roman Catholic Church brought back the worship of idols, though it is not called that.  Causes the making of images that become true-d, through true imagination; then to the reality.  Through false imagination to true-d imagination; and from the true to the reality.

First you make any kind of images you like — as you feel about them.  Then you begin to correct it.  You are true-ing it.  Then you have to true it to the thing itself.  That has to do with justice.  Then you are ready to meet Reality.  Therefore we do have to have in-betweens.

Therefore, after the many idols of a previous period, came the opposite.  Then again comes the in-between (as in Roman Catholic)

We have to have images; but the more the image is made like, the better.  The more the symbol of Mary is like a woman of this world the less useful it is.  The more she is like an ideal mother, and receives tribute, it becomes useful.  People need things in this dimension they can relate themselves to.

Trace growing sensitivities to even small deviations from the law.  Make note of many things as you go along (in the transliminal.)

     The more we see the thing as it is, because we have removed from ourselves the sense of projecting a guilt on the outside — no longer get entangled, or find the blame out there, but at home, it clarifies the images.  That is where psychology can presently do much good.  In the analysis of evidence.

(Sometimes) a gain in voltage but a loss in correctness….

Feb 1, 1934

Purpose of transliminal group.  Pojodag psychology (that is, philosophical psychology)

A deliberate study in regard to the soul.

Judge from the leading figures as to what they have said about the soul (Wisdom-teachers).  We parallel that, and show what is plus and what is minus (in its steps of evolution.)

     One objective of the group is to study their own data, compared with classic examples of the past: To list the types of psychodrams and the characteristics of dreams during the sleep state, and of experience during the waking state.  Show that they are apparently not motivated by events in the waking consciousness.

     To collect and organize such data under fitting headings, such as appear reasonable and logical from the data itself.  Therefore arbitrary? and other headings.

     To demonstrate that there may be a progressive unfolding of higher consciousness and understanding in the sequence of dream processes.

     That memory in the conscious state can be taken over purposively into the sleep state.

     That acts in the sleep state can be modified or directed by this consciousness.

     That there gradually and consistently unfolds a series of dream experiences that are sequential, and analogous to those described by various mystics.

     That memory, or the power of recollection, understanding and determination, usually called will — all attributes of the mind, are possessed in and through this experience.  That therefore the trans-liminal processes have capacity for conscious, rational functioning, similar, but not identical, to that of the waking state.

 

 

Bulletin to Transliminal Research Group

From MBM.  February 19, 1935

 

 

 

Soul node material

GB material

March 20, 1933

 

Material

Had a new job, in a theatre, getting stage ready for an Irish act.  First there were pictures on a screen; then the dancing figures seemed to become flesh and blood, and I was among them.  They were doing an Irish jig, but although it was a lively dance it seemed more like a Mayday dance,

around a central figure.  There were men and women in it, but mostly men.  The central figure was a woman.  One of the dancers carried a sort of round harp, with which he touched the head of another dancer for a moment.  Then I too seemed to be going around and playing the harp, and my fingers and hand felt the vibrations as I plucked the strings.  The woman in the center was so moved that she could not go on with the part of the dance she was supposed to do alone, but fell over on the shoulder of someone else.  I caught just a glimpse of her, and she was very beautiful.  She had golden hair, large blue eyes, and wore a red costume.

Interpretation and associations

Recapitulation dream.  Also represents the dance according to the mind (harp touching head.)  First we have the dance according to the body, then according to the emotions, then the mind; finally the spirit.  The major figure here is not quite able to do this yet.  She is the ideal figure, the soul image.

 

Apr. 19, 1935

Was visiting with an Italian family.  They had with them some relatives, who were now going home, and I understood they had no food in the house.  Going to their home, with the daughter of the house, I asked if they would like to have some fish.  Was going to buy a fish, but found I already had one in my hand.  It was white and about five or six feet long, more like a serpent than a fish.  It had a hard beak, like a bird.

Interpretation and associations

Italy, the country where the sun shines and things grow.  Fish which is long suggests something which belongs to the secret teachings of the sea-serpent, a symbol of power to one who knows how to handle it.  A preliminary to the super-dragons, beyond the five human ones.

 

MBM

Voices speaking words of Wisdom, sometimes subjective, welling up from  the deeps of the self, sometimes manifestly objective, are one of the  first signs of the thinning of the barrier between the physical and the etheric.  Wisdom figures whose presence is seen, or sensed, such as that of Jesus the Christ, convey messages of peace, or love, or grace, or strength.

The overwhelming realization of the stature of MBM as Wisdom teacher  may come as sound or sight or in overwhelming humility before a Wisdom  scarcely understood.