Death - The Giver Of Life

We have before us one of the Tarot Keys which gives a rather gruesome picture to those who do not understand the meaning of it. And we read from the Gospel of St. John deliberately because we feel that this particular chapter and in essence these particular words of Jesus have been more understood, have been the source of more ignorance, more bigotry, and more unhappiness than perhaps anything else that has ever been taught in basic religion. And why? Well, very simply, because those who took over the gospel apparently either did not know or chose to disregard the fact that these words were spoken by a Qabalist Jesus was trained in the esoteric holy Qabalah which was and is the mystical aspect of the Judaism of the philosophic background the true you might say mystery school teaching that goes back through history goes back through the various times and climes in other words the entire Qabalistic teaching had and has a specific language translation from Qabalistic language into the English language accurately is utterly impossible to any except one trained in Qabalah and it is certainly known that the translator into the English form of the original text was not a Qabalist and therefore the true meanings of these words were not understood or known and so we have the untold numbers of sects who tell us that unless we believe in an an individual by the name of jesus we're going to be eternally damned and if we do believe in an individual by the name of jesus as having been the only begotten son of god then we're saved and then we have another sex that says this is all right but you have to also dunk yourself in water some of them say all together and some of them say parts of yourself in order to be properly baptized baptized to be born of the spirit and so these literal interpretations proceed and ignorance begets ignorance unfortunately and this is tragic indeed because here we have one of the most extraordinarily beautiful and mystical assertions of eternal life for in actuality all of humanity a cabalist knows because who is the only begotten son of God we must always remind you the only begotten son of God is generic humanity this is what that word translated from Aramaic and Hebrew means in English generic humanity is the only begotten son of God also generic humanity is the son of man naturally and he who believes not really just believes he who knows himself to be a begotten son and daughter of God certainly does not walk through life with the same kinds of tears certainly one who knows himself to be a true son or daughter of the Living God knows that he has whatever we mean by eternal life which we are going to discuss since our sermon or topic for this morning is death the life-giver and we have already been talking about that very thing because we need to understand just what is entailed we we always like, as far as possible, to give at least little glimpses from the Bible into the true meaning of the original teachings, so that we may know that though it would appear that there are some philosophic, religious, mystical, or occult thoughts which seem to be contradictory to the Bible, it is nice to know that those of us who are born and raised in the Western world and in the rest of Western culture that in the Bible we really have something that is akin to and in harmony with all true esoteric teachings and indeed the pastoralism because in Qabalah we have what might be said to be the entire grouping of all the yogas those of you familiar with Eastern philosophy know of Bhakta Yoga as the way of devotion of Janana Yoga as the way of wisdom of Raja Yoga as the way of knowledge and testing and learning of Hatha Yoga as the way of bodily control, of Karma Yoga as the way of actions and reactions and so on. And in the Eastern thought it is said each individual follows what is particular to his temperament in his path of evolution until he attains to the highest spiritual beingness. In Qabalah we have all of these apparent yogas or ways or methods or paths as a synthesis, as a balance, protection. Because those in the Western world have reached a point, that is those who aspire spiritually, to where they are ready to integrate into to themselves all the basic ways and to overcome and develop beyond the unbalanced methods of development that we see so often where some people are so brilliant mentally but are lacking in either emotional intensity or emotional control or some may have suspiciously evolved emotions and may be very lacking in the ability to analyze and discriminate and use of the intellect and some may be very careful about their activities their actions in order to leave the good life to do whatever that concept is of good and yet overlook other aspects that are needed because they are trying to live the spiritual life in an unbalanced manner and And only as we actually utilize and integrate all these ways together as given in our work in the tarot, in the Qabalah, which after all we did not originate.

We merely present and re-present it for the inner school and have it in charge so that those who are ready and able can come and receive and drink as much as they are able from this fountain of life so with this little preamble let's analyze the ideas of death and life and what links them and just what it is we can do about it so that when we walk out of here this morning perhaps our hearts will be a little lighter and our minds will be more focused and pointed towards holding the kind of thinking feeling processes or training ourselves in them where we can mitigate or stop the destructive process which is destructively destructive and start using it constructively. In alchemy it says a man must learn how to reduce his world to a chaos in order to transform his faith.

Reduce his world to a chaos. What does this mean? It means breaking down the potteries. Breaking down the thinking feeling breaking down the things that we think are so usually incorrectly although most of us are given to the idea of feeling that what we think is naturally the correct thing watch people now we'd like to remind this every one of this when this time of year comes about watch yourselves and watch everybody now that the presidential nominations and elections are coming up watch how those who are emotionally focused on a specific party will be absolutely sure that their candidates have what it takes and the candidates from the other parties are very bad and evil and are going to ruin the country.

And watch yourselves and others. Watch how they feel.

It's important, my darlings. It's very important to do this. Watch how they feel and watch how you feel when you come up against someone who starts praising the Democrat if you're a Republican or the Republican if you're a Democrat.

Watch. Then ask yourself, where did I get these ideas?

I read them in a newspaper. Who wrote the newspaper? Somebody who was slanting the information in news the way he felt and believed. And so it goes. In case we become emotional echoes and we become so intense about it that friendships break up, families sometimes break up, and certainly we go in for very unpleasant emotions during this period until after it's all over and it's quiet down and then it only comes up occasionally if somebody is a democrat and hates the president and makes a derogatory remark why instantly the republican relatives and friends will become incensed he insulted them and vice versa when we had the democratic Democratic president and the Republicans did the insulting. It's the same thing. It's an affront to us. And we become emotional. We think we are that which we've taken on and believed in. And indeed, this is the secret of death right here. We want to show you what makes us die. And yet, inasmuch as death is a very beautiful and vital principle, we want to show you how to use this principle constructively the moment we hang on the moment we become emotionally and mentally frozen the moment indeed that we know something we're lost and we're blocked we're in a coffin and we're dead in that area are we not think think. It is very dangerous to know anything, my darling. Very dangerous indeed. Everything that we think we know, it is wiser to know it only tentatively. That is why in our work, we tell you, especially in our classwork, we remind you so often on our Thursday night classes, please do not accept what has been given you here in this class and say, now I know it. This is it.

Accepted tentatively and tested it. You know nothing until you have tested it and experienced it directly and even then what you know about it can change. We know something to be correct for one period that would be very incorrect for another period. When we develop this attitude then we can start handling universal forces in positive and constructive ways so as to make our lives a beautiful fulfilling glorious and emanating type of experience in relation to both ourselves and others and we can start eliminating indeed the agonies and the patterns and the continuous death that we suggest ourselves to in more ways than we realize.

So let's consider death for a minute from another point of view.

In Qabalah it is taught that death is merely change.

Change. You see, the river flows.

The river flows. It is change. What makes for the charm of life? Think for a moment. The flow of change. Unfortunately perhaps even in our love lives we sometimes develop a boredom with that which we think we have loved and the change, the charm of the new will cause many people men or women to fall in love with someone else just bored with something being or hanging or apparently saying the same this is sad because any two human beings who truly loved would experience in each other the continuous change in other words embracing death they would have life together in ever more glorious measure but what is it that happens let's see we all do it and this is the principle of death which we all use in a very unhappy way and a two-hour sparrow incarnation after incarnation which we'll discuss in a little while all right say joe joe dope did something to you 10 years ago 20 years ago ago 30 years ago Joe Doakes did something very terrible and of course it hurt us sometimes it may have damaged us very seriously so a year goes by two years goes by 20 years go by 30 years go by and when something unpleasant occurs suddenly we will be say confiding in a friend or a relative or we both be thinking or brooding or meditating or brooding or brooding and calling it meditating whatever it is we will think of joe doke watch yourselves and watch others a bitter expression will come over the mouth the eyes will take on the same anguish and hurt sometimes there'll be resentment and rage and mean more excessive feelings we are still reacting with negative and violent emotion to joe dokes 30 years ago general semantics brings this out rather beautifully and yet joe dokes 30 years ago was a different joe dokes from joe dokes today we give you this example because it comes up so often the same with our loved ones we become accustomed to the fact that they have certain group of qualities we become so focused in what we have known them as being that we stop looking and seeing the changing faces of life because every day is experienced as something new and different to the consciousness and the personality So we lose the charm of the living and of the love because we're still reacting to Mary or John as they used to be.

We fail to see the changes today or indeed we even fail to encourage and we get very insulted. We become so secure in our little depths that we get very insulted or we get very fearful if we see our Mary or our Jane changing a point of view we might say but I thought you said that you believed so and so and we think that it is a dreadful commentary on their character that they change their mind whereas the ability to change the mind might be a glorious commentary on the fact that they are in the motion of life and are able to absorb the new in the various ways so we show you that particular and this aspect of death and it is death and life life and death we are told in the Qabalah that death and life are the pair of opposites and all pairs of opposites are one and the same there's an opposite side of the coin now this we know from other schools of thought no doubt but but it was brought out there was many variations in the qabalistic teaching and training death and life are not different they're the same without death we could have no life and without life we couldn't have death and that would be a shame as a matter of fact just on the plain physical level if there were no death in just no time at all the oceans would be so stuffed with fixed that they would just smother the oceans and then the world no life could exist if death stopped life would stop right now just even just considering the kids if there were no death the insects as they continued to multiply would so smother the world that in a few weeks I think that they would reach from all the way around and sit on the crust from here to the moon if there were no death we have a tendency to think of death as an enemy and death is merely the way life can continue to be and it is said that god is a living being and we are the begotten sons sons and daughters of God.

Now consciousness.

What is consciousness in relation to life and death? Consciousness is what causes life, which then automatically will also cause death. This seems very apparent because it is consciousness that experiences the beingness which is the life and death. Consciousness itself apparently loves to be alive therefore it must love to also die if we only knew it and if we understood what death actually happens to be and so we repeat death is the principle of change why do we fear it mainly because we have not yet evolved the awareness, the recognition. We have not yet wooed the terror. Sometimes it is called the dweller on the threshold, but the dweller on the threshold is more than just this aspect of death. We hear the principle of death because we are afraid it means extinction.

And those of us who often give the most lip service to God and to survival and to reincarnation will show the greatest terror at some of the aspects of death and those of us who think that we are not afraid of death will show tremendous terror at the little death which we do not recognize as such and which are absolutely essential to the livingness and the beauty and the motion of life which is a true freedom and that and being truly eternal and immortal in our awareness when we recognize this principle we keep reading about eternal life and we read about resurrection from the dead and we read about many of these things and we try to take it all literally the truth is that consciousness does have eternal life and it has it through the principle of eternal life the truth is that consciousness does not consider it at all important to drop a physical vehicle when it has reached a certain stage or condition and then go ahead and build itself another one as a matter of fact gives it the charm of something that is more malleable because you see what happens is this basically because we get so fixed in what we think and what we feel like as republicans or democrats or what have you, or the other various social ideas that we hold to with grace, hymn, and vigor. We become so fixed in what we consider good and bad, in what is a spiritual and not spiritual, and what is intelligent and not intelligent, and certainly what is worthwhile and not worthwhile in terms of activity. We become so fixed in that, that this fixation keeps the consciousness from having its fullest livingness. In the Tarot, life and death is assigned to the Paralysis, the Magician, which is assigned also to attention, self-conscious attention, awareness. And the ability to be immediately aware is the greatest livingness we have and the unawareness is as one can easily see the dead but look how dead most of us are a good deal of the time when we're just walking down the street and we're not afraid of that are we perhaps we should be more afraid of that than we are of that thing called death which is called dropping the physical vehicle don't you think because you see it is in these little things how aware are we it is in this principle and only in this principle that there's any opportunity or hope for changing our destructive use of the death principle into the constructive one now the thing that makes bodies die as we said before is because they become fixated in certain patterns of action reactions thinking and feeling and it becomes so fixed in the cell structure which are little consciousnesses of their own that finally the higher self or the true consciousness has a harder and harder time pushing it around into motion and it becomes so rough and tough that it decides it's time to drop this one and in as much as we unfortunately identify ourselves with the body we think that we're dying whereas it's been reported in psychical research and in other fields that as a matter of fact those people who don't lose consciousness and float around on the astral as unconscious as they usually unfortunately have been here those who have enough consciousness to be aware on the astral report that that they have more livingness than they did here and why because their astral vehicle is not as fixated with the patterns of the thinking feeling reacting with the bitterness with the sorrow with the expectation of of all dire and terrible things the astral body is not as fixed in that because the astral body has more of a malleable uh the substance of the astral body is not as solid in the sense that the physical substance is solid that is to our present awareness so they see and they usually if they have a good sense of humor they usually will laugh although a sense of humor is a rather rare thing or even amongst those who think they have it so what are we to do in understanding this principle of life and death and we'll discuss reincarnation in a moment what are we to do in if we acknowledge and surely we should all be able to acknowledge to ourselves ourselves that it is in holding on to our pain to our hurt to our disappointments our frustrations our feelings of insecurity it's in holding on to these that we keep building more and more of the inability to have the flow of life in its fullest measure and indeed where we tamper it it's like taking the river and continuously getting it more and more plugged up until it becomes like a dam.

Maybe that's what they mean by the dams.

It becomes more plugged up with all the garbage of thinking and feeling and so on.

What can we do with it? Well, one of the first and most important things to do with that particular aspect is this.

We must say to ourselves every day and as many times a day as we can remember to say it something that goes like this I do not choose to react to yesterday's experiences to yesterday's pains to yesterday's frustrations I do not choose to react to them as though they are still present today I do not choose to I choose to be more intelligent than that this has potent subconscious suggestive value in one should make one's own words and then one should say I call upon my higher self to help me stay aware enough so that whenever I find myself expecting terrible things to happen because after all if it happened last year and 10 years ago why shouldn't I expect it to happen again tomorrow or five minutes from now this is the logic that you've regiven so we need to say further I call upon my Higher Self to bring my awareness to attention when it wanders off into this old pattern which is the true depth incidentally and in its place to substitute a forgiveness and love of yesterday with an expectation of the new and the happy like a child you know for tomorrow now there are many who think that because they have analyzed this idea of this principle very deeply because for instance they have seen such and such happening so many times before they feel they are using great mental abilities by saying that therefore this is just being realistic to expect the same terrible things tomorrow but this is what they think it's just like every republican thinks that a democrat as you know what and vice versa at least during election or if one or the other will make a derogatory remark about their beloved candidate usually we've all had some experience sometime in our lives with this so we can remind ourselves but you see the truth is that a human being who does that instead of being actually realistic is merely indicating that he hasn't gained any wisdom from yesterday and this parakeet you see what looks so gruesome that man's head and that woman's head gruesome isn't it but it isn't it's giving a very positive suggestion to subconsciousness which has a different idea about images and symbols that our self-conscious minds have and which and these are meant to speak directly to subconsciousness to take you into self-awareness remember that all right well well in qabalah uh divine wisdom is assigned to the father the gray circle on that tree of life to the cosmic father and divine understanding to the black circle the cosmic mother and they are he and she they are the the male and female principles of the universe and indeed the whole secret of gender is here which we bring out in our classes rather often and try to explain it a little more slowly well the idea here is that in depth we reach wisdom and understanding this grim reaper isn't really grim at all every time we take a breath every time we lift our hands every time we think every time we feel every time we do anything thing there are effects from it and the reaper or karma after all is involved only with an effect from an action an action whether it be mental emotional or physical it's merely an effect and if we have reached the point where we're able to reap wisdom and understanding understanding from past unhappy experiences then absolutely and certainly we will not require the same kind of unhappy experiences in the future but he who clings to yesterday's miseries and says well it's going to happen again I see all the signs he's only indicating his own frozen unhappy pattern still repeating itself still caught in what is a death rather than a life. As we understand what has happened to us in the past, as we realize that no matter how cruel Aunt Mamie or Papa or Mama or Mr. So-and-so or Mr. So-and-so may have been to us, that after all they too are uninvolved, immature, groping, poignantly unhappy soul, lonely and seeking and doing the best they can or reacting with rancor or reacting even with deliberate falsity because they are so afraid of life and they have so little faith in God that they have to grasp the things to try to be secure and this should cause us to feel compassion for these people who have injured us and it should help us to understand that if we have reached from this change which is our livingness if we have reached sorrow this is also a wonderful thing because then it is an indication we must look to see what was it in me that brought about this experience usually we will find that we didn't have enough discrimination and in as much as evolution itself is a development of ever more consciousness certainly then if we can see where we didn't have discrimination if we trusted somebody who couldn't be trusted it's like deliberately putting money in front of somebody who's broke and been raised in the gutter or putting dope in front of a dope scene and turning our back and walking into the other room why blame them we need to learn not to place that kind of temptation to injure us in other people's paths do you think when people have heard us that it's always that it's because maybe we were so evil no not because we were so evil it's because we're not bright enough yet and it is in these experiences in trying to extract the wisdom and understanding of where it is that we haven't been attentive where it is that we haven't seen clearly it is in trying to see that and give forgiveness and have compassion that we are able to avoid making the same mistakes the next time and this is using this is using real death because you see what we're doing we're willing to let an emotion die and substitute another emotion in its place this is a true flow of consciousness which reflects itself in everything else in our environment but it takes a lot of training because we have we are so fearful We are so insecure and our insecurity is really our lack of direct knowledge and perception of who and what we are, the only begotten sons of God, from never having been born, never die.

But we have conditions that are born and that die. And our bodies are part of those conditions that are born and that die. Not us and those of us who think maybe when we die we are a hundred percent in limbo or say in darkness let's think about it this way that is if there's nothing that if it's true that survival is it's perhaps the most important thing not perhaps it is the most important thing that exists to try to work with the principles and ideas and teachings that represent it in order to directly know it for ourselves eventually and if it is not true what have we lost anyway if there's eternal nothingness we've lost absolutely nothing and we have everything to gain so we we should apply everything that we have to learning how to die daily to learning how to let yesterday's heartache melt into wisdom understanding compassion and to utilize that wisdom understanding and compassion in order to recognize new situations because if we are going to fulfill our destiny and we are eventually but eventually can be awful long in times of our thinking we are going to fulfill our destiny we must have control of our consciousness and we must have be able to manipulate our conditions in terms of life and death in such a way that eventually we will even be able to do what the Masters of Wisdom can do the Master of Wisdom behind our work is definitely known to have been around in the same body for at least 300 years now we don't know how much longer this much we do know the same physical body because it isn't that he is so different from us. It's just that he has learned to utilize the principle of death constructively. He is able to let go the various cells and experiences that have to do with yesterday and put in the new bright balance cell in its place. He's able to do it through the manipulation of his thinking-feeling processes and therefore the direction of the energies that are involved he doesn't let the body get all torn down not that he isn't subjected to the same strains and shocks and sometimes tears that we are because he is and all masters are and those who tell you to himself I haven't really known them at least that's what we feel we know but their experiences do not tear them down they know how to utilize them constructively they have mastered the fortress and this is what we eventually must learn to do and the first way to do it in fact the most vital thing we must do is to start letting yesterday's misinterpretations of life and experience die to let them die stop stop clinging to them and release that energy for more life and more experience now then in terms of reincarnation which we feel should be brought in at least briefly although it would take many lectures to give the principles or even about one subject what really occurs the reason we actually incarnate continuously is because as we mentioned to you the vehicle becomes so filled with the toxins and the poisons of our thinking feeling the vehicle becomes so frozen with our old reactions that it becomes impossible to entertain really constructive new thoughts it becomes impossible for experience to bring about enough of a shock for the system to gain something in terms of its evolution so the vehicle the consciousness finally in time it drops the vehicle that is the physical vehicle but then the job isn't even fractionally done the true consciousness our true I sometimes takes the rest sometimes not and then starts to build another vehicle that will be malleable that in other words a little an infant vehicle where there are still certain predispositions the deepest predispositions remain don't you see but at least there's an opportunity for new experiences to affect the individual and the whole environment of a new baby vehicle which incidentally has dropped its memory this is why it is malleable and indeed this is the main reason we have to have reincarnation people moan and groan I wish I could remember my past incarnations you gods we couldn't evolve one one flexion of an inch the factory would be demolished if we were overwhelmed with all these memories it is because we forget that we're open enough again in the vehicle to be able to do some new conditioning and reconditioning and whenever it's necessary for the growth of an individual for an incarnation or more incarnations to be known uh if the information comes of course we know that the time Dr. Case was giving a lecture to the Theosophical Group much to his horror he discovered there were 12 Cleopatras all in the audience it was a large group in the east lots of people get their reincarnational information from others who are trying to blow up their ego or else they have their own experiences they are so they feel so unattractive for lambs that they comfort themselves with having been Cleopatra or Napoleon I'd hate to tell you I would just hate to tell you how many human beings think that they are the representation of all kinds of magnificent things in the past and in a cult as of most of the time you find many aspirants who've gone in for a few of these regression techniques techniques or auto-hypnotic techniques who will speak with great sincerity about the fact that they were high priests and high priestesses because this sort of in some ways seems to make them feel big for some reason being having been something once upon a time well just imagine if we really remembered things when you when most and most of the time but some people think they remember nearly the same thing as when you go to sleep and dream they make up a bunch of beautiful stories to help assuage their insecurities and feelings of insufficiency physically as far as their attractiveness is concerned or ability wise wise or straight wise and so on and I am known for a rather puckish sense of humor and there are times I cannot resist deliberately throwing a shot into our aspirant minds by claiming there's some incarnation or other that is exactly different from what most people seem to think it it's so wonderful to mention the Cleopatra's and Abraham Lincoln's and so on but you see even though we forget we haven't it isn't that we forget the higher self hasn't forgotten it knows but there are these certain patterns these fixated patterns will repeat and we will go in for incarnation after incarnation of being caught in this trap until the wisdom and understanding and forgiveness come we'll go into the same kind of experience it may not be 100 the same but it's the same type and the only way we can get over from just being continuously rejected in love or continuously unsuccessful in business or continuously betrayed by friends the only way we can overcome it is to gain a little wisdom and understanding to release that yesterday to where it is let the dead bury the dead and try to go forward bringing new patterns with the real livingness this is the real birth except ye be born anew except ye be born anew ye shall in no wise enter the kingdom of heaven so we ask you when you leave us this morning as you go out to give serious thought to the idea of making a regular habit of catching yourself in your reactions that have to do with yesterday still angry because of what somebody did yesterday or last year or 10 years ago hurt and so on to forgive it to try to see where you needed more discrimination and insight because that's the vital part of it to release it and to ask the higher self to help you with a new picture into a new and glorious adventure of livingness let's have more livingness this is what we try to help our aspirants attain to in ever greater measure continuously our