"Psychology of awakening" long

[Guest guest]

Hello Colette

 

All this is only an excuse so I can say, It's nice to read again from

you.

 

Love

 

Antoine

___________

A point of view among so many...

>From the card "XI FORCE" in "Meditation on the Tarot", Anonymous

 

"Now, there are several modes of sleeping. There is sleep and Sleep. You

can believe, or not believe, in the testimony of the Cabbala, which

describe what is said to happen during the sleep of the righteous,

during sleep of the ordinary people, and during the sleep of the

sinners. (...) However there is no one who does not know from sure

experience what arises during sleep at night, in diverse states not only

of health but also of the soul. the overwhelming cares of one day can be

changed during sleep into things of secondary importance and can even

appear insignificant, whilst insignificant things of the day before,

which skated almost imperceptibly across the screen of your memory

before sleep, can acquire in dream a singular importance which was not

at all surmised the preceding day. How many different ways of awakening!

How moods, states of mind, desires, general states of the soul, differ

when you awake, for example, after Christmas night or Easter night, or

some night in November or February... If the ways of awakening are as

different as black and white, it is because there are as many different

kinds of _sleep_.

 

Just as there are several modes of sleeping, so there are several modes

of dying. It is again the Cabbala which makes mention of this and which

describe a whole scale of ways of dying, the summit of which would be

death due to the kiss of the Eternal One. According to the Cabbala,

conscious or unconscious _ecstasy_ would therefore be the most sublime

cause of death.

 

Must an ecstatic rapture necessarily be sudden or can it be slow and

gradual as well? Consider the process of death where it is not the body

which refuses to serve the soul, but rather where it is the soul itself

which gradually quits the body - could this not be the visible

manifestation of invisible ecstasy, of the increasing attraction of the

divine working in the very depths of the soul? Would not increasing

_nostalgia_ suffice to explain the gradual departure of "vital élan"

that is recorded in the case of general decline resulting in death?

 

Be that as it may, this is not what the Cabbala teaches, but also

contemporary Christian Hermeticism. The Hermetic teaching is as follows:

 

During the period of preparation for so-called "natural death" - i.e.

caused neither by unserviceability of the organism, nor by violent

interference from outside, nor poisoning - a well-defined process takes

place in the "vital body" (the "etheric body", or _nephesch_ according

to the Cabbala). there the vital forces concentrate little by little in

the region of the eight-petalled lotus, which is the crown centre. To

the extent that this concentration in the crown region of the head (in

fact, even above the head, if one understands by "head" the physical

brain) takes place, vital activity diminishes-ate first the lower region

of the organism (...). At the moment when the concentration of vitality

in complete, the heart and also the circulatory system cease their

activity-this is the moment of death.

 

Now, the process here correspond to the ecstasy to which one aspires in

the practice of yoga. For the state of _samadhi_, or yogic ecstasy, is

realized, in terms of esoteric physio-psychurgy, by the concentration of

energy - arising from the lower region of the body - in the crown

region, in the region of the "thousand petalled lotus" (sahasrara).

(...) Once the energy is concentrated in the crown region the body is

reduced to a state of stupor, and the consciousness of the self departs

and is united with the consciousness of the transcendent Self - which is

the stare of _samadhi_ or ecstasy. _Samadhi_ or yogic ecstasy is a

temporary or artificial death."

 

Amanda:

Also, from chemistry, a solution's "strength" means that more of it has

left the clump of dry material that is

basis for the solution and that more of this material has been

dissolved."

 

Maybe one could say that the strength in one to live could be measured

to what he/she leaves behind in dying? But as we all know there is a

_place_ where energy or strength stop to have any meaning...

 

Antoine