Author: Jose Becerra

I’ve recently experienced the farewell and grieving process of my mother’s passing. So, I have drafted a 30-minute introduction on the subject of death and dying recapitulating my experience in the context of the Ageless Wisdom teachings. I hope it is useful to others. -JB

Supplemental quotes:

Can you picture the time when the process of death, clearly recognised and welcomed by the man, could be described by him in the simple phrase, “The time has come when my soul’s attractive force requires that I relinquish and restore my body to the place from whence it came”? Imagine the change in the human consciousness when death comes to be regarded as an act of simple and conscious relinquishing of form, temporarily taken for two specific objectives:

• To gain control in the three worlds.
• To give opportunity to the substance of the forms thus “stolen or borrowed or rightly appropriated,” according to the stage of evolution, to reach a higher point of perfection through the impact upon it of life, via the soul.

These are significant thoughts. They have been expressed before, but have been discarded as symbolic, as comforting or as wishful thinking. I present them to you as factual in nature, as unavoidable in practice, and as familiar a technique [Page 428] and process as those activities, (rhythmic and cyclic in nature) which govern the average man’s life—rising and retiring, eating and drinking, and all the periodic affairs which he is accustomed to pursue.

Esoteric Healing

The problem of death, needless to say, is founded upon the love of life which is the deepest instinct in human nature. The determination that nothing is lost under divine law is a recognition of science; eternal persistence in some form or another is universally held to be a truth. Out of the welter of theories, three major solutions have been proposed; these are well known to all thinking people. They are:

1. The strictly materialistic solution, which posits the experience and expression of conscious life as long as the physical, tangible form exists and persists, but also teaches that after death and the subsequent disintegration of the body there is no longer any conscious, functioning, self-identified person. The sense of the “I,” the awareness of a personality in contradistinction to all other personalities, vanishes with the disappearance of the form: personality is believed to be only the sumtotal of the consciousness of the cells in the body. This theory relegates man to the same state as any of the other forms in the three other kingdoms in nature; [Page 401] it is based on the nonsensitivity of the average human being to life, withdrawn from a tangible vehicle; it ignores all evidence to the contrary and says that because we cannot see (visually) and prove (tangibly) the persistence of the “I” or the immortal entity after death, it is nonexistent. This theory is not held by so many as it was in earlier years, particularly during the materialistic Victorian age.
2. The theory of conditional immortality. This theory is still held by certain fundamentalist and theologically narrow schools of thought and also by a few of the intelligentsia, primarily those of egoistic tendency. It posits that only those who reach a particular stage of spiritual awareness, or who accept a peculiar set of theological pronouncements, can receive the gift of personal immortality. The highly intellectual also argue at times that the crowning gift to humanity is a developed and cultured mind, and that those who possess this gift are likewise endowed with eternal persistence. One school dismisses those who are what they regard as spiritually recalcitrant or negative to the imposition of their particular theological certainties, either to complete annihilation as in the materialistic solution, or to a process of eternal punishment, thus at the same time arguing for a form of immortality. Owing to the innate kindness of the human heart, very few are vindictive or unthinking enough to regard this presentation as acceptable, and of course among those we must class the unthinking people who escape from mental responsibility into blind belief in theological pronouncements. The Christian interpretation as given by the orthodox and the fundamentalist schools proves untenable when submitted to clear reasoning; among the arguments which negate its accuracy lies the fact that [Page 402] Christianity posits a long future but no past; it is likewise a future entirely dependent upon the activities of this present life episode and accounts in no way for the distinctions and differences which distinguish humanity. It is only tenable upon the theory of an anthropomorphic Deity Whose will—as it works out in practice—gives a present that has no past but only a future; the injustice of this is widely recognised, but the inscrutable will of God must not be questioned. Millions still hold this belief, but it is not so strongly held as it was one hundred years ago.
3. The theory of reincarnation, so familiar to all my readers, is becoming increasingly popular in the Occident; it has always been accepted (though with many foolish additions and interpretations) in the Orient. This teaching has been as much distorted as have the teachings of the Christ or the Buddha or Shri Krishna by their narrow-minded and mentally limited theologians. The basic facts of a spiritual origin, of a descent into matter, of an ascent through the medium of constant incarnations in form until those forms are perfect expressions of the indwelling spiritual consciousness, and of a series of initiations at the close of the cycle of incarnation, are being more readily accepted and acknowledged than ever before.

Such are the major solutions of the problems of immortality and of the persistence of the human soul; they aim to answer the eternal questioning of the human heart as to Whence, Why, Whither and Where? Only the last of these proposed solutions offers a truly rational reply to all of them. Its acceptance has been delayed because, ever since the time of H. P. Blavatsky, who formulated this ancient truth for the modern world in the last quarter [Page 403] of the nineteenth century, it has been so unintelligently presented; it has been handicapped owing to the fact that the Eastern races have always held it, and—from the Western angle—they are heathen and the heathen “in their blindness bow down to wood and stone,” to quote one of your fundamentalist hymns. How curious it is to realise that, to the man from Eastern countries, the religious people in the West do likewise, and can be seen on their knees before the Christian altars bearing statues of the Christ, of the Virgin Mary and of the Apostles.

The occultists of the world, through the theosophical societies and other occult bodies, so-called, have greatly damaged the presentation of the truth anent reincarnation through the unnecessary, unimportant, inaccurate and purely speculative details which they give out as truths anent the processes of death and the circumstances of man after death. These details are largely dependent upon the clairvoyant vision of astral psychics of prominence in the Theosophical Society. Yet in the Scriptures of the world these details are not given, and H.P.B. in The Secret Doctrine gave none. An instance of this inaccurate and foolish attempt to throw light upon the theory of rebirth can be seen in the time limits imposed upon departed human souls between incarnations on the physical plane and the return to physical rebirth—so many years of absence are proclaimed, dependent upon the age of the departed soul and its place upon the ladder of evolution. If, we are told, the soul is very advanced, absence from the physical plane is prolonged, whereas the reverse is the case. Advanced souls and those whose intellectual capacity is rapidly developing come back with great rapidity, owing to their sensitive response to the pull of obligations, interests and responsibilities already established upon the physical plane. People are apt to forget that time is the sequence of events and of states of [Page 404] consciousness as registered by the physical brain. Where no physical brain exists, what humanity understands by time is nonexistent. The removal of the barriers of the form, stage by stage, brings an increasing realisation of the Eternal Now. In the case of those who have passed through the door of death and who still continue to think in terms of time, it is due to glamour and to the persistence of a powerful thoughtform. It indicates polarisation upon the astral plane; this is the plane upon which leading Theosophical writers and psychics have worked, and upon which they have based their writings. They are quite sincere in what they say, but omit to recognise the illusory nature of all findings based on astral clairvoyance. The recognition of a pronounced time factor, and the constant emphasis laid upon timing, are characteristic of all highly developed people in incarnation and of those whose lower, concrete minds are powerful in calibre. Children and child-races on the one hand, and those highly advanced people whose abstract minds are functioning (through the medium of the interpretive lower mind), usually have no sense of time. The initiate uses the time factor in his relations and his dealings with those living upon the physical plane, but is detached within himself from all recognition of it elsewhere in the universe.

Therefore the use of the term “immortality” infers timelessness and teaches that this timelessness exists for that which is not perishable or conditioned by time. This is a statement requiring careful consideration. Man reincarnates under no time urge. He incarnates under the demands of karmic liability, under the pull of that which he, as a soul, has initiated, and because of a sensed need to fulfill instituted obligations; he incarnates also from a sense of responsibility and to meet requirements which an earlier breaking of the laws governing right human relations have [Page 405] imposed upon him. When these requirements, soul necessities, experiences and responsibilities have all been met, he enters permanently “into the clear cold light of love and life” and no longer needs (as far as he himself is concerned the nursery stage of soul experience on earth. He is free from karmic impositions in the three worlds, but is still under the impulse of karmic necessity which exacts from him the last possible ounces of service that he is in a position to render to those still under the Law of Karmic Liability. You have, therefore, three aspects of the Law of Karma, as it affects the principle of rebirth:

1. The Law of Karmic Liability, governing life in the three worlds of human evolution, and which is ended altogether at the fourth initiation.
2. The Law of Karmic Necessity. This governs the life of the advanced disciple and the initiate from the time of the second initiation until a certain initiation higher than the fourth; these initiations enable him to pass on to the Way of the Higher Evolution.
3. The Law of Karmic Transformation, a mysterious phrase governing the processes undergone upon the Higher Way. These fit the initiate to pass off the cosmic physical plane altogether, and to function upon the cosmic mental plane. It is concerned with the release of those like Sanat Kumara, and His Associates in the Council Chamber at Shamballa, from the imposition of cosmic desire which demonstrates upon our cosmic physical plane as spiritual will. This should be to you an arresting thought. It will be obvious, however, that there is little that I can say upon this subject. The knowledge involved is not yet mine.

Esoteric Healing

The fear and the morbidness which the subject of death usually evokes, and the unwillingness to face it with understanding are due to the emphasis which people lay upon the fact of the physical body and the facility with which they identify themselves with it; it is based also upon an innate fear of loneliness and the loss of the familiar. Yet the loneliness which eventuates after death, when the man finds himself without a physical vehicle, is as nothing compared to the loneliness of birth. At birth, the soul finds itself in new surroundings and immersed in a body which is at first totally incompetent to take care of itself or to establish intelligent contact with surrounding conditions for a long period of time. The man comes into incarnation with no recollection as to the identity or the significance to him of the group of souls in bodies with which he finds himself in relationship; this loneliness only disappears gradually as he makes his own personality contacts, discovers those who are congenial to him and eventually gathers around him those whom he calls his friends. After death this is not so, for the man finds on the other side of the veil those whom the knows and who have been connected with him in physical plane life, and he is never alone as human beings understand loneliness; he is also conscious of those still in physical bodies; he can see them; he can tune in on their emotions, and also upon their thinking, for the physical brain, being nonexistent, no longer acts as a deterrent. If people but knew more, birth would be the experience which they would dread, and not [Page 393] death, for birth establishes the soul in the true prison, and physical death is only the first step towards liberation.

Esoteric Healing

All quotes from the Tibetan Master, as penned by Alice A. Bailey and published by the Lucis Trust.

I have read and studied this critical review of astrology since its 1977 edition,

which you may find, fully cross-referenced, in my personal library. As a mathematical epidemiologist, statistical tests of hypotheses — and the related methodologies — are an integral part of my professional work.

I can personally attest to the validity of the main conclusion of this work: most of the current practice of astrology is not a reliable predictive system of reproducible knowledge. Therefore, it cannot be “proven true” with empirical data, and most of its current predictive rules can be falsified. 

Like Kant’s “things-in-themselves,” the objective, critical mind cannot fully assess its depth, even less assess the validity of a “soul-centered” (esoteric) astrology. Likewise, the 2-D circumference cannot fully grasp the reality of the 3-D sphere in Flatland. A crucial difference, though , is that the critical mind — unaided — can correctly infer the reality of the sphere. The matter becomes more complicated when we consider non-Euclidean geometries. However, valid inferences can still be made, even if quite difficult to visualize.

In sum, in the current reductionistic, “scientific” model of reality, which denies — without proof — the existence of spiritual (non-physical) dimensions cannot ever assess metaphysical concepts. However, why should we consider metaphysics as “unreal?”

Age is one of the most powerful predictors of morbidity and mortality in epidemiological research. Without a proxy for the “age of the incarnating soul,” it is virtually impossible to build predictive astrological models. An immature (less experienced) soul would modify the effect of any astrological influence. This principle was crudely tested in Gauquelin’s research with reasonable, though disputed, success.

So, how do we build adequate astrological research models? I suggest that we begin by asking a most fundamental epistemological question: what is a fact?

Quantum physics has revealed fascinating answers to this question, such as the “collapse” (instantiation) of “probability waves” mediated by the act of observation itself.

As long as we consider the mind to be a byproduct of physical matter (brain), we would never develop research models able to include the dimension of consciousness as a factor in assessing any reality, astrology included.

That consciousness is the primary cause of material reality, that our “creative imagination” builds our subjective reality, which is eventually reproduced in the physical world, is a necessary premise enabling correct inferences about the spiritual (metaphysical) worlds. This “fact” is ascertained as a self-evident truth only by those with an expanded scope of consciousness.

There is a hidden, undeveloped human faculty that ascertains self-evident truths. This is the intuitive sense, a seventh sense unfolding in advanced humanity after fully developing the sixth sense, the rational mind.

For successful visionary business leaders in the corporate world, the reality of the creative imagination is a self-evident truth. No need for hypotheses testing to validate this truth. However, as Wilber’s Integral Theory has proposed, we do need a community of peers, each sharing a similar scope of consciousness, to validate self-evident truths by consensus.

Once we stipulate the reality of the human faculty of creative imagination, what the authors of “Understanding Astrology” discuss about astrology as poetry (“astro-poetics”) would make more sense. Although their apparent intention is to deride such animistic, archetypal approach to astrology as fanciful and nonsensical, this is exactly the bridge that makes possible the integration of astrology to a scientific belief system based on facts, physical and metaphysical facts.

The beauty of meaningful, non-causal associations in the daily practice of mindfulness needs no statistical tests. The psychological counselling practice of astrology “recognizes the multidimensionality, intra-dimensional variability, and polyvalence of astrological archetypes, which underscores their inherent indeterminism.”

Nine Essential Features of Archetypal Cosmology

1. Correlates planetary cycles with archetypal patterns in human experience.

2. Aspires to methodological rigor and epistemological humility in knowledge claims—thus, is research oriented, evidenced based, and value-neutral.

3. Extends psychological astrology’s growth oriented perspective and renders more precise its explication of the intrapsychic realm.

4. Situates astrology within an archetypal ground, defining archetypes as cosmological principles that are both transcendent and immanent, and which shape, inform, and animate Nature at every level, within and without.

5. Recognizes the multidimensionality, intra-dimensional variability, and polyvalence of astrological archetypes, which underscores their inherent indeterminism.

6 Emphasizes the co-creative, participatory role of the psyche in attracting formative experiences that shape behavior, thus highlighting the self’s responsibility for its continually evolving fate.

7. Establishes synchronicity as the key to understanding feedback relations between internal and external reality, and for overcoming the false dichotomy of a living, purposive, evolving self embedded in a dead, random, mechanistic universe.

8. Draws upon science, philosophy, and religion in formulating a theoretical basis for the observed correlations between psyche and cosmos, thus paving the way for a broader world view.

9. Focuses on the interiority (ensouled nature) of the cosmos—its consciousness, intelligence, and apparent teleology—and how this interiority is both the ground of psyche and the basis for an interconnected, evolving cosmos that is hierarchically structured and holonomically organized.

While these nine essential features could be fleshed out and more fully explained, I trust they suffice to provide a quick glimpse into the general nature of archetypal cosmology.

https://aaperry.com/archetypal-cosmology/

Such intuitive approach to astrology is not possible until the 3-D brain consciousness unfolds into a 4-D (and higher-D) soul consciousness capable of grasping causality in a new light. A 3-D brain consciousness will only sense probability waves (uncertainty). Only as we expand our scope of consciousness do astrological “proofs” become self-evident.

In conclusion, I congratulate my fellow scientific servers for falsifying flimsy hypotheses in the current practice of astrology. However, falsifying the science and art of astrology, as practiced by the Knowers of the Human Race, is a quite different endeavor.

Is Beauty true? Is the finding of meaning in life a falsifiable event? Is Reality contingent on scientific standards? Only a true scientist, who has explored “the breadth, and length, and depth, and height”, can honestly aspire to answer these questions. Only then would scientists be in position to approach “the real substance.”

JB, https://sevenray.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/09/thequestingscientist2.pdf

As the true astrology comes into its own and is developed into a reputable science, the charts of the soul and of the personality can be related to each other; then the etheric body will be checked by correct astrological conclusions, and the physician will be on far surer ground than he now is. The astrology of the past concerned the life of the personality; the astrology of the future will indicate the purpose of the soul, and will completely revolutionise medicine (among other things). It must, however, be lifted out of the hands of those interested in predictional astrology, out of the hands of the thousands who at this time spend much time “casting” horoscopes (seeking to interpret their usually erroneous conclusions), and placed in the hands of trained mathematical scientists and in the hands of those who have given as much time to scientific training along astrological lines as is now given to training a reputable physician, a chemist or a biologist.

These astrological findings will not only be related to the personality and the soul charts, but will also enter the field of medicine, particularly in relation to the etheric body. Today, any astrological investigation done in the field of medicine has relation to physical disease within the physical body; in the future, it will concentrate upon the condition of the etheric vehicle. This is a new and imminent development in astrological research.

Teachings of the Tibetan Master Djwhal Khul penned by Alice A. Bailey, published by the Lucis Trust.

The Hands of the Cosmic Clock

“Tonight, our hearts are in Bethlehem, where the Prince of Peace is once more rejected by the futile logic of war, by the clash of arms that even today prevents him from finding room in the world,” the 87-year-old pontiff said during a Christmas Eve midnight Mass in St. Peter’s Basilica.    

https://www.cnn.com/middleeast/live-news/israel-hamas-war-gaza-news-12-24-23/h_f2ee8e0ecf32d2f29645cd5d40fa17a6

With all due respect, the phrase “the futile logic of war” may not capture the gist of the matter. There are just wars, as was the Second World War. The futility of it was that it was not prevented. But Nazism had to be militarily defeated once Poland was invaded, as with any military invasion of another country in a new postwar world ruled by international justice and order.

The war on Gaza is a quite different matter, it’s an irrational war. The barbaric Israeli response to the horrific terrorist attack by Hamas is futile. Cruel vengeance will foster more terrorism, and the well-deserved repudiation by the world’s enlightened public opinion.

Truth and freedom will never be defeated, and these are on the side of the Palestinians held in bondage by an invading Zionist military force. Truth and freedom will prevail. But at what cost? Another burnt offering (holocaust)?

A FUTILE WAR

A futile war is often defined as a conflict that results in no significant or meaningful change despite the enormous costs involved. These costs can be in terms of human lives, resources, time, and socio-political stability. Such a war typically does not resolve the underlying issues that led to the conflict and may even exacerbate them.

Number of Palestinian and Israeli fatalities and injuries caused by war between Hamas and Israel in since October 7, 2023

It’s hard to say “merry” in these circumstances. But we can say “may we endure in serene expectancy, until the appointed time when light and love and power will restore justice for all, and peace, on Earth.”

Christmas blessings to all, particularly the starving children in Gaza. -JB

Joining other groups worldwide working for the Planet and Humanity, let’s say together the Mantra of the New Group of World Servers:

May the Power of the one Life pour through the group of all true servers.

May the Love of the one Soul characterize the lives of all who seek to aid the Great Ones.

May I fulfill my part in the one Work through self-forgetfulness, harmlessness, and right speech.

Visualize the New Age Symbol focalizing the incoming Aquarian energies flowing to our Planet.

Reciting The Aquarian Mantra of Synthesis, let’s invoke the Great Magic Triangle of extra-planetary Entities overshadowing the Coming One.

May the liberating Light of the Lord Buddha,

The infinite Love of the Spirit of Peace,

And the unfathomable Power of the Avatar of Synthesis

Restore God’s Plan on Earth.

(repeat 3 times)

Visualize the Planet and Humanity protected by a network of triangles of light and goodwill.

Invocation of the Devas of Equilibrium

Visualize the Planet and Humanity glowing in a soft yellow light (as in the triangle of the New Age Symbol),

With a loving attitude and using the creative visualization, inaudibly say 3 times:

May the Force of the Great Magic Triangle

And the Energy of the Devas of Equilibrium

Act on the Planet and Humanity

particularly acting on those world leaders promoting political, religious, and ideological divisions, penetrating the Astral planetary ethers and restoring psychological Peace, Harmony, and Serenity on Earth.

Invocation of the Solar Angels for Spiritual Understanding

Refracted through the symbol of the New Age, visualize cosmic rays of indigo light bathing the network of triangles throughout the Planet and into Humanity.

With a loving attitude and using the creative visualization, inaudibly repeat three times:

May the Force of the Great Magic Triangle

And the Energy of the Solar Angels

Act on the Planet and Humanity

as the New Group of World Servers promotes the Will to Good from Shamballa and the Good Will from the spiritual Hierarchy,
penetrating the planetary mental ethers, teaching souls the way of Truth, Compassion and Love.

We conclude by reciting the Great Invocation, visualizing the energies of Light, Love and Power flowing into Humanity.

From the point of Light within the mind of God
Let light stream forth into human minds
Let Light descend on Earth.

From the point of Love within the Heart of God
Let love stream forth into human hearts
May the Coming One return to Earth.

From the center where the Will of God is known
Let purpose guide all little human wills
The purpose which the Masters know and serve.

From the center which we call humanity
Let the Plan of Love and Light work out
And may it seal the door where evil dwells.

Let Light and Love and Power restore the Plan on Earth.

OM – OM – OM