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Microcosm Lecture Series Notes

Transitioning Into The Aquarian Age

Lecture 9b of 25 by [R]

The Aquarian Age and Some Problems of the Mind

We’re back to the mandala, an astrological symbol of the entire universe as seen from the human point of view. The mandala itself and everything in the mandala is symbolized by three figures – the point, the line and the circle. This was the ancient spiritual geometer, the ability to produce things in the cosmos, everything in the cosmos as a matter of deduction from universal principles was done by using the point, the line and the circle.

These, themselves, are representations of astrological aspects. The conjunction is when two planets are brought together in a point. The opposition is when they are diametrically in a straight line opposed to each other. The circle is produced by a compass. It’s a triangle and we have to go into the higher spiritual dimension as opposed to just the plane. Now using just the point, the line and the circle, you can produce the three fundamental triangles.

Of the three fundamental triangles the first is the isosceles (right triangle) out of which the square is produced.

The second is the 30-60-90 triangle or the 1-2 square root of 3 triangle and out of that an equilateral triangle is produced.

The last triangle of construction is the 1-2 square root of 5 triangle, and it requires an implicit manipulation but from

it you produce the pentagon or the pentacle. I have to sit down for an hour or so to figure out how to do it from the triangle but it can be done.

They are tied together by the famous Pythagorean triangle which is the 3-4-5, the 3 being the spirit, the 4 being matter and the 5 being soul nature in between. Everything, even the physical world that we are in, is created out of the ideas behind these three triangles. By uniting them with the fourth, you bring in the dimensionality of everything. For example, these are the five geometric, five Platonic solids. They are the only five that are possible. This is the tetrahedron, the cube, the octahedron, the icosohedron, and this is sort of a classic dodecahedron showing the relationship between an icosohedron and a tetrahedron but, by the way, the dodecahedron is bulk and so from these all of the solid state of the world is produced.

All of crystallography and close packed structures are based on these, anything that is a solid is a crystal in physics, and is based on these geometric structures. It’s a wonderful thing. This was found and studied in Euclid’s geometry. If you can understand the transcendent spiritual principles that are behind everything you have an understanding inside of yourself of how the universe was created. If you can live those principles in your own being, you automatically become a magician which is a creator in the highest sense of the word.

These are the three figures that you can produce on the plane and they are the only figures, the simple figures that you can inscribe in a circle – the equilateral triangle, the square and the pentacle. This is the famous formula I’m sure you’ve all seen before, it has to do with taking pure spirit, which is the circle, and bringing it down to pure matter which is the square or the cube. It relates to everything we said. This is 3.1415 and this is something that goes back in human history thousands of years. You find this inscribed in caves that they don’t even know the dates they were created. This is the first five digits of pi. Indicating that the ancient people knew very well the relationship between straight lines and points and circles and the squaring of the circle which means being able to materialize the spirit which can’t be done completely which is why it is an insoluble problem.

In the same way, there are five figures that can reproduce almost all of astrology, based on five simple aspects. One of them is the result of a compound figure and the compound figure is two equilateral triangles put together as the Star of David or the symbol of the macrocosm. There are three orders within the five aspects. First, there is the square and the square followed is cross-polarity. Aries is square to Cancer and that’s a battle between fire and water. So there’s always cross-polarity which means that when you’re functioning with the square, when you’re bringing things to this solid material state, you’re always struggling against something that doesn’t want to become manifest. That’s why there must be imperfection in the material world.

The second category of aspects includes the opposition and the sextile. This always is between complementary polarities, fire and air. We saw that when we looked at Aquarius and Leo. The sextile is, again, fire and air between Aries and Gemini or Aries and Aquarius or Taurus and Pisces or Taurus and Cancer. So we see that there is something complementary. The final kind of aspect, the final category of aspect includes the conjunction and the trine. They are single elemental aspects. Obviously, if both planets are in one sign it is a single element. A trine for Aries passes through Leo, that’s all fire. Or, like my friend, with everything in air, it’s all airy intellectual. So, we can see that the conjunction and the trine have something to do with concentration and simplicity and they lead to longevity and innocence because there is nothing outside of it and that is a pure state of being within one element.

With the precession, especially with Aquarius, we are looking at a process of evolution in consciousness taking place in time. In the mandala, just like in the evolutionary creation, everything projects forward. All these astrological influences go forward in the zodiac. So, we can see in the astrological mandala that the trine indicates an implied evolution toward perfection that each part of the trine represents – a different stage of perfection. Now the gardening mandala begins with Aries. This point is the beginning, it is the now, this is forward; going back is Pisces—going backwards in time. The ultimate forward vertex from Aries should indicate the end, the last thing, the capping achievement of the principle so that is the ninth house. The ninth house, if we can come to an understanding of it relative to the initial inception of something, then we will understand the nature of the trine and that will help us to get to where we can understand what is happening in the mind in the Aquarian age and the relationship of Gemini to Aquarius.

Sounds complicated, doesn’t it? It’s much easier just to live a simple life. The first house or Aries represents immediate experience. It is learning by doing, like you have the experience directly, head on like a ram. We said that with a change of state, that it precipitates the conditions of the second house. Whenever you make an action, you bring up the resistance of a heavier responsibility. The third house represents, instead of learning by doing, a general education, getting to know things. So learning by doing is by the sweat of the brow and it results in income and yet in a general education it means that you develop some kind of tool or ability to do things in society, a skill or anability for advancement in work. Finally, the ninth house represents education for its own sake. That you learn for the sake of learning and it is open-ended. It represents high scholarship. It also probably represents graduate school or divinity school, medical school or whatever and what comes out of that is profession. You have esteem in the world. You are honored for what you know. So we can see that there is progression between the fire signs and houses and the earth signs that follow after them.

We also can see from this that the houses relating to the fire signs relate to education, firsthand experience of childhood is overcome by general education and finally, then, by education as a higher way of life. And that higher way of life is open-ended; like the Sagittarian idealism, it shoots for the stars; it’s open-ended and never lets off. That way of life that is open-ended really is a way of life. One understands purpose. It is purposeful and that’s the word we are looking for. The ultimate vertex of the triangle of the simplest triangle on the cosmic mandala is purpose. Since the aspects represent tools or means of action, purpose is the ultimate of action and the purpose is open-ended and it is eternal purpose. So the purity and perfection and simplicity of the trine is to the end of purpose. So you might say the alchemical purging by burning, firing something, is to get rid of everything of the world, the ash of the earth to blow away and you have the purity of the purpose in itself.

The tenth house represents goals, but the ninth house represents purpose, always going towards that. You can see this throughout the whole horoscope or throughout the whole mandala. The second house, for example, is possessions. You can’t have possessions to be an end in itself because if the possessions are an end in themselves then you have something like a miser. Possessions find purpose in use. If you only just use something and you get involved in … you can’t find help in that way. You train for an objective. So you might say that the sixth house finds purpose in the tenth house in order to reach some far-fetched objective. But when you’re there, you don’t just stay there, like Richard Nixon. You’re a lonely person in the White House bugging the pictures or something like that because you haven’t followed purpose for being on the top of things. So the tenth house finds purpose in being productive. It’s like one of those triangles that keeps going around and around and around.

Now that we understand how the process goes, we can start applying it to Gemini. Gemini is the first air sign. The ultimate or the last air sign is Aquarius and so the ultimate purpose of the air signs, though initiated by Gemini, is found in Aquarius. Very briefly, relative to our topic this indicates that the simple knowledge, the gathering of the facts, the getting of the data, has its ultimate fulfillment in universal knowledge. Not necessarily as a cosmic data bank but as a whole. Aquarius thinks in wholes. It is that feeling of totality. Even a little bit of Aquarius… intuition feels like a whole. So this is like saying that condensing thought, like we did in Atlantean times when the atmosphere of the Earth was still vaporous, at that time we were developing the consciousness to condense thoughts. Co-evolutionarily, we condensed the atmosphere of the Earth and this is what caused the great floods of Moses and Noah or, as you know they’re the same in almost all mythologies of the world. So, what we’re talking about here then is taking knowledge to come to an understanding of wholes and when we have the ultimate understanding of wholes then the knowledge, the place or how things fit in, the relationship of one to another is understood from the whole. That’s what we’re trying to get at by the consciousness of Gemini to Aquarius.

After those floods of Noah and Moses as they are told in the Bible, (in Indian philosophy it’s Manu instead of Moses), after that, we could see through the atmosphere. The eye evolved with the ability to have light that we could see through a dense fog. So, we’re talking about something that takes place over millions of years of time. We’re talking about humans not in the shape that we would consider humans to be like now. We’re talking about the progenitors of all the different species that have been blown off by our consciousness as we recapitulated the human state and there were all those previous stages that we went through to become human and to become the seeds for the species that exist now. What we’re talking about was Moses, not the historical Moses of ten thousand years ago. There would be evidence of a general flood ten thousand years ago under … but here we’re going way back.

This is because, you know, people say history repeats itself and what they’re saying is the same thing the mystics have taught – that everything in evolution is spiral and there are spirals within spirals and by going through the various different spirals we are brought through an infinite number of experiences which bring out different and infinite facets within our being.

The rainbow is a sign…the Gemini consciousness. Alternation – waking and sleeping, night and day, life and death consciousness because by then a lot of clairvoyance that was lost in Lemurean times, in the times of the fall of Adam and Eve, was waning. What we’re talking about is alternating consciousness, Gemini consciousness, consciousness that is the result of inbreathing and out-breathing; ….ernated blood vs oxygenated blood; two different kinds of consciousness. Try to sing on the in-breath; you can’t do it; it’s not an easy thing. The rainbow sign introduced all of these alternations at the time when we had developed enough mentality so that we could receive it.

We were given something like a sermon, like the Moses/Manu person, whatever name we want to call the person, we were told that from here on in we could do what we wanted to do but that we would be responsible for the causes we put into effect. Meaning to say that we were to become intellectually conscious through the tree of knowledge—knowing what this kind of action produces in a consequence. This was as it should be. Thinking as human beings, this is when we really began as human beings and thinking is our service. The minerals give us form, the plants give us vital life and through the species shown in the signs of the zodiac, the animals, the animal kingdom is a vessel for emotional consequence.

But humans think and we think concretely. This is our primary service to the cosmos at this evolutionary age. Thinking – it is our service, it is our duty, it is our privilege to think. That’s what the whole talk is about tonight. It’s an occult service. When we are thinking, it may eventually be manifest in the world as actions and changes of forms and things like that but basically, it’s an internal activity. It comes out, we have bad thoughts that result in bad service and we harm others. This is why we recapitulated all these states to bring the nervous system into the body so that we could bring thought into the physical world. That is our service – bringing thoughts all the way down to concrete condition. We have been talking about it in most of these talks. It is through the focus of the lens of the mind that we become aware that the spirit is brought into matter. It brings us all the way through into our bodies. Our lens, our creative mind is one of those objectives.

We said very early in this talk we are here to develop a creative mind. We don’t even necessarily understand what the purpose of that is but it’s wonderful when we do something creative. Wow! There is no experience that is better than that. So, thinking is one of our primary and overall services, especially since we have fallen into matter and we cannot do things by spiritual perception and cannot do things by intuition as we could earlier. We have forced ourselves into a place where we have to think and we have to think ourselves out of matter. So let’s review a few thoughts about thinking itself, about the circumstances through which our mind came to be, because our mind, the nature of our thoughts, is determined by when and how the mind was developed.

In spiritual history our mind was seeded in the time when we were most blind to the spiritual worlds, when we were most separated and when we were forced into introspection. That makes thinking a very lonely activity. The mind is in its first stage, it’s in its mineral-like stage and it’s very, very young in terms of evolution. Of all the wondrous things we can do with it, we cannot think life into existence, for example.

The mind was seeded or it came into existence at the same time that the thoughts ego was developed as something to protect when we, by our rash actions, separated ourselves from the correct leadership and guidance of the gods. So the mind, the concrete mind is created and coalesced with the lower nature, the self-seeking that does more than protect us has set up shop for itself and it does for its own ends. The mind, we can say, was to grow up at the time of the fall. So it is a mind that, right now, is very much directed and guided toward materialism.

This tells us quite a bit. It tells us that if we want to evolve spiritually, we have to think not only about material things and not only in material ways but we have to think in terms of life; something that is not necessarily indefinite but something that is not as close and cumbersome as dense matter. The mind is bound up at the ground floor. Ab inicio, we’re starting from the bottom with the mind. So it’s part of our tainted and fallen lower nature in general. We can see that this is what we’re doing. This is why it is so important to gain control of the mind because the mind is the closest tool of the spirit and if the mind is attuned to matter, and if the mind is in the hands of the lower nature, it’s going to resist our taking control of it and using it as a divine instrument. So these are real problems.

These are problems that we must work out if we’re going to have that universal kind of consciousness that is the nature of Aquarius and that’s what is right for now. So we can conclude from this our identity – both our higher identity and lower identity – is all wrapped up with thinking. So we have to see what our true identity is and what it is not without taking it automatically as our mind. Again, our minds are bound up with matter and there’s a great danger of materialism. We can go down the abyss. We have a basic idea of what the problems are.

Let’s look at one more paradox (we’re getting down to the end now) and that is that thinking is simultaneously personal, objective and universal. On one hand, we can think a thought about reality and we can test it out in an experiment, a scientific experiment or an artistic experiment and that thought, if it is objective and universal, anyone else can check it out. But the funny thing is that when we think, we think alone. It’s not like emoting. In emotion two people will feel the same thing at the same time, but in the deliberative process of thinking, it’s a very lonely experience. It is part of that introverted experience that brings one to know oneself very, very clearly because it is so alone.

There are interesting things about this because it is about truth; we really can’t own a thought. We are responsible for our own thoughts and they coalesce to make our minds what they become, but we really don’t own them; even less can we own an idea. This is so silly, this whole idea. This is one of the dangers of materialism, the whole idea of intellectual property. Intellectual property is not the property of an individual; it’s the property of a soulless entity. Sony Corporation owns intellectual property of a lot of people. That’s weirdness to me and I can’t understand that at all. If we try to make such as that our property, that’s vanity, and we close our minds rather than opening them to new creation. So, the mind is a crux where universal objectivity and personal subjectivity meet. It’s where the spirit meets the body and it is the turning point. It’s the turning point where our material attachments and personal sins are meek and must return.

Let’s look at the mandala again. A conjunction in the mandala is a synod. It means that two things have come together or fuse together in one point. It is a Saturnine principle in the same way that an entire plant is built into a seed. What is sown in the conjunction is what becomes fruitful in time. It defines its first fruit there. So what is sown in Gemini finds fruit in Libra; it ultimately finds its truth and ultimate purpose in Aquarius.

What we’ve just seen in this little review of the history of our mind is that we have been sowing two kinds of seed. One, extremely materialistic, which isn’t by itself bad but it is personal and the other is universal, objective thought—very impersonal (other oriented). That brings us to …….

I have a great fondness of Talbot Mundy. Talbot Mundy was in the British version of the CIA before the 2^nd world war and he was a theosophist and he wrote some really interesting adventure stories and they all have a spiritual tint to them, not much more than a tint. But he has a quote in one of them. I’ll only give you the partial quote because the partial quote is what is important. ‘Love lives forever. Now and forever. Pain and the past must be something less than love’s chrysalis – its shell – its seed bed, in which necessary nothings rot, to release such real wonders as – as – as…’ beautiful, beautiful lines. We’re talking about the seed bed of thoughts.

The Aquarius wonders that are in the future are a consequence of what we are doing now. We are told, even in orthodox Christianity, how to deal with the problem of the thoughts we are sowing. That is in the story of the tares. I guess the story goes that the wheat was planted and that someone came along and put weed seeds in and when the wheat came up so did the weeds and the people wanted to go out and pull the weeds. In the parable, they are told not to do that but to wait until the harvest. That is really insightful for us solving the problem of the mind. We have two kinds of seed that are being sown in the concrete mind, the Gemini mind if you like, that was ours since the flood and will reach their ultimate fruit in Aquarius.

Now we come to another peculiarity or a paradox about thinking and about the zodiac. All the airy signs and symbols have two parts to them – either the two twins or the part of the Libra sign with the balance and the two lightning bolts or the two waves in Aquarius. They are air signs and thought can be dry and it can be barren and that is the way most people look at it, especially attorneys. They look at it as cut and dried. On the other hand, they can be Aquarian-like as Socrates said. He found the spontaneity of thinking pretty exciting. He said it was almost like following a path through an exotic forest. He said let’s follow this thought and see where it takes us. It’s alive and it’s vital and it’s very spontaneous. It’s Uranian creative. We can already see the tares coming up in our consciousness. You know, all those irrelevant facts and fads and all of those kinds of things. There are people who are involved in amassing them who get immense stores of knowledge and they’re very valuable people. But the wise shall be captured in their folly. We don’t need more thoughts. We need to think more deeply. We need to think more lovingly and we need to think more creatively.

Then, in selfish thought, it’s going to get left by the wayside – that’s the tares – and it’s what we’re sowing. Or if we’re harvesting it’s something like retrospection; that is what counts.

‘The heart is a garden where the thought will always grow and the thoughts that we think are the seeds that we sow. Every kind loving thought bears a kind loving deed while a thought that is selfish is just like a weed. So let us plant our love thoughts so thick in a row, there will not be room for weed thoughts to grow.’

Yeah, forget the rest of the talk. That’s it! We need to use the mind less as a magnifying mirror of shallow responses and more of a lens for planting the seeds that are divine. It doesn’t have to be a profound philosophical thing, but there are wild little good thoughts that we can think every day. When we do reflect, we should reflect on that which is doing the thinking and not seeing how things reflect on us personally. The more we can do of the retrospective thinking, the renegade thinking, the more we will have the strength and the more it will be in the hands of the spirit to plant the right thoughts.

The sun, the self, will ripen all of the seeds, but if we work on control of the mind we can transmute them. Sins don’t have to remain sin. They have seeds somewhere in universal principles and if we can seed that into them, we can transmute them and transform them into very positive things. There is a Bible verse that tells us the same thing very clearly,

‘Be ye perfected by the renewing of your mind.’

Don’t let it stay the same, renew it in the spirit and think new thoughts. This is sort of the opposite. I’m a child of fire rather than a child of water so I’m much more a person involved in the mysteries than religion and so I like ending with Biblical quotes rather than beginning with Biblical quotes. So, let’s end by thinking for just two or three minutes on the idea,

‘Be ye perfected by the renewing of your mind.’