Spirals and the Planes

Title

En Spirals and the Planes

Date

En 1983-Nov-27

Decade

En 1980s

City, State

En New Lebanon, NY

Location

En Abode

Description

En Last morning of a three-day retreat in which participants are led in ascent of the planes. Summarizes kasab with spirals, from previous days: kasab can be used to propel the consciousness upwards into the planes: will and magnetic energy help part of the way; longing and attunement to the ecstasy of the plane will take one further. Describes the emotional attunement of each plane, its inhabitants, the tests that correspond to each plane, and music that conveys the emotions of the plane, compared to the Kabbalistic system.

Topic(s)

En Meditation Practice

Music

Religions

Subtopic(s)

En Breath|Qasab|Planes|Bach|Gregorian Chant|Kabbalah|Cosmic Emotion

Type of event

En Retreat

Type of publication

En Recording

Media

En Audio

Transcript

Extent

En 1:52:26

Identifier

En 1043

File Format

En mp3

PDF

Language

En English

Digitizing Team

En Abad

TajAli Keith

Telema Hess

Author(s)

En Pir Vilayat Inayat Khan

Full Text

En Yes, I always notice that as a retreat is moving towards the end, I pick up a kind of anxiety on the part of people. Like, what do we do with all of this?

I tend to keep pushing people into their retreat concentration, right up into Samadhi, and at the same time pulling them right out, not pulling them down, like, but making them conscious of problems. And I think the answer is, of course, to have the overview. I think that's the answer: to look at things from above, in an enormous panoramic compass, without zooming right down to where one sees the details and one loses the lay of the land. But I'm trying to focus on the nitty gritty of human problems instead of being vague about it, and what we're trying to do mainly is to concentrate upon creativity. Now, it's true that I go about it sometimes in a zigzag fashion [chuckles]. I don't know if you know how to drive in the snow. You have to zigzag a little bit when you're driving in the snow.

So, we're working with two parameters. One is how to stay high, and the other is how to be very clear about your problems at the same time. Because that is the question that is asked to me by most people. It's, "Pir Vilayat, how does one keep high?" I wouldn't say that I'm able to keep high in everyday life or claim to, but how would one go about it if one did go about it?

I’ve tried to give you a few clues. There are those meditations that one can do in life and those which need one to be isolated in one's cell, one’s room or whatever. And of course, I would foster those meditations that one does in everyday life. But it's obvious that if doing a practice where you have to turn your eyeballs upwards, you can't be doing it while you're crossing the road. So, some practices have to be done in isolation and the others can be done in everyday life. And I like to be very clear about it. And then, as I said, when we started going into the retreat, one has to see very clearly the difference between those practices, where one is using a technique like breath or mantram or light, representations of light, and then, where it's just a question of an attunement of one's consciousness. For example, Buddha's retreat was just attunement of consciousness. That's all. He'd gone through all those techniques of breathing and so on and it gave what it had to give. So I think I did mention something in a retreat like this, and that is, whenever you do feel inspired by a practice or even without a practice, just feel inspired. Then I would say the practice might stand in your way instead of helping you.

So, I prescribe practices but I wouldn't like to hold people to do practices because, you know, I don't ask you to promise to do practice. It's not mandatory. You just have to play it by ear a little bit. You have to have a schedule and at the same time play it by ear [pause]. That is, to use the emergent emotion in you to carry you on its tidal wave ... That's where playing it by ear is more important than intervening with one's will. In fact, one has to be rather careful about the personal will in meditation, you know that. You know that ... that's one of the dangers of yoga, you know, proving oneself that one is able to do this or do that. It’s a kind of an ego trip. That's the danger of mastery. And on the other hand, permissiveness is counterproductive. So don't just play by ear. At times, when there's ... the will comes in as a kind of subsidiary help. Like, for example, it was Buddha's will that made him sit there day and night, a very fantastic exercise of just will, pure determination–personal, even personal will. And then on the other hand there was a greater will transforming his consciousness.

Okay, well, can we see ... [quietly] What should we do? I was going to give a resume of the different practices towards the end of the seminar/retreat, but I wanted to concentrate on a few practices that are really very effective. It's impossible in these three days, even three days, to give a total catalog of all the practices and states of consciousness. I want to earmark a few that are really just very right on. And we have done a few, so maybe this is not the best moment to review them until we've added a few.

In general, you will notice that we were working with energy and consciousness and ecstasy. And that is Sat Chit Ananda, meaning, satchidananda. I remember when I was talking at a conference with a scientist, amongst whom Karl Pribram, and I mentioned that, and he said, "Well, there’s no doubt that it is a combination of energy and intelligence that makes for evolution. But I have difficulty with that third factor that you're talking about, ecstasy." I wasn't that quick on the uptake at the time, I must say, but when I thought it over, I realized that even ecstasy plays … in fact, ecstasy plays perhaps the most important part in evolution. In scientific terms, it's heterostasis, in comparison to homeostasis. It's this seeking out for joy of the organisms themselves, even at the level of the elementary particles, or the chemicals. Even in very primitive forms like Nate and Chloe, who find completion in one another. Nate stands for "na" which is sodium and Chloe for chloride. It makes salt.

There is a kind of nostalgia for completion and fulfillment right down in the chemicals and in the case of the human being it is the greatest drive that there is. That which is called energy in terms of physics is called ecstasy in the terms of the psyche and makes for transformation.

So, okay, we're working with those three factors. Now, we were building up, working with energy, building it up, like there are different stages. Those of you who followed the retreat from the beginning will remember how we worked with the magnetic field and then we started churning the field and we started being aware of different plumes, emanations of that field. We churned it in the vertical plane and then the horizontal plane. We churned the chakras within this field. We examined the chakras within this field. We started working with the magnetic field and the light aura and then we even completed it with the sonic vibrations.

Much of the work that we were doing was based upon the paradigm of the vortex, which you remember doesn't have a frontier, and is always processing the lake, and is not an entity in itself, but that's what we are and so on. And then if you remember, I said, well, that is a simplistic paradigm; that, in fact, the human being is much more complex and that, really speaking, one is more like a template which orders the universe within one particular individual order, just part of the order of the universe. And then we went further, if you remember, and said that it's not just a template because a template is rather static, whereas it's a matrix which is evolving itself, you see. So, our own internal order is processing the universe and also evolving itself. And we had to listen in to what was coming through, to be able to affect transformation in ourselves. Now, I don't know whether you notice the flaw there, and that is that the vortex only whirls in one direction. And it is true that most in the state of ... a whirlpool, for example, the vortex simply turns anticlockwise, as a matter of fact. That's what they call Coriolis, which is due to the torque of the motion of the planet. And it's true that, basically, our energy is levorotatory, that is, it turns left. You'll find that, for example, when we whirled, the dervish whirling, we whirled left. Some of us were whirling right, yes, but it seems more natural to be whirling left. Also, piloting a plane, you find that it's easier to bank on the left than to bank on the right. But in fact, a human being is much more complex. And in fact, there are two simultaneous rotations taking place in our magnetic field. And so it has a structure of a double helix, just like the DNA.

We already felt that a little bit because when we were whirling to the left, you remember, we stopped and then we felt the counter bound (counter lash), which was moving backwards. And you remember that the energy ... you know the Law of Gauss, which I’m sure you've learnt at school, which is, if a dynamo is turning to the left, anticlockwise, there's a current that rises upwards--the symbol of your hands and your fingers. Well, so, we experienced a current moving upwards. And then when we whirled the other way or when we stopped whirling without the countermotion, then we felt current descending. Now, if you start becoming more aware of the forces that are in motion in your magnetic field, then you will be aware of the fact that there are two currents. One is levorotatory, the other is dextrorotatory—that is, one turns left, the other turns right—two spirals that crisscross upwards like a double helix. And, as you know, that's the symbol of the Caduceus. It's the two serpents of the ouroboros--well, they become the ouroboros when they get into a vicious circle, which is, there's no hope in the vicious circle. And that's where most of us are, in a bind, which is a vicious circle, like you can't get out of it, you're stuck. I wonder whether you recognize yourself in that. Everyone is more or less in a bind. And the bind is in the mind, that is, in our way of thinking. We can't see the way out. That's why we think there's no way out. And generally of course, the way out is on a different ... because reality is multi-dimensional. So, if you think in two dimensions, then you get in a circle, you're in a bind. But if you think in three dimensions, the way artists and others, in another dimension [chuckles] ... You know, there's a game of chess, three-dimensional chess, that was invented by the husband of Joan Grant. So if you're stuck on one plane, you can always find a way out in the other plane. That's the way out of the bind. Well, the spiral is the symbol of getting out of a bind.

It's what happens with a circle when it's stretching in a further dimension.

And so, this is the clue to lifting one's consciousness into other dimensions. And that's the practice of Kundalini. In Kundalini one is working with energy, using energy as a lift, to grow one's consciousness, hoist one's consciousness upwards and reach into other dimensions, other planes.

The clue to, for one thing, becoming aware of these two currents is to work with each one separately. And that is, it starts with that very simple practice, which is called pranayama. The Sufis call it kesab, which we did the other day, breathing in though the left nostril, holding the breath, out through the right, in through the right, holding the breath, out through the left, and then comes a time when you breathe through both nostrils at the same time. And that is where you conjoin those two forces, like the positive and the negative pole of the magnet, and that's where you have a real explosion of energy. In India, wherever there are two rivers or a confluent of the river and the river meet, or two confluents of the river meet, they build a temple. It's considered a holy place and very often you will find there's a Rishi sitting right there at that energy point on the globe, and they call it pralaya. The point at the bottom of the spine is one of those points, and I'll try and describe it. For example if you breathe in through your left nostril and become aware of the spiraling of energy from the Muladhara chakra, at the bottom of the spine, upwards, like a spiral, right? So, you breathe in through the left nostril, it is going to spiral dextrorotatory, that is clockwise. Breathing from your left nostril it spirals clockwise, right? Forward, right, behind left, forward right, behind left. And then you hold your breath. And then you breathe out through the right nostril, the energy now spirals downwards, again dextrorotatory, clockwise, but it will use another staircase than the one it used going up. So, you use the other spiral going down. And then if you breathe through the right nostril, then you will be causing the current to spiral left, counterclockwise, levorotatory, upwards--that is, right, forward, right nostril, right, right, right forward, left, back and then keep on spiraling up. And then hold your breath and then when you exhale the energy is going to spiral downwards. Now you exit through the left nostril and the energy spirals downwards on a different staircase than the one that it came up on. In fact on the same staircase that you breathe in through your nose with. Okay. Now supposing that you breathe through both nostrils, you have two spirals that are crisscrossing and you notice that they crisscross in two points, one is forward and the other is back. So, they crisscross, in the chain of the nodes in your spinal cord, which are the plexi of the autonomic nervous system, that's at the Caduceus, and they crisscross again, forward, and every chakra has its root in the spinal cord, and its Lotus forward, those two points. Alright, so you breathe in through both nostrils, you draw energy through both nostrils upwards. Hold your breath. And then as you exhale, you spiral down through both spirals. And you will notice that the energies of both spirals are going to meet at the bottom of the spine.

Well, they already met at the top. Now they're meeting at the bottom of the spine. And what one tries to do then is to use that energy of those two spirals to link them together into one current which rises in the middle of the spine. That's Kundalini. That's the lift that hoists your consciousness upwards. One is enhancing all that energy and using it, harnessing it in order to actually lift, to draw one's consciousness upwards. So that means that when you are spiraling upwards, you don't concentrate too much, at first, you don't concentrate too much on the central canal. Still concentrating on the spirals, although you know that there's energy that is rising in the spine, in the central canal. And then when you spiral downwards again, you concentrate much more on the spirals and on the downward current in the middle of the spine. But it is after that, after those two currents have met—we call it a marriage at the bottom of the spine—that is the moment when, of course, you concentrate on the energy in the center. And while you are still spiraling up, I mean you're breathing through both nostrils and there's current rising in both spirals, but you concentrate on the current that is ascending in the middle. And ... slowly, you see, and that gives you a tremendous hoist, tremendous boost.

Now, remember we have to overcome misconceptions; it’s very well-known of course—and that is, that we think that our consciousness is being hoisted. That means the space in space. And it's very difficult for us to understand that space has a significance for consciousness only when consciousness relates to the body, but that at a certain moment that whole concept breaks down. Consciousness functions totally irrespective of space. So you can't say that you're lifting consciousness in space. It's just because ... we think in terms of space if we think that we're displacing consciousness in space. But what you can say is that the astral body does lift up a little bit, there's some buoyancy in it. And I mentioned yesterday that you get into a kind of feeling in your body as though you are surfacing, you're swimming underwater, and then you're surfacing. You get your body a certain way so you get your magnetic field—I don't know what one does to it—but one gets it in such a condition that it begins to float. It makes you feel rather airy fairy and like a cloud. And DON'T STOP THERE, you see, because if you stop there then you'll never go any further, of course. Then the next thing is to realize that [pause]

... well, this is the way I do it. I don't know if it helps you to think this way. But it is that gravity only has meaningfulness where there's accumulation of matter. Where there's no accumulation of matter, there's no gravity. So, it's associated with our body consciousness. As soon as you overcome your body consciousness, then you feel buoyant because you're not conscious of the gravity pull on your being. It's a question of thinking, the way you think. And all of a sudden you feel like you're a spaceman floating in the void.

There's no gravity. Together with that, there's a lot of things which I mentioned yesterday. One is a total change in your self-image. And not only that—that is, your self-image means the qualities that you think you are, your personality—but there's also a change in your sense of individuality. You are the total reality, see, and it's ... I can say this in words and it sounds romantic and all that, but it doesn't make sense until you've actually experienced it. I think of those words of Saint John of the Cross, who went through a real ... imagine what a bind he was in, in the church. And how he got out of it, his prison, the dark night, and the absence of seeing things clearly. And in the end, he said things that must have shocked even the wisest of the church men. He said, "I am the mother of God. I am the stars in the universe." [laughs] He couldn't find words to say about his experience. His sense of "I" became universal. He overcame this idea of being the creature, you know, being created by God, in time and space. That's the experience you have. So, the material means that we're using, which is spiraling breath and all that technique, it will go so far, no further. And perhaps you know that the rider of Pegasus, whose name was Bellerophon, was trying to get the Olympus and Pegasus could only take him so far and after that he had to proceed on his own. Yes, it's like my RV going uphill up to a certain point and then after that one has to walk, in the snow. Or, it's like a hang glider. You can rush down the hill with it, carrying it, but at a certain moment it takes off, it carries you. Well, there's a moment when all of that technique—you kick the ladder—that technique that helps you to get there, you just forget it. And you're off. And you know what it is; when you're piloting a plane, you must never hesitate. Once you've put that accelerate on, you have to go ahead. So you started moving something, now you soar on the power that you've generated. And now, you don't use power anymore. You use power to prime the whole system. But once you've done that, then it's only your way of thinking of yourself that hoists you into other planes, only your readiness to forgo your sense of identity and accept your cosmic identity. That's the thing that will make you reach into the higher planes and that only. There's no other way.

So, we're going to do this now [chuckles]. Try it out. So I'd rather not tell you breathe in and hold and so on because that distracts you and you know how to do it now, I hope. That is, to start with, just breathe in one breath left, hold your breath. You know, when you hold a breath, you turn your eyeballs upwards and press your tongue against the palate. And then you exhale through the right nostril, spiraling up, you know, clockwise, spiraling down, clockwise, and then you do the opposite, spiraling up, left and spiraling down left. And then one breath in with both nostrils, both spirals, and then down again, both spirals. And then one more breath. Take the energy of both spirals, and the energy lifts in the center, you know, in the center of the Caduceus there's an axis, and you can do that a second time or third time if you want. And then forget the technique and just let yourself rise.

So, do it with this position of the head. Always start exhaling before you start.

[long silence while doing the practice]

Start moving your fingers and hands and stretch yourself.

That was the first attempt. It takes much more than that to take off.

Imagine that you are catapulted into beautiful celestial spheres, but that you are blind. So you might be in those spheres, but you're not experiencing anything. That's what's happening to most people. Hoist yourself up, but you're not experiencing anything because one hasn't developed yet the ability to recognize what's happening. And so ... perhaps you can find a clue in this venture into other spheres, and that is that, as Buddha said, of course, we have the equivalent in our personality of what is the attunement of those different spheres. And so, to be more specific, that's where the testimonials of those who have explored those uncharted regions may be helpful to us. We are living at a time when, because you have three dollars and a half or $5 to buy a paperback, where you have the choice between a detective story or then reading about the mystical experiences of some of the great, Hafiz, for example. That's your choice. But just imagine the heritage of the spiritual experience of the universe at our disposal in the shops for a few dollars.

It's right there. The descriptions of the experiences of the mystics in those planes vary enormously so that when you're dealing with all that data, at first you don't know how to make sense of it. There seem to be contradictions. It's a subject that I went into at a certain time in life, because I was trying to address that for a doctor's degree in angelology. And then, when you start looking at it, and you're comparing the different experiences, it starts falling into place. You see, it all starts by personal experience and then the mind of humans tries to categorize what's happening, establish a system, a kind of topography of states, which ... hope and hope that would be helpful to people. Like, the Sephirotic Tree is an index card system; indications of levels of experience, that's what it is, translated in terms of imagery.

So, to give you some kind of clue, you know the map is not the territory So, you go and try to visit ... Let's choose Mexico rather than Alaska. And if you get the appropriate map, then once you get there you think, well, "This is not what the map tells me." So you know, it might be an old map or it might not be that good, or it might be a new road that's been built since. And the same thing here. We may have a map, it maybe helps us to a point, but then reality is much more interesting than the map. I'm thinking of the Hephalot of the Jews, which is a system of angelology—Hephalot means the celestial spheres—which was the basis of the cosmic celebration which we celebrated several times, once in Boston, and New York and Los Angeles, London, Chamonix. So let's see if it gives us a clue. First thing that you get into is a kind of Pixieland, Lords of the Ring, with jittering fairy-like beings who are full of wit and sprightly, and represent a very primitive display of elementary nature intelligence that we've lost contact with in our civilizations. That's the world of Indra, according to the Hindus, the world of the Devas.

Maybe I should have mentioned: before that, actually, before that there's an astral plane which is not quite as sprightly. It's not that clear. It tends to get a little more clear towards the upper regions. The lower regions are called Lebanon, [laughter] which comes from the moon--"Lebanon", moon--and then the astral, the stars which are a little more clear, there's a little more light. But then it's only when you get to the second plane—which is what I was describing really, the sprightly nature spirit world—the second plane, which is the plane of jinns, and genius, the plane at which your mind was being formed. And so if ever you have bright ideas that make you feel like dancing with joy, you're relating to that level. The dream level. Well, what I'm saying is that these planes correspond to states that are to be found in you. So if you lift yourself to a higher plane, the third plane, you will recognize the same thing in yourself. In fact, it's only by recognizing it, by, how can I say, manifesting this aspect in yourself, that you will find yourself experiencing the corresponding plane. So that plane, that attunement is one that you may experience ... I hope you do experience it. It's something that you find in a very beautiful child. As Christ said, you have to become like a child to enter into the portals of heaven. I'm afraid one doesn't always see it in a child. [laughter]. But sometimes you do ... that lovely, luminous, innocence, beauty, spontaneity of the child that we lose as we grow up, become sophisticated and lose that beautiful, lovely simplicity of the child. So, it's perfectly true that you will hoist yourself up in the planes and remain totally blind and not experience anything really, blank out, unless you really consciously pass through each plane. And I've made the point of, instead of rushing into Samadhi, moving from one plane to the other.

And as I say, the only way to do it is to find that back in you. Because it is there. It's covered over with a lot of slush, but it's still there. You know that what covers it up most is guile, hypocrisy, manipulation, dishonesty. That's what covers it up. It's like splashing the snow with mud. So, if you can dig a little bit below that mountain you find that beautiful snow, crystal snow. It's [tape blips] a beautiful, innocent plane of grace and harmony. Simple. As I say, there's no guile, there's no manipulation. And so angelic beings of that plane don't have much discrimination. And we do come across sometimes—particularly in our century—a lot of very angelic beings have incarnated in our time, and you find them very often amongst the hippies. [chuckles] It's purely because sometimes the drug has arrested their normal growth and so they still remain not quite incarnated. Some of those angelic qualities—I don't say always—sometimes monstrous qualities come through under the effect of the drug. Please, I'm not recommending the drug [laughter]. But ... I think it's best just to concentrate on children. But you will find that if a person does not develop an ego, they tend to lack discrimination. So you can have beautiful people, who are very angelic, but don't have any discrimination. But anyway, that's something that is to be found in you, you can find it back in yourself. And if you're able to plug into that state of your being, you will feel inspired. And perhaps you will be experiencing that beautiful ecstasy of the third plane. There are some scenes of nature that put us into that attunement. We're looking at a beautiful sunrise in the middle of the mountains, in high altitude. Or just looking at beautiful flowers or butterflies. There are a lot of things that just correspond to that particular plane. Very unsophisticated.

Now, if you lift yourself a little higher, you get to the fourth plane, which is the plane of the Seraphim. It's a plane of raging fire, the fire of transformation, passion, but purifying, purifying the human passions. One goes through a very traumatic transformation, a catharsis. It's called the plane of judgment. Beings of fire of course, the seraphim, are beings of truth and are absolutely merciless like the dervish that I described. But something one has to be able to discover in oneself, that aspect of oneself that is uncompromising and ruthless when it comes to one's need for authenticity.

I remember the words of Jelaluddin Rumi, "Enough of metaphor. I want the burning, burning, burning." If you're beginning to function at that level, then you will be having some kind of experience of those beings of fire, which are the Seraphim. And which is something that you find among some human beings who are very, as I say, very outright ... the dervish, particularly the dervish.

Now, there are several, of course, grades in each one of these planes and when you reach into the high grades then you get into the spheres of victory and jubilation. It’s not quite the same thing as glorification. Of course, they are all one ultimately, but still the accent here is on a very overt form of glorification ... like the processions of the seraphim. You know, in the early days, the churches used to have a procession before the Mass. The Indians still have that, of course. But they've become a little bit artificial (?), instead of that marvelous further of beings, you know, triumphant and victory. That's the meaning of Netzach in the Sephirotic Tree. Netzach means victory.

It's the first test that one goes through, the test of the truth. Each plane corresponds to a test. The third plane corresponds to the test of purity and, as I say, being without guile; the fourth plane, truth--the test of truth, truthfulness. And then you get to the fifth plane corresponding to Tiferet in the Kabbalah and that is the plane of the Cherubim. And you notice the difference in the mood, in the attunement. It's very sacred and holy, less overt. It's not like that outgoing ... you find music ... the music of Bach, for example, will often describe these planes. For example, the prelude to the Weihnachtsoratorium—the Christmas Oratorio—is jubilant. It's victorious and the Magnificat, also. Certain parts of the High Mass, like the Hosanna—the Sanctus culminating in the Hosanna—glorious, jubilant. Whereas the fifth plane music is like what we play sometimes: the Russian Orthodox or Bulgarian Orthodox music, and some of the Gregorian chants. It's prayerful.

It's called the plane of light, where one has overcome form. There's just light. Clear beings are beings of light instead of beings of fire. One has transmuted one's anger into just radiating light. Just being a being of light.

And being a being of light, and at the same time looking upon it as being an expression of glorification, will place you in the attunement of the fifth plane.

Of course, it's very difficult to be clearly enough attuned to a plane when one is standing, more or less hovering between two planes, or at least so conscious of the physical plane or even the mental plane that it's kind of difficult to have any kind of interaction with these higher planes. Something may come through but not much. But in the dream, of course, they do. So, you may have ... If you are meditating on the planes, the one thing that I recommend you doing before you go to sleep, you see, like the dream therapy, like meditating on these different planes and if you were to go to sleep while you are meditating on the fifth plane emotion, you will have an experience of an encounter with Cherubimic angels.

It may be vague or it may get a little more clear. That depends upon the clarity of your being. The Sufis call it the clarification of the mirror. If your mirror is very clear, then your dreams will be very clear. Confused dreams ... that means that the mirror of your psyche is confused. It's not clear, rusty. So, there's a lot of work to do, catharsis—generally, facing oneself. The confusion is generally due to the fact that one is not facing oneself. One is trying to justify oneself in one's mind, or compromising because it's just too much of a sacrifice to do what one feels is one's ideal. And so ... you know, the mind provides a kind of smokescreen of ambiguity. And that's when the mirror is not very clear, and consequently your dreams can never be very clear. Confusing. And if you go through a real, very deep, in a retreat, a great confrontation with yourself, with your real intentions ... You know you can do that, like you can ask yourself, "Well, what am I really trying to get out of life? And what is it that I'm trying to get out of this person? Am I just trying to help that person, really? You’re fooling yourself. What are you trying to get out of that person? And are you upfront about it to that person?" That's clarification, you see. It's okay, maybe that you want to get something out of this person, but then be frank about it. I help you, you help me, okay. It's not the saintly attitude, but still, at least it's clear.

And then there comes a time of great clarity and that clarity combination is the sixth plane, which can be described as a plane of snow and ice, and a beautiful (?) from this light. But that's an image, of course, a metaphor that is meant to describe the state of one's attunement when one feels clear, like there are no blotches. Immaculate. One feels like, I suppose, a crystal—although, as I say, the color of crystals is often due to an impurity, a disorder within the order of the crystal, actually, causing what they call a Ligand field, which is a magnetic field which bends the molecules within the crystal and causes that, bends light, of course, eventually. But in the diamond, of course, there's no impurities and that's why it's a very special crystal. So, if you think of yourself as a diamond, and you understand what that is, in terms of human emotion ... In fact, it's human emotion at the edge, because it's beyond the human, of course. And then you begin to appreciate that in people ... in people who are sharp, but real ... as compared to people who are suave and very seductive and maybe not that pure. You can feel it in people.

And somewhere in the soul, there's a need to find that. The soul, perhaps, suffers by the ambiguity of the different levels of our being.

This, of course, is in line with the kind of experience that one has if one has a vision of an archangel—that's something you couldn't have in a dream, maybe. [softly] I don't know if you have an idea what an archangel is like ... Not the kind of beautiful face that one imagines—beautiful in a way that one needs to have a sense of appreciation to realize what that kind of beauty means. Like the beauty of a diamond as compared with lush vegetation, for example, or, say, the beauty of a landscape of snow and ice, with stalactites and stalagmites of ice, as compared with the lush vegetation of the foothills. There's some music for that, that describes that, the sound of the Plainsong (?) is very much like that.

We've been struggling with trying to find music that describes something of the state. You know, Hazrat Inayat Khan, my father, once said that music will be the language of religion in the future. Because words are sophisticated—I mean they carry all the limitations of our mind—whereas music acts directly. The only trouble is that our sophistication enters much of our music.But what we're doing now is, we're starting to get into the real pure sounds, like gongs and wind harp. The modern instruments, curiously enough, Ben Guerris (?) whose music is sometimes really gawky, [laughter] even he starts sometimes just picking up something that's coming through in the musical language of our time, which is the crystal-clear sound of the celesta, for example. Something is coming through. Our technology is helping this to come through in the language of music.

The sound of crystals. There's a sound of crystals? We think about the light of crystals. Well, this would be the moment to speak about crystals, yes, because they correspond to that plane, the sixth plane. Well, how come that matter, like minerals, like a stone for example, can reach a point when it allows light to pass through it! Just imagine what an evolution has taken place in the stone. And what makes it possible is that it has become orderly. That is, in a pebble, for example, you take off a beach, well, the molecules are disorderly. And consequently, there's no way in which light can pass through. Now, when they are all beautifully ordered, like a beautiful lattice work, and the distances in the space between the molecules, the light waves are able to pass through depending upon the distances between the molecules and the frequency of the light wave. Certain frequencies are able to pass, others not. And that's just one of the qualities of the crystal. Just imagine that the crystal developed under the earth and is ideal to transmit light, which is experienced on top of the earth. Although, of course, some light passes right down—very high frequency passes down under the earth. In fact, it's possible that the crystal is the result of the action of light upon matter in the first place—tremendous radiation in the womb of the earth. But that's not the only quality of the crystal. It also reflects a certain amount of light from its surface. And it's like a mirror: it refracts light as a prism. That light passes through it and is deflected. And then it absorbs light and it emits light. How does it emit light and how does it absorb light? The electrons in the outer shell ... not always in the outer shell—but more generally, you know they (?), what they call shells, orbitals within the shells. The electrons have the ability to, let's say, get energized by the energy of, let's say the sun, for example, and start going on a trip, like if you inherited money from your American aunt, you would start going and making a trip to the Riviera, for example. Money is energy. But then when you spend the money, you find yourself right back where you were. Well, that's what the electrons do. They go on a trip and then they find that when they spent all the energy they had, they have to fall right back to where they were before, which is back in the orbital again. If they have a little money over, which is probably what happens, you come back from the Riviera—you can't use that money. Now that's, at least, the law of electronics. So they have to spend that energy and that's spent in radiation. And so the crystal itself radiates light. The electron turns into a photon which is light energy. So it is fluorescent. That means if you expose a crystal to the light of say, for example, a high frequency like a mercury vapor lamp, for example, and then place it in the dark, it will fluoresce for some time and maybe very short, but just imagine that you can use a crystal then for healing, for example, put it on a chakra and that particular frequency of radiation is going to affect your chakra. It can be useful for healing—if we knew which crystal for which part of the body and for which illness. Don't play the apprentice sorcerer with that because you can really run into trouble. You know that the favorable climate for the growth of cancer is certain radiations in which the cancer grows.

So we're talking about radiation here and it's high frequency radiation. But within the visible range, it's okay. As soon as you get into the ultraviolet, then be careful. Important for the body, but you have to know just what proportion. Now of course, that's true of the crystals, but in organic matter, there is one degree further of freedom. And that is that I could try and describe the gain in terms of what happens if you inherit money from your aunt. And supposing that instead of going on a trip, you invest in a cause and then you wouldn't have to return back to your typing pool [chuckles]. So, that's where you're using not only energy, but intelligence. And evolution is a matter of a combination of energy and intelligence.

And that actually does happen in the passage between the crystal state and the organic state. Can you imagine what happens? In the crystal state, the atoms and molecules--they're all constrained—to a certain, within limits, to a certain freedom but very little, so that the vibrational rate remains constant—a bit like a moto perpetuo. That's why the crystal has its music, you see. It's like a drone sound that keeps on continuing. There's not much variation, but it's able to overcome that constraint by growing energy from light energy, so the at least the electrons are able to change their frequency, but the molecule on the whole is affected by it. But there's a constraint, you see. Now all of a sudden, so it's like, repetitive, like a wallpaper, the lattice works like a wallpaper, it's repetitive. Then all of a sudden in the organic we have a whole new disposition, where the atoms, electrons and so on ... it becomes like a tapestry. They find a way of cooperating for the good of the whole. And that's a very good paradigm for humanity, too, you see. One progresses by being able to find one's place in relationship to others, for the sake of the good of the whole. That's how evolution takes place.So now we've entered into, somewhat, the consciousness of the crystal. So it's not only a miracle of light but also of sound.

And so the sound of the sixth plane, which is not ... I say a landscape of snow and ice, but you can look into the snow, you look into there, you'll find it's all crystals. So, it's a landscape of crystals. You're wandering in landscape of crystals, and in order to be able to, once more to come back to our principle, to be able to wander into a landscape of crystals, you have to become like a crystal yourself. Now I'm not just speaking metaphorically. I don't know whether you realize that the body itself becomes more and more crystalline, at least certain cells of the body, particularly the nerves, the cells of the nervous system. First of all, take the example of a cello for example. Why is it that you can have an old cello that has not been played--it's rare of course to have an old cello that's never been played on—it would never sound as good as an old cello that has been played on. The reason is that the molecules of the wood get jiggled by the vibrations and, let's say, shift into an order, exactly as if you were to expose sand, for example, to vibration of a piezoelectric cell: on the surface of the sand, you'd find all kinds of beautiful undulations or eddies. And so matter has a way of being informed by vibration, picking up vibration. And what happens then is that the relative random disposition of the molecules in the cello, the wood of the cello, becomes orderly. And so the cello becomes more like a crystal. The same thing happens to a nervous system. We're continually building new pathways in our brain; the molecules of the organic matter of our brain undergoes the action of the nervous impulse, which imprints upon it a certain orderliness. And if one were to analyze the protein structure, one would find that what happens is what they call protein conformation, which is that the molecules are packed more closely together. You know, where if, for example, if you pack your luggage with books, if you have books in your suitcase and you just put them in random, well, you can't get as many books in as if you were to pack them in an orderly way. And so nature does the same thing. So that the actual molecules of the nerves when they are orderly occupy less space. There's an economy of space which has an action on the gravitational field. And so you have orderliness; let's say there's orderliness coming out of disorder, and the whole of evolution is just the process of orderliness out of the disorder. So, the thing is that when you get to the sixth plane consciousness, you discover that, like the order of the universe, like it's the harmony—I don't know ... well, I suppose one could use the word— the orderliness of an Archangel. I mean, I've been talking all the time about the pursuit of excellence. The excellence of the archangels represents such a perfection of the order of the universe.

And I suppose that's the moment when life begins to make sense, when you see that it's all moving towards a perfect harmony, a perfect order—within which there's freedom, or which is the ultimate expression of freedom. Okay, now, the seventh plane is, of course, so difficult to describe that we've been seeking out for music that could give any idea as to what it could be like. It's very difficult to find anything that could give any idea about it. One could only perhaps borrow that kind of music that is moving into it, let's say, and we have a wonderful passage ... in the Magnificat of Bach there's a place where—it's called ad fortiorem, I think—where he's breaking through one plane and the next and so on and mushrooming up. It's just an apotheosis. It leads one, if you know how to follow it up, leads one from one plane to the other and finally, getting to that seventh plane. In the Hekhalot of the Jews there's a very significant description of—let's say this—the EDGE of the ocean of the universe. And it says simply this: When a new soul impinges upon the surface of the ocean of the universe, it emits a cry of glory. And that cry of glory is reverberated from one plane to the other, and finally materializes as matter.

And so at the seventh plane you're at the edge of the universe, of physical matter.

It incorporates all the principles of the universe. So that one hardly dares speak about beings. They are the Hayoth, which are the four principles, represented by the bull, the lion, the ego and the human being, but those are not like the seraphim that you can meet or you can encounter or even an archangel. It becomes so otherworldly and so other-existential that one is not dealing with beings. One is dealing with principles that really represent ... the four of them--basically, you can divide the seven planes in four stages, but they are all incorporated at the top. So, it means that, you know, everything that is anywhere in the tree is already present in Keter, in a latent form. So, there is a moment if you reach upwards—and that is, I suppose, the moment of samadhi--when one has extricated oneself from one's existential condition. The thing that will help you to get there is to do ... something like what we did this morning was a preparation for that. And if you remember, we were having an overview over the history, let's say, of our lives, and also the procession of our personality, the way our personality is unfolding. And you remember that what was happening really was that we were beginning to become aware of the continuity in change, rather than be caught up by the change. There was a shift towards eternity, in comparison to transiency. And if you follow that up further, that's where you can experience the seventh plane, which is timeless. Everything is in a state of change, even, as I say, the archetypes that are resurrected, perfected by resurrection, except right at the top. That's pure intelligence. It never changes. Consciousness changes. Pure intelligence never changes. Pure spirit never changes. And on and on, which is bliss: the peace beyond understanding never changes. That's when you reach the top. You can’t say reach the top, because it's an endless, infinite regress, but at least there's, somehow, a quantum leap that takes place and that's samadhi. So, if you like we can try and do this. I hope you have a clear picture of those planes now. Would you like to just stand up and stretch yourself a little bit? [tape blips]

So, I'm not sure that I'll be able to speak while at the same time doing it. I'll try. What we're doing now is we're not using energy anymore—like, we started using the energy of Kundalini right? Now we're going to—let's say it's the primer that primes it off, trigger, but let us use ecstasy rather than magnetic energy, the magnetic energy of the body. The ecstasy of these different planes creates an interesting attunement in you.

So the first one, the astral one, is ... well, there is an ecstasy in astral travel, the fact of feeling free from the body, that you can float. I'm sure that you have flying dreams, you know, floating, and then you think, "Isn't that strange, I forgot that I could float when I was in my daily consciousness. Of course I can float." And when you get back down, you can't. Okay. So it's what you feel in the hang glider. Imagine you are a cloud. And what I've already said is that one can see and one can hear but what one sees is like the astral counterpart of physical matter.

And the other thing is that one can displace oneself, but one can't use one's will. That's why people freak out before: can't get back into their physical body because you can't use your will and yet you try to use your will and it doesn't work.

And the only thing that will make you displace yourself is nostalgia. The longing to visit a person or the longing to fly over a lake or something like that, the longing of freedom, the realization that one is not constrained by the body. There's a breakthrough of joy. Now, if we can transfer to the second--next plane---I know that you have that sensitivity that you're able to get into the consciousness of the Lord of the Rings, the gnomes and pixies and so on. That's the nature spirits. Our sensitivity has become so blunted that we bulldoze a land and all the nature spirits, of course, disappear, having been crushed by the bulldozer and then we put concrete there and, of course, any nature spirits in the environment move even further away.

And then we have the blaring sound of rather gross rock and roll. And it makes the nature spirits move even further away. So there's no way in which we would ever be able to attune to the nature spirits unless you rediscover your covenant with nature, your interdependence, your interaction and you walk in the woods and smell the breath of the earth, and feel the rays of the sun passing through your body and the air permeating the pores of your skin, and sitting with your back to a tree and feel the sap rising in the trunk and then into the consciousness of the tree and experience what it is it experiences, as being one of the antennas of the planet through which the cosmic energies are threaded down into the planet and fertilize the planet. And you could go on like that.

And you notice that the beingness, let's say, of what we see—the bodies of the trees or flowers or whatever—the beingness of these has a very intense consciousness. And you notice that that consciousness is very sprightly. It's not that terrible, heavy thing that we develop in our civilizations, the grossness of [tape blip] some of the streets in New York. It's innocent but it's very spontaneous, effervescent, shimmering.

Great dexterity, fast movements, intelligence emerging from the undergrowth.

Discover something in yourself that is like that: you could dance in nature with the nature spirit and get back to a certain very fundamental aspect of your being that you've been neglecting.

Now, some of them can be really naughty and out of hand and even kick up tantrums and things, actually. And they could all league against you and really tear you to bits. They don't have that much wisdom, just very primitive, but very beautiful in a way, but don't taunt them.

If you're an unscrupulous master, you could tame them and use them at your service until such a time as they unmask the hoax and turn on you—a terrible thing to do. That's magic.

Or you could learn from them and respect their freedom and establish a nice relationship.

Now can you discover in yourself, a place in your being of great purity and innocence? It's been covered over by our guile, by our suspicious nature about people. The innocent people will gladly let themselves be fooled. We like to be wise enough not to let ourselves be fooled and lose our innocence.

Can you be wise and innocent at the same time? Well, yes, that requires of you to maintain your childish spontaneity and innocence and guilelessness, ingenuity--I mean being ingenue. You never lose it, even while you become wise. It only means that you never stoop to any form of manipulation or strategy or deceiving anyone. If you can do that, you will not only maintain that innocence, but you would be able to rediscover that innocence. And you'll notice immediately that it is so graceful. You'll notice it in your own movements. You'll start walking in a very graceful way instead of stomping about and the way you put a book on the table or the way you sit, or even the way you lie.

Graceful, aesthetic, noble, good taste. One can tell a person by the kind of furniture they have in a room, by the kind of music they like, the kind of clothes they wear. It's a question of sensitivity to the harmony. It manifests as beauty.

Okay, well that kind of Eden state can't last, because as I say there's a lack of discrimination then. And so for one to evolve one has to go through catharsis. And if you look at your life you will find that you are being tested in your truthfulness.

It's difficult because it means that one has to make sacrifices.

It can become very difficult because it might mean showing some lack of compassion to another person.

It's a difficult subject to enter, we will have to, perhaps at some other time when we have time. But I want you to feel the dervish in you, the uncompromising aspect of your being that is indignant when facing hypocrisy and, consequently, has no patience with one's own ambiguity, and it will always unmask the hoax of the mind.

You become impatient with anything that is not absolutely upfront in your own being.

And you know what truth gives you? It gives you courage,

the courage to own up, even if your whole life can be ruined by your owning up. It's better that it all breaks down and you turn out to be a truthful person. It will build up again, believe me. But otherwise, it will not. It will collapse like a pack of cards. And I hope that you noticed the power that it gives you. Freedom. Power.

And now you can face the seraphim, the beings of fire, because you have the same fire and sparkle in your being as they have. You recognize each other as knights in the service of a common cause.

There is sacrifice. One is being crucified. And yet there is so much joy while being crucified. There's so much joy. I suppose it's the joy of getting rid of aspects of one's being that one wasn't very happy about.

This is the turning point.

And one is entering now into that state of attunement, which is the attunement of sacredness. We referred to it this morning—the Virgin Mary carrying this very sacred Being in her womb. Or the picture of Christ protecting his heart against—which is a light in a lamp against the storm. Or then the communicants at the Mass, coming back from having imbibed the Host and being conscious of being filled with the Holy Spirit, Body of Christ, that sacredness. And it is that sense of sacredness--the sacredness of the human state has been defiled, which hurts, it's violated. It hurts terribly when you see a person, who might have been very beautiful as a child, has become so tarnished, sacrilegious, bitter, ironical, gross, a desacralization, a defilement of the soul.

And you feel it in yourself. You become aware of defilement that has been taking place and makes you act more and more intent on maintaining the sacredness of the divine status in you. And that is the attunement in which one can pray. One is passing from the profane into the sacred. One is programming into one's daily routine, certain moments when one changes tack, from the profane to the sacred. One's voice has changed. One's whole attunement has changed. One has programmed the sacred into one's daily routine.

This is the moment when it is good to remember the cosmic celebration in the heavens, to remember that you were born out of an act of glorification. Your soul was born out of an act of glorification.

And then you realize what it means to exalt in glorification. Some of us experience it when we're singing in a choir, we're exalting in glorification, a marvelous experience.

And one is being reborn as one glorifies.

If you can just let yourself be hoisted into that attunement, which is that immaculate state, you become pure spirit. Pure spirit. You hardly feel material. In fact, you don't feel material. You feel pure spirit and very light. Got rid of all that heaviness and weight of the existential condition, detached, nobody can touch you or offend you or influence you or harm you. Your spirit is high, because you are your spirit. It's like having one's head high, like a fulcrum with a lot of spirit. A great sense of purity, immaculate.

A great need for peace, rather than joy.

But of course it is frigid. Not sensual. No human emotion. Cold, just like a diamond.

There's something in you like that. You're touching upon something in your being, the depth of your being—maybe it's the condition of your soul. That all that got involved in life still remains somehow uninvolved or untarnished or unchanged. That's where the detachment comes in. It's like the mirror that can reflect any amount of objects but you turn the mirror in another direction, it has not been tarnished.

Now just let yourself be hoisted beyond existence

and that is, there is no vestige of any sense of transiency, of motion. You have kind of escaped from transiency and are identifying with that aspect of your being that is beyond change. The

eternity of your being. And think of these words now: "Deep sleep in the night of time." There's no more consciousness because you do not remember the events of your life. Consciousness is still tied with its heartbreak. You're not cogitating about any thoughts. There is no more emotion. There's peace. There's no more emotion and so there's no more consciousness and, therefore, there is no change anymore. You’re suspended beyond time and space.

[long silence. Unclear words about when meeting next, at end of session]