Studies in Astrology
by
Elman Bacher
Volume IX
Chapter VII
Light As Communication
From an esoteric standpoint, as we usually use the
word, "communicate" means a process by which knowledge or information is
transmitted from one mind to another. However, a study and synthesis of its
derivative roots reveals its esoteric meaning which makes it possible for us
more truthfully to understand the real significance and right use of this
function of sensory, intellectual, and spiritual transmission. Its direct
derivation is from the Latin word communicare which means to
share. In it are found two basic root-words: "com" referring to "with" or
"together," and "un" referring to "one-ness" or "unity." Thus we see that
"communication" is a means by which diversity of minds and consciousness are,
in degree, unified through the process of sharing. This sharing
is a polarized process: the positive pole is revealed in actions of radiation,
expressing, informing, telling, writing, projective telepathy, and
inspirational projection; the negative pole is revealed in actions of
perception, reaction to vibratory stimuli, all sense-perception, learning,
understanding, and realization. All that is established in divine mind
can be transmitted to--or shared with--diversified, individualized mind or
consciousness. The over-all evolutionary goal is the realized unity of
diversified minds with the One Mind of our Creator.
Before undertaking a consideration of the occult,
karmic, and evolutionary significances of communication between humans, we
must first consider the basic or primordial or absolute communication
between Divine Consciousness and human consciousness--the "creative sharing of
Light." Divine Mind makes Itself known to us--"speaks to us"--by manifesting
Itself as infinitely varying states of objectified vibration--the natural,
physical world. It has also creatively provided us with centers and organs
of sense-perception in the development and exercise of which we may learn
of our source by observation of manifestation. Through sight, we
perceive and know God's manifestation as color; through hearing,
we perceive and know God's manifestation as tone; through touch,
we perceive and know God's manifestation as texture and density;
through taste, we perceive and know God's manifestation as chemical
mixture; through smell, we perceive and know God's manifestation as
invisible and silent chemical emanation or radiation. Extended,
"transcendental" forms of sense-perception are included in clairvoyance,
intuition, clairaudience, claircognition, telepathy, and inspiration. By
these faculties, Man's internal apperceptions are revealed in realms
that transcend the "limitations of Time-Space." All of these sensory and
super-sensory faculties and powers make possible the many variations of
communicative action and rapport between the Divine and Its sub-human,
human, and super-human microcosms as well as between humans amongst each other
and their sub-human and super-human "brothers and sisters." He who knows
more (has evolved more conscious-ness) shares with him who knows
less (is less evolved in consciousness and knowledge); he who knows
less (is less evolved in consciousness and knowledge) receives from,
and learns from, him who knows more and is more evolved in consciousness.
The magnetic attraction of relative differences in consciousness and
similarity of cosmic urge to realize unity is the communicative
relationship between all living things. Communication is fraternity in
action; Truth-full, constructive, and serviceable communication is
fraternal love in action. Now, to astrology:
Before a human can express to another mind in a
communicative way, he must go through a "process inside himself" by which he
formulates that which he desires to convey. In a subtle but
imperishable way, this formulation is an inter-action of the subconscious mind
with the conscious perceptions. Before any fact or realization can be
conveyed, it has first to be learned and the particular faculty for
learning was exercised prior to the present moment. It is the
subconscious mind--symbolized astrologically by the Moon-which acts as the
storehouse of memories--which are residual impressions established by past
exercises of consciousness. It is the conscious mind--symbolized
astrologically by Mercury--which cognizes and expresses according to the
present need. By the adhesive, retentive quality of the subconscious mind,
Man remains linked to that which he has been and has expressed in the
past and his cognitions and interpretations of his present are established on
what he recalls as memory or feeling-memory of his past. Therefore, we see
that an individual always communicates within himself before he transmits
or expresses his consciousness to another. A simple example: someone asks
you what time it is--he needs that factor of information; before you
can answer him, you have to "receive communication--by visual means--from what
your watch tells you." Formulating a cognition, you are then able to transmit
that fact as a communicative action to the other person. But, even before
that, you had to learn how to read a watch to tell time; your
subconscious mind retained memory of your having learned to read the watch
from some time in the past. So--you "drew on your past" to fulfill the
present communicative need for your friend. And so it goes, eternally: the
past is the "pabulum" upon which the present draws to build the future. In the
individual horoscope, the correlation of Moon and Mercury shows the alchemical
"mixture" of feeling-memory, established by exercises of consciousness
in the past, with perception by sense and intellect being exercised by
the consciousness in the present. Also, the correlation of Moon-Mercury with
Jupiter shows the alchemical process by which the individual is distilling
apperception of truth--a cognition of fact which is above, and
cleared from, all personal subconscious biases of interpretation by pain,
pleasure, prejudice, antipathy, or favoritism. The correlation of Moon-Mercury
with Uranus shows the alchemical evolution of such faculties as intuition
and prevision; with Neptune, it shows the "gestation" of clairvoyant and
clairaudient faculties (the evidence of things unseen and unheard) as well as
the evolutionary establishment of the power of faith and the power to
communicate by prayer.
The foregoing must be understood to be a general basic
survey of the nature of communication. Now, for practical astro-psychological
purposes, we will concentrate on the basic arch-symbol of communication and
communicative faculty--the planet Mercury, ruler of Gemini and Virgo.
Create a copy of the "Gemini mandala:" the zodiacal
sequence placed around a circle with Gemini as Ascendant-sign. Note that
Taurus-Scorpio, the diameter of desire-power and generative power, forms the
diameter of the twelfth and sixth cusps. Taurus refers to the throat-center,
the mechanism by which vocal creatures create tone; remember that
everything which we hear is perceived as an aspect of tonal vibration.
Scorpio refers to that faculty for generating, or "evoking," material for
another physical body. Through Taurus, we generate or "evoke" tonal material
for the embodiment, the perceptible manifestation, of ideas, thoughts,
feelings, emotions, knowledge, understanding, and realization; on the
plane of physical sense-perception it is the power and faculty to generate
tone that "overshadows" (twelfth house relationship to Ascendant) all
communicative action. It is the Mercury-power to formulate tones as
spoken words or sung words by the interaction of breath from the lungs and the
mobility of tongue and lips; it is also the Mercury-power to use the hands to
write and draw symbolic picture-imitations of the spoken word as written words
or diagrams, and of tones as musical notation. In the Gemini mandala the Moon-
sign, Cancer, is on the second cusp. Herein is seen that Man's consciousness
of nationality "stewards" the evolution of his faculty to express and
communicate by language. crystallized adherence to one
nationality provokes limited knowledge and use of systematized language--
such a person can communicate, in speech and writing (or reading) only with
those who know his particular language. But on the plane of present use of
the intellect, that adherence can be decrystallized by the learning
of another language, or of other languages. By such decrystallizing extension,
the person can communicate with a correspondingly greater number of people,
his "field of human rapport" is enlarged, his appreciation of the thought and
way-of-life of others is deepened and, consequently, on the plane of spiritual
recognitions he finds himself experiencing a greater degree of at-one-
ment with other humans. The differences of languages provide
communicative barriers only to those who do not step out of the crystallizing
adherences to one language; to those who do "step out," the barriers
disintegrate in degree. In this we see, again, a concrete illustration of the
fact that communication is fraternity expressed; to the degree that
more and more means of communication are learned will the
spiritualization of fraternal rapport and sympathy be realized, enjoyed, and
expressed.
In this age which witnesses the appearance of radio,
television, supersonic aircraft, and all such mechanisms by which the
limitations of time-space are being scientifically transcended, a parallel is
seen in the field of human spiritual endeavors. Many people, of all nations
around the world, are also seeking to explore the causations of impediments
in individual human functioning. These are people who are giving a
powerful regenerative impetus to human evolution by dedicated service to
humane measures, redeeming much negative karma built in their individual past
lives and devoting themselves to "helping other people to help themselves" out
of states of karmic abnormality, subnormality, and deflection from normal
healthy functions. In keeping with this subject of communication, it is hoped
that the following observations will serve to further a deeper "inner"
understanding of the karmic causations which undermine communicative faculties
in the human body; the first point to be considered is epigenesis:
Epigenesis refers to the faculty of the human to build
the quality of his vehicle in correspondence to the quality and states of his
consciousness. ("Epi-gene-sis" comes from two root-words which mean "to build
upon.") It is the one creative faculty possessed and--unconsciously or
consciously--exercised by all humans from the dawn of their evolutionary
procedure as humans. By epigenesis, Man reveals his creative likeness to
his own Creator; it is the "root" which underlies the flowering, in ages
to come, of his true creative activity as God-consciousness. The
principle, or law, of cause and effect operating on the faculty of
epigenesis in humans explains all conditioned quality of physical,
emotional, and mental manifestation in the human vehicle--congested,
deflected, crippled, or harmonized, potent, and efficient. In the present
consideration of communicative faculty and purpose, we find that the Gemini
mandala has much to tell us about the karmic causation of speech defects
and impediments which register in the bodies of humans at birth or which
"appear" during the incarnation as a result of a congested vibratory potential
being stimulated by the action of timing. Such conditions as congenital
muteness, cleft palate, abnormally thick tongue, stuttering and stammering,
traumatic conditions which injure the vocal mechanism, tongue or lips, etc.,
are the principal ones which outwardly reveal that the afflicted persons
caused communication to be impeded in the past. The subconscious
retained memory of the destructive or congestive action influences, and
the present physical body reproduces, by epigenesis, the negative
potential as "karmic return" so that the person may explore the negative
aspect of consciousness from "the other side of the fence" and so learn a
little more about the truths of communicative faculty and their right
usage for future development and evolution. Many, many kinds of action and
influence in the past may cause communicative defect in the present life, but
the Gemini mandala gives us the basic occult clues to the causation of
most of these defective conditions--and painful experiences:
The position of the Taurus-Scorpio diameter,
coinciding as it does with the cusps of the twelfth and sixth houses, is the
first point to consider. This is the diameter of consciousness of power as
"desire" or, to put it another way, the individualized consciousness of
desire. Keeping in mind that desire is a potency of consciousness
that can range, in quality, from the most inhumane lusts, greeds and
retaliations to the most sublime forms of spiritualized aspirations, we
realize that the right use of this potency--as shown in this mandala--
is a form of contributive service (Scorpio on cusp of sixth house) and a
builder of the consciousness of health. One such example is the
expression of mutual love through exercise of the sexual mechanism; another is
the disciplined conservation of vital and magnetic energies for use in
constructive endeavors and work. So much for Scorpio at the sixth cusp; its
higher polarization in the physical is the opposite sign Taurus, at the
twelfth cusp of this mandala, which is the symbol of the creativity of
tones released through the spoken word--the audible embodiment of
feelings, thoughts, ideas, opinions, and realizations.
Think about this: one small word--a "yes" or a
"no"--spoken in a certain tone of voice, communicating to another a
specific decision or feeling or realization or recognition, can change the
course of a human life if the person to whom the communication is made reacts
to what he hears in the word. One small word, pronounced as a judgment to
affect another's life or destiny, may be spoken in such a way that the
subconscious mind of the speaker "grasps and holds" an impression of malice or
destructiveness to so strong a degree that the karmic return from that
expression may objectify in painful experience several lives later. Through
fear a needed word may be withheld; the power inherent in the unspoken word
will be retained as a potential for blockage at a later time; the content of
pain attending the needed subsequent decrystallization will be proportionate
to the good that could have resulted if the original good word had been
spoken.
In order to unfold realizations or cognitions of
karmic causes to communication difficulties or impediments, we have to be
willing to elasticize our viewpoint and recognize that causation of these
effects, manifested in the present by epigenesis, may have been long
established in the sufferer's subconscious. To use the creative power of
the spoken word to give channeling to forces of destructive and untruthful
consciousness is to insure future experience with communicative
impediment. In much repetition of extreme forms, the mental vehicle is
disintegrated to a degree and in such wise that conditions identified as
"imbecility" and "idiocy" result as karmic return, especially when deliberate
cruelty has been the original emotional motivation. The present experience of
many such sufferers is being helped by the power of love expressed in the care
and consideration given by those who are seeking to assist them--and this love
is also a karmic return, established from actions of good intent and
kindliness in the past. So, in these times, we see--by observation of the
fact that humans are seeking to help and rehabilitate even the most
tragic cases of darkness, impediment, and relative disintegration--that the
only barriers to communication are those which man himself sets up; the
Creator has endowed us with potentials of mind and spirit and faculty to
insure our eventual communicativeness with all planes of life. In the
universal or absolute sense, there are no barriers to communication.
All individualized minds function under law and by releasement and refinement
of potentials within the inclusive scope of the one mind--which is the
one light, the one consciousness--the ever-unfolding lines of
communication of "each with all and of all with the One" are perpetually and
perfectly held. By the right usages of our Mercury-factors, we
reproduce the ever-open-ness of our lines of communication with fellow-humans
on this plane.