1. Seven Stages to Spiritual Unfolment Through Tarot

Tonight we're starting a new series called the seven stages of spiritual unfoldment through Tarot. Mustn't forget the through Tarot. And you see in front of you, don't you think we worked it out nicely? Three Tarot keys with one above.

Now, in actuality, of course, this particular group of keys has to do with a more advanced part of our work in the Tarot and the lessons you receive through the mail. However, we decided that due to the fact we have been accomplishing so much in our classwork, due to the fact there has been such an intensification of the receptivity that we would take up something that usually requires a great deal of preliminary preparation and try to present it in such a way that those of you who have not yet had any tarot classes or come to that part of the work in your lessons will gain much, we hope, extraordinary benefit. And those of you who have approached or passed that part in your lessons will have some new vistas open up to you which perhaps you failed to see before. Now in this seven-week course what we are going to do, you is take three tarot keys each week. Why three? Well, in actuality, the seven stages of spiritual unfoldment actually have to do with the last seven tarot keys. The last seven, starting from number 15 going through number 21. Those of you who haven't seen the tarot tableau, I know that Reverend Harriet B. Case will be glad to have one available for you during our intermission and any other time if you haven't got one at home usually our members receive this with their lessons in the eighth week of their studies with us so those of you who are members will of course have seen it will have it and those who are not can see it during the intermission and then you will see how it is set up Actually, then, it's the last seven tarot keys which really give the seven stages of spiritual unfoldment.

However, no tarot key is complete in itself. The ancient Mystery School training system, which utilized the principles of tarot for spiritual unfoldment, gave out the 22 major tarot keys for the 22 modes of the life powers activities in terms of types and expressions of consciousness. So that though we may say those last seven keys denote the stages, these stages are utterly incomprehensible without knowing what goes before. Therefore, in the tarot tableau, which our members receive in the eighth week of the work and which is available at the door during intermission if you want to go and look at it, the tableau is set up in an exact method so that the tarot key number zero sits above everything as you see it there the fool which represents super consciousness as it is about to enter into a new cycle of manifestation it's up on the top of the mountain it is looking out across the vistas to the next mountain, to the next height, which it intends to climb.

But in order to get to that next mountain, it must go down into the valley.

And so going down into the valley actually is what is involved in going through another phase of the life-powered creation, a phase of activity, a phase of evolution, which in essence can be thought of as a universal phase because usually it is the emanating out of an entire universe or nebula with the solar systems within the nebulas etc which becomes involved and the purpose as taught by Qabalah is for the unfoldment of consciousness centers differentiated centers of consciousness, or shall we say individualized centers of consciousness within the one universal consciousness, for the unfoldment and the growth or the expansion of these particular centers. So the fool, the tarot key number zero, can be thought of as being part of all the tarot keys we're going to take up. In actuality, all the keys from number one to to 21 are different phases of the fool, different parts of the activity. The first seven tarot keys, the ones numbered from 1 to 7, actually express the principles. So you can say these are the principles of consciousness, starting with number one, which expresses the principle of attention and therefore self-consciousness. Then it goes on to the number two, which expresses the principle of memory and or subconsciousness. Then to number three, which expresses the creative aspect of subconsciousness, the imaginative faculties of the life power. Then to number four, which gives the principle of reason, which develops from the preceding ones, and so on.

Number five being intuition. I mean, I'm just giving you a very brief, quick outline. Number six discrimination number seven actual awareness or expression of the divine will like the charioteer driving the chariot of the vehicle as the Bhagavad-gita puts it so the first seven tarot keys express the actual principle then the next seven the tarot keys numbered from 8 to 14 express the laws or the agencies or the activities through which the principles work. Then the last seven Tarot keys express the effects of all the previous elements that are involved, and these effects are what? They are the stages of unfoldment, the stages of evolution or the stages of spiritual unfoldment. Now then, in the Tarot tableau, actually across horizontally from 1 to 7, you see right here before you 1, 8, and 15. But actually on the tableau you have 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7 going horizontally. Then it starts under the number 1, a continuation of the number series, And then you go from 8 to 14.

These are the laws of agencies, the second row. Then, number 15 starts the third row, which is really from 15 to 21. That's how it is in the tableau. But you see, had we put them one after another this way, we tried it yesterday. Because I really wanted to have it that way. But we discovered, when we did that, that the lower key was so far down that people in the back would probably have problems that would not be as easily seen. And actually, when you lay out your tableaus, you can just as readily lay them out horizontally as you can vertically, remembering that we're dealing with really one set of three at the moment. So, on this first evening, we're taking up, naturally, the first stage of spiritual unfoldment with the keys which are involved. In other words, Tarot Key Number One, the magician, is the principle of consciousness.

Working through the laws or agencies or activities of what Tarot Key Number Eight, Strength, represents, bringing about the result or the effect or the stage of spiritual unfoldment which Tarot Key number 15 represents. Have I made myself clear? Good, because I did it. It's very confusing when you're dealing with a whole group of numbers and then throw several of them in. Now then we can continue with the essence of the classwork. Remember Tarot Key zero, the Fool, represents super consciousness.

Now, those of you who have not been here before will wonder why should superconsciousness be called the fool. And if you will just stop to think for a little while, I think you will realize that always the wise men of the world have been thought of as fools by their contemporaries. Certainly, though the sages of the world have been looked upon with scorn for their crackpot ideas, or their lack of practicality, or good common sense, or their lack of understanding of the real values in life, for instance, such as business and money and power. This is how it has always been.

Those who have attained to superconscious levels of response certainly are looked upon as a with contempt scorn and as being something not too far away from a moron perhaps we know this is true and so you see the fool is really very aptly represented here of course there's more involved than that remember it's the fool who in the course of all did what you remember in our present tarot pack he's now called the Joker and you know what a Joker is don't you somebody who makes jokes and who entertains and of course we could say well by golly this because if this is the joke with the life power of pulling taking a look at the devil here at the result of the effect we get to wonder wondering what is the life power about as As a matter of fact, practically every one of us have wondered that at some time or other, haven't we?

And indeed, often it has been this very wondering which has led us into metaphysics and then finally into the deeper aspects of metaphysics, which happen to be the really true occult levels of training, which are involved in learning how to actually experience these levels of consciousness So we know of what it means to be the fool or the Joker. You know this first stage of spiritual unfoldment it rather amused me that we have to speak a little more than usual about the fool during this process because You see Tarot Key number 15 here called the devil has two aspects assigned to it but cabalistically. One is bondage, and certainly you see these figures in bondage with chains and so on. And the other is mirth. And doesn't mirth remind you of the fool or the joker?

And remember, in the courts of old, it was the joker or the fool who brought about laughter for the king. He did the entertaining. And you know, our Eastern brethren have told us much and often that the physical universe is really the play of the gods. They called it Maya, and our Western interpreters have mistakenly gotten the idea that it is meant illusion, illusion in terms of it being unreal. This was not the intention of the real seers. Illusions are not necessarily unreal illusions merely present something in another guy rather dressed up more or less and of course anything that is in a limited framework anything that limits our perception or our point of view inevitably will give us a narrowed interpretation and bring about the illusions or the delusions which come out of the narrow points of view like looking through a keyhole you know you see only the partial thing and therefore you don't understand the whole thing at any rate going along then with the concept that the life power is now coming down into the valley in order to start a new phase of evolution, another cycle of self-expansion. Incidentally, there are some who think, well, if the life power is all, has all, why should it require something like going in for for the experiences of the valley, why should it require experiences which bring about self-expansion, or shall we say self-experience?

There could be several answers. Of course, we could say to you, why don't you go and ask God and see if he or she, we usually don't like to say he or she, you know, because God is basically both, will give you an answer.

Well, we could, but of course we won't say that. The point is that as we look out into the universe, into the physical universe, certainly the thing we see is something that's continuously expanding. This our telescopes show us. And as the apparent physical universe expands, right in line with it we certainly see another phenomenon, and that is the expansion of consciousness.

Now, we don't see why we cannot just say that it is the nature of the life power to go in for cycles of reproducing aspects of itself for ever more expanded areas of self-experience. It's creative.

And being creative, it enters into these phases of creation and sleep. Creation and sleep. And always there's the next phase of creation all of our material scientific discoveries point to this from the outer levels of experimentation and certainly our occult schools of thought have known this throughout all time at least throughout all history as far as we have a record of it now the The Tarot Key number one, which we see here as the magician, is certainly showing a figure that's in a valley. You can see that the descent has taken place. Actually, of course, when we give courses on the Tree of Life and the Qabalah, we show the descent of the energy of the life power into matter, or the way it condenses itself into forms, and then starts expanding itself in and through the forms into ever larger areas of self-expression. But in this particular series, we want to show you something very specific.

We want to show you the phases of your own consciousness. We want to show you how to work with the tarot keys in groups of three so that you can start developing a fourth-dimensional type of awareness.

Now, how does this come about? Actually, if you will stop to consider, you will realize that all description of mystical experience or spiritual experience has to do with a simultaneity of awareness. As you've heard us say before, it has to do with, for example, being aware of past, present, and future as being an eternal now, or it has to do with being aware of everything, everywhere, as being one in an interrelated unity and not exactly off in some far-and-forth space.

So that fourth-dimensional awareness transcends the limitation of self-consciousness. Fourth dimensional awareness has to do then with being able to know many things at once and indeed if you will think back to your own experiences that not a single one of you has ever had a time I'm sure when you have not had some kind of intuition about something things, both as children and as adults. And you'll say, well, I had an intuition. Now, if you will analyze this intuition, this is what you will discover. You will discover that this intuition involves your knowing several things at once, rather than one thing at a time in consecutive order. And we have, of course, little intuitions, and we have large intuitions, the largest being in cosmic consciousness, illumination, all of which we will take up in this series, of course. Because we are going to take you through the different stages and the principles and the laws through which they work, help you to understand these stages so that you will become more and more of a living, expressing example of the highest by being willing to go through the stages by recognizing the need to start working with your own consciousness because this is the essence of occult attainment.

We can attend lectures from now through eternity and of course, I was going to say, even if the seats were just comfortable, I don't see what you would be gaining more than an evening's entertainment although I suppose nothing is ever lost there is at least a little spark or a little seed which would start something even though you might not be ready to work with it intensively so perhaps I shouldn't say that it's wasteful although I do think that just to listen and come to sit in uncomfortable chairs requires some tremendous famine and it seems to me for this reason alone you must be ready for far more intensive work than perhaps even you realize at this moment at any rate the intensive work naturally has to do with learning what your consciousness really involves what it is perhaps even why it is well there are some who say there's no answer to it. There is an answer, but it's a fourth dimensional experience.

And furthermore, to learn what to do about getting your consciousness where it inevitably must go sooner or later. That is, taking your evolution in hand and going through your stages of evolution so that you will become liberated, not only for your own sake, but for the sake of everything that lives and moves and has its being in the one life. Now then, the magician as a principle, it represents attention. Now here is the way to utilize the grouping of the tarot keys in order to train yourself to start thinking, shall we say again, in group ideas instead of just step by step. Now this does not mean that you stop using your consciousness or attention for the step-by-step thinking. This is an absolute essential for analysis, for example, for study, for developing an awareness of certain areas or levels of of life. In fact, you can know nothing if you do not use the principle of self-consciousness, which takes the step-by-step awareness. Nevertheless, what we want you to do is use the step-by-step awareness to expand your consciousness so that you can utilize not only the principle of step-by-step, but the motion of this principle, which is tarot key number eight, the agency or law, and become aware of the effect or the principle that's involved in your life, so that you will learn how to do something about it. The magician, then, represents cabalistically, first of all, attention. Next, self-consciousness. Get your little words. If you have just one word indicating an idea, then we'll talk about the idea together, then another, you've got four, five, or six words for each tarot key, will give you the ability to start getting the whole principle of this key, the full symbolism into action and motion, and then it will give you the ability, working with them in these groups of three, of a motion of your consciousness going in an area or direction which it didn't go in before because you will be using this what we might call shorthand of consciousness to reach into the deeper part of yourself incidentally this will also make you very much more sensitive to what other people think and feel and are and in some ways it will be most pleasant and And in other ways, it will look like the very devil, as we see here.

But that's part of growth.

Now, what is attention? What is self-consciousness?

Kabbalistically, this Hebrew letter is assigned to house. The object is house. Now, what is self-consciousness, and what has attention got to do with house? Well, remember, a house is what you live in.

A house is your whole area of life, then. Your body, for example, is your house of life on the physical plane.

A house, therefore, is in a sense a vehicle.

And it is the house which represents, really, your area of attention. Also, a house is a place where you go in to be safe.

You withdraw from the elements. When it rains, when it storms, when the sun shines, if you're miserable and you can't stand the fact that the sun is shining, you can withdraw into your house. Or if you're feeling the opposite way, if it's miserable outside and you feel joyous, you can withdraw into your house.

Your attention or what you feel about your house determines your reaction to the house so your house really is your area a mapped out area of experience this is your house of life your body is one area of experience that you have mapped out for yourself but your environment is another area. So your environment is also your house. And incidentally, you are the builder of the house, you know, you and no one else. Yes, we can say it's the fool who built it. And some of you who are suffering from depression or unhappiness will say, ah, yes, I sure, some fool I've sure been. But we don't mean that kind of fool. We mean it's the super conscious part of you that has built this house, whatever it looks like. And so your house is the area that you have mapped out for yourself in which to live, in which to experience, in which to sleep, in which to eat, and so on. In which to study, in which to know. The mapped out area is absolutely essential in order to be able to have self-consciousness.

Now, most of you have heard me give this analogy before, and yet it's necessary to keep repeating it. Because, you know, in spiritual growth, it isn't that we keep telling you anything new.

If you keep searching for the new, you will never find anything that's really worthwhile while after you have learned a certain amount at any rate because the real effort the the real accomplishment the real thing we're after in occultism is to keep working with our principle of consciousness to keep approaching the same ideas in as many different ways as we can in order to accomplish the thing that the water accomplishes when it goes drop drop drop on the rock until finally it will wear away the stone. And this is what we have to do if we're going to get our consciousness out of the devilish predicament of sin as seen in the first stage of spiritual unfoldment here. We are going to have to understand this whole principle of the limitation of consciousness as being the very thing we use in order to expand our awareness.

So self-consciousness in itself must bring about what you might call an area or a field for cultivation. This field of cultivation is being shown in Tarot Key Number One again by the the roses and the lilies, you know, that's incidentally symbolizing subconsciousness. So that what we give attention to is really our field of cultivation.

And what we are cultivating is our consciousness. Through thinking, through feeling, through experience. This is what consciousness really is all about. And if we did not have a mapped out field with which to apply the principles of consciousness, we wouldn't have any cultivated flowers, don't you see? What would we have? Everything would be chaos. Everything would run riot. Nothing but weeds, we could even say. So in order to bring about the expression of purpose, you have to map out an area in which to work. A musician maps out an area when he composes a piece of music. An artist maps out an area for painting or for sewing or for cooking, because cooking is also art history. Don't forget, a carpenter or a mechanic maps out an area for activity. And so the life power marks out an area in which to cultivate intensive, awakened, self-conscious, individualized centers of self-knowingness and self-experience. That is why we have limitations.

Because there is, you might say, you know, you've seen these spheres which are maps of the world, and, you know, there's a whole line that's drawn around the middle, and you're told this is the equator. And then there are other lines that are drawn from the North Pole to the South Pole and you're told about latitudes and longitudes. And you have these marked out areas and within each of these areas you're told now this place is rich in minerals and this place is rich in growth and this place is rich in cannibals and this place is rich in mechanization.

All right, but what is it? This is an artificially mapped out area, isn't it? And yet each of these areas has a special, a specialty or a specialization. This, I think, is one of the best illustrations we can give to help you to understand that your self-consciousness is really a mapped out area which is your house mapped out by the higher self mapped out by god mapped out by the universal one in order to have our specializations of expression although you may ask well why in the world does Does the Lord of Life want to specialize in things like cannibals, for instance? See, that means that you're looking at it from the Tarot Key number 15 point of view, doesn't it?

When you ask that question. But we'll explain it. We are going to try to give you a very full understanding of just why we even ask for why. But we'll have to take it step by step. And don't forget we have the seven stages we will have to discuss. Therefore, the first thing we must understand in relation to the first principle is that we are a mapped out area for cultivation, but the divine is growing. And mind you, we said is growing, and it's because we are being grown in this mapped out area that we still are so shall we say immature or unfinished and of course it's very looks very evil at a certain point that's why again we can see the devil now then attention kabbalistically in terms of this hebrew letter and parakeet is also assigned to the pair of opposites called life and death and here we come to one of the most important aspects of this first principle of consciousness life and death now what do we mean by life and death all right when you are being attentive you are alive are you not when you are not being attentive you are not alive the extreme is for instance catalepsy not right when you're unconscious you're not being attentive to anything and this is the closest to the state of death that we know on this plane so you see the emptier the content of our consciousness in terms of attention the closer we are to being zombies. The more alive our consciousness is, even notice the expressions we use.

The consciousness is alive when it can be attentive, when it can watch, when it is alert. Therefore, the field of attention is the very first principle involved in having a really well-defined self-consciousness. Now you might think that all human beings have well-defined self-consciousnesses. You couldn't be more mistaken. All you have to do is go out and look, or maybe just watch yourself sometimes when you're not looking, sort of sneak up on yourself. All of us have periods where our consciousness is anything but well-defined. Our consciousness meanders around it's neither here nor there nor anywhere it follows uh associations just like in a dream you know I'll do this yesterday I'll do this yesterday or I'll do this tomorrow and maybe so and so will come and I wonder if I should accomplish this or let that go and the mind wanders and you could uh with some people you could slap your finger you You can call their name.

And they're not really doing anything constructive with the mind. It's wandering in subconsciousness.

Don't forget, any time self-consciousness or attention is not here and now, it's wandering inside of subconsciousness. As a matter of fact, inside of subconsciousness is all there is. It's the substance of the universe. As you will see when we take up the second stage of spiritual unfoldment next week.

But the wandering of the attention is something we all suffer from. Only some of us have the ability, if we're interested enough, to bring it sharply up and to suddenly become alert, and then what occurs? Only as our attention is sharp can we be said to be concentrating. What is concentration but limiting the attention to this cultivated area in order to know it, in order to study it, in order finally, of course, to control it. And it is the act of attention which really is what controls your whole house of life. It is what you do with your attention that has been responsible for everything you've ever been, everything you are, and everything you will be. This is the first principle of consciousness. And what is it that we do with our act of attention? Of course, when we're in love, as I always like to point out, we are in a state of attentive concentration that cannot be beat.

There's nothing can compare to it. Perhaps there's good reason for the idea that God is love because the most alive state if you will think the most alive state that consciousness seems to know is that state it has when it has been in love or is in love both in terms of its concentration and its feeling of verve of vigor of aliveness which it radiates to everyone. So you see the principle works there. Of course, when we're in hate, which is the opposite of being in love, a similar thing takes place, except that instead of the light and radiation, there's this darkness and this repulsion that people draw away from so readily. But the power is just as great as a concentration on an individual that you don't where you can't pull away of course this isn't good either because it means that something has you you haven't got it we want to have our own consciousness we want to have our own attention pointing where we direct it that's why you see the magician holding the staff this staff is tremendously symbolic and in the inner mystery school training of which our chapter is a representative this is a symbol of the most potent kind of stimulus or training the self-consciousness to learn how to own or be owned this is a better way to put it to be owned by the higher self instead of the vagaries and travelings and meanderings that go on now then what do you usually do with your self-consciousness by you I don't mean you sitting here I mean you generally everyone you which includes me so what I could say is what do we usually do with our self-consciousness with our act of attention here is what we usually do we usually look at things from the outer surfaces that is we look at the appearance that's the 15th therapy there the devil we look at the the appearance, and our attention is more or less captured by the devil, by the appearance.

In fact, this is our problem. You may be wondering, why haven't we been talking yet about parakeet number eight, which is the law or agency or the activity that's involved in this series of three? Because in this series, self-consciousness here, the magician, is the principle of self-conscious attention. Tarot key number eight, strength, is the law or agency through which this principle works, and tarot key number 15 is the result or the effect of that principle, and therefore the effect of that activity also. But you see, remember this, the activity is the intermediate state. Actually the activity is the result of the principle which is in the attention now and actually you have heard us say that Tarot Key number 15 is the result so which is the result each and both depending on what phase of it we are trying to understand at the moment. When we're trying to examine the action or activity that's going on inside of ourselves as a result of what we have given attention to, then that is the result at the moment. But then finally comes the later result. And incidentally sometimes it doesn't come to the next incarnation or two or three or four. In fact some of us are wiping out some of of the nonsense with which we imbued our acts of attention that we got into motion as much as seven and eight and nine and ten incarnations ago.

In other words, sort of washing up a whole group of incorrect acts of attention at one time because of having reached the stage of evolution where we are able to do it. You have to have achieved a great deal more of the ability to have been individualized. Now, the big problem with our use of the principle of attention happens to be that we have not gotten ourselves focused, as I said before, in the position of the magician holding the staff. And incidentally, here we have help again with the Qabalistic attributions because in Qabalah, each Hebrew letter, as well as each Sephirah on the Tree of Life, is assigned to a specific intelligence or a phase of consciousness.

And the magician's base, that's the Hebrew letter, is called the transparent intelligence.

Now, what is he saying, in essence, is that self-consciousness or the act of attention must learn to be transparent, like a window? In other words, it must learn to be a channel through which something higher does the looking.