The Initiatic Path in the Arcana of the Tarot and Kabala
CHAPTER LXXXV
PREPARATION
Consciousness is the highest kind of clairvoyance there is in the Universe. All of the Avatars and Messengers of the higher worlds have been supraconscious clairvoyants. Hermes Trismegistus, Rama, Krishna, Buddha, Jesus Christ, etc., were supraconscious beings, messengers of the higher worlds, initiators of new eras of historical evolution.
Imagination, inspiration and intuition are the three obligatory paths of initiation. We are going to examine each one of these three steps separately.
Let’s begin with imagination.
Imagination
For the sage, to imagine is to see. Imagination is the translucence of the soul.
The important thing is to learn how to concentrate the thinking on just one thing.
Those who learn how to think just one thing do miracles and wonders.
The disciple who wants to achieve imaginative knowledge must learn how to concentrate and must know how to meditate deeply.
The best exercise for achieving imaginative knowledge is the following:
Seated in front of a plant, we concentrate on it until forgetting everything else but the plant. Then closing our eyes, we become sleepy, conserving the form and figure of the plant in our imagination; its structure, its fragrance and its color.
The disciple must provoke sleepiness during these practices. The disciple, drowsing, will meditate deeply on the internal constitution of the plant.
The disciple will imagine the living cells of the plant. The plant cell has protoplasm, membrane and nucleus. The protoplasm is a viscous, elastic and transparent substance very much like egg white (albuminoid matter). The disciple, drowsing, should reflect on the four basic elements of the protoplasm of the vegetable cell. These four elements are carbon, oxygen, hydrogen and nitrogen.
The membrane is a marvelous colorless substance which is totally insoluble in water. This substance is the famous cellulose.
The disciple, well-concentrated, will imagine the nucleus of the cell as a small corpuscle where the great universal life pulsates. Within the nucleus are the nuclear filament, the nuclear juice [karyolymph] and the nucleolus all enveloped in the nuclear membrane. The nucleoli are infinitesimal corpuscles full of brightness and beauty, residual products of the incessant reactions of the vegetable organism.
The disciple, well-concentrated, should imagine with all logical accuracy all of those mineral substances and organic combinations that unfold harmoniously in the plant’s cellular protoplasm. Think of those grains of starch and of the extraordinary chlorophyll without which it would be impossible to reach perfect organic synthesis. The chlorophyll appears in a granulated form (chloroplastids) of a very lovely yellow color (xanthophyll). Under the solar rays, this xanthophyll is colored with that green that is so precious in the plant. Every plant is a perfect cellular community of incalculable perfections. The student should meditate on the plant’s perfection and on all of its scientific processes, filled with a mystical beatitude and enchanted by so much beauty.
The mystic goes into ecstasy remembering all of the phenomena of nutrition, relation and reproduction of each plant cell.
Let’s look at the calyx of the flower. Its sexual organs are there. There is the pollen; the masculine reproductive element. There is the pistil or gynoecium, the very precious feminine organ with its ovary, style and stigma.
The ovary is a sac filled with marvelous ovules. The stamens can occupy different positions in relation to the pistil: insertion below the ovary, around the ovary or above the ovary.
Fertilization takes place with the function of the feminine seeds and the masculine gametes. The pollen, masculine gamete, after coming off of the anther, reaches the ovary of the plant where the ovule, the feminine gamete, anxiously awaits. The seed is the precious and enchanting ovule that is transformed and grows after having been fertilized.
The student will now remember that stage of the plant in which he’s meditating. It sprouted as a delicate stem. Imagine it growing slowly until, with the imagination, seeing it send out branches, leaves and flowers. Remember that everything that is born has to die. Imagine now the plant’s process of dying. Its flowers go away, its leaves dry up and are carried off by the wind and finally all that remains are some dry twigs.
This process of being born and dying is marvelous. Meditating on this whole process of being born and dying of a plant, meditating on that whole marvelous life of the plant, if the concentration is perfect, if the drowsiness becomes deep, then the chakras of the astral body will spin, develop and unfold.
The meditation must be correct. The mind must be exact. Logical thought and exact concept are needed so that the internal senses develop absolutely perfectly.
Every incoherence, every lack of logic and mental equilibrium, obstructs and damages the evolution and progress of the chakra discs, or lotus flowers, of the astral body. The student needs much patience because any act of impatience will lead to failure. Patience, will, tenacity and absolutely conscious faith are needed. One day among dreams, a far-off picture, a scene of nature, a face, etc., arises during meditation. This is the sign that the student is progressing. The student is elevated little by little to imaginative knowledge. The student keeps lifting the veil of Isislittle by little. One day the plant on which the student is meditating disappears and he then sees a beautiful child in place of the plant. That child is the elemental of the plant; the vegetable soul.
Later, during sleep, the student’s consciousness awakens and then he can say, “I’m in the astral body”. The consciousness awakens little by little. On this path the moment comes in which the disciple has acquired “continuous consciousness.”
When the student enjoys continuous consciousness, he no longer sleeps; he can dream no longer because the consciousness is awake. Then even when his body is sleeping, he moves consciously in the higher worlds.
Exact meditation opens the internal senses and produces a total transformation of the internal bodies. Those who awaken the consciousness have arrived at imaginative knowledge. They move in a world of symbolic images.
Those symbols that before they saw when dreaming, they now see without dreaming. Previously they saw them in the sleeping consciousness, now they move among them with the wakingconsciousness even when the physical body is deeply asleep. Upon reaching imaginative knowledge students see the symbols but don’t understand them. They understand that all of Nature is a living scripture that is unknown to them. They need to elevate themselves to inspired knowledge in order to interpret the sacred symbols of the Great Nature.
Now we’re going to study inspiration.
Inspiration
Inspired knowledge bestows on us the power to interpret the symbols of Great Nature. The interpretation of symbols is very delicate. Many clairvoyants became homicidal or fell into the crime of public slander due to not knowing how to interpret symbols.
Symbols must be analyzed coldly, without superstition, malice, mistrust, pretentiousness, vanity, fanaticism, prejudice, preconceptions, hatred, envy, greed, jealousies, etc. All of those defects are of the I, the myself, the reincarnating ego.
When the I intervenes translating, interpreting symbols, it then alters the meaning of the secret scripture and the clairvoyant falls into the crime that can lead him to prison.
Interpretation must be tremendously analytical, highly scientific and fundamentally mystical. We need to learn to how to see and interpret in absence of the I, the myself.
To many mystics, it seems strange that we, the brothers and sisters of the Universal Gnostic Movement, speak of divine clairvoyance with the penal code in our hand. Those who think this way consider that spirituality up there is something that has no relationship with daily life. Those persons are not doing well, they are mistaken, they don’t know that what each soul is in the higher worlds is the exact result of the daily life that we lead in this vale of tears.
If our words and thoughts and acts are not just, then the results appear in the internal worlds and the Law comes down on us.
The Law is the Law. Ignorance of the Law does not cancel out its fulfillment. The worst sin is ignorance. To teach someone who doesn’t know is a work of mercy. The entire tremendous responsibility of the Law weighs on the shoulders of the clairvoyant.
It is necessary to know how to interpret the symbols of Great Nature in absolute absence of the I. However, self-criticism must be multiplied, because when the I of the clairvoyant thinks that it knows a great deal, it then feels itself to be infallible, omniscient, wise and even supposes that it sees and interprets in the absence of the ego. These kinds of clairvoyants strengthen the I so much that they end up becoming terribly perverse demons. When a clairvoyant of this kind sees his own internal God, he then translates the vision according to his own tenebrous criteria, and exclaims, “I’m doing very well!”
We need to know how to interpret, basing ourselves in the Law of Philosophical Analogies, in the Law of Correspondences and the Numeric Kabala. We recommend Dion Fortune’s Mystical Qabalah. Study that book, it is marvelous.
Those who have hatred, resentments, jealousies, envy, pride, etc., do not achieve rising to the second step called inspired knowledge.
When we rise to inspired knowledge we understand and comprehend that the accidental accumulation of objects does not exist. Really, all of Nature’s phenomena and all her objects are intimately connected organically with each other, depending internally on one another and mutually conditioning each other. Really, no phenomena of Nature can be fully comprehended if we consider it separately.
Everything is in incessant movement, everything changes, nothing is still.
In every object there is internal struggle. The object is positive and negative at the same time. Quantitative turns into qualitative. Evolution is a process of complication of energy.
Inspired knowledge permits us to know the interrelationship between all that is, has been and will be.
Matter is nothing but condensed energy. The infinite modifications of energy are as absolutely unknown to historical materialism as they are to dialectical materialism.
Energy is equal to mass times the speed of light squared. We the Gnostics turn away from the antithetical struggle that exists between metaphysics and dialectical materialism. Those are the two poles of ignorance, the two antitheses of error.
We go by another road. We are Gnostics. We see life as an integral whole. An object is a point in space that serves as a vehicle for certain sums of values. Inspired knowledge permits us to study the intimate relationship existing between all of the forms and values of Great Nature.
Dialectical materialism does not know the values, it only studies the object. Metaphysics doesn’t know the values, and neither does it know the object.
We the Gnostics turn away from the two antitheses of ignorance and study the human being and Nature integrally.
Life is entirely determined and determining energy. Life is subject and object at the same time.
The disciple who wants to reach inspired knowledge should concentrate deeply on music. Mozart’s The Magic Flute reminds us of an Egyptian initiation. Beethoven’s nine symphonies and many other great classical composers elevate us to the higher worlds.
The disciple, profoundly concentrated on music, should absorb himself in it like the bee in the honey, the product of its work.
When the disciple has already reached inspired knowledge, he must then prepare himself for intuitive knowledge.
Intuition
The world of intuitions is the world of mathematics. Students who want be raised to the world of intuition should be mathematicians, or at the very least have a basic knowledge of arithmetic.
Mathematical formulas confer intuitive knowledge.
The student must concentrate on a mathematical formula and meditate deeply on it. Afterward, empty the mind and make it blank, then wait for the inner Being to teach us the concept of contents contained in the mathematical formula. For example, before Kepler publicly announced his famous principle of, "The squares of the orbital periods of the planets around the sun are proportional to the cubes of their distances", the formula already existed; it was contained in the solar system, even when the sages didn’t know the formula.
Students can concentrate mentally on this formula, empty their mind, become sleepy with the mind blank, and await their own Inner Being to reveal to them the marvelous secrets contained in Kepler’s formula.
Newton’s formula of universal gravitation can also serve to train us in intuition. This formula is as follows: Bodies attract each other in direct proportion to [the product of] their masses and inversely proportional to the square of the distance between them.
If students practice with tenacity and supreme patience, their own internal Being will teach and instruct them in the work. Then they will study at the feet of the Master; they will be elevated to intuitive knowledge.
Imagination, inspiration and intuition are the three obligatory paths of Initiation.
Those who have climbed the three ladders of direct knowledge have achieved supraconsciousness.
In the World of Intuition we find only omniscience. The World of Intuition is the world of the Being. It is the world of the Innermost.
The I, the myself, the ego, cannot enter that world.
The World of Intuition is Universal Spirit of life.
The world of imaginative knowledge is a world of symbolic images.
Inspiration bestows upon us the power to interpret symbols.
In the World of Intuition we see the great cosmic theater, and we are the spectators. We attend the great drama of life.
In that world the whole drama that is represented in the cosmic play is reduced to tremendous arithmetical operations. That is the amphitheater of cosmic science.
From that region of mathematics we see that there are physical masses that are above and below the limits of external sense perception. Those masses are invisible; they can only be perceived with clairvoyance.
Matter is condensed energy. When the vibration is very slow, the mass is below the limits of external sense perception. When the vibratory movement is very rapid, the mass is above the limits of external sense perception. With the telescope we can only see many whose level of vibration is active within the limits of external sense perception.
Above and below the limits of external sense perception there are worlds, solar systems, and constellations populated by all kinds of living beings.
So-called matter is energy that condenses into infinite masses.
The senses of external perception perceive very little.
Dialectical materialism and metaphysics are now absolutely outdated and antiquated.
We, the brothers and sisters of the Gnostic Movement, go by a different path.
It is urgent that men and women of science study the treatise of occult science of Doctor Rudolf Steiner, the great Austro-Hungarian physician born in 1861, friend and disciple of Nietzsche and of Ernst Haeckel, and founder of the General Anthroposophical Society.
It is indispensable that those lovers of science investigate in depth all the momentous oriental wisdom flowing like a river of gold in the immortal pages of The Secret Doctrine. That work consists of six volumes and is a monument of the ancient wisdom. The great Master H.P.B. is the brilliant author of that very precious treasure of ancient wisdom.
Those who achieve supraconsciousness become true illuminated clairvoyants. No authentic clairvoyant boasts of his faculties.
No legitimate clairvoyant says that he is clairvoyant.
When true clairvoyants see something important they communicate their concepts with the greatest culture and supreme respect for their fellow man. They never say, “I am seeing”. They always say, “We consider that…”, or, “We have learned…” That’s how all those who have reached the ineffable summits of supraconsciousness are distinguished by their gentility, humbleness and modesty.
Read Sivananda’s Kundalini Yoga. Meditate on the Blessed White Lodge. Examine the Gnostic treasures. Meditate on the profound symbology contained in each one of the Tarot’s arcana.
Those who reach the heights of the supraconsciousness enter the amphitheater of cosmic science.
The triple path of science, philosophy and revolutionary cosmic mysticism leads us to the ineffable regions of the Great Light.
Gnosis is highly scientific, highly philosophical and transcendentally mystical.
Note: This chapter is a transcription of chapter 22 from the book Fundamental Notions of Endocrinology and Criminology. In order for disciples to complete their preparation for using the Kabala of prediction with complete purity, which is the indispensable requirement, they can study the book Igneous Rose, chapter 17, “Esoteric Discipline of the Mind.” That chapter is the complement of the chapter set forth here.
Meditate deeply on the number of this present chapter (85) and on its Kabalistic additions. Examine with the deepest part of your Soul the key for the preparation for the Kabala of prediction found there:
85 = 8 + 5 = 13 = 1 + 3 = 4
8: Patience
5: Intelligence
13: Mystical Death
3: Work with the Divine Mother
1: Will
4: Work with the Cross, with Sex