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Microcosm Lecture Series Notes

 Transitioning Into The Aquarian Age

 Lecture 6b of 25 by [R]

 Some Thoughts On Altruism

[Editor’s Note: All portrait thumbnail illustrations are editorial content, not part of the lecture]

                         We have seen all along in this and previous talks that the spirit when it is manifest is three-fold.  There is divine spirit which is the power and will.  There is life spirit which we’ve been talking about a lot which is the light and the truth, the life and the creative love of the three-fold spirit.  And there is the human spirit which is not only the thinker; it is the doer, the generator and all of those things.  In effect, without too much technicality, spirit reflectively projects its dream for what is known within itself into potential.  Into what could be but what is not yet.  This unknown or ignorance is congealed as the various states of matter – the different worlds in macrocosm.               

             In the process it is a three-fold activity.  There is the materialization of spirit which is the manifestation of the dream.  There is the spiritualization of matter which is taking the dream and making it real and incorporating it into spirit.  And the third process is the evolution of consciousness which is a consequence of the other two actions.  Now, in that second-named process, which is the spiritualization of matter, the spirit works on the matter.  It doubts the illusory nature of its own projection into the unknown, into the ignorance of things.  The essence of that experience, that was within potential, the essence of that, becomes soul material, and that soul material is absorbed and processed and assimilated into the spirit and then it is spiritualized.  It is made real, and we won’t go into that right now.  A little later we’ll get into that a little more deeply.  We want to be more practical now.  This process is carried out in us in microcosm in our vehicles of consciousness which is where, even if we’re just metabolizing, we are spiritualizing matter.  We are great alchemists whether we know it or not.

            I only want to talk about one part of this.  In the reflective projection, the life spirit is projected reflectively into the etheric subdivision of the physical world.  The etheric subdivision of the physical world is composed of four ethers:  the chemical ether which has to do with chemical reactions and stable form; the life ether which has to do with vitalization, growth and procreation, etc; the light ether which is responsible for taking sense perception and carrying it into the spiritual worlds and taking intuitive impulses from the spiritual worlds and bringing them into the physical; finally there is what is called the reflecting ether and it has two functions.  On one pole it has the function of memory.  That is its receptive pole.   As its positive, active pole it ramifies thoughts.  I’m going very fast here.  There’s loads and loads we could say about this, but this would last all night.

            So, basically, within our etheric constitution there are four ethers and they are divided into two different kinds of activities.  There are the biological ethers which are the chemical and life ethers which take care of biological business, and there are the soul ethers, the light ether and the reflecting ether.  It is those that our spiritual development takes place in.  By enriching our soul bodies, that is, by attracting the stuff of the two higher ethers and incorporating them into our etheric aura it becomes the vehicle of consciousness in which we exist when we leave the dense physical body.  There is no limit to how much we can draw to ourselves of the two higher ethers.  The more we have of them, the clearer our consciousness is.  You can always tell a soulful person by how clear he is in his consciousness and by how things from him are easily understood.

            We build our soul bodies by using them, by attracting them.   The most essential thing in this is the light ether.  At the negative pole of the light ether the perception takes place.  Every time that we are very astute in our perceptions or give ourselves to observing things, the more we attract to ourselves, the light ether through the negative pole.   The other pole is even more important, because the positive pole of the light ether is what warms and drives the blood.  The life spirit drives the blood through the light ether in the blood stream.  This means that the more we use our bodies to serve other people, the more we drive our circulation in service to other people, the more we have of the light ether.  The more we have of the soul material, especially the light ether, in our soul body determines how altruistic we are.  A person who is not soulful in this regard cannot understand what altruism is.  You cannot learn altruism.  You cannot practice altruism.  You can only live it, and it’s when you live a life of service [that] you have the stuff on which the intuitions which come from the realm of altruism reflect themselves or manifest themselves.  There is no other way.  You cannot buy altruism.

            We can see in a very practical way how we can develop the capacity for altruism.  It isn’t just sitting around and smiling lovingly at each other, although that is some of it.  We can love other people and in loving and smiling and sharing those smiles we do attract a small amount of ethers to ourselves, but it’s mostly by sacrificing in loving self-forgetting service that we attract the stuff of altruism.

            To some extent all of this is unnecessary, because altruism manifests immediately as soon as we are soulful.  There is no way that we can have a lot of light ether and not be altruistic.  However, the effects of using spiritual exercises such as retrospection and the other exercises that we have in actually organizing and attracting and building this into our soul body is quite appreciable.  So, we could sit around and smile at each other, but that’s not the way.

            Now we want to understand a little better about not practicing altruism but coming to altruism and realizing it when it is there.  Most of us are not very spontaneous people, and for that we look at some simple keywords from Aquarius. Anticipation, surprise, spontaneity; they are all Aquarius, Uranus keywords.    If we watch a spontaneous artist like a jazz musician, we get some idea of it.  Many people practice music and they develop virtuosity and they can express emotion.  They are familiar with the music, but very few create spontaneously, because spontaneous creation is something else.  Many musicians do practice all kinds of music.

            A few years ago, we had an artist-in-residence here that was world famous for his spontaneity.  His name was Buiner Johannsen, and he would sit down and spontaneously, for an hour and a half, write or play out of his head.  J. S. Bach was another one who created spontaneously.  In the musical offering he sat down at the organ and composed a perpetual fugue, and not a simple one at that.  And then we have musicians like John Coltrane. They are spontaneous creators.  What happens to most of us is that we’re so ground into our daily lives, our humdrum habits, and our closed consciousness that we aren’t open for surprise. It is, indeed, a sign of Aquarian consciousness to not think overly much of self but to realize that within oneself one can be surprised.  If we think as though there is an answer and if we play music as though there is another note that will carry our idea further we are practicing spontaneous creation.  The key to it is anticipation.  We anticipate, but we can be intuitive, but we can be spontaneous creators, so we understand that when we have the soul material it’s available to us.  But, to utilize the soul material we have to learn to anticipate spontaneous creation.

             Discovery is like that.  Discovery comes to people who think and think and they believe there is a truth to be discovered.  If we think there’s nothing there, we have closed ourselves to discovery.  The process of experiencing spontaneous creation, of experiencing altruism by anticipation or by surprise is a very subtle process.  It is told to us several times by the biblical Christ, and when a being that great repeats something several times, it’s important.  The biblical Christ says, “The kingdom of heaven comes as a thief in the night.  We have to be watchful; we have to be subtle; we have to be welcoming.  Otherwise it can be passing right by us, and we don’t know it’s there.

            This means letting go – letting go of habits – letting go of our own opinions about things.  Our opinions about things block us from experiencing new things.  Our opinions may be perfectly fine, but if we’re attached to them they’re impedimental.  We have to let go and open our consciousness.  Not to something outside of ourselves; that’s what leads to mediumship or things like that; but we have to let go of the way we’ve always looked at things and look for new things within ourselves.  The beautiful thing about this, if you’ve ever had intuitions or spontaneous experiences, is that all the things that you were hanging on to so dearly before – almost all of them are not lost.  Sometime they’re overturned.  They’re still true, just as true.  Sometimes you can even see them in a whole new light.  It’s a matter of letting go of personal identification with the things in our consciousness.

            So, we can’t practice altruism, but we can anticipate it.  We anticipate it in the same way we anticipate meeting our friends.  We know we’re going to have a good time when we get together with our friends.  We anticipate that.  So, once again that’s going back and forth between self-forgetting and self-remembering.  Now that we’ve looked at altruism through the negatives, we’re ready to move on to looking at altruism through the positives.

            Let’s begin by looking at another very peculiar quality of Aquarius.  Earlier we said that Aquarius and the eleventh house represented things that were done for themselves.  Now let’s look at things in themselves.  Plato was a great Aquarian transcendentalist and he talked about apperceiving things in themselves.  That is, he talked about perceiving wholes.  Perceiving wholes where all of the perceptions or all of the details are seen as one.  One is not looking at those, but one is experiencing the whole.  In doing this he talked about a science of sciences; a science that knows all things, including itself.  This, mathematicians would recognize as a set of sets.  Mozart was another Aquarian and he had total perception of the region of archetypes, in the region of concrete thought.  He could see the archetype that could be expressed as a symphony in a fraction of a second; as a whole. 

Socrates

Plato

Mozart

            You and I are not Socrates or Plato or Mozart, but it’s helpful for us if we start thinking in wholes, and we can do that by beginning where we are and looking at parts with respect to the wholes that they create or that they are subsets of.  The astrological mandala is  a symbol of the whole of the universe.  One of the simplest ways to understand any one of the signs of the zodiac is to understand it in terms of its opposite.  When you understand a thing in terms of its opposite, you understand that as a pole which is a whole in itself, and in this regard to understand something through its opposite is to understand it through complementation.  This is like saying, Aries is the opposite of Libra, and Aries is the drive to move forward, and the drive to move forward is complemented by balance.  One cannot really go forward unless one is balanced.  That’s the lesson that you learn when you ride a bicycle.  You can ride a bicycle “no hands” if you’re moving forward at a good clip, even if you don’t have a good sense of balance, but if you stand with the bicycle and you’re not going forward it’s very hard to balance, so balance facilitates forward motion and forward motion facilitates motion.  There is a complementation.

            Now, Leo is usually said to represent personal love and Aquarius to represent impersonal love.  I don’t like that choice of words.  Probably a better choice of words is individual love for Leo and altruistic love for Aquarius.  The question that we are looking at now in positive through complementation is: does individual love fulfill altruistic love in the same way that balance fulfills forward motion or forward motion, balance.   Cats are Leonine, and they’re big on individual love, provided they’re the one that is loved.  They don’t sacrifice any dignity in receiving individual love.  They don’t fawn and slobber like a dog does.  The point is within individual love and in Leo (Leo is like the Sun) is that there is a simple, central focus; a central focus for love, just like there is a central focus of light for the Sun.

            Some philosophers believe that the Sun was and is lit up by the divine beings that comprise the constellation of the zodiac.  And that the fuller system is really the womb and that the light’s projected and that is what lights the Sun.  If we focus our positive attention on an individual, and really penetrate into the very core of being of that individual, we can’t help but to love them, and that love of what they really are in their essential being is key to altruism.  There are would-be altruists who are in love with the idea of altruism and have a vague and kind of nebulous conception of humanity, but they can’t stand the kind of people who are around them.  Love is objective.  It is not vague or nebulous.  We want to be loved as ourselves and each of us, in our self, and even further in our being, is divine.  Each of us is a unique expression of altruism.

            We can see by looking at the unique qualities of each single human being, one has a peep-hole into the life spirit of which that individual is an expression, and that is a peep-hole into the light of altruism.  The character of each individual is a variant of the character of all selves, the self of selves, or the selfness of selves.  So, altruism and the humanity that is an embodiment of it is not a diffuse sentiment.  It is a whole and it has a character and although that character is so good in this life that we cannot always understand it, it is lovable just as each individual expression of it is lovable.

            Every time we encounter an individual, if we do so with anticipation and look at it as an opportunity to love, both the whole individual and the whole gets lit up by that.  That’s what we do with our friends.  We don’t go to our friends and think we’re going to get a bad reception.  We go there for an opportunity to love them, so maybe, if we do sit and look at each other and smile and pass a dollar back and forth between us, maybe there is some altruism that can come from that

            Now the principle of fulfillment for the opposite and of the extreme beginning other extremes is not new.  It was first stated, at least in the Western world, by Paraclitis of Pontia and it found its way a few years ago into the analytic psychology of Carl Jung where it was called ……….. and it’s something that can be taken deeper.  This is my vanity.  You know, I have to trump the ace with Paraclitis and Jung.

             In the astrological mandala the houses can be seen as abstract derivatives of the ideas of the signs.  That is to say the fifth house if gifts or children, whereas the fifth sign, Leo, is the attitude of generosity or the attitude of giving off.  In a similar way, the signs of the intellectual zodiac are abstract derivatives of the constellational zodiac, that is, the sidereal zodiac.  The constellations are formed of great spiritual beings working together collectively and individually, not only in their particular stars but collectively working together and radiating into the solar system.  Their being and their right is much more than what we see with our eyes or with our telescopes.  It is an intelligible life which is creative.  They literally focus their being into the solar room.  Now, in the very first talk and the second talk we talked about how the interactions between the sidereal and intellectual zodiacs, by the precession of the equinoxes, shows great changes in historical things.  We can add to that fact that with each zodiacal constellation there is a hierarchy of divine beings.

            Associated with the constellations of Leo is a hierarchy of beings that is called “The Lords of The Flame.”  When we speak about our evolutionary creation, we’re speaking about something that is much grander and deeper than what material cosmogonists (or cosmologists) talk about.  We’re talking about something that goes way beyond the big bang and that fifteen-million years. The materialists are only dealing with the outer skin of things.  The evolutionists, the Darwinian evolutionists are only looking at a recent capitulation.   They’re looking at one inch in the middle of the yard stick.  We know how inches are reflected in the feet of the yards, so it means that this is a very big thing—to look at the evolutionary creation.  We’re talking about a time at the beginning of our solar manifestation.  We’re only talking about the solar manifestation and not at all the other nebulae, galaxies, and such.  We’re talking about a time when the density of our solar system was no more dense than a thought, and the bulk of it was still in the spiritual worlds.  In that early beginning, we were mineral-like.  We passed through a mineral-like stage in which we learned how to take form.  The basic capacity for us to take form was radiated into us by that hierarchy, The Lords of The Flame. 

            Later on in the early beginning, they radiated into our becoming-spiritual being the ability to eventually have the Will-To-Be, the divine spirit.  In the next stage of our solar evolutionary creation when we were passing through a plant-like state and the cosmos was no more deep than a desire, toward the end of that they radiated into us the capacity to have the life spirit that we are talking about with regard to altruism.  Thus we can see that three of our most fundamental states of being, our physical being which is our most highly evolved, our will-to-be and our capacity to truth and to light and to the spirit of life were radiated into us by the hierarchy called “The Lords of The Flame.”

            There are many other hierarchies that participated in our solar cosmos, and mostly they participated with us also.  Each of these hierarchies represents a different rung on Jacob’s Ladder passing into deeper and deeper apotheosis.  Each hierarchy has a character all of its own, depending on the experience that it had during its evolution in the creation.  In terms of their creative accomplishment, all of these hierarchies differ in their power as well as how they go about things.

            In the solar creation, there are three different grades of spiritual hierarchies that we want to talk about.  First of all, there are beings that did not need to participate in our solar cosmos, in our creation, but they did so freely and voluntarily.  They were so highly evolved that they could not participate directly with the creatures, because their level of consciousness was so intense that they would have disintegrated the becoming beings.  These [higher] beings are called the Zenaphim and the Teraphim, and they are associated with the constellations Aries and Taurus.

            The second grade of beings that participated in our solar cosmos also participated freely and voluntarily.  They did not need to; it was not necessary for them to be….what they were or to become what they were becoming, but their evolutionary level was such that they could participate in the distinct individual becoming beings.  They include the Cherubim, the Seraphim and The Lords of The Flame.  The Cherubim are associated with the constellation of Cancer, the Seraphim with Gemini, and as we have already said, The Lords of The Flame are associated with Leo.

            The third category of creative beings are those that participate in the creation because they have to in order to fulfill their commitment to themselves; in order to become what they had to become, they had to participate in the creation.  They include Lords of Wisdom, Lords of Individuality, Lords of Form, Lords of Mind, Archangels, Angels, and our very beginning as Human Beings.  They are particularly associated with Virgo, Libra, Scorpio, Sagittarius, Capricorn, Aquarius, and we with Pisces.  We’re not talking about horoscopes here.  We’re talking about exalting, creative activity.  We’re talking about exalted beings that have a status and consciousness in evolution that is as far above and beyond us as we are beyond a bacterium.

            We’re trying to get at a principle here, a principle that is important, and the principle is with the first two categories.  The first category, the Zenaphim and Teraphim, were too advanced to work with us directly, so we cannot talk about them.  There is a cosmological principle in that; as we grow in creativity we have a responsibility to share our creativity with other beings.  All beings advance by creating and giving to other beings.

            The second principle is distance, figuratively speaking.  The Teraphim and Zenaphim were too far above us.  If you take an 11-year old, the 11-year old is more likely to follow the example of a 14-year old rather than a 50-year old.  There is that kinship in being closer.  So, we want to talk about the second category of beings—that freely participated, that didn’t have to, who gave of themselves voluntarily, but worked on us directly.   Specifically, we want to look at the Lords of The Flame who gave us that germ of life spirit that made it possible for us to experience love at all, for us to experience altruism at all.  They also gave us the divine spirit and physical body, but that’s not there.  This means they gave us the capacity to take a form of any kind.  We have now evolved that form so that it is quite sophisticated.  They gave us the Will-To-Be, and whether we know it or not, we exist because we will to exist.    The archetype of our life here on earth is set spinning by the will to live, which is built by consciousness soul which comes from our experience here and feeds our divine will, but that’s getting too far afield.

            But, our capacity to love and light and life in spirit is what we’re trying to get at.  What we’re trying to understand now is how the Lords of The Flame could give such fundamental things to us without attachment.  This is central.  Altruism means loving and loving very intensely, but without clinging, without any cling at all.  The best answer to these principles of Leo and Aquarius, for this question, can be found in a simple keyword for each of those two signs of the zodiac or constellations.  They are “freedom” and “giving.” 

            We are told by the biblical Christ, freely have ye received (when you were creatures), now freely give.  He didn’t say just give; give freely.  The Lords of The Flame did not have to participate.  They did so freely, and they did so voluntarily, and because of this they could give of themselves totally without being bounded by necessity.  Anytime there’s necessity, you are limiting your capacity to give.  Anything by coercion, you will do, but you won’t do as much as if you do it in freedom.  Because of this, the Lords of The Flame could give of themselves totally, and when they gave of themselves totally, their selfness, their spirit was given to the other, was given to the dream and was no longer theirs.  When it was given to the dream, even though it takes millions of years for it to be effected, ……… realizes the dream.  The dream is realized when it becomes spiritual reality and not just, “this is my dream, this is what I’d like it to be.”  It happens when something is given totally and without restraint of any kind.  That is how the dream is realized, and that is how matter is spiritualized.

            Now like all deeply spiritual things that are beyond the mind, there are paradoxes, because things beyond the mind, paradoxical opposites meet in a unity.  One paradox most Christians have experienced.  It is: Once we give ourselves completely in freedom and begin to experience the Christ-love, the altruistic love, we become prisoners of it.  We are prisoners of love, and when we love something we can’t help but do what we have to do, no matter what.  So, we have Paul saying, “I, Paul, prisoner of Christ.”

            Another paradox is where we find the principle that we’re seeking at this time.  It is a simple fact that such an activity could only be done by freely giving.  Stated very tritely, it isn’t really a gift unless it is given freely.  This even applies with for-giving, forgiving as in an apology.  Nobody wants an apology that is given half-heartedly or is given begrudgingly.  Apologies for-giving only come when it’s unconditional-giving.

            Beyond these simple, trite kinds of statements, is the difficulty that in the interplay between individual attachment and free-giving, in the interplay between them there are things that run very deep, things that are very hard for us to work with.  For example, Leo and the fifth house rule giving, but they are also the home of the Sun, or the Self and central being, as said earlier.  We have to give up ourselves or we have to give the whole selfness when we give, or else there is attachment. 

             If done spiritually, the Self goes with the gift and it is part of the gift.  Things that people give us aren’t important.  It’s what they, of themselves, have given to us.  It is another trite saying, it isn’t the gift, it’s the thought behind it.  Even though it’s a trite statement, there’s a deep reality behind it.  If the Self is given freely in a gift, it becomes unattached, and it becomes Aquarian-like.

            This is what it means, looking in the other direction, when we give ourselves to Christ.  We still have our individual nature; we still have our selfhood, but when we make that transference, from the whirlpool to the sea, when we give ourselves to Christ, it is an amazingly relieving kind of thing.  We don’t carry that onus or that burden of ego or of self like that.  Conversely, if we remain aloof from things, that only enhances egoism.  So, you see, in this whole principle of Leo/Aquarius as it is with an opposite, there are not only fulfillments, but there are flip-flops of all kinds of ideas……… which I’m too tired to talk about. There are things of which we must be aware and there are different kinds of definitions that come up as we try to live these things on the path.

            So we see that the peep-hole to altruism that another individual is actually becomes a gateway to the whole other side of reality.  So that our whole conception of self is not lost but it is given over to something greater.

            This is a principle profound beyond my capacity to describe it, but it can be applied to our lives in simple ways.  The beautiful thing about it is that with thorough giving, about giving the totality of ourselves, it’s something that cannot be abused, whereas, pseudo altruism or intellectualized altruism or any of those things lead to all kinds of perversions.  We have to give only of ourselves and when we do there is no claim.   There’s an analogy in physical things.  People in sports are told you’re less likely to injure yourself if you give yourself wholeheartedly to an effort than if you have a little hitch to what you’re doing.  Giving ourselves or giving of ourselves is both intense and Leo-like on one hand and altruistic on the other hand.  It goes right to the core of our being and in that it gets right to the character of all humanity.  There are no longer those differences in our character and the character of other people that are brought about by religions or nationalities or any other kind of separations.

            Finally, one last little thought about altruism on the Aquarius/Leo pole, and that is, Leo rules the heart.  Saint Exupery, in his beautiful little story, “The Little Prince” says “It is only with the heart that one can see true; what is essential is invisible to the eye.”

             But the Aquarian “invisible” that is seen by the heart is not seen; it is felt.  When one gives oneself deeply, in our common language we say, “It is a heartfelt giving.”  There is a lot of wisdom in this common language.  It’s one of those statements that is much more literal than people realize.

            The life spirit has two major seats in the physical body.  One is the pituitary body and the other is the blood together with the heart.  The circulatory system itself is ruled by Aquarius, but the blood and the heart are ruled by Leo and the life spirit.  The three-fold entity, the Self, is composed of the divine spirit, the life spirit and the human spirit.  In brief, its functions can be called willing, healing, and thinking.  The feeling quality is the quality of the life spirit, but it’s Feeling with a capital ‘F’ and it is Loving with a capital ‘L’.  Mystics claim that every time that we do something from the goodness of our heart or when we do something for the Christ’s sake, we literally feel it in our hearts.  There have been one or two times in my life when I have been fortunate enough to feel that.  You literally feel something in your heart.  This has something to do with an anomalous physiology with the heart.  The heart is composed of both voluntary and involuntary muscles.  The claim that is made by mystics is that it becomes voluntary the more that we do altruistic, heartfelt activities.  We develop more of the voluntary muscle.  As we gain control of the heart, we also gain control of the blood and the life spirit which works through both of them.  We can then direct the blood, (….for example) in the brain that has more to do with ethical behavior, with helping other people, and a different way of thinking.  Right now, for survival, most of the blood goes to the centers of the brain that have to do with eating and sex.  This is necessary for self preservation.   

            All muscles of the body are an expression of the desire body.  We move and tell ourselves to get what we desire.  Some clairvoyants claim that if a person is sufficiently sensitive, if you tense a muscle and keep it tense, and you’re in a very silent place, and you hold it to your ear, you can hear the music of the spheres as filtered through the desire body and the muscles.  Those same clairvoyants claim that in a similar way, if you’re completely silent and listen, the blood that rushes through the ears carries the echo of the primordial word, which is a small representation of the macrocosmic creative word.   The smaller version is to hear the Shepherd’s voice.  It’s probably best to hear it in intuition but it can be heard in our ears, but not in the same way that we hear in intuition.            

            The idea is that whether the blood becomes etherized at the same time that our soul bodies become richer and richer from altruistic actions we literally can hear more of the Shepherd’s voice and what we do is we do things for the Christ’s sake or we do things for friendship.  Everyone becomes our friend and we advance the spiritual development for everyone.  This helps us to have a new understanding of the words of Christ when he said near the end of his life, “Ye are my friends.” 

[Editor’s Note: All portrait thumbnail illustrations are editorial content, not part of the lecture]