Meditation, Mystical and Practical

The title of our talk for this morning is Meditation, Mystical and Practical. Now, first of all, let's try to get an idea as to what we mean by meditation, that is at least some slight idea because meditation itself is a profound subject. In the recent developments of history, shall we say in the last few years, it seems that Western humanity has been hearing a great deal about meditation and its main area of information has has been coming from our Eastern traditions, that is, from the teachings that stemmed basically from Buddha.

And so the Eastern philosophies have been bringing in far more intensively into the Western world their various meditational methods.

And one of the extraordinary phenomenons that we see at this time is how the young people have been flocking to this particular teaching.

But on the whole, it seems to me the thing that requires headlining is the fact that we have the extraordinary majority of our youth who are determined to discover the values behind materialism.

Now then, meditation basically has been thought of from the Eastern occult point of view as that which attempts to discover the means of organization of consciousness into body in order to release itself completely in other words the Buddhist basis for the Eastern occultism has to do with the idea that life is pain. Everything that is born is born to suffer, to become old, and to die. And so no matter how marvelous life is on the physical plane, it is born to suffer. And so the only thing one should do is to discover how one can get out of this trap since along with it there is the teaching of reincarnation. Meditation, remember, is aimed then at discovering realities that are beyond the senses, that go beyond the physical plane, but do not deny the physical plane. Because if you have to deny whatever exists, you are merely then trying to use some other a point of view as an escape.

And this is the trap, I think, that most of the schools of thought that have been leaning towards the Eastern thinking have fallen into.

Because, whether they have recognized it or not, the use of the Eastern forms of meditation have been leading to escapisms. All we have to do is to look at the cultures that have developed along with these or in the areas in which this thought has been prevalent. We find that the physical plane has been utterly ignored.

We find that greater hunger, greater misery, greater filth, greater inhumanity of man to man really exists because the compassion of the soul is not really there, even though it may claim it exists. We find that the filth, the disease, the poverty, the hopelessness is beyond description and yet supposedly these are the areas in which the meditational methods have been developed according to what too many people are thinking today because of the misinformation now then as I pointed out since all of the Eastern schools of thought that would include yoga, Vedanta, and so on, and they're quite lovely. I'm not tearing them down at all.

What I'm tearing down is the misunderstandings, the misuse that has developed as a result of a lack of understanding of the basic principles behind these kinds of meditations. The point is is then that meditations that develop out of a basic philosophy which says you can never hope to have anything on the physical plane. It is an illusion, a delusion, a snare. You're trapped into it. What you have to do is wake up and discover who and what you are and get yourself to samadhi or nirvana, whichever term you like, which means you're going to get out of it. Now, I've known quite a few people who have followed the Eastern school of thought and I myself did for many years and have quite a fondness for it incidentally but I've seen what it does especially what it does in this Western culture and I have found that just about everyone I've known who has concentrated on that way of meditation and that that particular orientation of ideas that they have have become more and more the escapists. They have used it more to try to withdraw from the responsibilities of life. They have used it to withdraw from the disciplines of growth and evolution, and they have not recognized that this is what they've been doing. This is what's been so sad. They have tried to withdraw from the living essence of the desire nature, for example, since in that philosophy it is taught that desire must be killed out.

Now then, let's go to the other side, the Qabalistic forms of meditation and the Qabalistic philosophy behind meditation. And we will see something quite different. And yet there is a harmony if we look only at principles. But when we look at the practices, there's where we see quite a difference in the entire usage of meditation, and therefore in the results of meditation. Now then, the basic philosophy behind the Qabalistic way of return towards God is very different from the Eastern philosophy in this way. In Qabalah, and remember Qabalah is the esoteric wisdom of Israel, that which was the groundwork for the training that gave us the Old Testament, that in which Jesus was trained.

We have, for the Western culture, a completely different stream of philosophic thinking that has to do with its own form of mysticism. And in this dream we have the philosophy of a material world as being the flower of God not that which is a trap because remember in true mysticism especially in in the occultism of the West, the Qabalistic teachings. We do not separate God from man.

We do not separate heaven from earth.

We do not make these separations because we know that when a person has been trained to meditate properly in the various ways and methods, is that they themselves will discover, and this is why we're here, to help you to discover this. We know that what you discover, what every one of us is destined to discover sooner or later, is that we are all living eternal aspects of the one life. And this unity is expressing as both the one and the many at the same time. It's just like you are one, but you have many relationships, do you not? And you also have many qualities. You might be loving, but there are times you might also be hating. Isn't that right? You might be kind, but there are times you might be very stern. In other words, we have many aspects to our selfhood. And the divine one life has many evolving expressions of its selfhood, and that's us.

And the tree, the blade of grass, the bird, the little creature that lives beneath the earth the breeze, the sky there's nothing that isn't said to be the one so that in your western occult approach you are attempting to bring heaven to earth if you like that expression you're attempting to bring the orientation of the spiritual into the material you are, you know, the kingdom of spirit is embodied as my flesh This is the thing that we are attempting to become awakened to, whereas in the other orientation, we're trying to run away when we go in for the Eastern philosophic foundations. And I think that it has been a very sad thing that so many of the beautiful things from the East have brought such a very terrible harvest due, I think, mainly to the mistranslations of basic principles. Now then, in the Western occultism, how then are the various meditations developed? They're developed in harmony with the whole concept of an evolving universe, which is really, you might say, the womb of God. And so it is recognized that there are many different levels of meditation, and that all these levels must be known and understood, just like we have many levels of growth when we're born we're infants and we're in a sense psychologically recapitulating the infantile level of the evolution of humanity because there's only one thing we're interested in and that's being taken care of and fed and then as we grow a little older when we become little older babies we do we start developing the ability and the the capacity to relate in much more meaningful terms until finally when we attain complete adulthood and maturity provided that we have evolved to the point where we can be mature because we have plenty of 50 and 60 and 70 year olds that are infinitely younger than five-year olds running around you know maturity is not a matter of the physical age it's a matter of the the emotional, mental, spiritual age of an individual.

And so, bearing this in mind, we can see that the recapitulation of one's own growth is part of the process of meditation that is understanding this recapitulation, and then taking our own growth in hand as the ruler, because remember, king means ruler, and as the ruler of our universe, and our universe is first our body, then our environment, remember, and it grows outward as we develop the capacity to expand our consciousness outward. So then we take under our own controls, our conscious controls, through meditation, these various facets of our being, we learn how to rule them by learning how to understand them. So we have with the tarot keys, for example, what do we do? The tarot keys, the lessons you receive through the mail on the tarot keys, and then the classes that we give on them to help expand it into even larger ideas. These are all aimed at what you might call a spiritual self-psychoanalytic method, one that is enthralling, one that is fascinating, because when we try to use words with which to look into ourselves, we fail.

We have to use the principles of consciousness, and the principles of consciousness deal with pictorial images, with symbols.

And so when we start working with the pictorial images, with the symbols, we learn how to look into ourselves, how to see ourselves, how to stir ourselves. We discover who and what we are through a step-by-step disciplined teaching that is guiding us in the meditational techniques. But meditational techniques that will not let us escape, that are keeping us here, that are helping us to reach upward and inward, but at the same time to reach upward and inward in order to express it outward.

Because I don't care how spiritual anybody might be thought to be if they have not got a social conscience, they are not spiritual. Somebody could come and just with silver tongue, they might declare a thousand and one developments developments that have to do with knowing God and evolution and the universe and being one with the infinite. And they march around with their eyes upward or crossed, depending on their method of meditation.

But if they haven't got a social conscience, they're in a state of delusion, the same kind of delusion that so many people, unfortunately, have fallen into through drugs.

Because the one thing in the Western occultism, in Qabalah, the one thing that shows where we are and whether we are going there really or just deluded is how we are thinking and feeling about humanity and what we are doing about it. So we start first with ourselves, because if we don't develop the capacity to love, that is or to develop the capacity to touch the divine love so it can love in and through us because that's the only complete loving really and then we share in this exaltation if we don't do this how can we love our fellow man I mean lots of people use words words words and you know you've heard me say many times before lots of people say oh I love humanity but I can't stand people you But the truth of the matter is that the more we meditate effectively, the more we are willing to go in for those disciplines, and I mean disciplines, that have to do with becoming self-aware and using this awareness to contact our larger selves and to use that larger self-contact, the more we come to realize that we have been placed here, or we have grown here, or whatever idea you want to use, in order to develop the complete unity with all life.

You know, there's one, supposed to be one very great Eastern Swami, his disciples think that he is the, well, the same idea as Messiah, the full, the new avatar on this earth. And he is so spiritual they say that he you know he's out of his body more than he's in it and so they never know when he's suddenly going to fall into trance and he has oh he has quite a few disciples travel with him when he does travel and they're always waiting so that in case he suddenly goes into trance they catch him and then you know he's uh and they carry him and and tenderly put him down, and this is supposed to be an attained one?

Now, in Western occultism, we say that this magical, wondrous vehicle, this mystery, this beauty, this glowing essence that we are, it is meant to be more and more aware. It is meant to be expanded and yet pointed at the same time. And so your meditations are utilized in order to learn how to shimmer with the beauty of what we are and what everyone else and everything else is in its basic principle. And at the same time, to recognize that others, as well as ourselves, are still evolving, and therefore, to try to emanate, to try to be a telepathic influence, because what we think and feel influences everybody else. We're not separate we are not separate at all and this telepathic influence then helps to bring others to this higher uh state of thinking feeling recognition and of course the most glorious attainment is when one can say with jesus of nazareth I am in unity with my divine parents and being in that unity.

I know the divine will and I have only one will and that is to do the will of the divine. Now what does that mean basically? It means I have contacted through meditation the pattern, the patterns of evolution for myself, for life. And I want only to follow these divine patterns. I want only to attain because otherwise we truly continue to walk in darkness. So Western occultism is aimed at helping us to develop the controls, the rulership, first of what we permit ourselves to think, what we permit ourselves to feel, what we permit ourselves to do, then to develop ever-intensified awareness of the unity of life, which means kindness towards all things tenderness towards all things we start to recognize the that all these hatreds and these egomanias that march around unaware that these are the infantile levels that must be overcome and that it is up to us to help overcome them and that is why I feel as our young people of today these are the hope these are the true hope of tomorrow the promised Aquarian age in which Brotherhood of Man will exist, it is our young people who are going to bring it because they have recognized and naturally you can't say everyone, we're talking about the influence of this particular two or three generations that are involved at the moment, it is because they have seen the ridiculousness of being so overbound, over-focused on material things.

They've discovered that having a TV set and a radio and a car and a this and a that doesn't bring happiness at all. And besides, they can think deeply and think, well, are you going to take that with you? Now, it isn't that we look down, remember, on having these things. It's how we look upon them. You know it did not say in the bible that the love of money is the root of all evil it said the lust you see there's a mistranslation again which our school of thought has kept alive it is the lust and therefore it is the lust for things it is the over focus and lust on materialism that uh is the evil the the the horror that has washed this world at this time more intensively than ever but you see in the Qabalistic training we not only do not escape we learn how to appreciate the things and appreciate them properly and in the western development of meditation what we do we help you to start appreciating material things as being the passing beauties that are not vital but they are lovely when they are there but that the real important thing always, is to develop that which you're going to take with you. And what you're going to take with you has been the amount of living you have learned to do, the amount of thinking, feeling, and this comes from meditation. Because once we have developed the outer to a certain degree, only as we develop the inner life, the richness of the inner life, no amount of beauty can be seen unless unless the richness of our inner life has developed a capacity to see it.

I look at my garden and see beauty. Some people who have never developed the capacity for a garden will pass it by. They won't even know it's there. So you see, it's the consciousness that experiences, that picks out, extracts. And meditation develops the capacity in this consciousness. And actually this is the purpose of meditation, is to bring the highest, the deepest, the most profound developments that we can gain at this point, and to bring it into manifestation so that we can see it and experience it here and now, in and through all peoples. And remember what I said, a social conscience is really the measurement of the, at least subconscious, conscious, intuitive recognition of the unity of life, even though it might not be necessarily intellectual as yet. So keep in mind that only as we make our lives rich with the various meditational methods that open our whole inner life to ourselves, and incidentally it also increases our IQ, it develops our meditation, develops our ability, that is the western form, develops our abilities to concentrate properly to enjoy every little detail with more complete rapture as well as to expand it out and see the whole from the details only as we do this are we going to learn that the kingdom of heaven isn't something we're ever going to go to because our consciousness is here and and our consciousness is hereafter.

Consciousness cannot die. And whatever we have done with our consciousness, whatever way we've trained it, this is the capacity of this particular area of consciousness, this individuality. And the quality and richness of this consciousness is what we're going to take with us.

So you can see that meditation is a way of attainment in a practical sense, as well as, I think, very intelligently taking care of the hereafter, don't you?