The Secret Of Orientation

What is the implication once the truth is realized that both the human body and the physical world are actually images taking place within the individual Soul?  I have posed this question to several people over the years who simply couldn’t understand it.  Their misunderstanding stemmed from the simple fact that they had been so deeply indoctrinated into modern culture and linear/reductive thought processes that the very idea seemed non-sensical to them.

Most people today (I’d say well over 98%) perceive themselves as an individual consciousness inhabiting a slowly decaying human body.  These are the only two perspectives.  There is no third option.  One represents the proper orientation of the human being, and the other represents the dis-oriented view of the modern individuality, which has effectively entombed itself in a flesh and blood casket from which they believe there can be no escape.

Once humanity took up the dis-oriented view of an entombed individuality, a cosmic process began that would lock them further into this idea.  The disoriented view of life (a consciousness inhabiting a physical body) represents, ultimately, the end stages of the divine descent into the temporal-spatial domain before the “correction” or reversion takes place. As more human drones and automatons are born into this world, consumed by opinions and mere “beliefs”, humanity moves further and further outward from the very heart of its own being.  Initiation soon becomes confused with “occultism”  when in fact ”initiation” is simply the re-orientation of the proper human perspective.  This Orient of our Soul is what we have lost. All of our suffering and immaturity stems from our inability to get beyond the crushing squeeze of the cosmic process that will be the death blow to every individual trapped within this misperception of “consciousness inhabiting body.”

In an earlier post I mentioned the Christian metaphysical poet Thomas Traherne.  In his book “Centuries Of Meditation” he writes:

“You never enjoy the world aright, till the Sea itself floweth in your veins, till you are clothed with the heavens, and crowned with the stars: and perceive yourself to be the sole heir of the whole world, and more than so, because men are in it who are every one sole heirs as well as you.”

To the being trapped in the body, not able to see or understand that the world is actually taking place within him/her and is in fact an emanation of him/her, the verse above can make no sense at all.  Furthermore Traherne goes on to say:

“The corn was orient and immortal wheat, which never should be reaped, nor was ever sown. I thought it had stood from everlasting to everlasting…. And so it was that with much ado I was corrupted and made to learn the dirty devices of the world. Which now I unlearn, and become as it were a little child again, that I may enter into the Kingdom of God.”

While these quotes come from “Centuries” I found them on Wikipedia. They represent the summum bonum of initiatic perception.  As outrageous as it may seem to us today, each one of us owns the universe that exists and projects outward from within.  However, at a certain point even the idea of “within” and “without” become meaningless once this re-orientation takes place.  What Traherne is telling us is that we must again become like innocent children, innocent as we were before our entombment in the physical body, which we foolishly believe can contain something that literally has no dimension like the Soul.  To be sure, everything we have come to believe is a ruse.  Seeing through this ruse represents the entrance into the greater mysteries.

The defenders of Tradition like Proclus, Plotinus, Iamblichus, Damascius, Porphyry and others despised the idea of spiritual innovation.  While that may seem very “close-minded” to modern mentalities, there was indeed a very good reason for it.  The ancients understood that the human individual was a microcosmic representation of the ALL.  Therefore, the human being was already complete in itself.  It wasn’t a matter of “uncovering” that which had never been discovered before, it was about uncovering what had already been present, but lost or perhaps dormant.  The teachings of  initiates like Pythagoras were nothing new because finding “truth” wasn’t a matter of seeking it out in the world, it was about finding the fullness of the world within the human soul. 

Initiates will know each other fairly quickly because their orientation is communicated through their writing and other expressions.  Writings by the pseudo-spiritual will always present a separation between subject and object–even when attempting to express ideas of a “spiritual” nature.  While this post may seem overly metaphysical, there is a purpose for it that will become apparent in coming posts.

Read more: Transmissions From The Imaginal