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Microcosm Lecture Series Notes 

Transitioning Into The Aquarian Age 

Lecture 10 of 25 by [R] 

Some Social Problems and the Aquarian Age

[Illustrations were not part of the lecture]

The title of this talk is: Some Social Problems and The Aquarian Age.  This is the Libra to Aquarius talk.  Libra is the sign of the scales, the scales of justice and of law.  It is through the law that there is continuity or connectivity within time.  The opportunities of one day are the consequence of the days before it and they are the cause of the days that come after it.  There are, of course, always new things that enter in so that one day is not the same as the next.  That’s getting a little bit far a-field, but we are going to talk about newness tonight.

            In the last talk that we went through, we very likely touched on some problems and paradoxes about the mind.  We were looking at the relationship of Gemini to Aquarius; we were looking at the trine relationships.  Now this is a very different kind of talk; it’s more of a meandering kind of a talk.  There is some hint of the inversion that takes place when spirit is focused through the center of being which happens to be located in the center of mind and will, as some of those things go, come back up.

            Libra is the sign of turnarounds.  If you’re going through the zodiac beginning with Aries, when you come to Libra you are as far away from the beginning as you can get and it is a turnaround.  This is something like our situation in evolution.  We are as far from our spiritual home as we are going to be in our entire evolutionary creation, and we are now at a turnaround.  For this reason, some people believe that Jesus, who took in the Christ Spirit, was born under the sign of Libra, because it represented complete turnaround.

            Now, with the Libra turnaround, one sees things in a different way, in an opposite way.  We’re talking about the sign of marriage and partnership.  With Libra you see the world through the eyes of the partner.  Not only the world, but you see yourself through the eyes of your partner.  So, with this perspective, things are reversed, and sometimes that is a little bit unpleasant, because from the personal perspective we have built into our consciousness all kinds of things to defend ourselves and to protect ourselves, and we’re not always willing to sacrifice that personal point of view.  So, when we’re talking about turnarounds in marriage and things like that, these are issues that come up.

            What we live in is a conservation of unity.  Everything in the One is recycled.  It’s a closed system, and in that kind of system when one loses another one gains.  So, there is a connectivity of that type in Libra.  Like the seesaw, one side of the seesaw cannot go down without the other side coming up.  It’s with great wisdom that in the cosmic mandala, Libra which lives and loves for the other, is the sign of sacrifice.  It’s willing to go down so the partner can go up, so that things can go forward. 

            Now, the talk preceding this talk, had a quality of mental tension about it.  It has to do with Gemini, and Gemini is polarity.  On and off with switches and things of that nature.  With a sign that is ruled by Venus, there is more relaxation.  We’re tense when we argue, but when we share with others (and we’re talking about the sign and house of sharing) there is relaxation.  Also, because this is a turnaround principle and because it is more relaxed, it means an easier talk for you, because there is probably not very much content in what is going to be said tonight.  This will probably be the lightest talk of the whole 25 talks. 

            When I relax, I usually go to stories.  I have a personal library that is filled with literature of all different types – all different types of stories.  It isn’t often that I allow myself to relax from obligation; I have the Sun in the second house, so I have a very obligatory kind of consciousness.  I feel guilty if I’m not fulfilling my obligations.  But, when I do, I start reading stories.

            Not too long ago, at the 100-year anniversary of Jorge Luis Borges, I read all of the stories of Borges.  He was probably one of the best creative thinkers of the 20^th Century, because he wrote stories, interesting stories.  He has one called “The Babylon Lottery” in which in a very literary way, in telling the story, he deals with the problems of determinism and randomness and the interjection of freedom better than any 20^th Century philosopher has dealt with them, because they’ve never taken all of those things in context at the same time.  In his other stories he deals with objectivity and subjectivity, and he has an interesting one about people, especially about one individual being the source of intelligible light in the world, and it’s most fascinating.  He even talks about one-word poems, which harkens back to the one word of creation. 

            At any rate, I love to read mythology and fairy tales.   They’re sort of a favorite of mine because they have a lot of spiritual meaning in them which needs disclosure.  ………… symbolism without taking away the wonderful feel that you get in a story.  And of course all of the fairy tales have morals to them.  I love the stories like Chronos swallowing all of his children and Prometheus, for example, stealing fire from the Gods and bringing it to humans, and for his reward he gets chained to a rock and all day long an eagle chews at his liver and every night it’s regenerated.  They’re really interesting stories.  In fact, I believe probably the entirety of spiritual philosophy, the story of the creation of the Cosmos could be done in story fashion.

            Plato and the Platonists came pretty close to doing that and fortunately they did a lot of interpretation.  The abstract or the meaning behind the story is what is important.  It is what gives life.  It’s almost like food.  We can’t take in food that is pure concentrated nutrient, because we could not absorb it, we could not digest it.  We need roughage as part of it and the undigested part of our food is as important as the digested part. 

            So, let’s begin in our relaxed meandering through an idea or a set of ideas; let’s begin with a story.  It’s a little story, and it’s a peculiar thing because I don’t know of any stories about the kidneys.  Libra rules the kidneys, and I wanted a story that has to do with the functions of the body.  So I had to settle for a story about the stomach which is ruled by Cancer which is not so bad because Cancer has its own kind of sacrifice.  It isn’t the same thing as a Libra sacrifice, but it’s a story that’s probably good for me anyway because sometimes I think that my God is in my belly.  It’s a very brief story, and it’s not very laden with meaning.  You can find it in various parts of the world. 

            One of the simpler versions of it is in Coriolanus by Shakespeare and the story could be called, “In Defense of the Stomach.”  It starts out where the heart calls for a meeting of all of the parts of the body.  The purpose of the meeting is the prosecution of the stomach.  Of course, the head wanted to call the meeting; for that’s what Aries and the head are like, but the heart, ruled by Leo prevailed and ruled the meeting.  The legs started it out by saying, “I walk, I run, I dance, I move the body everywhere, but the stomach gets all the food.”  And the feet said, “I support the body until I am in pain, but the stomach gets all of the food.”  And the head said, “I think, I see, I hear, and I direct everything, but still the stomach gets all of the food.”  It went on like that.  The lungs said, “I inflate and deflate – (It’s almost like a little children’s song.  Each one comes up and sings his little piece.) – I pump until I am almost breathless, but the stomach gets all the food.”

            By the time all of the parts of the body had testified there was quite a bit of evidence and there were a lot of statements against the stomach.  However, the stomach had plenty of stomach, and it spoke out in its defense.  Defense is a posture for Cancer, so it was capable of rebuking its accusers.  Its defense went something like this.  “Yes, I get all of the food.  I swell with it, I toss it around, I mull over it, and when I am done it isn’t even recognizable as all of the things that went into me.  But I keep none of it.  I pass it on to the rest of the body.  Of course there would be other counter-arguments for that, but what happened is that all of the other parts of the body were so stunned and they were so ashamed that they didn’t say anything, and that was the end of the arguments against the stomach.  And they never again raised the issue. 

            Now that’s a story that has very little to do with what we’re talking about tonight, but it’s a nice little story.  With the sophistication of Libra we can appreciate the value of the stomach, or better said, of the digestion.  Digestion is a very complex process on the physical plane.  Even the chemistry of it is quite amazing.   As the food starts out – when it gets to the stomach, it’s in a completely acid environment, and by the time it gets out of the small intestine, it’s in a completely alkaline environment.   We have true PH’s in the alimentary canal.  This is quite a remarkable chemical feat – to do this within one living organism.

            When we look at digestion spiritually, it is both simpler and at the same time more complex.  Our waking self-consciousness is very beautiful, and we appreciate it.  And we appreciate waking consciousness and awareness so much and we are preoccupied with it to the point that we don’t realize how limited it is.  We think that our waking self-consciousness is the totality of our consciousness.  That assumption is an illusion.  There is much more to our spiritual being than our waking self-consciousness. 

            There are various grades of consciousness within our being, both above and below – sub-consciousness and super-consciousness, parts of our being of which we are ignorant.  So, there is an unconscious part of the digestion of food and of a lot of other biological processes.  They go on by themselves, seemingly automatically, but they are under the direction of the entire intent to live of the spirit.  And it keeps those things functioning.  So, the spiritual presence is working and growing and experiencing even though we may not be fully aware of that part of what’s going on in our being.    It’s almost instinct-like and it’s the kind of intelligence that we wouldn’t associate with waking consciousness.  But there are responses to everything that is needed.  When we digest food, as soon as we take it into our mouths, some of it goes immediately to the blood stream and the control of the consciousness then knows what kind of digestive fluids to put into the stomach for that food.  There are all kinds of things like this that are happening all of the time.  In the time that it took me to say that last sentence, all of us produced hundreds of millions of red blood cells.  Physiology is wonderful, wonderful to study.  Every page that you turn over is a new miracle.

            Spiritual philosophy, like the philosophy of the Rosicrucians, gives examples, and they are examples that should cure us of this illusion of having all of this self-consciousness and it being so great.  The reality of it is that our self-consciousness is probably like a tiny aisle in a vast ocean of our general consciousness.  This gives us plenty of incentive to what we can wake up to and what we can make ourselves free in rather than acting in instinctual-like ways.

            Now, we could throw a curve at this process.  I remember one time about 44 years ago, I threw a curve at my digestive process.  I ate a half-green banana, hulled sesame seeds, and a little bottle of Welch’s grape juice and I had a stomach ache that I can remember until this day.  That’s really quite something.  That’s talking a little bit about the complexity of digestion – the consciousness that controls it that we’re not even aware of and it does all sorts of complex things.

            There are also simple things about the digestion.  Esoteric students know that digestion is two-fold.  There is the chemical digestion of which we have just been speaking, and there is the etheric digestion; and there’s a complication even in this simple difference.  The two types of digestion are incompatible with each other.

            For chemical digestion, cooking food makes it more digestible.  For people who eat meat, (I wouldn’t even think of it) but for people who eat meat, raw meat is hard to overcome.  But, with etheric digestion, the vitality in live foods is a totally different kind of digestion and the vital life is driven out of food by the heat process.  We need to have live, vital foods.  When U-boats first came out, the Germans sent the pride of their navy out for several months in a U-boat with completely processed food, nothing live whatsoever.  They came back, and most of them were crippled and mal-nourished and quite a few of them never got their health back.  It’s just one of those things; we cannot live without live foods.

            Some people, people who are etheric healers who are sometimes called “magnetic healers” take an abundance of etheric energy into their body.  They do that by taking milk straight out of the cow so that the energy has not had a chance to dissipate.  Some people do the same thing with vegetable juices.  Fresh-pressed vegetable juice has a considerable amount of vital life.  When I was married my wife was a very sensitive person.  She used to drink carrot juice, and she would say, “I feel new hair coming out on my arms; she could feel the energy coming out from the etheric body through the skin.

            Not all of the things about etheric and chemical digestion are mutually exclusive.  There is a spiritual principle that applies to the digestion, absorption, and assimilation of food that is called “the law of assimilation.”  It is a principle that goes somewhat like the following statement: “One can only absorb and assimilate foodstuff into one’s body that one has overpowered from the form that it is in — the form that was produced by another living being.  And we can only keep it in our bodies as long as we can keep it under our over-powering assertion of will.”  It’s a very interesting principle. 

            There are interesting corollaries that come out of it.  The idea is that since animals are at a much different level than the evolutionary creation, the animal kingdom is one step down from us just the same way that we are one step down from the angelic kingdom, and for that reason they do not have that same strong will, and they do not benefit from taking in food from human beings.  They can attract some of the ethers and some of the ionization, but they cannot overpower the food and they cannot keep it in them.  It’s an interesting thing because with a lot of animals such as tigers – the claim is that almost all tigers which are man-eaters are possessed – that someone has taken over their body and is trying to get food in that way. 

            The relationship of the law of assimilation produces some very interesting interdependence between kingdoms.  It is a creative principle that during involution as we go deeper and deeper into matter and there are more and more ramifications with each world, we cannot do everything, because there’s too much, and so the deeper that we proceed into matter the more we have to sacrifice some things in order to develop other things because we are not universally all-powerful.        An example of this is the transition between the plant kingdom and the animal and human kingdoms.  The plant kingdom has the ability to take minerals as nutrients.  Animals and humans cannot do that.  Ions we can use, but pure minerals as food – we can’t use; they are basically poisons to our body.  Another part of this is that because plants do not have motivation, they have nothing to curb the vital forces in them.  Every plant that lives, as long as it lives it grows.  The principle is that in order to have internal motivation so that we can motivate ourselves, that is, to have a desire body – (an aura as some people call it), we had to sacrifice the ability to take life directly from the Sun out of sunlight.  Of course, at some time in the future we’ll get that ability back again and we’ll get it back in a much higher way, but that’s way beyond what we’re talking about here.    

            So, when we’re talking about these things, because there are things we cannot do, we have to then depend on kingdoms below ourselves, and that makes a wonderful interdependence.  Everything needs the plant kingdom.  The animals and the humans cannot go on without it.  So, the plant kingdom, beside having its own experiences of building new bodies and experiencing new environments in different ways, provides a service.  They give the vitality for everything that lives.  Everything in the Cosmos gives some kind of service.

            There are all kinds of things with this that are really interesting.  For example, with herbalism if you want to use an herb as a medicine you don’t sip it and run it around in your mouth, because that digests it.  You want to keep the property of the herb that is medicinal intact in its state to do what it’s going to do.  If you look at herbalists who have been around for a long time they recommend gulping your herbal tea as soon as it’s cool enough to do that.  This also tells us another reason why it is unwise to eat animal flesh as food.  In the first place it’s not very good for compassion, because since the animals have a desire nature, and they also, like humans, quit growing once the desire function comes into place, they can feel things.  So, the animals suffer when they are killed wantonly and unnecessarily.  There’s another reason.  Since the animals are in a milieu of survival and reproduction, the animal flesh is permeated with desire for those very things, violence and sexual reproduction.   If you’re taking in animal food, you’re taking in, as part of that, those desires.  And before that food can become part of you, you have to overpower it, and you have to keep it in your power or it’s not going to do you any good.

            If we look at this principle, the whole idea is that it’s very good to eat things low on the evolutionary chain.  They’re most easy to overpower and they’re most likely to stay with us for a long time.  By that kind of assumption, algae would be an excellent food.  In fact, I try to use algae; every day I eat spirulina.    I don’t eat much, but I find it to be a very excellent food.  We have noted here several times, while we’ve talked about diet, that we as human beings – each of us is an entire kingdom.  Each of us is a universe. 

            For complete expression of our being, it’s important that we have variety.  One of the weakest factors in the 20^th Century typical American diet is the lack of variety.  Because of that, various foodstuffs are missing and various qualities that go with those foodstuffs are missing.  It is an important thing to keep in mind, because most people do treat food almost like a religion, and challenging someone’s eating habits is like challenging his belief in God.  Back to the statements of just a few seconds ago, each person is a kingdom, and each person as a kingdom is unique.  Often we are significantly different.  As all of you who are married know, you’re very different from your spouse.  So, it’s an important principle that there’s no one diet for every person.

            Doctors find that giving the same medicine in the very same dose to different persons will have very different effects, and it isn’t just a matter of how big the person is or their metabolism.  It’s that each body functions differently.  So, there is no diet that is right for everyone.  Each person should find his own diet and work with what his body or his character likes.  There are general principles that apply to everyone, but there is no diet that is right for everyone.  In fact even for each person there is no one diet, because I’m finding now that with aging, the amount of food and the kind of food that I eat is very different than 20-25 years ago.  It is for this reason that we have the statement about the ancient Iranians that goes, “One man’s meat is another man’s Persian.”

            All right, we’re finally getting to the theme now.  There is another kind of digestion that is very engaging and it is very fascinating.  There are a lot of things that are fascinating, especially when the unconscious part of our being makes itself known in ways that we would never guess, like for instance, cravings – like a woman going through pregnancy wanting laundry starch or something like that because she needs it.  Then, there are all the complexities of what are desire urgings and what are real cravings and things like that, but there’s a kind of digestion that I find the height of all digestion.  It is called autolysis which literally means “self-digestion.”                                             

            Autolysis in the plant kingdom is what is responsible for fruits ripening away from the tree.  Bananas taste better if you cut them when they’re green and they ripen away from the tree – providing you don’t puncture the skin, the ripening process will go on in an excellent way away from the plant.  It’s due to an autolysis that is set into motion.  For fruits like apples which are ruled by Libra and Venus, this indicates a time in the future when our creations will stand outside of us and they will live on their own and they will be independent.  That, in fact, is even called the Venus period.  Those things are, you know, hints of what is given to us right now.   Autolysis is found in the animal kingdom when animals undergo long fasts such as hibernation and estivation.  What happens is that the animals digest fats and store them in the liver and in other organs, but primarily the liver.  They carry themselves through a long winter or a long summer, depending on whether it’s hibernation or estivation.  

Tags: Animal kingdom, autolysis, Libra