The Darkness – Ravishment or Rape?

There is little dispute that consciousness on planet earth is entering a crucial stage of its unfoldment.

Light is being confronted by darkness both from without and within

An outer symbol of this is the planet Pluto – lord of the underworld conjunct the black hole at the galactic centre.

Darkness is entering. Will it be a ravishment or a ravaging of consciousness ?

To answer this question it might be useful to look at the interplay of light and darkness

The Sun represents the sphere of light or consciousness that is radiating between an inner and outer darkness. The outer darkness represents the three worlds which the soul is attempting to enlighten. The inner darkness is the monadic core of being that lies behind consciousness.

When the soul is establishing itself in the world then darkness is seen as a resistant force antagonistic to the unfoldment of the world of light. A real fear exists that the outer energies of the unconscious will overwhelm the fledging conscious self and light will go out. This battle is epitomized in mythology by the slaying of the dragon of the unconscious impulses by the sun god – Apollo, Helios, Zeus, St Michael etc.

In esoteric psychology this is represented by the victory of the solar angels over the lunar or the soul over the personality.

The reverse symbol of this that once carried superstitious awe in all cultures was the eclipse of the sun by the moon.

Once the sun or solar self is firmly established however then it begins to become aware of a ‘higher’ or divine darkness that lies at its core. This is the darkness of pure spirit.

The symbol for this is the revelation through the sun door of the dark centre of the sun.

Hierarchy – as the planetary soul divides itself in to two natural divisions represented by the orange dotted line in the diagam. One stands as a wall to protect earth’s ‘solar centre’ from the ravaging forces of the outer darkness and as a source of entering light via the ashrams on the buddhic plane. They bridge Hierarchy and Humanity.

The other stands as a wall against destructive forces entering from the cosmic astral plane and as a source of the ‘dark light’. They bridge Hierarchy and Shamballa.

The effect of darkness on light is threefold. It purifies, destroys and organizes – the three energies of Shamballa.

Let us consider Pluto as the agent of the lower darkness that ‘presses in’ on the field of light.

It is destructive if it is able to destroy essential structures of consciousness that are needed for the emerging civilization. However if those structures are preserved by Hierarchy then the destructive energies merely destroy those forms and thoughtforms that have outlived their use by date.

Some consciousness structures are purified – the antiglobalistion movement’s critique of corporate greed for example. Others are organized as a result of the challenge by darkness. An example of the latter would be the growing global realisation that we need international law with teeth to combat both the ‘forces of terror’ and ‘vigilanteism’.

Let us consider Vulcan as the agent of the higher darkness. The destructive force of Vulcan is that which eventually destroys the causal body liberating the essential life.

Its purifying power is expressed as the jewel at the centre of the causal body – the essential ‘matter’ of the soul is revealed as a many faceted highly polished and compressed gem – the stone of Shamballa.

The organizing force of Vulcan is expressed in the revelation of the ashrams as transmitting agents of the divine will via the jewels in Indra’s net.

From a nondual perspective, Vulcan and Pluto are one and we can see this by their symbols – Vulcan’s hammer ‘cracks open’. Pluto’s arrow ‘pierces’ to the core.

Darkness is Will. Will is stronger than consciousness. Whether or not consciousness understands and opens to Will determines whether it experiences rape or ravishment.

One of the names of the first ray lord is the ‘Ravisher of Souls’.

The planetary personality is on the anvil between Vulcan’s hammer and Pluto’s arrow. Whether it will be ‘pierced’ or cracked open is partly up to the New Group of World Servers.

We might imagine the planetary personality as a king in his castle beset from without by the hordes of peasants in revolt to his rule and from within by strange dreams and visions.

He is under pressure. Should he crack down harder on his subjects – raise taxes and imprison the ringleaders of the revolt or should he listen to these strange inner promptings to surrender his kingdom into the guidance of…what….. something totally intangible….and yet…and yet…so compelling!

The New Group of World Serves are like the advisors to the king which encourage him to transcend the limitations of his own consciousness. They advise him to develop and rely upon inner guidance. They can do this because they know Hierarchy exists and have proven it in their own lives. They also advise him to take outer action based upon what is best for the whole kingdom and not in the name of vested interests.

When Pluto moves into Capricorn in 2008 the control structures of the planet will come under major decade long transformational pressure. The current transit of the galactic centre is like a flash or peak experience that will assist in that process. The transmission of the Will as an empowerment of the NGWS will give them the synthetic impulse to step forward en mass to provide models and voices of inspired but grounded leadership in these times of transition. What is transitioning is the ‘executive power’ from the planetary personality to the planetary soul and the NGWS is the bridge for this.

Let the darkness…….enter!

Bruce Lyon

From a meditation on the divine darkness

Contemplating and Invoking the dark centre of the soul’s journey at the time of the solstice produced the following insights.

The first darkness encountered was full and luminous – like velvet it seemed as if this darkness was black because it had absorbed all the light in the universe – indeed that the light in the universe was only there because it could not fit into the dark chalice and was poured out or emitted  as an overflow. The energy of pure being, full and vibrant – the roar of a lion – the fiery dragon of Kosmos that both IS the life of the universe – being – consciousness – matter and that which permeates it. This first darkness ‘charges’ the heart and soul with strength and the feeling of invincibility.

The second darkness came next and seemed to negate all that was present in the first darkness. If the first was Being then this was Non-Being. If the first darkness was full to brimming, this was totally empty – void – Non Being. The effect on the heart/soul was to ‘quail’ before such total negation. If the first darkness strengthened then this darkness chastened and the life principle seemed totally humbled before that emptiness in which it arose.

These two darknesses are complementary and opposities. It occurs to me that they must represent some of  the states experienced in Vedanta, Buddhism and mystic Christianity and I recall the variety of debates about whether the fundamental principle is empty or full – the proponents of each school seeing the other as a preparatory stage of their own favourite. In some way they represent the primary duality of consciousness taken to its extreme – an expansion  that results in the embrace of ‘everything’ – or a contraction/ negation that results in the realization of ‘nothing’.

What is similar about these two states of ‘dark realisation’ however is that there is still a trace of the witnessing consciousness – there is still a soul to be ‘thrilled’ or ‘humbled’ in some way before the experience. Some vessel of consciousness, however transparent or flimsy still escapes the event horizon and retains a memory trace of the divine adventure.

As for the third darkness I can only report on the momentary flash that occurred before the experience and afterwards but not during – perhaps because there was no ‘during’. Once I became aware – in that thinnest of veils of consciousness still present that the first two darknesses were complementary – like two dark pillars that were the reciprocal of each other – one manifest and the other unmanifest – there was a moment – and in that moment it felt as if all the love I have ever experienced was rushing through me all at once and then – nothing. It was like a fuse blowing – a total annihilation of all consciousness and experience that could have lasted an instant or an eternity - and then the fuse was replaced, the same rush of love rushing back from a torrent to a steady handleable flow. So it seems that this third darkness has no attributes for there is none present to experience them. The self literally dies, disappears or is reabsorbed and while there is obviously the experience of continuity between the selves before and after the experience – there is also a lingering sense of discontinuity or unrealness – as if the fabric of identity has been torn and darkness, divine darkness is seeping in and unraveling the core knot of being. It is good to know that if it is love that bestows a sense of self to make our strange multiincarnational journey through the world of consciousness – it is also love – an even greater love that takes it away again – returning the drop to the sea.

There was also an interesting spatial component to the meditation. In NZ at the time of the solstice – just after midnight on a crystal clear night -  the galatic centre ( and pluto ) was directly overhead which meant of course that the sun ( and Vulcan ) was directly beneath the feet. It was as if the base and the crown were inverted ( its strange enough in the southern hemisphere anyway! ) . It was easy to be aware of the fact that this galactic centre was the real still point of the moving worlds – the dark sun around which we have always turned as a physical planet. Even when there was no life on earth to contemplate a centre. Even when that life developed consciousness and thought earth was the centre of the universe. Even when that consciousness discovered the sun was the centre and began to worship it – firstly as a physical deity and then a metaphysical one. Through all this, that dark centre has been still. Through twenty revolutions of the sun. Through 5000 million revolutions of the earth. Peaceful, silent, radiating its dark life!