Spiritual Blogs

Marshall McLuhan, dubbed the high priest of the media in the 1960s and 1970s, made a startling statement that has found little understanding and recognition even 40 years later. And what was his startling statement? "The medium is the message." (This was elaborated in his 1964 book, Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man). To paraphrase McLuhan, it may not be as important in the long-term what we were watching on our television screens or movie theater screens, as is the extraordinary fact that we were placing ourselves under direct influence or exposure to an electronic light board that was pouring out powerful vibrating beams of color and light. These flickering and rhythmic bands of flashing light and sound go directly into the viewer's conscious and subconscious mind, and thereby alter the viewer's perceptions of reality in radically new ways of which we know nothing.

The occultist understands that the universe is composed of different qualities and types of vibration and electronic pulsation, and that when these vibrations impact you the effect can be either positive or negative. The moment the average person gets out of bed in the morning, he is literally deluged and bombarded by a sea of electronic influences. McLuhan for good reasons saw this power to be mainly a negative thing, since most of its use was in advertising and persuasion in commercial ventures, the sole criteria being the profit motive.

Studies in neuroscience have recently confirmed McLuhan's earlier suspicions and discovered that brainwave patterns and activity can be radically altered or conditioned by modern methods of communication and media exposure. It is this hypnotic entrainment (brainwave synchronization) and exposure to rhythmic flashing light and sound (often used in symbols, logos, slogans and short mantric phrases or sayings) that fuels much of the consumer-driven economy. It is an economy based to a large degree on artificially created desires as opposed to real human needs. The brainwave patterns and etheric body of an individual or any large group of people may be more radically influenced by the flickering and flashing lights that communicate mass advertisements than by the product or service the ad is intended to sell. What entertains or amuses us often unconsciously entrains us, and we become what we are exposed to continuously over long periods of time.

Students of the ancient wisdom teachings will understand the opportunity these new electronic tools create and will use many of the same techniques positively and with the viewer or participant's consent. (See also the discussion of rotary motion in Appendix II.) The modern occultist understands that brain wave fluctuations are directly conditioned by the etheric body of any person from monadic and soul levels downward. Yet our outer environments in which our personalities live also alter, change, and condition those original impulses once they have arrived here onto the physical plane. Raja yoga has instructed students for thousands of years to control their outer as well as inner environments or run the risk of being controlled by undesirable influences.

What the mystics and idealists in the world must come to understand is that this process of vibratory integration is reciprocal and also happens from below upward. Both sides of the material-spiritual spectrum are required to build in the new energies and forms that will usher in the true Age of Aquarius.

We know that the first and seventh rays work in conjunction with each other, the seventh ray forming the basis for the grounding of first ray force. It is the understanding of this first ray force that the Tibetan has clearly stated to be the most important aspect of the teaching he provided on the new discipleship training. If this is true, it is only logical to assume that these powerful subjective forces will demand new and more refined forms to ground themselves and work through.

If there is to be an ever-expanding progression of new and more sophisticated forms to receive and ground these new spiritual impulses, from what direction should we look for these changes to come? Unfortunately most new-agers see this purification process to be carried out primarily within their physical bodies and personality vehicles. One's eating habits, aspirations, and mental atmosphere may be a good place to start in this purification process, but it is the entire planet that is demanding purification. This may be the hidden and esoteric side of the new eco-green revolution that is now building momentum within the world.

Are we trying to save the planet because its destruction and demise will have a direct relationship to our survival, or are we attempting to salvage or assist a planetary life in whom we are but mere cells and whose survival will have reciprocal and far-reaching consequences on all that lives within its body and sphere of influence? Gurdjieff coined an interesting phrase in his spiritual work which applies here when he said that we as individuals and integrated groups must learn not only to save ourselves from the illusion and ignorance that exists everywhere around us, but also to go even further and take on the burden of our common Father-Logos.

Part of lifting that burden may lie in trying to slow down and reverse the planet's ecological decline to pre-industrial levels. Another part that may be even more significant is to find a clear place of receptivity and grounding of the high purpose of the Logos right down here onto the physical plane in new and unexpected ways — a grounding of spiritual force that can be felt in the very etheric, genetic and cellular structure of the physical body and not simply in the higher vehicles. The directives from the innermost courts of Shamballa have gone out to humanity that the highest and the lowest must now meet and fuse.

Figure 3: God is a Consuming Fire
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This electrification or lifting up we know is consummated between the third and sixth initiations when the initiate breaks down all hindrances or intermediaries to the one Monadic Life. Here we see the great third aspect of creation that impulsed from the highest levels of spiritual will lifts the perceptions of the initiate upwards towards cosmic levels.   (AAB: CF:  Kundalini and the Spine.)

It is only the full force and fury of the kundalini fire that has the dynamic power to rend all the veils from the top to the bottom and bring new life and liberation to the very foundation of the earth's material substance — first within the initiate's physical-etheric body and later within the etheric body and genetic and cellular structure of the very earth itself.