Tag: Tarot

Greetings, my cosmic traveler friend! As we embark on a journey to explore the dualities of mind and travel in higher dimensions, let us dive into the mystical and mind-bending realms of Tao and I Ching.

While Western psychology has been struggling with the apparent dualities inherent in conscious existence since Queen Victoria’s time, other cultures and societies have been creating more accurate models of the nature of these dualities for centuries. Here I present two of these models for your consideration, so buckle up, baby!

1. The Tao and I Ching

If we look at the base truths of our reality we can see from our perspective there appear to be three physical dimensions, while we experience another dimension as the passage of time. To science, this is where reality exists. At some momentary now point, despite the Universe expanding and all items within it in constant relative motion an “objective” reality exists. This presupposes an objective reality apart from mind or consciousness. However given the rapid advances of theoretical physics and the apparent facts of either string theory or M-Theory being true, we know quite concretely that we are missing dimensions that the whole would depend upon given its measurable features. Most likely our reality has either 10 or 11 dimensions and we are only aware of four of them if you believe the materialists. Now think about the directions and the cardinal points. On the plane we have four directions, depth gives us two more (up and down), and time gives us two more (past and future), despite not being able to travel from future to past in our current predicament. If we make the dualistic Yin-Yang center of our consciousness the relative center of the Universe, we arrive at the eight possible directions of travel seen in the above diagram. Each of the Trigrams represents a mode of direction proceeding outward from the center of the mind.

The Yin Yang symbol is an apt one for our conscious exploration of the nature of mind as each side contains the seed of its opposite and it is depicted in motion. I would posit to you dear reader that this symbol represents the positive and negative currents of mind each stimulated by its opposite pole but different than the deeper duality of root consciousness and the mind itself. I would suggest that in order to realize this fact in action it is necessary to silence the thought track, whether that be verbal, like most people, or more like pure thought for others. Not everyone has an internal monologue, but it is easier to observe the roots of thought if you are able to silence the thought process that you have identified with in this lifetime. If you have an internal voice and silence it, you can observe the two other voices which create this experience of living through monologue. They are the twin devil and angel of your waking being, they are most noticeably not your voice. They are seeds of mental motion who, in their interference pattern of waveforms generate that stream of rambling that the unfortunate believe is their consciousness. In the sleep-walking world of this society, seemingly externalized and very dangerous to navigate, it is beneficial to surf this center wave of consciousness, whether it is breaking good or evil, because those are the rules of the game we are given.

But wait, there’s more! What about the question that arises when you encounter this aspect of mind: if my inner voice is not me, and this devil and angel are not me, who, what, and where am I? We can say, that for now, you are that thing which is observing these facts of mind. In Yoga it is referred to as Purusha or Soul and for our purposes now we can also refer to it as witness consciousness. It is possible through meditation to show the conscious mind the appearance of Purusha which is then reflected back at itself to be witnessed, but itself is the thing which is doing the observing. What you have come to accept as mind is actually the motion in life-force, Chi, or Prana closest to the metaphysical consciousness of your individual Purusha. The ether is the mind, and all matter, including your body and brain are merely regularized and temporarily structured disturbances in this Universal sea of Life. The organs of sense, with their electrochemical signaling, merely translate and transmit manifest point-events to and from the Purusha.

Now, what the I Ching theorizes is that moving up one level in awareness rather than giving us 10 directions of travel the map itself doubles to 64 different modes of movement.

This may be great for divination and to show the combination of states of mind, but if we are to travel any further up the central axis of consciousness, the exponential explosion of states of mind quickly becomes overwhelming as the next level gives us 64 X 64 states at minimum. Better then to switch to a different map or model.

2. The Tree of Life

If we think of this model as approximating similar ideas of dimensionality as the I Ching, we can use it as a map for exploration of higher dimensions. The first four dimensions of the manifested Universe being represented by the four-fold division of Malkuth into the cardinal points, then every plane on the way upward can be seen as a new dimension. This adds the element of multi-dimensional directionality to our map, as well as a description of the modes of travel between these higher coordinate points. For example, the straight path upward along the beam of consciousness takes us to Yesod, the bottom-most point of which is the dreamworld and is visited by passing through the unconscious or awakening the Kundalini. It only adds a new directionality of up and down perpendicular to all the right angles of the four dimensions. The current illustration, though not all theorists agree on this point, shows two divergent paths on either side that we can use to get to the sixth dimension, the Hod-Netzach plane, through the conscious modes of madness on one side and death and rebirth on the other. By the time we reach this 6th dimension, we already have 22 directions of travel along 11 paths, but like traveling from the South Pole, if we are grounded in Malkuth, every direction is also North.

This is where we get the feeling that Heaven is in the sky, or the idea that certain types of consciousness are “Higher”, the realm we are beginning from is the South Pole of Consciousness and if we want to stay in the World of awareness all other directions are “Up”. Various means of exploration are available to the traveler from the Shamanistic to the purely mathematical, but within the superstructure there has to be a witnessing consciousness. The wave function of probabilistic ether only collapses to a point-event upon observation. What we cannot take up the tree is the material body and physical mind of the brain. The current of life-force is such that all gross material manifestation is pushed to the four-dimensional world and a successive chain of vehicles for the Purusha is necessary to travel higher. Luckily for us thinking/dreaming creatures the next vehicle up is the astral body, or as you may be more familiar with it, the dream-body. This body takes less of our ego and persona with it, yet we are able to recognize it as ourself and rarely have an identity crisis upon waking from dream. You do not have to be asleep to access this body on its travels, you only have to be very relaxed. The probability of any event being observed in dream is much easier to influence than here in the manifested material spectrum, and once dreamed, easier to bring into this world. All the techniques used to visualize a point-event in a higher dimension and then observe the desired event in this realm constitutes Magick, and it is the reason persisting in a very rigorous meditation practice is necessary to produce reliable willed occult events on our plane. Increasing the difficulty of this endeavor Purusha is at the center of every living being, collapsing the wave function every moment and continuing the existence of this reality in every possible direction.

Given the unpleasantness encountered regularly on our current shared plane, it only makes sense to stop incarnating as profane matter beings and pursue a more permanent place in a higher realm while keeping the option to manifest here at will. The surest path to such an existence in our waking hours is deep meditation and reconciling these dualities in a synergism of higher self. Whether that is a truer existence is up to the traveler, but given the doctrines of Maya as illusionary existence and the so-called Allegory of Plato’s Cave, it is worth an effort for us to master travel up the Tree or into the Tao as your preferred map guides you.