Category Archives: Sacred Science

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Sling-Shot Into the Multiverse


From the most recent Winter Solstice (December 21, 2009) until upcoming March 9, we all will have been experiencing Mars retrograde in Leo.

A retrograde movement is an optical illusion that makes a planet appear to journey backward in its orbit, and it has the effect of internalizing much of the planet’s influence. Rather than manifesting directly into our immediate environment, there is a sense of requisite preparation that may entail all sorts of cleansing and letting go.

You are not alone if, throughout this period, you’ve felt charged-up and ready to go… even while being held back, like a stallion chomping at the bit. It would also not be surprising if you’ve been asked to separate from important relationships, jobs and other once-solid commitments.

This has been a time of incredible inner churning — fiery intensity, dominated by a sense that the world is moving at break-neck speed and we are somehow falling behind — shouldn’t we be doing something to address the situation?

Frustration results, as our conditioning prompts self-judgment around an inability to take a step forward. We feel as though we are moving sideways, at best, even when it looks like we’re taking care of business “out there.”

The skillful way to be with this transit — no matter how it impacts an individual natal chart — is to relax, allowing the fire of Mars and Leo to cleanse away hindrances to what will unfold when the retrograde movement ends on March 9.

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When we look ahead to early March, we notice a stellium (or grouping) of planets in Pisces: Uranus, Sun, Mercury and Jupiter.

Pisces, the Mystic, transcends conventional boundaries of consciousness. With these planets moving through Pisces at precisely the time that Mars goes direct at 0″17′ Leo, we will not only begin to move out of our insulated comfort zones, but we will be blasted beyond the margins of our conditioned reality. With so much emphasis on Pisces, we will collectively sense our individual participation in a much, much larger cycle of transformation — and we will secretly desire that our lives will shift into alignment with our “true mission.”

I really do see the period between March 9 and June 7 (when Mars moves from Leo into Virgo, with Chiron having dipped into Pisces to join Uranus and Jupiter) as a challenge that demands deep and unconditional surrender within each and every one of us. We will be asked to trust in ways that we’ve successfully avoided in the past, no matter how deep our fear of being “burned” again. We will also be asked to assume a larger perspective within ourselves, connecting with something higher and more powerful.

We will, in fact, be prompted to allow this larger part of us to run the show.

The hours, days and weeks from March 9 to June 7 signify a collective acceleration of consciousness, which will find grounding once Mars has finally entered the earth sign of Virgo. During this acceleration, potential changes that have been incubating since the Solstice will blossom into manifestation — likely more than one, flying toward us like blowing embers — such that we may not be able to collate and organize things in real time, requiring that we (again) trust that everything is falling into place according to some higher design… knowing that a time for assessment will arrive with Summer.

So, good friends, just know that this strange inner chaos that seeps outward from time to time — the jerking forward and back, feet stepping on themselves — is actually part of a necessary adjustment that has been moving through us all. Our wish for resolution will not only be met, but will be met in ways that we’ve not even dreamed of.

Ours is to remain patient during these final days of inner preparation, and to buckle-in for a three-month trans-dimensional journey into uncharted space… knowing that there’ll be time enough to make sense of it all in due time.

Those who consciously embrace the shift will be the first to realize that the awaiting reality is perfect and fine in every way….

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Signs and Symbols: A Doorway to the Holy Place

The question is, why consult signs and symbols when we are modern citizens of the Scientific Age?

What possible benefit could come from an examination of planetary positions at the moment and place of birth?

Did we not leave such superstitious ideas behind when Darwin and Descartes came along?

Granted, Carl G. Jung did much to restore interest in alchemy, astrology, Eastern traditions and the realm of the intuitive. He studied dreams in himself and thousands of clients over the years, and even sent his most challenging clients off to have a horoscope drawn up. He recognized through his theory of synchronicity that there is no such thing as randomness, that everything in this reality unfolds along archetypal lines, and that this unfoldment occurs according to alchemical cycles that appear to have been embedded in the collective unconscious of humanity. Jung was not afraid to look into the dark past for insights into psychological pathologies of modern existence – and what he found during this search was that the ancients were far better equipped to understand the workings of the mind and soul than are scientifically-conditioned “experts” of current times.

Jung paid a price for his rediscoveries, of course, in that his work was marginalized and discarded by the psychotherapeutic establishment, which retains a Freudian perspective to this very day.  So-called “Jungians” are typically regarded by the mainstream with a wink and a nod, at best.  Nevertheless, Jungian ideas have infiltrated the field of psychology in subtle (yet profound) ways, even as these ideas have done wonders in establishing astrology in the West.

Dane Rudhyar, whose work spanned the middle 50 years of the 20th century, crystallized Jung’s revolutionary perspective and combined it with the ancient art of astrology, publishing in 1936 one of the truly original – if nearly-unknown – works of psycho-spiritual synthesis ever produced: The Astrology of Personality. In this book (as well as in most of his writings), Rudhyar showed that astrology is not about predicting future events, but about bringing order out of chaos, giving the individual a roadmap for psychological unfoldment along organic and cyclical lines.

In my consultations, then, it is this ideal of “bringing order out of chaos” that informs the proceedings.

Through this “higher ordering,” something profound and mysterious occurs, and it is this deeper process that gives astrology its true value.

We spend so much of our lives “in the middle of it,” plugging away, often just surviving what seems like a random mess of external influences that push us here and there. We are conditioned, in fact, to believe that this is how life really occurs – that things just happen, and we should respond as best we can. The idea that life unfolds in cycles that may be interpreted through signs and symbols is not something to be taken seriously – so we just push ahead, doing what we can within our limited range of vision.

If nothing else, these past 18 years of working with astrology have shown me that life is not random, that it does unfold according to a collective framework that manifests cyclically, and that these cycles have been expressed through the signs and symbols of astrology for thousands of years.

Astrology puts the individual in touch with the collective, the micro with the macro, and it gives us the opportunity to avail ourselves of a collective perspective that is literally infinite in scope. It is like being put in a spaceship, flown way, way up into our local solar system – into the realm of the Archetypes – and given the opportunity to see life from the point-of-view of higher understanding. From this higher platform of knowledge, order is introduced into what the individual experiences as chaos.

While it’s true that, in identifying certain cycles running through the client’s chart, an occasional insight will arise that may be taken as a “prediction” for future events… what is actually happening is that the client and I are arriving at a synchronistic point of understanding. Together we “see” something clear and obvious, even though it may have been sitting on the client’s nose for years and years. This is an alchemical process, such that, when the two of us climb into the “alchemical crucible,” we have availed ourselves of a Mystery that expresses through signs and symbols. We have immersed ourselves, in fact, in a sea of signs and symbols, submitting to anciently-derived collective wisdom that comes to bear on the present moment.

As I explain this and describe that during a routine survey of astrological data springing forth from the chart, signs and symbols are transmuted into insights that trigger connections and associations within the client. These connections and associations then trigger a similar process within me. In short order, the client and I are seeing one another as an uncanny mirror, sharing in this deeply intimate moment a recognition of an otherwise unconscious human heritage.

There is something profoundly healing in the intimacy of this meeting, beyond even what the signs and symbols represent. It is as though the signs and symbols create a doorway to the holy place of awareness before we take birth, and in this holy place we find a spiritual connectedness that is independent of the form and drama of our current life. We have agreed to spend an hour or so in this place, suspending our conditioning and our beliefs about the should’s and shouldn’ts of life… and we make ourselves available to a wisdom that can’t be accessed in any other way.

Perhaps this description sounds forth as memory and resonance from beyond the chaos of your everyday life.

If so, perhaps the alchemical crucible may be calling you.

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Radical Reverend Bates

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Just a quick note of welcome to my new friend, Rev. Hank Bates of Desert Cities Religious Science in Palm Springs, CA.

His brand of Radical Religious Science appeals to my tendency toward taking a practice to its logical extreme — which is to say, I’ve no interest in watered-down spirituality, and Rev. Bates is all about walking the talk when it comes to the business of living in communion with the One Mind.

So, I’ve added his website to my blogroll, and am appreciative of his willingness to engage my earnest questions in a series of email conversations. For those interested in the prospect of 24/7 communion with All That Is, please check him out at the above link….

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Alice Coltrane, R.I.P.

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Is there not a tradition that these things “come in threes”? First, one of our favorite authors dies (Robert Anton Wilson, on 1/11/07), and now one of our favorite jazz musicians, who happens to have been a spiritual giant, has taken leave of our collective drama:

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) – Alice Coltrane, an avant-garde jazz pianist and widow of saxophone great John Coltrane, whose musical legacy she helped keep, has died at age 69 of respiratory failure, an official said on Sunday.

Coltrane died on Friday at West Hills Hospital and Medical Center in West Hills, a Los Angeles suburb, a hospital spokeswoman said.

Famed for replacing McCoy Tyner on piano in her husband’s last quartet as he broke new and controversial musical ground, Coltrane was also a convert to Hinduism and a guru who had her own commune.

Born Alice McLeod in Detroit, Coltrane was trained as a classical musician and as an organist, harpist and pianist. Among her jazz teachers was the legendary Bud Powell.

Jazz vibist Terry Gibbs told the Los Angeles Times that Alice Coltrane met her husband while playing with his band at Birdland in the 1960s.

“He saw something in her that was beautiful. They were both very shy in a way. It was beautiful to see them fall in love,” he told the paper adding, she was “the nicest person I ever worked with. She was a real lady.”

She left Gibbs’ band to marry and play piano for Coltrane as he moved into bolder, more spiritual music than he had been playing before.

In an interview with Essence magazine in September 2006, she was asked if she caused the change in his music and the break-up of the famous John Coltrane Quartet.

Her answer was, “I didn’t have to inspire John toward the avant-garde; he did not need anything from me. That is why it’s so interesting that critics decided to dislike me. At some point the members of the quartet felt it was time for a change, and left on their own.

“When John said that he wanted me to play with him on piano, I told him that there were many others who were qualified. He said, ‘I want you there because you can do it.'” She credited Coltrane with “showing me how to play fully.”

After his death in July 1967 at age 40, she raised the couple’s children, continued playing and expanding upon his music and devoted herself to the study of Eastern religions, adopting the Sanskrit name, Turiyasangitananda.

My wife discovered Alice Coltrane’s music during my time (1991 through 1998) working at an independent record store here in Boulder — this would’ve been 1995, I’m guessing. She’s been collecting Alice’s stuff ever since, including many Japanese import recordings of obscure concert dates at UCLA from the early 70’s.

Alice Coltrane’s spirituality came through every note of every song she ever played. When I would spin “Journey in Satchidananda” over the house system at the record store, shoppers would stop browsing and just listen, many of them buying a copy of the album on the spot.

It’s sad that she’s left us at 69, but on the other hand, I can think of few people who’ve lived such a full life as hers. Besides, I’m sure she would insist that life never dies, but simply moves on to the next thing.

My condolences go out to Alice Coltrane’s family and friends, who’ve been blessed by this unique woman’s presence.

For more, you can go here, here or here….

[Cross-posted over here….]

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Robert Anton Wilson, R.I.P.

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From Robert’s final blog post, dated 1/6/07:

Various medical authorities swarm in and out of here predicting I have between two days and two months to live. I think they are guessing. I remain cheerful and unimpressed. I look forward without dogmatic optimism but without dread. I love you all and I deeply implore you to keep the lasagna flying.

Please pardon my levity, I don’t see how to take death seriously. It seems absurd.

RAW

Now that’s going out in style, isn’t it?

From Al Barger’s obit:

He managed to turn all kinds of paranoia and conspiracy theories into great fun, kind of a Dr. Strangelove strategy of transubstantiating darkness into light. He was very conscious of wanting to carefully put the most optimistic interpretation of events that he could reasonably justify. You’d likely come away from a RAW book suspecting that there really is significant truth to a lot of even the cheesier conspiracy theories.

But Wilson was especially important as a “guerilla ontologist,” as he sometimes described himself, or as he listed himself last month in his official Blogger profile, “Occupation: Mind Fucker.” He was really good at illuminating the ways in which our primitive mammalian biology tends to limit and actively subvert our best higher, more rational intentions. Thus, he’s been very useful to me in sorting the wheat from the chaff in the pronouncements of alpha males both physical and spiritual – politicians and priests alike. His guerilla ontology of being baroquely skeptical of even — especially — his own epistemological ability is for one thing the most precise counterargument to the surety of Ayn Rand’s “objectivism.” It’s also a pretty sure prescription for basic humility.

[…]

Anyhow, Brother Bob has slipped this mortal coil. One might guess that Tim Leary greeted him with a dose, and they’re trippin’ like fat rats and bouncing off the stars.

His personal consciousness might not be here to continue enjoying it, but in his mortal time Robert Anton Wilson put his own distinct twist into the DNA of our collective intellect that will far outlive his weak fleshly body. He may be dead and gone, but he’ll probably always be one of the top voices I hear in my head.

I don’t have much more to add, except to say that, like many, I enjoyed Wilson’s Cosmic Trigger books, his Illuminatus Trilogy and the Schrodinger’s Cat Trilogy. What strikes me about his writing is that he’s thinking on a genius level, and this makes everything seem so absurd to him that he can’t stop laughing. He’s not laughing at us, however; he’s laughing at himself, watching himself skip along his path as if it was nothing but a cartoon. It’s this irreverence that appeals to so many of us, the way he reminds us not to take life so damned seriously, but to pay loving attention to the details.

He showed us how he did it, and encouraged us to find our own method.

I’m truly sorry that he’s left us, and my heart goes out to his family and friends.

On the other hand, I’m happy that he was able to die exactly as he lived, with tongue firmly planted in cheek, smiling all the way.

[Cross-posted at my other place….]

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Renaissance Man

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I went through a Teilhard de Chardin phase a few years ago, and just stumbled on some biographical information about this modern polymath that I thought may interest readers here:

Pierre Teilhard de Chardin was a visionary French Jesuit, paleontologist, biologist, and philosopher, who spent the bulk of his life trying to integrate religious experience with natural science, most specifically Christian theology with theories of evolution. In this endeavor he became absolutely enthralled with the possibilities for humankind, which he saw as heading for an exciting convergence of systems, an “Omega point” where the coalescence of consciousness will lead us to a new state of peace and planetary unity. Long before ecology was fashionable, he saw this unity he saw as being based intrinsically upon the spirit of the Earth:

“The Age of Nations is past. The task before us now, if we would not perish, is to build the Earth.”

Teilhard de Chardin passed away a full ten years before James Lovelock ever proposed the “Gaia Hypothesis” which suggests that the Earth is actually a living being, a collosal biological super-system. Yet Chardin’s writings clearly reflect the sense of the Earth as having its own autonomous personality, and being the prime center and director of our future — a strange attractor, if you will — that will be the guiding force for the synthesis of humankind.

“The phrase ‘Sense of the Earth’ should be understood to mean the passionate concern for our common destiny which draws the thinking part of life ever further onward. The only truly natural and real human unity is the spirit of the Earth. . . .The sense of Earth is the irresistable pressure which will come at the right moment to unite them (humankind) in a common passion.

“We have reached a crossroads in human evolution where the only road which leads forward is towards a common passion. . . To continue to place our hopes in a social order achieved by external violence would simply amount to our giving up all hope of carrying the Spirit of the Earth to its limits.”

To this end, he suggested that the Earth in its evolutionary unfolding, was growing a new organ of consciousness, called the noosphere. The noosphere is analogous on a planetary level to the evolution of the cerebral cortex in humans. The noosphere is a “planetary thinking network” — an interlinked system of consciousness and information, a global net of self-awareness, instantaneous feedback, and planetary communication. At the time of his writing, computers of any merit were the size of a city block, and the Internet was, if anything, an element of speculative science fiction. Yet this evolution is indeed coming to pass, and with a rapidity, that in Gaia time, is but a mere passage of seconds. In these precious moments, the planet is developing her cerebral cortex, and emerging into self-conscious awakening. We are indeed approaching the Omega point that Teilhard de Chardin was so excited about.

This convergence however, though it was predicted to occur through a global information network, was not a convergence of merely minds or bodies — but of heart, a point that he made most fervently.

“It is not our heads or our bodies which we must bring together, but our hearts. . . . Humanity. . . is building its composite brain beneath our eyes. May it not be that tomorrow, through the logical and biological deepening of the movement drawing it together, it will find its heart, without which the ultimate wholeness of its power of unification can never be achieved?”

One may wonder where all these spiritual giants have gone, and why have they seemingly abandoned us?

Truth is, the Pierre Teilhard de Chardins of the world left a legacy that we may either follow or ignore. The choice is up to us. We can’t keep expecting them to magically appear in order to hold our hands during difficult times.

Besides, if we look around, we can see that the giants have not completely died off.

If we look inside, we can see that such a thing is impossible.