TEMPLE OF LIVING LIGHT: QBL 2010

 
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THE TEMPLE OF LIVING LIGHT

Show me your mysteries, I'll show you mine,
As we embark outside this space and time.
Clasping hands we'll join the dance divine,
Flowing gently toward eternal rhyme.

Tell me your fantasies, I'll tell you mine,
Show me your ecstasies that flow as wine.
Together we'll reach the highest peak sublime,
Drinking deeply from the spring of time.

[Chorus]

Try as we might...
    So many chambers in which to dwell.
To reach the heights...
    From the bottom of a wishing well.
With second sight...
    How we ascend only time will tell.
To the temple of living Light...
    Far beyond heaven and hell.

Bare your heart to me, I'll give you mine,
Though all alone we might be flying blind.
Through embrace, fire and ice entwine,
Surging and merging as the ocean tide.

Wild Divine

Kabbalah is the traditional term applied to the practice of Jewish mysticism with a visionary, intuitive nature; it is uncompromisingly monotheistic.  Qabala and Qabalah are spellings for the culturally diverse, polytheistic, hermetic path, while QBL reflects the magickal root. Each type of qabala has its own subculture with its own woldview, developed in its own era.

We need a contemporary qabala for today, a 21st Century qabala, suitable for our "ground", our electronic environment. There is no advantage in our remaining locked up in any cultural cycle, exchanging hoary grimoires and number matrices, as if in a trance or a dream. If you go obsessively looking for something in the matrix, you are sure to find it. But it may be an idiosyncratic delusion – a sterile attention trap.

We have no need to journey down obsolete reality wormholes into 14th - 20th century mindsets. But some of us have discovered the means of living simultaneously in all cultural modes while quite conscious. http://mindcontrolfordummies.50megs.com All spiritual worldviews, including science, are narratives or interpretations of the nature of reality and our nature. We can make our practice and service contemporary by drawing on each era and drawing them forward into the future. http://myzeropoint.50megs.com

* The strength of Jewish kabbalah is its accent on worship, mindfulness, humility, human relations and redemptive action. It is illuminated by religious commentary, community, service and healing the world.

* The strength of hermetic qabalah is society, brotherhood, and its encyclopedic array of the phenomenology, myth, and symbolism of the collective unconscious. It is illuminated by group initiation, cyclic celebration, correspondences, mythic living, and transpersonal psychologies.

* The strength of QBL is divergent thinking and its transgressive attempts to break free of the lockdown mind control of conformist culture in renewed attempts to fly free in emergent creativity. It embodies the fluency, spontaneity and flexibility that prevents religious ossification. It is illuminated by self-expression, self-direction, self-initiation - the Holy Guardian Angel or inner genius.  

All recognize a transcendent reality whether it is called divine, transpersonal, or void/plenum.  Each looks into the Abyss and finds it smiling back. Each recognizes and embraces hierarchies of embedded fields within fields, holographic aspects of the Universal Field.  Qabalah represents an intuitive, NEGENTROPIC way of being that constantly, deliberately feeds and nourishes itself from the wellsprings of life and manifestation - the inexhaustible geyser of creative flux.

QBL is all about enliving that conscious connection with primordial SOURCE, via The Middle Pillar, or Middle Way.  It is wisdom, understanding, knowledge, mercy, strength, integration, emotion, cognition, instinct, and corporality.  The balanced integration of all potential faculties opens the portal of Real-I-zation.

Hermetic Qabalah is the basis of Western occultism, the Renaissance, The Enlightenment and many threads of Theosophical, New Age and Postmodern thought. It reflects Eastern notions, such as yin and yang, and subtle energy centers. Both traditional and metaphysical currents offer profoundly personal experiences of the divine nature of life, transforming the ordinary and creating a journey to the center of the self, where all things are made whole and holy, kindled by divine love and intentionality. 

Influx: Priming the Cosmic Pump

As a cultural phenomena, Qabala is a chaotically evolving artform. Its wild nature cannot be contained in any static institutional form. Magick suggests that as Nothing becomes Something in the subquantal oscillation of matter/energy there is room for human intervention, for intentionality at the quantum level.  These subtle changes can be pumped up to the macro scale through the self-organization and butterfly effect of Chaos Theory.

Surfing the wake of the creative edge of culture, underground movements often herald the shape of things to come - what will shortly be mainstreamed into global culture. Modern magick has uprooted QBL from both the religious and secret society formats, creating a personalistic framework for self-help, self-initiation, and self-transformation.

Nonlocal qabala isn't rooted in ancient cultural traditions; digital qabala is an infinite virtuality not confined by consensus reality. It is rooted in the ZERO-POINT fluctuation of subspace, quantum mechanics, chaos theory, synchronicity, parapsychology, and hyperdelic consciousness. Radical things and experiences are possible that weren't before. For example, Magick's "cloak of invisibility" is being literalized by DARPA using stealth metamaterials.

The new QBL relies on radical self-confrontation and self-commitment. Practice does generally retain a connection with the wisdom of Tarot and the elegantly symphonic symbolism of the correspondence system, and often classical number mysticism. There are many self-styled idiosyncratic cults based in this maverick eclectic strain of so-called qabalistic practice. Many embrace novelty-seeking rock and pop culture elements, others "tales from the darkside", yet others realize it's all a "put on" and that identity and personality are mutable facades through which we can reinvent ourselves.

THE THIRD WAVE: The Wake of Human Progress

Old cultures are dying as they are assimilated into global awareness; we exchange the wake for being awake. Like an indicator species, art and artists often reveal long in advance where humanity is heading. They express what cannot yet be articulated or lived in the common culture.  This is no more true than in the artistic expression of Qabala and the art of magick.

The interplay in colloidal mixture of all components of human technology extends our senses and shifts their ratios. Our very nervous systems have been extended and morphed by the electronic environment and the advent of 'voluntary ESP'. Postmodern "generic" forms of magick, in particular Thelema and/or Chaos Magick strip the religious veneer from the purely technological spiritual practices. Qabalistic practice has jumped the theological framework into idiosyncratic, neo-pagan, humanist, and atheistic formats.

This isn't black or white magick, but a highly saturated social kaleidoscope in living color, sometimes coming together through the common heartbeat of tribal sensibilities. As paths of self-development, they are esoteric psychologies with a worldview. They substitute an exploratory, experimental and pragmatic philosophy of self-reliance and self-realization for the religious bedrock of the traditional forms.

Magick is a commited lifestyle. The emphasis can be on mysticism and meditation, or ritual and magick. Some favor obsolete wormholes back to other centuries - grimoires and goblins - while others are busy creating the next-new-way-on. These essays, artwork, and visualizations here are not meant as a new dogma, practice, or school of thought.  They are simply the result of my own decades of qabalistic work.  I hope they provide a springboard for your own thought.  As food for thought, they are meant to stimulate and provoke your own speculations, insights, and experiments.

Occulture Club 

Qabala is not a static doctrine, but a living Way.  Qabala is an experiential path, an experiment which lasts throughout one's life.  Qabala is ultimately about access to and experience of discrete states of consciousness, ways of being and becoming.  To glean its wisdom, we must "sample the dish," not simply read the recipes.  It is a subject which cannot be exhausted. 

We must make QBL our own, even while honoring its tradition.  In this way, we have the best of both worlds.  Qabalistic traditions and models are validated by modern research everyday.  It has a vast capacity to incorporate the entire repertoire of human knowledge and understanding, coordinating through its primary glyph, the Tree of Life.

We can update our models and create revolutions in our own beliefs and thinking, much the same as happens in science.  Therefore, we will be drawing on resources from post quantum physics, Jungian and Transpersonal Psychology, and traditional and modern philosophical speculation, such as Buckminster Fuller's SYNERGETICS.  I hope you find valuable concepts here for bootstrapping into your own worldview and facilitating your journey toward Union.

Tweeking Consciousness

The dazzling phenomenology and sparkle of consciousness has perhaps led us to think that its function must be equally dazzling and discrete - the fruit of human evolution.  But it may be foundational - the very mindstuff or maya of Eastern philosophy, that is the primordial basis of both manifesting matter and energy. This common candidate has something to do with increased intelligence and choice, perhaps even 'free will'.

Increased intelligence is a cognitive and emotional function: I.Q. and E.Q., including rapport and empathy with life and cosmos. Reality might be tweekable by consciousness, but there is no obvious requirement for this. We can change ourselves by applying our will at the physical, emotional, mental and spiritual levels.  In doing so, we alter the very fabric of those domains of human experience, adding our voices, our contributions to the evolutionary thrust.

SYNERGETIC QABALA

Synergetic Qabala
synergeticqabala.iwarp.com

The premise of Synergetic Qabala is based on the fact that manifesting form is essentially energetic.  Form is not other than force, and force is often indistinguishable from form.  Both are rooted in the Void or cosmic Zero-Point of virtual vacuum fluctuation of subspace.  Forces interacting in dynamic stabilization are essentially, therefore, synergetic. 

The right and left Pillars of the Tree of Life are in a state of dynamic tension, as well as other polarities which it embodies. While Synergetic Qabala is essentially a geometrical philosophy, it is not a sterile number mysticism, but a theosophical approach to the unfathomable mysteries of Qabala and its essentially mystical orientation.

The Tree of Life is a model of the universe that describes energy's behavior and also has the ability to shape our thinking.  Synergetics describes the actual underlying geometry of subatomic structure.  Here we employ nature's own coordinate system, the geometry nature uses for self-organization --the tetrahedron.  There is a relationship between geometry and number which is intrinsic to the spheres and geometry of the Tree of Life.  It defines the philosophical universe of Qabala.  Explorations in this geometry are covered elsewhere in "The Synergetic Qabala."

The ancient system of the Qabala may best be described as a mystical theosophy, an effective guide for understanding ourselves and our relationship to the universe within the Tree of Life.  It provides a cohesive worldview which is consistent with the findings of modern physics, psychology, and philosophical thought.  It provides not only a philosophy, but a Way of life.  It is a mystical discipline which requires an active spiritual practice for realization.

As in the case of physics, there are two main branches of Qabala.  The first is speculative or Theoretical Qabala and the second is Practical Qabala which concerns the application of its principles through theurgic magic and/or mystical meditation.  It is a complex system of symbols and principles for developing the inner potential of human nature, leading to the stage of conscious service to the divine powers at the source of all creation.  Though often spelled many ways, we employ the simplest transliteration of QBL, as Qabala (ka-ba-la).

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CHURCH OF SELF AMPLIFICATION

"Nothing at last is sacred but the integrity of your mind."
(Ralph Waldo Emerson--from "Self-Reliance")

Kabbalah claims a 4,000 year lineage, from Abraham. An angel of God revealed it to him, including the geometrical language of existence.  The Jewish kabbalists had a holistic theory of everything including mankind’s relationship to cosmos depicted in their Tree of Life diagram. It is a holographic encyclopedia of phenomenology.  It is a graphic display of the unity of micro- and macrocosm, of how man and universe interpenetrate and reflect one another.

Does our psychobiology somehow condition or reflect our philosophies?  Reality seems to depend on how you look at it.  Were the ancient mystics prescient?  Were they somehow able to intuitively perceive the true nature of the cosmos by looking into themselves? 

Intuition is a non-linear informational source which creates “quantum leaps” in our awareness.  But mystics have also always spoken of the illusory nature of consensus reality.  However, without the matrix of theory, data flies by incomprehensibly, its deeper meaning lost.  If so, how does what the ancients discovered relate to current scientific findings?  Can we know the nature of the universe if we do not even know ourselves?

The Great Work of the Qabalists has always consisted in finding the equivalence of the Macrocosm and the Microcosm, heaven and earth.  Among the ten spheres of the Tree of Life these are represented respectively by the spheres Kether at the top of the glyph, and Malkuth at its bottom.  There is a qabalistic saying about the essence of godhead or spirit in matter: “Kether is in Malkuth.”  (See figure above).

Medieval texts describe the creation of the universe as an emanation from the negative veils of existence beginning with Kether, down the ten spheres of the Tree of Life through the archetypal, causal and astral planes to the material world of Malkuth.  The prehistory of this traditional Tree diagram is unknown, but may be presupposed to come from the oral mystical tradition.

As the kabbalists say, “Kether is in Malkuth.”  Spirit suffuses matter.  Malkuth is the turning point between Emanation and Return.  The whole endeavor of mystical aspiration is called the Path of Return, and involves working one’s way philosophically back up the experiential Tree of Life to Kether by intentional participation in the Great Work.

God out of Nothing is a tradition wherein the Ain Soph wills existence into being so God can perceive the existence of God, a “space” in the Universe to express and see Self. God comes out of Limitless Nothing. Relativity describes how a quantum of Light creates mass from its speed – pure consciousness is an explosion of Light that creates particles. The right side of the tree is energy, while the left is matter or form.  The point of Light emanates nested hierarchies of energy/matter

The nature of reality is that matter-energy must be taken together .The theory of relativity conceives of this single substance as a distortion or curving of the structure of space-time.

Physicist Ian Barbour writes that, "...in quantum theory, separate particles seem to be temporary and partial manifestations of a shifting pattern of waves that combine at one point, dissolve again, and recombine elsewhere; a particle begins to look like a local outcropping of a continuous substratum of vibrational energy." That vibrational energy is governed by the laws of probability.

But what subtle forces underlie matter-energy and space-time? All form and power are latent within the void. The Heart Sutra tells us that, "Form is not other than Void, Void is not other than Form." This implies that our human form is not other than void, and biophysics shows this to be true.

Our physical makeup is largely emptiness. If we conceive of humans as being most fundamentally electromagnetic entities, instead of chemical beings, we can imagine our finer existence as wave-fronts in space. Our microcosmic personal "space" is not utterly empty, but cannot be conceived apart from our matter exhibiting itself in particular ways, i.e. as "waves."

Yet, the void state, or primal matrix, is "cosmic zero," and proportionately our most fundamental reality. It is part of the surrealistic quantum realm. It lies within us all, for the relative space between our atoms is astronomical. This is the ground state of existence which mystics seek in their meditation, moving beyond mind and maya. It is that state of consciousness where outer perceptions cease, and consciousness is free to simply be.

Throughout the centuries, various geometrical forms have been revered as expressions or metaphors of higher spiritual truths. These sacred forms and symbols are a natural part of the collective consciousness which emerges in every generation.

We project them outwardly from within our psyche because they are so fundamental to our existence. That apprehension is intuitive. Certain typical forms recur in meditation and ceremonial practice, worldwide.

When something emerges from nothing, it does so via non-Euclidean geometry, coming to occupy space/time. Einstein used non-Euclidean geometry to explain the relativity of time and curved space as the geometry that is produced by matter or matter by geometry.

The perception of the transcendental or metaphysical aspects of geometry is intuitive. There are examples of philosophical geometry or geometrical philosophy from around the world. These traditions are found in India, China, Southeast Asia, Egypt, Europe, and Great Britain, to name a few.  It is expressed in monuments, tombs, temples, church and mosque construction, astrology, the arts, mandalas, yantras, stupas, magical circles and symbols, etc.

The qabalistic techniques were developed in remote antiquity for stimulating latent, or subconscious abilities, with the aim of self-realization and God-realization.  A personal program of spiritual development allows an individual to transform himself according to a consistent, orderly process.  A self-directed individual can recreate himself as an integrated individual.  By facilitating internal processes of creativity, we release our optimal talents and realize our potential for self-unfolding. The Qabala, with its most important diagram, the Tree of Life, provides a synergetic background for this process of change.  

"To my mind, the exercise described as the Middle Pillar is the groundwork of all actual developmental work.  It is a process which is the basis of Magic.  That this has been but seldom realized is obviously at the root of the futile attempts to do Ceremonial and perform Ritual, of which the general public hears every now and again.  Even students of Magic of many years standing have been guilty of negligence in this respect, and also in failing to recommend it to their successors." --Israel Regardie/The Middle Pillar

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THE HOLOGRAPHIC TREE

New Science and the Tree of Life
by Iona Miller, 1993

ABSTRACT:  The science of wholeness emerging from interdisciplinary approaches to the nature of reality reflects many Qabalistic principles.  Among the theories expressing this new paradigm are quantum mechanics, chaos theory, Energy Medicine and Biophysics, Holographic Concept of Reality, Pribram's holographic brain, Buckminster Fuller's synergetics, Sheldrake's morphogenetic fields, co-evolution, the Gaia and Panspermia hypotheses, semiotics, hermeneutics, hyperdimensional realities, the new cosmology and consciousness studies.

In new sciences, consciousness and matter share the same essence as different expressions of the same reality.  New sciences describe the evolution of the laws of nature, the evolution of our perception of nature.  In this view there are no abolutes, no fixed laws of nature, only a relative stability.  The laws of nature are evolving because nature is creative.

This universal dynamic creativity is also the domain of the Qabala with its consciousness map, the Tree of Life.  It presents a holistic image of emergent creativity, a webwork of the interaction of various spheres of influence, and the complex feedback loops which bind them to one another.  In terms of consciousness, each sphere (hypersphere) represents a discrete state of consciousness, and each path a transitional phase, or transformation.  Aspects of the system can be entrained through resonance.

Every body placed in the luminous air spreads out in circles and fills the surrounding space withi infinite likenesses of itself and appears all in all.  --Leonardo da Vinci

Our mapmaking changes the very terrain, and terrain in turn changes our map.  Maps, mapmakers, and terrains whirl around each other like the vortex in a river which expresses the whole. -Briggs and Peat, Looking Glass Universe

A WHOLE -- IF NOT ABSOLUTE -- TRUTH

Wholeness has traditionally been a mystical perspective.  Now, the new sciences with radical notions of nonlinear complex dynamics, nonlocality, chaotic behavior, patterns of energy flow, relativity, enmeshment, fuzzy logic, etc. are revealing a deeper order underlying the nature of our directly experienced reality.

Wholeness is characterized by "flow," and the influence of every event on every other.  Through minute fluctuation, this flow gives birth to sudden orders of all kinds--structures of flowing energy exchange.  The whole is contained, paradoxically, within the "part," holographically.  Yet, wholeness can include incompleteness, the higher degree of order always hidden in apparent randomness.

Analogous processes of transformation in consciousness lead to insight and creativity.  Each moment in the therapeutic process, as in all life, reflects all others in the past.  Each therapeutic image contains a fractal-like representation of past, present, and future.  The transformation of imagery reflects in creativity; transformation of beliefs, thoughts, fellings, values, attitudes and behavior.

The Tree of Life encodes a dynamic system of transformation of the individual at the physical, emotional, conceptual, and spiritual levels.  Rather than a hierarchical "ladder" to be climbed, the Tree is a stratified image of the holistic nature of existence which interpenetrates as a fluid exchange of energy at every level.  More subtle "planes" are simply more deeply enfolded aspects of reality--hidden domains of order creating variables in our ordinary existence.

More than the sum of its parts, the Tree represents a multidimensional web of processes emanating in all directions by the conjoint macro-micro co-evolution of all systems.  This web exalts the pure intensification of life.  The secret of the universe is that it is alive.

The qabalistic Tree presents a model of reality and consciousness which is organic in nature.  It reflects the nature of nature, the nature of mind, and relevates the nature mind (natural mind) -- void of conceptualization -- the Clear Light.  Qabala offers an animated alternative perspective to the mechanistic, cybernetic models of psychoneurological function.

The living Tree models co-evolution as a creation that is happening at every point everywhere, in a fractal-like bottomless unfolding.  It also accomodates the self-referential process of recursive feeding back (or recycling) of consciousness in psychological transformation -- modeling the penetration of awareness into deeply implicate realms.  Pathworking provides for the opening, amplification, and exploration of specific feedback channels, and the induction of specific altered states of consciousness.

The Tree is a graphic representation of the dynamic process of becoming.  There is no real hierarchy, no fundamental level of description.  Rather, there are different levels, each dependent on the others in complex ways.  Higher levels feed back strands of information to lower levels, back to new higher levels, and so on.  Rather than describing a world of things, it describes process structures and emphasizes relationship.  It describes hidden formative principles, and a webwork of multiple perspectives.

Modern cosmology suggests that all matter plus all gravity in the observable universe equals zero.  So the universe -- and therefore, ourselves -- could come from nothing, because it is fundamentally nothing.  This echoes the qabalistic creation myth where all substance emanates from the primordial Veils of Negative Existence.  It reminds us of the Vedic and Buddhist notions that we and all we can observe are no more than 'mind-stuff.'  It reminds of Jung's conclusion that at the most fundamental levels psyche and matter are the same, that psyche and soma are indissoluably welded in our psychophysical selves. 

The story goes that around 4,000 years ago an angel of God gave the Qabala and Tree of Life to Abraham.  Though the glyph has gone through a few permutations through the centuries, it's essence has remained intact.  Curiously, this matrix describes the exact geometries of the nucelus of atomic structure as described by Buckminster Fuller in Synergetics.  By "looking within" the qabalists correctly deduced the primal structure of reality without any recourse to modern science and technology.  Apparently, the angels spoke the Truth.  This is the essence of Synergetic Qabala.

Qabalah is an underground spiritual current, a distillation and synthesis of some of the main threads of western spiritual technology. It is a path of Knowledge, a Way of being in the world enlivened by deeper dimensions. Kabbala is the traditional term applied to the practice of Jewish mysticism with a visionary, intuitive nature.  Hermetic Qabalah is the basis of Western occultism, the Renaissance and The Enlightenment. Both traditional and metaphysical currents offer profoundly personal experiences of the divine nature of life, transforming the ordinary and creating a journey to the center of the self, where all things are made whole, kindled by divine love. 

Postmodern "generic" forms of magick, in particular Thelema and/or Chaos Magick strip the religious veneer from the purely technological spiritual practices. In today's occulture we are each the lords of creation; we create our own lived realities. Each of us is autonomous, even our own form of divinity if we choose to manifest that. This may strike some as narcissistic and grandiose.  It is, if one does magick in the name of ego rather than Higher Self. The main quest of magick is for the transpersonal Self - the Angel, the Daemon, the Genius. Presence im the Now means optimal expression of human potential.

As paths of self-development, traditional and metaphysical currents are esoteric psychologies with a metaphysical worldview. One substitutes a pragmatic philosophy of Self-Realization and self-actualization for the religious bedrock of the traditional forms. The modern search for the Self in a conformist culture is encompassed by the lower half of the Tree: in the Spheres from Malkuth (Earth) to Tiphareth (Heart).  Since the goal is the heartcenter of integration, THE DIAMOND BODY, the object is to pick a path with Heart and to develop one's inherent potential artfully and heartfully, whether you "believe" in God, or polytheistic gods or not. 

A primary tenet is to first harm none...a metaphysical "Do unto others..."  The struggle here is between willfulness, True Will and free will.  Modern consciousness studies show there is virtually no such thing as free will, in the sense the term was used during The Enlightenment.  Then the struggle was to break free of thought-control by church and state.  Now our minds are controlled by lockdown media and pop culture. So, the premise of generic magick is to control and deploy your own thoughts creating your own reality via cybernetic technologies.

Kabbalists seek communion with God in the divine Light - Ain Soph.  The sacred is the ground of Being - God the Father; God the Mother, and God within as Presence, all consuming love.  Profound spiritual integration and completion reaches its transcendent goal in God. Nature of divinity, soul, fate of humanity and universe emerge from the deepest part of our being.  The secret of all qabalah is that it must be practiced to be personally experienced, as is the case of all Mystery Schools. The secret's in the knowing and the knowing's in the secret.  Kabbalah came out of the Egyptian mystery schools.

"GOD out of NOTHING" is a pre-scientific theory of the Universe, which turns out to have seen through to the primal geometric nature of atomic and subatom