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CONTENTS:
Teaching 1: Affective Meditation and its Purpose
Teaching 2: Disposition for Meditation
Teaching 3: Invocation
Teaching 4: Imaginative Picture
Teaching 5: Sensitive Picture
Teaching 6: Purposes
Teaching 7: Consequences
Teaching 8: The Black Lady
Teaching 9: The Abyss
Teaching 10: The Two Ways
Teaching 11: The Standard
Teaching 12: The Temple of Gold
Teaching 13: The Veil of Ahehia
Teaching 14: Resurrection of Hes
Teaching 15:
The System of Meditation
Teaching 16: Final Comments
Teaching 1: Affective Meditation and its Purpose
The spiritual work in the soul is mainly made by educating the sensibility.
The main concern is not so much to acquire knowledge or to increase mental powers during the first stages of the spiritual process, but an inner transformation.
In other words: to change the old man for the spiritual man is not only to change his conceptual world, but mainly to change his sensibility, affections and habits.
In other words: To change the old man for the spiritual man is not only to change his conceptual world, but also mainly to alter his sensibility, his affections and his habits.
Hence the work rather influences senses and their environment than the mind and its varied range of possibilities and reactions.
So, spiritual life is synonym of continuous exercise to change the nature of an individual, his primitivism, inclinations, desires and passions, for another fit nature to the formation of an ideal, to the realization of a higher state of life, and to the achievement of plenitude.
Therefore, this exercise has to influence what generally one calls sensibility.
Knowledge given in parallel should expand the horizon and make the profile of the ideal world clearer and clearer; a horizon toward which the disciple is going.
These notes try to explain how this transformation in general terms can be achieved by the above-mentioned exercise. There are as many variations as souls, but these exercises must produce and had ever produced in general terms the above-mentioned effects.
Numerous exercises have been prescribed throughout ages to achieve the spiritualization of man. Of those that more directly influence and become proper for a natural transformation of sensibility, meditation is the most important.
Here meditation called affective shall be deal with, since it is the most suitable for the first years of spiritual work, and all powers of the world are brought into action for its realization.
The intelligence outlines pictures and brings into play the capacity of the meditator for an exercise that is technically perfect.
The will keeps the meditator in his work and encourages his efforts not to give up, be distracted or wander. The will measures the steps and invigorates the purposes.
Memory leads the meditator to get from his subconscious world and bring to the surface of his mind experiences of the past, to purify the sensibility linked to these experiences, or rather, to remove any affection related to this experience, and to transform it into a pure experience that has been summarized and learnt.
Of course, this does not discard the play of powers of the soul with meditations of other types, but its best application corresponds to the affective meditation.
Teaching 2: Disposition for Meditation
Meditating is not thinking. Thinking is just one of the elements of the exercise. Discoursing, reasoning and reflecting do not involve a real and deep movement in the soul substance. The purpose of thinking in meditation is to outline the aim of the exercise and to produce necessary stimuli for its realization.
Meditating is not feeling. Feeling is other element of the exercise. In meditation, feeling is to shape the psychic thought substance.
Meditating is not to speaking. Words used during the exercise are helpful to express images that have been formed, sensations that have been experienced, and purposes that the heart and mind try to achieve.
Meditating is achieving a special vibratory state, certain warmth to produce movements in the soul substance, and creation of new forms in the latter, whose result is a different nature.
We shall never speak sufficiently about the importance of this exercise and the words of orators and superiors never shall be enough to lead the souls to love this vital improvement element.
Beginners are not aware of the force put at their disposal through the teaching of meditation, and a person that does not pray daily, neglects his opportunity and his means to transform his soul into a divine vibration.
First of all, a proper disposition is necessary to meditate; he who must force himself to meditate, does not run toward meditation, or does not looks forward meditating, is a man that does not love his own liberation and is not ready for this act of true divine magic. Meditation must be wished, expected and sought. It requires a disposition made a habit; any resistance decreases the transforming Meditation power.
So, the Son must usually hanker for the moment of the holy meeting, and must be ready to practice the exercise.
The habitual meditation, always at the same time and place, is very productive.
By the mere fact of being seated at the usual place, the meditator is immediately ready for a proper absorption in order to enter the state of meditation. It is so because by sitting down, the initial resistance is overcome. Also, it is taken for granted that the place for usual meditation is a select mental environment that encourages the prayer.
The physical body and usual activities are proper if the meditator chooses and permanently observes the same meditation time, because mainly all days, during the morning, the physical body remains in the same state, not interfered by bodily tiredness, digestive functions, or the call of usual activities during subsequent hours, which distract and spoil meditation.
Strange or affected positions should be avoided by practicing positions that are natural in every individual, impede the unruly current of his thoughts, and lead his soul to the divine infinitude.
Even vocal prayer –pleasant to the soul of the meditator– should be recommended before he enters the internal chamber, the purest tabernacle, where his human nature, in touch with the divine vibration, has to be raised and transmuted.
On the other hand, the meditator must prepare those subjects of his concern not to be forced to strive mentally to find the subject and other elements of meditation. This effort, instead de facilitating the absorption and entry to the tabernacle, just would facilitate the exit and expansion of the mind.
Just this way one can expect advantageous results from meditation in a healthy condition of the soul.
In affective meditation there are five steps, namely, Invocation, imaginative picture, sensitive picture, purposes and consequences.
Seemingly it is a contradiction that one must invoke superior forces for an exercise like meditation, where personal effort of the person that prays is mainly important; but this first step is indispensable and must be taken for a true meditation.
Certainly, invocation moves the practitioner away from his ordinary state, by raising his vibration and placing him at the necessary soul state.
Through invocation, the practitioner leaves the mental circle where his thoughts commonly revolve, for entering and placing his soul a higher and more select circle.
So, his mind and affection are not united as usual, but amalgamated by a higher vibration. If is as if to change certain portion of the usual soul substance, it should subject it to heat by means of the invocation, which eventually shall transform it.
Internalization is a “must” for meditating, and this introversion is acquired only by contacting the soul with the higher circle invoked. Just then the soul enters his tabernacle, his sancta sanctorum, and just there the soul does his best to start the exercise
Invocation is not to utter beautiful words addressed to the Divine or to the Masters, because this is just a means to express the invocation.
In fact, this step of the exercise consists in raising the soul and immersing it into the state of meditation by means of this elevation. There must be a real soul movement e soul toward to end invoked, not a mere verbal formulation with entreaties or requests.
The step of the invocation must last as much as the meditator takes to achieve this state. Certain souls enter easily the meditation, and others require time and exercise to move their sensibility to higher plane.
You must invoke the form of the Divine, Entities or Masters in which the soul believes. The whole exercise of meditation must be developed as if on a tense rope between the soul and the fixed point.
Invocation must begin with a simple exposition about the need of the soul to get certain purpose related to the subject of meditation. In natural and sincere terms, the soul has to say to the Mother why and for what the subject of meditation has been chosen, what evils must be corrected or what spiritual bliss is expected. But this exposition should not be for long; otherwise the soul runs the risk of a long discourse and of spoiling the desired state of meditation.
As soon as the meditator deems that his invocation is sufficiently founded or posed, must close at once the circle by means of a short entreaty. He must summarize his request with some few words, by praying as carefully as possible.
So he shall complete this step, by establishing and fixing the vibration or the state for a total development of the exercise.
We may add that even the entreaty is not question of words, but a posture of the soul, a humiliation, a minimization of the soul before the superiority of the point invoked.
It is as if through entreaty, the minimized soul could induce the Divine to enter the soul and to fill it with the necessary vibration for a perfect achievement of meditation; or also it is as if the soul, projected after much prayer, finally could lean on the selected superior point, establishing the connection or contact to plunge it into the state of meditation.
A good meditation cannot be achieved without a good invocation.
Teaching 4: Imaginative Picture
This step consists in exposing a picture that the soul has to observe and consider: it may be the development of an event already lived, scenes usually observed in the abyss, or images that express the divine.
Its object is to awaken in the meditator a movement of his sensibility, that is, affection. This sensibility cannot be purified or exalted by moral reflections or by considering general problems that are common to all men. It must be put before particular circumstances and, in front of every one of these circumstances, certain decision must be made.
The inner reality to know and control must be apprehended in portions –isolated in pictures– in such a way that the corresponding reaction is produced before every portion or picture.
So, the Imaginative Picture grants to the meditator his personal experiences so that he may examine them again with his new affection; and also parts of the reality so that he may affectionately decide.
It is impossible to speak of spiritual progress if the soul is not subject to the influence of different factors of life.
A higher or lesser serenity of the soul is determined by the way of reaction before these factors, and this serenity is the rate of perfection. The same must be made with the continuous effort of the soul to purify its sensibility. The soul must contemplate different pictures offered by the individual life and by the universe so that the sensibility may be defined, cultivated and improved in front of every one of those pictures.
The rest of the exercise shall depend upon the perfection of the picture; hence it is necessary to imagine pictures of clear traits, vivid colors and clear-cut profiles to bring about a rapid and categorical reaction.
Vagueness, chiaroscuro, lack of definition and personal experiences not sufficiently expressed to mind, and the world not considered with the same honesty, as much in his abyssal aspect as in his spiritual aspect, just offer useless confused sensations and undefined reactions.
Do not fear to exaggerate as to colors and traits; you shall not run the risk of acquiring a wrong or altered vision of the world, whether individual or total.
You need a suggestive force, sufficiently intense to produce this effect, and then the sensibility shall be unburied and moved. A little clear picture does not raise the sensibility. On the other hand, after you outlined the picture, you must keep it in your mind for a while for your identification with it, that is, to exclude any other image from your mind. For instance, if the meditator sees a road, he must be so identified with this image that any other image must be discarded; he must see just that road and insist on the contemplation of this picture to the extent of possessing it.
Again avoid the risk of verbosity that, by rightly striving to outline the picture as clearly as possible, dilutes it; then imagination runs after the words instead of staying on the picture.
Certain souls do not find proper pictures for their meditations. This trouble derives, above all, from the desire of imagining extravagances. Life and the universe are precious pictures to be examined on the light of meditation. But, seemingly beginners often strive for seeking non-real pictures and for imagining beauties instead of seeing those abundant beauties where the human glance rests and of seeking ugliness always outside themselves. Many times this is due to an inaccurate conception about spiritual life, by attributing the mysterious and rare traits to the latter.
Other times, the trouble is that the imagination is hardly used in life. Reality became so limited and pressing for certain souls that these souls have neither time nor desire to imagine or use fantasy in order to beautify the outline of the world.
A recommendation for them is to seek in themselves, in their own history, elements to purify, and in the divine extension of beauty of nature, to find pictures that may provide spiritual bliss. But if this is not understood and troubles to find imaginative pictures persist, then prepare very simple pictures containing just one or two traits. See an act of avarice, and despise it; observe just an aspect of the sunset, and enjoy it.
People of excessive imaginative power should not use it to think up rare or incongruous pictures, entirely strange to the reality, for sensibility shall refuse to react accordingly before unreality. Power of impression, power of suggestion is absent in pictures of this kind. Many times, sensibility comes into action by merely beginning to outline the picture, since the mind already knows what effect he is seeking; then to persist in making the picture is unproductive. This must mark the end of the picture.
The picture must be left after its mission of raising sensibility and preparing for the transformation is fulfilled. To archive pictures is to build a museum, and the purpose of the imaginative picture is not to accumulate images but to bring opportunities to purify, raise and lead the sensibility to take the following step in meditation.
The sensitive picture is one of the most important steps in the exercise of meditation, for it is the stage in which the soul controls its feelings and gives its intended form, tonality and vibration.
Seemingly the name of this step in the exercise indicates that sensations occur while the practitioner is describing what he feels. Sensations take place during the development of the Imaginative Picture. In this Sensitive Picture you take account of your feeling and conceptually you are identified with the state of sensibility. So, while you imagine a slow, rhythmical rain, our appeasing or calming sensation derives from the observation of two drops of water, not when the meditator describes the Sensitive Picture. So, when this step develops during the meditation, the practitioner is aware of the peaceful and calm sensation experienced.
Moreover, during the description of the Sensitive Picture, the practitioner defines the sensation experienced, and typifies and stabilizes it. So, when the Imaginative Picture is made, simultaneously sensations take place, and when the practitioner speaks about feeling it, he possesses and perceives his sensation. On the other hand, the achievement of the intended sensation is not an instantaneous effect, for the sensation is not an impression. Impression is the influence of the stimulus on the senses. Sensation, as a step in meditation, is mental perception of the effect of this stimulus.
This step is taken reuniting and bringing to the mind different sensations experienced by virtue of the Imaginative Picture. This operation must be made gradually or in crescendo, namely, he must begin describing the prelude of sensation and, by suggestive affirmation of its feeling, gradually to lead it to acquire a definitive form of the sensation intended.
An operation of this kind on sensibility is precisely the educational aspect as to purification or plenitude.
Also here we must warn against the evil of the word that, in virtue of expressing more intensely and constantly a sensation achieved, usually minimizes and scatters it, returning sensibility to its early state instead of keeping suspended on the culminating point achieved.
For instance, when a sensation of abhorrence is reached, you should not continue to talk and talk, since words disintegrate the sensation; you must keep this sensation so that you may pose later your purposes by means of this force. You shall not get effective or durable purposes without sensation. When I imagine a rotten food (Imaginative Picture), at once I feel disgust (Sensation). If I describe what I have felt and keep this sensation with no dilution or disintegration, at once I shall pose serious and steady purposes not to eat again foods in this condition. But if sensation is lightly confused, weak and non-realized, the purpose neither would be posed nor had realization force.
The Sensitive Picture must be strong and exaggerated as to its expression. As we said earlier, emotionality does not move through weak, loose stimuli; you must revolutionize it if you wish lasting effects. Emotionality, as a vital element of the human nature, shall be balanced by itself. If you try an exhaustive and analytical research to discover the real tonality of the experienced sensation it would lose intensity.
So do not fear to state steadily that you feel such or such sensation in spite of feeling it less intensely.
But as we said earlier, in your exposition you must observe a gradual procedure, that is, from the enunciation of the sensation to reach later, by exaggerating, the affirmation that you have perceived the whole sensation that you were seeking. During this step in meditation is when, in fact, one can say that the practitioner controls his sensibility and is operating, controlling and imposing on it a tonality and a way to feel that is the fruit of his will. This is the culminating point in the exercise.
Emotionality is led to a high point of vibration during the Sensitive Picture. If the practitioner stops the exercise, emotionality returns immediately to its early state, and nothing occurs in the soul. So, the success in meditation shall depend upon the use of the emotional exaltation attained.
By purposes we mean to make steady decisions and keep in the soul that sensation that the soul has sought and achieved. So, emotionality remains at the disposal of the purposes and does not return to its original state without certain change in its nature. It shall never be again the former emotionality, for sensation has led it to a culminating state and its affirmation has subjugated and put it at the disposal of the spiritual elevation.
Usually many practitioners are reluctant to pass from those beautiful emotional states achieved in the sensitive picture to state purposes; this is a mental work that demands to leave the sensitive state. But here the will must steadily intervene so that this state does not last unnecessarily and the soul is ready to fuse the sensation experienced with the mental nature of the purpose to achieve.
Purposes should be clear, concise, sensible and achievable.
They should be clear, since only this way they can produce an intended effect in the soul; any confusion in them would spoil the exercise, with this result: fruitless efforts.
They should be concise, since observations and recapitulations are out of question; these are summed up in the state achieved in the Sensitive Picture.
On the other hand, a concise purpose prevents the enthusiasm put in its service from being widely diluted, and on the contrary, leads to load this enthusiasm intensively.
They should be sensible, namely, humanly and immediately applicable, devoid of eccentricity and fantasy, and entirely real to the soul. If an evil of the soul was, for instance, the habit of smoking, you should not try to exterminate any factory and plantation of tobacco, which are so negative for health of mankind in general, but you should intend to abhor intensively a weakness of your soul, fostered and led by the Black Lady, who does not permit you to overcome this negative habit.
Here also we should warn against excessive talking, which dilutes the power of the purpose or multiplies purposes, resulting in such a number that meditator is unable to recall.
You should begin by posing purposes related to an immediate and possible achievement. You should not intend great battles, and your purposes should be to defend yourself or to attack the enemy in the first opportunity given in your own soul; and you may leave for the end your formulation of a purpose of general kind. So, in relation to the example above-mentioned, one can say your purpose should be to fight against that enemy as soon as temptation shows up in the soul, and to abhor it through the smell of the smoke, through the sight of a cigarette or through its eventual taste in your palate; you may leave for the end the general purpose of abhorring the Black Lady, or of running after a total purification.
Purposes should be posed emphatically; they are not a mere mental elaboration; they are not mere thoughts, but thoughts driven by a fervent feeling achieved in the Sensitive Picture. Then, emphasis consists in amalgamating these two elements; otherwise, mere purposes enunciated become absolutely unproductive.
To prevent the enthusiastic purpose from being diluted, one should not pose many purposes; one must pose few purposes containing those conditions above-mentioned.
The state of the soul after posing the purposes is neither that of relaxation nor of the individual after ending his work; on the contrary, this emphasis linking sensation and purpose still should keep the individual fervent by the fire of meditation, since the exercise technically will finish just with the next step.
As the last step of the exercise, Consequences have a double purpose in the technical formation of the exercise.
As we said, along with the spiritual process developed in depths of the soul, the student should become self-conscious of the process, that is, he should acquire knowledge of his inner development and of the result achieved through exercise of prayer and application of the teaching to his own life.
The first purpose of this step of meditation is to know the effect that the exercise has produced in the soul by summing up what he has achieved through meditation.
The second purpose is to affirm again in the soul the suggestive power of this exercise by stating repeatedly and emphatically, with inner certainty, that you have reached and achieved the effect you were looking for.
Precisely in the frame of this double purpose of the step, we recommend: first, what the exercise has revealed must be reduced to the understanding of the meditator. And meditation makes the soul know and understand aspects and states never known.
Many meditators have deemed to be exempt of defects, passions or vicious inclination, but after successive meditations have found that the Black Lady is enthroned as the queen and lady within, even presiding over aspects that they believed good and worthy.
In this step of his meditation, the meditator is aware of what he has discovered through the exercise within. So, for instance, if in meditation on the Two Ways he discovers his grade of attachment to things that never called his attention, because they never came to the surface of his consciousness, but that were charmingly sleeping within, he shall sum up this discovery by expressing that he could understand to what extent he was tied to such or such things.
Second, the meditator has to see what happened in the world of his sensations.
Certain people have renounced to the possibility of reaching states of elevation and spiritual bliss. Nothing sublime affected their sleeping emotionality. But meditation has revealed to them marvelous sources of spiritual plenitude, and true, never-dreamt glimpses of Divine Union.
As the meditator states that he achieved the effect of his quest, he has laid the basis for the real and total achievement of this purpose.
Entering the path is beginning of Divine Union; the first achievement in the effect that one seeks in meditation is the beginning of its definitive conquest.
Also consequences must be clear, short, certain and with no argumentation.
Clarity and concision permit a clear knowledge of what one has achieved and a conclusive affirmation of what one has perceived.
Certainty is indispensable and must be expressed to fix in the soul the respective conquest. As to absence of argumentation, this can be easily explained taking into account that any argumentation in this step is a rational meditation disconnected from the exercise performed; also, a long argumentation affects the effect and dilutes it with words and images.
Resume as such, not as a step in the exercise of Meditation, as its name indicates, sums up every step of the exercise with precision and very few words.
Its object is mainly didactic, since it just gives to the soul an element for the memory through few conclusive terms; so the meditator can remember during the day those words pervaded by the vibration of the exercise and by the sense of realization contained in them.
What may represent the Black Lady in Cafh’s Symbols?
The spiritual path is traveled by stages; it neither begins nor ends in one life. It began by the individuation of the human being and shall end by his liberation.
The spiritual way is marked by long life spans, which is experience, subtilization, adaptation of vehicles, and a sum of inner realizations.
A stage must be relegated to the past as soon as is achieved, because it was a personal experience accumulated in the subconscious and expressed in the soul.
So, if instincts were for man his means to know, if present man is a son of whatever experience derived from instincts, this state has been surpassed and must be forgotten to choose the mental life that present mankind tries to conquer. But human senses naturally tend to taste again what some day was a cause of delight in the personal experience; and sensibility tries to preserve numberless times a pleasant sensation experienced yesterday. All lower powers of the soul conspire to grant again to man this pleasure of yesterday. But if the soul wants to try the new stage and realize it unfailingly, must give up and escape from the past, must control senses leading it to repeat what yesterday was tasted, and must educate the sensibility to move it away from this trend to taste again.
So, a spiritual man must not look behind. Behind, in his life and in the past is what he has realized and surpassed, and what he has to leave; and the Black Lady is the main symbol of this past.
Passions, vicious trends, affections of yesterday, all this belongs to the past. Yesterday they were used by the soul in is travel through the stage of senses and instincts, but in the new stage, to come back to it is to vegetate in the past, to be stagnated, and to deny the spiritual progress.
So, the Black Lady is not an evil and wicked entity; on the contrary, she is the Divine of yesterday for a spiritual man and the Divine of today for a man that still did not realize the stage in which she is the queen. The Black Lady is the voice of whatever corrupts the spiritual work, the enemy par excellence of any ideal and of any effort of the soul to excel spiritually, the deadened voice of the past, and temptation, passion, vice, belittling fear, and death.
She is a powerful enemy not only because attacks through senses, but also because invades the mind with whisperings of the latter and with the memory and all powers of the instinctive mind at her service.
There is just one way to overcome and reduce it just to an experience accumulated in the soul without any other subjugating power, and this way is meditation, since concepts and moral criteria are out of question, and we have to detach our sensibility from the desire of tasting again and to control the natural trend of our senses to sense again; and this entails, over all, to work intensively on sensibility making use of proper means.
Sermons become vain, reasoning are useless, notions of duty futile, and call to will poor; we have to act directly on the psychic substance whose diapason is sensibility, to transform, re-educate and shape it again. All this is an order that must be eminently individual or personal. Evils of the world or from other beings around us have nothing to do with this corrective exercise, and criticisms from others cannot have any influence.
The practitioner must personally take and observe his soul and its state, must understand what aspect of the Black Lady prevails in the soul, and must be ready to work, under direction and control, for his own recovery and spiritual progress.
An effect must be achieved in the meditation on the Black Lady: Abhorrence.
Of all psychological reactions that can be used in this struggle, such as contempt, hatred, rejection, intolerance, repulse, et cetera, doubtless Abhorrence is really indicated for the triumph of the soul over the Black Lady.
Bear in mind that to make her power steady, the Black Lady causes the sensibility to be attached and to taste time and again those sensations experienced someday. An equivalent force must be used to liberate the sensibility from this attachment. To criticize the Black Lady, to treat her in an intolerant way or dislike her is not enough; we need to use or get in the soul a true force of attack and opposition, something able to impede the Black Lady even to appear in the soul; and this just can be achieved by continuously, intensely and constantly abhorring her and whatever she symbolizes and controls in the soul.
Years of constant abhorrence through meditation have to forge in the soul a total abhorrence of the past with all its delights tasted someday, therefore by permitting a slow and gradual formation of the new man, that is, of a man with a proper sensibility of high and lofty spiritual states: that is why abhorrence is an irreplaceable psychological effect.
Many meditators fear to abhor too much the ordinary aspects of the Black Lady and think that this is a denial of life, and that a harsh attack on the Black Lady is like an attack on life itself, and when they deem so, far from an intense abhorrence, they operate with ineffective mediocrity; this is for those who think and meditate so: life is so wisely organized that it never will attempt against itself, and there is no danger that the indispensable equilibrium may be broken by excessive abhorrence impeding to live as a human being and to achieve the purposes of life.
The Black Lady never dies, and human nature cannot be harmed in its vital aspects by meditation: these fears are the most obvious expression of how the Black Lady is fighting against the meditation on the Black Lady.
You should preferably develop the exercise bearing in mind something already lived that has been reproached or is being reproached by the conscience. This personal experience has to be coldly outlined in the imaginative picture, that is, it must not be lived again, as if it were not of the present state of the meditator.
Of course, the picture must include those conditions above-mentioned in the respective teaching, and must be careful not to be disconnected from his imaginative character.
Naturally, from this picture whether a manifested weakness before stimuli of the picture, or a sensation of vacuity and futility of the event already lived shall emerge, and this shall permit to express purposes of abhorrence and repulsion in general against the Black Lady, who from the ignorance and darkness of the soul has brought about these sensations.
You should persist for a while in the purgative work because a personal experience on the surface has to facilitate the emergence of other similar personal experiences to consciousness.
These personal experiences shall take place picture by picture in the good meditator, and shall permit a systematic purgative work. It is as if after taking from the archive of the soul something already lived, the dark pit of human primitivism would remain exposed, that is, the crude selfishness of the old man, of that being who has been faithful son of the Black Lady, permitting then a continuous evaporation and a subsequent penetration of sunbeams. The observation of vapors has to give us the uninterrupted succession of imaginative pictures, and a past that has to be really abhorred for long.
What may the abyss symbolize as subject of meditation?
First, we must emphasize the analogy between the graphic picture suggested by this word and the environment in which mankind in general lives, struggles, enjoys and suffers to die.
As a matter of fact, an abyss suggests a deep and dark place of doom; an environment, on which man has fallen, carried by his desires, has the same characteristics. This environment is dark because of ignorance covering the soul of man in this state of his living, and it is of doom because the human being desires in an excessive way to live the life of this environment and becomes intensely attached to the latter, and so he loses the Eternal Life, which is his heritage and fatherland.
Hence meditation about the abyss tends to give to the soul a sensation of desolation in this world of continuous and intense emotions, and this way prevents the soul from its doom and from spending life after life in this true vale of darkness and death.
On the other hand, the abyss also symbolizes what recently has been called collective subconscious, which also could be called collective mind.
Certainly, men not only take part in a common or general structure, whether physical or biological, by virtue of laws of heritage and species, but also take part a common way of feeling and a common mentality. Mankind indisputably progresses in developing mind. The grade of mental capacity achieved by a generation is conveyed to the next generation by laws of heritage. When the humans come into being, regardless their individual grade of evolution, they flow into a grade of more advanced collective mentality possessed by previous generations.
Knowledge gradually acquired by men and experience achieved in different areas are essentially conveyed to future generations, which bring it like something known and lived, and that takes part in their evolutionary experience.
So, if the Son wants to achieve his individuality, to be independent of collective sensing and thinking, to be an artifice of his own ego and refuses to follow the long way observed by mankind in general, has to abandon the route followed by the collective mind, by tracing his own new, individual grooves on his brain.
He has to overcome the influence of this general mind for the prevalence of his own mind. He has to leave behind the route followed by men of Pisces and follow the route announced by Aquarius. The Abyss is also a symbol of this collective mind.
After determining the concept of abyss and the purpose of meditation, we let us see why desolation is pre-established as an effect. Again it is patent how deeply the Holy Masters know the soul of the humans and what therapy can be prescribed to their evils or what laws may be applied to their education.
A soul that comes to the Spiritual Path comes from the world and from its collective feeling and thinking, gets used and likes to live the collective aspect, and escapes from loneliness. It vibrates with tonalities of happiness while living the vibration of the collective aspect; then the path must move the soul away from this pleasure and habit called worldliness.
Desolation is for the soul the most suitable sensation to get this estate of isolation and detachment from worldliness. Please, understand properly this: spiritual men must not abandon streets and fields, living closed and isolated; they must live in streets and cities being desolate within, with hunger of loneliness within, internally escaping from the sensation of worldliness, from pleasure for worldliness, from the sensation of apparent security given by the collective aspect, and from the common rule, emotions, opinions and way of life.
Such sensation is indispensable in the beginning of the spiritual life and quite necessary in such a way in the soul so that the individual takes for sure that the memory and pleasure shall not overwhelm him for the collective past, which represents the abyss.
A definitive rooting in the world of the spirit shall not exist until this inclination to worldliness is purged and cleaned. Meditation must give these fruits; to live in the world being desolate.
How to meditate?
The quest of this desolation can bring two different sensations. One of them has to be of distress before the dimensions and force of worldliness.
A soul that strove to discover its own defects and purged from them, goes to the world and sees that to remove evil from within is not enough, but that there is a extraordinary force in the environment, which by its continuous influence on senses and mind, brings into the soul what the soul tried to extirpate.
The boisterous image of this world before the purified soul causes the latter to feel alone, strange and desolate. On the other hand, usually a grief invades at those moments the soul of the meditator, a grief for the lack or destiny of mankind in general. Far from the reality, in the oceanic maelstrom of its varied sensations, desires, inclinations and passions, mankind runs, laughs and weeps, and does not pay attention to God, and then the soul of the meditator suffers of this blindness and of this implacable human karma sealed off, and this sensation forms the truly spiritual desolation.
It is not difficult to choose imaginative pictures with this concept of worldliness since if we open our eyes to see the surrounding reality it is enough to observe how those pictures multiply rapidly.
It is important to get the truly wished desolation. Generally, meditators require desolation of the Divine Matter, but in their souls they do not wish it. They do not notice that the spiritual building that they are erecting has no bases when desolation is absent. The winds of worldliness, which continuously and uninterruptedly blow on the unprotected valleys of the world, at any moment shall thrown down those castles if previously an intense desolation had not annihilated those worldly pleasures by granting to the soul its certainty that shall triumph by its own efforts.
Desolation forges a protective wall and sure foundations of the spiritual building.
We may properly say a soul imperfectly desolate is a soul totally unsteady in its journey through the spiritual road.
Certainly, just the beginning of the purgative task of the soul, first step in the spiritual life of the meditator, is also the beginning of honoring the divine promise, the beginning of the Divine Union.
But throughout the path there are culminating points, crossroads or bifurcations marking the beginning of new stages.
The two ways symbolize a culminating point in Cafh’s hermeneutics. They symbolize a decision that the soul has to make someday to follow certain direction by means of clear-cut methods and yearnings, through the way of knowledge, or way of wanting nothing and knowing nothing, that is, the way of Renunciation. Is there any relationship in this symbolical name with the subject of meditation? Obviously, there is a concrete relationship between the subject and the step that the soul must take. You might state that so far the two classical stages in Hindu mystique occurred: Yama and Niyama, external and internal detachment from worldliness, change of external habits and of internal dispositions. But, did the purgative task finish? Is it enough what we made to leave the soul exposed to the Divine influence? No; certainly, evils of the soul are removed and an aversion to worldliness is introduced, but the deep incision to remove along with the evils the productive source of them still is not made.
And the meditator must decide then between a morality more or less acquired and the bleeding elimination of sources of evil existing in him. He has to decide for death of his nature and of his old man, formed by links, affections and ties of his personality, or simply, for those things that he achieved so far, which is a more or less emphasized morality. The attentive meditator then has noticed that it is not enough to remove those superficial layers thrown to his soul by the past that the Black Lady symbolizes. And to fight against his inclinations to the world of the abyss is not enough, but he has to remove affections, ties and chains of his soul and to achieve the internal detachment.
This meditation leads to it and certainly produces a very different spiritual freedom, as to its projections, from that freedom commonly understood in the world.
You are truly free just when you removed from the soul your attachment in every human and emotional aspect –material, psychological and mental chains forged to stay on earth, which you must tear to pieces in order to take flight to heaven–.
Before your meditation on the Two Ways, you should make a self-analysis to see more or less clearly those inner bonds that are tying your soul with the world and its shadows.
So, abundant material shall come to the surface configuring imaginative pictures, blood ties, disordered affections, imaginary possessions, concepts of happiness, illusory certainties and excessive desires of life, which all together shall show to the meditator the dimension of his ties through pictures of intense colors and subtle design.
These last pictures shall determine at the same time a sensation of bondage, heaviness, prison, attachment or impossibility to take a spiritual flight or to get undressed and enter, light and pure, the kingdom of heaven.
This sensation must be intense and quite descriptive; the meditator must really feel the burden of chains and how short steps he can take if he does not cut these ties that now are heavier and heavier by virtue of a continuous meditation.
So, he shall pose general purposes to lighten the burden, and later other purposes of immediate realization, of immediate dissolution of the affective nucleus sealed off in the heart and of immediate disintegration of the heavy mass established there, whose chains form the whole prison of the individual.
Also consequences have to be clear, determining in the soul understanding or clear vision of its own tie, and conviction of having incorporated within, through exercise, a liberating force and enthusiasm for a freedom already achieved.
Certain meditators refuse to leave to purposes the result of meditation and as early as in the picture of sensations they want to feel detachment, but notice that this sensation is non-existent as a lasting state of the soul. Of course, you feel relief by discarding your burden, but this is not a sensation of detachment. Technically you need introduce, by means of purposes, a liberating force whose results some day shall be detachment.
Generally, in observing the spiritual process of the souls, at a moment the enthusiasm for purification decreases and the meditator stops by repeating inconsistent imaginative pictures that, because of their repetition, neither arouse enthusiasm, nor make the soul progress in the purgative aspect or in the spiritual process in general.
Then the spiritual directors usually remove from the meditator that depression caused by a long purgative exercise and again kindle in him a flame or something like that that may move it within with new determination to seek the grace of the Mother.
Meditation on the Standard is for this purpose and other purpose too.
Seemingly for the novice, his entire spiritual life is to abhor his sins, visibly multiplied when he meditates more and more, and to escape from an almost uninhabitable world, whose evils are greater and greater in his mind.
And what about the Divine Promise? And about love so many times dreamt? And about the revelation of mysteries so many times promised? Seemingly everything is farther and farther from the soul like a frustrated ideal.
Then the practitioner must recover his early determination, by kindling again the holy fire within.
Also he must control the world of values and choose among them, becoming somebody who decides and solves his own destiny.
This meditation and its effect –the choice– lead to it.
For a person devoted to continuous purgation and internal isolation to escape from the abyss, the Standard implies to look at the light and means to flee from a darkened world in quest for the radiant light of the spirit, majestically and lovingly conveyed by the Standard.
This meditation is a revival and must be started with this disposition. It is the first contact of the embittered practitioner with the divine sweetness and the substitution of the dark screen of the Black lady for the red color of the sweetly tender Anhunit.
Invocation has to be the first dialogue with no complaints between meditator and the divine. It has to be the first projection of forces of the soul upwards, in a youthful, vibrating tone; it has to be like the green grass that in springtime emerges from the black earth toward the light and heat of the soft sun. During the invocation a perfect choice has to be requested because the soul, after its distresses, finds new choices and then has to decide the way to follow for its culmination. When the soul started its purgative activity, just one world would exist: the Abyss ruled by the Black Lady. But after a long battle against this world, a new state emerged in the soul, expressed by its longing for something else, for something different, and by its yearning for the first love.
The choice shall determine the form of vocation to achieve entirely this state.
As purgative death prevailed in the soul, there was neither vocation nor force to do so. The meditator was dozing and dreaming of his imperfection. But when vocation breaches the walls of darkness, whose foundations shake by the purgative hammering, and the soul strives for going out, then this is not a clear-cut purpose, but a first desire to breath divine air; he makes it but does not know why. The meditation on the Standard has to take this vocative force that is beginning, and has to drive it toward the Divine by means of the choice.
Usually many spiritual aims call the attention of the meditator to apply his vocation on them, but a long exercise of meditation on the Standard shall give him the knowledge of his own vocation and the subsequent guide to re-float this vocation. Therefore, choices must have vast aims, in such a way that the practitioner is not obliged to make use of his sensibility to choose properly among many aims that are indiscernible to him. First choices must imply the vocative force of the Mother, her love, her banner, her heart, her harmony, et cetera, and as soon as the practitioner progressed and established his vocation in this aspect, then less wider and but fitter aims to the vocational nature of the soul can be sought.
Practitioners very often complain for their numberless choices and therefore find this meditation improper; but the genuine vocation of the soul lasts a lot to purify its merely enthusiastic nature and to become a clear, unique, true and transcendental expression; one thing is the spiritual vocation in general and another thing altogether is the peculiar vocation of every one, and this process of self-quest, that is, the quest for vocation, is long and laborious. So, meditators should not be sorry if, year after year, are obliged to change choice, to choose again and to change their aim, since this shall occur nearer and nearer to the unstoppable nature of their own vocation.
So far all of our sayings are sufficient provision of elements for the invocation and imaginative pictures of an exercise of this kind. In sensation, the meditator has to describe his deeds and the effects produced on him by the picture; has to determine the stimulus that he sensed to get from it force for his purposes; and has to achieve a vigorous and clear choice, sufficient effect, to produce in the souls what we said it is the aim of meditation on the Standard.
Teaching 12: The Temple of Gold
An ordinary man tries to solve his anxieties as soon perceives that distraction and entertainment are forgotten, and perhaps he does not notice that these means move away just temporarily from the mental surface the hammering of his troubles, while in his own soul, the latter remain unsolved. Forces accumulated around him seek exits and many times find them, not by natural transmutation, but through conflicts that do not imply spiritual good health of course, and that leave sediments of future, continuous discomforts. This trait is really of our times in which society seemingly has organized as never before different media of distraction and entertainment. It is as if he perceived this evil of the time which is precisely a lack of inner life and would try to solve it collectively, but with no success.
For a lonely meditator not only there are problems of any ordinary man but also other problems of transcendental kind, which cannot be deviated or disconnected from the soul by external media. So for the Son disinclined to a mystical realization, there is a constant sorrow for the lack of plenitude as to efforts and results.
We can say properly, a mystic is lovesick because his soul is always faithful to his Divine Bride. Just as a worldly lover never gratifies his desire for sincere love because even the possession of his beloved being cannot gratify his desire for a total union with her, so the faithful lover of the Divine Mother never gratifies his desire for a full love until the moment when the two disappear from the world of individuation to become One. Until that moment, the soul undergoes the sweet sorrow that keeps perennially kindled the flame of love. But the divine can alternately stay on the surface of the beloved just if this soul is calm, passive and closely exposed to the divine influence. For instance, no sorrow can co-exist with bliss because otherwise disturbs or decreases the effects of the latter. Needless to say at that moment even ordinary problems of man must not intervene. So, on this level of the process regulated by meditation, the practitioner needs a means to smoothen the uneven soul because of incisive sorrows and troubles. In other words, the soul needs a fountain to remain in it for a moment and to go out like a limpid silver mirror to reflect the divinity.
This fountain is the Temple of Gold, and the wonderful water is the divine consolation.
Unlike any contradictory opinion, the practitioner must meditate on the Temple of Gold not only when his soul is disturbed or lovesick. That is, he must make use of this meditation not only for recovery purposes but also of the comforting meditation after his session of purgative meditation before he may go to a fully blissful state.
Invocation becomes extraordinarily important in this exercise. As we said above, invocation in general forms the so-called state of meditation. Here, besides the formation of this state, it must create a proper disposition of the soul for consolation. Consolation cannot be felt without sorrow and tribulation. The practitioner must express to the Divine Mother, step by step, his motives to seek consolation, by becoming a suitable receiver of the effect that he is seeking. Otherwise, to seek the divine balsam is to fail beforehand.
Also the choice of imaginative pictures is important in this meditation. Pictures are abundant in purgative meditation, and personal experiences are ceaseless and provide quite sufficient elements to the imagination. Meditation on the Temple of Gold is more technical and that is why it influences one determined aspect, that of consolation, and demands especial pictures to stimulate sufficiently and properly the soul.
On the other hand, usually the meditator neither seeks nor gets this divine therapy. Therefore he needs previous training through merely soothing pictures, in such a way that he may get peace, tranquility and even lack of care from his first meditations. Usually pictures of nature in rest or relaxation provide soothing effects: a uniform, constant rain, a soft sunset, a spring dawn without any stimulus or enthusiasm, and even the sea or the mountain at dusk.
The meditator must not stop there, on pain of being deprived of the divine consolation forever.
After these pictures, according to his nature, which may be more rational or more emotional, he must form pictures to understand the presence of the divine through laws and harmonies of the universe, or imaginative pictures of emotional kind, such as to see the heart of the Mother, the eyes of the Master, his blessing and other pictures like that.
Sensation is also characteristic in this meditation. The comforting result of the imaginative picture has to be consolation and nothing more, that is, stimulating effects of wellbeing or mystical rapture are out of the question; you must get only consolation, and this sensation is unique for its softness and evenness. This sensation should not arouse enthusiasm in the soul, but tenderly smooth it, without any depression or exaltation; therefore, sensation must be slowly described, never going beyond consolation to become spiritual bliss; this step must end without any prolongation, when the soul feels that sorrow and grief disappear, are deleted, or subsided.
Purposes should lead the soul to use frequently the divine consolation in order to seek usually in the temple of Gold the tranquility that the soul needs, and the internalization by seeking restoration reserves that the divine stores up within.
As usual, the consequences not only shall lead to get consolation but also to understand the supreme good of this meditation for his life in general and for his spiritual process in particular.
Teaching 13: The Veil of Ahehia
We cannot take for granted that the purgative face of meditation reduces any evil existing in the soul and that the loving face is the positive, or constructive, aspect of the work, for one and the other become indispensable to get spiritual aims.
Plot and foundations must be prepared before any construction. The purgative Meditation prepares the plot, and the loving meditation erects the buildings.
The meditation on the Veil of Ahehia implies the beginning of the definitive and direct work of spiritual construction, but what does symbolize the Veil of Ahehia? Ahehia is the Divine Mother of the Universe in her active and dynamic aspect, first motor, first law, vibrational focus from which any radiation of work and life of the Universe emanate; any vibratory power, slow or rapid, is in the focus from which it emanates, and this focus is Ahehia.
She is present at any non-potential manifestation; so her symbol is the figure of a Divine Woman who uninterruptedly beats a little drum, image of the vibration. Ahehia shall be then everywhere and her vibration shall fill totally the Universe.
But for a man and meditator, She is veiled, since her presence is not perceived or remains excluded, covered by the secondary manifestation. So, for instance, you admire nature, its quite intelligent laws, its powers of renewal, its unequal colors and its wonderful music, but in all this you do not perceive the breath of the ever-awake Mother Ahehia.
Meditation on the Veil of Ahehia tends to an affective identification with the divine by introducing the soul, through bliss, into the divine love, which is the loftiest expression of this divine. On the other hand, the meditator gets used to find the divine in everything, on the first plane, the closest plane to the soul, not in the rational deduction of His Presence at secondary and remote planes.
So the effect of your search, that is bliss, must be not another ordinary emotion, a common pleasant emotion, or a sensation eventually derived from the contemplation of nature, but spiritual bliss that just can be given by the divine aspect animating nature.
Certainly, is quite difficult to explain and prescribe to a meditator the proper sensation of spiritual bliss; any eventual explanation of it shall be defective; just experience shall reveal to the soul the nature of spiritual bliss. But in order explain more or less how this sensation is we may say it is subtler and fuller than any intellectual pleasure. Many times an understanding suddenly achieved in the soul, whether by reading or by simple reflection, usually is very pleasant within, but strange to our senses, as if that pleasant sensation had taken place just in the mind and had just cheered up the heart.
Spiritual bliss is even subtler; the intellectual pleasure is referred to something concrete, like certain knowledge or spontaneous revelation. Ultimately, like a definition, we would state the intellectual pleasure is a localized sensation. In spiritual bliss this limitation is absent because this bliss pervades the whole soul and gives heat to the whole being.
Of course, it is difficult for the practitioner to reach this so marvellous effect the first time; so he must be slowly led to a gradual training for the spiritual bliss, as we shall see this next by a commentary on the steps of this exercise.
The best invocation to seek spiritual bliss is directly led to the source of any bliss, that is, Ahehia, and not only to entreat her, but also by repeating time and again her name, in order to associate its vibration and divine essence with the following steps.
Many, or rather numberless, are the proper imaginative pictures for this meditation. Needless to say, Ahehia is present at the entire manifestation to recognize how easily we can find her; but for technical reasons the soul must be led from the easier perception of the divine presence –observation of nature– to the innermost subtle and spiritual identification with her. So we must start with accessible pictures to see this bliss, which by themselves may give spiritual pleasure, like a natural beauty or certain immense aspects of the manifestation; for instance, the contemplation of the ocean or of the infinite sky; but bearing ever in mind that sensation must not be provided by this manifestation in itself, but by the presence of Ahehia behind this manifestation.
But before the soul gets used to this easy find, it must pass to the spiritual bliss in its non-pleasant aspect, that is, what naturally does not provide pleasure, such as the observation of death in nature, depressing aspects of certain climates, and bothersome characteristics of rains, storms and snow. In all these aspects, the meditator shall get used to the unity of Ahehia, that is, her ever-constructive aspect, and he shall fully enjoy.
But even the search for spiritual Bliss should not stop there. The spirit of Ahehia flutters over a vast field and as soon as the soul gets used to find her on pictures of both pleasant and unpleasant aspects of nature, has to look for her within, establishing a personal affinity between Mother Ahehia and himself.
Usually certain steps are observed for this close contact. So, meditator has to begin by seeing, hearing or tasting Ahehia like a Woman, Mother or Entity; he shall establish an objective connection and, after he enjoys this presence outside him, through the senses of all, just then he shall go to perceive internally the formless Ahehia by trying to enjoy her spiritual nature without sensorial contamination.
And since Ahehia comprises the entire active manifestation, also it is possible to enjoy Her by intuiting Her attributes. Admire Her omnipotence, enjoy Her omnipresence, the mind of Her wonderful omniscience, and the purest spiritual bliss shall fill the Divine Soul of Ahehia.
Also sensation has to be gradually achieved; the meditator must be trained to experience the spiritual pleasure. Neither seek in this meditation perceptible and superficial emotions nor strive to ascertain the occurrence or not of a sensation in your soul. Generally, it is an unknown sensation that neither accelerates intensely the agitated beat of our heart because is so subtle, nor gives pleasure to senses.
Training will respond to the scale of those pictures above described. The more spiritual is the picture, the less accessible to senses, and the more accessible to the soul is the Presence, the more intense and spiritual is this sensation.
Bear in mind, you do not seek emotional softness, but to tune the higher sensibility with the cosmic vibration of the Mother Ahehia, which is symbol of bliss for man.
The only purposes of this meditation are to decide your union with Ahehia by enjoying Her Divine Presence behind (and in) the whole manifestation.
The consequences should affirm the soul expansion for spiritual bliss, the Union of Mother Ahehia by perceiving and feeling what the soul has obtained during this unifying exercise.
Experience gathered throughout years by meditator shall confirm this truth in his soul. Ahehia is the Mother of the Universe and active manifestation of the Unity; Her realization by man is given by the bliss provided by this meditation.
Teaching 14: Resurrection of Hes
The subtlest vibration –the potential aspect– is immolated one day on the continuous movement produced by the becoming. She emanates from that time on and Her emanation is activity and life. Everything that lives is animated by Her potentiality.
This divine potentiality is also contained in the human being. She presides from his heart over the entire evolution of man.
So, we are told, the Mother Hes sleeps in the human heart, expecting the end of the becoming and the liberation that may produce Her return.
By meditating on the resurrection of Hes, the soul is able to tune the potential vibration of the Universe by means of the affective union with the Divine Mother Hes.
In Cafh there is experience about this possibility given to meditators through this exercise.
There is not a cosmogonic concept of the potential aspect of the Universe in the intellectual class of present Humanity. Even if this term is used on some few limited cases of science, just there is an elemental notion of it, deprived of universal dimensions. But even the less educated Sons have intuited through meditation and simple explanations given by orators the existence of the potential aspect, and certain practitioners notably progressed in a remarkable exploration of this aspect.
Of course, the affective meditation just can give –and this is too much– a loving union with Hes, that is, so deep, profound and intense introversion in the sensibility of the meditator to the extent of leading him to the subtle extreme of the potential vibration.
Here the unitive effort is given by the highest expression of spiritual love. This is indicated by the Raptures sought as an effect, since rapture is the exaltation of the lover for the being loved, and Union has ever been understood like the practitioner lost in the sea of the Divine.
The practitioners have to achieve a deep introversion in this meditation, an extraordinary separation from the sensorial periphery. So, in the very invocation he has to raise his soul to the Divine Mother Hes imploring Her contact. The loving human may make use just of entreaty before this Divine formless Bride, without any point of reference and without any sign within the reach of senses. Invocation has to be a prelude to all this difficult but intensely productive pilgrimage of the meditator from the surface to the remote inner centre.
No picture can give to the meditator a fulcrum to fix the sensation that he seeks: just there is the tomb, in which he imagines that the Mother sleeps. To facilitate the work of the practitioner, he was led to imagine at least the light irradiated by the Holy Feet of the Mother Hes. But this picture removes a profound absorption in a person who has practiced this meditation.
This great love really can be stimulated just by intuiting the Mother’s breath behind the lid of the sepulcher, which separates Her potential nature from any active manifestation.
So, the Imaginative Picture has to be always rather vague, without any clear-cut trait stimulating the senses, but with such characteristics that enable to have a presentiment of the Divinity in the environment of the picture. Even the above-mentioned presentiment has to refer to a serenely sleeping Divine, without any breath of life, because just in this way the meditator shall solemnly come near the loftiest potential vibration, that is, the Divine Mother Hes.
Here the term “presentiment” is used in a wider sense that also can comprise “intuition” or “knowledge”, since for the soul this is the only way to realize the presence of the Divinity and to remain stimulated by Her.
The Sensitive Picture derives precisely from the above-mentioned presentiment. Just the Divine Tomb of the Imaginative Picture would provide the serene bliss of meditating on the Veil of Ahehia. Again, it is the presentiment of the potential Divinity that stimulates such sensibility and leads it to this rapture. This is not suddenly achieved, except in extraordinary cases. The meditator has to tune gradually the picture of his sensation until he attains the rapture.
The first impression or sensation after the picture surely has to be that of exalted solemnity. This shock, this perplexity, this desire for kneeling respectfully is produced in the soul by this great presentiment, not by the disposition to an immediate loving approximation to the Mother. At once this reverent disposition shall acquire so subtle affective tones according to the dimension of the solemn surprise, and now in the field of affective sensitization, this surprise shall slowly grow making the heart beat with the softest love; later this subtle sentiment shall pervade the mind and the entire being to the point that both meditator and formless Mother are only one blaze whose separateness just lies in the mind of the meditator, while he analyses what occurs inside him.
The meditator can remain in this state not for long, since for a person that has reached the depth required for this exercise it is difficult to go out of this state and continue the following steps of meditation.
Since this meditation neither is corrective nor we can say the soul seeks something except the Divine Rapture, several purposes can be posed just to certain educational ends, for here the only right purpose would be to repeat so many times this meditation until the moment when Rapture takes possession of the fiery heart of the meditator; but other extra purposes can be posed, for spiritual education, such as to enter often the inner castle to get the extraordinary detachment from the periphery that this meditation grants, or to achieve an extreme introversion that no other exercise of meditation can produce. Even there may be the purpose of dignifying and purifying oneself to deserve the prescribed effect, but the most perfect purpose is that of loving more and more intensely the Mother Hess until being enraptured by her Divine Love.
If sometime the consequences clearly confirm what has been said in regard to its self-cognitive importance, doubtless this takes place in this meditation for the state achieved is so different from those states acquired by other loving meditations that the soul cannot help being surprised at the consequences achieved. We can tell that in this step of the meditation on the Resurrection of Hes the meditator gets not only a deep introversion, but also knows a depth he never had explored.
The consequences of this meditation also can contribute to verify the attainment of an affective technique never sensed before and certainly different from any other ever achieved.
The meditator must be aware, in this meditation he faces the difficulty of returning to the surface. It is really difficult or unpleasant to go out of sensations. The practitioner, even though may be little habituated to meditate, as soon as he gets the sensation, dislikes to go out of it, but he must not forget that is practicing an exercise whose different parts must be coordinated to get certain effect, and then the will must intervene to subject the uncontrolled sensibility and force it to follow the channel of purposes. Also he must be warned against the natural trend of sensations when consequences are analyzed. These consequences have a different end and must be kept and limited according to such end.
Teaching 15: The System of Meditation
Is there any relationship between the seven classical subjects of meditation so far analyzed? Does this order respond to the process that naturally must develop in the soul of the meditator?, obviously, yes. It is really a regulated journey by stages from the common state of sensibility, limited as to its projections and possibilities, maintained static in certain limit, toward the most divine exaltation of its possibilities and of its absolute freedom attained by the vast identification with the divine infinitude.
A hasty look at the different subjects shall prove our statements.
In fact, the Black Lady is the first purgative exercise whose influence on the lower nature of the practitioner tends to reduce its natural ends by removing bad habits that keep the soul as a prisoner of the animal limitation and human primitivism. It is the fight against the old and natural man.
The Abyss emphasizes this fight by cutting those primitive defenses rooted in the collective. Individuality becomes stronger when external security is lost. The soul, eager for purification, returns to itself.
The Two Ways represent the next step; it is a determined attack against the primitive nature surprised in its darkest and innermost redoubts. It is not only extraction of evil, but also extirpation of its affective root.
This purgative stage only can have positive consequences if its results are immediately channeled upward. Otherwise the soul would not go beyond a moral realization.
Meditation on the Standard is then the first impulse of offering made by the meditator to the Divine Mother by means of his purified affections.
But by the sorrow that the worshipper stands and by the revelation about his lower nature that he recently attained he cannot start the loving stage if he neither found consolation earlier nor learnt to enjoy this divine privilege that is so necessary later.
So, the Temple of Gold is at this point of the road to assuage the thirst of the wayfarer, to heal his wounds and to let him ascend to heights of his own affective world unknown to him.
To exercise to become intimate with the Mother is to fit to the divine amplitude. To love Her is to be loved by Her. To find Her everywhere is to carry Her in the soul and to have a great soul to be able to lodge Her. So, the Veil of Ahehia is the constructive exercise in the spiritualization of man. Its amplitude just can be surpassed by the Rapture given by Hes’ Resurrection.
So it is by perfect knowledge of the soul and of the way of the divine quest that this order exists, according to an ideal system.
Of course, certain practitioners perhaps do not need to start meditating on the Black Lady, but certainly they must do when the loving way emphasizes their need of purgation.
It is likely that some practitioners, at certain point of their process, indispensably need divine consolation, with purposes known and recommended by the Spiritual Director, but this in no way reduces the true perfection of the system in general, with gradual stages that the soul must fulfill.
In this work we have emphasized the need of joining personal factors of the meditator to the exercise of affective meditation, that is, imaginative pictures should be personal experiences of the practitioner, on the light of the mental scene, sensations should be direct consequence of the picture, et cetera; and seemingly this limits the method, in an exclusive way, to critical possibilities, whether analytical or intellectual, of the practitioner. This is true because the use of other elements is impossible and cannot be tried until the final exploration of the practitioner in his own field. On the contrary, the effectiveness of the exercise would be reduced if the meditator first uses strange pictures and non-real sensations, which instead of certainly leading him to a fecund work on himself, move him away, transforming the exercise into something of others and strange to him.
It is known that you also can get sensations by means of imaginative pictures in contrast. So, the contemplation of a saint, of his virtues and of his beautiful disposition can awake in the soul sensations of spiritual poverty and encourage perfection; but the first years of meditation must find sufficient stimulation in direct action. Just when you reach certain affective height, you can try every indirect means to be encouraged toward perfection.
Also, bear in mind this: meditation is not inhibition of emotions, but transmutation of the emotional content given by sensations. Inhibition is not a definitive solution, but procrastination of troubles and conflicts between the personality and the emerging spiritual individuality.
You cannot say you have achieved anything or that your soul is free of something if you do not extirpate every particle of affection accumulated around that “something” and if your soul cannot remain truly serene before the to-and-fro movement of emotional surges.
You should properly understand, then, that the work of meditation is not a simple moralization or moral education –which is a task of mere inhibition of emotions– but a work of real purification in the sensible nature of the meditator.
On the other hand, since forces and not only ideas come into play in meditation, you must be cautious in the management of these forces.
To spiritualize the emotionality through meditation is not a process that may be represented by a straight line traced from the incipient spiritual state of the meditator to the summit of perfection. On the contrary, this process is made by repeated tests in which the emotionality is raised and later lowered to its natural state. As sensibility raises lower powers become more acute to recover it or to bring it to the usual state that is its state of organic and psychical balance. When you stimulate more intensely your sensibility upwards, the resistance of the lower powers becomes stronger.
So, it is recommendable to be somehow skilful in the management of this sensitive polarity, and you should be wise and cautious; that is, you should meditate on an interesting subject for a while and then you should leave it for a while to approach it later again with higher chances and better effects.
Also here you must respect the dual law used by God to spiritualize His creation.
CONTENTS:
Teaching 1: Affective Meditation and its Purpose
Teaching 2: Disposition for Meditation
Teaching 3: Invocation
Teaching 4: Imaginative Picture
Teaching 5: Sensitive Picture
Teaching 6: Purposes
Teaching 7: Consequences
Teaching 8: The Black Lady
Teaching 9: The Abyss
Teaching 10: The Two Ways
Teaching 11: The Standard
Teaching 12: The Temple of Gold
Teaching 13: The Veil of Ahehia
Teaching 14: Resurrection of Hes
Teaching 15:
The System of Meditation
Teaching 16: Final Comments
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