Discrimination In Mysticism

The title of my talk for this morning is Discrimination and Mysticism.

Now, discrimination is assigned to Tarot Key Number 6, the Lovers. So I invite you to look at Tarot Key Number 6, the Lovers, at your left, up there, where you see the Golden Sun. You see the holy archangel raphael with wings and arms outspread coming out from clouds you see adam and eve which are the symbolic representations of the ability to differentiate differentiate, discriminate. Remember we said discrimination and mysticism. And we have the symbols behind the Adam and Eve figures. Behind Adam, the twelve flames representing the twelve signs of the zodiac, which means the entire heavenly area. In other words, cosmic law, cosmic all is involved here. And its types, because again you have differentiation.

That is indicated because although the heavens are one, what we do with our minds is the same thing we do when we make a map.

We draw a circle to represent the sphere of infinity and then we say we're at the center, which we are, because consciousness is always at the center of everywhere-ness, you know reaching out in all directions pushing you might say even creating everywhere-ness as it pushes that's expansion of consciousness basically so consciousness is always at the center each person's or total consciousness which is the life power the universal consciousness of which we are a part and this outpushing from the center uh hasn't got the kind of boundaries in in reality that we put on it but we have to do this we have to because this is how we evolve an ability to distinguish to make comparisons between one thing and another and this indeed is what gives us mentality individuality and the capacity to take our own self in hand finally to become a conscious child of the Lord of the Universe and one with the all, but within the framework of the development that came from the apparent separation.

So here you have marked out areas where somebody is called an Aries or somebody is called a Taurus or somebody is called a Scorpio because the whatever time of day they were born within the motion of the all.

There were certain slants of energies from certain portions of the heavens radiating in a certain way. And yet, these demarcation lines, remember, are artificial.

This is something we fail to recognize. All demarcations are artificial when we have the line going around the equator we're studying a map you go to the equator and see if you can find that line ask yourself where does it start where does it finish you see there are always these interactions but it is the fantastic capacity capacity for the development of extra richness of awareness. It is this fantastic capacity in man's consciousness, utilizing this ability to separate in order to become aware of the richness and the unity of life.

Uh when we are one with unity and don't know it then we're not able to truly enjoy it are we haven't you found for example that you never knew how well off you were until after being dissatisfied you lost it and got something a lot worse that you thought would be better then realized that you should have appreciated what you had to begin with in other words it seems to take sorrow in order to appreciate that which is productive of joy provided we permit it to be that you know a person for example might be living in an apartment and they might moan and groan about having to live in an apartment saying gosh I want to live in a house you know and I don't like living in an apartment well I've known of one case where the person moaned and groaned and boy they lost their job and they lost I mean all sorts of other things uh happened and they sure didn't live in an apartment anymore because they were evicted they couldn't pay their rent and they just practically had no place to go finally through Through charity, they were taken into a house, but it wasn't their house.

And they realized, oh, why wasn't I grateful when I had that richness, an apartment all my own, you know, where I was the boss. I could do as I pleased. Now here, I have not got the jurisdiction of the place. I have not got the authority to do or not do. I have to follow behind.

And we could enumerate untold numbers of case histories like that, but I'm sure all of us could find something similar in our own background, as only through such experiences do we start recognizing the fact that this ability to differentiate actually has to be used with great care. And so discrimination in mysticism involves much more than one thing the title itself would seem to suggest that what we're going to hear about is how to discriminate various kinds of teachings within occultism within mysticism how to be able to tell which is good or which is bad but if I But it is not our policy to discourage anyone from making any mistakes whatsoever, as you have noted, because in the advanced training systems of occultism we have an obligation to permit you to grow.

And just as we know that no one can learn how to do or be anything without working at it and making their own mistakes we have to honor your right to be wrong which is a similar to the ideas dealing with democracy wouldn't you say and yet a cult training is within a hierarchy. The hierarchy, though, has to do with something very special indeed. It has to do with the recognition of the variations in growth, the variations in the age of souls, the variations in the strength of souls, to take and handle certain certain ideas, certain principles, and to learn how to cope with these forces and the interaction of experience. To learn how to do this and therefore various individuals would be on various different rungs of the ladder in their abilities and capacities to to tell what might be the right or the wrong thing for this situation. Because, you see, what would be right for a young soul would be very wrong for an old soul, and vice versa.

That's why true discrimination, which is the evolution that comes from all the development of the previous steps in the tarot series, stories, evolution absolutely requires that we recognize that what other people do or do not do, what other people have accomplished or cannot accomplish, cannot be what we utilize for our judgments because if that were so for example now governmentally speaking a government can declare war on another country in each country now then that means that killing becomes legal and And indeed, not only legal, but in some countries they kill you if you refuse to kill.

That's how horrible they think it is that you should refuse to kill. And of course this is called by other names. We always give beautiful names to things that we want people to be conditioned into. And yet when you just take off all the outer coverings, this is how it is. Because the evolution of man up to this time, though it's changing rapidly, the evolution of man has been such that he has not been able to discriminate as yet between the difference that has to do with having different cultures and different attitudes towards these cultures as something that you honor or as something that is dangerous because young souls have the tendency to look at all things that are different as dangerous dangerous or and you know enemies something alien if it's different it's alien young souls have a tendency to do this as we surely know and even old souls sometimes fall by the wayside here and they're caught up in the projections from race minds so that we come across the situations that really have made many many people say that this planet Earth is the insane asylum for the cosmos, and not just the insane asylum, the asylum for the criminally insane.

Believe me, you'd be surprised how many people with certain subtle plane awarenesses are quite determined that that's what planet Earth is. I'm not saying tis or tisn't, I just thought it would amuse you to realize it's fairly widely but always remember if you are prone to accept the idea naturally we don't want to say well gee there's something wrong with me that would be awful we always insist we are here as missionaries and that will keep us comfortable or caretakers but chuckling, joking aside side the thing we do notice is how differences make people feel insecure and they therefore think of that which is different as being alien as I mentioned before so the result The result is that which is alien, automatically the reaction to this is a bit of violence. You want to eliminate something that's alien because there's shock, there's disturbance, there are various degrees of these intensities. And this is how the younger souls usually feel, that's how they react.

Intact. Therefore, if you go back to primitive times, for example, you'll find that although the family itself was held intact and very tenderly treated, another family was like an alien, you see. And especially if it was another tribe or another village, you had of these bits of wars and you you had cannibalism and there isn't a place in the world that hasn't practiced cannibalism at some time or other you know in the cultural development of this particular area no matter where you every country in the world has gone in for it at some point always with the rationalization of its stage of development in other words seeing it as something great and bold and marvelous because you're getting the spirit of your enemy into them you so it makes you stronger you see and then everybody looks up say isn't he marvelous you know he ate somebody that had great courage and now look he's going to be much more courageous it became a he became a great hero so look at how by taking in what seemed to be the proper values look how we we could be and can be enticed into very intense reactions I deliberately give you this extreme because extremes show a principle more effectively still the same thing as there in subtleties and here in Tarot Key Six I want you to note that it's called the lovers and there's great significance here, the lovers human evolution demands that sooner or later we reach a point in our mentality in our insight with our this intellect this fantastic ability to differentiate we reach a point where not only do we differentiate we even work at developing it more and more but we develop more a greater and greater and deeper and deeper in loveness with the whole principle of differences the miracle of it the wonder of it realizing that the very thing that makes one person love to just sit and think the very same principle makes another person want to just do nothing but remember active you know baseball football walks run you know can't you don't they don't want to sit still the same principle there are the differences and as you've heard me say often if we were all exactly the same, we would be like an anthill.

But I don't know, I have a sneaking hunch that one ant knows another ant and can differentiate and perhaps even honors and adores the differences. How do we know? We haven't entered into the ant consciousness that deeply yet. So we assume that they cannot.

And again we think that bees are just all the same it isn't true, those who have studied beehives have noted that some of them like to take little siestas and they go in for little games and teasings and some of them are busier than others and they're not at all as identical in their actions as one thinks those who have taken the time to study their habits have noted these differentiations and as far as looks are concerned I'd like to remind you that one of the greatest complaints Orientals have always made whenever they have first seen Caucasians is that they all look so the same you can't tell one apart from the other and this you find, this is the true of every race race when they first come in contact with others they they make this complaint and yet you then see a development of do but that's different than I am so comes for the undeveloped the undeveloped heart comes this feeling well if it's alien then it's not as good as I am because it's not exactly the same as I am and we have all of the nonsense developed in the world which is a reflection from the inability for each center within the that group the inability to see and love difference now this does not mean that we love that that which commits whatever our idea is of evil at this point in our evolution.

Because most certainly this Tarot key, with the highlight on discrimination, also, and without any question whatever, is pointing up the idea of the ability to discriminate between good and evil. You see there, there's the tree with the apples behind Eve, and remember, it was our eating of this fruit that gave us the, this is the fruit of the knowledge of good and evil. And the fruit of the knowledge of good and evil, which we have eaten, is actually the very principle that has given us the ability to discriminate. To see one thing as against another thing. To tell things apart. Instead of being an amorphous mass, or should we call it an amorphous mess, we are distinct units within a unity, but distinct.

And that's why, I remind you, in Genesis, that's why the Elohim said, now man has become like us.

He can tell good and evil apart. In other words, he now has a self-consciousness that will be evolving.

So the tree of life, which I have mentioned previously, was locked away because this was done deliberately. You can't give unevolved self-consciousness eternal life on the conscious level because then its evolution would stop its ability to keep discriminating more keenly to evolve through mistakes would stop you have to sort of keep dying being born you have to get really into the experiences of the pairs of opposites to finally develop the understanding of what is is truly good and what is truly evil before you're ready to claim your eternal life that is that we of course traveling this tree of life you know thursday nights we're doing it in a very special way sunday mornings we are working with its names of power in another very special way each is a different phase of the work and each is equally important that is why what we are doing um with the qabalistic tree of life with the tarot keys we are actually learning how to eat of the fruit of the tree of life discriminately how to tell the poison plants from the nutritive ones we are learning how to eat of it we are evolving back toward from once we came but with the gaining of that completed evolutionary individuality which will make us a partner with the divine as child of the Divine.

And then that sword, and do you remember it's a sword that stops Adam and Eve from also eating of the tree of life?

There's a sword, a flaming sword.

And in Tarot Key number 6, the lovers, the Hebrew letter Zayim, That's how you pronounce it.

I bet you thought it's Zane.

Zion.

It means sword.

And sword, as Dr. Case has pointed out, literally it does what? It cuts apart. So we learn how to cut apart. That is look at a thing. It's two sides or it's many sides. And as we develop the ability to use that sword, what discrimination, to truly understand and respond to and gain power over the forces that we call good and evil, so that we become incapable of evil, incapable of it.

Now, how do we become incapable of evil? Of course, the rest of the tarot series helps show the way.

You can't give the full essence of evolution in one talk, because then you miss a main lesson. Each must give its potent message for our needs of right now.

But the development does come, provided we realize that to learn how to discriminate accurately, effectively, and in harmony with that glorious archangel, that is a very vital job and it is something we must be at at all times. Also the ability to experience life itself the ability to appreciate experience and delight in relationships all involves the ability to be aware of differences and to love them man loves woman and woman loves man because of our very primary difference you understand that has to do with the mating now and each feels incomplete until the very difference has become a source of unity on a higher level until finally it achieves its spiritual level of unification when the two individuals have evolved to the point where they can utilize these forces that fully and And again, in the difference, a person who has a nurturing temperament certainly absolutely requires friends, as well as within the family, those who like to be nurtured, so that one can just have a ball, nurturing, and fulfill that need, and the other is having a ball and just being delighted because it has a need to be nurtured.

Sometimes we turn around and take turns. Why do we have to be just one thing? They're a game. We are complex beings and so we are many things and we therefore should honor and love all the many aspects of self in ourselves and others.

While not giving up at any time, the recognition that every step of the way life the higher soul the guardian angel presents us with choices every step of the way there are choices and only to the degree that we learn how to discriminate between that which is conducive towards the spiritual the fulfilling fulfilling and that which is not. Only then do we make wise choices. But of course we realize we've always made many unwise choices before we can have wisdom. Wisdom consists of mistakes.

You know, there again you take opposites and you find that they have a unity on the next level. There can no one who has true wisdom no one at all who has true wisdom would deny the fact that this wisdom was gained through many failures many failures else how would it come first comes comes knowledge and out of the knowledge and the experiment with it finally and the failures then comes that deepening and the true wisdom that brings a higher type of discriminatory power than that which is merely intellectual and yet if we do not honor and love the intellectual intellectual discrimination, we certainly do not prepare ourselves as an instrument to be able to receive the higher, because the higher must work in and through the intellect.

Certainly, those who down the intellect have been making a great error, as I've been pointing out on the Thursday night classes, because the intellect has to be used as an instrument, and the Lord of Life has gone to a great deal of trouble to evolve centers of self that have intellect with which to discriminate, to tell apart. And also I would like to remind you how often I have remarked that the intellect is similar to a microscope, so that you might call our ability to see the little minute variations in things is like our being God's microscope in order to become aware of all the fantastic, glorious, rapturous different types of form.

You know, the favorite analogy always used is a snowflake. If you look at it from one level, it is a lovely piece of white fluff. Lovely, but just fluff. Up take a microscope and you see the most gorgeous hexagram designs and every snowflake is different so we you see are the way the divine consciousness experiences the differences so that instead of lovely white flakes we see each other with skin hues varying all the way from the lightest to the darkest with hair colorings varying all the way along all these beautiful variations eye shadings of the most fantastic variety if you stop to look you know, you don't see it if you don't look Most people make the mistake of just looking at obvious differences, you know, and then there's that unhappy deciding because it's different it's alien.

Whereas the truly old soul hunts for differences to love them, to love the consciousness that is able to be aware because thus does the divine consciousness delight in its own creativity, creativity in its own selfhood in and through each and us as the center. Thus does the divine consciousness have the utter rapture of subtle variations in color and hue of sunrises and sunsets, the flowers, the variations in the greens of just one tree, and between different trees.

The variations that are so subtle of the color, I've heard some people say, oh, the desert is so colorless, and I've looked at them with astonishment.

Look, you see, he who hath eyes to see, sees, and yet we develop our eyes to see.

But when we look go to the desert go to a mountain our california mountains in the summer similar to what we could say about the desert in its colorations there are these subtleties beautiful rich glorious they're not just a brown hills we are not looking when we say that the California summer mountains no different times of day there are different colorings and there are the light and the shadow with the higher and lower places according to the way the Sun is placed at the time of day and they go from what is almost like a purple with the with mysterious furious smoke colorings into pearl translucence, into sort of subtle golds and it is astonishing if you just look and did you know all of this is meditation?

Looking for these variations everywhere in the sky, I just love watching the different colors of the sky on a smogless day, I'm afraid that I have no appreciation whatsoever for whatever experience it is that smog gives us. Because there, my discriminatory power say, now there is an evil.

The thoughtlessness, the unevolved level of man, the greediness of man, the not caring, they grab your dollar and to you know where with the people who are suffering you know I don't have to suffer I've got a million or a billion dollars I I'll go off to my little island or mountain retreat and I'll just go there when it's pleasant besides I can afford the finest air conditioning and in my automobile, in my car. This is the thinking of those who... And then the deliberate misleading that goes on. Everyone points the finger at everybody else.

It's like a bunch of children who've been in mischief and something breaks. No one wants to take the blame, so everyone points the finger at everybody else. Even though figuring that's the way to keep from reaping the whirlwind but of course in cosmic law we read the whirlwind that's one wonderful thing because the sword also indicates justice which comes back to us for lack of discrimination that's how we develop it you see and the sort The sword of justice can be seen there in Key 11, although we won't be going into that today.

But we have to be able to say some things are evil. You see, a big mistake has been made by many metaphysical aspirants because of hearing and receiving this principle that says, God is good, which is true.

And we our consciousness creates all things so our consciousness has to say all is good and so you know there are these mad affirmations somebody might be murdering a child right next to us what are we going to do close our eyes and say that is unreal god is good god is life god is beauty god is protection that's not there that's not there but it is there and those who have mistaken taken the principles that involve, you know, the fact that consciousness creates and that we must use positive thinking, they have, again, they have failed to show discrimination when they are going to use this principle with which to deny that something is there that requires action, action and attention of various kinds. So you see, the true occultist does not deny that evil exists because it does, and the true occultist does not deny that evil must be fought because it must. What the true occultist says though is what I've already said before now I'm going to have to remind you again that all that is evil is the necessary illusion because of our inability at this point to see a whole picture we have to see it in part because that's our the way our evolution proceeds and within the total picture we finally come to recognize all evil ends up serving good think about it for a moment you'll see no not that it does so willingly now the words of soul that is still on an evil level young soul let's say certainly such a young soul on a level of of appreciating and enjoying evil, whatever that soul wants to call it, this particular soul will very definitely be unable to understand the significance of its inability to see what evil is or even desire to do anything about it.

Because that young soul will be unable to see what is destructive to those around me at this moment and what is constructive.

Now the older soul takes every evil and uses it for growth.

The older soul indeed comes to recognize that the opposite side of a coin is an essential in order to achieve anything so we do not waste our energy in moaning and groaning about certain factors because we are willing to recognize that that if this is in an unevolved state, it is evil for this time, this place. Still, I refuse to let it pull me down.

And by refusing to let it pull me down, and by, if it is within my province, by refusing to let it be the victor, it does what? It strengthens my soul and deepens my capacity. And all growth proceeds a step by step because we overcome the immaturity of yesterday which becomes the evil if you because that's another word for it really the clumsiness and it has been said behind every saint is a sinner otherwise how do you become a saint unless you've been a sinner so you can't you have to have been a sinner and they're really gone in for some pretty horrible types of being thinking and feeling in order to come to recognize what does not pay that it is productive of sorrow that it it is productive of disruption, that it is productive of everything anti our ideal. And we never can see that until we've been sinners. That's why every one of us here, oh, the things we've been I tell you you name it we've been it old souls have been through more than one hell old souls have fallen and risen and fallen and risen over and over again in order to aspire fire at all you have to have sinned your head off over and over again because then the soul has come to recognize the fact that there is nothing to be gained by letting ourselves get pulled into gutters and garbage children naturally play in gutters and garbage but all souls do not and that's why recognition of what evil is is an essential and rationalizing it away does not help us to grow at all no we have to be ready to pose a part to utilize this power of discrimination and and this is the and notice it is such a fine razor's edge because though we have to be ready and willing and able to say this is evil this I must overcome in myself this I must not react to or respond to in the mass mind or mass media though we must be ready and willing to say that at the same time we have to remain lovers In other words, you cannot hate the child that still likes to play in the dirt.

Is that fair if the child doesn't know any better?

Yet you're not going to use that as a rationalization, say, well, if that person can play in the dirt, why can't I?

You know, I've heard people use such rationalizations in many ways. They've done something that is certainly not on a very evolved level, and they said, well, it isn't as bad as so-and-so did. Well, what has that got to do with it? You see, there's where you're using the discriminatory power in the wrong way. You know, those who fall into that trap will do that. And then, of course, there's the use of this posing apart, which, you know, the discriminatory power, the use of it, which is the saddest of all. That's when we fall into the delusion of feeling so separated and alien from everyone that we walk in a loneliness.

Now, every true occult aspirant goes through some such stage.

I guess you have to be lonely enough to become desperate enough to search for that which you will never lose in the way of the security of relationship.

And of course in the final analysis, as I said, you have to be lonely enough. People who haven't been lonely enough will keep destroying relationships until as we mentioned before they have developed that appreciation and that appreciation has to do with the awareness of the subtleties the ability to discriminate to to pose a part to see the the all the little things that aren't so so little, that they take on real significance. The ability to really see and appreciate, and sadly but truly, of course, familiarity breeds contempt in the soul that hasn't been lonely enough.

And therefore, people forget to say thank you, God, when a little problem comes up here and there with people. They forget to say, thank you God that I'm not alone, that I'm in something meaningful, that I'm with love, that I have something to cope with, instead of living in the empty void of hopelessness and aloneness.

I hope you're getting the depth of the message of what discrimination and lovers as two words that have to be brought together into a larger unity can mean and should mean and must mean sooner or later in so many ways.

To be able to tell the things apart is what gives us the capacity to keep ourselves lovingly grateful, rich, expressive and experiencing.

When we remember how terrible it is to have once been lonely, ah how we treasure what lovers we are towards our friends or the beloved the children of the stranger passing the night oh how tenderly sweet we are when we remember we've all been through many such emptinesses and when we've been through many despairs in relation to what what we've been doing, say, work-wise, when we have felt a sort of senselessness, how many of us stop to remind ourselves from the depth of our heart and soul how fortunate we are to be a part of something that serves, whether we are serving in the way of being a cook to prepare meals whether we are serving in a way that expresses itself say as being able to type or do clerical work all things of service it's It's our work within the total one.

And so instead of looking, again, using this power to see differentiations, instead of looking for the things that we don't like about it, and then feeding it with the depth of our consciousness, which is so powerful, when we recognize what that sword can do and does do that sort of discrimination what we should do and will do and must do then is wherever we are we are going to be careful to be saying thank you to be grateful for it else we shall have to lose it again and again and again and we're tired of that aren't we now now. Of course we are. So what we're going to be doing now on, more better than we did before at least, let's put it that way, and that's always good, any improvement is something to rejoice about. What we will be doing then is remembering to love the differences, to to love the things that seem to be the aggressor, to love that which seems to be the enemy, because finally, as I told you, there is no enemy, and all evil serves, gives growth and depth and beauty to the soul that is determined to go in that direction. Let's take that with us.