Death and Resurrection
The experience of recent decades has perhaps made some of us who have a bit of esoteric understanding of this importance of this turning point in planetary history, wonder what it would take to capture the attention of a humanity seemingly caught up in distractions? Perhaps some kind of breakthrough could be possible through something as challenging as the present pandemic, when people are forced for a time at least to step back from the ordinary routines and have somewhat of a pause from the normal conditions. Surely one of the lessons of the present situation will be to demonstrate the many ways in which we and the planet itself have become out of balance with the rhythms and cycles of the natural world.
The timing of this situation has been quite interesting--following as it has upon the heels of the Festival Week period which included a powerful solar eclipse and a major alignment of planets in the sign of Capricorn, followed by the very rare alignment of two first ray planets--Saturn and Pluto, at the time of the subsequent Capricorn full moon. During these alignments spiritual groups everywhere were coming together and surely together we did evoke a measure of the spiritual will-to-good as a result. And preceding this time of invocative appeal we also witnessed a mass mobilisation and ardent appeal by young climate activists everywhere throughout the world taking to the streets in droves, demanding that adults wake up and listen and change the system. A wise person I knew once said that we should be careful what we wish for because we might get it! And so perhaps on some level what we are seeing in some measure is the result of the impact of these invocative appeals for the release of light in response to the cry of the planet.
For despite the terrible suffering and disruption that the pandemic is inflicting on so many--particularly the most marginalized in our societies--who would have thought that in a few brief months our collective carbon footprint would have been so dramatically lowered. And as a result we see the earth itself responding quickly and dramatically as a result. I’s said, for example, that people in some parts of China are seeing blue skies for the first time in their lives; dolphins and swans have appeared in the canals in Venice,, the CO2 emmision in major cities throughtout the world are dropping precipitously, animals are coming down from the hills, perhaps feeling safer as a new found quiet has descended upon the towns and cities of the world.
The climate crisis and the pandemic are of course interrelated. The virus we might say is a reflection that the planet’s immune system and humanity’s as well, are seriously compromised by the toxicity in our air, our water, our food, and also within our consciousness itself. The last pandemic in 1918 occurred on the heels of the ceasefire of World War I. In a certain sense a war is one way in which humanity seeks to address situations that have become stagnant and crystallized and diseased and, on the other hand when situations have become out of control and the astral and lower mental plane climates are raging. War is an aspect of change and change is an evolutionary tool that contributes to forward movement. When a diseased condition rises to the surface it is a clear indication that the body is trying to heal itself. Often a detox , brings a rash to the surface of the physical body, as a reflection of the body’s attempt to rid itself of the toxic overload. Perhaps the present situation is another reflection of a similar cleansing that is taking place on Earth in response to the condition of glamour in our planet that has become so thick.
Hopefully we will respond adequately to this situation, not by going back to the old ways and attempting to bandage up the old system, but rather by working towards deep, structural changes that will help restore our health and the health of all living beings. Through such measures this virus can act as a springboard to show us the many ways in which we have been living out of balance and provide an opening into how we can begin to live in greater harmony. Kathy Newburn
Death and Resurrection
“Resurrection is the keynote of nature; death is not. Death is only the ante-chamber of resurrection.” The Externalisation of the Hierarchy, p. 469
Life is full of uncertainties and this has been made particularly clear by our current pandemic. Yet, there is one thing which is always certain—perhaps the only that is certain—and that is, one’s eventual death. Yet, despite this eventuality, most people avoid thinking or talking about death until it is practically upon them or until someone close to them dies. In the West especially, there is a great deal of social stigma connected to death. Misunderstanding is exacerbated fear, grief, and attachment which surround the issue.
These negative emotions following from a purely materialistic understanding of life. This perspective identifies the self with its physical form, and therefore the death of this form means an end to all of the beauty, love, intelligence, and humanity that was expressed through a personality.
From the perspective of the soul, the death of the physical body is a liberating event, since it frees the soul from the limitations of its vehicle. For the soul, there is no death. The soul incarnates cyclically, taking a form and returning again to its own plane, under the impulse of the forces of evolution. From the soul’s perspective, death is the time spent in a physical form, wherein it experiences the pain, suffering, ignorance, and limitation of the human condition—ultimately to overcome them. The end of incarnation—the death of the form—is seen by the soul as “the great releaser” which grants the indwelling life reprieve from its earthly experience.
The soul strives to express the qualities of its being through what is, for many lifetimes, a very inadequate form. It occultly “enters into death” and takes on a human form, to redeem the substance of which it is composed. This substance is inherently separative by nature and tends towards dissolution. It is the spiritual will of some thinker (the soul) which negates this tendency towards dissolution and causes these forms to cohere into an entity which the thinker then utilizes for its evolutionary purposes. It is the withdrawal of this will at the end of incarnation which leads to the dissolution of the form and a refocusing of the thinker’s consciousness back into the abode of the self.
The whole problem of death (that is the fear and sense of separateness) persists because of the attachment to the form which the soul has created. The discarding of the form upon death is a natural and inevitable occurrence. When seen as merely an extended interlude before the next incarnation, there is less fear. Death is then celebrated as the completion of a cycle, as part of the evolutionary process, and thus with a sense of hope, planning, and purpose towards the future.
One of the spiritual responsibilities of humanity is to redeem matter, to spiritualize it. This, however, is not the same as the immortalization of some form. The redemption of matter occurs through the spiritual energy which pours through any form. This elevates the substance of which that form is composed, and in the case of humanity, creates a channel through which spiritual energies can then flow to other forms as well. As the human form is redeemed, it becomes capable of also elevating the consciousness of the subhuman kingdoms in nature which in turn redeem those forms as well. The Bible states that God granted mankind dominion over the animal, plant, and mineral lives—this is also an occult truism. The Ageless Wisdom states that mankind must eventually assume the role of the 1staspect of divinity in relation to the subhuman kingdoms. This means that it is humanity’s task to be the source of evolutionary energies to these kingdoms thus fulfilling their spiritual potential. As we know, Divine Purpose cannot be consummated except through the full development of all seven kingdoms in nature.
We are told that “Occultly speaking, any process of elevation or of ‘raising up’ automatically involves death.” One of the three qualities of the soul is sacrifice—meaning literally to make holy or sacred. It is through the expression of the quality of sacrifice that attachment to form is relinquished and the preoccupation with the individual becomes a preoccupation with the working out of spiritual will. Through sacrifice, one consciously and willfully dies so that a purpose higher than the individual can work out. At first, this sacrifice entails the death of personal desires and ambitions. Later upon the path of discipleship, the personality itself is sacrificed and the soul then controls its form.
On the path of Initiation, a final culminating death occurs wherein all is sacrificed—even the soul itself. The soul, which has always acted as a mediator between life and form, is no longer needed and so is destroyed. The Monadic life—pure spirit—can then directly make contact with the three worlds of human evolution. The initiate can then rightfully repeat the words of Christ: "I, if I be lifted up, will draw all men unto Me." The initiate has lifted himself up entirely out of the world of material phenomena, and thereby blazes a path which others will tread.
The result of this great renunciation is ascension, leading eventually to a great Revelation. This revelation concerns Divine Purpose—i.e.,why The Planetary Logos created this Planet and initiated the evolutionary process. The injunction given to those whom have received this revelation is “to Resurrect.” They are charged with raising the dead body of humanity into a living body—to shift human consciousness from the form—which is death—to the soul—which is life.
This of course is not a physical resurrection, but a spiritual one. It involves the application of the Will (as an aspect of Shamballa) to Hierarchical activity. This activity elevates humanity via the same Lighted Way that all of the Sages, Saints, and Bodhisattvas of all time have tread. This Lighted Way is also called Antahkarana or the Way of Resurrection.
This resurrection is the immediate objective of the planetary evolutionary process, and it is one that Triangles workers are well-placed to cooperate with. The Triangles network is a means of transferring human consciousness from the three worlds of material phenomenon into the spiritual consciousness of the soul. This transference is profoundly expressed in the Great Invocation.
As Triangles workers, we actualize this shift simply by standing as a group, in spiritual being, and radiating the qualities of light and goodwill throughout the network. We stand with whatever level of detachment, with whatever degree of renunciation that our own sense of spiritual responsibility demands. In this way, we aid in a great planetary resurrection which will result in the birth of a culture of the soul on earth.
“The key to the overcoming of death and to the processes of realising the meaning and nature of eternity and the continuity of life can with safety be revealed only when love holds sway over the human consciousness, and where the good of the whole, and not the selfish good of the individual, comes to be the supreme regard. Only through love (and service as the expression of love) can the real message of Christ be understood and men pass on towards a joyful resurrection” From Bethlehem to Calvary, p. 233
Michael Galloway