The principle of Venus is the functional principle relating to the individualization in the involutionary process of creation and is the principle of immortality in the evolutionary process. It is for this reason that the Venusian principle is regarded as divine and also as diabolic. It is diabolic because it causes separativeness of consciousness into individual units of consciousness. It is considered divine because, by the reversal of the process, it enables us recollection of the divinity in oneself and one's own unity with the creation.

Beauty, balance and pure love are the three different states of awareness relating to Venus. Venus also holds the key to immortality.

Planet Venus carries the principle of Venus, which gives the experience to the beings in creation. Experience is sublime and is very different from comprehension. Understanding is one thing, experiencing is another thing. Understanding is what we gain through the principle of Mercury.

There are two basic aspects with us and we pursue both of them. One is understanding, the other is experience. Experiencing includes understanding. Understanding does not necessarily include experience. Suppose, for example, that I describe to you a fruit which you have never seen or tasted before. I can speak to you about its shape, colour, taste. I may also give you the science of Chemistry relating to the fruit or even the details relating to the kind of vibrations it carries. All these descriptions can build up into a big volume.

We will start imagining about the fruit in our being. We gain some comprehension about it, but it is not equal to our eating the fruit and experiencing it. A person who has eaten it has the experience of it and the comprehension is included. We can very clearly see the difference between that which we try to understand and that which we experience. That is why wisdom tells us that experiencing is better than knowing. If a fruit is described to someone who has not eaten it, he, at best, lives in its imagination. But the one who has eaten it, he not only knows about it, he also has the experience of it.

Thus, the man who knows about an apple speaks about it to the man who has eaten an apple. The man who knows the apple only knows the name, but the man who has eaten the apple may not know the name of it. The man of knowledge asks the man of experience: “Did you ever taste an apple?”. The man of experience answers: “I do not know what an apple is. How does it look like? How does it taste? What is its colour?” The man of knowledge describes it, and the man of experience says: “I have the experience of it, though I did not know the name of it”. The man of knowledge knows only the name, but not the experience.

From time immemorial there are two paths open towards truth. One path is trying to know about truth. The man that chooses this path goes around and around. He knows about the truth, but not the truth. He speaks about the truth, but not of truth. Speaking about truth is different from speaking truth. The man who speaks about truth says: “We should speak truth”. The other path consists in speaking truth. The man who speaks truth just speaks, but does not speak about it. To know about it is what is called the principle of Mercury. To experience is the principle of Venus. We can see the difference between the two very clearly. Experience includes understanding and comprehension. A mere understanding or comprehension does not give us the experience.

Someone experienced Sanat Kumara as the Lord of our planet; he spoke of it and it became a scripture. To him what is realized is spoken. Today we are all informed about Sanat Kumara, but to us it is only an information, not an experience. We know that Sanat Kumara lives in Shambhala, that he is the Lord of our planet, and that there is a hierarchy on the planet. It is sheer information to us. So, mostly we are working with the principle of Mercury by gathering information. That also makes you more and more enlightened, but it does not give the central theme of the beauty of the experience. A big volume written about magnetism is not equal to a simple piece of a magnet. Or can that book of magnetism magnetize anything? But a small piece of a magnet can magnetize. Just see the difference. The path of being and experiencing is the path to be followed. Lord Krishna speaks of it in the very beginning of his teaching contained in the Bhagavad Gita.

To give it more lucidly I will give another example. Two men who were thirsty of truth are described in the story as the two thirsty ones. They went up to a well because they were thirsty. One of them looked at the well and tried to understand its diameter, its depth, how much water could it contain and how much water could it supply. He also tried to understand how much water gets accumulated again or replenished if so much water is used daily. He tried to measure the water contained in the well, trying to know what measure will enable him to facilitate the measurement. By doing so he died of thirst. The other man, the simple one, walked up to the well, took the required water into his hands, quenched his thirst, and walked away to inform people that there is a well where you can find the waters of life. He knew how the water tasted. Thus, he was able to inspire people to go up to the well and quench their thirst. Suppose that the man who was collecting knowledge about the well did not die and did not drink the water, he only saw, but did not taste it. He will also speak about the water, but he can't give a precise description about the taste of the water.

Krishna says in the Bhagavad Gita: “Do not bother as to how much water is there in the well; bother to quench your thirst; experience it”. If we have the experience of the taste of the water, it is as good as tasting the whole water as it is in the well and as it will spring up from the well. That means, we carry the knowledge of the present and the future too. This is the difference between knowing and experiencing. Incidentally, it is said that Lord Krishna reached our planet via Venus. He put much emphasis upon experiencing truth, than gathering information about truth. Even during his time there were too many intellectuals and too much information about the cosmic system, the solar system, the planets, the seven kingdoms, the Manvantaras and the seven rays. So much wisdom was available. It was a wild growth, like a deep forest and people who were pursuing truth were lost in the forest.

That is what happens to us when we stop living and start acquiring knowledge. The art of living is more important than the art of gathering knowledge. It is better we experience the life that is offered to us. The principle of Venus lives in us as the urge to experience. Our urge to experience the water of the lake, the snowy mountain peaks or the moonlight, it is all the driving force coming to us from the principle of Venus. This topic emphasizes upon experiencing more than knowing. This is where we find the clue coming from the Orient: “Do not be hungry for knowledge. Start working with what little knowledge we have to experience it. Knowledge, when experienced, transforms itself as wisdom and we live in it”. Experiencing even goes up to the point of experiencing death. That is the ultimate of the experience. That is what interested the grandest Initiates on this planet.

DEATH, THE ULTIMATE EXPERIENCE

The first teaching of Lord Krishna is about death. The primary and fundamental teaching of Master CVV is about immortality; that is, experiencing death. The major port of the teachings coming from Master Djwhal Khul also speak about the art of dying; it is the ultimate to be experienced. If we can experience death while we are in the body, then we have the ability to continue casting off bodies and gaining bodies. If we do not experience death while we are in the body, the knowledge that we have gathered around us dies with us. Every time it is a fresh beginning then. See how ridiculous it is for us to learn the alphabet every time anew, learn that two into two is four etc. As we had a gathering yesterday evening, we remember that we have released three books, but how do we remember? Simply because we continue to live from yesterday till today. If we can live through like that, all that which has been experienced remains, not as an instinct, but as the knowledge settled down as wisdom.

It is like the frog in the well that tries to gain the height to come out of the well. It jumps up by one foot and then drops by one foot. Luckily that it drops only by one foot, because sometimes it can be a drop by two feet. Instead of gaining height we drop into the depth of the well. There are three ways of movement: one is to move forward, the second is to remain there, thinking that we are moving forward, and the third is to think that we are moving forward, but we are really and factually moving backward. The ones who move backwards are the ones who give more emphasis to information than living with the information. Thinking that they are making prospective steps, they are making retrospective steps.

The need for every one is to live with the wisdom already given and proceed step by step. The age-old example given is that we have a small lamp with us in darkness. We make one step and the light of the lamp shows us the next step. The light of the lamp always shows us the next step and not beyond, but we will definitely cross the jungle. The one who makes the first step is the one who finds light for the second step. The lamp is so simple and the man who is engrossed in knowledge thinks that it cannot guide him throughout the jungle. But the one who crossed the jungle in darkness with the help of a small lamp is the wiser one, wiser than the one who is stuck thinking that the light is not sufficient.

RECOLLECTION

Man hears about the Hierarchy. It is the biggest light we have on the planet. Man is in search of the Hierarchy, but in vain, because he is not willing to make the small steps, and the Hierarchy is not interested in him, because he is only speculative. There are people to whom even the Hierarchy is very little, so they think of the White Island. Even this planet and the energies on the planet are also not sufficient to many, so they think of constellations like Sirius or the Pleiades, and still others think of the constellation of the Great Bear. This is how we grow crazy, because we do not make the very fundamental steps towards a proper living. Thus, the boat is broken. In the name of travel we walk into a boat and we break the boat. There are many truth seekers who break their boat in this fashion and drown. This is what we should avoid. It is not that we do not know about it, but it is better that we recollect this concept before we walk into the knowledge relating to Venus.

What is explained in this book is only the wisdom relating to Venus; it does not by itself take us to Venus, but if we start walking the steps, we have the possibility to experience Venus. That is why it is said that wisdom teaching has its limitations and it gradually settles down as a habit. It is a kind of addiction. Wisdom from time to time gives us inspiration. It gives us inspiration to live and experience. Wisdom for the sake of wisdom is a burden; just listening to it for the sake of listening.

We many times open our seminars speaking about the unity of the soul and the diversity of the forms. We also say that in our daily life we need to observe the soul while functioning in varieties of situations. Most of the time, as we walk out of the hall of teaching, this truth is just forgotten and we behave as usual. The only simple way is to pick it up and work with that particular truth. The truth is the unity of the soul and the diversity of the forms. In the diversity of the forms we see the soul. In the diversity of behaviour we see the soul. But we prefer to see the behaviours and the forms and not the soul. To move forward with life is to see the life in all. The more and more we recollect the unity of existence, the more and more the veils of the form, the colour and the soul, reveal to us. Otherwise wisdom remains wisdom and we remain what we are. That is why Krishna says: “One in a million picks it up”, others just listen and forget. The disciple asked Krishna:“ In that case, why should you do this job of reminding?”

When a student forgets what has been told in the next minute, he is retold and again he forgets; he is told again, and again he forgets… Teaching is the habit of the teacher, forgetting is the habit of the student. Neither is bored with it. Krishna says: “That is where love counts”. We really love the person who makes mistakes. We are never bored to tell with love and to remind with love. It is not admonishing for having forgotten, because the teacher knows that the student forgets. The student does not know that he forgets, and he also does not know that he has forgotten. That means, he forgets that he forgets. How difficult is the game! There is one who knows that the listener forgets, and there is the listener who does not know that he forgets. Between the two there is a communication.

The hope of the Teacher is that at least one student picks it up, so, he goes ahead untiringly. His doctrine is: “Never say die!”. The teacher is very hopeful that at least there will be one. When one is found, the work of the Teacher is over. Then, the one who has known starts the game only to find one. I always give the example of the relay race in the Olympic Games. The teacher runs with a stick in the hand all over the globe. He is not just running in a ground with 4000 metres. He is a real Olympian, because he continues to run till he finds a person to whom he can hand over the stick. That is what we have to take as a basis whenever we gather. This basis shall have to be taken with us when we go home. Without that basis, all wisdom exercises are futile. From time to time we gather, we are excited about wisdom and then we disperse. This has to be assimilated and has to be carried with us at all times. As we are walking into a sublime principle called Venus I had necessarily tell you the difference between comprehension and experience. Without this basis, if we walk into Venus, Venus laughs at us. Kindly keep this in mind, that we comprehend to experience. All comprehension has its culmination in experience. One gives the light of understanding, the other gives the experience of light. Is it not wonderful?

ASWA VIDYA

The principle of Venus in Sanskrit is called Sukra. Sukra is the principle that functions from the cosmic up to the planetary plane. Even while we eat our morning bread, he functions as our experiencing of the bread. We miss it when we speak while eating the bread. If we are experiencing the bread, we will not speak; if we speak there is no bread and it is just eating without experience. This is how we miss Sukra every minute. In every event we have developed an expertise in missing.

I have spoken many times about it as Aswa Vidya, which is the fundamental thought for a spiritual aspirant. Aswa Vidya makes us live “here and now” to experience. That means that we don't jump into the future nor do we drown into the past; it is living in the presence to experience it fully. When we are at one work the rest of it is absent to us, and only this work is present. We are well focused to experience. This is true in every walk of life. Volumes can be spoken of this Vidya or science.

The experience that we gain from the Cosmic Existence to our existence with the bread is the scope of operation of Venus. It is not just looking at our chart to see where our Venus is located. Mostly our Venus is squared by Mars. Thus the Venus principle has its range from the first emanation, that is, from the point of emergence to the point of our eating bread, all is experienced. This is what is called Sukra.

SUKRA: SEGREGATES, AGGREGATES

Before we get into the astrological understanding of Sukra, I will narrate the story of Sukra as it is recorded in the Puranas.

It is the story of individualization, and once again, the individual merging into the Universal Existence. The Universal Consciousness, in order to create, has to individualize. This individualization is a very long process. It is referred to by Madame H.P.Blavatsky as the Lemurian Age. It is a stupendous task to individualize, and it is equally a stupendous task once again to gain group consciousness or universal consciousness. For individual and group consciousness the key is held by Sukra. The bigger aspect of the group consciousness is the universal consciousness.

When the Sukra principle involves, there is individualization. When there is the evolution of the Sukra principle, there is the gaining of the universalization. We are now in the Aquarian Age which relates to group consciousness. How do we gain that group consciousness? Only with the help of the Venusian principle! No other principle helps us to gain group consciousness from the state of individual consciousness. It is for this reason astrology tells us that Venus rules the third decanate of Aquarius. The first decanate in the zodiacal sign speaks of individuality, the second decanate speaks of personality and the third decanate speaks of spirituality.

VENUS IN AQUARIUS

Venus is the ruler of the third decanate of Aquarius and Dhanishta is the constellation of the third decanate of Aquarius. This is the reason why we have to tune up to the Dhanishta constellation. Every time the moon moves into the constellation of Dhanishta we have the possibility of gaining the venusian principle. That is why Master CVV suggested attunement to that constellation for the benefit of humanity. Incidentally, Master CVV was also born in this constellation. Venus in the third decanate of Aquarius, is the highest aspect of Venus.

VENUS IN TAURUS

Venus in Taurus is indicative of experiencing the beauty as form. A beautiful form attracts us. That is how man and woman are also attracted to start with. This is the least aspect of Venus and it is the minimum that Venus does to us: to give us the happiness of a beautiful form. Beauty in the form is reflected by Taurus. It means, if we are still hanging around beautiful forms, we are very taurean; that is, very blunt in our energies. The beauty of the form is, no doubt, very attractive. That is Venus in Taurus.

VENUS IN LIBRA

When Venus is in Libra we see the beauty of the behaviour in preference to the beauty of the form. The beauty of the form lives very short. A man and a lady see each other. To each other they look beautiful in form. Then, each one looks at the other and says: “Shall we live together? Shall we marry?”, so they marry. After marriage it is more and more encountering the behaviour of each other than the form. No more the beauty of the form is appealing, it is the beauty of the behaviour that is appealing. All beautiful forms need not necessarily be beautiful in behaviour. Thus, the attraction that took place on the basis of form, develops a repulsion when it comes to the basis of behaviour. That is why the love at first sight is sometimes dangerous.

If we have a little depth to see the beauty of the behaviour in preference to the beauty of the form, then the choice shall have to be on the basis of behaviour than on the basis of form. This is a deeper aspect of Venus where there is a long term association. The association does not break.

Many times we see a broken marriage. In most of the cases the association was more based on form than on behaviour. There are others who would like to break on the basis of behaviour, but for social reasons they remain together. If we ask them how is their married life, they say: “Well, we are working it out”. For the entire life, it is only working out. Working out means not working in! It means one works on the other rather than working on himself. It is one testing the nerves of the other. Just pulling each other and remaining together. How do we know the behavioural compatibility unless we know substantially about the other person? That is where astrology helps us.

If there is behavioural compatibility, it should be preferred to compatibility of the forms. To recognize the behaviour in preference to the form, is Venus in Libra. The one with Venus in Libra is agreeable to all. That means, to him there are no repulsions; if others feel repulsive towards him, it is because of them; he feels agreeable with all.

We don't have to look into our charts to see if we have Venus in Libra. We shall see with how many persons we are agreeable.

Others agreeing with us is different, but how do we hold in our being about others? Do we have differences in our being about others? Do we have dislikes in our being about others? Others' disagreeability has nothing to do with our agreeing with others, if we wish to tread the path of discipleship. If you love me, I love you; if you hate me, I hate you. This is not the path of discipleship. More often we see people in the initial stages hugging each other, and when there is greater interaction, it develops into repulsion. If there are differences in us about others, that means the Venus principle in us is sleeping. We need to make sure that, as far as we are concerned, there should be no disagreeability in us about others. This is what is called the fundamental quality of friendliness. Mitra is the Sanskrit name for friendliness. To Lord Maitreya all beings on this planet are agreeable. He has no game of love and hate. He has no policy of “dividing and ruling”. This is the second aspect of Venus. The third aspect of Venus is to gain group consciousness; that means, we feel the other beings in our own being and we experience the experiences of the other beings also. For instance, if my friend Heinrich has a headache, we feel the headache in him, because we are permeating in consciousness from the state of individuality to the state of group. But the group consciousness cannot develop by itself; it develops only through our working out Venus in Libra. We cannot function suddenly as souls. It is a good wish, but on the path we have to work out all the aspects: from the beauty of the form to the beauty of behaviour and from the beauty of behaviour to group consciousness. In this process the faculty of love is developed.

VENUS AS LOVE

When Venus is in Aquarius we have beauty as pure love. In Taurus we have beauty as form and in Libra we have beauty as balance. A person who is balanced is very beautiful. A person who loses balance is ugly in terms of his behaviour. Balance means finding the brother in every other. If we see others, we lose balance and we will see some as our own friends and some as our enemies. Those whom we think our friends, we tend to overact with them and thereby create enmity with them. Don't we have many friends who tend to be our enemies later, because we try to do more than what is to be done in the name of our own understanding of friendship? Thick friends become thin friends later and after some time they don't speak to each other. Their faces do not blossom in the presence of each other.

When the brother is seen in others, the balance is gained. That is the basis for love to generate. When love is generated, the brother is seen as no other than our own self. Thus, from other to brother and from brother to one's own self, there is the ascension. To see the other as brother is only half true. To realize that the brother is no other than ourselves is the full truth. That means, we live through all the brothers. By that we have gained group consciousness. It is one functioning in many.

VENUS IN ITS THREE DIMENSIONS

Aquarius in its three decanates functions with three planets. Up to 10° it is Saturn, from 10° to 20° it is Mercury and from 20° to 30° it is Venus. This is the path of ascent as far as Venus is concerned.

From Saturn to Mercury and from Mercury to Venus. Working with Saturn means working with our own limitations and overcoming them. Working with Mercury means improving our comprehension, and working with Venus means experiencing that which we have comprehended. This is the fundamental triangle of Venus, Mercury and Saturn. That is why in all spiritual schools, the first step is to work with Saturn. Those who have overcome the limitations shall have to take up working with Mercury, where the limitations of concepts are also broken.

The first step is working with Saturn, that is the individual limitation. The second limitation is the conceptual limitation. We are asked: “Do you work with Bailey or Blavatsky?” Our answer is: “No, with Jesus Christ!”; as if the three were different! Be it Jesus Christ, Bailey or Blavatsky, all what flew through them was wisdom. If somebody asks: “Do you work with the Theosophical Society or with the World Teacher Trust, with the Mercury School or with the Arcane School?” Finished! We just remain with our own concepts; we cannot grow beyond comprehension and we deny ourselves the beauty of experience. Be it the Theosophical Society, the World Teacher Trust, the Mercury School or the Arcane School, what is important is to experience life. If the living experience is gone, we only carry the load of the concepts as donkeys; concepts of wisdom, but not wisdom. The same truth can be said by one Master in one language, by another Master in another language and we take them as two different things! This is how we are settled to some names and some concepts. We don't see the import of the concepts. When we travel towards the import from the concepts, we overcome Mercury to experience Venus. This is Venus in its three dimensions. We can also see the form aspect of Venus in Taurus the balance aspect of Venus in Libra and the love aspect of Venus in Aquarius.

Thus, the travel can be from Venus to Mercury, from Mercury to Saturn and also from Saturn to Mercury and from Mercury to Venus. The whole travel is done from its central point, otherwise again we will be moving around and around. This central point is called Jupiter. The presence of I AM Consciousness enables the path to be walked very easily. This ascending and descending path is described in the Puranas in a mystical way.

A PURANIC STORY

There is a story in the Puranas which gives us the dimension of Venus. When there is the first emanation from the seeming nothingness, there is the effulgence of light. It is called Bhrigu in Sanskrit and it is the light which is the basis for all creation. It is the content of all luminaries in the cosmos. He is said to have a son called Sukra, the Venus principle.

That means that from the totality of light there is a further emanation called Sukra, who was a good disciple of his father. Bhrigu the father, was always in contemplation, full of light, just like the silver screen. The silver screen of the cosmos is called Akasha or Kurukshetra in Sanskrit. Kurukshetra is the field of action of the light. On that screen of light there is a further emanation called Sukra. It is like the ray of light coming from the light. The ray of light is always associated with light. Without the light there is no ray of light. The ray of light is said to have been in association with its source. So, Sukra was always with the Father. To be always with the “Father” is the status of the “Son”; otherwise we cannot be called sons. We can be called sons of men, but not sons of light. A son of light is one who is always inseparably associated with light. So was Sukra with his Father.

One day, the Father was in such stillness. The Akasha is always still. All is happening within it, but as far as the Akasha is concerned, it is always still. The emanation cannot be still as the Akasha. The two are like the ocean and the wave. The wave is essentially the ocean, but it has movement. The ocean does not move.

The Son was with the Father who was in contemplation. Sukra was experiencing the beauty of Akasha and suddenly he found a beautiful nymph (Apsara) emanating from the Akasha, dancing in a very beautiful manner. The quality of Akasha is to be brilliant in three aspects: sound, light and rhythm. All is triangular in creation. Here also we have the triangle of Bhrigu the father, Sukra the son and Apsara the nymph. Apsara is the sound and the light that has a rhythm. The rhythm is also called dance, and the dance of the Apsara was said to be beautiful. That is why it is said in the Puranas that the dance of the Apsaras is indescribable, being sound, light and rhythm. Sound can also be understood as music.

When Sukra was observing the Akasha, he found an emanation from Akasha coming as sound, light and rhythm and went on following the Apsara. Just like in meditation we sit with a good intention and some thought gradually takes us away from meditation.

Sukra was taken away by the beauty of the sound, the light and the rhythm, and he followed, and followed and followed. So the thought relating to her had crystallized in him. It is said that following the nymph, Sukra landed in the plane of Indra, the kingdom of Indra. That means, in his comprehension there is a beauty of sound, light and rhythm and he is following it. From the state of being, where he was with the Father, he gradually descended to the state of a concept. The whole creation is also a concept presided by an intelligence called Indra. He is said to be the Lord of workings. When we get a thought crystallized in us, do we stop with it?

We shall pick up the know-how to work with it. Any thought that comes to us, propels us into action. Unless we are in contemplation with the Father, Bhrigu, there is propulsion into action. This propulsion into action is called “walking into the kingdom of the celestial king”. Indra is the one who is in charge of action in the creation and he exists in us as our higher mind. If some idea comes into our mind, we feel that it is a brilliant idea and that we have to work with it.

Thus Sukra, in pursuit of Apsara, reached the kingdom of Indra. The kingdom of the celestials was very splendourous. He had started in pursuit of a beauty and landed in a kingdom of beauty. As he arrived in the kingdom of beauty, the king said to him: “Enjoy my kingdom”. Indra told his celestials to show Sukra the splendours of the field of action.

The basic quality of Sukra is one of experience, and to experience Apsara he walked into the kingdom of Indra. There he was asked to experience further. He was moving in the kingdom of splendour. It was something like Switzerland, with lakes and snowy mountain peaks, beautiful landscapes, not of the material, but of the blue colour. It is a kingdom where there is the colour, the sound and the beauty of it.

When Sukra was moving in the kingdom with the assistance of Indra, he found the Apsara once again there. It was love at first sight. They liked each other and joined in a marital relationship. Mind you, it is not a marriage as we know, because there is no form as yet. It is a conceptual experience. It is experiencing the beauty of a concept. It is the beauty of sound, the beauty of light and the beauty of rhythm that is experienced. It is not of any form as such. As a consequence, Sukra has become a part of the triangle of sound, light and rhythm and was absorbed in it. Consequently he has become a potential thought form in manifestation. The scripture says that the association of Sukra with nymph Apsara took a time scale of:

432.000 x 10 = 4.320.000 x 4 = 17.280.000

This is the time span for the formation of the planet Venus.

That is how the light joining sound, colour and rhythm manifested itself as a planet of light. The planet is formed in that fashion with the activity of the ray of light, sound, colour and rhythm into a form, and Sukra continued to associate with the Apsara.

Slowly, the brilliance of this light gradually weakened, because it has disintegrated into sound, colour and form. It is a process of disintegration and individualization.

As students of spiritualism we arse trying to integrate with colour and sound to realize the light. But here is a disintegration happening. The Purana says that Sukra has become weak of virtues. This is debilitation that has happened to the ray of light coming from its source. It has generated in him the memory relating to his experience with the Apsara. That is the birth of the moon. The placement of our Moon tells us the capacity of our memory and it stores all the experiences.

It is said the Sukra worked with the Apsara for one Manvantara. Gradually, through the Moon, he fell on Earth. The Purana has a very poetic, humorous and mysterious way of presenting a sublime truth. Sukra is then said to have gathered the smoke of memory. What happens to us when the lady with whom we live is not around us? We only carry the memory of her. The memory about the one who is absent makes us worried. It is a process by which we grow more and more weak by recollecting. The memory about things which are not available, which are not immediate, develop into feelings. A man who is caught by feelings is more confused. In fact, all our confusion is arising out of feelings, but not on account of the reality. If we have some feelings about some persons and keep self-cooking about it, who is affected? Our feelings affect us only. When we look at someone and that someone does not look at us, we take it as a misbehaviour. Thus, we suffer from feelings more than the reality. The feeling about money, the feeling about health, the feeling about sickness, the fear of death, the fear of the unknown, the feeling of security; there are many such things that confuse us enough. That is how we become debilitated more and more.

The story says that on account of his memory relating to an experience, Sukra fell on the Moon. To experience is lively, to carry the memory of experience is carrying something dead. For example, we have a good breakfast in the morning. Does it help us now if we carry the memory of it? Likewise, at the breakfast table someone called us a fool. Does it help us now to carry it with us? We carry things that were said about us even years before. We nurture them, we grow them into big trees and look for a combat in the next occasion to settle accounts. So through out between that occasion and this occasion the feeling has put us to more and more weakness.

Please understand, memory is such an important tool, and at the same time it also has its smoke called feeling. Memory is required, but feeling is not required.

If we are wise, we will not recollect the past without a purpose. The first sentence that Krishna speaks to Arjuna is: “If you entertain the feelings all the time about whatever has happened, you are not a wise one”. Don't we say: “Past is past; live in the present?”

Sukra started feeling about the experiences. It is a further degeneration. If we always recollect the beautiful group living we had in Engelberg, we are dead; dead from the present. Suppose, it is an unpleasant experience and we still live in it till today; then we are dead. We are expected to be lively. Feelings make us dead; memory does not. Memory is a facility for a future action. Feeling is the smoke that confuses.

That is how, via the Moon, Sukra reached the Earth. See, how the fall is. Basically he is a ray of light, but only occasionally he was recollecting about it. Whenever he recollected and asked himself: “Who am I?”, the voice in him was answering: “You are the dawn”. Only then he started to reorient. When he was doing it, there were also other things with him. It was the feeling about the experience.

When we contemplate about I AM other things keep coming to us, because we have the memory and the smoke of the feelings about it.

SUKRA BECOMES MORTAL

Sukra was weak, hence he could not contemplate upon the source of his being. As a consequence, he was looking hither and thither. While he was looking in this way, he found a beautiful deer. A deer in the scriptures always speaks of the constellation Mrigasirsha. It is the constellation that makes us go towards something which is apparently there, but not really. In Sanskrit, deer is called Mruga. We know how a deer jumps, very inconsistent and very fast. It is difficult to catch a deer. It moves with such a speed, it seems that it is getting into our hand's reach, but we miss it. Mruga also means the mirage. We see how people pursue after water in the desert. It seems to be there, and as we go near, the water moves further, because it is an illusion. That is how Sukra was getting into a mirage and that is how we are. We are after mirages. Things seem to get into our hands and are slipping. That mirage (the deer) takes us away from our centre.

The Purana says that Sukra married the deer and thereby fell further. Many Orientalists coming from the west, look into the Puranas and say: “Those ancient Indians had no brains. How can a man marry a deer and beget children?”. The truth is that the Initiates who wrote the scriptures wanted to protect the scriptures from those who mishandle them. That is why they have stated things in a symbolical fashion. Mruga in Sanskrit means deer and it also means the constellation Mrigasirsha.

Thus, Sukra was said to have married a deer and begot children. It means that he was just like every one of us, running after mirages of life and start creating his own problems. Our problems are our children and our children are our problems, because both of them have come from us. This is how Sukra, pursuing the mirage, went on producing children and slowly he was getting lost. Then he was bitten by a serpent! To be bitten by a serpent means that he was totally conditioned through time. He has become a gross physical materialistic person. To be bitten by a serpent is indicative of death. It means through time he started dying, which was not his case at all.

Before that there was no such thing as death to him, even for Manvantaras and Yugas! Now he dies as you and me, and each time he dies he gets into another birth. So, he has fallen into the cycles of birth and death and moves in it endlessly.

This is a gradual descent in pursuit of experience, but the beauty of Sukra is that he once again works out the Wisdom of Immortality. That is what we also have to do. If we are immortal, our experience is continuous. In just one story we have the involution and evolution, from the state of immortality to the state of mortality and again from the state of mortality to the state of immortality. This is what we call the fall from the first emanation up to the planet Earth. The narration is true with the planets and also with the beings.

THE ASCENT OF SUKRA

The descent of the principle of Venus as contained in the Puranas is what is being narrated, and we have seen how it reached that state of mortality from the state of immortality. It is in the scheme of things that the son who went astray, in due course of time returns to the source from which he went astray. It is a law in creation. There is the work of the centripetal and centrifugal forces. The One Energy multiplies into many to form the creation, and once again gathers itself to become itself. This is what we know as the law of involution and evolution. There is a point beyond which it cannot move further to disintegrate and therefore has to return. The path of return is what is explained in the second part of the story.

Sukra in his pursuit of experience of life meets a “lady” by name Urjaswathi. The same energy which has drawn him towards matter has its counterpart seen as Urjaswathi. He marries this “lady”, which means that his pursuit turns once again towards the source. The meaning of Urjaswathi is ascending energy. From the state of the cosmos to the state of mortality there is the fall, which is also represented in the human being as the fall from Sahasrara or head centre, to Muladhara or base centre. The rise is through the path of Urjaswathi, which is the path of Sushumna, through which one ascends once again from the base centre with the help of the same Venus principle. It is utilising the Venusian energy for ascension than for incarnation. This is what is called the upward movement of the life energy. The downward movement of the energy causes disintegration and the upward movement causes, once again, integration. The upward movement is conducted through Sushumna and, once again, one raises from the gross physical to the subtle physical, and we further ascend step by step into the state of being in the presence of the Father - the Light of the Sky.

This is what has been worked out by Sukra and consequently he has known how the immortals become mortal and how the mortals become immortal. He is said to have known the key to immortality. The key to immortality is to transcend the material while we are in the physical body. To be able to achieve immortality while we are in the mortal body affords us the facility to continue the identity. That is the wisdom that Venus gives.

Sukra, associating with Urjaswathi, regains the steps of immortality and once again reaches the Father and thereby realizes in him the two-way path. For that reason he is retained in creation as the Teacher of Immortality. Immortality is a very important aspect to be gained to experience the continuity of life, which is gained as the 4th Initiation. It is the ascension of resurrection while being in the body. This is ourselves seeing ourselves. That is how our etheric double visualizes our body.

VENUS IN RELATION TO OTHER PLANETS

VENUS IN ASSOCIATION WITH MARS

This is the wisdom Venus bestows and hence it is considered to be the principle of experience. It exists in all of us and it descends through us as the sperm. Sukra in Sanskrit also means the sperm. The downward movement of the sperm is caused by the negative aspect of Mars. The upward movement of the sperm is caused by the positive aspect of Mars. In either case it is Mars that functions for evolution as well as for involution. That is the reason why when we look into the horoscope of a person, we need to see what is the relationship between Mars and Venus. The sextile or trine aspect is helpful for upward movement; the square, opposition and conjunction cause an impulse for downward movement. It gives a hint that one has to work much more to transform oneself, because the urge is more for descent, for a downward flow. Venus in its negative aspect with Mars causes conditioning into the matter and its positive aspect causes expansion from such conditioning.

VENUS IN ASSOCIATION WITH SATURN

When there is more and more urge for acquisition of forms, it is the functioning of Saturn and Venus. As a consequence man is buried in matter. That means, he is a mobile tomb, where consciousness is totally buried in matter. This is what is called death. What we know today as death is a release from this burial. See how our understanding undergoes an inversion. Death is a state of being conditioned by matter. But today our under standing of death is, in fact, a phenomenon of our release from the physical matter. We are released from the body through the event of death. It is nothing but a release given, because we are unable to release ourselves. We are so much stuck in it that we suffocate in it, and we think it is life. What we think as life is death from the higher standpoint, and what we think as death is the gateway to life from the higher standpoint. This strong link of our being with matter is caused by Saturn. That link has to be disconnected. When that disconnection takes place, we can once again start ascending. When that disconnection takes place, we are in the higher side of the base centre.

THE TECHNIQUE FOR RELEASE

The base centre has a dual functioning. One way it makes us more and more involved into matter - that is the lower side of the base centre; the other is to release us from matter, which is the higher side of the base centre. Yoga is the practice suggested for release from the matter. It is a practice which does not carry any religion. It is related to our breathing, and breathing has no religion, fortunately. Nobody has started a religious breathing. In the name of religion we are given many names and forms of God, and we break our heads against many things, but they do not give us the clue to release from matter.

The technique for release from matter is given only by the Initiates, and it is relatively unknown to the religious people. By this I am not condemning the religions. Religion has its own fitness in creation and it helps man to gain the basic discipline. Mostly every religion gives a code of conduct, which is ethical, moral and social, but by itself it does not give us the release. It requires a Master of Wisdom or an Initiate who can give us the technique for release.

The base centre is linked to the path of Sushumna and the two are linked by a line of force. When man is released from the base, there is the upward movement of the energy. This delinking is compatible with the general attitude of detachment towards things around us. This detached attitude in life is a prerequisite which every religion speaks of, but it should be coupled with a technique. The technique helps us to delink and proceed in the higher realms of being. In the body, man is tied down three times. One tie-up or knot is between the base and the sacral centre, the second knot is between the solar plexus and the heart centre, and the third knot is between the pituitary and the pineal gland. These three initiations shall have to be achieved, for which purpose the Initiates have given certain practices.

For example, Master CVV has given such a technique and stated: “When you practise this technique at a rhythm of twice a day for a period of twelve years without discontinuation, then the release takes place”. While we are more inclined to study books and listen to wisdom, we are much less inclined for the practice of delinking oneself from the material. Such High Initiates come once in a while to give us the technique. There are many who can give wisdom, but the ones who can give the technique towards immortality are rare. For instance, it requires a Master like Jesus Christ or a Master like Morya, Koot Hoomi or Master Djwhal Khul, or someone like Pythagoras to give this kind of technique. It cannot be given by all. Many have given wisdom and that wisdom dies with us. But few have given the wisdom to overcome death. So, when such a wisdom is given, it is too simple and hence we overstep it. Master CVV said: “You just do this; the rest of it comes to you”. The continuity of the practice enables the delinking. Do you know what happens when the practice is conducted regularly? The point of bondage, or the knot, is slowly confronted. It is such a slow confrontation that you do not feel the pain. Just like a ripe fruit detaches itself from the tree, so also the continuous practice causes the detachment. Hence this practice is the key. A similar key is also given in Kriya Yoga. Kriya means action. It is the action to delink the man from the material.

When this delinking takes place, we are continuing. Time will no more delink us from that which we have gathered. Just like we remember what we have learnt yesterday and the day before, in the same fashion life after life, whatever is gathered is retained in its detail. Such techniques are known only to the Hierarchy. That is the beauty of the Hierarchy. It is an ancient-most technique, which is retained in the Hierarchy and is given out to the aspirants according to the discipline they show. It is discipline after all that makes a disciple out of an aspirant.

What is given by Master CVV is the first step towards it. It is the step to discipleship. When we have done it regularly for 12 years, we are at the portals of discipleship. But the very first step itself is often overlooked. The technique is also contained in the Bhagavad Gita, in the 8th chapter, when the Lord Speaks of the sacred word.

We have to understand that Venus in association with Mars can cause descent in one aspect and ascent in another aspect. When it causes descent it puts us in the conditioning of matter i.e. the Venusian energy conditioned by Saturn. In the book “The Aquarian Master” it is described that Master CVV functioned with Saturn first, with Venus next. So are we to do. Saturn limits and we are to liberate from the limitations by recognizing our own limitations. The first thing is to recognize them. We easily see the limitations of others, but we seldom see our own limitations. Master CVV emphasized that we shall have to overcome our limitations by recognizing them and working with them. Rhythmic functioning is the key to overcome one's own limitations. That is what is given as morning 6 o' clock and evening 6 o' clock invocation. That is also what Master Djwhal Khul says as: “The 7th Ray holds the key”. One has to systematize to overcome the state of a conditioned being. When once this conditioning is overcome, we get into the first step. The first step is Venus/Mars, the second step is Venus/Saturn and the third step is Venus/Uranus.

VENUS IN ASSOCIATION WITH URANUS

Be it Master CVV, Master Djwhal Khul or any great Initiate, when they are emphasizing on rhythm or on order, they are only emphasizing on the aspect of Uranus, because any work with Uranus is rearrangement. That means that the fragments are brought together according to an order to make it meaningful and to make it magnetic. It is like an image of a man being fragmented into thousand pieces. It is a question of rearranging the thousand of pieces in an order to gain the image of a man once again. Every fragment is important. If a particular fragment is neglected, the image is not complete. Nothing need to be brought from outside to complete the image. Hence, an Initiate always said: “You do not gain anything from me, but order”. Please remember, no things are gained, only order and rhythm is gained. Rhythm causes rearrangement. Rearrangement establishes the lines of force. The force, which was hitherto blocked, moves freely. The iron piece is a magnet but for the arrangement of atoms therein. A rearrangement causes flow of the magnetic current. So too, the work of the Initiate cause rearrangement.

Rearrangement of one's own being is like making a sculpture out of the stone. When Venus functions with Uranus the rearrangement happens. At the macrolevel even the human bodies are being rearranged by Venus and Uranus, which is the work of Manu. The Manu tries to bring out new models of human beings. It is about the work of the new pituitary model. Venus along with Uranus, create at the macrolevel new models for greater facilities. If Venus and Uranus are not well aspected, the rearrangement is for the worse. In the name of rearrangement there will be aberrations to break from the limitation. If the rearrangement is not proper, it causes a worse situation. Today the influence of Uranus on the planet has made the weak susceptible to all kinds of aberrations. Anarchy, homo-sexuality, sexual aberrations and the intermixing of incompatible energies, are some of the aspects of the negative side of Uranus. With a view to work out something better, something worse takes place. But where the law of rhythm is followed in tune with the law of Nature, the rearrangement is for the better. This is what Venus offers in its aspect with Uranus.

VENUS IN ASSOCIATION WITH MERCURY

A good aspect between Venus and Mercury brings balance in life, balance in thought, balance in emotion and balance in action. Whenever we have an occasion for such good aspects happening between Mercury and Venus, we shall have to avail the opportunity to balance the energies in us. When Mercury is transiting, making sextiles and trines with our birth Venus, those times shall have to be advantageously used. In the same fashion, when Venus is transiting making these aspects with the birth Mercury, one should avail the opportunity. Those times are propitious to gain the balance in the three worlds, physical, emotional and mental. This is an appropriate use of astrology in the spiritual path.

VENUS IN ASSOCIATION WITH JUPITER

Venus in association with Jupiter gives occasion for self-realization. If there is a good aspect between Venus and Jupiter in the birth chart, it can be well utilized for self-realization. If not, you can see whenever the transiting of Venus is making favourable aspects with the birth Jupiter. Such times should be marked and then accommodated for the spiritual practice. Any aspect with our birth Venus or Jupiter, or between the two, should be put to good use. It can also happen among the planets in the sky, when transit Venus and transit Jupiter also make trine and sextile aspects. For instance, now Jupiter is in the last degrees of Scorpio, and soon he will enter into Sagittarius. Then Venus will in due course of time, enter into Aries. That means, in the sky there will be a trine between Venus and Jupiter, which can also be used for the spiritual practice. Also in your progression of the chart there are aspects that take place; then also you can utilize the time for spiritual practice. This is how astrology gives us the Time Key and the favourable time to make significant progress. When Jupiter and Venus are well aspected, the time is propitious for self-realization.

VENUS IN ASSOCIATION WITH NEPTUNE

When Venus and Neptune make good aspects, they result in experiencing pure love of the cosmic order, which such high souls like Lord Maitreya hold.

VENUS IN ASSOCIATION WITH THE MOON

If the Moon is well aspected with Venus, the experience through mind is vivid. If it is ill-aspected, there is more and more smoke in the mind. The mind becomes smoky. When we get into the past, we generate feelings and live in feelings. In the same manner we also get into the future and the feelings about it and live in smoke. That means, more husk and less grain. If there is a favourable aspect, it enables experiencing very vividly the events. There is no confusion.

This is how Venus in its functioning with all other planets, gives its different keys to us. When it is in interaction with Mars, it can be conditioning or expanding. In its interaction with Saturn, it is buried in matter, which we can overcome through rhythm that is imposed by Saturn. Venus in its interaction with Mercury, gives us balance in the three worlds and Venus in its interaction with Jupiter, gives us self-realization. When self-realization takes place, the three qualities manifest: the Light, the Will and the Love. In its higher dimension we have the same thing when Venus and Neptune are worked out in one's own being. Throughout the process of ascension, Mars in its positive aspect, functions as the will. Mars gives the fiery aspiration. If Mars is not well aspected in the horoscope there is no fiery aspiration, there is frequent discontinuation and there are frequent disturbances to the practice. This fiery aspect of Mars is also called Vulcan. It is the fiery will which was very much invoked by the Greeks, because continuity gives the scope for growth. It is the virility of Mars that enables us to continue. These are some of the aspects which we find between the planets.

VENUS - EARTH'S HIGHER SELF

Venus is the subtle Earth, being our planet the grosser Earth. It shines twice as much as our planet. More shining means more consciousness and less matter. When matter grows more and more transparent, it keeps on gaining more light, and when it is dense, it will lose the light. When we lose light, the matter becomes gross. When we gain light, the matter becomes subtle. The more and more we are occupied with thoughts of light, the matter in the body goes through the alchemy and grows subtle. So, there is the relationship between Venus and Earth in this regard.

The planet Venus is the higher aspect of our Earth. It functions as our higher counterpart. Venus directs its energies towards the Earth to rise the Earth into sublime states. This is why it is called the elder sister or elder brother of our Earth, and its link to our Earth is the North Pole.

Around the North Pole of the Earth, there is the Venusian energy linking up. The ones who carry the Venusian energy, keep guiding the Earth and the beings on the Earth. The vibrations of the matter relating to Venus is much more subtler; it forms the first and second ether of our Earth. The beings that visit our Earth from Venus; permeate in the ether of our Earth. It is for that reason it is said that the Logos and ruler of our planet, Sanat Kumara, is in the second ether of our Earth. He cannot descend further and he is a descendent from Venus. In fact, from time to time, there are intelligences visiting our planet from Venus to give the required inspiration for the planet and the planetary beings.

It is said that Lord Krishna on his way to the planet earth, routed himself via Venus. Sanat Kumara is also one who has descended and made an abode on this planet for the benefit of the planetary beings. They link up to the higherself in us and give us the necessary inspiration to come out of our tombs of matter. The expectation that a Messiah will come and raise the dead from the tombs is more symbolic than a planetary fact. Whenever a high soul from Venus visits us, we are inspired to overcome our material conditioning and consequently we are liberated from the tombs of matter in which we are. That is what an elder brother does. An elder brother is helpful to those who have no Father. In the occult sense, we are all children of the widow. In masonry they also say that we are the sons of the widow; that means we do not know our Father and we did not see Him. Even before we are born, we have lost him, and only the mother is known to us; that is, the matter. Who is there to guide those who have lost their Father? The elder brother guides, if he is really an elder brother. In the family also the elder brother is supposed to take up the responsibility of the younger brothers, otherwise he cannot arrogate to himself that he is the elder brother of the family. Just like the elder brother in the family takes care of the younger brothers in the absence of the father, the elder brothers keep coming from Venus for the humanity which has lost the Father. When they give the right inspiration, the younger brothers are oriented towards the Father. The purpose of the elder brothers is to link up the younger brothers to the Father. This is the only work of the elder brother, giving the link to the Father. He does not stand between the Father and the son. When the Father is found by the younger brother, there is no more roles for the elder brother, because the younger brother himself has become an elder brother now.

That is why it is said that Venus has no role to play in the presence of the Sun. Where there is a conjunction of Venus and the Sun, during that time, the Venusian energies do not reach us. That means, Venus ceases to operate where there is the sun. For that reason it is also said that Venus is afflicted in Aries. Aries is the exaltation point for the sun; it is the mid-heaven where the sun is all light. The noon sun gives the most brilliant light. At that time no star can shine in the sky. So also Venus has no role to play where the sun is already in action. That is why it is said that the conjunction of sun with Venus makes Venus inoperative.

There are essentially two paths available to us and also an option: one is the path of reproduction and the other is the divine path or the path of light. Man stands at the junction of the two paths. He has to make a choice of the two. If he makes a choice of the path of reproduction or procreation, he descends more and more into the matter; that means, the tomb of matter around him is more strongly built, and it becomes more difficult for him to come out of it. The other is the divine path, where the act of procreation is substituted by the act of creation. The beauty is that Venus is the presiding deity for both actions. Venus presides over the act of procreation for involution and over the act of creation for ascent into the spirit. In man, the principle of Venus is very much existing. In both ways it keeps giving the experience. One gives the experience of mundane life, the other gives the experience of divine life.

The path of creation is called the divine path. It is also called the solar path. The path of procreation is called the path of the Pitris or the lunar path. The choice is left to us. In the path of procreation or the lunar path, there is more conditioning. In the solar path there is liberation, but experience is common for both. In the lunar path we experience sorrows, emotions and conflicts. When we take the other path we experience the bliss the joy and the happiness.

The basis is experience. Basically the beings look for experience and it can be blissful or otherwise according to the path that we tread. For both the paths the planet is Venus, and for both the paths the Muladhara or base centre, is the location. The base centre is the centre for procreation; that is, the lunar path, and it is also the centre from which there is a column of force developed which has to be formed in the being. This column of force is called the Brahma Randhra. It is also called the Sushumna path.

THE SEVENTH RAY OR THE PATH OF LIBERATION

Sushumna is the First Ray of the Seven Rays. The Second Ray is Harikesha, the Seventh Ray is Svaraj. The Seventh Ray Svaraj is no other than the path of liberation. Svaraj in Sanskrit means self-governing. We are the kings of our own kingdom, and we are not slaves to anything. To be the master of one's own life - that is what is called self-governing, and it is what the Seventh Ray gives us. That is why there is so much emphasis on the Seventh Ray. It is an aspect of Kala Chakra Tantra.

Kala Chakra is the wheel of time in its circular movements. Time moves on cyclically. It is unending, and we get tired. But there is a process to come out of the Kala Chakra. The process is Tantra. So, Kala Chakra Tantra is a technique to overcome tiresomeness of the cycles of time. That is what the Seventh Ray offers. If we are asked to function with the seventh ray, we are not so much interested because it demands a rhythm. We have to transform the routine of life into a ritual, through a specific rhythm.

When the daily routine is considered a routine, it becomes a dead thing. In the same routine, there is always something new. If we can see that which is new and comes to us on a daily basis in the same routine, we have transformed it into a ritual and we have developed enough interest in life in the routine. Otherwise everything in life seems to be the same.

Nature always offers something new on a daily basis. Unless we have a keen interest we do not see that which is fresh in the routine. The freshness to be realized in daily routine, which is otherwise dead, makes life lively. That is the beginning of the Seventh Ray activity in order not to skip anything that we have proposed for ourselves, including the morning and evening invocation. Otherwise we always find excuses to escape from the morning and evening invocation. There is a way to continue life, and if we continue life the wisdom we gathered also continues with us. Otherwise we have to learn again and again and again.

In the lunar path, every time we start, we start from square one. In the path of procreation we lose the rhythm; we have only the dead routine, while in the solar path we have the ritual to come up to Sushumna. The path to Sushumna begins from Svaraj; that is, the seventh ray, and only its functioning makes us get into the divine path. It is very inconvenient to listen and difficult to practise, but if we wish to embark upon the path of the divine, there are no alternatives. Muladhara provides the path of Sushumna. The path of Sushumna is the path of the Divine will. “Father, Thy will be done, not mine”. We only say that. Do we ever allow the Father to conduct His will through us? It can happen only when the path of Sushumna is prepared. The path of Sushumna is opened to us when we have learnt to govern ourselves. That means, we have to pick up the quality of Leo to be able to govern ourselves, but not to govern others. We are too eager to save others or to govern others.

The first step towards the path of initiation is to govern ourselves, to allow others to govern themselves and not to allow others to govern us. This path requires following the rhythm of a ritual. There is enough said about rhythm and ritual via seventh ray in the books; it is the entry point into the path. If We make the entry, we have the continuity, if we don't make the entry, all that we have learnt in this cycle is dead along with us.

One of the greatest Initiates of KaliYuga, called Sankaracharya, says: “You, fellow being, think of the Cosmic will and associate with it and thereby continue to live, otherwise all the gymnastics of wisdom dies along with you”. You may do much gymnastics of wisdom, but they die with us, because we have not learnt to live beyond death. The Background consciousness is called Govinda in Sanskrit. Govinda is the owner of all the rays of light and we are the rays. All formations are on the basis of the rays coming from the sun. The Sun is coming from the Central Sun, the Central Sun from the Cosmic Sun and the Cosmic Sun from the Background or Govinda. The Initiate Sankaracharya says: “Recollect that Cosmic will Govinda, you ignorant fellow. Recollect the owner of all life and of all light and love and become part of Him; otherwise all the gymnastics of your wisdom will die with you”. This is the secret of Venus.

There is a path of practice and there is a path of gathering wisdom. All our collections will not help us if we don't live. What happens if we collect a million dollars in the bank, but die the next year? It is of no use to us. Like wise, the wisdom that we gather is of no use to us unless we continue to live through the cycles of time. What is more important, to continue to live through the cycles of time or to gather wisdom? Common sense tells us that we should continue to live, so that we have an eternity of time to know and to experience. We will find many teachers giving wisdom but we rarely find a teacher giving the technique of continuity, because they themselves do not know. They know wisdom, but they do not know how to transcend death. The Hierarchy on this planet knows; others do not. The Hierarchy always looks to us to continue through cycles of time than to gather knowledge. There is a process for it. That process is reversing the direction of the flow of energies.

DESIRE VERSUS LOVE

This is the triangle that binds us: Venus via Mars landing into Saturn. This is the triangle through which every average man factions in mundane life. Most of the time we love what we desire. So, we are not in love; we are in desire and we call it love! When we say: “I love this videocamera”, it means that we desire it. We are very diplomatic in our expressions. Someone has something very valuable with him, and we keep looking at it, till he says: “Do you like it?”; then we say: “Oh, I love it”. The message is that we want it.

To us there is no clarity between love and desire. The love which we speak of cannot co-exist with desire. The pure love, of which we speak much in our circles, does not exist if desire exists. If there is desire, there is no love. If there is Love; there is no desire. When we look to the lives of the initiates we understand that they love, but do not desire. We desire and we call it love. This is our inversion. There are many initiates in India who have demonstrated love without desire. We have the example of the life of Jesus whom we know so well. There were so many men who loved Maria Magdalena and she thought that she was loved by all those men. They gave her good shelter and good comforts for living with her. Then came Jesus into her life and told her: “Maria, I am the only one who loves you; others do not”. Maria Magdalena could not believe it, but later she realized that others desired her, but did not love her. Desire was spoken as love.

When a young man looks at a young woman and vice versa, it is more a desire based look than a love-based look, though apparently it seems to be love. The superficial aspect of desire is what is always associated with that which we call love. The right aspect of desire is what is always associated with that which we call love. The right word for it is emotion. Instead of saying: “I love it”, we should say: “I am emotional about it”. When we say: “I love it”, there is no such thing as loving “It”. Jesus loved Maria Magdalena, but he did not desire her in any aspect. We don't have this clarity in our life. If we love, we cannot desire. That is pure love. We love a person because we desire certain things from the other person. We love a place because we wish to derive something from that place. We desire a thing because we want to derive something from it. We are looking for fulfilment of our desires in the name of love. To an Initiate there is no such thing as loving places, persons and things. To him, love does not require a venue, but to an ordinary man, love requires a venue. To an initiate there is no such thing as showing love. Showing love is nothing than showing desires or fulfilling others desires.

When we really love, we don't desire anything from the person we love. In the name of love, if we desire, it is nothing but possessiveness. Depending on the state of consciousness in which one is, he gives very peculiar and strange definitions of love. That is because love and desire are not separated in an ordinary man.

When the desire is against the Law of Nature, the experience leads us to conditioning. That is how people through desire get conditioned. This is the negative aspect of Mars; to desire more than what naturally we are expected to. This is the flow of Venusian energy via Mars to Saturn, and that causes conditioning. The more and more the love is desire-based, there is more and more conditioning. It is like building a concrete structure around us, building a castle with no exit. That is how we become prisoners through our desires. If the desire is requirement-based, we arrest the process of conditioning ourselves. If it is just desire-based, we keep acquiring thoughts and things with which we become prisoners. That is why every doctrine tells us initially how to desire. Excessiveness makes us walk into the castle of concrete, or tomb of Saturn. There we have to wait the game again and again. This is the negative aspect of Mars that causes the conditioning via Saturn. The conditioned person experiences cyclically birth and death.

THE PATH OF PROCREATION

Another aspect of Mars is sex. Sex is positive and negative. Anything in Creation by itself has no such thing as positive or negative; it becomes positive or negative according to our attitude. Is electricity good or bad? Is salt good or bad? It all depends on how we use it. That makes it positive or negative.

We have to make a good understanding of the following triangle by which we are able to tread the Divine Path.

Venus in its physical aspect is the sperm and has its counterpart in the woman. The physical formation in the human being is on account of Venus. The sperm is the vehicle for an ego that descends. The egos need vehicles to descend. The descent of the ego into the sperm is the work of the Moon, or lunar energy. When it is decided that an ego should descend, it takes to a sperm. It is the work of Mars to deliver the ego through the sperm. We can see Nature's intention in this triangle. The ego keep descending via the Moon, the path of procreation. They go through the wheel of birth and death all the time. The egos go from Earth to the Moon through that which we call death, and the Moon once again sends the egos back with a good intention that the next time we may take to the other road. Moon conducts this work; it conducts the descent of the egos and sends them through its rays to the Earth. That is why the nights are important for procreation and not the days.

The vehicle for the descending ego is the sperm, which is Venus. Then, as it is generated in the man, it has to find its descent again. So, the descent of the ego is conducted by the lunar principle, while the descent of the sperm that contains the ego is conducted by Mars.

Thus, Moon sends the ego, that is the descent of the ego from Moon to Earth. Then, it joins a sperm. Now the sperm has to be delivered out for incarnation into a body. The descent of the ego is carried out by the Moon and the descent of the sperm is carried out by Mars. That is how the Moon, Venus and Mars work in a triangle to bring out the ego that is intended for incarnation. What happens in the process? The sperm is sacrificing itself for the ego to come out. Consequently, the ego gets into the body. That is the sublime intention of Nature.

Suppose we keep burning this sperm, not to bring out a child, but just for our pleasure. That which we burn will start burning us. That is where an important understanding must be made of sex if we wish to tread the Divine Path; otherwise we will spend away our energies. It is the same Venus which gives us the energy for the Divine Path. When it is wasted, as Sukra in the story became weak of virtues, we also become weak and wasted. That means, we have lost one more chance. In so far as the act of procreation is not for the purpose, of progeny, we are not carrying out any natural law. The sperm is not ours. It is given to us. It can be used by us either way. The initiates only use it for procreation and at other times they use it for penance to ascend. That is how one needs to use it. When it is just used for pleasure, the energy which is given to us for ascension, is only used by us for descent. We are given an aircraft to go to heaven and we have gone with it to hell. It is possible. We can make hell out of it and we can also make heaven out of it. We think we are going to heaven, because we are pursuing pleasures, but we are going to hell. When the natural law is worked out, there is no destruction of our own being. When it is not for the natural law, but for our own pleasure, we will get into a situation where we cannot retreat and we will have to go back to the Moon where, once again, we will be sent back to Earth. We keep moving from Moon to Earth and from Earth to Moon - that's all, and that is the circle in which we are struck. This circle is described in the 8th chapter of the Bhagavad Gita. We totally become beings conditioned by the law of cause and effect, if we do not really overcome the circle of wishes.

We should know how to work with sex, because we have the vehicle and we have two roads. The vehicle is the sperm, but in which way do we drive the vehicle? If we are driving it towards the north, we cannot drive it towards the south, and we cannot drive south and believe that we are driving towards north. Do we see the distortions of the wisdom that is happening in this century in some schools? They try to show us the Divine Path through sex.

Let us imagine a crossroad where there is a signboard pointing towards the right, which says: heaven, and another one pointing toward the left, which says: hell. We, human beings, have turned the signboard by 180 degrees. To us, believing is seeing. So, we turned it the other way and we say that through sex we go to heaven. We want to believe in it and hence we make a doctrine of it, and we try to impose it on others by telling them to live a sex life, calling it Tantra. That means we have changed the direction of the board, but the road does not change. We cannot change the world and the laws of the world for our convenience. We have to change to tune up to the world. We people want everything to change according to our convenience. But we should remember: “Nothing changes; we have to change”. The changes around us happen according to a bigger plan, not according to our plan.

Let us suppose that in this place there was a colony of ants before we came and we have decided to live here for four days. Can the ants change our programme? Just like the ants cannot change our programme, we also cannot change the programme of the Planet, but we can tune up to it. The ants think: “Oh, some humans have come here; let us adjust our activity to avoid the crisis of confrontation”. Likewise we also have to attune ourselves to the plan of the bigger being called the planet. This is where there is the need to work with Venus and to see that there is no drainage of the sperm. We cannot let it go down the drain. Let us therefore understand the method of working with Venus.

THE PURPOSE OF BEAUTIFUL FORMS

There is the instinct in us to get attracted to anything beautiful; we cannot avoid it; it is there with us and we get focused. There is a quality in beauty that makes us focused, just like a magnet focuses and draws the attention of the iron pieces. In the presence of the magnet, the iron pieces cannot have their own behaviour. Left to themselves, the iron pieces may wag their tails, but the tails are wound up in the presence of magnet. Every beautiful form is such a magnet that makes us focused; that means, it draws our attention. We cannot be weary and hazy in the presence of a beautiful form. When we are focused something happens in us.

The ability to get focused to beauty is what Venus gives us. Then the beauty of the form to which we are focused, makes a rearrangement in us. This is a rearrangement of the psychic levels in us, the magnetic currents in us, and it results in transformation of the base nature in us. This is what happens in the presence of an Initiate. This is also what happens in the presence of a beautiful form as we conceive and worship on the altar. That is how forms of beauty are considered very important to get focused and to get rearranged in our magnetic currents. The vehicles of the lower body undergo this change. That is why beautiful icons for worship have come into being, because when it is beautiful and it is familiar to us, we get attracted and we get focused. That is how in the East the beautiful forms are conceived for the intelligences of Nature, which are called the deities. Those deities invariably carry a smile; they are not weeping deities. They are not the ones who are pictured to give us negative ideas. They cause an upward surge of the psychic levels in us, a magnetic reorientation.

Master Djwhal Khul says: “Christianity would have done much better, if only they had kept the beautiful face of Jesus the Christ for worship, but not a crucified one”. Jesus was very beautiful, because he had a feminine face and a masculine power. Jesus was soft outside and very strong inside. There was no equal to him in beauty during his days. That is where actually Maria Magdalena found her challenge. Such a beautiful face has been hidden and the crucifixion symbol has been brought out. Consequently, in places where Christianity is followed, Venus has fallen. When Venus falls, due to a wrong understanding, there is the misbehaviour relating to sex. Woman is mostly seen as a play thing and is never seen in her spiritual dimension. There is a curse on every society where woman is misused. The fall of man is very certain where woman is insulted. The position of women is very sublime in creation. Improper understanding and lack of understanding lead to the saying that women are the source of sin.

The presence of women can raise men into subtler planes of consciousness. There are four dimensions of the lady, which helps us in our life. There is the only lady when we are infants in our awareness; she is the mother to us. When we are grown, we have a co-born, who is the sister to us. According to the occult understanding, if we don't have a sister as a co-born, we have much more difficulty in pursuing the Divine Path. There is the lady whom we associate with as a life partner, as the third one, and there is the birth of a daughter to us. When we spiritually work out in these four dimensions, we gain the four aspects of existence.

In the morning we are born to a woman and thereafter we have given birth to a woman. That means the seed has grown into a tree and has given out a seed again. Blessed is the tree that bears fruit. Blessed is the life of man who can see the four dimensions of him in four aspects of the woman around him. The beauty of the woman is what is to be venerated but not to be exploited. The immediate instinct is to exploit, but if we are really cultured, we will enjoy the presence without possessing or even using it. What prevents us to see a beautiful flower and enjoy it instead of plucking it and keeping it in a vase?

Observation of beauty enables us to gain a kind of restructuring in the lower vehicles. See the beauty as the manifestation of light! Don't desire it! Don't try to possess it! That is how the emotional and physical currents which pass in us, get rearranged through a beautiful form. Like that the temples have emerged. A temple carries an idol inside, which is very beautifully decorated on a 3 hour basis. That is what is also done in Christianity towards Mary, which has some positive impact on us. When we see something beautiful in form, we keep it in our mind's screen, and when we gently close our eyes and recollect the form, we have the form once again on our mind's screen. There is a difference between the form which we have seen on the physical plane and the form which we have made in the mental plane. When we are able to recollect the form on the physical plane, we have taken the form into our mental plane. The difference between the form in the mind and the form on Earth is the difference in the density of the material.

If we have a beautiful golden icon and we look at it and contemplate upon it in our mind's screen. We have the beautiful mental form in golden colour but not the material. Any beautiful form that we see in the objectivity, when contemplated inside, we only carry the form, the colour and the vibration of it, and not the matter relating to it. Thus, we have the etheric form in us relating to the objective form that conducts in the etheric levels the magnetic transformations. This is what helps us to grow into the beauty without the matter relating to it. This is what is called beauty out of matter. When we focus upon the beauty without matter it enables us to raise from our conditioning of matter. When a beautiful concept is settled in our being and we muse with it, we don't need the material forms any more. This is a very delicate way of releasing ourselves from the gross matter, because even this form is matter, but of subtle nature. Thought is also matter, and the form we maintain in the mind is a thought form, but our ability to contemplate upon the beautiful thought form releases us from our conditioning of the matter.

So, the beauty of concept substitutes the beauty of matter. We will not seek any more or possess beautiful material and beautiful men or women, because through a very delicate, soft and smooth way we have ourselves overcome that state. Without giving this technique, to say: “don't go about with your desires, don't hunt for women”, it remains only a sermon. We should give the technique “how not to do” than always saying: “do not, do not, do not”. Most of the preachers tell us: “do not”. Only Teachers can teach us “how not”.

SUBJECTIVE CONTEMPLATION

That is where contemplation upon the flame of the light, the sunrise, a beautiful swan, a white horse, a white lotus, a diamond or a crystal, have become things of veneration for us. Precious forms, precious stones, precious metals make us get out of our ugliness and focus our beauty vis-a-vis the beauty presented to us. In this manner we have raised in our etheric current into subtle areas. This is how Venus and Mars function with Mercury. The concept is mercurial, because it belongs to the mind; here it is the higher mind. We are released from Saturn and now we are working with Mercury. The downward flow of the sperm is arrested, and the same Mars which conducted the downward flow, now conducts the upward flow, because the beautiful form is contemplated in the heart or in the forehead. If we maintain such a form in meditation, the eyebrow centre widens. If we see worried faces in meditation, it means that nothing is being contemplated. Since we maintain the beauty of the form and we are focussed upon it in our mind's screen, our entire forehead is filled with the light. There is a smile on our lips when we meditate, just like we smile when we see a beautiful form. We choose the most beautiful form, forming the etheric version in the mind's screen, and release ourselves from the desire of the dense physical.

The currents raise upwards and come up to the Ajna centre. That is how the Kundalini is raised, not by pushing is strenuously. We cannot push it, it happens when we take to a process. The beauty of the form is now substituted by the beauty of the concept that we hold on our mind's screen and consequently the upward flow begins as against the downward flow. Mars by itself cannot be blamed. It is now the same Mars conducting the upward movement. We have now chosen to contemplate on our forehead a beautiful form and Mars conducts the upward way. This is how the direction is reversed by Mars, because we are no more looking into the objectivity for beauty. We are looking into the subjectivity and hence Mars reversed the process.

DEVAYANA - THE DIVINE PATH

Venus is raised once again through this process. The Venus which we have killed earlier raises again in great splendour. It is the Venusian magnetism that keeps functioning through us. That is the reason why Venus is said to carry the double path with him. Sukra is said to be the preceptor of the Asuras. Asuras means demons in Sanskrit. He is also said to be the teacher who can give us the key of immortality. He has both the techniques with him. He can show us the path towards involution and the path towards evolution. That is why it is said that Sukra has given birth to a daughter, whose name is Devayana, the divine path. Now there is a path for divine manifesting through Venus; hence, through that path the divine beings start coming to Earth.

When we have made a road from south to north, not only the beings from south go to north, but it also enables the beings of the north to come to the south. This path is made for us to ascend into the light. It is therefore called the path of the divine, Devayana, the solar path or the path of Sushumna. When once this path is made, it also facilitates the divine beings to tread the path from above downwards. That is the reason why it is said that great Initiates and Gurus keep coming to Earth from Venus. It is a two way path for the beings to become divine and for the divine beings to descend to Earth. This is the contract made between Venus and Earth, which is worked out by Sukra. It is born out of him and hence Devayana is said to be the daughter of Sukra. If any divine being of a high order intends descending on Earth, they have a highway to follow. That is the path of Devayana, the divine path marked out by Venus. When the divine path is thus made and we have settled in our forehead, we have found a meeting place with the divine. We find a meeting place in the heart with the semi-divine. When we ascend and reach the heart, we meet the semi-human/ semi-divine beings whom we call the Masters of Wisdom. When we proceed further upto the Ajna centre we will start meeting the divine beings.

Thus we have developed a two way path to meet the divine and come back to the human. This is how the link is established between the human and the divine. Consequently we can function with the facility bringing the divine to the human, because the divine beings need a human vehicle to function. It is the divine functioning through a human whom we call the Initiate. In between, we meet the semi-divine who gives us the guidance. The Hierarchy or the Initiates gives us the guidance to tread the path. They are the ones who call us up from the heart centre. People who are in the base centre are pulled up by the Initiates through such technique and are instituted in the heart centre. Then there is a further call from the Higher Circles and the resonance is felt around the Ajna Centre. That means we are now linked to the divine and thereafter we shall function according to the plan.

The divine path is the path that gives the facility to meet the divine and to come back to the human. On a daily basis the Initiate conducts his meeting with the divine. It is in silence and in loneliness. According to the plan conceived he comes out and works. Don't we see this in the life of Jesus also? He frequently retired into the hills and came out to do his next task. This path is also described in the Western scriptures as the Jacob's ladder. Brahma Randra or Sushumna are the ancient names relating to it. When this happens and we meet the divine in our Ajna centre, it is astrologically presented as the work of Venus, Mercury and Jupiter.

The work of Venus is complete when Jupiter figures in. Jupiter is a representative of the unknown. When the unknown is met by the known, the programme of Venus is complete. That is how we need to work with Venus. When once Jupiter figures in, Venus ceases and the higher aspect of Venus, which is Neptune, starts functioning.

To think of Neptune now is too early. In our individual astrological chart we shall have to complete our work with Venus. Only then we can think of Neptune. The Hierarchy works with this triangle to pour down Pure Love of the second Ray via Jupiter, Venus and Mercury.

We are now working with Venus and hence Neptune is the future programme. This is the astrological way of presenting the path of ascent and it is the secret of intelligent utilization of the sperm in us. This is called the path of the Mother or the Divine Female Path. That is why Devayana is said to be the daughter of Sukra.

This is the central theme of Venus. There are other details about Venus, but they are only for informative value, like the colour aspect of Venus, as the entire colour is predominantly under the influence of Venus, the sound aspect of Venus, and about Sanat Kumara and the relationship with him. These are only information to us now. The important thing is this practical working with Venus. Once this is worked out, all other information become a reality, Otherwise we have to satisfy ourselves with books.

We have briefly understood the path which is mentioned here as Devayana. It is the path of ascension and it is also called the process of resurrection. Resurrection is what was described in its detail by conscious utilization of the spermatozoa by attuning to the path of beauty. We have seen beauty as desire, beauty as a concept and beauty as love. These there aspects can also be seen as:

1) Glamour for beauty, which is very familiar to all beings.

2) Love of beauty

3) Love as beauty

This is how the ascension takes place gradually when we adopt to a beautiful form in our meditation. The very basic nature of the lower vehicles gets transformed and then the psychic levels are rearranged and the magnetic currents find their arrangement. The energies are called up from Muladhara or base centre to the Heart centre and from the Heart centre to the Ajna Centre. When there is this upward movement, the link with matter is gradually released. This release of the link with matter causes immortality. That is the science of immortality.

When we take out the etheric form of a beautiful article, we are gradually released from the matter. The constant functioning with it, enables us to disassociate with matter, which does not mean rejection of matter. There is a difference between living in a tomb and living in a house. When we are in the tomb, we have no way to come out of it; we are buried down deep in matter. A house is different; in a house, we have the facility to go out and come in. We should have the body as a house but not as a tomb. While a house is given to us by nature, we make a tomb out of it. The process explained helps us to find exits. Sushumna is the exit path. Through that we will ourselves realize that we are no more conditioned by matter. Others need not tell us that we went through an initiation and that we have overcome matter. If others confer initiation on us, it is business. Initiations never happen in that way. How do we know that we are released from matter? We tell everyone that we are released from matter and make many claims that we have seen Lord Maitreya or Master Djwhal Khul, that they visit us daily and we visit them. As we have no work, we try to visit them, but they have enough work and they have no time to visit us for nothing.

The one who has gained immortality knows by himself that he has gained it; others don't have to confer it on him. How does one know about it? We will see ourselves before ourselves. If we are able to see our own image before ourselves, we will be able to see | a master. Before that if we say that we have seen a Master, it is only our mental projection. There are two ways of realizing or visualizing the Master; one is our mental or astral projection, the other is the real presence of the Master. Whether the Master is really present or not, is known to us if we have the experience of seeing ourselves before us. That is the proof of immortality; nothing else.

We will meet the etheric beings of the planet the moment we are released from matter. That is the first bonus we are given. When we have worked out through the technique of beauty to overcome matter, the first thing that we see is ourselves. We will know how we are in our own body. Just as in a house, we are in the body. It is not a vague example when we say that the body is the house; it is a precise example.

THE ETHERIC FORM

Imagine that we are standing in the centre of a hall. Imagine that instead of the hall, the body is the hall and within the body we are just like in the house, but not stuck to the house. Every human being has the dimension of his own thumb. That is our mini-form, and the body is our maxi-form. The little thing inside the body, which is “I Am”, stands exactly as I am standing here. The real inner being stands in a posture according to which the outer physical form takes the shape. That is our etheric form, and that which we know is our gross form. The etheric form can move anywhere. It moves out of the house, because it is delinked with the house called the body. That is how we will find ourselves. If we sit in meditation, our etheric double also appears to us in the same posture. When we scratch our nose, it also scratches. With that body we can go anywhere without requiring an aircraft ticket. It is for this gross body for which we pay so much. When we have seen our inner image this way, then we have also the facility to see the ones whom we venerate. We have gained our real potential form, which is our blueprint.

The plan of a hotel can be drawn on a small paper and it is such a big building when it is constructed. So also our blueprint is responsible for the form we have. Inside is our real being, which we are as our etheric form, and it is exactly the same as we look - except that one is etheric and the other is gross. This gross form gets destroyed, but the etheric form does not. We can once again gain form with continuity in another body. This is how we can live through bodies. When we have gained this consciousness, we can see our body sleeping on the bed. There are some people who see themselves in dreams; they have a prospect to gain this consciousness. This is what enables us to gain our real form, our etheric form. When this etheric form is gained, the loss of the physical is not our dissolution or death. This is what is called the state of immortality.

We can function with greater facility. We will see our own blueprint in a golden aura while we see our gross physical body lying on the bed. We can go around, come back and get into it. Just like we see our house, we get into it and we get out of it according to the work. When we have grown further in light, we will see that the colour of our etheric form is blue, which is a blind for white. A deep white colour appears optically as blue. The man of the thumb size sees himself in brilliant white - which is also a body. He sees another body in golden yellow and still another body - the gross body. This is how the realization gradually takes place. If any one of us has this experience, he is immortal. This is the immortality which we need to gain, for which the technique is being given through Venus.

The continuity is there and whatever is gained as wisdom is progressive. If we can gain that state while we are in the body, the purpose of getting into a human body is fulfilled. That is why to be in a human body is considered to be an opportunity. It affords us an opportunity to grow immortal. When the opportunity is not utilized, we move in the wheel of birth and death. This is the lunar path or the path of the pitris, which is called Pitriyana in Sanskrit. The other path is Devayana, the divine path. We have the two paths thus available to us. Even when we have taken to the divine path, we can continue to live in the body; we are there even while the body decays.

This is what exactly Venus gives us: an opportunity. We are the sparks coming from the source of light. We have the path of divinity, called Devayana, and the path of conditining, called Pitriyana. Venus presides over both. Devayana is the solar path to light and Pitriyana is the lunar path to Earth.

DEVAYANI AND PITRIYANI

Sukra has given birth to the daughter called Devayani, which was married to a king called Yayati.Yayati is the spiritual spark in every one of us. To marry the lady Devayani means that he has taken to the immortal path. But the king was not satisfied with the marriage with Devayani and he married Pitriyani, the lady coming from the other channel, the mortal path. He has children coming from both the ladies. That means the spiritual spark has always the two possibilities. It can do something in terms of mortal actions and create certain mortal things, which die through time, and it can also give birth to certain things which do not die through time.

Thus, the spiritual deity or the spiritual spark has two wives. Devayani, who enables the descent of the divine is also called Sri Devi; Pitriyani, who gives birth to mortal beings, is called Bhu Devi, or the earthy one. The two are always with the Lord. That is why the Lord is said to have two ladies. He gives birth to mortal beings through one lady and to immortal beings through the other lady. That is why the planet carries the beings coming from the two sources. The theory of evolution given by Darwin speaks of the mortal beings coming out of Pitriyana; that is, from mineral to plant, from plant to animal, and from animal to human. This evolution relates to the evolution of the mortal being. But there is also the simultaneous birth of immortal beings who reach the Earth to give the Law to the mortals. That is how the kings and the priests in the beginning came down to give the Law to the mortals. Whenever there is need to give the Law or to establish the Law, the immortal divine beings keep channeling themselves to Earth through the divine path or Devayana. When there is too much conflict and disregard for the natural law, leading to selfdestruction, there is a channel open for the divine and immortal beings to come down and establish the law. Those are the ones who descend through the divine path.

Man is a double being. There is a mind relating to the body, which is called Chitta in Sanskrit and there is a mind relating to the soul, which is called Buddhi in Sanskrit. If Buddhi prevails, we follow the Law; if Chitta prevails, we follow the animal instincts.

What we are learning is to find our real being as the blueprint inside. Then we can get into the divine and immortal aspect of creation. Consequently we do not fall into the wheel of birth and death and time does not sweep us away. We continue to live during creation with the identity known to us and which Venus bestows on us.

The individual story and the story of the planet are the same. We are spiritual sparks and we have the scope for mortal and immortal actions resulting in mortal and immortal products. Even with the planet it was so. The planet had the king Yayati and he had two ladies: the divine lady, called Devayani, who gave birth to initiates or high souls, and Pitriyani, who gave birth to mortals.

Devayani gives birth to suras- beings of light, sons of light. Pitriyani gives birth to Asuras - beings without light, sons of darkness, sons of the blind.

THE MAHABHARATA WAR

It so happened, that the sons of darkness seized the kingdom from the Father and denied it to the sons of light. This is common, because the mortals believe in occupation, they believe in aggression, in offence and in exploitation. The sons of darkness who ruled the kingdom were called the kings of Earth. The sons of light do not seek that kingdom at all. They do not seek the kingdom of Earth. They have least interest in earthy things. They always live in the kingdom of God. They are kings in their own kingdoms. The others are kings because they rule over a portion of the Earth. That is why when Jesus was asked: “Are you a king? Are you a king to be?”, he said: “Yes, I am; I am the king of kings. My kingdom is not the Earth but of a different kingdom. That is the kingdom of my Father, of which I am the king, and I have come to recruit people into that kingdom”, he was more insulted than respected, because he came from the Light and tried to give the kingdom of God, but nobody was willing to receive it.

There is always a fight between the sons of light and the sons of the blind. That is the story of the Mahabharata War. The sons of the blind and the sons of light are at war. The sons of light want the establishment of the law, and the sons of the blind want the establishment of individual rights. The fight is always there. Please remember that in humanity both exist. The Mahabharata tells us the proportion between them is hundred versus five.

The hundred sons of the blind are against the five sons of light. The proportion always remains like that among human beings in Kali Yuga. There is the assistance coming to the sons of light from Krishna. The Lord himself is the great strength behind the sons of light. What was the strength of the smart looking young man who moved in the desert of Judea and the lake of Galilea? The strength was the Father. That is the strength the sons of light always carry. They don't look for security as others do; their sense of security is different. They conduct the Law of their Father. In conducting it, they are fearless and, if required, they would even sacrifice themselves in the process. It is only a sacrifice of the body, but not of the inner one. Nobody can destroy the inner blueprint. That remains.

That is what Krishna tells Arjuna in the beginning of the Mahabharata war: “Only the house is destroyed, not the being. Don't worry about it. The idea is to give them good houses instead of tombs. They suffer and suffocate in their tombs, and throughout they demand destruction of the tombs, so that they can walk into better houses again. Hence, since you wish to protect the Law, conduct the war and help them.”

On one side, the light functions coming from the divine path, and on the other side, the mortal sons behave by trying to tresspass the natural Law. From time to time people are recruited from the kingdom of the mortals into the kingdom of the immortals. The Hierarchy is the bridge by which the mortals can cross over to be immortal. That is the facility created on account of the existence of the divine path. From time to time, through the divine path, there are beings who visit the planet and keep helping the Law. The mortals are inspired by the sense of achievement. To them the sense of achievement is very great, but for the sons of light, on the contrary, it is the sense of being. The sense of being gives poise and harmony. The sense of accomplishment puts them to dynamics; that is, they are always put to charge. They live in tension; they have the fear of not achieving and have the jealousy against those who have achieved.

The children of light are called Pandus and the children of darkness are called Kurus.

THE MIND OF THE BODY

Mercury, the light of the soul, is also called the mind of the soul, whom we call the Manu. Jupiter is the love of the soul; that is, Synthesis. Earth is the physical form. The body also carries the body of light, which is the etheric body which comes to us through Venus. Mercury is the light of the soul and, in one dimension, Venus is the light of the body, The soul has its mind. The Moon is the mind of the body. Mars is the lower aspect of Venus. Venus, when coupled with Mars, forms the emotional body.

There is the physical body, represented by the Earth, the emotional body, which is a combination of the negative of Mars with Venus, there is the etheric body or body of light, represented by Venus and there is the mind of the body. The mind of the body is the one which always tells us the requirements of the body. This mind is developed through the passage of the mineral, plant, animal and human kingdom. How this mind of the body is developed, we can study in the book “Letters on Occult Meditation”, Written by Alice A. Bailey. I will give a brief understanding of it.

The self and the non-self (the soul & the body) are approximated by means of the mind. Mind is the linking principle of the spiritual triad and the material triad. Mind is the intelligence that links up the highest spirit and the grossest matter.

When the physical body is well co-ordinated, the emotional body is well guided by the instinct, when repeated instinctive actions lead to impressions which settle down as memory and when correlative ideas are forming, then the animal is ripe for entry into the human kingdom.

The animal form thus well developed, is occupied by the spiritual triad or rather taken possession by the latter. This is the state of the centaur symbolically speaking, that the body carries its own mind to remind the body needs and requirements, while the soul carries its light as wisdom (higher mind). Man is thus guided both by the body instincts and by the wisdom of the soul. It is regulated in the formation of caused body which keeps the composite spirit/matter triads together.

We become a complete man when the mind of the body and the mind of soul are linked up. Otherwise, the higher man and the lower man do not agree with each other. That is where Mercury and the Moon need to come to an agreement. But other objectives are different. That is why it is difficult to gain an agreement between these two. The programme of the soul is different from the programme of the body. The soul tells: “Let the sperm be used in the path of ascent.” “That is what the Buddhi tells us. But the mind says: ” No, no, it is not possible. It is very difficult“, and we prefer to enjoy. It is interesting to note that Mercury moves around the Sun while the Moon moves around the Earth. As it is above so it is below. The solar system's functioning and the functioning of the individual system correspond.

We have an excellent good intention, but when it comes to action, it disappears. Spirituality disappears when we are in action, because action relates to the body and mind prevails. That is why any number of times we listen to wisdom, we just remain where we are, because the objectives of the lower mind and the higher mind are divergent but not convergent. Many people say: “You have to function with the higher mind”, but when it comes to functioning, the lower mind functions. We function as humans, not as souls. All these years we have recollected to ourselves that we shall have to function as souls, but sometimes we even behave like sub-humans. We see tigers among us who cause aggression on others, we see bulls that staple, we see scorpions that sting. We see a variety of animals functioning through us. That means the animal man is functioning more than the spiritual man. Where is the human? We have only the animal and the spiritual. When there is a good agreement between the spiritual and the animal, the human is born.

Therefore, the way is not to gain only wisdom. To gain the body of light we have to first regulate the body and the mind. That is where Venus gives the facility. When the Venusian principle is worked out in us, the mind of the body and the body co-operate with the mind of the soul. That is how the whole thing works. Our mind is filled with the mind-stuff. We cannot stuff it further with wisdom. Madame Bailey appropriately translated Chitta as mind- stuff. In such a stuffed mind what else can get in? That is why wisdom gets in through one ear and gets out of the other ear. We hear through the left ear and let it out through the right ear, because the mind is full with stuff. The technique given by the Initiates is: “Clear the stuff” otherwise the wisdom exercises are futile. Clearing the stuff of the mind is what is called “Yoga Chitta Vruthi Nirodhakah…” is the first instruction of Yoga. For this reason we always start the teachings with Yoga. The first Yoga instruction is “suspend the activity of the mind-stuff”.

GOPALA

We are all engrossed in the material and we need to resurrect ourselves from it. When once we overcome the material and resurrect ourselves from it via Venus, the agreement with Mercury, Jupiter and. the Sun, via Venus, becomes easier. That is how the work of Venus is fulfilled. In this manner we form the ultimate triangle.

In the preceding chapters I have given triangle after triangle, from the state of utter conditioning to the state of liberation. The final triangle is the triangle of being.

GOPALA is the name of this triangle. GA is the sound relating to Jupiter, O is the sound relating to the Sun PA is the sound relating to Venus and LA is the sound for its manifestation. So, with Love and Light the Sun (the soul) shines. That is how astrology gives us the path of discipleship.

VENUS AND THE SENSE OF COLOUR

It is stated that Venus governs beauty, balance and love. Venus also governs the colour sense in man, but the sensitivity to light is an aspect that comes to us from the Sun. The Sun governs the light and Venus governs the colour. Venus stands for etheric matter. When the light passes through matter, there is the manifestation of the colour. The Akasha is the astral light and by itself it does not manifest any colour. The manifestation of colour is on account of the interaction of the light with the matter. Where light interacts with matter, the colour manifests. Otherwise, there is no colour: it is all light. Colour is a manifestation due to the resistance of matter to the flow of light. The light moves in velocity and when it is resisted by matter, there is the colour formation. In fact, that which we see as light itself is matter. It is the interaction of the unknown with the Primordial Matter that makes the light formation.

Venus gives the subtle matter, hence the light manifests through the subtle matter into a variety of colours. It is like the solar ray passing through a prism manifesting the colours. The colour sense in us depends upon the Venusian principle functioning in us. The response to colour depends upon the placement of Venus in our horoscope. The best painters are the ones who carry a good relation with Venus. They have a better sense of colour. Colour as we see it today, is only the effect of colour, but not the colour as such. Depending upon the density of the matter we have from radiant to dull colours. If the matter is subtle, there is the radiance of the colour. If the matter is dense, the colour tends to be dull. What we see as difference of colours is only the effect arising out of the density of the matter. It is the effect of the colour which we see, but not the colour as such. The colour as such can be seen when we have grown into subtle matter. That is what happens to a painter. The painter feels the colour inside and tries to produce it on the canvas. His perception of colour in his being is far more radiant than what he can bring out on the canvas, because his visualization of the colour is in the etheric form and his production of the colour is on the canvas. That is why a painter is never satisfied with his paintings. What he visualizes inside is so good, so beautiful and so radiant that when he tries to bring it on the canvas, it does not come in that radiance.

Working with radiant colours make us more and more sensitive towards the etheric matter. It is the Venusian principle in us that enables us to respond to colours in nature. Responding to colour is responding to beauty.

Venus governs the sense of colour. The Sun governs the sense of light, Jupiter governs the sense of sound and taste, Mercury governs the sense of smell and Mars governs the sense of touch. If Mars is afflicted, one would like to touch everybody.

VENUS AND THE QUALITY OF UNFOLDMENT

Another quality Venus has is the quality of unfoldment. It reveals that which is hidden. That is why the deity carried lotuses in the two hands and says: “I unfold you if you permit. I unfold what is hidden”. For instance, it can unfold the sound into voice. We have the sound happening in us, and it is unfolded into voice. Many times we think that Mercury presides over the voice. Even in the sound there are many details. The unfoldment of sound into voice is presided over by Venus. The import or content of sound is presided over by Jupiter and it is transformed into voice. The meaning of the sound is presided by Mercury. Jupiter functions as our own utterance in silence and it is unfolded into voice. The meaning which is hidden, when it is unfolded into voice, comes out through Mercury. The urge to speak comes from Mars and the breath to speak comes from the Moon.

LOTUSES AND CHAKRAS

See how sound is unfolded into voice by Venus. We know the unfoldment of the chakras in our being as whirlpools and we know also the unfoldment as lotuses. Chakras are the whirlpool of energy which put us to conditioned movements. It is circular movement, up and down all the time, birth and death. The wheel of the time is the one in which the conditioned beings move. Venus offers unfoldment from the state of conditioning.

When the principle of Venus is worked out with the technique given, the chakras transform into lotuses. This is how we will have lotuses in Muladhara or base centre, in Anahata or heart centre and also in the Ajna or brow centre. This is the unfoldment of man in his threefold aspect. The lotus is an excellent symbol recollecting to us the splendour of unfoldment. “Better unfold than move in circles” is the message coming from the lotus. That is why the symbol of Venus is a beautiful lady sitting in a lotus, holding lotuses in her hands. She is called Padmini. When the Mother is depicted wearing garlands of lotuses as necklaces she is called Padma Malini. There are many names relating to the Mother derived from the sound Padma, which in Sanskrit means lotus. The idea is to give the import of unfoldment the moment we look at this symbol. That is how Venus helps the unfoldment. The moment the link with the gross material is disconnected, the energy moves upwards and all the lotuses or centres of energy unfold. That is the kind of unfoldment Venus offers. The work of Jupiter becomes easy when we are unfolded. In an unfolded and opened person wisdom can be received and assimilated. When the person is not open, the wisdom flies over. That is why the work of Venus shall have to precede all work of wisdom. To open, we need to have the help of Venus. The wisdom that we need to unfold is what we get through Mercury. First we should know that we have to unfold - that is Mercury; then we unfold with the help of Venus, then we realize the truth - that is Jupiter, and its culmination in the Sun. That is how the scheme is worked out with Venus as the basis. Thus, Venus governs the aspect of unfoldment also.

PURITY

AMALA is the sound to stimulate the Venus principle in us.

OM SRIM AMALAI NAMAHA is the mantra.

We utter the sound AMALA and imagine that we are unfolding like a white lotus at the base centre. It helps to gain the response of the principle of Venus in us. Amala means purity. Mala means impurity. That is where the concept of purity finds its importance in the esoteric practice. It unfolds when there is purity. Purity has to be in the three worlds: physical purity, emotional purity, and perceptual purity. That means we have to be pure in our thoughts, in our emotions and we have to adopt purity in the physical life. The purity of speech is associated with the purity of thoughts. In Yoga it is said that we have to purify the three lower vehicles. That is the step through which we gain the principle of Venus. When we are disturbed in our thoughts on account of impurity, we can use the technique conceived now to overcome the situation. We imagine the symbol of the Mother with a smiling face, sitting in a lotus with her two hands holding two lotuses and we utter the mantra: OM SRIM AMALA I NAMAHA. If we keep doing it, it helps to purify the thought plane. When thoughts are purified, it becomes easier to purify the emotions and to gain physical purity

MANTRAS

There are mantras for every planetary principle :

PLANETARY PRINCIPLE MANTRA

This is how unfoldment of mantras happened to the seers. Today we are trying to reproduce from what is already said. But there are some who have got these mantrams through unfoldment and they are now available to us. Likewise, the entire doctrine of sound, the doctrine of light and the symbolism, unfolded to the ones who went through contemplation for hundreds of years. This is the unfoldment that Venus gives us. That is the reason why we need to work with Venus for unfoldment than with any other energy. That is the reason why Venus is said to be an esoteric planet. It carried the secrets. The secrets are hidden for those who have not gained the response of Venus. Even the secret of the secrets gets unfolded when we work with Venus. The secret of the secrets is the secret of death and birth. It unfolds to that extent till one realizes that there is no death and that there is no birth.

THE PERFECT STATE OF THE SOUL

Venus is the teacher for both the esoteric and exoteric life. He has disciples who work for the objectivity and he also prepares disciples for subjective unfoldment. He is the Master that gives the objective and the subjective life together; that means, one need not be sacrified for the sake of the other. He stands at the middle-point between the subjective and objective aspects of life. It is a life that carries the splendour of the two.

The Lord himself is said to have two consorts. The life of objectivity and the life of subjectivity are harmonized in a yogi and hence we don't have to lead an uncommon life in the name of spiritualism. It is finding a balance between the two and living in harmony with the matter and the spirit. That is the perfect state of the soul. When the perfect state of the soul is realized, we get the presence of the supreme being of the planet, Sanat Kumara. He is basically Venusian, but lives on this planet to inspire and guide.

Venus gives the steps of unfoldment up to the point of self-realization. At each step of unfoldment we start working with a different planetary principle. We start with Saturn, then with the will of Mars raising we work with Mercury, and then we start realizing in terms of Jupiter. Please remember, when Venus works with Saturn, it manifests beauty in form, but it has the susceptibility to get conditioned by matter. When Venus functions with Mercury, we gain beauty as a concept. When Venus works with Uranus, we have the ability to rearrange which is the seventh ray aspect. When there is a good interaction between Venus and Jupiter in one's own being, there is the self-realization. This is how Venus, step by step, leads us to unfoldment. When the realization is complete and we have realized the self, when we have ourselves realized that we are the Sun, Venus has no more purpose.

THE SOLAR SYSTEM

Each one of us is a Sun. We have the potential to be a solar system, in which case our self becomes the Sun in the solar system and the other principles become the planets. The Sun quality in us will be the Sun of the solar system and that is what we are. We cannot call Him in the third person. All other principles we have, like Jupiter, Venus, Mars and Mercury, form the planets, because the principles are there basically in us. Every human being is a micro-system and the solar system is the macro-system. In an advanced worship of the sun the initiate looks at the sun and says: “You are no different from me and I am no different from you. You and me are one”.

The Solar system is a bigger system with the same principles. We are a smaller system with the same principles. That is how the realization has the same dimension towards which we have to make the initial steps via Venus. The most unique aspect of Venus is that it establishes the continuity in us, so that we don't lose time and wisdom. The key of Venus is the key to immortality. The need to work with it is much more than the need to work with other aspects of wisdom, because it provides us the continuity. What we gain will not be lost.

This aspect of Venus inspired me to give this seminar. Other aspects are more informative. This aspect is the one with which we need to work so that we don't have to start with the alphabets all the time.

PRACTICE

That was exactly the point of Master CVV when he said: “Why should we study everytime right from the alphabets? There should be a way to gain everything and retain it, than to forget it”.

Master CVV found the technique through his contemplation. It is not any invention; it is the unfoldment of the technique in one's own being which is already existing, so that we continue and gain immortality. Gaining immortality is given preference to gaining wisdom. Therefore, practice stands in preference to more and more comprehension. We need to comprehend to practice and we need to practise to comprehend. Let the two function alternatively. It is the functioning of Mercury and Venus in an alternating fashion, but with the emphasis on Venus; that is, with the emphasis on practice. Then the work has its fruition; otherwise we remain otherwise and we will be anything other than wise. Practice has everything to do with us, not with others. We don't have to practise on others, but only on us.

The practice is to daily contemplate upon the symbol in the heart centre. The contemplation is recommended to be not only daily but also timely. Every day our contemplation has to be at the same time. The third requirement is that the contemplation should take place thrice daily at the same time, with eight hours interval.

Our ability to do so decides our priority. If this is the priority, then it becomes possible. If this is not the priority, better not to get into it. Onepointedness is the keynote to success. This is true in spiritual matters also.

Contemplation upon the symbol with the sound given at timely intervals form into a Tantra; that is, symbol, sound and timely contemplation.

Such focussed and regular contemplation enables us to visualize the symbol inside us in the heart centre, which is etheric Further contemplation leads us to the etheric form, gaining more and more radiance. The bright light over-shadows the contours of the symbol; gradually the symbol disappears and the bright light remains. The brighter the light is, it develops a proportionate magnetic field, causing the lift-up of the soul from the base centre to the throat centre, in a later stage to the brow centre and finally it settles in the heart centre.

Thus, the bondage from the body is released. The soul moves freely within and outside. It is the state of living in the material without being conditioned by it. This is what is referred to as “the dew drop on the lotus leaf”. The soul remains detached from the objectivity and the functioning with the objectivity is with equanimity.

The entry and exit into and from the body is experienced frequently and bodylessness is experienced. One's own body is witnessed as an object in the objectivity Since the released state is frequently experienced, one realizes the life beyond the body. Death is no more. It was existing whither as a concept. The illusion relating to the concept of death is overcome. The one who accomplishes the practice realizes that there is no death but only the departure from the body, that he does not die but that his departure is consciously experienced.

Immortality is thus gained. Such is the importance of the principle of Venus.

THE PURPOSE

The purpose of building the etheric body is to function effectively as a disciple. The purpose of discipleship is in turn accomplished when the etheric body is built. A well built etheric body is the means for translation of intangible spiritual principles into tangible acts of goodwill. It enables the manifestation of the Divine Plan. It elevates the individual to the state of immortality. One overcomes death and continues with his identity as a soul fulfilling the plan of the Higher ones. Such is the state of the Masters of Wisdom.

The spiritual practice belongs to the soul and it continues through series of births and deaths. Each incarnation carries with it the programme of the soul as also the programme of the personality. The programme of the personality commences and concludes in each incarnation, to recommence in the next birth on the basis of the individual karma. Such individual karma is carried until the doctrine of action (Karma Yoga) is practised and realized. As long as the Karma conditioning continues, every death washes off one's memories.

The programme of the soul too continues through spiritual practices during all these series of births and deaths as seed tendencies. There is a hidden continuity of its work as part of one's consciousness.

The spiritual part of the one has one name through all incarnations as the codename. Through this code-name one is known and is identified. The personality part of the one also is given a name for every incarnation, but it keeps changing from incarnation to incarnation.

Linking up the two layers of consciousness enables man to realize his original identity and his purpose in life. Such link-up is possible when the etheric body is built, strengthened, vitalized and made magnetic. It is a process of initiation, meaning inner work. Such inner work is possible only for those who have fairly accomplished a natural and normal temperament in the outer world. Once the etheric body is built up to the required vibration, man becomes semi-divine and semi-human. It becomes the divine-human as contrary to the human-animal. He becomes a bridge between the divine and the material worlds - a messenger of God upon Earth as per the scriptures.

WHAT IS THE ETHERIC BODY

The etheric body is the body of light formed of the four higher sub-planes (of the seven sub-planes) of the physical plane matter. The physical body of the human being is a composite body formed of two parts, the dense physical and the subtle physical. The dense physical is formed of the matter of the lowest three sub-planes of the physical plane. The etheric part is formed of the four higher sub-planes which are subtle in matter, enabling radiation of light. The etheric part of the human body, being formed of subtle, transparent matter, enables transmission of spiritual energies viz. Light, Love and Will.

The dense physical body corresponds to the planet Earth. The etheric body corresponds to the planet Venus. The esoteric astrology tells us that Venus is the higher counterpart (elder sister) to our Earth. It also tells us that Venus is the guardian angel of our Earth. In the involutionary process, the descent of the physical man as we now know, is from the etheric state. Hence, the etheric form of the human being forms the basis for the dense physical human form. In the evolutionary process (the spiritual pursuit) the human being once again gains the etheric state. The Aquarian Age is suitable for gaining such subtle state of existence.

All the spiritual practice is aimed at shifting the emphasis from the gross to the subtle, from the dense physical to the subtle physical, from the darkness to the light, from ignorance to knowledge and from a gross and material-conditioned existence to a subtle, spiritual and liberated existence.

CHIEF FUNCTION OF THE ETHERIC BODY

The etheric body functions as a link between the emotional body and the physical body on one hand, and as a link between the vital body and the physical body on the other hand.

Thus the etheric body is the transmitter of life force through the vital body, or of emotions through the emotional body. When the etheric transmits the latter, you have the animal-man at rage. When it transmits the former, you have the complete human, as also the divine-human, at work.

THE IMMEDIATE WORK

The immediate task of the disciple is therefore, to build the etheric body, strengthen it, vitalize it and magnetize it to enable it to transmit the forces of life and light and simultaneously delink it from the emotional body. Such should be the understanding of all Yoga practice. It is thus a two-pronged attack to achieve the desired state. One is to work with the elimination of selfish/impure mental, emotional and physical activity. The other is to build up the etheric body through specific practices. One relates to the work in the objectivity - the outer work, the other relates to the subjectivity - the inner work. Both should be picked up and worked out simultaneously, for the entanglement with the outer world disables practising in the inner world.

WORK - OBJECTIVE

(Square up the Square)

It involves purification of the three lower sub-planes of the physical plane, consisting of the physical, emotional and the lower mental.

The purification of the physical body involves cleanliness of the surroundings, cleanliness in all physical aspects, pure food, timely sleep, adequate exposure to sunlight, fresh air and water.

The purification of the emotional body involves constant watching of desires, motives, wishes, aversions, anger, hatred, possessiveness, fear and other negative forces at play. These emotions can be overcome by setting oneself upon a noble aspiration. An ideal need to be set in terms of service to the surrounding life and keep working on it incessantly to focus all emotion and burn it in the fire of aspiration. Service as part of discipleship is thus an inevitable programme in the evolutionary path.

“A man in fog is a blind traveller”, says Master D.K. A man in confused thought is a man in fog. Clear thinking through constant introspection leads to visualization. A conscious effort should be made to build thoughts of goodwill, strengthen such thought form and gradually manifest them for the welfare of the beings. Self-analysis, self-introspection, self-searching and self-review of daily life, are important tools in this context.

In fact, all religions preach these principles (and many more) for harmonious outer living. It is this exoteric work that precedes all real occult work.

KARMA

Karma means action. Karma is divine. The creational process is the divine karma. The law relating to karma is that “all action shall be welfare-oriented”. One works for the welfare of the other. It is summed as “not doing unto others what one expects not to be done by others unto oneself. Goodwill is the intended basis of all action (karma). In creation, karma is a sequential action. But when the basis of goodwill or welfare is replaced by selishness, the sequential actions become consequential, giving birth to the conditioning of the beings. The karma that conditions one through selfishness is the binding karma called “individual karma”. The selfish one weaves his own sheet of cause and effect within the creational wheel. He becomes accountable to his own actions. His selfish actions give birth to selfish thoughts and the selfish thoughts push him to selfish actions. He thus weaves around him a web of karma and gets imprisoned therein.

In Nature, if we observe, there is mutuality - one working for the other. The mineral works for the plant, the plant works for the animal, the human and the animal work for the plant and the human and the Devas work for all the four kingdoms. The human too need to work thus. “Work as an offering is divine karma and work for oneself is individual karma”, says the Bhagvad Gita.

Work as an offering involves a spirit of sacrifice. Doing for oneself has the motive in the doer, and therefore turns back to him in the shape of consequences. “Be sequential but not consequential”, says Master E.K.

THE TRIPLE ASPECT OF KARMA

Our of ignorance, man does act in selfishness and binds himself with such actions The tendency to be selfish exists as seeds in him. They sprout in every appropriate situation, in spite of his own theoretical knowledge of their ill-effect. This is called “Sanchita Karma”, The karma that distorts the present thought and action.

Conditioned thus, the individual is driven to selfish actions binding him further through the present. That is called “Prarabdha Karma”. The present lays the foundations for the future, just as the past laid the foundations for the present. Man is bound by his own nature, even into the future. That is called “Agami Karma”. Driven by fate, man moves cyclically through births and deaths for series of incarnations, moved by the cause and effect of individual karma.

The doctrine of discipleship therefore suggests exercise of goodwill to break this imprisoning wheel of individual karma. When man realizes the futility of selfish-seeking, he starts learning and working for others. In the beginning “working for others” is only a good intention. One will not be able to manifest his intention without obstacles, for his own settled, past tendencies distort his intentions. It is in this context exercise of strong will need to be inculcated. Association with men of goodwill becomes necessary to gain the necessary strength.

As one learns to hold on to goodwill in thought, he ceases to create future karma through the present action and thus provides for a free tomorrow. Nevertheless, past karma remains and surfaces in the present. The disciple is expected to be tolerant to meet the adverse situations and all injustice done to him, with the conscious understanding that his own past is turning back upon him and that he needs to dispassionately handle it lest it could create consequences. It is in this stage we see initiates being dispassionate to personal injustice done to them.

All obligatory karma is understood at this stage as the debt arising out of the past karma. The obligations to the family, the spouse and the society, are nothing but past karma surfacing and seeking discharge. “A disciple should walk out of obligatory karma through proper discharge”, says Master D.K All action therefore becomes voluntary, playful and bestows bliss of existence on the doer.

“There is nothing that I have to do in all the three worlds (….) Yet I engage Myself in doing My lot”, says Lord Krishna (Bhagavd Gita III, 22)

THE SQUARE - SQUARED UP

“One needs to square up the four to walk into the temple of the Triangle”, says Pythagoras. The four or the square in the esoteric sense, refers to the objectivity. Squaring up the objectivity requires responsible attendance to the objective world through the four aspects, namely purification of the three bodies and neutralization of the individual karma. One should remember that this is a gradual work to be accomplished, but not an overnight turnout. According to Master Morya, it extends to 12 incarnations for a sincere aspirant. It was so even for Master D.K.! The last three of the twelve incarnations worked out speedier than the first three incarnations for in three incarnations the seeker is into the direct service of the Plan. “Make haste slowly”, is the relevant mantra here, given by Master D.K.

As the objective life grows less and less obligatory and more and more voluntary, proportionate eligibility is gained for subjective practice and subjective growth. A man bound head to foot by the objective world cannot even dream of entering into the subtle subjective world. How can the one that has not learnt to handle the gross, think of handling the subtle forces? Hence, building the etheric body demands discipline (as summarized above) relating to objectivity. But one does not abstain to work with subjectivity until the objective obligation is fully cleared. As much as one gains release from the objectivity, so much one is eligible for subjective pursuit. The subjective work and objective work are complementary.

SUBJECTIVE WORK

(Triangular Work)

The subjective work chiefly involves working with colour, sound and respiration. The three form the golden triangle of the Temple work to be carried within. It is simply meditational work to be carried out silently in secrecy and in utter simplicity. Remember the triple “S” (Secrecy, Silence, Simplicity) while we are in the Temple work.

RESPIRATION

To supply the deficiency to fill the needed gap, and to manipulate the matter to build the etheric body, normalization of one's own respiration is the first step. We do not breath as we should. Affected by emotions and perverted intellect, we reduce our breathing to sub-normalcy. The free flowing currents of respiration are frequently attacked by the emotional onslaughts. The rhythm is disturbed. Consequently the flow of prana (the life force) is distorted. This is the cause of disease, decay and death.

We should therefore attempt to normalize our breathing. This involves conscious breathing. We breath consciously for about 24 minutes during the sunrise time and again for the same duration during the sunset time. It has a surprisingly healthy effect on bringing in life force via the vital body, to strengthen the etheric body which would gradually develop resistance to the attacks of the emotional body.

We let our breathing be conscious, slow, soft, deep and uniform. Conscious breathing helps alignment of mind with respiration. It helps to gradually delink the mind with objectivity and link with the source of respiration, which is located in the heart centre. The other four qualities of breathing make respiration complete and the practitioner gradually respires less number of times per minute, calming down the whole system within. In 24 minutes one would respire 27 times. Such effort to respire, when done daily twice at the appointed hours, helps to build a strong, resistant, vibrant and vitalized etheric web.

The agitated mind agitates the respiration and latter disturbs the ever-flowing life currents. Hence, neutralization of respiration through the above technique help substantially in the process of building the etheric body. When mind and respiration are consicously united, man, in the advanced stages of the practice, realizes that they are the two outflowing channels of consciousness, which he is in reality. He finds that he himself is bifurcated to function as thread of awareness and also as thread of life, and the meeting point for the two is the heart centre. He further realizes that the two currents are complementary to each other when aligned, and are detrimental to each other when not aligned.

Having practised thus, we allow time to bring about the remainder of the work. The practice of breathing as stated above would also train the mind to reach the cave of the heart on a daily basis. “To turn within” is gained through regular practice, which would, in later advanced stages, help the student to reach the higher (subtler) realms of his own being.

SOUND - ITS USE

The worlds are the effect of sound. Sound is the creating intermediary. It is the agent of the great Entity as the sacred word. In relation to the lower vehicles, sound manifests as electricity, prana (life force) and the magnetic fluid.

Invocation of the sacred word OM daily enables the attraction of finer matter and the dispelling of coarser matter to one's body. Invocation of the sacred word also repudiates thoughts of a lower vibration and attracts thought forms of a finer nature. It causes the alignment of the lower bodies with the higher (subtler) ones. Utter the sacred word either 3,5,or 7 times, having done the breathing as explained earlier. Locate the source of emergence of the sound in the heart. The first step of respiration already leads one's mind unto the heart centre. The utterance of the sacred word brings into manifestation a fresh dosage of electrical energy of the spirit, magnetic fluid of the soul and prana itself. Engage in the muse of the heart beat which conducts itself as resonance of the unuttered sound - Anahata. The music of the sound emerging from the pulsation of the heart is a double sound. This music of the double sound is the heart principle that conducts the heartbeat. It is called the double winged swan Hamsa, conducting the double sound SOHAM.

The heart principle is called Hridayam in Sanskrit. Hridayam means “Here I AM”. The student locates himself thus in the heart principle and gradually realizes himself the pulsaing principle. He locates himself the heart principle and listens to the music of the soul, “SOHAM”. Soham is a double sound - Saha + Aham, meaning “That I AM”. Regular contemplation upon the heart principle for a duration of 24 minutes is second step, while conscious breathing for 24 minutes to reach the heart region is the first step. The student at this stage is said to have entered into “the cave of the heart” to listen to and engross in” the Music of the Soul”. He locates himself and is at the portal to gain his identity.

COLOUR

As the student stabilizes himself in the cave of the heart, he is advised to visualize his own image - an etheric one, about the size of one's own thumb, in a white/violet electric hew. Proceed to visualize with due and elaborate care and build the etheric form with minute care, with the help of one's own focused imagination and loving effort. Work daily on the etheric figure of the size of the thumb (some scriptures say that the figure's size is that of one's own index finger) to picture it vividly towards the close of the meditation. This is the third and final step of the meditation, which is also expected to last for the third set of 24 minutes. In all, the total inner work or meditational work is expected to last 72 minutes.

When worked daily as stated above, the etheric figure becomes real and there comes a day where the student realizes that the figure built is not the puppet he imagined but himself verily as distinct from his dense physical body! He realizes himself to be in etheric form while he finds his dense physical body as a gross envelop around him. He stands out and sees his physical sheath objectively when he becomes conscious of his etheric form. Lo! he finds his gross physical sheath. It is magnified dense replica of his micro-etheric form in all respects! He further finds that his etheric (light) form moves, so does the dense physical. The emphasis gets shifted to the etheric portion of his body from the dense physical portion. The work is thus fulfilled.

Does it look fictional? What did happen? Identifying himself with the etheric figure within the heart, making a conscious channel between the heart and the head centre (due to the vivification in building the etheric figure) he links up the head and the heart centre. By doing so he purifies the corresponding part of the physical brain. In turn, the brain responds to the higher vibration and records or registers the vibration.

This is the work of Venus as a principle. Venus governs the colour sense in man. Colour is the base form in the etheric plane (while sound is the base of the higher etheric plane). The whole world itself is conception of the Logos that produces colour and sound vibrations before the origin of light. “Colour brings light down to objectivity”. “Venus thus steals light from heavens to Earth” (Master E.K., “Spiritual Astrology”).

When meditation upon one's own gross form or on any form of beauty, man is raised from the gross form to the mental form. The mental form is only the etheric part of the gross physical form. At that meditative state, the gross physical form drops off and the mental form remains within. The gross physical form is absent and consequently man is freed from the bondage of gross matter. Man in the beginning requires gross moulds (forms) of beauty to contemplate. He slowly conceives the beauty of the form, eliminating the substance of the outer mould. He thus raises himself to the etheric levels. The images of Gods serve this purpose initially. The temple worships have come up on this basis to elevate man from the initial stages of matter.

Once the mental forms are set, Venus accelerates the realization at higher levels. Remember that the creation is from the thought form to the dense matter to the subtler matter. This is the sacred mission of Venus in the involutionary and evolutionary process.

SOME HINTS RELATING TO COLOUR

The RED colour stimulates the etheric body and helps building up that body a great deal. The students are initially recommended to meditate upon the RED of the sky during the sunrise and the sunset hours. Remember, all mendicants in India wear RED robes as a principle. This enables them to absorb the colour through mental engagement on the colour. They also wear an RED brow-mark on their forehead. RED dispels the negative energies of emotion; it removes congestion and enables the free flow of life currents. Worship of Lord Hanuman, the monkey God, in RED colour is used popularly till date in India as the sixth ray key to overcome the dominance of the emotional body. Tuesday and the sixth phase of the moon are also linked to the RED colour.

The Rose colour is worshipped through the beautiful form of the goddesses, for the rose colour tranquilizes, eliminates depression and arrests devitalization. “It improve the will to live”, says Master E.K.

Contemplation upon brilliant colours tightens the etheric web and strengthens the etheric body, thus it shuts the door to the entry of the emotional feelings through the emotional body. When cleavages exist in the etheric web, the stimulants of the objective world activate the emotional body and permit the entry through the relaxed elasticity to the entities from the emotional plane. Gradually the physical body turns sick. Disease, decay and death thus occur to the physical body when the etheric web is weak. “May we seal the door where evil dwells”, instructs Master D.K.

“Master, please, let us receive the influx of Thy “Plenty of Prana” into our systems, so that we may transcend disease, decay and death, realize the highest Truth, the pure love and the bliss of existence and serve humanity according to Thy Plan”, is the daily prayer suggested by Master CVV.

The chief work of Master CVV is to strengthen, develop, vitalize and magnetize the etheric body of the humans, through invocation of prana and conduct of transference of such prana into the physical body, thereby delinking the physical from the emotional body. He thereby aims at two things: one is to build a strong and healthy physical body and systematically develop the etheric body to its natural electric and magnetic power, so that it survives the physical; meaning, surviving death!

It should be remembered that the primary expression of the etheric body is through the colour violet. Violet precedes the dense physical state. Violet again is reflective of the blue the higher counterpart. Blue stands for synthesis in the higher worlds, while violet stands for such synthesis in the manifest world. Violet links the Deva kingdom to the visible kingdom and is therefore the medium that unites the human to the Devas. It is the bridge between the visible and the semivisible and leads to the realization of the invisible.

Esoterically, violet is white and white is violet. So also, blue is white and white is blue. Venus represents all the three shades of Light. Lord Krishna, the blue boy is said to have descended upon our Earth via Venus!

Gayatri, the light of the three worlds, is one of the chief keys of meditation followed by the Himalayan Aryans from the ancient most times. Contemplation upon Gayatri is a “Sound and Light technique” given by the ancient Seers for realization of one's own etheric form. It is interesting to note that the five faces of Gayatri carry the five aspects of the colour, namely the solar light, the lunar light and the colour blue, red and golden yellow. In recent times, Master E.K is believed to have realized his etheric state of existence through contemplaton upon Gayatri. Consequently he stood as an outpost in initiating aspirants in the Gayatri mantra.

THE ETHERIC BODY AND HEALING

When the emotional body's impact is neutralized and the physical body is firmly linked to the etheric, healing becomes effortless. Pranic healing is possible for those who develop their etheric vehicle as per the instructions given in this book. It is for this reason all initiates are natural healers. The secret of esoteric healing lies in the truth that the emotion should give way to pranic flow. It requires a disciplined approach to the subject until emotions and selfish intellect are sacrificed in the altar of the systematic esoteric practice enumerated in this chapter, as otherwise, all healing work remains a feeling work; that's all. Healing is the clear mental work achieved with the help of a vibrant etheric body that is capable of transmitting pranic force.

Let not the etheric body be confused with the body of the soul. The soul itself is the vehicle of the spirit. The causal body is the vehicle of the soul, which is radiant white in colour, the etheric body is the vehicle of prana. It is a body of golden light - flame coloured, which is the subtle form that holds the dense physical body.

One of the principal and immediate objects of endeavour on the part of the Masters of Wisdom during the present time, is to stimulate, purify and build the etheric body of the humans, which shall be the first step towards immortality.

When the etheric body is at function in the occultist, one stands midway the pineal gland and the pituitary body at the centre of the forehead. That centre is the magnetic field of the soul, Which is referred to as “the light in the head” or the third eye. All magical work on the physical plane is carried out by the occultist by focussing in the third eye.

The substratum of energy that functions through the etheric body is air. Breath handled through the science of pranayama builds and strengthens the etheric body.

VENUS - ANTAHKARANA

Venus in Libra is the ruler for the disciple when he is in the process of building the Antahkarana. Saturn in Libra helps transformation of the chakras into lotuses for sustained effort to build the Anthakarana. Saturn helps to transcend the pairs of opposites and to complete the building of the Antahkarana. Form the stage of formation of lotuses, Venus, once again, becomes the ruler of Libra to realize and manifest pure love, which is no different from pure will.

VENUS - PISCES

Venus, the Lord of Taurus and the ruler of Libra for the disciple, finds its fullest expression in Pisces. Through look and through expression, a disciple can elevate the beings into spiritual awareness when Venus in Pisces is realized. Such disciples are called “Truth Bearers”.

OTHER ASPECTS OF SUKRA

• The Planet Venus has no satellite
• The planet Venus is twice as brilliant and hot as the earth.
• Light comes through Venus to the earth,
• The former receives a triple supply and gives out a third of it to the earth. The two are called the twin sisters.
• The Initiates represent the two globes; Venus and earth, one over the other; under the double sign.

The double sign signifies the male-female principle in nature, representing the androgynous state of the beings before the fall into the physical sheaths. Venus is presented as the globe over the cross while the Earth is represented as the globe under the cross . This signifies that while Venus stands transcended the matter, the earth stands farther into material degeneration into production of species through sexual union.

• Venus is the most occult, powerful and mysterious of all planets. Its influence upon earth is prominent.
• The rotation of Venus on its axis takes 243 days. The direction of rotation is retrograde, i.e., opposite to that of the revolution of all the planets around the sun.
• The being of Venus are Aphrodite's male-female. So are the Initiates. They are complete in themselves and are therefore not in need of male or female supplementation. They are called Kumaras - Sons of God.

THE VENUS PRESENCE

• The numerical potency of Venus is six.
• Its Colour is light blue,
• Its sound is SRIM
• Its symbol is
• Its day is Friday,
• It flower is lotus,
• Its grain is rice
• Its drink is milk,
• Its stone is sapphire,
• Its mineral is magnesium
• Its element is ether - sky waters,
• Its material is translucent,
• Its nature is experience,
• Its yogic centre is the cave of the heart,
• Its seat is the lion's throne,
• Its prana is Samana.

ADDITIONAL INFORMATION ON VENUS

• Venus guides the intelligent human brotherhood upon the planet.
• Venus is the light counterpart of our Earth and is the basis of the Earth's astral matter
• Venus provides the basis for the formation of mind on the Earth's chain.
• The work of Venus begins when the work of Saturn ends. When the work with Saturn begins, man is recruited into the soul's life - the 2nd initiation.
  1. Venus in Taurus produces earthy desires
  2. Venus in Gemini awakens duality and conflict of good & bad.
  3. Venus in Libra causes true balance, which is worked out as equilibrium of the conflicting duality.
• Saturn binds the two opposite triads - spiritual and material. Pluto cuts the thread of bondage. Venus unites the two without binding. Such is the work of Venus in Pisces.

Mary stood crying outside the tomb. While she was still crying, she bent over and looked in the tomb and saw two angels there dressed in white, sitting where the body of Jesus had been, one at the head and the other at the feet. “Woman, why are you crying?” they asked her.

She answered, “They have taken my lord away, and I do not know where they have put him!”

Then she turned round and saw Jesus standing there; but she did not know that it was Jesus. “Woman, why are you crying?” Jesus asked her. “Who is it that you are looking for?”

She thought he was the gardener, so she said to him, “If you took him away, sir, tell me where you have put him, and I will go and get him.”

Jesus said to her, “Maria!”

She turned towards him and said in Hebrew, “Rabboni!” (that is to say, “My Teacher!”)

(John 20,11-16).

There are many Initiates in India who have demonstrated love without desire. In the occident we have Jesus Christ who demonstrated it in his life.

If we love we cannot desire; that is pure love. We love a person, because we desire certain things from the other person. We love a place, because we wish to derive something from the place. We love a thing, because we want to something from it. WE are looking for fulfilment of our desires in the name of love.

To an Initiate there is no such thing as loving places, persons and things. To him, love does not require a venue. But to an ordinary man love requires a venue.

To an Initiate there is no such thing as showing love. Showing love is nothing than showing desire or fulfilling others' desires.

The love of Jesus was complete, in that he never desired anything from any of his disciples. He was only loving them because they were attracted to his way of life, which is the wisdom of the Initiates.

The relationship of Jesus with Maria Magdalena was on a soul to soul basis. There can be no other relationship to an Initiate of that order.

When Jesus stepped on the banks of the river Jordan, after 18 years of preparation, he was a complete man. In him there was the full presence of the feminine aspect. He was androgynous. He did not need the presence of any female around him. None of his disciples played a supportive role. He was self-supporting. The disciples did not have the status to help Jesus. He had come to help them; how could they help him? If one is in a state of receiving help from his disciples, he is no Master. A Master is self-dependant and self-reliant, self-confident and self-governing. He had come to give a demonstration of wisdom to a few as to how a complete man should be. His completeness had attracted a few and he gave it out to them. The wisdom he carried was the way of life.

Among the disciples who received the way of life from him, Maria Magdalena was one of the most prominent disciples. She had a good transformation in a short cycle of time, because in her there was aligned. She carried complete conviction in what she did. Such people can easily tune up to any; concept when focused, because basically they carry alignment with them. They are people who do not attribute to themselves something which they are not; they are truthful to themselves. I t is that truth which helped her to transform very quickly.

We all know Maria Magdalena as a prostitute. For all objective purposes she was so, but we have no idea of what alchemy she went through, to be one of the grand disciples of Jesus Christ. She was the first who was able to see the etheric body of the Master coming out of the sepulchre. Unless so much change has happened to her within, she would not have been able to see the etheric presence of the Master. How much work has been done to turn out an ordinary woman into a disciple!, -a fallen woman, according to the society.

Everywhere we find transformation happening from within. The detail of the transformation happening from within is not put out, only the fruits of the labour are given out. The difficulties that are gone through are silently endured. We do not see how a seed transforms into a root and sprouts, we do not see how the flowering happens, we also do not see how the flower transforms into a fruit and how the fruit ripens. We only know the taste of the fruit when it is offered to us.

Maria Magdalena was so much in her personality life. She was acclaimed as one of the most beautiful women of her time and she was admired by all. She was admired by political leaders as well as by the government officials. They were all loving her and she also believed that they were loving her, until she met Jesus.

Her personality was very big. She was living in a great vanity and great riches; she was wielding much power in the government and in the political circles. All the influential people in town were her admirers. They were feeling that a look by her was a great favour done to them. She used to move in the streets in a glorious palanquin. People used to look at her in a great admiration as if the queen was moving . She used to enjoy such situations. She used to shower her blessings by looks. People were feeling : “Ah, she looked at me”. That was the stature she enjoyed.

One day when she was moving in the streets in a gait, she saw Jesus walking along with his disciples. Jesus was very handsome man. He was in the vigour of his youth in his 30th year. The one great damage that people has done to him, is to picturize him as a sad looking man, as if he never smiled. Jesus was a smiling beauty of his time , spreading radiance from every part of his body. His forehead distinctly carried a golden hue in the shape of a bud, in between the eyebrows. Such a person was walking on the other side of the street when Maria Magdalena was moving in her palanquin. All people looked at her with admiration. Jesus did not. But she looked at him; she felt hurt and thought: “Why this man did not look at me?”. She was accustomed to people looking at her with admiration. She now encounters a situation where a man did not care for her. Naturally she was hurt and she made note of him.

That is how Jesus made his first impression. The same situation repeated for a second time and Maria Magdalena gained a still deeper impression. She asked her maiden if she knew who was the handsome man who did not look at her. The maiden made inquiries and reported that Jesus was a kind of mystical person who teaches the gospel and seemed not to care for anything else. Maria Magdalena was recollecting Jesus all the time and was asking herself if he did not love her or, at least, like her.

One day Maria Magdalena was standing on the balcony of her house, looking around in the evening light. Suddenly she found Jesus seated under the cypress tree across the garden, near the gate. She felt encouraged and started thinking if he would be coming in or if she should go out. She would have liked him to come in, but he just sat at the gate. Maria Magdalena was in conflict thinking: “has he come for me, or is he just taking rest on his way?”. These thoughts were moving inside her. She became rest less. The man about whom she was thinking all the time was at her gate, but she was not sure if he would come in or not. Her vanity did not allow her to go out and invite him in. She spoke to her maiden and the maiden replayed: “Why don't you go to him and invite him? Instead of suffering inside about him, better go and meet him there”. M aria Magdalena thought for a while and then walked out. As she walked towards Jesus, Jesus walked towards her and said: “Maria, I love you”. She felt happy and comforted. But Jesus did not stop at it, further said: “Maria, I love you; others do not”. Then she was in confusion and asked him for an explanation. The Master again said: “You have many lovers, and yet I alone love you. Other men love themselves in your nearness. I love you in your self. Other men see a beauty in you that shall fade away sooner than their own years. But I see in you a beauty that shall not fade away. I alone love the unseen in you. All men love you for themselves; I love you for yourself. They want your body and you think that they are loving you. If you deny them your body, they will hate you and turn against you”.

Maria Magdalena could not believe it at first. She thought that they were all her real admirers in all planes. Then she thought to put it to a test. She started not being available any more for anybody. She stopped admitting people into her house. A big government officer came to the house and his entrance was denied; he felt offended as well. Thus, the government officer felt offended, the military officer felt offended, the politician felt offended, the police officer felt offended, the tax officer felt offended, the businessman felt offended! All the offended men called for a meeting and because of the insult they had suffered, they declared her to be a prostitute. Before that, she was not considered so, because of the insult they had suffered, they declared so, because all their wishes were fulfilled. She was treated as a very important person. But now that she denied her body and emotion to them, they have declared her to be a prostitute! For that purpose they invited a priest and told him to apply the Law of Moses upon her, which meant to stone her to death in public. The judgement was passed!

From a grand personality life, Maria Magdalena was reduced to be a prostitute on the streets. She could no more live in the big house; she had to move out to the streets, and the same people who used to look at her with admiration, started to throw stones at her.

The day came where she was to be stoned to death. While they wanted to start stoning her, Jesus came and offered his body as a protection to her and said unto them: If you are all righteous men, How did she become a prostitute? How can a woman become a prostitute unless men misbehave? The one who did not misbehaved with her is only eligible to stone her“. The power of the statement of the Master stunned the people who wanted to stone her and they left. Once again Jesus told her: “Maria, I love you; others do not”. Then, she understood-here is a man who offered his life to protect her, while he does not need her body. There are the others, who wanted to use the law to their advantage and put her to death when she refused to offer her body! The naked truth struck her like a thunderbolt.

Transformation triggered in her personality thereafter. What is Love was very clearly perceived by Maria Magdalena in that terrible crisis. In that crisis she found the only sources, the Master.

The strength of the truth that we hold is put test only in crisis. A crisis is the turning point for everyone to walk towards the light. Crisis are common in the lives of the disciples. It is through that crisis that Maria Magdalena has become a disciple. The communication between her and Jesus was one of soul and no more on the mental plane. He did not require to communicate much to her through mind or voice. Such was the depth of Maria Magdalena. She could realize the beauty of Master and the universality that was functioning through him.

Her orientation to the Master was so complete that it enabled silent transmission of the soul quality from the Master to herself. It was a joyful process of magnetization that she went through. The disciple is thus prepared.

She was allowed to be around the Jesus all the time, even to the extent that the co-disciples felt jealous about her. The other disciples did not carry so much conviction as she carried about the Master. John, the youngest one of the 12 apostles, on whose shoulders Jesus was frequently leaning his head, was the deepest among them. He could not see the esoteric side of Jesus. To him, the entire esoteric doctrine was revealed in the presence of Jesus. There were others who doubted him. Among the ones who doubted him. Among the ones who doubted was none other than his own younger brother Thomas. In times of difficulties Peter disowned the Master. When he was about to be in trouble, peter felt better to disown him that own him. There was such a variety among his disciples.

The one who really showed complete understanding was Maria Magdalena. She was the one who went first towards the sepulchre. What did the apostle do? Why didn't they go to the sepulchre? Only three ladies went! We can se the kind of belonging they had. The three ladies went to the sepulchre, but they did not find the body of the Master. They were dumbstruck and awe-struck. To them the situation was such that they could not live with the fact that the body of their Master was missing. It was a fact which they could not bear. That was the belonging they had towards the Master. The Master had to make haste to utter: “Maria!”, and Maria Magdalena turned towards him and said in Hebrew, “Rubboni!” (“My Teacher!”). “Do not hold on to me”, Jesus told her, “because I have not yet gone back up to the Father. But go to my brothers and tell them that I am returning to him who is my Father and their Father, my God and their God. So, Maria Magdalena went and told the disciples that she had seen the Lord and related to them what he had told her”. (John 20, 16-18)

Some got excited with the news and some where putting into reasoning: “It is possible? Are these ladies emotional?” The intellectuals try to sweep away the visions of the real ones as emotional. There were others who doubted. Jesus Christ had to come, give his presence to them: “I don't die:.

The concept of resurrection is very clearly demonstrated in the life of Jesus, and it was so as he walked up to the banks of the river Jordan.

There was nothing that he needed to learn during the last three years. He had a mission (a plan) and he fulfilled it. He always remained a big challenge to humanity and he is frequently with his demonstration of life after death.

The teachings that Jesus gave were complete and very simple, but only a few could really pick them. Mary, the mother of Jesus, was already an Initiate. There was nothing that she needed to learn from her son. She knew the whole scheme of things. She was the one who was giving a kind of presence to protect those who were working with Jesus. She also has no role to protect Jesus, but she had the role to protect the followers of Jesus. That is the reason why the followers of Christianity seek protection through Mary. If the followers of Christianity want to get protection, they pray to Mary, the mother. If the followers of Christianity want to get resurrected, they should follow Jesus.

The relationship between Jesus and Maria Magdalena was one of complete understanding between a Master and a disciple. It was a complete alignment between a Master and a disciple, where the disciple is fully anointed with the presence of the Universal Master. Her story gives us the message of the appropriateness of crisis in life. Every crisis makes the person deeper in his being. Spiritual realization cannot happen in fair weather. That does not mean that we have to invite unfair weather. Only through crisis we can be driven deeper towards truth.

When we looked at the life of the Initiates, like Arjuna or Yudhistira, we find that they were in deep crisis. Only in periods of crisis they gained the spirit. Among the disciples of Jesus we only know that Maria Magdalena had such a deep crisis in life. That must have afforded a great opportunity for her to transform. At the point of death initiation can happen. Arjuna was at that point and Maria Magdalena was at that point. Initiation can very easily happen in such crisis.

That is another dimension which I visualize in the life of Maria Magdalena.

That is how the transformation happens through the death of personality. This is what happens when we are truly walking in the path of light. The death of personality for the birth of consciousness.

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First Edition:  1997
© Copyright: Dhanishta

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