The Spirit of the Tarot. Claudine Aegerter

in front of her from accomplishing his mission. The mission is to unfold his destiny and to follow his own star, which is the true seed of divinity. As he faces her he is aware that he could get lost, for he doesn’t know if it is life eternal on the other side of the veil or not and he’s aware of the dread of not knowing. She completely ignores all that and so appears to be stern and impartial. He has to decide from within himself to stay and knock at the door. His persistence is a true sign of courage, which says that the steel of his inner truth has been sufficiently tempered.

      Whenever we are very close to the truth, discrimination through the intellect must be used; otherwise the initiate at the door hasn’t really rendered his intellect useful. The only job the intellect has, after he has gone through that door, is to serve. Right up to the door he has had to see whether he is taking his intellect seriously or not, but after going through it discrimination becomes a spiritual quality. We still have to weigh everything up carefully, because we remem ber that mistakes are always likely. Even Jesus (the Soul) on the cross was weighing up and asking; “Is this really happening?”

      He could go on living the double life, for on the one hand the ini tiate or disciple is driven towards the goal of illumination or fusion with the highest; on the other hand he knows that he is weakened with temptation and can be charmed. In taking the next step and going through the door, he will have to let go of that double life and then it is really a single life, with the focus on the highest, but stay ing with the behaviour of the profane. There are no more excuses of “I am only human and I am not completely aware”, which allowed him to go back and play the game. Jesus (the Soul) said; “When you are in a foreign land you eat and behave as a foreigner” so the initi ate does not say, “I am special and I am different”, but rather obeys the social laws of the country he is in and the laws of the Earth, even if he knows these laws are temporary. The laws are temporary in the sense that they will carry on until the Earth herself is divine and then we will be under divine laws, rather than the laws of life and death. If he pleads ignorance that is covering up the fact that he still wants to enjoy the sensual life.

      The real word for The High Priestess is gnossos, or connaissance, which is what we are born with. The wisdom is not that we are in the world, but that the world is in us. At this stage we know that, because we have learned to understand what incredible instruments we are. We are a memory-bank for the God we live in and we each have the capability of entering every single room in that great vault of knowledge. Each cell in our bodies is a room that we can enter into and decipher the knowledge therein; this is the kind of instru ment we are. The world is actually not out there, except when we need to check the little black dogs we have within us, which are our reactions as we play the game. Once we truly know the world is within us, then everything is accepted and loved and there is no problem. We can go and visit any room with as much courage, hon esty and love as we can fathom within us, for we are custodians of our house; that is what makes us true co-creators. Creation isn’t to do with planting trees; it is to do with truly understanding that the world is the way it is because of an idea or a mental process. Each word or thought creates a true entity. Self work is necessary, also witnessing and service are a by-product of the greater plan, which is to make planet Earth sacred. In this work we are essential but not most important, for we ourselves are just by-products by which the planet can move on.

      The whole of the planet’s psyche is polluted by a murky, lust ful, wishful, wanting, needy atmosphere. Cleansing our thoughts, desires and needs is necessary, so that our instruments can exteriorise the good will and pure intent of the Soul into the highest attainment, by the work of service; this doesn’t mean being a ‘goody-goody’. If we can hold that intent, then even when we are living for biological survival, we can recreate the world with the power of our thoughts; for example the more people think peace, the more peace will hap pen. If we see the possibility of that, we can see how it is going to replace the lower needs. All of us are breathing an atmosphere that is full of this polluted mind stuff. If we put together all the wishes and lust that occur between men and women in just one day on the planet, it isn’t surprising that there is rape and abuse. In a time of war it happens through the de-humanised men who are used for these wars. That violent energy has to manifest through an instru ment, so let’s not put the entire fault on the rapist or the killer, they just happen to be the weakest instrument at the time; it is the sum of all our thoughts that makes it happen. In knowing this, our ini tiate must always focus on the highest vision, for we are forever recreating the world with our thoughts. Originally the world was a manifestation in form of the highest possibilities of biological perfection, but now it has given birth to consciousness through mankind. We have recognised that we are in the world to observe it, so it has become the laboratory for the consciousness to unfold into its full potential. We go in and are driven by lust and greed, and then we have to become aware of our behaviour in order to stop playing the game. Once we liked it, but now we must hate it; eventually we go beyond love or hate by dropping it and focussing elsewhere. At that point we are not in the body or in the personal ity anymore, but are guided by the Masters of Wisdom.

      We really do create everything with our thoughts all the time, so mass consciousness is constantly creating the world we see now. Changing this takes courage and honesty and it doesn’t hurt us, but we don’t do it at all if we are afraid of losing the game. We have to be in the market place, waiting for someone to wake up. This knowledge cannot be taught in books, because it has to be an inner process. It is the same type of thing in family relationships, for the whole human family is working towards the complete acceptance that our sole purpose is to be used in service. It can seem violent that we have to be killed and have to suffer earthquakes and war in the name of God, but it is the same as having millions of cells in our bodies dying every day; that death is an unfolding of new life.

      There are more and more of us who have greater awareness now, so the mass consciousness can’t dominate in such a malevolent way any more. It is a tiny opening, but it has more power than anything we can imagine, because we are plugged into the enormous power point of Spirit. Power, in the sense of force or light, is not without danger. When we hear “Let us not fall into temptation”, this is a reality that we have vaguely understood as “Don’t let me go for one more bar of chocolate”. Temptations are only a measure of the power we have, so if all we are worried about is the temptation of the bar of chocolate, then our powers are quite gentle. There are no absolute sins to do with temptation. Absolute sin is only when we have lifted ourselves up to the higher level of consciousness and want to use the power gained to manipulate the energy for our own purposes; this is serious black art. Sin can only be against Spirit, so we cannot sin through lack of awareness or ignorance of nature, we can only sin in the light of Spirit, which is to use the force knowingly for our own benefit. This is why we have to be so vigilant in the cleansing of the instrument. All so-called sins are there to teach us to align and to be aware. If we think we are afraid to fall into tempta tion, we have had it, because it is the power of thought that does it. Temptation only comes through self-interest. Dread is okay because we are in front of something incredible, but we need to go bravely forward with no intention of falling back, for that would feed that power into the personality. So falling back is a sin which stems from fear of falling and is about wanting to be more powerful than the other one. We have to be consciously aware of all our thoughts. It is important to choose a focus that is completely detached from self and to dare to lose any interest or intent towards self. The dread is normal, but let’s not turn it into excitement, fear, or whatever it was that we carried on our backs, otherwise we will fall back into our mindsets and carry on playing the game.

      We are being asked not to live a double life, for in the process of lifting the veil we have to be honest and true all the time. If we can do that there is no sin, because we can see it as it happens. As an instrument we are covered with dust; as we see the dust we can transmute it into pure energy. This becomes easier in time and eventually, when we are focussed on the truth rather than on our selves, it just happens without having to try. It is the truth that is important and we cannot plead ignorance any more once the veil is lifted. There can be a heavy disturbance about having to go further, because, when we are in front of the sphinx we are faced with how much we have fed the black dog of hell. For lives and lives we trod that beautiful path, we had visions, we even taught people. Then suddenly we are truly looking at ourselves and we see the pitiless reality of the system we live in. It is truly awe-ful when we