It will help if we begin our discussion with the spiritual disciplines of the previous Age. Understanding the purpose and accomplishments of those old, familiar disciplines will help us understand the new disciplines of this Age.
In the past planetary Age, the predominant energy was that of the sixth ray of devotion to an ideal. For spiritual seekers, this was an ideal of divinity. Most spiritual disciplines were basically methods of aspiring to, and at-one-ing with, this overshadowing divinity. This includes most of the familiar Eastern and Western spiritual traditions.
This aspirational path frequently involved some type of abandonment of the form. If you were on the mystical path (the way of the heart), the intellect was seen as the enemy. If you were on the occult path (the way of the intellect), then the emotions were viewed as a distraction. Both the mystic and the occultist viewed the material body was a trap from which they attempted to escape.
When the goal of the seeker was union or at-one-ment with the divine, the method was to higher state of awareness, and attempt to stay there. This was true whether the path was that of sexual union with the divine, mystical bliss, at-one-ment, or transcendence.
The trouble with that type of approach is that “What goes up must come down.” The natural, fundamental motion of the form is rotary or cyclic. So long as the consciousness or self dwells in a form, without mastering it, the self will be subject to those cycles. Thus, for every “up” there will be a “down.”
Most spiritual seekers viewed these “downs” as failures, to be fought and/or avoided. They achieved some degree union, but then they fell from grace into the material world.
In the Age of aspiration, the seeker learned to experience Divinity. However, they did not learn how to bring the divine downward. It remained an overshadowing abstraction, unobtainable in the world of affairs.
Their misrelationship with substance, with the physical, emotional, and mental realms, made manifesting the Divine both unthinkable and impossible.[1]
In the New Age, the seeker’s focus, goal, and methods are very different. The “fall” is seen as a necessary part of the work. It is not avoided, but used, incorporated into the inner disciplines. This is comparable to a skydiver on an airplane. The point of the flight up is to get to where he needs to be in order to come down.
The primary planetary energy of the present Age is that of Ceremonial Magic. Where aspiration moved the incarnate consciousness upward, this energy moves Spirit downward. Where seekers had attempted to escape form and at-one with Spirit, they now attempt to at-one with Spirit and bring it downward into form.
The purpose of the spiritual quest is to manifest the Divine, giving it shape and form in the world of affairs. The ability to ascend and at-one, developed in the previous Age, becomes the method whereby we get where we need to be in order to bring the divine down.
Having, presumably, used the aspirational process in a number of recent incarnations, we tend to see the ascent and at-one-ment as the “good” part of meditation. We avoid the descent, in which we return to the world of affairs. However, since the descent is the embodiment portion of the meditation cycle, it has become an essential part of the meditation process.
Among other things, The Nature of The Soul is a meditation instruction manual. It includes the foundational instruction for the new type of meditation. Once you learn that foundation, you can build whatever you need to on top of it. But until you have that foundation, you cannot build.
The Nature of The Soul also introduces the student to the complete three-fold meditation cycle, including:
Ascent (aspiration to the divine, such as a ray energy or some Aspect or Attribute of divinity),
At-one-ment (contact with, receptivity to, realization of, or union with some aspect of divinity), and then
Descent (or embodiment of that realized during at-one-ment).
The course recognizes this cyclic process within each meditation activity, within each day, within each lunar cycle, within each year, and within each incarnation. It recognizes that all of those cycles are taking place within an ashramic cycle, within a hierarchial cycle, and within a planetary cycle. This recognition goes out as far as this Age and puts this Age in the context of the planetary Purpose.
The meditations start as basic, foundational techniques, integrating the three-fold persona in the Ajna (brow) center. Later on, the course moves on to other centers in and above the head, including the Cave and Crown centers, and the ashramic alignment and focus.
As with all new activities, these inner exercises take some time and practice to master. While the course usually lasts about a year, mastering the inner work is part of a continuing process of spiritual growth.
Both the ascent and descent processes use all three persona vehicles (mental, emotional, and physical). In fact, the three vehicles are a necessary part of the new meditation process.
The mental vehicle focuses and directs the incarnate consciousness. It directs the consciousness to a thought-form, which focuses the student’s attention on a divine characteristic, quality, or aspect.
The emotional body is a font of force that enables the seeker’s consciousness to move.
The physical vehicle is the instrument through which the outer appearance is created.
One of my favorite analogies of the way this process works is a ram pump. Imagine a large, vertical, cylinder with a piston at the bottom, and a small pipe at the top (like a large syringe). The large cylinder is full of ten gallons of water. When the piston moves up, it forces water into the small pipe. Since the pipe is narrow, it will hold only a small amount of water, and the piston will not have to move very far to force water through the pipe.
The meditation techniques use the astral aspiration like the piston and water, and the mental thought-form like the small pipe. The astral body provides the force and the mental provides the direction. When used together, they carry the consciousness upward into contact with the divine.
Once you contact a divine idea, you reverse the “pump”. You take on a little of the quality, characteristic, or nature of that idea, and move back down. As you move downward, you carry that quality down with you, into the mental plane. As that quality is held or sounded in the mental plane it transforms the surrounding mental substance. This creates a new thought-form, and/or transmutes any existing thought-forms which are responsive to that frequency. When the thought-form is fully formed and organized, you continue the downward movement, bringing that quality into the astral plane, giving it the force it needs to manifest in the world of affairs.
Using the astral force, you move that quality down into the physical-etheric, where it is given an intelligent activity in etheric substance, a shape and form just above the level of the physical. Then that intelligent activity is passed to the devic kingdom (to a “deva of appearance”) to be given form in the physical-dense world of appearance.
Thus, we see a complete cycle of creative activity in each meditation. There is an ascent, the height of meditation, and then a descent. The whole meditation process is designed to take the identity up, merge with some aspect of divinity, and then bring that aspect down.
The cyclic process of the meditations is coordinated with, and takes place in the context of, daily cycles. The ascent portion of the day is in the morning, and the descent portion of the day is in the evening. During your morning meditations you emphasize the ascent portion of the meditation. Those meditations which are ascent in nature (aspirational or beginning) are practiced in the morning. During the evening you emphasize the descent portion of your meditations. Those meditations which are descent in nature (manifestation or completion) are practiced in the evening.
The cumulative effect of working the meditation cycles this way, is like your movement on a playground swing. Remember how you sit in the swing and push off. When you get to the top of your backward arc, you push and lean back (if I’m remembering this right). Just as you get to the top of the forward arc, you pull and lean forward. By redistributing your weight at the right moment, you go higher and higher.
If you were strapped into the seat, and the swing had inflexible pipe instead of chain, it would be possible to continue pumping until you were going around in circles.
The complete meditation cycle works just like a swing, with the ascent and descent providing the pumping action. This action is most effective when performed at the right time in the daily, lunar, and annual cycles.
The course encourages students to practice meditations for a full lunar cycle. You begin the ascent phase of a lunar cycle at the new moon. During the fourteen day period from new moon to full moon, your daily cycles emphasize the morning–ascent period. During each meditation in that fourteen day period, you emphasize the ascent portion of the technique.
The height of the lunar cycle is reached at the full moon. During this period (from between twelve hours to three days) the persona consciousness is at its closest point of approach to the Overshadowing Spiritual Soul. It is then most receptive to the Overshadowing Soul, and most possible to bring about a mergence of the two. The meditations during this period emphasize the height of the technique, in which one is impressed with an abstract idea, or divine intent, characteristic, or quality.
You then begin the descent phase of a lunar cycle. During the fourteen day period from full moon to new moon, your daily cycles emphasize the evening, descent period. During each meditation in that fourteen day period, you emphasize the descent portion of the technique.
The cycle is completed just before the new moon, via the embodiment of the idea or characteristic.
By working each meditation cycle within a daily cycle, within a lunar cycle, within a yearly cycle, you are, in effect, creating a swinging motion. A motion of consciousness brought about by a cooperative effort with the form. That motion helps you get to higher heights and better lows. You get more consistent contact and at-one-ment, during the ascent phase. You do better at manifesting Divine Intent during the descent phase. If this process is practiced consistently enough, you eventually reach a point where the motions of the persona merge with the motions of the overshadowing Spiritual Soul, and the two become one.
Just as the embodied consciousness, within the form, is working within a cycle of activity, the Spiritual Soul, within its form, is working its own cycle. When we coordinate our persona cycles as described above, we are synchronizing them with the cycles of the Soul.
Imagine you are on a merry-go-round that is turning counter-clockwise. You need to receive a note from a friend who is on another merry-go-round that is turning clockwise, at the same speed, only five feet away. If you coordinate it so that you reach the nearest point of approach at the same moment, then for that instant you will be motionless relative to each other. Your friend can simply reach out and hand you the note. If your speed or timing is off, you will miss each other.
Thus, while the embodied consciousness is working its lunar cycle, the overshadowing Spiritual Soul is working its lunar cycle. Again, the cycle of the embodied consciousness includes:
New Moon to Full Moon: Ascent via aspiration to the Soul.
Full Moon (the high point of the persona cycle): At-one-ment with the Soul or Christ, and via that at-one-ment receptivity to a divine idea, aspect, characteristic, or quality.
Full Moon to New Moon: Descent of that idea through the three lower worlds, by transforming it into mental thought, astral force, physical-etheric activity, and embodying it in the world of affairs.
During its lunar cycle, the Spiritual Soul is working from:
New Moon (the high-point of the Soul cycle): At-one-ment with the Monad, and via that at-one-ment, receptivity to pure Truth or Purpose.
New Moon to Full Moon: Descent of that Truth through the Buddhic plane, translating it into an abstract idea, or divine quality.
Full Moon to New Moon: Ascent of the Spiritual Soul via aspiration to the Christ.
The Spiritual Soul is working with pure Truth, transforming it into an abstraction in the Buddhic plane. The Spiritual Soul then radiates that abstraction to the incarnate consciousness, or human soul, for translation into form.
Above the Soul’s cycle we find a third, “monadic” cycle, involving the Spirit of the greater group life.
Of course, in order for these cycles to work, they must be coordinated. Since the Spiritual Soul is already working its cycle, in coordination with the monadic cycle, it is up to the human soul to complete the process by working the cycle in the three lower worlds.
The lunar cycles are worked within the context of an annual cycle, which the Tibetan speaks of, for instance, when he talks about the new schools. He talks about the education activity emphasizing study and meditation during the first six months, while it emphasizes (as I recall), service and other embodiment activity during the second six months of the year. This is why the new schools need to be located near major population centers (so you have a field of service available).
While we may have intuitive flashes or insights during the first fourteen days of the lunar cycle, these are ignored. We have not reached the height of the cycle yet. Any early Soul is considered a prelude to the more complete contact, and insight, possible at the full moon. Thus, intuitive glimpses achieved during the fourteen day aspirational period are considered tentative.
When you glimpse an abstract truth, at or near the full moon, you then start the translation process. This is where the New Age meditation forms really start to differ from those of the previous Age. After connecting with the abstraction, you translate it into a thought-form. This may involve connecting with existing thought-forms or creating new ones.
This is also a point of danger for the seeker. Unless the seeker’s attachment remains on the overshadowing Divine Intent throughout this process, you will become “attached” to your creation. If you become attached to the form you create, you become trapped in and by that form. It then becomes “your” thought-form and a part of your consciousness becomes its driving center.
One of the neat things about the Internet is that it provides tremendous spiritual analogies. For instance, the planetary mind is like a huge hard drive, on which all thought-forms exist. Your individual mind is a tiny sector within that vast hard drive. That sector has been set aside for your use, and you have exclusive read/write rights to it.
Since you are the only one who can access, read, or copy to your sector, it looks and acts like a separate hard drive. However, it is really just a part of the planetary mind.
As long as people believe and act as though their mind is not a part of the planetary mind, they confine themselves to their own tiny sector. Once they realize that their mind is a part of the planetary mind, they gain access to that vast hard drive.
This realization, and access, is one of the results of the new three-fold meditation process. However, once one has access, and the ability to locate and download material from the planetary mind, one has to decide what one will, and will not, copy to one’s local mind.
For instance, a few years ago I had a package that had be mailed immediately, via the U.S. Postal Service. It was early in the morning, the Post Offices were not open, and there were no postal rate lists anywhere in the office. So, I opened my browser, typed in “www.usps.gov”, hit “enter”, and shortly thereafter was looking at the list of current postal rates.
Now, did I save that thirty-two page list of postage rates to “my” hard drive? Of course not. Their rates could go up again in six months, and the downloaded version would not be updated. However, the information on the web site will be kept up. It is a living, evolving part of the “One Life”. However, the moment I copy it to my local hard drive, it’s cut off from that One Life.
The same thing takes place when we copy a thought-form to our own mental equipment. Fortunately for initiates, there is a way to get around that. You don’t “save” anything to your local hard drive. What the initiate does is to develop a first-class web browser, a 24-hour, high-speed connection to the Net. The initiate does not store thought-forms in “his” mind, but accesses them as needed. This avoids cluttering the mind with old, outdated thoughts.
The mind of the average individual is like of an infant who is playing with Play-Doh® and gets into Clue® and Monopoly® games, and mixes all the little game pieces (thought-forms) in with the Play-Doh. This makes it very difficult to make anything out of the Play-Doh, because all the little pieces are in the way.
As a result, when the average individual is asked to make a new form, they can’t. They do not have either the necessary practice in molding mental substance, or the available mental substance.
If asked to make a house, for instance, they search through the collection of forms in their mental instrument, and find the closest available match. It may not be exactly what they really need, but it’s what they have, so they use it. Instead of creating something with thought, they’re filing through the mental goo to find whatever they have that’s “close enough”.
Part of the inner work involves getting rid of all those hard little mental forms, transmuting them back into soft Play-Doh. This gradually transforms the mental body into a creation laboratory. The initiate uses this laboratory in the descent process to create the forms needed to manifest the Divine Plan.
However, those new forms are not stored on the local hard drive, but copied to the planetary mind.
When an overshadowing Intent or idea is brought down into the mind, the surrounding mental substance is stirred into activity. Any unformed mental substance (Play Doh) that has a similar note or frequency is attracted to the idea. If this process continues, it will eventually create a new thought-form, a mental expression of that specific idea or intent. However, the process is usually interrupted.
Most human beings have “copied” a great number of thought-forms to their local hard drive or mind. When they contact a “new” idea, they usually have an existing thought-form that is capable of responding to that idea. Thus, when they attempt to bring the new idea down into the mental plane, an old thought-form pops up, and appropriates the creative energy.
When we contact a new idea, our natural reaction is to ask, “what is this?” We then try to associate the abstract idea with a familiar thought-form. However, the existing form is almost never truly suitable.
The creative process is a method of bringing a new intent or idea into appearance. Since it is new, it does not have a form or appearance. There is no familiar thought, emotional, or physical form for us to recognize. Thus, we presume (as part of the creative process) that we cannot recognize the idea. At first, this produces a period of bewilderment for the persona, as it struggles to formulate the new idea into new forms that it can recognize. Later, as the practitioner becomes familiar with the creative process, the bewilderment gives way to a calm, but intense, period of focused waiting as the idea is sounded and the new thought formulates.
The Nature of The Soul includes techniques for trans-muting the old thought-forms (resolving them back into mental Play Doh, and purifying the Doh). However, this transmutation process is never done to someone else. You never impose your will on anyone, for that would violate their free will. Instead, you recognize that all the thought-forms you encounter exist in the planetary hard drive, within humanity’s mind. You then at-one with humanity, and as humanity transmute your own forms.
You are not trying to move humanity into your local hard drive (which would not work). You are at-one-ing with humanity (while maintaining your individuality) and, as humanity, healing your self.
The period of highest receptivity to overshadowing Intent, or new ideas, is the three days of the full moon, including the day before, the day of, and the day after. During this three-day period, you do not try to translate that idea into thought or feeling. You wait until the thirteen-day period after the full moon. Then you use the descent process to bring the idea down into the three lower worlds.
Coincidences do happen. If one is not consciously working the cycle, you may accidentally put your persona in the right place at the right time, and get a flash of intuition. When you are consciously working this type of cycle, you are consciously placing your persona in a position to catch what the Soul is making available, and then move it down. You are doing that consciously, within each meditation, within each daily cycle, within each lunar cycle, within each year. These meditations are practiced within the context of your Soul purpose, your ashramic purpose, and the planetary purpose. This provides lots of opportunities for spiritual, mental, and emotional realizations. However, when you are working the creative cycles, you deal with realizations from within the context of the cycles. You include your realizations in the process, but do not allow them to interrupt that process.
There are also, of course, the ordinary crises of daily life. When these occur, you do whatever subjective and objective work is called for, when and where it is needed. Later, when you can, you compare the outer evens with the subjective activity within your group life and your own life and affairs, within the context of these various cycles.
After you create the thought-form, you bring it down to a throat center level where it is organized. The throat center is very good at organizing things, preparing them for a sequential process of appearance.
Then, you take that organized thought-form, place emotional force behind it, and push. The emotional force provides the energy that moves the thought down to the physical-etheric plane (between the emotional and the physical-dense) where it takes shape within physical-etheric substance.
Then, you do a hand-off to the deva of appearance, an angelic being responsible for coordinating the creation of physical-dense forms. Once you hand it off to the deva of appearance, you release it, mentally, emotionally, and physically. You are able to release it because, throughout the creative process, you held your attachment to the overshadowing intent. Before letting that creation go, you align it back up (outside your instrument), with its overshadowing source or intent. Via this line of light, the new creation has a connection (independent of your and your persona instrument) with its overshadowing source.
The deva of appearance then impresses that new thing on the elementals (beings of physical-dense substance), who give it physical shape and form. It may be that the elementals who give it a shape and form include your own physical-dense elementals, in which case your persona might end up stuffing envelopes or something. In any case, once you complete the hand-off, you begin the inner creative cycle again.
You start practicing this meditation cycle in scheduled meditations. You set aside fifteen to twenty minutes for meditation in the morning, and another fifteen minutes to half an hour in the evening. Later, as you become accustomed to regular meditations, you start setting aside time in the middle of the day.
When set-times have become customary, you gradually start holding a meditative alignment while doing routine activities, such as washing dishes, mowing the lawn, gardening, or exercising.
Eventually, you begin to include daily activities which require a little more of your conscious attention. Then a little more of your conscious attention, until you are able to hold a meditative alignment twenty-four hours a day. At that point, you move into what Nature of The Soul calls the Ceremony of Life, in which the entire life and affairs becomes a creative meditative process.
Thus, the result of practicing the meditations is to transform the life and affairs into a continuous ceremony through which the divine is made manifest.
Up to now, our discussion of the cycles has been from the perspective of the embodied consciousness, or human soul in the three lower worlds. However, once you merge the human soul with the Spiritual Soul, you take on the cycles of the Spiritual Soul.
At first, your meditation activity will proceed from new moon to new moon, beginning of the year to the end of the year, beginning of the day to end of the day, morning to night, and so forth. When you merge with the Spiritual Soul, and become a Spiritual Soul Incarnate, the cycle of the Soul merges with that of the persona. The persona instrument and human soul take on the cycle of the Spiritual Soul.
As we move our identity from the persona to the Spiritual Soul, we move through a period of transition. For a while, we may occasionally find ourselves working one or the other cycle. We may use the cycle of the persona in our “personal” meditation work, and the cycle of the Soul in our group service work. The two cycles merge when the consciousness merges.
It may help to look at the two cycles simultaneously:
During this transition from persona to Soular cycles, you begin identifying with your ashramic group life (to recognize your Soul relationships) and take up your group work. You work and move to the group cycle, meditating from full moon to full moon. Your experience and practice of the annual, lunar, and daily meditation cycles are transformed.
The Nature of The Soul includes two basic types of meditation in the descent phase, Invocation and Evocation. Which type one uses depends on where one is in the creative process.
Imagine a pair of prospective parents who have, as souls, agreed to cooperate with the incarnation process of a fellow Soul. The cooperative effort of the three Souls (those of the parents and child) will have two major stages.
In the first stage, the Soul is brought into incarnation, and a baby is born. However, that Soul is not fully in appearance. It is incarnate, but most of the abilities of the new persona instrument exist only in potential. That potential must be brought into full expression in the three lower worlds.
The Invocative process brings the overshadowing divine potential into its first appearance. The infant is born.
The Evocative process brings that divine potential into full fruition or maturity. The infant is evoked into the mature adult.
The Nature of The Soul includes examples of both techniques. It provides instruction in manifesting Divine Intent, the Will of the Soul, and bringing that intent to full maturity.
[1]. This is a gross generalization. A few seekers managed to transcend the form and achieve complete union with the self or Soul.
Copyright © 1997 by Glen W. Knape. All rights, including copyrights, reserved.