By the end of the last presentation, we got a grasp of the meditative workflow. This started with concentration, which led to meditation, this evolved into contemplation, which finally led to illumination. Those are the steps, however, meditation has to achieve results, so what are these? The first is to rid ourselves of the illusions that populate our emotional bodies and set ourselves up to correctly apprehend ideas. The second is to facilitate a better understanding of our environment, especially the people we interact with, bringing us into the right relations with them. Lastly, meditation should lead to action. It is not just a theoretical exercise.
What does meditating actually do? To answer this question we first have to realise that meditating is not just an expression of our consciousness. It is also the production of energy. Depending on which subplane your thoughts originate from, depends on how much energy they carry. This is a relief in many ways. Think about your negative thoughts. The last thing you want is for them to blow down houses or kill people! So, the lower the subplane a thought originates from, the lower the amount of dynamis it carries. Remember dynamis? That energy that is responsible for the motion in all primary atoms. That inexhaustible supply of energy that we all get from the Anti-Verse. If you realise greater energy levels in your mental molecules in higher subplanes, these increased energy levels filter down into lower subplanes as well.
Prayer is an expression of emotional consciousness. We, however, know now that any expression of consciousness also carries an expression of energy. This means that prayers do have an effect. It is inevitable. We can, therefore, conclude that meditation also deals with energy and the net result is the realising of that thought, through the agency of the energy that this thought carries. This is why the esoterician is always telling us that “energy follows thought”. Energy vitalises centres, whether it be the centre of a molecule or atom or our chakra centres. In this way, the consciousness content of those centres get activated. Using this energy in a focused manner leads to single-pointed concentration. This tells us that the more intensely you meditate, by focusing your attention, the greater is the amount of energy that is stored up.
Previously, we have discussed how affected we are by other people’s thoughts. These elemental thoughts enter our envelopes and attract our attention. Elemental complexes already active in our envelopes can also be activated. This drags our focus higher and then lower in our envelopes. This affects the ‘quality’ of our mental thoughts and emotional feelings. Our level of consciousness consequently rises and falls. Guess what? It is harder to keep our attention focused on higher levels of thought and feelings. This means we have to really focus and cultivate our attention if we are to move our game forward. General conditions, such as our health and tiredness, will affect our ability to hold our concentration.
Meditation starts with the activation of mental consciousness. If you are not prepared to make an effort to meditate, your mental faculties develop very slowly. If you are prepared to meditate, you increase the plasticity of your thought patterns rather than just being stuck in a rut with your thoughts. Laurency tells us that prayer is emotional meditation, as opposed to mental meditation. Activation of both kinds of consciousness needs to happen. We need to develop emotional attraction and mental analysis. The former revitalises us and we synthesise from the latter. By revitalising your thoughts, you develop a sense of proportion, also called a ‘sense of humour’. If you are not prepared to do this, you end up using the lowest class of mental matter, 47:7 and end up taking absolutist positions on everything. Every concept can be considered as being absolutist. This is this and that is that. But how does ‘this’ relate to ‘that’? Absolute ‘facts’ have to be placed in a context. To do this you have to devise a system and this is designated as a whole class of mental ability, which has been referred to as Conceptual Thinking. Laurency warns us that we can not go from the ‘universal’ to the ‘particular’ without a system. He says that the majority of humanity today are 1. Young Souls and they consequently exhibit the lowest level of consciousness, which is called Inference or Deductive thinking. This, as has already been stated, involves mental molecules from subplane 47:7. People with this capacity to think, look at one thing and deduce that if what is next to is similar, it must be the same thing. Changing this perception involved patient education. Such monads do not have the capacity, yet, to work up principles of association. This is done by philosophers and scientists, using resources found on subplane 47:6. If you are able to move your thoughts up another sub-level, you enter the realm of Conceptual Thinking (47:5) and eventually reach the top of the mental envelope, where you are able to devise whole systems of thought and apply them universally (47:4).
What is the take-home from this? Our goal in the 4th Kingdom of Nature is to acquire causal consciousness. It is clear from what has been said so far, if we stand a chance of achieving this, we first have to dominate and control our mental activity. Why? Because the ceaseless activity on our mental envelope makes the apprehension of causal ideas impossible. Hence we need to meditate. What then happens is that we receive a bolt of lightening; we call it intuition. An idea just pops into our heads. To receive this ‘intuition’, we need to calmly contemplate the systems we develop and become receptive to our causal envelope. Up to this point, our mental envelope has been the main player in our life. It has been full of activity and confusion. By pacifying it, we enter a state of expectant tension and this is when the taps turn on to causal knowledge. What happens if you have not reached the highest level of mental activity (47:4)? This is the case for most of us. What do we do? We still meditate. We formulate our question and focus upon it, working up our concepts to the highest level we can (47:5). When we have done this, we get on with the rest of our life and one day, suddenly, out of the blue, the answer to our question will pop into our heads, as if for free. Some of you may experience this in your daily lives without the need to meditate. Whichever way you approach the problem, the trick is to formulate the question and then to forget about it. This takes away the mental tension and allows subplane, 47:3, to work its magic.
To recap; meditation is reflective analysis, where we fix our attention through a process that leads from concentration to meditation, to contemplation and hopefully, eventually, illumination, when the answer just drops into our heads.
Let us now look at prayer. What is it generally regarded to be? The first thing to realise is that prayer is an emotional activity, whereas meditation is a mental activity. Theologians have confused prayer with meditation. Prayer, as it is performed by most people, is a form of begging. The person praying is attempting to influence and change the normal course of action. They assume that the laws that govern life can be suspended at a whim. Mediation is a very different process. The meditator is attempting to change themselves by vitalising complexes within their envelopes and trying to solve their own problems. When you pray, it is a serious activity. There is energy involved. Ultimately, we always get what we desire, but not necessarily when we want and in the form we expected it! When one prays for humanity, rather than yourself, the outcome of the prayers is more direct. “The mills of God grind slowly”; you may wish for something in one incarnation, only to be granted it in another one, the purpose of which is to teach you a lesson. Hence the saying, “be careful what you wish for, you may just get it”. As we progress in our evolution, our subconscious triad memory begins to cooperate with our casual memory and our instincts in life become much more focused.
We shall end this presentation here and next time we can finish off looking at what prayer actually is and how it relates to esoteric prayer. We will then go on to look at the power of thought.