How Tarot Awakens the Power of Awareness

This morning we're going to talk about how Tarot awakens the powers of awareness.

Now, of course you have heard me say often that awareness is related to many levels, and that one of the tremendous errors that has been made by most of the schools of metaphysics is the fact that they have tried to separate the experiences of the physical plane from the awarenesses of the spiritual plane, thereby, you might say, cutting off the nutriment or the nutrition which the consciousness requires in order to awaken and expand its awareness. If it were not true that we require, shall we say, manifestation and experiences, which we receive through the five senses if it were not true that we required this in order to grow would the Lord of Life have created the phenomenal or the physical universe for us to experience in this manner but you see so often certain schools of esoteric thought make the mistake of trying to teach their disciples to cut themselves off from a physical plane activity, physical plane awareness, in order to meditate upon or concentrate upon what they call the higher mind, in order to attain what they call illumination. And they teach their disciples therefore to, as they say, kill kill out desire, which truly is a fantastic thing. And those human beings who follow that idea, who have attempted to follow this school of thought, have discovered that if they have seemed to succeed, what has happened is that they have lost more and more of their power of livingness. The power of livingness. Now how are we going to separate the power of livingness from the power of awareness, I ask you? How can we separate it? Of course it's true that the power of livingness is not dependent upon the physical body. Nevertheless, it is true also that the expansion and growth of of the power of livingness, of the power of consciousness, is dependent on what we call physical plane experience.

Because all we have to do is look back into history, look back into what is known about evolution, and we will discover that the kind of physical form that an entity has determines the kind of consciousness and therefore the degree of awareness that that particular entity will have.

Form, therefore, can be called an instrument through which awareness and consciousness function.

And inasmuch as form is an instrument, we could also say that just like the virtuoso on the piano must practice on the instrument that we call the piano in order to become a virtuoso. In the same manner, one who is going to become a virtuoso in consciousness, until he becomes such a tremendous virtuoso that he actually has what we might call Christ consciousness or illumination or liberation, whatever term you like, that that person can attain that only also through learning how to practice on the instrument, to play the music of life in and through the instrument we call this physical vehicle. Therefore, to attempt to cut away our emotional life, which is what's done in some schools of thought unfortunately is attempting to cut away you might say the gasoline that's going to drive the car and then we get stalled I'm sure some of you at least have met certain types who have felt that they have attained shall we say this liberation from the physical plane at least to a degree that they have succeeded at least to a degree in shall we say killing out what they call desire and if they really are not just deceiving themselves utterly these types are what you might call walking zombies they give a sickly smile which is their shall we say idea of spirituality spirituality, and if this, of course, is an example of spirituality, it should be an indication to us that we should run very rapidly, of course in the opposite direction, not forwards, the type of training that will give this kind of a sickly consciousness.

Because awakening the power of awareness is really becoming more and more intensely alive, alert, aware to what goes on about us. And as we do this, as we work with all our powers, gradually we expand our consciousness into the subtle field so that by and through, you might say, practicing properly on the and through the physical vehicle, we discover awarenesses that go beyond the physical life. The intuitions, the supersensory perceptions, all of these of course go beyond the knowledge or awareness that we have through our five senses. Yet in order to develop a controlled and a true insight and perception we have to do it in and through the physical world now let's analyze this with a few examples and see if we can understand it a little better Of course, first, let's see just what it is that tarot does. As we know, tarot is the pictorial symbolic representation of the powers of consciousness given out to the world at a certain time when we were going through the Dark Ages and when some method was needed to keep alive the spiritual training of the esoteric mystery schools, particularly the Essene and Eleusinian mysteries, which are tied up with Tarot and Qabalah. And of course we know that through these methods, the Tree of Life, which is the aspects of Qabalah and the Tarot, that those few from from generation to generation, were able to be taught, to be trained in those spiritual methods which helped them to attain beyond the ordinary evolutionary level of average Homo sapiens, or average humanity.

And this has never stopped. The same teaching has continued on to this day.

We, of course, as you know, are the present-day representatives to this planet for this particular system of spiritual training. And as you know also, at least some of you, we have been giving out more and more of the esoteric work to our open classes and to our open services, although we still have that which is esoteric, it is always so. But we have been giving out more and more under instructions introductions from the inner school and the master who's behind our work because of the period we are in. At this time we have untold numbers of millions of human beings, human souls who are evolving altogether, that is who have come into embodiment at one time because of the cycle we have entered into that is the Aquarian age and because this is the period when in a sense you can say the sheep are going to be separated from the goats the new age is already dawning upon us and the brotherhood of man the energies that are playing upon the earth are stimulating the whole evolution of humanity so that the true brotherhood of man will without any question come about and only those souls who have evolved beyond certain animal level responses to life will be the ones who will be going on with this life wave that doesn't mean that the others are doomed because there's no such thing in the universe these are what you call the laggards they wait and they then proceed again in another era another time or another millennium as another group wave. So we have untold numbers of souls incarnating at once where they used to take their time on the astral plane, where they used to stay there for quite long periods between embodiments, because it's only in and through the vehicle that we can attain to the expansions of consciousness to the liberations of certain karmic factors patterns that we hold in our inner or subconscious life and for the same reason more and more of the most potent esoteric techniques utilizing the tarot are being given out and have been given out in the last few years and as we said as you know it's been proceeding because we're giving as much as is possible to help the aspirants reach as high a level of conscious awareness of awakened awareness due to the fact that every single human being who attains to a certain degree of awareness helps to stimulate the rest of the mass mind so that more and more potentials or possibilities come about it's under the same principle you know where we say and I if I be lifted up lift all others unto myself so we are working day and night and we are working intensively and now then to explain to you a little more about why why tarot can do this and does do this, inevitably, when the aspirant will truly work with tarot.

As we then said, tarot is a symbolic pictorial representation of the powers of consciousness.

This was given out to the world under the guise of a game, you know, during the dark ages, called the game of man but it was called that on the outside so that esoterically it could still be utilized for the continued training of the few in each generation and now we have come to understand more and more that the use of these symbolic pictorial images have a very special type of effect beyond that which is ordinarily understood. First of all, of course, we know that even modern psychology has come to recognize that the subconsciousness is basically a symbol manipulating creature, so to speak. In other words, subconsciousness responds to pictorial images, and this is the most direct approach then to the inner life. This is the most direct way to stimulate the whole emotional, mental nature. To stimulate it means, of course, then to awaken it. So this is just one aspect that's involved, and each of the Tarot keys are representing a stimulus to a special part of the powers of our consciousness. Just like, for example in Tarot Key number zero, the Fool, we know this represents super consciousness. But it also represents Uranus, the higher octave of Mercury, in terms of esoteric astrology. And Uranus, the higher octave of Mercury, has to do with the New Age thinking and feeling. And so what is it that the Fool is doing? He's standing on a mountaintop, remember, and he is starting out on another adventure, the adventure of life. In other words, that gay debonair feeling of security and freedom to walk into tomorrow from the present. That fearlessness, this is the thing that the fool stimulates. So that, for instance, aspirants who suffer from fears, especially in relation to tomorrow find and of course we know we have testimonials that come continuously on this that when they work with this particular tarot key they find that this whole sense of adventure that they had as children is returning to them and they start remembering again that what jesus said that only he who becomes as a little child can enter the kingdom of heaven they start realizing this sense of adventure this looking towards tomorrow without fear yay debonair trusting in the higher knowing what the final outcome is to be uh think of what kind of stimulus this gives to the whole nature it stimulates the mind it stimulates the heart and it starts people are going somewhere instead of cringing subconsciously cringing away from life, from love, from work, from people, and all that goes with it. I give this just as one example. We can take another example, the next Tarot Key number one, the magician. We know that by working with this magician, as taught in our work, that even the worst concentrator learns how to be able to narrow the attention so that we can become more aware of what's going on in our immediate environment.

Now what has this got to do with spiritual development? Everything. If we're not aware here and now, if we don't train ourselves to know what is happening in this instant when we're meeting a person, when we're listening to a person, when anything is occurring, if our consciousness isn't alertly here taking it in how are we going to see into it how then are we going to develop the ability to see through it how then are we going to develop the consciousness to intuit the significance of what happens in all of life and of all in all of living and especially when we remember that superconscious states, illumination, what are they always described as?

Well, I can certainly testify to this, as can every mystic. This certain special superconscious kind of experience has this in it, that awareness of time is not present. There is a sort of simultaneousness of yesterday, today, and tomorrow, you might say. And haven't you all heard the expression, the eternal now? Well, there's only one place where you are going to become receptive to the spiritual experience of the eternal now, and that is by learning how to keep your attention in the here and now through using the magician to develop that alert awakened awareness this is the only way we learn about ourselves so the only way we learn about people this is the only way we learn about principles and it's as we gather all this data that we prepare ourselves for the intuitional experiences that expand us out beyond horizons we can even dream of. So we use the here and now in order to become aware of the all-timeness. And those who attempt to withdraw from the here and now and just sort of dream about mysticism and spirituality and whatnot, all they do is keep giving up the most divine of heritages truly that is the power of awareness which is your immortal soul which is your immortal spirit the ability to be able to say I am is involved there and a true understanding of the ideas of I am has to do with learning how to use this power of I am to know, to be aware, to think, to feel, to live, to love. All of this is the activity of I. And in this level of consciousness we must either go in for this kind of activity which is truly a meditational state because then a part of ourselves through the use of the Tarot even the magician shows this when he holds his hand up with that staff there's a part of him that's whole reaching to the above saying in essence God is the one who is paying attention through me seeing through me becoming becoming aware through me.

This symbolic gesture is giving this information to subconsciousness and training it to overcome this nonsense of separatism and open itself to truly divine experience.

So these two examples, I think, should show how tremendously important it is to not only develop a sense of adventure and to recognize the importance of developing the concentration of the mind in proper ways but I think that it will show us that the utilization of symbolic images can help us bring this about where other methods have failed because subconsciousness simply doesn't respond to just wordy affirmations. It responds only to a language that's real, and that's the language of image. This is well known by all who've done research into the powers of consciousness, as you surely must realize. Now then, let's consider another factor. You know, Tarot Key number 15, for instance, is called the Devil. And you know what a tremendously awful looking figure this is. But Kabbalistically, remember, this Tarot Key is assigned to the power of mirth, which is what? Laughter, mirth. And also the function attributed to it is the eye as the organ of vision. Now we know that those of us who look at surfaces, what we see is plain hell, isn't it? And that's what the world looks like. And this is what that tarot key is telling us, that if we use the eye as an organ of vision, in other words, to be materialistic minded to accept merely what the senses tell us what the eye tells us is to be in the hands of the devil which is of our own making it's ignorance is what it really is and that's another attribution to that particular tarot key but at the same time it's telling us how to cure that particular uh tendency that very unhappy tendency of consciousness the eye is an organ of vision we all know very well that if we judge by what we see we're going to be in trouble and I mean real trouble we'd have gotten nowhere scientifically if we would accept if we had continued to accept what the eye sees because what the eye sees is that the Sun comes up in the east and goes down in the west but we know that that's incorrect our consciousness our power of awareness knows that actually the planet is turning around on its axis and traveling around the sun and this is what gives the appearance of the sun coming up in the east and going down in the west we're forever having to correct what our eyes tell us and of course using tarot as you're taught to use it gives you the ability to start correcting in far deeper ways, to start correcting what the whole mass subconsciousness has trained into you, what every past reincarnational experience has given you through your misinterpretation.

We train that out of ourselves, and then we truly become awakened in our perceptions. We start seeing beyond the apparent surfaces, and we see beyond them by learning how to pay attention to what's there. I remember one time I was talking to a gentleman and he was giving me some anecdotes and various experiences and suddenly he stopped and he said, you are the most flattering person I have ever met. I looked at him in amazement because I hadn't been saying a word except the proper exclamations. And of course he saw how startled I looked and he said, the way you pay attention to everything I say. He said, this is just marvelous for my ego.

And I said, why aren't you accustomed to having people pay attention to what you say? He said, my dear, hardly anybody is accustomed to having people pay attention to what they say." And I thought about that for a moment. I said, my God, of course, how true. How very true, because you've heard me say before, most people are so busily wrapped in their own emotional thinkings and their associations that what they're doing is waiting for the other person to hurry up and say what they're going to say and shut up, because they reminded you something you want to tell them, which of course is very much more exciting and interesting and as much as as it'll be you getting the attention I mean don't we do that all the time and of course here's where mirth comes in because uh becoming aware of these things as our perceptions awaken we can do one of these two things we can draw our mouths down or else puff our lips up in a sneer which isn't pretty and it's very unsocial then to expose our faces in a sneer to other people you know I mean it just isn't spiritual to give them such an ugly thing to look at but in any case it wouldn't make us very popular although it might help us feel more superior so we can curl our lips up in a sort of sneer at all these egomaniacs who must have all this attention or we can look into our own hearts also and notice our poignant and pathetic need for attention to and smile like we smile at the child who calls out look at me look at me to see me stand on my head look at me well we all have that need and if we can smile at ourselves we're using our perceptions properly we're not only seeing what's going on but we're We're seeing through it.

And we're not being bitter. We're being aware that immaturity does bring about this particular need. And just becoming aware of these things, utilizing the techniques of tarot which help us to identify our selfhood with that something higher, we find in a gentle, magical, almost miraculous way, we not only learn how to accept our own little foibles but we start accepting the foibles of others and we become pretty much more like what Jesus said come learn of me for I am meek and gentle of heart there's a gentle tenderness we develop towards ourselves and towards others and that automatically starts melting away the bitterness and the insecurities and the fears and the inability to really pay attention to what goes on out there to give it its significance. I remember it was such a little thing, you see, we shouldn't ever think that little things are necessarily little. It was such a little thing that occurred in my life which brought about my first real recognition and perception of the fact that at heart all people were good no matter what they were like and some of them are very evil we know this all of us have a little of the immaturities in us some a few have a very dark side to the nature because they're very very young and very very naughty we could say although that's a very mild term yet in essence no matter how evil anyone is there is some spark somewhere there at heart that is good and if we would keep if we could learn to see this and keep it in mind then when we come across the evidences of the evils at least we would manage to keep our attention above these well negative vibrations I guess is the best way to put it and thereby at least help to change it to that degree and what was it that helped me to see it at a time when I was in my life's darkest hour flowers suddenly arrived, a bouquet of flowers from my co-workers, and such a little thing it seems. But the fact that people could be thoughtful and kind and compassionate to want to send a moment of cheer and beauty and color, this This staggered me.

As a matter of fact, it staggered my consciousness so that I was catapulted into this experience of seeing into the heart of all humanity. And I never, never forgot it. Nor did I ever lose that realization.

Nor have I ever been able to become discouraged about the final outcome of anything no matter how dark no matter how drear the day or the condition or the situation could be and the result has been that I've been able to help others to see this and to feel it and it has been well worthwhile now you see this power of awareness that is the ability to see into and beyond the surfaces can come to us truly only as we learn to use our emotions and our mind in certain definite regulated channels as taught by the whole tarot qabalistic system because I'm sure we have all found that just as saint paul said the good that I would I do not and the evil that I would not, this I do. And the spirit is willing but the flesh is weak." Isn't this true? We've all found this and I hope we have all found this out because unless we know it about ourselves we won't have that understanding in relation to others. So it's good to gain this power of perception into our own hearts. However, you see, this is just one side of the story. Because the masters of the inner school and the adepts who've gone before us, because they know of this principle, they've given us a way to cope with that very factor, that weakness of the flesh.

They've given us the tarot we can affirm and affirm and affirm in an attempt to lift our heart or our spirits or overcome a sense of anger or hatred which we're all prone to and the affirmation doesn't really work as we have found sometimes it might help for a few minutes but we find our consciousness being pulled right back to oh that dirty so-and-so and how can how How could they have done such and such? And then sometimes we'll try to think with pleasure about their karmic comeuppances.

You know, I mean, all of us do it, and let's chuckle, let's murk, laughter.

That's the only way to handle these elements in ourselves. Then they can't become dangerous and serious to ourselves and others, because you laugh the devil to scorn, and you laugh his power away from him in that manner. There so we we utilize something that really works you see when you have something definite to get hold of say suddenly you've gotten news that might have a tendency to make you start worrying about someone near or dear to you or that would rouse your anger or any one of the innumerable emotions that would come you see to just start in an abstract way saying god is love god is love god is love I mean it's whistling in the dark you can't uh handle something that is so intense like a sudden emotion or a fear uh just that way we're then trying to make abstract affirmations but when you have that definite vital something like this symbolic image that automatically you can grab onto and because you've been working with it and with its meanings just grabbing that tarot key that symbolic image that represents whatever state it is that you require and of course you are taught all these things step by step in the lessons and we give it in our classes as you know uh to grab that image instantly gives you something to hold on to just as you've heard us say uh I don't know how many of you might we have might remember how it was on these street cars if they suddenly turn, you know, and you could go falling over, but they have straps above them.

And on the subways in New York, this is particularly so, they go so rapidly. But when you have a strap to hang on to, you can sway, you know, with the way the energy is pushing, but you can't get caught up. You can't fall, because there's something there to hold you and to help you reach into the higher elements of your consciousness there's a real science behind this a true esoteric occult science and this helps you then to more and more you might say drain the adverse energy out of certain subconscious patterns and get that energy up to the higher levels of perception and awareness which gives you that much more ability and capacity for the expansion of consciousness, where more and more often you'll discover yourself experiencing the timeless states, the feeling of the divinity of life, the realization of the immortality of all living beings, the magic of the garbs of the Lord of Life through everything that you're experiencing you'll find as you work with these principles of awakening your perceptions on the apparent outside that more and more colors not only will brighten but the whole intensity and vividness of life will start shining out to you from other people and start shining out from you to other people in ever greater vitality until finally that burst of light which every mystic tells about that might almost blind you but doesn't because it gives you the true ability to see not only here but hereafter not only now but into the beyond the altogetherness the divinity of life in all its aspects. Isn't that worthwhile working for? Let's work with it.

Let us bow our heads in prayer.

Thank you.