The Purified Breath and Carbon Transformation - Part 3

At present, the human breathing cycle has a less than benign effect on the environment, taking oxygen out of the atmosphere and returning poisonous carbonic acid. On the heat of the outbreath, the materialistic consciousness and separative desires of the human being manifest, fortunately redeemed by the psychic purity of the vegetable kingdom through the power of photosynthesis.

In addition to the pollution generated by our breathing, the carbon emissions produced by human enterprise in general reveal toxicity within the collective consciousness. Significantly, humanity is now working towards the curtailing of carbon emissions, which symbolises a move towards controlling the desire nature. For the esotericist, the breath itself must be redeemed, its composition reflecting the condition of the psychic nature.

During respiration, Man unconsciously breathes in the psychic component of the surrounding atmosphere and breathes his inner psychic condition back out. At the point where the tide of the in-breath turns to become the outbreath, an alchemical reaction takes place between the outer and inner environments and the resulting combination permeates the exhaled breath. Those who understand this cycle work purposefully and rhythmically with the breathing process. The secret cannot be discovered through specific exercises however, which can over-oxygenate and therefore over-stimulate the lower force centres; it is revealed instead through the profoundly more difficult process of self-forgetfulness, harmlessness and right speech. These attributes open up an intuitive understanding of the Law of Cycles that automatically imposes harmony and rhythm on the life expression, including the breathing cycle.

Interestingly, in the 1950’s, the Ukrainian doctor, Konstantin Buteyko, postulated that many chronic medical conditions of our age from asthma to lupus and Crohn’s disease are the result of taking in too much oxygen during the breathing process. This leads to a deficiency of carbon dioxide in the body which medical science has long known plays an important role in releasing oxygen from the blood cells and tissue. The Buteyko breathing technique extends the lower interlude of the breathing cycle to address this problem with promising results.¹

Esotericists who have achieved the necessary level of dispassion can work in the lower interlude of the breathing cycle – the pause after exhalation – for an incredible length of time. This is because the amount of oxygen used by the body is in proportion to the power of the desire nature and the more spiritualised the practitioner, the longer he can live in his own air. The magical worker aspires to become as passionless and psychically pure as the plant kingdom and, like the plant, begins to alchemise carbon in the inner laboratory of his own body which is why carbon is an integral part of the philosopher’s stone. As the practice of dispassion proceeds, a purified alchemical force, literally pervaded with love, is breathed out, carrying the magical work forward.

"Students of occultism who have demonstrated their devotion and their mental poise, and who (to use the ancient formula of the schools of meditation) have kept the five commandments and the five rules, and have achieved right poise, can begin to use the interludes between the two aspects of physical breathing for intense activity and the use of the power of will to produce magical effects. The consciousness, focussed in the brain and having participated in the work of contemplation can now proceed to the work of materialising the plan upon the physical plane by the focussed energy of the will, used in the silence by the conscious man. As can be seen, these breathing interludes are also two in number, after inhalation and after exhalation and the more experienced the disciple, the longer will be the interlude and the greater the opportunity therefore for focussed magical work and for the utterance of those words of power which will make divine purpose to be."1

The breath literally and symbolically fans the spiritual fire of white magic on the physical plane. It forms an integral part of a great science of the initiates which might be termed esoteric dynamism – the psychology of fiery motion. Through the in-breath, the initiate takes the outer psychic environment in and raises it towards the Spiritual Ego, while on the out-breath, energy from this level of being is poured out into the world as the will-to-love. The kundalini fire is involved in this transmutation process, the force of the base chakra rising and fusing with that of the head centre to produce, what the Tibetan terms, "the individual ‘electric fire’"; together they circulate throughout the ventricles of the brain – the place of magical work. Here the white magician combines the fires of spirit and matter to build thoughtforms of love to fire the world with the spirit of relationship and directs them towards specific ends through the electric charge of the will nature.

Just as mercury rising in a thermometer is a physical symbol of this process, the Tibetan hints that: "Mercury and the centre at the base of the spine in the human being are closely allied. Mercury demonstrates kundalini in intelligent activity, while Mars demonstrates kundalini latent. The truth lies hid in their two astrological symbols. In transmutation and planetary geometrising, the secret may be revealed."

Mercury

Mars

This process of transmutation and planetary geometrising to which the Tibetan refers forms the esoteric science behind his directive to: Let the will-to-love fire the entire world with the spirit of relationship. And working in this way is a step, no matter how small, towards revealing the secret of the more occult work he alludes to. For now, the focus of the aspirant to the mysteries must be on understanding the role that Love plays in transmutation and planetary geometrising and working with it practically in meditation.

Love is the great Spiral Architect – the builder of electromagnetic relationships between two basic forms of dynamic motion in the universe – the forward drive of the first aspect of Divinity – the Will – and the rotary motion of the third aspect – Active Intelligence. Love is a spiralling, elevating aspect of Divinity that brings the two together in right relationship to one another – spinning and weaving the rotating atoms of substance into forms through which the essence of love may be expressed. On the human scale, when the will-to-love is evoked and pours into the human frame, it raises the whole organism into a state of dynamic tension and imposes the rhythm of right relationships on all parts of the body. The human being is then in a position to work as a creative spiral architect, directing love into the world to elevate and direct subjective relationships into new forms of expression.

Service of this kind wisely hastens rather than hurries the time when, in the words of Djwhal Khul, "the inner fire of the mental plane and the fire latent in the lower vehicles merge with the sacred fire of the Triad [and] the work is completed, and the man stands adept". He then gives a vision of the future of the human race explaining that "Macrocosmic evolution proceeds in like manner to the microcosmic. The internal fires of the terrestrial globe, deep in the heart of our earth sphere, will merge with the sacred fire of the sun at the end of the greater cycle, and the solar system will then have reached its apotheosis. Little by little as the aeons slip away and the lesser cycles run their course, fire will permeate the ethers and will be daily more recognisable and controlled till eventually cosmic and terrestrial fire will be at-one (the bodies of all material forms adapting themselves to the changing conditions)."²

The required changes are already occurring in the forerunners of the race who are practising dispassion and, as a consequence, initiating the transfiguration of the human vehicle through the alchemy of carbon. It may be a very long process but this is the direction of human evolution as far as the bodies of manifestation are concerned on all the planes. As stated in the yoga sutra of Patanjali in Part 2, "Symmetry of form, beauty of colour, strength and the compactness of the diamond, constitute bodily perfection." The human species will ultimately become hermaphrodite and, transcending the process of sexual reproduction, will build bodies of expression through an act of will – according to Steiner – bodies of transfigured carbon akin to a soft diamond, the blood that circulates within as pure and passionless as the sap of the plant as symbolised by the rosy cross of the Rosicrucian.

In the future, humanity will become the diamond-souled kingdom – working as one to fuse spiritual and mundane fire and raise planetary kundalini. As this occurs, the whole of planetary life will shift onto etheric levels and a state unimaginable to us at present. The pure, cold fire of love that shines from Venus whose evolution is someway ahead of ours, indicates the way, as does the sulphurous, fiery atmosphere that envelops its physical body indicate that the liberation of spirit from matter has taken place.

While this is a vision for a distant future, the work of those who are learning the esoteric science of energy direction is spearheading the way towards this grand consummation. The immediate step forward is the practice of raja meditation to evoke the will to love. This automatically engages the central jewel of electric fire in the centres that stand behind the organs of the human body. Safely and surely they bring about the conditions and spiritual atmosphere in which the initiate works, where "All the centres in the body…can be intensified electrically at will and used simultaneously, or one at a time, according to the demand and the need which must be met." ³

The inner as well as the outer nature of man is electric, and the bridge between the two involves the newly discovered magnetic properties of carbon as earlier referred to, which form part of the philosopher’s stone. Added to this is the fact that modern science is not only discovering the electric and magnetic properties of carbon but also of water, (to be explored in the next posting) which makes up more than 80% of the physical bodies of vertebrates, and plays a crucial role in the evolution of life on the physical plane of our planet Earth. The scientific discoveries now being made as to how to work electronically and magnetically with carbon and water will facilitate the passage and use of electrical energy in the world, helping humanity to transcend the physical plane and identify more with one another in terms of energy and force.

At this point, the work of electric masonry and the building of the carbon temple will proceed in earnest. Transcending identification with any vehicle of consciousness on any plane, the divine human being will know himself simply as a divine emanation – the antahkarana itself – the various bodies like electric knots threaded along the antahkarana that can be activated at will when he chooses to focus at a specific level of consciousness in the Divine manifestation. When the whole of mankind can do this, man will then truly be a divine ray – a strand of loving energy within the stream of love divine – a point of sacrificial fire, focused within the fiery will of God – a little fiery breath riding in rhythmic harmony with the Great Breath.

Then "the emanations of heat - due to intensification of the inner flame, coupled with the assimilated radiation of other units – will increase, and become of such proportions that the interaction between the individualised Selves will result in the merging to perfection of the flame within each one, and a blending of the heat; this will proceed until there is ‘one flame with countless sparks’ within it."⁴