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This book contains 53 lessons for developing supersensory powers based on Tarot as taught to BOTA ( Builders of the Adytum ) students. God bless you .
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How To Develop Supersensory Powers
The Builders Of The Adytum
Esoteric aspirantsBookRix GmbH & Co. KG81371 MunichLESSON 1
How To Develop Supersensory Powers
ESOTERIC EXTENSION OF TAROT TO DEVELOP SUPERSENSORY POWERS
LESSON 1
Transcriptions from Ann Davies' Class Lectures With this course of lessons you are being privileged for the first time to participate in the transcription of tape recordings extending the practical work in Tarot and the principles of Holy Qabalah. In order that you may understand the importance and the significance of this opportunity, you should be aware of at least a portion of the recent history and tradition of the Western Mystery School of which Builders of the Adytum is the lineal descendant and the active instrument. During the twenty-six thousand year cycle of the great solar year, the sun passes through each zodiacal sign; each sign of the zodiaci n turn exercises, during its 2,155 year interval, a small but important influence. Three centuries ago, as the sun began nearing the end of the Piscean Age, those fetters with which the feudal church and state had bound men's minds and bodies began to be discarded. The invention of the printing press weakened the hold of old patterns on men's minds and the great upheaval in orthodox Christianity created by the Reformation weakened the possibility of enforcing accepted ideas on inquiring spirits. Early in the seventeenth century, it was possible for a statement of Qabalistic doctrine to be published openly for the first time, in the Fama Fraternitatis and the Confessio Fraternitatis, although they had to be published anon;rmously. Both participation in the Mystery School tradition and publication of Mystery School teachings accelerated sharply in the eighteenth century. This new century was called the "age of reason,"i n sharp contrastto the
"age of faith" thathad precededit . The culminating years of the eighteenth century saw the rebirth of democracy with the establishment of the American Republic, dedicated to a new order of the ages; the foundations were laid for new humanitarian movements to provide aid to the poor, to care for the insane, and for the ill; and the first steps were made in the elimination of traditional discrimination against different races, religions and sects. Astrologically, this "age of reason" was highlighted by the discovery, in 1781, of the planet Uranus. It is signiflrcant that Uranus, as the higher octave of Mercury, is the planet attributed to Tarot Key 0, Superconsciousness,an d is the co-ruler of the dawning Aquarian Age. As all movements are characterized by tides, and as the waters, even when swelling to high tide, withdraw intermittently, so a period of reaction necessarily followed the intense activity of the eighteenth century. The hesitating steps of experimental science, still in its infancy, were obstructed by the dogmatic rigidity of orthodox religion; the industrial revolution, for a time, made the laboring poor worse off than before; in reaction to the American and French revolutions, the remaining absolute monarchies stifled any outward movements by the people toward democratic forms of government.
But the reaction to changes of a new age was only temporary. Great reformers of the mid and late nineteenth century devoted their hearts and souls to the eradication of existing social inljustices and evils by seeking knowledge of the laws of life and developing broad ethical standards. Because the established churches of this period were too entrenched in dogma, for the most part, to satisfy the growing desire within the people for greater spiritual awareness, the teachings of the outer school of the Western Tradition were revealed through many and various channels. Some recipients of this Mystery training perverted or polluted its teachings, some misinterpreted them, some tried to use the occult knowledge for personal power and aggrandizement. Others were too timid to put into practice that which they had learned. Within this same period, a true outer vehicle for the Qabalistic Wisdom appeared in England, the Order of the Golden Dawn. The Golden Dawn numbered among its mem-bership some of the most brilliant and talented men and women of that day and age. It was the first open and public Order of the Western Tradition to exist in over 1,600 years. It must not be thought that the secrecy surrounding the outer vehicles of the Western Tradition places it at any true disadvantage with
the Eastern Tradition. It is, of course, tragic that the Western Tradition has lost some of its ancient literature. But the secrecy of Qabalism during a portion of the Piscean Age has saved its teachings from being perverted by the same types of popular misinterpretation and from the same forms of degradation by power-seeking leaders, as can be found in so many instances within the Eastern Tradition. The man or woman who sought illumination in the Mystery Schools of the West after the victory of the exoteric side of Christianity (and it must always be remembered that the esoteric side of Christianity was as ruthlessly repressed as any non-Christian belief) had to be prepared to learn in secret, to shun any public use of knowledge of power, and to face martSrrdom. These very qualities necessary to anyone who dared to seek the light under these conditions insured that even though the lamp might be small, its flame would be pure. It has always been difficult for the materially successful to remain dedicatedt o an ideal that embraces yet transcends the physical plane.
For this reason it wa.s necessary that great numbers of reformers be called upon at various intervals to purge the Eastern tradition of corruption. And for this reason too, Christianity itself degenerated into formality and dogma. Thus, too, was planted the seed of the weed that flrnally choked the flowering of the Order of the Golden Dawn and necessitatedth e formation by the Inner School of a new outer vehicle. At the time the Golden Dawn was in its ascent, a young man in the United States was beginning to find his true life vocation. Dr. Paul Foster Case, while still a youth, was led to a life-long interest in Tarot. During his study of the history and meaning of Tarot, he continually was aided by an Inner Voice, which led him and encouraged him in his endeavors.
Before he was 21, Dr. Case had become an authority on the wisdom of Holy Qabalah as expressed in the Tarot. Dr. Case published a number of works dealing with occult and Qabalistic matters. Members of the Golden Dawn, upon reading these works, were horrified and probably terrified to discover that many of their most cherished secrets were here presented to the public gaze. Dr. Case was, therefore, invited by Michael Whitty, the then Praemonstrator General of the Order of the Golden Dawn for the United States and Canada, to join the Order.
After his initiation into the Golden Dawn, Dr. Case discovered that most of what they taught he already knew, and a good deal of what was taught had been corrupted, misplaced, or misunderstood. Because of his innate knowledge, brought over from many incarnations as a great Qabalistic scholar and teacher, Dr. Case quickly traveled the grades, the Mystery School Paths of Return. Within a few years, he had succeeded M ichael lvhitty as the "greatly honored"
Supreme Head of the Order of the Golden Dawn for the United States and Canada, At this time the Golden Dawn was still operating as a true outer vehicle. Although a number of innovations, made by well-intentioned but misguided individuals in most cases, had somewhat detracted from the purity of its teachings, he found that in general its arcana were identical with his own independent discoveries.
Soon after Dr. Case had received his spiritual linkage at the highest levels of this mystery training, he received a telephone call. The voice that he heard, his Inner Teacher, spoke to him, physically, over the phone. It was the Master "R," the author of the Fama Fraternitatis and the Confessio Fraternitatis mentioned on the previous page who had come personally to New York for the express purpose of preparing Dr. Case to lay the foundations for the next outer vehicle of the Inner School. The Master *R' spent three weeks with Dr. Case for the purpose of transferring the channel, the contact with the Inner School, from the Order of the Golden Dawn to a pure and more satisfactory vehicle. Dr. Case resigned from the Order of the Golden Dawn, which without its inner contact, gradually disintegrated. Dr. Caser etired from his own successful career as a musician in order to devote his full time to the service of the Masters. The Master R
gave lengthy instructions to Dr. Case on the methods of purifying the teachings of the Golden Dawn and on the extent to which these teachings could be made public. Dr. Casef ormed the Builders of the Adytum, selectingt hat name to signify builders of the Holy Inner Shrine, that is the Saered Temple within. B.O.TA. is but one of the outer vehicles of the Invisible Order, a true
Mystery School of the Western Tradition and the Qabalistic Mysteries and does not claim sole proprietorship to Truth. Dr. Case was directed to give out the teachings of this vehicle more widely than had hitherto been possible by means of our modern media. As B.O.TA. has grown and as the Aquarian Age has come more fully into its own, it has been possible on instructions from the Inner School, to make public an ever increasing amount of that information, doctrine, and practice formerly revealed only to the chosen few. At one time in the west and in the east, training in the Qabalistic Tradition was given only by direct contact with the teacher, with whom the pupil generally lived in close association. This method became traditionally accepted in the Eastern Tradition.
In the west, for many centuries such private instruction was required by the grim necessities. It was not until the period in which the Fama Fraternitatis was published, or perhaps until the Freemasonry movement gained impetus that it became possible for a teacher to dare to lecture openly to groups of students. Even then, however, there was the need for personal contact because much could not be given in writing or even in speech. It was necessary for the pupil to receive much of his attunement with the Higher Self by a process known as impactation, a process similar to the use of a tuning fork to make another tuning fork vibrate.Dr. Case, however, was allowed to give out much more information than the Inner School had previously released, Because of the wealth of doctrine that he was allowed to make public, it is possible to use a written medium to accomplish this training.
There is, however, no question that to progress beyond a mere knowledge of the theoretical considerations, an occultist (as opposed to the mystic) must participate in carefully controlled group work. It is for this reason that this course has been prepared which will eventually give you detailed instruction in ritualistic work wherein you will be able to participate, The lessons that you will receive are taken from transcriptions of the recordings of actual classes conducted by Ann Davies. These lessons expand and bring an enlarged understanding of the material presented in earlier courses. The curriculum you have already received has been much enhanced by direct instructions from the Inner School. These additional lessons provide you with the opportunity for personal participation in a more intimate spirit, the spirit that group work can give. During the presentation of the class lectures from which these lessons are taken, Dr.
Davies included much new information as she received it from the Inner School. In these lessons you are receiving a new point of view. As you ascend the spiral of evolution, deeper and deeper strata must be transmuted. For this process, a different view of each separate territory must be achieved. As you work with the lessons of this course, rcalize that your consciousnessis participating in the extra forces that group work provides and participating in the telepathic rapport that is brought about by a common goal.
Lesson 2.
Transcriptions from Ann Davies' Class Lectures Occult principles are based upon knowledge of the powers of consciousness. This is the fundamental principle of every esoteric school, whether it be Unity or New Thought, Yoga or Vedanta. Any school of thought founded upon metaphysical tradition teaches as its basic conceptt hat consciousnessis that which builds-consciousnessis that which has the power.If you look back to the time when you first entered upon the study of metaphysics or occultism, you may recall that your heart was firlled with inspiration. The powers of the mind were new to you, and for some strange reason you were able to accomplish much more initially than later. You have probably wondered why this was so.
Many of our members write to us asking, "Why is it that I was able to hold to specific states of mind, to hold my emotions, to keep my aspirations pointed beautifully for a time, and now suddenly I can do nothing?" When you were first introduced to the concepto f consciousnessa s the creator, you began to experiment to see if it were so; you had enthusiasm, that child-feeling of miracle. Do you remember as a child feeling the wonder, the sensation of the magical in a new recognition or realization? It is this magic, this wonder more basic to faith than we often
realize, that makes it possible to utilize these laws and principles effectively. "Except ye becomea s little children...." Withfamiliaritytherecomes stalenessif notcontempt. As you becomea ccustomedt o the idea that consciousnessis the creator, you lose this early feeling of wonder and miracle. You tend to fall back into old habit patberns and unhappily thereby to recreate that which is frustrating in your environment. This relapse is due to the fact that while it is our emotions that are the fuel of consciousness, itis that to which we direct and on which we hold our attention that directs the @ of consciousness. In Tarot Key 1, The Magician, you have depicted symbolically the principle of attention, the ability to hold in your mind specific thoughts or ideas unswervingly.
But how many of us can sit down and concentrate or meditate for one hour without our minds and hearts swerving from the thought which we are trying to hold? Yet, have you ever had difficulty in holdingyour beloved in your mind? It is an interesting principle and a basic idea in occultism (overlooked by too many aspirants) that we have to fall in love with the powers of our own consciousness, inrecognizingw hat these powers are. That is why the meditation on Key 1
in the Book of Tokens says, "Not thine, but Mine is the power of attention. . ." The reason we have such difficulty in holding our minds and our attention fast on something that we want is because we are not truly in love, either with our powers of consciousness or with that which we think we want! It is true that what you want is yours, but this is a statement easily misunderstood. Before you can begin to work practically with the Tarot, you must grasp what is involved here and see how you can utilize this power, how you can attain what you want, and first of all how you can be sure of what it is you really want.
You will remember that the very first thing that the aspirant was told to do in our first course of lessons was to write down what he wants. But the problem is that in thinking that you know what you want, you are deluding yourself. You have to learn how to discover what you reall]r want, and whether it is worth having. Many members respond when they are told that this is the first thing they must do by saying, "I don't really want anybhing except illumination." Was that your reaction? Did you say to yourself, "I don't want anybhing but illumination, or spiritual development, or to serve?" In all the metaphysical schools of thought there is one thing that every aspirant has drummed into him: "Fulfill your desires; you can have what you want!" We tell you-the same thing, an echo of what you have read and heard. However, what you want is dependent on your knowing "Who am I?" That is why all schools tell you that if you do not know who or what you are--or if at least you are not ready to go on tlie assumption that you are something specific-all the wanting in the world is not going to do any good. We tell you this too, but we do not stop there! It is not that you do riot St *h"t you want--you do! It is that, in most cases, you do not recognizet hatyor "t" getting what you want!
You must learn to recognizet hat everything in ytur enviro-nment,& erytfring that you think and feel, every unhappy relationship as weli as every happy on", "rr"ry aetait ofyour life that you yourselfhave created, both thejoyous and the-unhappy, both the frustrating and the fulfilling, is of your own creating. You must disco".. fto* it is that you have created these things, and what it is that you are doing in order to discover what yJu are and who you are. In the Book olTokens you will find expressedt he underlying conceptt hat there is One, The Indivisible Essence. Some people object to the word "God." Which is a pity, because "God" is a brief word and it takes a bit longer to say "The Lord of the Llniverse" even though it is a more poetic phrase. "The One," "the Indivisible," "God," ,,The Lord of the Universe," "the Universal Spirit," "the Life Principle," it doesn't matter what we call IT. An occultist who wants truly to utilize consciousnessco nsciouslym ust be able to say, "I know what I want." In working toward this goal, he has first to
."t " an assumption. He must do what the scientist does. The scientist says," If such-and-suchis true, then such-and-such should result.
Let us test this." We say to you, "If it is true that there is only the One Life and that this One Life has many aspects of ltself, (which we call you and me, Tom, M"ry, Dick and John), and if that one universal principle is the One Selfithen that Self knows exactly what it is about and exactly
what it has in store for you as its center of expression." Some students are disturbed at the idea of being just a part of a Universal Self. They fear the loss of indjviduality. Our answer is that though one may be a mother, a daughter, a sister, a student, a teacher, though one may be parts of many relationshipr, on" is still oneself. Therefore, the fact that it is said in esoteric philosophy that there is only One Being, One Will, and that all that exists is an aspect or an
.*p".mion of that Will, ioes not lessen the eternal individuality of any one aspect. If you have had this fear, the concept that one Universal Self takes arilay from your own individuality or the eternalness of your selfhood as a unique individual, we hope that this analory will help to eliminate that fear. This One Self is evolving or growing and experiencing Itself through Its various aspects. If you have studied the way in which consciousness works, you must know that it does this through what is held in the mind, what is held as the desire. When you are asked,
,,What do you dlsire?" it is fruitless for you to reply that you do not know what you want or to answerihat you want to receive spiritual development or to serve, In actuality, he who _ lives with the intensity of the moment knows that it is through the differentiation of varied and various things--through the working toward the fulfillment of his various wants--that the meaningfulness of life comes to him. Those who have read the literature of the Eastern Tradition are apt to hear that the desire for a nice house to live in, or for good health, or for this or that profession, or for a pretty dress is beneath the dignity of spiritual aspirations, below spiritual levels.
All that *r ""tr say to this at the moment (though we shall have more to say later), is that they have made the mistake of separating from God certain things that they call materialistie, as against that which they call spiritual. This error is one of the reasons we have problems in di-scoveringw hat it is that we want and how to bring it into being. We think that to enjoy a good meal-or a beautiful dress is immature or unspiritual, that he who walks with his head in the clouds, uttering platitudes such as "God is peace," is a beautiful, spiritual being. But when you look out at life and see the variegated plumage of the bird, when you see the diversity in the dress of the flowers, when you see that every leaf on every tree has different form, when you see the colors and the different shapes and shadings of the mountains, when you consider all the manifold things that man has learned to give expression to, you must realize that true spirituality is in being able to love and see and experience God in each and every little "material thing," and in recognizing that these things are not so "material" after all. A great mistake that spirituai aspirants oiten make is in trying to make a distinction between physical aspiration and spiritual aspiration. Yet, m*ny an enlightened adept or Master of Wisdom walks the earth in a body. There are some who say that a Master does not need a body who go to a great deal of trouble to communicate with these Masters via Ouija boards or other psychic sources.
Sometimes they can achieve contact with very highly evolved souls or even rarely with Masters, but on the whole the vast mqjority of those aspirants who think that spiritual enlightenment makes it unnecessary to deal in or with the physical universe or that one shoutd evolve beyond that and who look with disdain upon physical or material things are making one of the gravest of errors. The Inner School, through instruction in the Holy Qabalah, teaches and stresses that the physical universe is the flowering of God's desire, that the entire universe comes about becausl God, the One Life, desires to experience Itself in all the myriad ways and means that are. The Self experience of God comes through the desire of God to express in and through form. This view is not at all similar to the creed of the materialist, who believes that there is no creative spirit, that man lives only from birth to death, and ends. He who lives by that materialistic creed usually lives selfishly, taking advantage of his fellow man, feeling that the end justifies the means. He is neither a happy nor a pleasant person. It is not materialistic, however, to recognize that what is called the physical universe is in effect the dress or. garb of God; that everything that occurs, everything that comes into physical being is an eipression of the Primal Will of God, of the One Life, expressing itself in and through form, because this is what God desires.
If that which is, is God's desire, we come to the question: "Does God want all of the horrors that go on?" When we say that God apparently knows what He wants, and that we do not, we mean that according to true esoteric teachings which we have verified, the human consciousnessis an infantile power of the Lord of Life. When you start to teach a baby how to eat, it will spill food all over itself becausei t has not masteredm uscular coordination and cannot eat properly. The results will be sloppy, yet it is not of itself evil. The reason you have experienced problems in seeking to fulfill your heart's desire and have found it difficult to manifest that which you attempt to bring into experience, is because you have been letting your powers of consciousnessor mind operate at an infantile level--sloppy attention wandering. You must make up your mind to choose some goal, even a tentative one, or else you will get nowhere. If you do not know where you are going, you will wander in circles, It is better to make up your mind to go anJrwhereju st in order to developy our muscles. That is why it is vital to make up your mind to a specific thing toward which your desire will drive you and to work at it. We shall try to show you what you really want and how to have the insight, the intelligence and the ability to recognize your mistakes, because often after you decide you want somethingyou discover it was not what you wanted at all. You must learn to have the courage and the agility to change, to switch to the next thing that you develop as a goal, resulting from re-evaluation. You must learn to utilize these shifts in direction and to keep yourself pointed with your consciousnessto wards an ever more evolved desire.
The feeling which some hold that to want a pretty dress is materialistic and that to want to attain to spiritual heights is very important, results only in wandering in circles. Here is an example of what happens: We know of a woman who felt that she had outgrown the need for all physical things. She was not interested in clothes or a good job. She wanted to attain to complete illumination, to be released from the pain and suffering of having to reincarnate. She commencedt o meditate continually on the idea of obtaining illumination and to look down on an5rthing that had to do with physical needs or physical expression. She had a great deal of power. Whatever she wanted to think and feel she was able to think and feel intensely. The result was that she lost her job, for obviously if it was not good enough for her, she was not good enough for it. She had no living. She tried to obtain anotherjob but could not. She became destitute, this spiritual aspirant, still clutching the idea that these were the tests and trials that God was bringing to her in order that she might overcome and do away fully, finally, and forever with the terrible physical universe.
As she continued to meditate on this idea, she found that she was becoming more and more divorced from life. Originally she had had quite a loving feeling towards people, but with her desire to escape from life, her emotions withdrew, and she began to move through life hungry, as unspiritual an individual as you could flrnd, and without friends. If you withdraw from life, life will withdraw from you in accordancew ith the principle that consciousnessc reates. In this instance,f ortunately this woman was intelligent enough to eventually recognize that she had been creating with great ability, that she had had excellent success. One could certainly say of her, "What did she want?" An objective observer would ask, "Is this what you would call the spiritual path? Look what happened to this person." And would that not be a fair question? This is rather extreme, but everyone of us has been guilty of exactly that sort of action in one way or another.
We think, because we have read it somewhere, that we should kill out desire. We think that the way to attain spirituality is to trample down our desires. Indeed, what actually happens, is that we become more and more fearful of our desires, we press them down, we bury them. Yet, if we have no desire, we are unable to have love. There is an inseparable relationship between the two. In Qabalah desire is assigned to the planet Venus, and Venus is the goddess of love.
Desire is something that must be treasuredl man must not kill out desire; man must nurture desire like the most precious of living things. Man must learn how to listen to his heart, to study his feelings, to call from the depths of his being his truest, most sacred desire and fan it into a
flame so that the desire will take completep ossessiono f him. This sounds the opposite of what we usually hear, and yet it is not. There is much more involved here than appears on the surface. We must learn to know what we want, if we are going to be true sons and daughters of God, if we are to develop our ability to direct our consciousnessc onsciously,i nstead of being washedh ither and thither in the currents of subconsciousness. We must discoverw hat we want and fan the flame. We must be willing to make a few mistakes, even to decide that what we thought we wanted, we did not. Some who have been in occultism for a while go through a period in which they become terrified. This happened to me. I wanted a thing and I got it, and it was terrible. Then I became afraid to want anything. I was one of those who created too rapidly.
Many of us are fortunate enough to do it more gradually, but others have such intensity in their nature that whatever they decide to desire comes upon them like an avalanche. They find themselves overwhelmed. We must be willing, however, to desire, to work with desire, to learn and utilize the techniques of desiring properly, even though at times we make mistakes and must reap the consequences. This is what teachesu s to desire more intelligently the next time.
How can we be co-creators with God if we are not willing to strive, to develop, and to accept the sore muscles of emotional exercise? Those who do not know what they want must look into their hearts and ask, "Am I afraid of what I might get if I got what I want, or am I afraid that if I work on what I want and it comes to me, I will discover that I am tied to it, it is an attachment?"
This is a real danger, over-attachment to the manifestations of our desires. We shall have to learn to bring about manifestations by understanding how to lose our attachments to the things that are here and now, which is one of our greatest diffrculties. We keep tomorrow's good from coming to us by hanging on to today's frustrations! We shall show you how to cease doing this, as it is one of the reasons that you fail so often. You cannot put any thing in a pot already filled to the brim. That is what we try so often to do. We are not willing to let life flow through. My own experience has shown me the results of clinging to yesterday's beliefs. When I was 21, I had a very serious illness which left one of my legs very weak. I had to walk on crutches or with a cane and a heavy brace.
Being completely immersed in occultism, I spent day and night in study. I made all the usual mistakes, thank God, for only when we make mistakes are we in a position to understand what it is we do with our consciousness, what we need to learn about it. Then we are in a position to help others avoid the error, or at least to recognize it more rapidly. For that reason I am very grateful. to the Lord of Life that I made these mistakes. I was guided definitely and specifically to learn from them. I was relatively helpless, physically, at this time, and the disablement was also very painful. I foolishly kept my attention focused on my unhappiness because I resented not being able to get around. We little rcalize what the porverso f consciousnessc an do. My attention and my emotions were foeused hypnotically on the fact that I was disabled, that I could not get around without crutches or a cane, that I was kept from all sorts of activities. The result was that I led, for a time, a very circumscribed life and was very unhappy. A time came when suddenly I received an insight. I recognized that instead of keeping my consciousnessa nd attention focusedo n the disability, I should be thanking the Lord of the Universe that I could get around. After all, I could, with a brace and crutches cover quite a bit of territory. I used to drag ten books at a time home from the library, wearing the crutches and the brace, so I was not really incapacitated. I had not recognized that.
When it occurred to me that I should be happy and grateful that I could get around at all, I began to sing praises to the One Life. It was Tarot and Qabalah that awakened me to this. I had just entered this flreld of training and teaching, and it was an illumination, this recognition of what I had been doing and what I needed to do, The realization was so deep and profound that despite the fact that I was suffering physical pain, despite the fact that I was living on top of a very steep hill, I managed to rejoice at the fact that I could get around! Then an astonishing thing happened. I was already working with Dr. Case at this time under his private instruction and training. A student told me that another student had heard that I was on crutches. He did not
know what the problem was, but he was a doctor and felt intuitively that he could help me. He asked that I be brought to him. All that he was to me was a name on a card. I was taken to him and he helped me so that within a few weeks I was off the crutches, off the cane, off the brace! I could walk for long distances; I could get around with ease and without pain. I had been in constant pain, when on my feet, for many years. What brought about such an occurrence? First of all, I stopped using my emotions negatively in that particular area. Some will ask how one can hold a positive thought when he knows that a negative situation exists. In occultism, you must learn that no matter what the condition is today, no matter how dark, no matter how dreary, no matter how painful, today is merely the passing transitory result of yesterday's nonsense. How you choose to react today, what you choose to feel and give your attention toward, that is what builds tomorrow! Some who have studied deeply in the eastern schools frequently err in this way.
There is much beauty in the Eastern Tradition, but it lends itself to certain misinterpretations, such as the belief that everything sad or painful is the result of earned karma. It is, in a sense, but they do not quite understand what is meant by karma. We sigh and moan and say, "This is my karma; I'm washing out a great deal of bad karma!" If that is what we are holding our attention on, we are building more unpleasant karma, though it is not necessarily bad karma.
Lesson 3
Transcriptions from Ann Davies' Class Lectures Consciousnesse ternally creates;i t can do nothing else. It is not that we learn how to create with our consciousness,bu t that, as aspectso f God, we are the way in which God creates specific conditions or environment through the level of our thinking and feeling now. That is why, at the beginning of this course, we called your attention to Tarot Key 1, The Magician. This Key has to do with concentration on the here and now. If you wish tomorrow to be different from today, you must change what you think and feel today, no matter what the conditions of today appear to be. If you keep your mind and heart on the sorrow ofyesterday, ifyour thoughts and feelings center on past hurts and betrayals, the act of holding these thoughts in your consciousness will causet hem to be recreated in your tomorrow. We cannot avoid creating; becausew e have consciousness, we cannot avoid creation. We may attempt to keep ourselves devoid of all feeling and thought. We have known some who tried this. They almost perished of boredom. There is nothing worse than boredom; it is much better to have problems, even great ones, to beat your breast and tear your hair and weep, than to live in an empty nothingness. Since we do have ever-creatingc onsciousness, we actually want to learn to intensify this ability.
To evolve it into a potent and directed force, so that we become conscious co-creators with the Universal Life instead of unconscious creators. That is why we say to you what all of the true mystery schools of the east and west have taught in their secret doctrine, that it is a great mistake to try to kill out desire, to try to tell yourself that you have no desire, to try to cease to create. In trying to keep the mind and heart a blank, devoid of thought and feeling, one builds a boredom, a desperation, because we cannot stop being alive. Whatever is, is. Whatever consciousnessdo ese xperience,i t experiences. If we wish to attain to anything worthwhile by our own efforts instead of waiting for the slow but certain evolution of the world, we must begin to seek to cooperate with evolution, and thereby accelerate world evolution for ourselves and for all creation. I hope that you have long since been wearied of traveling in circles, that you are ready to travel in an upward spiral, to attain to the worthwhile Now instead of in some distant incarnation to come. You can begin to do this nowl and now is always the only time in which you can begin. If you put it off until tomorrow, you are using your now to say "tomorrow" and then tomorrow will then be another "today," for this is whatyou will have built with consciousness.C
onsciousnessm ust always be pushing toward the next moment. It cannot help itself because this is the way in which God lives Its centers of expression. As we learn to recognize what our
desires really are and how to feed them, as we learn to interpret and direct these desires in constructive ways, we shall cease to build more frustration and failure for ourselves. We all have built these unhappy structures, and none of us need be ashamed of our past mistakes, but we must now recognize what we have done. To those who are afraid to have desire, we can only say that, as you cannot help having desire, you must stop being afraid of it. God made you that way. Can you help wanting to have others like you? Can you help wanting to be kind to those whom you love? Can you help wanting to eat when you are hungry? Can you help wanting to sleep when you are weary?
Can you help wanting to breathe? You cannot help these things. You always desire something, so you might as well stop desiring unconsciously and seek to fulfill your desires in accordancew ith Divine Pattern. Although the Eastern Tradition teaches that desire must be overcome, there is a little understood paradox involved in this overcoming. You cannot overcome desire until and unless you have fulfillment! This is one of the deepest and most profound esoteric secrets, and it is little understood. The way in which you overcome immature desire is to recognize that you have been choosing immature ways of fulfilling these desires. Those who have studied modern psycholory know that some of the gravest illnesses of the mind occur when people are so ashamed of certain desires that they have buried them down deep in the subconsciousw here these suppressedc ravingsh ave manufactured a host of demons. By attempting to stifle desire, such people have made themselves so mentally and emotionally ill that they are destructive not only to themselves but also to all those around them.
When we say that the only way to overcome desire is to fulfill it, we do not mean that you should fulfill it in ways that are unsocial. He who is truly ready to travel the spiritual path of return will not seek to fulfill any desire in such a way that it will injure another human being.
Indeed, any intelligent person who knows the bare rudiments of occult power will not do anybhing so foolish, because he will realize that if he seeks to fulfill a desire by injuring or destroying some other human being or by forcing himself upon another, his own creative consciousness will produce the exact experiencef or himself, becauset his is what his consciousnesis building. Karma, in a sense,i s only the Golden Rule. But it is not only "Do unto others as you would have them do unto you," but rather, "Do unto others as they would like to have you do unto them," which is the more advanced form of the Golden Rule. You have to develop a genuine love of humanity to be able to do unto others as they would have you do unto them, rather than merely as you yourself would like to do. We have all felt at one time or another that if only people would do as we would like them to, they would be much better off, When they do not behave as we wish, we know that they are stupid, otherwise they would quickly see that our way is certainly the better way.
This is a common failing we all possess, but the important thing to remember is that our own desires are the only things that we ourselves can come to understand and direct. In order to know that which we really desire and to be able to plan a social, spiritual, beautiful, intelligent way to fulfill the desire and to bring this desire into realit5r, the first thing for us to do is to recognize that if our desire has to do with changing someone else, we must stop cold. He who seeks to reform the whole world or just another human being faces a long struggle. In the end, not only will he find the results counter to his desire, but he will have produced more trouble in the meanwhile than he knows what to do with. You cannot change another human being; this is the first thing that you must realize! If your husband or your wife or parents or children are gteat problems, if they have much growing yet ahead of them, and if they need great transmutations, leave them in the hands of God.
Each human being is in the hands of his own soul, and there is only one place from which you can work--and that is within yourself. If your desire requires changing another person--stop! One does not travel the occult path of return to develop his own powers over others. The Path is not an escape or a means for personal power. We change others only as we transmute our own personalities. We hope that you will avoid the pitfall that traps many aspirants. They say, "I want
my son to go to college instead of taking that job," or "I want my husband to stay home at night instead of playing poker." Such desires can effect nothing within your own nature. Until we understand our own desires, we are not in a position to transmute the old habit patterns and bring ourselves to spiritual illumination. It is necessary to decide what we desire and work at it for many reasons. To prepare for spiritual work you must exerciset he musclesof consciousness. You must discover what it is that you do with your emotions. You cannot recognize and study what you are doing with your emotions unless you set yourself a goal and begin to watch what it is that you are doing to reach that goal. For instance, suppose I should decide that my goal is health and begin to watch myself in terms of this goal. We all desire to be healthy, but often we do nothing to achieve that goal.
If I say that I wish to be healthy and yet if I deliberately miss the means of attaining that desire, if I deliberately eat foods that are not healthful, and if I deliberately omit taking proper exercise or seeing that I get enough fresh air, I may think that I desire health but if I study myself I will see that I am not doing the things that lead to fulfillment in this desire. I am, in fact, beingjust as aimless with my desire or goal as the person who says that all that he wants is spiritual development. As a matter of fact, a person who wants spiritual development has to express spiritualiQr in and through his form. If he is going to express spirituality in and through his form, then there are certain qualities the personality must develop. If his personality is to express certain qualities, these qualities need a framework in and through which to express themselves.
If you desire spirituality, you will not develop it if you do not examine what you are doing with your relationships with others, what you are doing with your work, what you are doing with your emotions.
If you think and feel that your neighbor is contemptible and then say that you desire spirituality, you are seeking escape from responsibility in the matter, using the desire for spirituality as an escape mechanism to avoid training your consciousness. Consciousnessc an be trained only as we becomea ware of what we are doing with it! We can becomea ware of what we are doing with our consciousness only as we set ourselves definite goals that give us specific aims. . .
give this force a particular action. Hence, it is better to say, "I want a dress," than to say "I want nothingbut spirituality." If you say that you want nothing, you will have nothing, in time you will lose that which you do have. This is not an effective way to become spiritual. A person who seeks to be spiritual should want to be in a position from which he can express spiritual joy, spiritual glory, fulfillment. Some say they want love, their greatest desire is for love, and of course everyone's greatest desire is for love. In a way this is the most honest desire that anyone could state, except that most of us do not know what we mean by love. One student of ours said that she wanted a husband but found herself pursued by other women's husbands. In having this experience, she discovered that the mind and the heart have to be much more explicit and exact in their desire. You must learn how to build the details of what you want.
Another felt that all of his problems would be solved by money. He worked at picturing money.
He was very good at visualization, and he pictured himself as handling great sums of money. In the end he found himself a bank teller, handling thousands of dollars--for someone else. It is important to learn how to study what our emotions do and how they act. We discover this only as we work with goals.
Choose any goal that you please but work at it. You will find that those goals which are not important after all will drop away like an unfolding flower as the love of toys drops away from the child when it reaches adulthood. The nonessentials of life will drop away, and only that which is important, that which truly expressest he joy and glory of life will remain. This is what the One Life wants us to have. Some seem to feel that it is not spiritual to want personal fulfillment, but think for a moment. They say that all the world loves a lover. When people in love are in your presence, do you not find that they radiate something very lovely for you? And yet they are in the state of personal fulfillment, If you are personally fulfilled, you radiate out into life somethingjoyous, happy and beautiful. This is not undesirable. On the contrary, what we owe to
the One Life, what we owe to the Lord of the Universe, what we owe to our fellow man, what we owe to everything that lives, what we owe to ourselves, is to work at our own self-fulfillment so that we too will broadcastf rom our subconsciousle vels beauty and happiness and love and unity in order to help lift others. "And I, if I be lifted up, shall take all others unto myself." We repeat, it is not unspiritr.lal to want self-fulfillment. We make a great misfake in thinking that it is not spiritual to work, to love, to possessa dequatef inances,o r to have a fruitful occupation through which to express our qualities.
Could it not be that we have been failing miserably because we have not loved ourselves enough? He who truly loves humanity begins at the only place where he can be effective, and that can be only with himself. He develops within himself the capacity for value, for joy, for beauty and securit;i in order to be able to lift some of the soruow from the mass mind---within which we all dwell. We are not separate creatures. If you are miserable, you broadcast misery to others, most strongly to those in closest contact with you, but all, even to the most distant star, are saddened by your sorrow. Modern science has shown that even an electron in a sense is infinite. When we think, we are acting like a radio transmitter. Everything that we think or feel we broadcast throughout the universe. The effect of a thought is therefore not just felt on this planet; we effect everything with our thoughts and emotions. Wherever the consciousnessca n reach in imagination, that we affect. This is how vast we are! Strive to developi llumined selfishness, becausei llumined selfishnessi s not personal selfishness. We know that in lifting ourselves, in developing fulflrllment for ourselves, in developing the ability to smile, to sing, to love, to dance, through our own fulfillment, we are helping God's most potent desire and intentionl we are then truly fulfilling the Divine Plan, Now you see perhaps the most potent reason for discovering what you want.
We have warned you that you must make sure from the first that you are not employing your desire nature to attempt to change someone else. Each of us has his own field to hoe and mow, his own weeds to pull, his own flowers to grow, You cannot cultivate another's garden. God shares with each of us a part of His garden and a part of His talent for our cultivation. We help the gardens of others by keeping the weeds out of our own. If you wish to help humanity, help yourself. If you want love, learn to love humanity enough to feel that, since the One Life, the Lord of Life wishes to express fulfillment through you, He is evolving you as His center for this express purpose; so learning to work consciously in cooperation with Him is perhaps the most spiritual thing that you can do. This is the Way toward true and complete illumination, mastery and adepthood. Most of us have sought it by the wrong way. The right way - and I hope that you will try it - is to start with your own heart and mind. The next thing, after making up your mind not to tend someone else's garden, is to try, when you are more or less with yourself, to analyze what it is on which your attention and yearning centers, This will give you a hint of what you really want, even though you may not clearly recognize it. It is better to risk occasional disappointment and so learn the working and control of mind and heart, than to continually delude ourselves and thereby deny ourselves the opportunity to work and master the universal forces in ever greater measute. It is our destiny, and it is our obligation to Life and to God to work towards this control, this mastery.
LESSON 4
Transcriptions from Ann Davies’ Class Lectures
In the last lesson we asked you to give careful attention to your inner desires, to ask yourself, “What do I want?” You will remember that we said that very few know what they really want. Of those who do, a goodly percentage have been placing their attention, formulating their desire, in the wrong area.
What want really implies has not been understood. In this lesson we shall try to give you an account of the esoteric aspects of desire and “demonstration.” We do not recommend that you become merely a fine demonstrator of things, but as you read in the Book of Tokens. “He who would know God must first know his own consciousness,” which is an aspect of God. In order to know your own consciousness, the
first thing you must do is to look into your own heart and find out what it is you think you want, and as a result of this, to study what is happening to you so you can see how you are creating everything that you have--that you yourself built yesterday--and that today is the result of yesterday’s thinking, feeling and desiring. It is by becoming attentive to your wants, learning what to do about them, that you will begin to be a conscious co-creator with God.
Remember that by insisting that you must know what you want before you work with these powerful techniques that we shall give you, we are not trying to make you materialistic. By now, you surely realize this. As you discover how it is that you build your today, you should learn what it is that you truly yearn for, so that you may become a fulfilled center of expression for the Primal Will to Good, or God. This fulfillment, indeed, is your greatest responsibility to yourself, to Life, and to God.
We must not feel that spirituality is walking about with a solemn face and sighing that one has overcome any desire for physical things-this is not spirituality, it is merely an announcement that one is tired of it all and that one is not participating consciously with the heart and mind in the livingness and flow of life. It is an indication that one is building exactly what one feels.
Let us analyze some of the things involved with the question “What do I want?”
Even if you know what you want, you still need to know WHY. Also, it is necessary to understand what is involved in not knowing, because sooner or later you will confront that problem. We must never forget that no matter how high we attain, no matter how far we seem to reach in our spiritual growth, we can always fall, and fall hard. There is no quality that we can develop, mentally, emotionally or spiritually that we cannot also lose, and lose entirely if we become lazy and disinterested. If in your mind you dwell on the pains of life, life will begin to present only this side to your attention, not because that is all there is to life but because you are so creating. The occultist cannot afford uncensored mentation-he falls harder than the untaught.
The more highly evolved you are, the more intense the mental and emotional nature becomes and the more sensitive your life becomes to repercussions from your thinking and feeling processes, either positive or negative. This is the reason for the seeming adverse conditions that meet the occultist. It is really an acceleration of evolution in consciousness. This is why it is vital to decide what you want, to work toward it, to gain control of the wanderings of your attention by understanding the powers of subconsciousness.
You must learn how to release the powers of subconsciousness consciously, and you cannot do this until you consciously know what you want. If you have not fixed yourself a goal, you are, in effect, announcing that you have no focus, and you will not have the drive to do much with your consciousness, with your thinking, with your feeling, with all your powers. Remember that you do not have to learn how to direct subconsciousness or to utilize its powers; you have always done it. What you must learn is how to direct it consciously! Only this ability to consciously direct the subconscious gives one the power to reverse the destructive tendencies that have raised havoc with himself, his environment and others with whom he comes in contact. If you still do not know what you want, work at discovering it.
If you know what you want to do and to be, you must have in mind something to work on consciously in order to change. Remember that we took to task the attitude of “al I want is spiritual illumination.” We said this is escapism. It is true that this is the final goal for all, but there are first steps that must be taken. If one wants to be a teacher, he cannotjust sit down and visualize himself teaching. Nothing will happen; he will not even be able to visualize it correctly. That which you have not the capacity to image, you will never be able to develop exactly and correctly! That is why it will not come to you. It is one of the reasons occult methods apparently fail at times. The methods do not fail; we fail to understand them. If we do not understand, we cannot work properly with the principles involved with consciousness. When we see that things are not working out, we should undertake a little self-examination to learn what it is that is not in harmony with the true laws of consciousness.
If one wants to be a teacher, he has to apply himself to study, take courses, develop a personality that goes with teaching. Dr. Case has said that no one is a good teacher who is not a good ham. If you are a good ham, you have the talent and capacity to be a good teacher, even a good spiritual teacher, because, after all, whether you teach English or math or the Spiritual Path, you are still a teacher, In order to teach, you must be able to project yourself to those who sit to learn. If one has not a talent for acting, dramatizing, making things exciting and interesting, the student’s attention wil wander and he will not
learn. Have you not on occasion yourself listened to a monotonous voice chattering tritenesses with no spark of life? Such a speaker has not the talent to teach, and those who come to listen will receive very little benefit. s?
There is no reason to look down on certain traits as undesirable. All qualities can be used constructively or destructively. As children we are unabashed exhibitionists, and when we grow older, although we do not like to show off too obviously, we do everything that we can to gain attention. This is a form of exhibitionism and is a universal trait. Being the center of attention is constructive if one has something to radiate. The Lord of the Universe is an exhibitionist. If this statement shocks you, it shouldn’t. True spirituality does not reside in pompous solemnity, the so-called “spiritual attitude.” The Lord of the Universe loves to display.
The Lord of the Universe loves to display Itself in myriad ways through flowers, trees, the sky, birds—all creatures including ourselves. Because we are aspects of God, we reflect the same qualities. We love to enhance our appearance, make ourselves more attractive. In so doing, we are expressing the spirit of beauty that God intends. This is at the heart of display.
Wanting to be or to do anything requires practice and preparation. If we do not want to be or do this sufficiently, if our desires are not really fixed, we shall, naturally, be careless of practice and preparation, and results will reflect this attitude. When you have analyzed what it is that you want to be and do, you must then analyze your thinking and feeling toward this goal. You must determine what you are doing for and against it with your creative subconsciousness. Such examination becomes more and more intensive as you advance in the work. Certainly, any spiritual teacher worthy of the name must be very careful to analyze and test himself continually in this fashion.
Some who call themselves spiritual teachers, unfortunately, ignore this responsibility. Their exhibitionism is applied negatively in the form of ridiculous claims to be Masters of Wisdom.
