MOVING AWAY –
I emerged from school not knowing what I wanted. I had failed my A levels so university was not an option so I was left wondering how to proceed. I worked for some months in the family firm as a credit rep going out every day on a weekly round visiting customers to collect an agreed amount to cover the purchase of household items. I got to know a certain part of Liverpool quite well and enjoyed the contact with the customers. At 19 I chose to get away from all the influences around me friends, family, Eugene and find out something for myself. My mother cried as I left Manchester Airport for Sydney Australia with no fixed date for return. I soon found a room for 11 dollars a week in a small house in Edgecliff, a suburb of Sydney, and with my Honda 50 moped the world was my oyster. I managed to get a job with David Jones in Castlereigh street working in the Knitshirt department thanks to a connection with one of my fathers golfing partners.
Later after leaving David Jones department store as I travelled in Australia I came to the realization that all my effort was directed at getting away rather than arriving. I was hitchhiking from Sydney to as far north as I could get which was about 1500 miles and every time I arrived in a town my instinct was to not stop and explore but move on. Dissatisfaction drove me blindly onwards; I was looking for something but I did not know what. I moved on till I got to Cairns which at that time it was the end of the road so I stopped and got a job working as a temporary labourer unloading trains for the railroad and staying with other travellers in a youth hostel dorm for a dollar a night. I knew that I needed to get away, away from my family, away from Parklands , away from Eugene and my friends. I needed to find myself without all their influence. Hitchhiking along the Australian west coast and eventually back was a great learning experience in itself. I met so many people who were without exception kind and good willed and I slept in many places, under trucks, in a concrete pipe on a construction site in Brisbane, On the beach, in an abandoned hen house to escape a torrential rain storm, In a garage in Kingaroy for 3 nights when the floods cut off all the roads. I was 20 and needed to conserve money and somehow had the attitude that as long as I could sleep there seemed little point in parting with precious cash for the privilege of a bed. I learnt that Australians were kind, generous and helpful people and part of me never wanted to come back. I had many adventures including being sucked over a waterfall on the Atherton tablelands and ending up dangling with my arms over a tree that had also been washed down suspended between the bank and a large rock part way down the waterfall. It was a brush with death, I was sure I was going to die or at least be horribly injured. The experience was a wake-up call, time to stop fear driven avoidance and start to find the courage to say yes.
Eventually this happened in Sydney and in the course of visiting every alternative society available, Children of God, Theosophy, I learned Astrology, self styled magicians, Webster on the Domaine, Moonies, Hare Krishna, Transcendental meditation and more. None of it worked until I came across the personal growth movement with its emphasis on direct emotional expression and intolerance of intellectualization. That was the key that turned the rusty lock that guarded my emotions and a real sense myself. Once I found this therapy I had a new sense of purpose and direction and 48 hour weekend encounter groups became the order of the day. What I needed was not on offer at Parklands and it was a revelation to have finally found my path. It was less easy to follow that path and transitioning from highly charged emotionally expressive therapy to the day to day world needed skill, skills that would take time to develop. But what a relief to have found what was missing and way of repair.
I remember my first experience of a therapy workshop and the release that comes from moving out of your head into your heart. This is something I had never experience before because the Parklands lectures focused on words and form which were too intellectual for me. My need was for something more heart and body based. I tried to become an intellectual but it was really for show to keep up with the rest of my family and I was always aware that I could be exposed as a fraud very easily. Repeating other people’s words and pretending I knew their meaning made me feel hollow inside. As I started to engage with my subjective emotional side this gave me energy, purpose and a degree of authenticity. I now lived my life around getting to as many workshops as I could and slowly a change of sorts began to manifest. I did not want to discuss philosophy and seem clever but I did want to love and to be seen and be loved, nothing else really mattered.
A reply to a letter to Eugene also indicates some of the questions that I was seeking answers for. My letter was written by the light of a campfire at 2.00 am in an isolated location in the Blue Mountains. I had bought a tent and a sleeping bag but no inflatable mattress. It was too cold to sleep hence the fire and the reflective state of mind.
Port St Mary, I.O.M 22/8/1973
Dear Richard
Of course your letter is important to you, because you have imported that is, carried into it some of your energy. Importance means no more than this to any living being—the in-carrying [im-porting] of energy into some area of activity or possibility. This definition is absolutely basic to all occult and Qabalistic knowledge. [Always spell Qabalah with a Q and no U following it, never with a C or a K as seen so often in books written by men who know nothing of the essentials of the doctrine] The letter Q implies polarity in every sense of the term, sexual or other.
As you say the holding of power [that is power over other living beings] is hellish. The end of Hitler and Mussolini is typical of men who fail to recognise this principle.
“You can fool some of the people all of the time, all of the people some of the time, but not all of the people all of the time”.
You write for guidance in reading source books of occult doctrine. The most important books are the I Ching [book of changes] which is ancient Chinese; the Tao The Ching [way of life] of Lao-Tsu, which is 6th century B.C. The Bhagavad Gita [The Lords Song] and the Upanishads, both Hindu philosophical works. The Advaita philosophy of Sankaracharya, and the Monism of Ramaniya also Hindu. The Buddhist Dhammapada, the Chinese and Japanese Buddhist works especially the Japanese Zen Buddhist works, all findable in the library. Then of tremendous importance are the works of Jacob Boehme, the great German mystic of the 17th century A.D. to which nearly every great modern thinker in Europe is indebted for a true perspective on matters spiritual.
It is important to read the earliest books first, because later books continually quote from them, either openly or without reference to them. And you will save a lot of time and energy by not reading books by ignorant money-making hack writers who continually re-hash the source books without any understanding of them. Such persons are as dangerous as they are ignorant, for every false idea taken into the mind is a destructive piece of machinery, acting illogically and out of harmony with any truth the mind may contain. Just as one does not see clearly with ones eyes covered with films of dirty Perspex, so one does not understand properly if ones mind is covered with erroneous ideas derived from careless writers, or even from ones own careless observations or illogicalities of thought.
You say that the purpose that unveils itself while you are writing is the “will to get out of the situation” by pushing through it. Of course the only true way out of any situation is through it. This is the great Law of Evolution. Persons who “back out” of situations instead of going through them cannot learn from them, and thus cannot evolve to a higher level, cannot grow in spiritual power.
If you develop the sensitivity your horoscope indicates you will find that your five sense organs will give you much more information than you have previously been conscious of. But information must be correctly interpreted, and for this the mind must be made free of fear, and therefore of the will to power over other persons, for where this exists, fear will accompany it, because if one desires power over others, one must believe that some other persons also have the same ambition, and might succeed in gaining power over oneself. But if one has no desire for power over others, one can see clearly the realities of ones situation and ones real relations with others, thus freeing oneself from the possibility of being dominated from outside ones will.
You ask the method whereby occult faculties can be developed. This involves the process of progressive initiation. “Initiation” really means being shown how to begin work on oneself at a certain level of being. It does not mean the conferring upon a candidate of omniscience. Every knowledge is to be gained only by going through stages of development, by uses of ones own energy and intelligence. There are three steps to the goal.
[1] Probation, which is a period in which one develops ones spiritual senses by strict work upon ones emotional responses to stimuli received from outside ones organism, and from various levels of ones inner being.
[2] Enlightenment, which is a process of awakening ones spiritual intelligence or “light”. This requires meditation on the relations which exist between different levels of existence mineral, vegetable, animal, human and divine. By such meditations certain kinds of thoughts appear in the mind, and with these thoughts certain kinds of emotions. The development of these emotions, which are very fine forces is essential for enlightenment. For this it is essential that one recognises the real relationships which exist between the inorganic [mineral] world of atoms etc, and the organic world of plants, animals, human beings and divine beings. One must see that spirit has precipitated the mineral world of atoms to provide a stable reference upon which to work; that the plant world is spirit at work creating the conditions of the possibility of higher levels of life, animal, humans, and divine.
[3] Initiation is the doorway to communication with higher levels of spiritual consciousness and with spiritual intelligences which dwell at such levels. In order to attain this initiation one must be oriented or truly turned toward the spiritual world, and for this one must become absolutely convinced that thoughts and feelings are not just phantasies or appearances which appear in mans mind, but are actual, real forces, existing at a level above that of the material, mineral or physical level, Only if one understands this fact can one understand the tremendous importance of the correct use of names, which are really spiritual forms of force.
There are three trials before one can be initiated. These are called the trials by Fire, by Water, and by Air. These trials must be gone through in order to attain the goal. Fire, Water, and Air are terms symbolising respectively Action, Passive Feeling, and Intellective Creativity.
In the trial by Fire one deliberately exposes oneself to all kinds of activity in order to create in oneself a fearlessness and courage and fortitude without which further trials cannot be undertaken. Here ones only centre of reference is the pattern of ones own actions. One leans on no external things or events. One rests only on the consciousness that one is self –activating, that ones own actions are the only supports of ones own consciousness. For this trial one needs energy. This trial refers to the Fire Triad, so that one can guarantee a reference centre by ones own self-activation, then one is ready for the Water Trial.
In the Water Trial one must do exactly the opposite of that which one did in the Fire Trial. In the Fire trial one activated oneself in order to create by ones own actions a centre of reference which one can hold onto with courage, fortitude and fearlessness. In the Water Trial one undertakes to be passive to every feeling which is induced in ones being by stimulus from without or within one’s organism. One must be able to allow feelings to arise within one’s soul without trying to change them. One is permitted and required to observe every feeling as it arises in one’s being, or in other beings, but one is not to react to any feeling in order to defend oneself against it, nor to hang on to it. Every feeling is to be allowed to rise and fall just as it does, without trying to interfere with it or change it. Hence the courage, fearlessness and fortitude developed in the Fire Trial gives one the power to remain centred in one’s own will to remain passive to every experienced feeling as it arises or fades away. One is centred only in the will to passivity and the observation of what states of being result in oneself from this passivity. To pass the Water Trial, one must remain absolutely passive to every experience and feeling arising from it, and must not in any way energise the experience either to increase or decrease its effects in our soul. The object of the Water Trial is to attain the power to remain absolutely passive under any condition whatever, and to retain ones self-awareness and fearlessness under those conditions. The Water Trial refers to experiences represented by the Water Triad in the Zodiac. After successfully passing the Water Trial one is ready for the Air Trial.
In the Air Trial one passes into a condition into which the fruits of the Fire Trial [attainment of courage, fortitude and fearlessness and centeredness of oneself in one’s own activity], and the Water Trial [attainment of the capacity to remain totally passive to stimuli, inner and outer without loss of courage are added together intellectually [as in the Zodiac’s Air Triad].
In the Air Trial one undertakes to be strictly logical in all one does, feels, thinks and wills. This is a very high trial, not possible to pass successfully without the courage & Fortitude & fearlessness gained in the Fire Trial, and the capacity for remaining totally passive to all events gained in the Water Trial. For one must be able to make oneself totally passive to the demands of every situation’s logic and then to activate oneself in accordance with this logic, regardless of the effect of this logical action upon one’s own private feelings and thoughts and will and situation. If one passes this trial successfully one can design a new universe with pure logic and thoroughly affirm it with one’s Fire –energies and one’s Water sensitivity.
To pass these three trials successfully one must first ask oneself three questions:
Question One: Have I the necessary energy to be able to centre my conscious wholly in the fact of my own self-motivation?
Question Two; Have I the capacity to expose myself totally passively to any and every experience which may befall me?
Question Three; Have I the intellectual capacity to be able to see the pure logic of each situation in which I may find myself and the capacity to submit myself to this logic, and to activate myself upon this basis of logic.
If one cannot yet affirmatively reply to these questions, then one must go back to the beginning of the probationary process in which one works on ones emotional responses to stimuli inner and outer, until one has by self observation, understood the nature of emotion as such, and learned what particular factors in one’s own being causes these responses to the particular stimuli which elicit them. Time is needed for the safe development of spiritual & occult capacities. The rule is patience, ‘make haste slowly’ to allow ones mind and body to make the adjustments needed for spiritual development, at one’s own developmental tempo.
You mention “astral travel”, this is the chief occult idea that catches the imagination of beginners, because it seems to offer a way to power and the discovery of secrets not otherwise attainable. But in fact the “astral” plane is but the plane on which exists the totality of forms created by human desire over untellable stretches of time. There is much if not more, misinformation on the “astral” plane as there is true information. Also the body in which one travels astrally is the etheric body, which results from the interaction of one’s desire-energies with the energies of the physical body. So that if one does not first acquire control over one’s desire energies one cannot effectively direct one’s etheric body and cannot usefully practice “ astral travel”. We have to remember that occult study is not a game indulged in for fun, but a serious doorway to a better life.
The highest level of the souls own consciousness is the true initiator of man’s mind, real initiation thus comes from within the depths of one’s own soul. It therefore follows that one must have a certain attitude of mind and feeling called, “Devotion” or “Veneration”, towards one’s highest self. The moment of the gaining of this attitude is called the moment of entry upon the ‘Path of Devotion”. Devotion is absolutely essential for the successful attainment of spiritual consciousness. Books that suggest the possibility of attaining power without having stressed first the necessity of a devotional attitude towards the true highest self, are really a snare and danger to the unwary aspirant. No Finite person acting on the level of ordinary consciousness can possibly gain control of powers which are the essential properties of the highest self, which will not give them into the hands of lower egotistic levels of consciousness.
Without devotion to the highest truth of the soul no one can enter the true path of discipleship, the very substance of which is devotional energy. We must be quite sure of this if we are to move forward towards increased awareness of higher levels of being in a true way.
The ordinary everyday consciousness is turned outwards towards the world of external material things. As long as one’s own devotional energies are more interested in matter and external physical objects than in the deep processes of the soul, where occult forces work, there can be no real advance in occult knowledge. But one must first have gained the power of concentration by using external physical facts as focal points for consciousness. This is why we have come into a physical body. Because without a fixed thing on which to focus one’s awareness, one cannot gain the power of concentration needed to stabilise the souls energies before going on to investigate the different levels on which the soul can function. One must be able to gather together the souls energies by an act of will, and to hold them together in all situations, at all levels of existence. The capacity to hold oneself together under all kinds of stimuli is what we mean by integration of being. Without such integration the energies of the soul can be scattered by any stimuli of sufficient strength or of certain types.
You as Richard Freeman have a will to sum up what you are and what has made you into an “I “. That is, you will return to the origin of your being, which origin is the same as the foundation of the universal being. As you say, there is an implied relationship between your “I “ and the Absolute consciousness which is fundamental to the universe to the universe in which you exist. And this relationship implies a method of attaining the closest degree of this relationship. And this method is by identification. You are to identify your own consciousness of “I”-ness with that of absolute consciousness. But this means that you must break any identification with limiting factors like that of lower egotism, pride, conceit, self-imagery of oneself as a “powerful” if finite being, etc.
Remember that ‘occult “means “secret”. The occult forces you feel in your being are forces of yet unknown character and origin. They are expressions of solar energy [called ‘Prana” in Hindu philosophy which is the living power of the sun in our organism]. This energy is part of the intelligence of the whole field of the solar system. This solar system is one of the systems within the great cosmic system, which we call the Supreme Logos. There is no possibility of any finite human ego gaining control of the Supreme logos or of the Solar System of which human egos are but parts. What can be done is to learn how to cooperate with the cosmic intelligence and solar intelligence and to use the energy given to one by the solar intelligence for this cooperation. To try to do other than cooperate with the very source of one’s being is not at all intelligent. Of course, millions of people do not cooperate, but this is the reason why there is so much inefficiency & misery in the world. The ‘Gestalt “that you seek is the Supreme Logos, in which we all live, move and have our being. This Supreme Logos has precipitated the whole cosmos and has entered into the cosmos as an architect into a house he has designed for himself. And there is a definite order of entry into this house, and a definite number of levels or “floors” in it, all of which have their representations in the human organism. Man thus has a certain constitution with different functional levels. Five levels are distinguishable in certain occult schools. Others subdivide certain of these to produce seven levels. Others add an eighth level to represent the unity principle which holds together the seven levels. Others add a ninth level to signify the state before creation begins.
Five fold division
Will
Pure Intellect
Serial Thinking
Feeling Response
Physical Body
Seven Fold Division
Spirit [Atma}
Buddhi Pure Logic
Manas Higher
Manas Lower
Astral Body
Etheric body
Physical body
There is a very important equation in Hindu occultism. It Is “Atma is Brahma”, The ‘Atma “is the individual self or spiritual monad., “Brama” is the universal self. The equation says that mans individual self is in essence the same as the universal self. This means that it is possible to gain a state of identification of one’s individual self with that of the self of the universe. This possibility of identification of the self of man with that of the self of the universe is the basis of all Hindu Yoga practice and of all occult schools of thought which express this possibility as the ground of the occult systems of meditation and magical ritual practices. In occult works the equation ‘Atma is as Brama ‘ takes the form ‘the microcosm [little universe] is as the macrocosm [big universe]. Man on earth has total representation of all the elements of the universe.
You are quite right not to trust anything or anyone outside your own self. But this outside includes all the mental processes of your ego-consciousness, which is easily influenced by external stimuli and promises of ego power over other beings. Safest of all is to trust only pure logic and pure will presupposed in it. For if ones will is not pure then ones logic cannot be pure, for the impure will distort every statement made by pure logic, because otherwise pure logic would inhibit the will.
Love
Eugene