Meditation in the Aquarian Age

The title of my talk for this morning is Meditation in the Aquarian Age. Tarot Key number 17, also called the Star, is involved with the Aquarian Age because, as most of you know by now, each one of the major Tarot Keys is assigned to either a sign of the Zodiac or one of the planets.

And Tarot Key 17 is assigned to one of the signs of the zodiac and that is the Aquarian Age. Now we're all familiar with the terminology of course but not all of us are familiar with some of the various subtleties involved in the ideas that relate to meditation and its interrelationship with the Aquarian Age. So we're going to try to cover some portions of that particular principle together. We're going to try to gather ourselves into the spirit of this particular idea. Now, the first thing we want to remember, in terms of the Aquarian age, of course, is that we have already entered into it. We are barely in, and much is going to be happening before the essence or the destiny of man becomes fulfilled for this age. But this Aquarian age definitely is going to develop into what we call the brotherhood of man. And, of course, one of the things I was very startled to discover many years ago, when I was quite a youngster, the thing that startled me was the realization that brotherhood of man meant different things to different people.

This, of course, seemed strange, but it is strangely true. True. People have a tendency to interpret an idea, of course, always in terms of their level of consciousness. And so the ideas relating to brotherhood of man, I found, have so many different levels. However, in Qabalah, we do not try to beat about the bush in any way, shape or form regarding what this term means in its essence as well as in its detailed application. Because brotherhood of man is brotherhood of man, and along with the idea of brotherhood of man, we very definitely indicate that this means that every single human being on the face of the earth, once the destiny planned by the divine is accomplished, within this age, every single human being on this planet will either have achieved a capacity to be a brother to all humanity, or they will have been dropped out, like being left back in school, to go on with another life wave, and to have to learn the lessons that need to be learned in order to develop the capacity to be a brother to all humanity.

And being a brother to all humanity is something we won't speak about in detail because I want us to understand meditation a little more fully for this morning's talk, especially as understanding meditation and utilizing it properly is what helps us to develop the full capacity for participating in this particular age and beyond.

Now, in this Tarot key, we have many, many ideas, even though the Tarot key looks like it is so simple. First of all, being assigned to Aquarius, we always have to consider the ruler. You know, each sign of the zodiac has a ruler of that sign, which is a planetary ruler.

And the sign of Aquarius has as its ruler Uranus. And Uranus is also called the higher octave of Mercury, which means it's the higher mind or the higher mental power or the higher spiritual mind as compared to or related to the activities of Mercury, which deals more with the concrete mind, which deals more with the intellect, which deals more with the capacity within the framework of personality consciousness to be able to give attention to any particular idea and to discriminate between ideas. So we have Mercury shown in Tarot Key number one, the magician, and then its higher octave is Uranus, shown as Tarot Key, oh the fool.

And therefore both of these are very intensely involved with Tarot Key 17, which is representing the Aquarian age, and it is representing meditation.

Because Kabbalistically, this particular Hebrew letter is called the fish hook. You heard it read about in the Book of Tokens. Now, the fish hook, remember, is something, a hook is something you cast into the waters. And in all schools of occult thought, consciousness is always portrayed by waters, consciousness itself.

And so we have the waters of consciousness or the substance of consciousness.

And the Hebrew letter meaning the fishhook, you can see that it means that you cast into the waters of consciousness, consciousness, this fishhook, in order to catch what literally sounds like a fish. But again, in the Book of Tokens, we have subtleties here. If you want to see what the fish is in the Hebrew Qabalistic terminology, take a look at Key 13, called death. And don't say it's ugly, because you're going to hurt my feelings. It being assigned to Scorpio, you understand.

Now, this Tarot key, called Death, actually shows a rising sun, not a setting sun, since the east is always to the back of a Tarot key. And you can see that what's being harvested in this Tarot key is knowledge and wisdom. The woman's head representing symbolically knowledge, the man's head wisdom along with much else, of course. And you see a lot of hands, of course, as well as a foot.

And the hands, what are we harvesting? We harvest from the handiwork of man, or shall we say what we have done in the past, in past incarnations, what we do. We always harvest this because everything that happens to us is the result of what we have done, what we have been. What we have done is always the result of what we have been. And so we have in this Hebrew letter tzadi which is cabalistically involved with the ideas of meditation remember we have the indication that meditation is like casting a fish hook or a hook into the waters of consciousness in order to to catch a fish, which indicates in order to catch or understand the whole meaning of life and death, of harvesting, of karma, of the inner world, of the principles of consciousness. Because not until we know and understand the principles of consciousness Are we even remotely ready to participate in the Aquarian age?

And not until we understand the principles of consciousness are we remotely able to meditate in the deepest or highest sense. However, it may surprise you to know that everybody meditates, from the most apparently unevolved young soul to the most apparently highly evolved old soul.

Everybody meditates. The trouble is, most of us don't realize what meditation is, and most of us don't know how to go about meditating consciously and deliberately, although all of us, without exception, meditate, even though we don't realize this is what we do. For example, let's take a scientist. Now, when a scientist has learned all that he can about a specific something, whatever it is that he wants to learn about, and he still sees there is a problem, he wants to reach out to have more, to learn more. There's a puzzle there he hasn't got the whole picture he starts to try to think he analyzes which means what? First he uses mercury you know, Tarot Key 1, the magician because you always have to utilize certain aspects of consciousness first, before you're ready for the next steps some people think they meditate when what they really do is just open themselves themselves up into a sort of zero sign and let anything come that comes. That's not real meditation. Or if it is, let's say it's a very negative, undeveloped kind, because it brings only negativity. But actual meditation has to do with the mind becoming focused on on a theme, on an idea, on something.

It doesn't have to be, and of course spiritual meditation isn't involved with having the mind focused on a physical something, although it can also involve that. It doesn't exclude it. But a scientist then, after examining everything possible in the realm of whatever it is that he's trying to work out, like Einstein when he worked out his theory of relativity which came and remember as a result of meditation he himself said after he thought and studied did everything he could then somehow from beyond something came to me he said and this is how every creative person who's truly creative describes the result of meditation, even though they may not call it that. Because the idea is basically that when the mind is focused on anything specific that it is interested in, you see, you have to be interested, incidentally. If your feelings, if your interest is not there, your mind simply isn't going to focus. And no amount of effort will do it because your mind will go wandering away as you have all found when you have tried to meditate any of you on something that you thought you should be meditating on what you found yourselves doing was going along a whole line of associations about what he said, she said what I should do or shouldn't do why I did or didn't or why they did or didn't do this or how I should or shouldn't take care of the problem or whatnot, and all of a sudden, oh, what am I doing, letting my mind wander, and back we pull.

Remember? Everybody has that particular problem, and the reason for it is that the interest, the focus, the emotional nature is not with whatever one happens to be trying to meditate about at that time. That's why on the Qabalistic tree of life, you will see that this particular tarot key connects victory, which is the desire nature, to foundation, which is the subconsciousness and holds the patterns of life.

You see, you have this connection only when feeling, that's the power, when feeling is there, are we able to hold the mind concentrated enough to go over and around and around the idea, the pattern, for the first step or stage of meditation.

Then, as I've just pointed out, when we have examined whatever the problem is thoroughly enough, deeply enough, when we have looked at every possibility that we can, trying to analyze it, should I do this or that? Well, if I do, this might occur or that, in terms of any problem. Why once we have really reached the limit of our ability or capacity to think it through, analyze it through we find that our mind, it does it almost by itself because we've done the other things first we find that the mind then reaches just like the angling, the fishhook that's the point where that fish hook really gets thrown into the waters of self with the deep the the the depths of self or you might also call it the heights of self and there is a special state of mind which is like a question mark and yet it is not vague it isn't a vague kind of question mark. It's like a question mark, but it isn't an unfocused question mark.

There's power behind the question mark. In other words, there's an intensity of mind in the question mark. The mind is open, and yet it is focused at the same time. And I'm sure we've all had this type of experience very much more than once because it is not an unusual thing for consciousness to do. It's just that we have not realized how it works. Then when that question mark, and the question mark comes with that focus because we care. It's important.

We've got to have an answer. You know, we've got to find some answer. And this is the reason the power can gather around this fishing process and holding that question mark, caring like that. All of a sudden, something dawns or all of a sudden, something comes and sometimes nothing dawns and nothing comes and the world calls us to perform duties. And so we go off to whatever the job might be or taking care of the children or whatever it is that's necessary and yet a part of the consciousness remains focused with that question mark. And just if you'll analyze back into periods where you have been going through something very important, You will find you did this more or less unconsciously, but this is what you were doing. Even when you went out to attend to the needs of the day or the time, there was a certain portion of the consciousness was still questing, fishing.

It was subtle, and yet it was there. Sometimes it wasn't so subtle and then suddenly out of sleep while walking while washing your hair while taking a shower while doing anything at all all of a sudden BAM or boom the idea comes and yes that's the answer then we know what to do there's like a feeling of complete relief in other In other words, we've landed a fish out of the wisdom, out of the knowledge, out of the use of the energies. But these, of course, are the ways we all work unconsciously when something is important enough to us.

We especially do it when it happens when we find ourselves caught up in very grave problems in immediate relationships we find if we analyze it that this is what we've done not always because sometimes what we do instead of going round and round hunting for an answer and what we do instead instead is to keep all our energy going, growling, tearing apart, hating, suffering, being martyred, you know, and so what we're doing, we're reacting that way of course is not really meditative in the sense we've been speaking about, and yet think for a moment, isn't it also a form of meditation when you analyze it except that it's very negative meditation because there's power there's the emotion there the consciousness is focused of course it's focused growling it's hunting for all the reasons that it's got to be angrier and angrier angrier or more and more hurt so as it's It's hunting, that's fishing, isn't it?

It's fishing in consciousness for a very special kind of fish, a hate fish. You know, the kind of fish that will give us some idea as to how to really fix that person for not recognizing or doing whatever we thought they should or shouldn't do because of our great and noble beingness. Whichever. But that is also a type of meditation, because we're still fishing for a solution, even though our intended solution, though we may not recognize it while we're doing it, our intended solution has to do with bringing pain to somebody. And that's, of course, the reason we we make so much unhappy karma so very often, but we're still using a form of meditation. Now, when we reach a certain stage of evolution, of course, we reach it because we have used the powers of our consciousness erroneously for many, many millennia of incarnations so that we've already died to our old selves, not just life and death through a physical incarnation, but through many attitudes and emotional predispositions.

When we have died, time's enough so that our values are changed from the usual, ordinary, mass mind kind of value.

Then we start developing this drive for meditation in its deepest and highest sense.

We start wanting total answers to the whole total mystery of life itself.

We want to know who and what we are. We are ready for reality we are ready for revelation and of course this tarot key represents revelation revelation and meditation this is what it represents and you notice the nude figure wherever you see a nude figure in the tarot keys You are always being told, symbolically, that here the masks are off.

The veils are parted.

Nothing is being hidden. You know, usually our personalities, coming from the word persona, which means mask, we wear our masks for each other, for ourselves, for the world. And we're taken in by these masks.

We think we are whatever mask we've been playing and we think other people are these masks, these personas. And this is clothing in the Tarot keys always showing some aspect of the persona that is involved with something deeper. Not that wearing a persona or wearing clothing is bad mind you it's when you think that that's the whole reality you get into trouble we have to have personas of personalities in fact I think is very charming that we do gives us an opportunity to have much more joy excitement differentiation I mean, we have all the variations of the divine garments to enjoy.

So there isn't anything evil or bad about the personality. It is a magical wonder. What's bad is when we take it for reality or truth. And this Tarot key, true spiritual, spiritually oriented meditation, meditation, lets us see beneath. The veils are off. And so reality and revelation, of course, are synonymous in this sense. But the point is, if we will sit down and meditate when we're in trouble, and just reach with our consciousness to that, that deeper, higher self, if we will remember to start meditating in that way under all sorts of various other conditions. We will discover little by little that we are meditating all the time. And that is a certain portion of our consciousness. Now there's a portion of my consciousness is never out of meditation. It is like a scanning radar. And it is going all the time with a question mark. Always meditating with a question mark and a love and uplift because somewhere someone's calling somewhere someone is sending and there's that fraction although the rest functions appropriately we hope the point is more appropriately because it's always open to the the guidance, the guidance that comes from reality, from the depths, from the heights, from the vastness which is our true home.

So my darlings, remember, meditate you're going to anyway, from time to time, more intensely than other times, for the sake of your own fulfillment, for the sake of your own joy, for the sake of your own capacity to develop even more richly and give out more richly of the values that are eternal.

Get yourself, train yourself into regular meditation, daily meditation.

And this will expand until your whole life is a meditation.

Do not let one day go by without meditating. Meditating and if you say well suppose I don't feel like it if you don't feel like it perhaps you can't but as you meditate on wanting to be in a state of meditation on god you'll find that after a while you won't be able to bear it if you're not in that meditation and this becomes the highest of all because when you are continuously in meditation on god with that fraction of you which I am, I praise God, because it gives me an ecstasy and a rapture and a beauty and a joy. When you are continuously with a portion of you in that meditation, then it becomes impossible for you to suffer the kind of pain that others have. And you develop the richness and the ability and the capacity to lift others from pain, to help them towards the light and reality, because God then is meditating you all the way, and it is vice versa.

So let's bring that joyous rapture with us from this temple today, and try to make it a daily thing in our lives.