On the pretext of describing the characteristics of the path to Enlightenment and ultimate knowledge, traditional paths of the past issued prohibitions and advocated compulsory forms of behaviour which stayed within the realm of conventional experience. Quantum meditation advocates completely sweeping aside our feelings, experience, self, self-image and finally the subliminal self - the deepest part of our being in which the Divine already exerts an influence - even though our experience of this is limited.

A spiritual follower who tries to adopt too precise a form of behaviour in order to confront the mysteries of existence finds himself defining convenient truths and inconvenient errors for himself and in the end his spirit never addresses the blind spots. He creates a new and doubtless superior ruts and invents larger blinkers, but this is not sufficient to achieve genuine awakening. Up to now, conventional teaching has been too detached from actual life to which it offered a contrasting “vision” and all experience had to fit somehow into the mould it offered by one means or another. Locked in this dogmatic approach, the self manipulates the criteria for meditation, but lacks its absolute power. Of course this attitude is not a willing one, but is dictated by the specifications of the teaching to be followed, which forces the spirit to praise certain forms of progress and to criticize certain habits, without the centre or source of the spirit - the Self - being reached, precisely because of the constant dualities which emerge between the higher path to be followed and everyday experience full of physical habits.

An exponent of the integral path chooses cardinal meditation, whose principles will be described later, in order to adopt a path stripped of all distinguishing forms, which endeavours to explore reality before passing judgement on its features which would only be based on the past. Inspired by a profound aspiration to participate supremely fully in totality, the meditator instructs the spirit no longer to take hold of what it apprehends and interpret it conventionally according to memory and prejudices. He is starting to become wary of thought, without resenting it in the least, because it is still an integral part of his being, which he must view as one of his own organs in its own right. This wariness on principle, which is detached, serene and paradoxical, but which can be learned, opens up different worlds which will manifest themselves through new intellectual processes as the brain is quite capable of interpreting more subtle forms of vibration than those generated by thought, which produce new forms of perception. In simple terms, thought will subsist, but it will be perceived by a different power when it manifests itself, a form of consciousness which is difficult to define and convey, but which can emerge from within.

In this respect, practising the four Mysteries, or quantum meditation, conforms to the predicates of traditional Eastern teaching. It consists of making the individual confront his own representations, then encouraging him to realize that they are the product of a range of different forms of conditioning which act like filters preventing him from grasping pure reality as it happens. In order to ensure the survival of the human race, the brain associates vital perception (living energy) with mental perception (ordered thought) in order to enable the individual to grasp the dangers and opportunities around him on a continuous basis. Excessive speed of thought is therefore a legacy of the animal world in human beings in search of a spiritual future and generating abstract thought is woven instinctively into that physical awareness of the body to the same end, thus providing feedback on one’s surroundings at all times. Unless the seeker accepts that thought is a hindrance to him and mingles with feelings and he acknowledges that it is a form of prison which condemns him to reacting permanently to the demands of the outside world, then he cannot aspire to the vastness of the non-mental realm or intuit the huge joys which consciousness can experience when higher intuitions connect perceptions in a wholly new way.

Admittedly, exploring the Self does not inevitably lead to the blue, mother-of-pearl and gold of spiritual horizons without first plunging the subject into the structures of the subconscious, where the red of violence and desire is deeply rooted in archaic territories and where the black of death and darkness sometimes resurfaces to bury solar aspirations in the law of the past. It is specifically in order to facilitate these journeys of consciousness into the realms which it has created that I am making quantum or cardinal meditation available to seekers, in the form of exploring the four fundamental fields through which reality is expressed. Although they are the same thing, I will term time spent being carried along by associations in all four fields in random order quantum meditation, whereas the term cardinal meditation will refer to the aim of restricting oneself to exploring just one of the four Mysteries while adopting the appropriate physical position, which is different in each case, as described at the end of the work.

Once the fields have been defined, it will become clear that each has its own sphere of influence and a finality which is specific to it, which will compel us to gather all their individual perspectives in one single approach balanced out by investigation. Meditation uncovers the somewhat hidden and insidious battle between the four fundamental zones which are termed Mysteries so that we can understand the stakes and make a decision, while discovering an unlimited area of psychological content drawn from the subconscious and supraconscious.

We can in fact be certain today that the structure of life has its own laws in cellular organisms and that rules which stem from the evolution of matter do not promote the ascension of the soul towards knowledge of the Divine, but on the contrary determine forms of crystallization of archaic thought for the benefit of the biological system, forcing us sometimes to use animal reactions in lieu of answers, or encouraging us to hold onto habits when relinquishing them would promote greater adaptation. The purpose of various forms of conditioning which we inherit - be they cultural educational or hereditary - is to place spokes in the wheels of the solar approach and to provide new obstacles to it, so that it has to discover its own strength by transcending the limitations imposed on it by the forces of the mortal body.

Targeting knowledge is, therefore, a waste of time, but it reveals itself by breaking up the filters which render it opaque and by working to convince the brain to broaden the way in which it functions. Knowledge constantly moves further away from where we think we have pinned it down, if only on account of the influence of the movement of circumstances and history which means that we are involved at all times in a world which changes on a daily basis. The only truly receptive power is passivity which is fully attentive and panoramic, as both the great masters of wisdom and consummate mystics never cease to remind us and which we shall learn to apply through quantum meditation. As is stated in the Gita, the Hindu “bible” as it were, knowledge is superior to works, but non-action (naishkarma) is superior to knowledge. The seer of truth - the integral seeker - moves towards total inspiration, where all that remains of personal will is the aim of serving the Divine, or - if one has no knowledge of him - the aim of reaching pure integrity in keeping with the highest Ideal of truth and love which we can imagine. The other aims of the will are more practical or subjective. Higher will becomes passive and receives higher vibrations, whereas the spirit stays receptive to all events and learns to deal with them by separating them from the emotions to which they give rise. The more prosaic aims which the individual forms within the context of his life have not necessarily been abandoned and contingent, active will can be retained, but these should be put in perspective and sometimes sacrificed to consecration. One of the powers inherent in practising the four Mysteries is to place behaviours in order, to organize values into a hierarchy and to rapidly eliminate aims which are no longer current.

OVERVIEW OF QUANTUM MEDITATION

The work of the spirit can only repeat itself endlessly and this is precisely what we are going to make use of when practising the four Mysteries, instead of attacking thought head-on.

No special training can knock down thought and we are simply going to follow the path of the spirit whilst teaching it to search for meaning in the four fundamental realities with which we are concerned. Meanings in the third field are limited, contingent, practical and horizontal. In the fourth field, they are open, full and round. In the first field, they are structural and not based on daily events. In the second field, they are transcendent, almost timeless and holistic.

These four zones are so huge and so primordial that it is pointless to try to establish the chronological order in which they appeared, but in the course of this work readers will be able to experience the differences between them in order to practice meditation in their own way without encountering resistance, with a freedom not previously afforded by any other system. Depending on one’s point of view, any one of the four mysteries can be considered to be the original one, but this is purely a subjective convention, which will be treated in a humorous way later on to underscore the specific position of the self which is being formed within these four infinities. In fact, the spirit is bound to be dealing with one of the four zones at all times and if one has to make a distinction between them, it is simply that the four fields are all autonomous, have different interests and each represent us in their own way, while combining easily with each other. Before even defining them, I would therefore ask you to understand that you can be manipulated by any of the four mysteries at all times in your life, though the current situation may call for one in particular to manifest itself strongly and take control. Genuine power lies at the centre with the Self - pure, disinterested intelligence - but it is not unusual for another power to muscle in or to take the upper hand and lead consciousness of the moment towards a new experience which is intrinsically enriching, but which can be dangerous or beneficial and either welcomed or endured, according to the Mystery in question. Alliances also form between the fields, entailing the risk of destabilizing the overall structure.

The first aim in practising the four Mysteries is to discover the unity which lies at their centre: the unconditioned spirit, free of all content, that pure intelligence which no longer seeks to seize anything whatsoever and which is the origin of mental activity. The spirit identifies continuously with what it apprehends in one of these four directions and is grappling with the true meaning of events, which survives all attempts at subjective interpretation.

The real impact of events lies in their practical and objective outcomes and it is very rare for us to understand the overall consequences of our actions.

Description of the mysteries

Mystery number one describes the subject, the Self, individual consciousness which attempts to establish its own sense of permanence, through a feeling of personal identity. We can already state that this primordial space is explored by more or less every individual. Many human beings, especially in tribal societies which have been sheltered from history are not affected by their own individuality. They are happy to follow their instincts and the current laws and taboos, in keeping with ancestral tradition. By contrast, a genuine spiritual seeker is preoccupied by the mystery of his own individuality. He strays from it sometimes, by cultivating fleeting identifications or by imitating, then comes back, often by force of circumstance, when suffering drives him into a corner. Anybody who asks themselves seriously "Who am I?" (a question which the ancients Greeks raised relatively late compared to the Chinese and Hindus) begins consciously to explore the first field and learns how to keep coming back to it until this becomes instinctive and effortless.

The third Mystery forms the foundation. It is animate matter, i.e. life, which on our own scale means the sphere in which our existence takes place within its own environment. It is the history of our own childhood which is believed to guide us towards the inner Self and it is also our whole span on Earth, seen from the outside, with our animal being perceiving its surroundings through the senses and grappling with time, the body and the environment. Number 3 therefore adds a physical dimension to number 1. Whereas the Self seeks to establish a sense of permanence through his consciousness of the first Mystery as a being and as a separate entity, independently of what is happening, when we venture into the third field we have to deal with everything which we have experienced over the course of time. In this zone, we therefore spontaneously adhere to accidents and opportunities. Sensations and emotions manifest themselves in ephemeral patterns whose meaning can easily escape us in this zone in which we are connected to the present. During childhood, when the permanent Self is not yet fundamentally established, we are subjected to so many pressures that conditioning occurs to falsify any objective interpretation of events. We could caricature human beings confined in Mystery 3 as brutes who are basically concerned with defending their territory, respecting only what is established and scorning any different form of thought. The third field is therefore that of the physical body within its environment, throughout its cycle, animated by many phases which give countless forms to experience, but which fundamentally refer back to the animal state. We are in field three when we are ourselves as normal in a waking state – neither inward-looking nor excessively outward-looking, without any particular sense of tension, in the ordinary course of time and in our usual environment, but with our senses alert, of course. By contrast, awareness of field 1 is always receptive, slightly in the background, for reflection, decision-making and communication. (We are in field 1 (without 3) when we draw a veil over things, eliminate our identifications, feelings, emotions and beliefs, forget our sensations and try to seek to “be”, or to reflect on our relationship with the world.) In the third zone, we feel imprisoned by external constraints and are slaves to our basic appetites (food and sleep). We are sometimes subject to superficial or even artificial relationships and we feel that we are dependent on a large number of factors over which it is difficult to exert any influence. We participate fully in our surroundings.

A considerable number of mental habits can stem from this third mystery and be explored by looking at things in a different light. All memories can be revisited and corrected in order to release traumas and suffering and it is therefore quite normal to venture frequently and for long spells of time into this mystery in order to rid oneself of influences, obsolete identifications and old emotional patterns. This work can enable us to become conscious of bad habits in interpreting experience resulting from violent feelings, particularly during the first three years of existence.

In a square divided into four equal sections we shall put Mystery number 3 in the lower left-hand quadrant, where we see a human being taking shape from embryogenesis, dictated by a powerful genetic code. We imagine our life unfolding within its context like a film in fast forward. This child is already rushing towards the adjoining right-hand quadrant,

Mystery number 4 – duration - but also this current moment, the present, which will shape our existence. By moving through duration chronologically, or by following behind it if one prefers an overall view, the biological entity or “thinking animal” reaches Mystery number 1 in the top left quadrant and tries to find himself in ontological permanence. He explores his character, temperament and personality - similar structures which defy experience and which are sufficiently plastic or flexible to play with the interpretation of events - and he devotes himself to reviewing his past and imagining the future, wanting to make his instant projection in the present correspond to how he feels about himself as an individual endowed with personal free will. He explores those things which resist being distorted by opportunities, accidents, emotions, feelings, failures, successes, disappointments or joys. He constructs a code of values. He claims qualities and character traits for himself.

A minority of human beings wants to pursue the journey beyond this stage and sets off to discover Mystery number 2 (top right) – that part of us which is greater than what we already know and which Sri Aurobindo called the Subliminal self.

Une minorité seulement d'êtres humains veut continuer sa route au-delà de cette étape, et elle part à la découverte du Mystère numéro 2 (en haut et à droite), cette partie de nous-même plus grande que ce que nous en savons déjà, et que Sri Aurobindo a appelé le Moi Subliminal.

(The path therefore describes an "s" shape right from the outset).

In Mystery number 2, we find the potential for our solar future, the fruit of transformations in other mysteries and we can naturally flush out divine energy and consciousness, just as it is also possible to establish conscious contact with the immortal within us - the soul in Eastern esotericism and the psychic being in the new revelation of Sri Aurobindo.

We have to refer back emphatically to the essence of pure duration and invite everybody to acknowledge it as pure virgin matter, like an available stream of permanent clues to the divine quest, as the means to constantly transform the relationship between the other three mysteries. Therefore, if you want to practise quantum meditation, you must experience duration per se by ceasing to attribute any kind of finality to it. If this is not possible on a permanent basis, then you can begin to do it using this treatise as you would learn to do in an ashram, monastery or any place of initiation. You must be able to separate the mind from the mechanical stream of thought before claiming to be able to change the association of ideas which reveals the meaning of things in a new way.

Since we will establish four different types of meditation, each corresponding to one of the Mysteries, it is necessary at this point to set out the characteristics of meditation in zone four. This is where we will surrender ourselves to the present, without worrying about anything else. It will not be a question of knowing who observes what, nor how it might be useful. Moreover, this meditation is the one advocated by many traditional teachings. Practising the fourth field is difficult at the outset. It creates an interplay, new variations within the areas which constitute the four Mysteries, because the present appears more often now as a rich, open and indeterminate state, whereas the personal sphere appears to be built in a subjective manner and less solidly than before. The self suddenly seems to be buried under new questions and overall reality increasingly evades intellectual exploration. The interplay which occurs between the pieces of the puzzle prevents us from controlling thought and situations as usual and threatens the order of the past in order to look forward to a far broader sphere of consciousness, creating a centrifugal movement within the Mysteries which can shatter their limitations. The neophyte sees his brain constantly producing thoughts which spring up out of nowhere and are completely out of context and it can be like being pestered by a swarm of flies. However, when you are simply contemplating, sat quietly or cross-legged, you cannot manage to stay in this simple state and devote yourself entirely to it. All sorts of preoccupations surface which you have not summoned up and which really interfere with the time which you wanted to devote to this simple recreation, or “search for emptiness”. This meditation is intrinsically humiliating because it not only shows that the spirit can neither control nor direct its thoughts, but that it is also incapable of making them stop. This meditation is so fundamental that different virtues are attributed to it according to the cultures which advocate it.

In praise of the present. (Fourth Mystery).

In most Hindu schools, thought is considered deficient per se and practising Mystery number 4 enables one firstly to space out its rhythm and to slow down the pace of psychological content and then secondly, to discover Brahman, the great empty, undifferentiated reality, mere contact with which frees the brain permanently from its dynamic projections. In Chan and Zen, this same meditation is generally accompanied by a physical posture which is somewhat ritualized and this is a double-edged sword, because attributing too much importance to it can stop the mind from really letting go if it believes that there is something at stake and therefore remains tense. It’s fundamental aim is satori or immediate enlightenment, which reveals the unity of all things and puts an end to all feelings of duality. For Taoists, who are not wary of thought but prefer to seek out its quintessence, this meditation does not so much aim for the liberation of the mind as the growth of unlimited receptivity which is likely to dissolve the Self into the Tao or to connect heaven and earth - which comes down to the same thing. Although Buddhists are steeped in their own explanations they still evoke sunyata as the critical step in spiritual ascension – an experience which reveals that the original spirit is empty of all content. When you take into account that races themselves impose somewhat different ways of using the brain on individuals, it is remarkable how unanimity has been achieved across the millennia on the spiritual use of duration in the East.

Even in the Sufi or Christian mystics, who do not systematically wage war on thought but actively seek the soul of the world or contact with God, you find numerous testimonies in which the eventual conquest of inner silence is a form of antechamber prior to piercing the secret of the Divine himself. In ancient Greek times we find ataraxia, which trains the intellect to turn towards principles by detaching itself from rapid forms – thoughts – which the spirit creates.

 By simply abandoning the notion that duration is at our mercy, we open up the real sphere of possibilities. By contrast, permanently striving to achieve something else (even “good” meditation) only prolongs the ordinary mentality which is a prisoner of greed and fear. We can always amuse ourselves by reversing the points of a train but this merely changes its direction, without altering its speed. Furthermore, this same meditation is thought by Buddhists to favour detachment from fear and desire, which form the basis of human ignorance. It can seem paradoxical that in order to free yourself from ignorance you need to embrace higher ignorance – i.e. the random and malleable instant which offers itself to us before we make it a tool for conquest or for some form of appropriation. However, as Lao-Tzu said: “making darkness darker is the gateway to divine origins”. We must see the ignorance of the spirit face to face, find it natural and admit that it only grasps isolated scraps of reality which it sticks together arbitrarily. This admission of our condition opens up immense vistas. It is simply a question of embracing the spirit’s impotence to grasp the One, God and indivisible reality in order to discover ways other than thought, sovereign paths which project the being out of the animal state into the realm of the Spirit, which finally becomes accessible.

If we consider that nearly all cultures teach us to orchestrate time from the moment we learn to speak, then you can see the huge amount of work required in a reverse direction in order to unlearn this. Locked in the third Mystery, the Self which is sensitive to conditioning believes that it must constantly set an end point to the instants of the day. Time will be cut into slices, each with its own purpose and the individual will thus become a complete prisoner of a planned fabric of different identifications. Those people representing social values will try to make the young disciple of the Absolute feel guilty if he sometimes feels the need to do nothing in order to give himself over to deep thought. It would seem that the basis of middle-class society is the need to appropriate comfort through an obsession with social activity and with the religion of work, which is thought to bring its exponents an enhanced status in which they revel in order to exploit the weak. In these cultural conditions, the spirit will only grasp what is external and never think to look inwards at what it is, at the inner master whom it is serving. The subject will only experience a present which is predetermined by all its memories, habits and outdated plans, whereas the current moment will have to adapt to prior demands of conforming to long-dead models. Admittedly, this moment is sometimes crowned by violent reactions in the ecological environment, an accident which could show the way to the inner sun if it were followed right through, which is rarely the case. In general, the subconscious hijacks prejudices which the non-self inflicts on the self through the spearhead of narcissistic wounds, accidents, bereavements, serious illness or unbearable failures.

While these events should in a sense be construed as awakening agents in a truly divine culture, they are on the contrary represented as curses and maledictions, undeserved obstacles and unjust facts. The mind, obsessed by the paradigm that Reality must not extend beyond the framework of its preferences and hatreds, rejects humiliating factors instead of assimilating them and they can no longer play the role in our society which was represented by spiritual initiation in traditional cultures. The transition from Mystery number 3 to Mystery number 1 can no longer take place “properly” in modern cultures because adolescents are no longer called upon to recognize the sovereign authority of the Whole over existence since religions have lost their edge. Nobody teaches a growing child any longer how to become an adult who is capable of analyzing himself without seeing himself as a victim of circumstances when the outside world fails to correspond to his requirements. By making the socialized self the only form of psychological reality, modern cultures since the eighteenth century have forgotten that the inner being can take precedence over the external being and shape it and they have strived to divide up reality until almost nobody can experience the feeling of belonging to a single great Whole, thus promoting purely superficial identification. However, since we have reached a dead-end and our so-called civilization cannot offer anything other than destruction, we are starting to turn again towards the secret mysteries of our being in a what is perhaps an instinctive burst of integrity - those secrets which want to emerge from within us and give us the satisfaction of living for something more than a social or family role. After being swallowed up by matter in the manner perpetrated by rationalism for more than three hundred years, we have rediscovered the need to see things as a whole, in their unity and in the homogeneity of nature’s systems.

In this immense boundless reality, our own spiritual life consists primarily in finding the true materials of which we are made and examining them in order to understand them. This work initially takes place in the privacy of our own consciousness, with as its sole aim becoming receptive to supreme reality. We will innocently analyze the power of life which establishes the basis for our incarnation in the third zone which always gives us a hard time, with all its issues of the jigsaw of our territory and its combined elements: membership of a profession, family, race, region, political group, religion, heredity or sex, which can all sometimes be painful. Whoever we think that we were in Mystery number one, we find ourselves incarnated in the third field with our mortal body subject to the cycles of time and doubtless imprinted with hereditary characteristics, some of which are poisoned chalices, morbid, fossilized memories carried from generation to generation down to the body which falls to our lot. The question of knowing what to do with our genetic and psychological inheritance arises regularly through family relationships and personal psychological problems similar to those in other members and prone to the same diseases. Paying attention to the body was scarcely advocated in spiritual traditions. Most teachings even compromised themselves by presenting the physical body as the main obstacle to divine revelation. The body has been demonized in every possible way or abandoned in too many paths, under pretext that if we give free rein to our feelings they seize hold of our whole being and plunge it not only into desire, but into cultivating sensual pleasures. But feeling forms the basis of perception and it is necessary to transform it. TodayAgenda de Mère [Mother's Agenda], vol I, published by the Institut de recherches évolutives the Divine wants to seize Matter itself - the physical body can no longer be the focus of opprobrium or be considered an obstacle. It is the pedestal, it even becomes the lever for divine Ascension in supramental yoga, especially in intense moments when the body is actually “crushed” (pounded) by the supramental.

Practising the 4 Mysteries deepens the role of the body and mobilizes the intellect until it understands the mechanisms for appropriating Reality through which it grows – processes which are independent of the mind, especially in times of crisis, danger, disappointment and suffering, in which the subconscious increasingly mingles with consciousness and submerges it, painting a blacker picture of experience, while seeking forms of defence. After essential emotional cleansing, the physical body will become directly receptive to divine energy. Numerous enlightened approaches can supply material for investigation, such as studying parental character, reappraising childhood and the relationships which prevailed then, or a live reading of the horoscope at birthNatarajan, Astrologie supramentale [Supramental Astrology], published by Trédaniel, looking forward towards the transcendent future, where numerous forces are represented in a sufficiently precise psychological context to be useful. Restricting oneself to one’s environment can be one of the forms of meditation in zone 3, which also consists of many others.

Insofar as we can contain everything in the four zones with the Self at their centre, meditation must begin with a very broad representation of the four primordial states, in order to enable the spirit to explore easily in the directions mentioned.

Mystery 3 will contain any sequence of our existence at all from our origins to the present day, just as it also consists of our relationship with the body, with other people and with our environment. It represents our outward-looking experience, the sum of our every moment and therefore also our entire memory. This mystery forms the basis of our contact with the external world and can, therefore, also include our plans, fears for the future, deadlines, house moves, changes of partner and everything which makes up our membership of the non-self through the structures which govern our surroundings.

Mystery 4 represents time in different forms – duration which passes and the present. Devoid of objects, it leads to the pure moment which has not been orchestrated by thought or by emotion which severs it – Brahman..
(The atman – the non-mental – is at the centre of the cross of Mysteries).

The first Mystery represents our sense of personal identity, but it is something very personal coming as it does from the depths, so we can incorporate into it "what we want to be" as well as "what we think we are" – i.e. our self image.

The second Mystery is, at the end of the day, the most difficult to define, because it gathers together all the subtle and divine characteristics available to us. Our psychic being is therefore part of number 2 and the purest solar aspirations of cosmic integrity refer back to it. The psychic being is a fragment of the divine world proper, with the Spirit on one side (Satchitananda) and divine creative energy on the other (maha Shakti), or Aditi, the Supreme Mother and her four supramental manifestations. Meditation in Mystery 2 can take different forms – contemplation, prayer, the need to surrender to the Divine, mantras - and it is likely in theory to awaken the subliminal self, i.e. to create subtle planes of consciousness between the soul and the Self. It is also favourable to developing higher inner centres of energy – the chakras of the heart, throat, pineal gland and fontanelle.

In order to avoid excluding any form of exploration, it is necessary to follow the development of what the four Mysteries represent in the course of our practice. This is an essential theme which enables us constantly to renew the four meditations.

In Mystery number 3, we can not only bring about realizations regarding memory and our past, but we can also have an effect on the representation of our own experience, i.e. we can flush out ready-made images from our history in order to transform them.

In Mystery number 1, access to what we truly are as human beings is sometimes concealed by beliefs about ourselves and by the value which we place on them, which is often too subjective or unduly influenced by the quality of events. When we disidentify from the external world, reflection on self-image is therefore just as necessary as meditation proper on what we are.

In Mystery number 4, we can only come close to the pure moment if our intellect has understood the purpose of de-orchestrating duration. If we do not see the need to suspend the mind or at the very least let it act without any guidance, then we have not discovered the aim of meditation. Reflection therefore plays a part in the process of putting meditative procedures in place so that we truly understand their meaning before putting them into practice.

Meditation in Mystery number 2 can only take place properly if we correct ready-made images which we might have of God or the Divine based on what we have inherited or on embryonic experiences. This meditation is only correct and pure if it is stripped of all our own idols, which are often crude, innocent representations of what an intelligence truly superior to ourselves could be. It goes without saying that zone 2 contains higher energies of compassion and unconditional love and that we can in a sense receive graces there, if meditations in other zones have provided a substantial degree of clarification of our relationship with the non-self and a deepening of our relationship with ourselves.

NB: no single meditation out of the four is better than any other since each one enables us to bring about spontaneous realizations in order to de-mechanize experience and our self-image. It is even advocated that if we do not manage to meditate in the fourth zone we should follow up the information which occurs there. This will immediately provide us with feedback on the inner tensions arising from another mystery. If it is impossible to allow the spirit to roam freely, to let it freewheel without it coming back repetitively to the same object or group of objects, then this is because we have psychic matter there to transform. If we cannot enjoy a present there to which we are closely bonded and which leaves no mark, we can by contrast, determine psychological content which the brain places at our disposal. This is material which it seeks out itself because we have deliberately stopped guiding its work, thus enabling it to let all sorts of feelings which characterize us rise to the surface which we would sometimes like to keep quiet out of an obsessive desire to control the self and its discourse. It is therefore apparent that if meditation in Mystery 4 cannot continue, it opens up analysis in 3 (circumstances and events to be dealt with), initiates a meditation in 1 (malaise, guilt and anxiety) or projects us into a meditation in 2 if the spirit becomes eager to climb towards the psychic being or subtle and divine energies.

Practising the four Mysteries therefore cannot fail, since it merely supplies a huge amount of information which can always be used if the spirit is keen on integrity. At that very moment, the intellect has a remarkable quality which we must allow it to express instead of distorting it with our preferences, fears and the work of the ego, which would invent preconceived ideas instead of letting the real work of awakening take place.

Cardinal meditation is an infallible means of learning to distance oneself from one’s experience (by meditating in 4, 1 or 2 in order to move away from the past and memory). Similarly, we can leave aside our personality, which is still more or less crystallized, by surrendering ourselves in 4 and then in 2. Analysis of the fabric of experience in 3 refers back to the other zones again. By placing ourselves in zone 3, we can really take note of our responsibilities in our surroundings in relation to the body – locating evasions, compromises or habits which stem from alienation from our surroundings. By going into mystery number 2, which can occasionally serve as a refuge, the whole of our life can be viewed in a final or evolutionary manner and one can feel the highest degree of involvement in the growth of the universe. Experience, the way in which we use time with less determination, and work on the personality can sometimes appear synthetically and spontaneously in meditation 2, which must be practised with enthusiasm and sincerity because it is the highest and deepest. I therefore warn practitioners against the massive illusion of overindulging in field 2, because this excess systematically hides the work to be done in other fields.

Quantum meditation roams around the mysteries and sometimes reaches their centre – the Self – if the four fields balance themselves in a natural order.

It is harmful to believe in the pre-established value of one meditation out of the four as being more appropriate than the others. A preference may be legitimate at the outset, as I have pointed out in seminars, because new participants often feel the need to rebalance the whole by attacking the deficient Mystery which they have just discovered. But, with practice, intuition must allow us to change direction when the attention deficit with regards the weakest mystery has been filled. When sustained work has been accomplished, in order to reintegrate the field which had been neglected, a new, subtle balance reveals itself and each field’s progress can be divided up equally so that we do not keep hounding one single field. The success of the system depends more on a permanent, rapid, light, frequent and unforeseen adjustment of the four fields than on a plan for practice pre-established by the mind. If each of the areas is explored properly, it is likely that the Self will begin to emerge at the best moments in any of the four zones and enable an objective realization of the work of the spirit in each of these directions. We will return to this issue. By contrast, transforming one, two or three mysteries in a privileged manner, leaving a deficit of attention, cannot produce the harmony necessary to reveal integral silence and this prevents the evolutionary spiral from occurring: one part of the person does not move forward and whatever its achievements in the other zones, the inertial force in the neglected field will mean that it levels out indefinitely until it turns towards the mystery which has been left out.

One of the dangers of traditional teaching is that it only promotes our attention in certain zones. We cannot refer all work back to 4 and 2 without running the risk of being naively unrealistic, despite the obvious beauty of pure mysticism, or we lose sight of the legitimacy of incarnation, like the Cathars for example. In other systems, work takes place in 3, 4 and 1, but the divine aspect is overlooked. Since the Mother and Sri Aurobindo, the future of the human race belongs to a higher order of which religions and spiritual traditions were unaware, with the exception of the Vedic rishis, whose ideas gradually spread through the Vedanta and Upanishads. In the twentieth century we discovered psychology and it is now obvious that education enriches the natural mirror of the spirit by distorting it and the shuttle movement between 3 and 1 must be much more conscious if it is to clean up the past which intercepts our interpretation of the present. As he practises the 4 Mysteries, the seeker will discover the complementary nature of these fields and their constant, mutual interference and combinations which create the global field of the individual’s perception by gathering together all the information, including the moral or emotional limitations to which it gives rise. Even though the mind is able to amalgamate things, to combine the Self with the non-self through all sorts of opinions and identifications which enable it to grasp objects, it is still the case that our identity is stratified: furthest back and deepest of all is the psychic being, for which existence is just a simple journey or item of clothing. Below that lies the permanent personality which is an intermediary point between the physical body (and therefore the brain) and the soul. Then there is the cellular animal completely imprisoned in lifeThis rather drastic description came to me as the result of very deep supramental experiences. I realized that some of my organs were not informed by my spirit but by that of my parents and grandparents and I began to want to explore this in order to facilitate the transformation of my body. The physical body is fairly anonymous and common to all and trying to infuse it with one’s own personal consciousness is something that tempts some people, but it requires regular practice which the system of four Mysteries does not claim to offer. The supramental acts spontaneously in our cells and frees all sorts of engrams.

Personality in the first field gives us each the feeling of being unique and encourages us to differentiate ourselves. It creates values itself, i.e. reference points. Further down, our physical constitution and the subconscious (3) process the subject’s information in his surroundings and in relation to himself (emotional reactions) and do not concern themselves with moral or ethical values. This field is autonomous and has a form of room for manoeuvre which operates within us and unbeknownst to us, creating all sorts of psychological knots and complexes which are the legacy of problems which the personality has encountered in the external world, and there is also the issue of whether or not the permanent self in field 1 can integrate what happens to the historic subject connected to the event. This is also where the supramental mutant discovers the physical mind which is at the service of death, a little autonomous conscience, higher up than the vital, which organizes the process of somatisation, creating diseases on the basis of psychological content in order to legitimize the lack of harmony between the self and the whole. It is therefore a particularly dark force, which is the most shadowy power of the subconscious, because its work consists of accelerating ageing and death in the physical body. The more clear, limpid and effortlessly vigilant the spirit is, the more able it is to feel deeply the nature of the relationship between the Self and the non-self and the nature of the contact between consciousness in the third field and consciousness in the first.

This stratification reveals different speeds at work in the layers. The self in 3 moves about at a steady speed and perception stays stuck to emotions and events. By tracing a path back towards consciousness of the Self proper in meditation1, we encounter a much slower speed of psychological content and with a degree of training ideas even follow on from each other - pure abstractions devoid of characteristic forms, which can give meaning to any event. With practice, consciousness can stay motionless in the centre, without thinking, mingled with the self. At last, the psychic being becomes conscious in immutability, and movement is merely one attribute of life, one characteristic of its incarnation. Practising the four Mysteries enables us to exploit all the spirit’s potential, without ever forcing it to crystallize its efforts in a single area of reality. By surrendering to its action in the 4 primordial directions which characterize our incarnation, we learn to straddle the present, without worrying about turning it into a preconceived future, whilst ridding the past of negative or crystallized traces.

Descriptions of the Mysteries distort them to some extent because their reality is not designed to be represented. It is therefore naive to think that an intellectual approach can account for the whole of a field using an appropriate description and thus enable us to meditate better. This would be like believing that the score contains the orchestra’s particular playing style. The same piece has an amazing number of formal variations and it is only by stepping back from the notes rather than by sticking to them that we can discover their content and richness. Intuition of the four zones is sufficient to practise meditation by following the broad lines, i.e. by creating an X-shaped diagram of the four special fields. What is important is to differentiate between them and to see how the spirit jumps from one mystery to another, whether it does so harmoniously or whether frictions arise between interests in particular fields. Seekers who might think that the system is “vague” will realize in this way that they lack innocence, which is a valuable tool for dismissing the mind, or that they underestimate it. Yet it refers back to the “spirit of nature”, virgin intelligence devoid of goals, as described by a few ancient teachers who savoured pure instant.

It is up to each individual to fill the Mysteries with their own psychological content, just as we might put fish in a fish tank. Then, with the Self in still and quiet watchfulness, we see what happens. Some “fish” knock against the glass – these are psychological content which is easy to understand and they come tamely right up to the observer - consciousness-witness - and yield meanings, which can trigger feelings while shedding light on the management of the field in question. Others are more difficult to observe and reveal themselves later, as if working themselves up to an admission. It is likely that the different breeds of fish will behave differently for each person. Some practitioners understand the structure of a mystery quickly and others take longer and actually struggle in the last one. This is quite normal given the complexity of our nature, which is open to all possibilities, possessed by duration and able to dig down or take wing, preserve or innovate. There is no success in principle and if yoga is skill in works, it stems from commitment and not stubborn determination to do well, because constant commitment will triumph over the usual mechanisms of the brain, not a special process applied to an ordinary vision of life.

IMAGE OF FIELD THREE:

The body functions on its own behalf, without the approval of the mind, which only grasps small parts of it’s principle in action. Our metabolism incorporates psychic data since events in the consciousness have an effect on physical behaviour, modify the respiratory rate and exchanges between endorphins. Emotional feelings serve as a link between the subject’s body and consciousness and this is why the Chinese developed techniques six thousand years ago which enable us to act from top to bottom or vice versa, by creating gentle or controlled emotions believed to promote harmony between the physical base (3) and personality (1) through work led by the body in field 4.

Homeostasis, which regulates body temperature, is autonomous and we are not aware of what is going on within us, although hundred of parameters organize themselves towards one purpose, which continues to exercise biologists because the central organizer which groups together the different specialist processes in order to maintain equilibrium cannot be pinpointed. Several hundred measures converge simultaneously towards the same goal right under our noses to bring about a general equilibrium out of constant small variations. This confirms that a magnificent intelligence pervades living matter - life - and synthesizes all functions at all times, without the mind being directly involved. Meditation, hypnosis and certain mystical practices enable us to infuse information into the apparently autonomous body, of which it will take account. In a way the supraconscious can compensate for the subconscious which does the opposite. Information from the physical body rises to the level of consciousness and if it is painful it affects our sense of self.

IMAGE OF FIELD FOUR:

Duration is quasi-eternal, like the pure present and was not invented to correspond to any description specified by a somewhat mad animal species which is the last to reach the very end of evolution and which thinks that it can submit time to its whims on the pretext that it can manipulate it mentally. No representation of time exists which would yield its secrets or instructions for use, whether we measure it in fractions of seconds, minutes, hours, weeks or years. Knowing the speed of an arrow from a bow is not what makes it hit its target. Passing time is neither wasted nor saved and it is only when we learn not to attribute an end to it that it reveals its true nature. The present is not at anybody’s disposal and encountering it in its huge, indeterminate atemporal virginity, free of all concepts, feeds the brain in a new way and establishes a new, intuitive conception of existence.

IMAGE OF FIELD ONE:

As for the permanent self, if it were simply an object to be represented in three dimensions we would know what it is and what it is used for, but no psychology is exhaustive and comparing cultures does not yield very much. Everywhere we look, some people progress further than others and hold secrets, as it were, for which they are either banished or consulted. They do not use ordinary language and their mental field of “vision” is way beyond the norm. It doesn’t matter if they explain that they gained their knowledge or their power by sacrificing commonly held values, that they left the beaten track and crossed other thresholds, people still try to extort their knowledge through flattery or torture, threats or corruption, as if the ordinary mind cannot accept that “certain individuals” transgress it totally by devoting their lives to something else – in this instance the seamless Whole, Unity. (Given the scope of the project it is obvious that everything has to be sacrificed to this quest). The permanent self is not necessarily accessible as a whole, nor is it limited by the characteristics of the ego either. However, each individual knows that he is himself and suffers when he moves away from his true nature, even if he does not know how to define it.

IMAGE OF FIELD TWO:

Everything which makes us aspire to the light, integrity, truth and the abolition of earthly suffering. Everything which dictates higher forms of behaviour and ideas to us to raise consciousness, embrace unity and feel love for the mystery of our own existence. Everything which enables us to envisage solar transformations, greater intimacy with what is fundamental. Everything which encourages us to seek the path to greater conformity with the infinite, Tao, the Divine.

The subtle planes of our being which take part in cosmic evolution.

The mind will defend different options with equal pertinence if it analyzes the diagram of the Mysteries with its lofty inquisitorial spirit, with the stupid aim of examining it from all angles. “There is no consciousness of self if there is discontinuity, therefore the permanent self takes the upper hand over the other three fields. The first Mystery is the most important”. It will be proud of its analysis. Then it will change its mind and will contradict itself impatiently, proud to have found a new perspective: “That’s not right, everything begins with the body, with the journey from baby to old man, and that is the fundamental reality – emotional discourse and the sensations. Experience forms the basis of the human being. Mystery number 3 wins.” Satisfied, it will place number three at the front, but then as it continues on its way it will shout: “I’m such a fool! It is time which gives birth to everything so it is the fundamental mystery and earns first place” . Finally, after analyzing the infinite possibilities of field three, it will proclaim after hours of prevarication: “Let me see now, of course, it is the Divine which is the origin of all things obviously, or in its absence that intelligence which is constantly organizing itself for the better, which assembles and consciousness while pervading it with enormous energy.” Then it will pace around again only to come back with new arguments for what could establish the definitive pre-eminence of one field, on the pretext that, all things considered, “they are virtually equal.” Let’s leave him to hold forth on the subject. Let us get back to the issue of the dynamic of the method and abandon his plan.

Let’s avoid the issue of pre-eminence, since in practice we will inflict a wound on ourselves which is harmful to the “lower” mysteries in relation to the “higher” mysteries and which would pervert the practice of cardinal meditation from the outset and poison with duality the very method which is deemed to liberate us from it. Quantum meditation accepts wholesale all the thoughts, emotions, dross, fantasies, insights, memories, impulses of hatred, lust and anger - i.e. all our psychological content - without any mark sheet which would award good marks to some and black marks to others. The self is happy to receive all this material and to sort it straightaway without following any procedure based on a model, morality or teaching - i.e. a bias. The emotions which then occur in the self are liberating and if it is true that realizations can sometimes appear “harsh”, the flavour of conscious emotions differs from that of instinctive emotions. Conscious emotions are physical impulses which accompany flashes or insights into oneself, blinding illuminations into matter in transformation, appropriations to drop, errors committed or disappointments inflicted, which liberate new energies which we shall term “resolutory”. Forgiveness is one such example, or forgiving oneself, which is a radiant emotion, sometimes accompanied by physical manifestations such as tears, rapid breathing, etc.

Wrong turns which occur along the way are merely viewed as stumbles on an objective and distant path and in this way there is no need for guilt in order to get back on track and find one’s route again, or it may manifest itself and then dissolve with conscious emotion. The concept of error is in fact a wonderful thing, because something which has been accomplished without any benefit can be seen as sterile or harmful, thus opening up the path to other strategies, thoughts, intellectual routes and of course to diverting harmful consequences. When the self is truly present, there is no reason to keep making the same mistakes. The subject becomes attentive to the quality of all its initiatives based on new approaches, in the knowledge that there is naturally scope for error on a trail that has not yet been blazed. The material nature of the fourth field is accepted and we know that the present is the sovereign of opportunities and accidents. It deals out what appears to be favourable or unfavourable according to its whim in the huge field of intermingled circumstances. The ludicrous idea of trying to incorporate all events into one’s own overall strategy, which is the final fantasy of the mind, is abandoned as a childish superstition. Mistakes are acknowledged with good grace, as in any other apprenticeship, corrected without resentment and accepted without any sense of drama if they cannot be avoided.

It is peculiar to individuals who practise meditation to enjoy discovering their mistakes. Now that they live in the pure present, admitting to a mistake is no longer humiliating because it is in the past, an area of the self which has already been abandoned, and bringing it to light opens up a better path. Making mistakes is necessary, firstly because the subject is so small compared to all the categories of the non-self which surround him that he cannot constantly watch all fronts at once and conform perfectly to everything come what may. Secondly, it is always difficult to make decisions based on the unified self. The historic subject (3) can be opportunistic and commit the whole self to a siding where surface interests dominate and drown the inner being. The historic subject can be manipulated by fear, threats, gratification and interest. Passion in the present (4) can on rare occasions mask certain character traits and push the self blindly into a seductive but discontinuous dimension which becomes heterogeneous and then dangerous, before finally forcing it to backtrack. Sometimes the permanent self (1) turns in on itself, lacks the piquancy of 4 and is wary of experience and refuses to become involved, which is something which it might regret later if it is attached to its own image. Sometimes so much work takes place in Mystery 2 that any decision to be made of a contingent or material nature can seem unreal, out of place or even hostile. This is a feeling which can lead to postponements which may or may not be wise.

Admitting to our mistakes is simply a way of rediscovering our own direction when we have lost it for whatever reason. Many things lead us to make mistakes and in the West we have a tendency to think that they stem from lack of knowledge of external data. In the East, by contrast, people recognize that if they make mistakes it is because they do not know themselves sufficiently well to avoid compromising themselves in heterogeneous situations. Cardinal meditation welcomes observations on mistakes in everyday life and relationship problems, but it also welcomes the theory that the facts in question, external facts, were only able to occur because of a state of mind which allowed them to. When a train comes off the tracks, this is an accident, but it is caused by faulty points - an omission. Therefore, failures in field 3 provide us with information on our own temperament which is too slack or too tense, too forward-looking or too reserved in relation to the requirements of our environment.

If we consider ourselves to be students of the universe strangely confronted by a self which we cannot escape, then at every instant our achievements and failures provide us with information on the basic nature of what we are and encourage us to vary our approach to things, to transform our territorial consciousness, test our solar aspirations which we place unconditionally before the Divine and to let our self-image die and be reborn in a glittering present. This present is so pure that not one fragment of it is an extension of the past and this is infallible for severing our beliefs, abolishing obsolete representations of who we are and of what we want to achieve.

The body can take longer than the self to free itself from pointless memories and cardinal meditation can be an adjunct to all forms of exercise which enable the physical body to free itself from the past. A huge repertoire of techniques is currently available, but in every scenario the physical body being worked upon must reach a significant state of rest to eliminate the toxins of memories. Slow, conscious breathing from the stomach generally brings immediate relief after all the emotional reactions which triggered a radical split from certain structures and attachments from the past. Tears are liberating when they occur spontaneously and it is not necessary to stifle them when they genuinely come from the body. On the other hand, allowing a sequence of negative thoughts to occur in which one goes round in circles until quasi-artificial tears are summoned up is an old strategy from field 3, devoid of all intelligence, which digs the ruts of the ego even deeper and consecrates vanity through complacency.

What meditation teaches us is precisely how to distinguish emotional discourse, which is by definition plaintive, from the abstract vision of the problem which is causing us to suffer and which has not let itself be caught up in the closed monologue of complaining. It testifies faithfully like a stubborn animal at its own biological level that a breaking point has been reached between the self and the non-self. Inner suffering is divinely calculated to serve as an alarm bell when we begin to drift towards an agreement where the self and the non-self interweave and become confused. The emotion is so sincere that it embarrasses most people because it is forced on them in order to break the bars of the cage of ready-made representations and to shatter the mirror of self-image which is often simply an idol. Accepting emotion, whether it terrifies or delights us, allows us to respect the authority of the universe with regards to us and to understand that it warns us permanently through this emotion of the structures existing between ourselves and the whole which require transformation, as well as between ourselves and what we think of ourselves, now that our line of conduct has been called into question by inopportune moods, excesses which suddenly orphan the self without any object on which to project its need for security and without any internal or external force of authority.

The self changes its interpretation of things because it has nothing to defend and no longer attempts to interpret anything. It is simply there, enduring the whole manifestation without being fundamentally alien to it – a state which only skilled physicists could establish using abstruse equations because it is so difficult for the mind to grasp this status. However, if evolution moves towards conscious complexity, we will eventually be able to make the materials of our global being converge with the Supreme Being, who has instilled them with his own Presence while separating them from each other - hence our conflicting, material, spiritual horizontal, vertical, immediate and permanent position. Every option is offered to us but for some mysterious reason we reject them all. When they survey the issue, awakened ones are unanimous – if we content ourselves with nature we will relish our tragedies and passions and we will find happiness in the keen fight for existence which is intense and multi-coloured, sanctioning violent impulses wholesale as if they were legitimate as well as our justifiable hatred of peccadilloes. Our ambition, which we cultivate religiously will, by contrast, survive all sorts of meaningful failures and our inflexible and shadowy self-image will be fiercely preserved. We will remain in a crude state of unity which can be compared to the animal state and which comprises unbearable degrees of tension at irregular intervals.

By contrast the idea of turning inwards towards the centre of the self offers the possibility of freeing ourselves from the dualities which block our path – those fundamental dualities which we express in the transverse axes of the Mysteries. The whole starting position will be abandoned then destroyed and unity will be rebuilt on new criteria from the inside, which will give a new status to perception of the senses. The permanent immediacy of field 4 is implacably opposed to the mysterious motionless unity within us which we call ourselves and which has accompanied us since childhood and strives to conjugate the verb “to be”. Consciousness of the physical body, the pressures of survival in its environment and also its weakness and weight contrast with the majesty of field 2, where the Divine gives the shape which suits him directly to the intelligence, soul, chakras and the subliminal self through the powerful ideal which he imposes on those who want to join him and who receive the strength to love obstacles.

All representations of life other than those which stem from our own experience in the infinite adventure, here and now, are futile presuppositions and subtle conditioning for dealing with the present according to a preconceived frame of mind. Aspirations are sufficient to overcome abuses of power on the part of the mind, which grasps the highest realities and kills them with the limitations which it imposes on them. The will does not have to do anything at all, other than aspire to be revealed by preventing the mind for as long as possible from setting the rules, which it does by loading the dice, to avoid being banished from its realm.

Once the major worlds of higher consciousness have been described, the main issue lies in finding the path to them rather than in enriching them with futile considerations. Cardinal, or quantum, meditation is simply the fullest and the most synthetic reappraisal to date. Sri Aurobindo borrowed a significant number of Sanskrit terms which specifically describe those fundamental realities which we have lost and which the supramental enables us to rediscover. Reading his works would seem to be an effective aid to understanding the supremacy of field 2 in our own system, the need for self or Brahman and the complementary nature of divine consciousness and the creative energy of worlds. For our part, we face the need to establish a new spiritual method which, without renouncing the splendours of the past, will take into account the spectacular advance of human consciousness in the twentieth century, because our species has just rediscovered the supramentalSri Aurobindo, La Manifestation supramentale [The supramental Manifestation] published by Buchet-Chastel after several thousand years of eclipse, opening up completely new horizons as described by Sri Aurobindo and practised by the Mother and the author of this work for nearly thirty years.

It was during the twentieth century that the intellect developed in a new way and somehow learned to go back over its workings with new vigilance, as quantum physicists blazed the trail in parallel with the most rigorous psychologists. Once Western intellectuals acknowledged that the characteristics which we attribute to things are merely provisional representations, overall Reality suddenly became an unfathomable mystery. The best minds in many disciplines have got into the habit of only trusting immediate results, ready to call a theory into question as soon as it comes to light and to enlarge it as soon as it has been born.

The well-known saying “The map is not the territory” has led to the establishment of a new school of thought which included the most profound thinkers. By adopting a form of intellectual discipline which they arrived at empirically, they were keen to distinguish constantly between how they apprehended reality - a totally internal process - and the groups of objects which the spirit was trying to decipher. The results of this new intelligence have admittedly not reached the public domain yet and very few people today know that what they call reality has almost no relevance to it. However, the vision is directly derived from particle physics, whose paradigm consists of establishing that reality will always move away from that place where we thought we had comprehensively grasped it.

This paradigm constitutes scientific proof that the mind is not designed to grasp reality, but merely to represent its immediate materials to the self, which is subject to the ceaseless work of the spirit. The more the self decides to broaden the spatial field of this immediacy, the more it finds it normal to be simultaneously interested in things which infinitely transcend the boundaries of sensations and environment, and the more the mind gropes to represent apparently remote still virgin territories. However, intelligence is delighted to expand its realm and is triumphant on rediscovering a free, broad activity in the human brain which is conducive to its elevation.

A new phase therefore occurs in which the intelligence begins to get to know itself and knows how to avoid all sorts of useless processes. It learns to abandon representing things which are too huge for it, whose image would merely be a grotesque caricature. Therefore it is possible to abandon our model of the Divine and, contrary to what most people think, this opens up the presence of the Divine to a greater extent than modelling based on the limitations of the mind, if it is guided by sincere aspiration. In fact, whilst anticipating a divine which conforms to a model, perception will lean towards catching feelings in the present instant which concur with the model we have in mind, rejecting all spontaneity, every state of grace which has not been through the mill of this imaginary conformity, which is by definition critical. Similarly, Chan and Taoist teachers insist that the Path cannot be represented, although this in no way invalidates its existence. Lao-Tzu even goes so far as to say in one chapter that history places at the beginning of the Tao-te King that the path which can receive a name cannot be the supreme route. Viewed in this light, all religions could fundamentally be denounced as a pure counterfeit versions of the spiritual idea. However, if this point of view is right per se, when taken out of context, it is false in relation to the empirical history of mankind. Managing to turn towards the Divine without first having imprisoned him in a cage of values and ideas is not a process which we can inflict on culture. This would be equivalent to extolling the virtues of a staircase with out any steps which would rise like a wall, on the pretext that it would be quicker but would require an impossible leap. It is likely that each self attached to matter, each being must work on the use of the brain in the field of representations to avoid mistaking what one feels with the senses with what one perceives with one’s inner being, as the mind amuses itself by futilely appropriating objects to which our being aspires – knowledge, Good and Right. For thousands of years, this simple truth has formed the basis for the need for consecration, which is not so much offering one’s existence to absolute Mystery as a firm daily resolve to pay careful, close attention to how we use time (4) and the body (3) to prevent the discourse of thought from appropriating reality through the words it projects onto it.

This is why it is not unusual to meet certain teachers who think that it is necessary to do very little for a whole day in order to let the spirit work unhurriedly on everything it grasps and also so that it learns to surrender to it. This is a necessary stage during the transition towards the spiritual life in which the mechanical spirit tries by any means or activity to fill the moment, to avoid turning inwards where the proof of its ignorance would appear in the mirror. Once we have passed through this phase, mental pride is quashed and a new form of lucidity appears in which the complexity of decision-making surfaces, because friction occurs between instinct, the moral code and the need for the personality to express itself against the background of totality which becomes a vague sort of partner, but one whose role will continue to grow.

Our intelligence encounters the rough edges of the object which it is exploring at all times. We do not really know to what extent far we can gather together the necessary parameters which will give rise to a more favourable situation, or we are struggling with the issue of working out if we are “on the right track”, i.e. the one which will lead to the implosion of thought, revealing integral silence, or contact with a higher shakti (energy) . If we are being taught, it is not unusual to realize that we have got a statement the wrong way round, because the spirit will only project its own experience on the idea contained in the phrase which is written or heard. This weakness on the part of the mind legitimized the authority of teachers in the past, as they were the only ones who could immediately unscramble a novice’s distorted representation of the spiritual world by making signifier and signified tally through dialogue. There is no call for this process of listening to the awakened one in order to liberate intelligence to disappear, but it is not sufficient to enable consciousness to grow. It is time for most people to understand that the brain is a sort of extremely complex biological machine, but one which works mostly on information from the senses and nervous system to decree what is real and what is not.

This blind faith in the workings of the brain yields terrible results, like those great religious intellectuals ready to burn everything in their paths on the pretext of revealing the kingdom of God. Both neurobiologists and psychologists must continue to explore patiently the different ways in which the spirit makes what it perceives its own by calling this “reality”. We know the extent to which other people can become part of us, a child for its mother, a mother for its child, a teacher for his disciple, a loved one for their lover and sometimes, as we see in British culture, an elderly retainer who identifies completely with his employer whose every requirement he anticipates, as if he were himself although the relationship has never been an intimate one. Beyond identifications, which are just like a distorting glimpse of knowledge through identity, the self is already the non-self: consciousness is supreme in relation to all objects snared by the spirit in order to make them oneRupert Sheldrake, The Sense of Being Stared At published by Editions du Rocher with it.

The self can be considered to be like this immobile, quantum spirit, which is simultaneously identified with the object and profoundly external to it. It is a wall which reason cannot scale, which is fundamentally difficult to reach and yet until we scale it, life is just a long unfolding process which we endure, whatever our own scope for manoeuvre invents and whatever the merits of free will.

A search which is detached from the self and from anticipation of enlightenment which will crown our existence releases the mutual forms of blackmail which the four Mysteries maintain between themselves and it is therefore necessary to separate the merits of either pole of the fundamental reality – consciousness and energy, purusha and prakriti. If these two realities converged naturally it would not have been necessary to distinguish between them. Energy (prakriti) would have been placed at the service of the spirit and we would thus have a very reassuring model of the human being – unity in motion which continuously interweaves ideas and actions effortlessly and totally automatically, moving from one piece of knowledge to another and from development to realization. However, the whole of human history is a symbol of how impossible it is to reconcile consciousness and energy. Energy is always out at the front; it supports countless movements on its own and lives for itself, in a sense, as is evident in the grammar of animal communication in which dominance codes play the main role and prevail over embryonic individual identity, with the dominant and the dominated dividing themselves up in appropriate proportions.

If we give free rein to prakriti, Mystery 3 and Mystery 4 support each other to create a human being who will be permanently intoxicated by experience and by the powers of life, whilst leaving the moral self behind there, because he will let himself be “consumed” by the power of the moment or of desire – which are one and the same thing. If, by contrast, the self becomes taken only with purusha, then Mystery 1 will combine with Mystery 2 and allow access to a form of ascetic holiness, dominating life without touching it and the existence of the body will be referred back to its simplest form. The mind and the representations which it will be capable of creating will end by dictating a priori the interpretation which the senses will have to attribute to the objects explored. Therefore, for example, the founders of Jainism had become taken with non-material consciousness (without any movement) to the point of virtually denying their physical existence. This is still the case for a few followers of Shivaist or other sects seeking to obtain the self or contact with the Divine through dogmatic but practical contempt for the body, in which case it is quite appropriate to submit it to all sorts of privations. In fact, the appeal Cathar vision, which demonizes life, resurfaces at regular intervals and it can only recognize consciousness by shutting itself off proportionally to matter and energy which still leads to serious mass suicides to this day.

By contrast, investigating the four Mysteries allows us to harmonize consciousness-witness and the material energy of the body with its different energy flows – the “chi” devoted to the organs and the breath of life - whilst the still deeply mysterious subconscious will reveal the processes of amalgamation between the self and the non-self, which will then be able to dissolve (complexes, knots of energy and obsessions). The movement of prakriti and the immobility of purusha can be joined harmoniously with extreme care and in this respect I am merely updating the Isha Upanishad which, in just a few verses, makes light of all the contradictions and antagonisms which we encounter on the spiritual path. Purusha and prakriti are not completely distinct since our mental activity ground down intensely by our brain cells (or vice versa) mingles with the pure energy of life, while simultaneously creating sort of virulent inner ghosts which escape from us like sub-personalities, such as chronic obsessions, serious compulsions or minor reactive diseases which are caused by the same events. Obviously, what interests us is the absolute convergence of purusha and prakriti, where neither one suffers from the attention being paid to the other, which can still be found in a very small number of secret teachings, generally referred to as tantric, in which the idea of opposing principles is completely abandoned. From our point of view, only the self at the centre can absorb in its vastness, or its neutrality if one prefers, the movements of energy without getting lost or fighting them in vain. Enlightenment therefore seems to be an obligatory stage for reconciling ethics and the ideal (which have a tendency to rise of their own accord or to become abstract to the detriment of feeling) with vital and behavioural energy which tends to sink under pressure of fear and desire and trivialize the present or fourth field which prepares and performs situations and roles and their constant maelstrom. Enlightenment is prepared by all incursions into a more pared-back mental field, which is slower and tends towards the void.

Traditional forms of wisdom which seem to prefigure the descent of the supramental have tried to reconcile opposites rather than to praise the higher, “celestial” pole and life after death to the detriment of permanent observation. However, since the union of opposites, alchemy, is more difficult to achieve than forward transcendental flight movements which never abandoned incarnation whilst seeking higher wisdom only affected a few elite groups. Anything which is subtle escapes the vulgar masses and it takes at least three generations for a revealed religion to become its own counterfeit. I would say that Buddha preached a radical vision which was likely to lead to the self, in which meditation on fear and desire played a role, as advocated and recorded by Chan, which has nothing to do with standard Buddhism which has spread throughout Asia and is steeped in morality, common sense and complacency. In the Baghavad Gita, a few luminous passages denounce rites and liturgies in veiled terms, whereas the injunction “Take refuge in me alone” stipulates that it is sufficient to surrender oneself sincerely to the Divine without further ado in order to meet Him. Christ’s gospel preached genuine politics, an on-going initiative to be carried out in daily life outside the framework of time in order to listen to others, share the same intelligence and build a society which is no longer based on greed. The Taoist fathersLi Tzu, Lao-Tzu, Chuang Tzu wanted to unite heaven and earth by learning the intricacies of yin and yang which, when revealed by a teacher, account for the purusha/prakriti polarity in a different way.

Consciousness-witness is passive – it receives and transforms movements from energy and nature which are always active and part of us dreads this passivity, because humiliating truths will take advantage of our complete openness to pass through our defences and to show us in a different light what the “material” part of our being would rather not have seen. Awakening is difficult to achieve because prakriti is always one step ahead – our reactions precede our thoughts and our desires precede our consent to realize them. Our fears precede an objective evaluation of danger and our anger precedes our so-called control of it. In short – how can we find the strength not to be swept up in spite of ourselves by prakriti’s head start?

It is necessary and sufficient to be able to counter it with the proportional counterweight of perfect stillness, which characterizes the self, so that nature’s head start is slowed right down and can be observed at source by the truly awakened one. Actions then conform to the traits of the inner being, because they are no longer impulses tugged by nature or pushed by the past, but true expressions of a being who has achieved mastery over his senses. Few paths deal in detail with the work which the inner being must carry out on the physical body in order to reconcile the antagonisms represented by the Mysteries. But without the self, which acts as a bridge between the ideal and the contingent, between the self and the subject plunged in desire and fear then opportunities and accidents have too great an impact on determining our perception of the moment. Therefore we have to be able to be present, fully attentive to each moment, without losing ourselves in what we are listening to, as if it were possible to allow the meaning of things to occur on its own at the point of intersection between the open, detached, non-judgemental self and the uncontrollable non-self, which is likely to challenge our expectations, beliefs, values ideals and most deeply-held wishes. The aim of supramental activity on earth is to make the self one and the same thing, because the unity in question is so total and so whole that consciousness of the self by embracing the universe in one go becomes the universe itself. This is a new experience which Mother and Sri Aurobindo shared in the twentieth century, without daring to state that we would manage to achieve it.

The system of the four Mysteries enables what are called obstacles to meditation to become part of meditation itself and to be absorbed into it purely and simply. In this respect what we advocate represents a departure from Zen belief which is too precise and seemed to want to monopolize the image of meditation and disseminate it in Europe for several decades based on its reputation for authenticity and seductive simplicity compared to Hindu or Buddhist schools of thought. In order to practise the four Mysteries correctly, it is necessary to move away from former beliefs or conceptions about meditation and to be keen for past experiences to be viewed as preparation rather than as reference points. It is not a handicap to have no experience in this area since our method can then be grasped in all innocence without interference from the double-edged sword of erudition in this chapter.

This is a new form of practice and its aims differ from those which, for example, the great expert on these matters Maharishi Mahesh Yogi[The Science of Life and the Art of Being], published by Robert Laffont wanted to develop and which we will quote shortly because he knew how to clear out dualist presuppositions which prevent us from understanding the essence of meditation. Cardinal or quantum meditation is simply something different which cannot be compared to anything else because it is a sort of dialectical combination of traditional arts necessitated by the descent of the supramental in 1956, which added to the quest for one’s being the possibility of physical experimentation with the Divine (Mother and Satprem). The aim is not to gather together a percentage of meditators to make peace easier to achieve, nor merely to de-stress us, any more than realization of the Self can claim to be the only good. Cardinal meditation frames our whole lives, but it does not have a frame itself and it prepares us for all events - be they subjective or objective, individual or historical - because it has the power to transform the tree structure of individual ideas and, therefore, to transform perception itself and, as a result, the meaning of all things.

Just two right angles which bisect each other perpendicularly, define four specific fields for exploration, fields which give us directions for observing the pile of layers which constitute us, each of which makes the brain work. In simple terms, four motors make the machine work on different types of fuel as it were, but only the centre – which does not move – can give everything its place and function in relation to others. This provocative caricature underlines the fact that because human consciousness is based on different components it must have a mechanism, a secret law governing how it works, which organizes bonds between the physical body, energetic bodies and a sense of permanent self, the three stages being pervaded by duration which is malleable on the one hand due to our choice of schedule and inflexible on the other with the alternation of occasions and accidents which do not depend on us. Once we have understood and memorized the diagram, all the rest comes down to practice and experience, because the passive spirit of the self which is integral and present will welcome identifications and their objects in order to de-dramatize them, re-centre them in relation to the essential being which is sovereign in respect of circumstances, acts and emotions.

Forgetting our references is not that easy and it is always tempting to imprison oneself in a stated tradition or freedom in order to put an end to exploration which seems, rightly or wrongly, to be dangerous or risky. There is always the same risk that one danger will hide another, i.e. that the emphasis placed on one particular truth will leave other not insignificant aspects in the background. The great advantage of the supernatural is that its scanning cannot miss anything or leave anything to chance and I would therefore say that it is Divine energy which encouraged me to explore the four fields, something which I would not otherwise have done because I wanted to remain in my superior “bubble” of somebody awakened to the self. Supramental consciousness is direct, based on immediate identity and does not need constructions anymore, although significant linkages occur. I would never have “found” the diagram of the four mysteries without the profound and varied experience dating back to the start of 1977, which opened up a new world to me. Since then, I have been forced to go back endlessly over all aspects of my personality in order to offer a relevant experimental field to the Divine in this area and I accepted the critical importance of the physical body in this form of yoga. It was becoming necessary therefore to weave a web of representations to describe the third field to which I was able to connect evolutionary memory: effective subconscious programmes to assure the survival of the physical body and take advantage of lack of conscious attention or difficult events in order to transform our brain chemistry and produce regressive states of consciousness. The obstacles encountered in Mystery three, the field of the ecological self, can resolve themselves as soon as the self has reflected them through the determination of the subject in the first field, his aspiration in the second and his ability to let go in the third, and all their combinations.

Thanks to Divine aspiration and to the powerful mantra I have been using since1982, I generally manage to recover from my descents into the very depths of life, sometimes to the frontier with death, and in this way have been able to rigorously counter Mystery 3, which is concerned with our passage into incarnation with the weight of the body and its survival mechanism, and Mystery 2, which is particularly aptly named because most direct action by the Divine on us cannot be predicted and is secret, right up to powerful, supreme supramental energy felt in every fibre of the body which often decides to intervene on whim. As for Mystery number 4, it brings together time in its objective forms – duration which takes its course, the present moment, the here and now – but it is pointless to include the past, because it is our past and our deeply subjective and limited memory and it is pointless to add the future which has no objective reality because it does not exist yet. Faced with the apparent irreversible speed at which duration flows, consciousness of field 1, or the permanent self, plays at juggling with time because we are very well aware of how to remember and anticipate, to create virtual forms of duration independent from the authentic flow of time in which we are just as likely to see ourselves in the past as in future situations, through the powerful intermediary of collections of memories or a range of images of the gratification to be obtained. These range from quasi-subconscious fantasy to the purest wish, passing through all sorts of desires, blueprints for plans, more or less wishful thinking and hopes followed up to a greater or lesser degree by the steps necessary to make them happen.

In fact, depending on what happens in actual practice, the person conducting the experiment will be able, if he so desires, to make a new realization coincide with content already recorded in another system whose name is not important. Only flavour - rasa - counts in meditation and it is not used for collecting higher memories. A particularly inspired shuttle movement between Field 4 and Field 1 can produce the equivalent of a Jnana-yoga or Samkhya meditation. The subject suddenly discovers in duration itself a new form of sustenance, capable of satisfying his thirst for knowledge, which it now feels to be at its disposal (whilst refusing to “submit” to this availability), while experiencing a new intelligence, which is henceforth less driven to react to different opinions. Invigorating and conscious sessions of walking, snorkelingLooking underwater from the surface, with freediving. In water at 27 or 28 degrees one can rediscover the original happiness of the womb. or strolls during which Field 3 yields to 4, while Field 1 explores consciousness of the body can be equivalent to advanced Tai-chi, Ki-kong or hatha yoga exercises, reinforce the immune system and awaken hara. They can enable us to free ourselves from ancestral fear or to purify the vital, if breathing exercises are correct (which calls for a particular type of letting go).

An equilibrium between the four Mysteries which would come close to perfection fairly and without friction by virtue of its neutrality and detachment in all four directions can produce so-called tantric experiences, without any opposition occurring between the Self and the Manifestation. Desire finds a new paradoxical place which the mind cannot represent. Meditation in 4, untroubled by emotional or semantic remanence, is in keeping with the living anthology of devotees of Chan and Zen, or teachers of Advaita. Increases in consciousness in field 2 through the intermediary of the self which unites the other mysteries give rise to experiences analogous to those described by mystics – vibratory frequency fields which are normally forbidden reveal themselves within perception itself, linking the moment to Eternity.

In fact, the intelligence is always free to try all sorts of approaches to make the physical body more conscious and at the end of the day practising the three mysteries is simply an accelerated method for enriching the self through multiple confrontations with the physical body (and its defence of its territory), with the framework of a present stripped of all finality (in which the centre and 4 merge) and the higher mystery of the subliminal self, in which secret energies work to open the chakras, Intellect and the psychic being. Although we start from the basis of division - the four fields - meditation takes place in unity because the self at the centre will end up blurring the antagonisms which naturally emerge from the four sectors through its consciousness of them and the need for us to abandon habits and work in new directions. In simple terms, we assume that that the form of the four Mysteries is constantly changing and it is thought that meditation enables us to sort the puzzle out so that the four pieces join properly so that we can enjoy wonderful unity as the four fields become one. Each realization in whatever zone frees the self and keeps it present whilst other identifications continue to take place. As Maharishi Mahesh admirably put it, “if the self remains present, he does not need to try to eliminate identifications, he takes advantage of them, they confront him and provide him with information. The spirit then becomes quantum – identification and non-identification merge.

"The thought of freedom, even if it seems good, is just a thought, not a state. The thought of freedom is just as alienating as any other thought. By its very nature, thought takes us out of our Self. When the spirit begins to have a thought, it penetrates the realm of duality and thought hides the essential nature of the spirit. Consequently, all thought, whatever it might be, entails identification.

Therefore the problem of identification was not resolved at all by the thought of the Self, the Divine or of God. This is why these practices have not managed to bring freedom and it is also why the quest for freedom has remained unfulfilled and the paths leading to it have been blurred by our habits of entertaining the idea of the divine Self or God at the level of thought.

The fundamental error came from the fact that we mistook identification itself for alienation. In fact, identification is not alienation. What constitutes alienation is an inability to hold onto the Being at the same time as identification. What constitutes alienation is an inability to hold onto the Self when there is apperception and we are active.

If identification were alienation, freedom would not be possible in the state following death in which all perception and activity cease. While ever a man is alive, he continues to have experiences and to act, so that it is impossible for him to avoid identification during his lifetime.

Identification is not the same as alienation because freedom is lived out in the real world and living in the world involves identifying with everything there, with experience and activity as our aim."

In this respect, the self can consider that memories of behaviour which hinder “pure” meditation to be external to it without avoiding them and that thought in field 3 faithfully brings them to the surface like a stubborn dog who keeps bringing his master objects for him to throw when the master does not want to move. In certain schools, it is said that meditation can only take place when you have got rid of the dog. This is not the answer. The self absorbs everything which appears and finds evolutionary meaning in it and does not have to deny the past because it can transform it. Absolute silence will occur eventually without having to be summoned when intelligence becomes weary of fragmented thoughts and finally moves towards its own source. The brain does its work perfectly when it places before us everything which disturbs it and it is simply because we do not have the self to welcome this painful material that we seek to cheat with the truth and repress what we do not want to see, using checks to deny access to awkward information which generally deals with a lack of skill in different sectors which we do not wish to acknowledge. As soon as the self manifests itself, the meditator confronts the shame which arises, dissolves it, consigns it to the past and can eliminate the processes by which it could recur. It does the same thing with all sorts of guilt as it can also absorb humiliating images of the self into its own neutrality without being affected, realigning itself by drawing strength from within or from field 2. When grappling with the pure present , the Self dissolves what we could call “sins”, cancels out mistakes by the absence of any need ever to make them again which he is now able to do because tamas is stronger than rajas and even stronger then sattva. The self has the power to turn over a new leaf, to abandon ipso facto what we thought we owned, just like a snake changes its skin, whether that be the smug virtue of vanity, recurring faults or weaknesses which it throws away like worn-out clothes if aspiration in field 2 is sufficiently strong. Imperfection is not an obstacle, but the actual path to perfection, which becomes apparent by pruning back the separative processes.

 The conscious practice of free meditation, which turns towards the self while accepting information as and when it arises from each of the Mysteries, enables the spirit to discover its true nature – infinite flexibility which will no longer be bounded by the rigid confines of the ego, nor the square fears of the body and which will make its way through the desires of the personality to command a huge territory. This will occur as soon as the immobile centre and Field 4 achieve a relationship which is stable rather than based on accidents.

Churning the mind sometimes suddenly opens the door to far deeper consciousness of Field 2 and this is when quantum meditation produces new feelings in the meditator, who feels that he belongs unfailingly to not only to life and to the earth, but to consciousness of the universe. These moments have different names depending on the tradition and put us in touch with different types of energy. Only the mind, which likes to create boundaries and separate, tries to differentiate unduly between meditation and contemplation, in which love for the Divine manifests itself in servile adoration. The true self is broad and is nourished in several ways, therefore it is dry and blurs objects in such a way that the spirit can turn in on itself, whilst avoiding losing everything in favour of the object which it can see. Contemplation is virtually liquid nourishment, something which is probably indescribable, but which happens and bases the identity of the self on the identity of the Whole, as if all the territorial defences of Fields 3 and the psychological barriers of Field 1 would collapse in one single go, revealing the living Presence, different from Brahman and indifferent to life.

It can also be the case that attention from Field 1 directed towards Field 3 through the intermediary of progressive acknowledgement of the indeterminate nature of Field 4 (free from past and future) allows for inner work analogous to that found in the paradigm of transpersonal psychology or esoteric Buddhist philosophy, which is quick to advocate all manner of mental exercises designed to break down the usual resistances of Field 3, steeped in generic fears, those of Field 4 with its opportunistic desire and those of Field 1 grappling with the framework of self-image. When mental silence surveys the Mysteries in a simple passive scan, it sometimes encounters concrete psychological content which is almost physical and clutters up the psyche and it can dissolve it or become aware of it and search for a solution. Quite independently of complexes and broadly catalogued sub-personalities, meditation can encounter “expectations”, like clots of energy, continually issuing requests, like a permanent distress signal. The desire for approval and the desertion complex are the best-known examples.

Human beings’ virtual realizations are poorly described in the most authoritative descriptions. Only experience can show what an authentic mediation, a genuine process of individuation, a real consecration, or even the “true” present moment really is and the model is very elusive, which makes it useless. Trying to describe the procedures would be like building made-to-measure cages again for the glittering birds of awakening, as if the instructions spared us from using the device. The only reality is the one we are experiencing, it is our personal way of getting our bearings in the compass directions, of returning to the centre in the knowledge that everything is there, in the constraint of the self linked to the physical body, in the servitude of the self in relationship to the supreme Present, master of opportunities and accidents, and in the respectful obedience of our being towards the infinite universe which it is leaving and which we have represented by Field 2

The four Fields are not only huge, which makes any attempt to define their limits futile, but the centre of the self is boundless and immutable. This means that the principle which enables us to form thoughts at all times is so deep and so perfect that any attempt to “get hold of it” is doomed to failure.

It is therefore a case of coinciding with this source rather than getting hold of it by grasping it objectively. This is the fundamental difference between the wise man and the philosopher. The philosopher still believes that his own spirit will be able to grasp itself and he would give anything to achieve this result. The philosopher therefore forces himself to become an architect and he imagines that the scaffolding of ideas can account for the necessity of life and Order and even God. By contrast, the wise man, through a grace which he cannot perhaps always explain to himself, has reached the conclusion that the mind cannot not grasp reality. By giving up trying to tame intelligence, not only does it dissolve, but it manifests itself with such spontaneity that it will reveal the true nature of things through immediate contact with them and not by any kind of process of elaboration which would attempt to fit observation into a premeditated framework.

This revelation of the supremacy of spontaneous intelligence over the cultivated mind has been proclaimed in every age and in many countries. Lao-Tzu transformed the pragmatic Chinese mind by convincing it that it would obtain better results in the search for harmony if it abandoned rites and ancestors in order to surrender to the innocence of a playful vision of reality in which the great principle could be found once more if one yielded to it. But the folly of Socrates and Empedocles and the very concision of Heraclitus perpetuate the same myth. Anybody who agrees to tip over beyond human boundaries (i.e. beyond the manipulation of the brain or Field 3 in our jargon) can discover what laws forbid: that God is not an authority figure but a presence full of infinite love, whom we can touch and feel, and that the sufferings of life hide joy beyond all imagination,  which the Self, concerned with its own depths, eventually finds and may perhaps even keep. Quantum meditation opens up the way to all explorations which we generally find listed in other paths, but its genius lies in not letting any one orientation prevail, as this would limit the impact of the others, increasing the value of some fields to the detriment of others, when in fact they are all interwoven.

The integral seeker, who is purely a precursor, can nevertheless think of himself as a wise man or mystic, a teacher or an “innocent” who has unlearned all the labels, as a psychologist or a warrior, since former labels no longer correspond to current experience, as is tangible in Mother’s Agenda. He tries to let others who are moved by respect for Consciousness, love of the Earth and hence recognition of Matter forgotten in many paths, benefit from his lead. Those who love the truth can collect new, different forms of testimony by tuning in to their frequency. An author for example cannot make a big deal out of his own experience and revel in it, because Mother’s vision of worlds and contact with Supreme Consciousness will have revealed his place to him on its true scale in infinity. It is a tiny little place (but it is not separated from anything) which enabled him to reduce all realities down to just five in a dialectical paradigm – the four Fields defined by the cross and its centre, the self, which any intellectual approach damages or destroys. The words applied to realizations are by definition deceptive because they fix in swift and concise pointlessness the whole content of a movement filled with “quantum leaps”, i.e. transitions from one area of consciousness to another which cannot be explained by reason or described by any route. We are, therefore, now free to welcome what the spirit offers us in order to see which zone is really affected and what turbulence is produced, given that Field 3 pulls us in the opposite direction from Field 2 (unless we carry out major work) and Field 1 never knows what to do with the pure moment.

Unless one is profoundly convinced that the Self is at the centre of this cross and that it can make light of conflicts between the four Mysteries and resolve them, then cardinal meditation is just practised artificially. The testimony of great teachers from the East therefore gives us hope for a transcendent resolution of the horizontal/vertical tension which is part of incarnation. Those who have climbed the wall before us clumsily try to show us the way in order to make the transition easier for us, however as has already been mentioned, words can only represent the experience that the reader or listener already has of them. Hence the cruel fact that “enlightenment” represents many more things for the disciple pursuing it than it does for his teacher, who is only describing one episode of his existence. We therefore know that we are taking a few risks by creating such a simple and complete diagram as that of the four Mysteries in which the self occupies the centre position, because if it is misunderstood, this limpid, simple, childlike representation could enable some complicated minds to lock themselves into a sort of preconceived or voluntarist meditation if the mind were to hijack the dazzling intuition which confers power on this method. But this is a calculated risk, because the system integrates infinite possibilities into a small number of facts, which actually makes it a quantum model adapted to each unique individual. Quantum representation allows the spirit to become flexible and supremely skilful at letting go and also facilitates recognition of the spirit of Fo-Hi: adopting the constant transformations of the universe in order to stay interwoven with the Whole so that we can understand how universal consciousness embroiders our existence into the space-time continuum (which obviates the need for us to invent false motives).

Everything is being transformed at all times - words are not what they represent and signifiers lead to a plastic, flexible, often formless signified in the case of higher realities (God, totality, existence, life, being, realization etc.). The identifications forced on us by our waking state are infinitesimal segments of the continuous and indestructible self within us and this conscious silence can play with them and choose or eliminate them in an infinite dance in which only our tamas suffers – the inertia which is particular to the laws of the species (the subconscious still plays its part with a certain degree of authority in the life of man, the evolving cosmic individual“Know that tamas, born of ignorance, is what leads all incarnate souls astray; it is through carelessness, indolence and sleep that it binds the soul to Bharata.” Bhagavad Gita, song XIV.). We therefore approach our exploration of the four Fields with a certain degree of casualness, so that it it does not become an onerous duty or a routine activity, whilst remaining aware of the circumstances of mental silence, as well as the instructive return of unresolved dross and parasitical constellations, in the simple unfolding of the unique moment, which is always the same (for the self) and always different (for real life and its history).

A few modern awakened ones are beginning to denounce the myth of enlightenment, when it is obvious that they themselves have passed through the mental wall to embrace the motionless source of the spirit. This is a position which should be approached with caution, because it is certain that obtaining permanent mental silence opens up new horizons. On the other hand, we do believe, like these modern teachers, that enlightenment must not be pursued as an aim, as this would make the centre, the self, a supreme locus per se when it is there especially to enable the Fields to integrate in individual unity, which then becomes a fractal of cosmic Unity as the microcosm joins the macrocosm, in order to yield to it with total confidence.

If this were the case and the self were considered to be independent of everything around it, what we defined as meditation in Field 4 would have to be considered a missed opportunity if it were troubled by thoughts, because at the end of the day it is supposed to merge with the self, Brahman, by dissolving. Therefore, the very fact of wanting to force oneself not to think provides an aim and a stake which prevents the self from manifesting itself spontaneously -  the main theme of the discursive symphony which is this work and which we must treat in a variety of registers. Practising the four Mysteries not only entails accepting that meditation will be disturbed, but also takes advantage of this to discover what is preventing the spirit from being calm and correcting it through inner dialogue. Insofar as impulses are clearly defined, there is nothing to prevent us from remedying them. The more distinct the differences between the self, the ocean and the “fishes” which are thoughts which occur, the more information will be clear. When the self is transparent, i.e. motionless and not exerting any effort, everything which stems from thought has clear outline, the sequence makes sense and is all the more meaningful because we want to change its actual nature. According to Satprem’s formula “the obstacle becomes the ally”. In the end we will only encounter two categories of obstacle: those which belong to the external world and can be observed, and those which belong to the inner world -  beliefs or values totally imagined by the spirit, the implicit recurrence of dubious actions and repressed desires or fears which are more difficult to unearth but which feelings of unease reveal and which we end up feeding, as it were.

A meditation can be disturbed either by sensory stimuli (sounds, smells, temperature), or by thoughts which have absolutely nothing to do with the context, whose unknown origin has yet to be discovered. The difficulty stems from the amalgam that the spirit produces between the objective problem and what it represents. We can be asked through meditation to resolve contingent problems (e.g. finding a new form of relationship with a close relative or finding a new job), but this question will only very rarely be considered without the possibility of failure or success, states which bring an emotional dimension to the solution being sought, with fears on the one hand and hopes on the other. At this point, meditation allows us to frame the question better, because if the question asked concerns Field 3, then the answer to it can come from Field 1 and have nothing to do with the objective circumstances. The image which we create of ourselves automatically attaches itself to the way in which we envisage the reply. The same objective question will be treated in a different way depending on our skill in the meditation. A subject who does not realize that in his search for a solution he is mixing up strategic reasoning and unconscious content will certainly not find the answer which is in line with the question asked. Subjective interference, like crackling on a phone line, will stop the self from addressing the question and it will therefore be treated not as a question but as a simple reaction looking for a way out.

The transverse line of Fields 1 and 4 has already been mentioned and processes have been described for making the transition to enable the permanent self to open itself unconditionally to the pure and indeterminate present and to tame the field of the contingent and physical self by making it participate in the encounter so that it abandons appropriating the moment from the very fabric of the past. We must in a sense make 4 move back up towards 1 and the moment must impregnate the passive self. In the other direction, it is the personality which dominates the moment and gives it a framework in which several filters remain. In order to achieve a perfect form of circulation - an osmosis between the present and the self -  it is necessary to confer authority per se on the moment.

The transition from Field 3 to Field 2 is archaic, a legacy, and is used in difficult times by those least concerned by metaphysics, who suddenly ask God to exist in order to ask for a favour during a very bad patch. It is at this time that childish religiosity can manage to establish itself, as the emotional self constantly reassures itself by bribing the Divine with petty little attentions. Moving from Field 2 to Field 3 is a difficult process, but it can be accompanied by mantras and devotional chants, sacrificing physical satisfaction, and by the occasionally excessive rigor of discipline. Lateral movements also exist between the permanent self and the supreme self, without distance or duration, but it is difficult to describe them as they transcend language. Transitions from 3 to 4 without the presence of the structured self in Field 1 are dangerous and regressive, but exist in different forms in extreme cases of survival, in fights to the death and to counter diabolic or satanic initiation and serious addiction to sex, alcohol, drugs and money.

Vertical transitions are virtual and difficult to detect, although the permanent self (1) can control the body (3) by simple determination, without relying on temporal processes by the simple effect of will or immediate understanding. The transition from 3 to 1 uses a number of subconscious channels and forges a higher ego. The direct shuttle between Fields 2 and 4 is the most seductive, rare and elevated – it abolishes the feeling of having a personal identity with defined contours, but it cannot last for long because returning to the physical transformation of the body must follow on from supreme upward flights in magical alternation, guided by the great Mother. However, in the other direction - from the moment towards the soul - the purity of the present sometimes leads to Field 2 via the self, and this repeated experience has conferred an illustrious character on spiritual history and allowed different doctrines to become established in which the same learned names appear in order to try to define both transcendent spaces and their approach, on the basis of pure, instantaneous feeling.

The outcome of the spirit in each moment is an infinitely complex process, but we can clearly see that it mingles Field 3 (the subject and the senses) very closely with Field 4 (the object and the moment) under the legitimate, shifting gaze of Fields 1 and 2, which have some latitude to identify with what is happening. Meditation appears to be the only way in which we can reject being manipulated by Field 4 and its opportunistic desire, by the Field 3 and its attachment to defending and preserving and by Field 1 with its determination to hold onto the seductive image of itself. Even Field2, if it is powerful but not sufficiently clarified (i.e. consciously and correctly connected to the other three Mysteries) can avidly manipulate a subject who is broadly attracted by the unknown and transcendence.

The self occupies the centre of the four fields, absorbs the fourth Field naturally and accepts the other three unconditionally. We can therefore rely on total surrender of reality to achieve non-separativity, harmonious symbiosis and finally, unity in multiplicity when enlightenment erases the boundaries between the four Mysteries and when mental silence blurs the lines of the cross until it becomes an infinite circle: this is me.

The reasons for which one field becomes dominant to the point where it tries to suppress the balance of the whole are diverse and are not revealed until we have restored equilibrium, because the self gets into the habit of mechanically filling the strongest Mystery, thus compensating for any gaps elsewhere. The centrifugal motion of one particular field can drag the whole psychological self towards it with the following results:

In 4 - the tyranny of the present, emotion, pleasure, existential intoxication and various addictions. In 3, the tyranny of control from our social and family background and various attachments to material things, unhealthy possessiveness towards loved ones. In 1, the tyranny of the cult of the self, an obsession with disappointing oneself, missing one’s goals and of not being fully valued, ill-intentioned authoritarianism or asceticism, a sense of superiority, and very limited openness towards others. In 2, the tyranny of imaginary perfection, attachment to idols, a superior sectarian attitude, fascination with the occult, siddhis, “teachers” and the paranormal. An obsession with the future. Overwhelming idealism and prophetism.

The excessive development of consciousness of self as a physical entity and social being is, in the final analysis, the most naive distortion of all. It is based on the irrefutable fact that the Whole Self is just an extension of our birth in the physical world which connects with our environment through identification. For the moment, few human beings have truly analyzed the structural differences which are positioned along the path of our existence. By contrast, those who have done so never cease reiterating, each in their own way, the extent to which the impulse towards individual differentiation takes place from the basis of a jumble of amalgamated dependencies. A parallel reading of the works of ethologistsBoris Cyrulnik: several works., paediatricians, psychologists and spiritual teachers makes our intelligence converge on a reality which is difficult to accept without some emotional upheaval. Different imprints take hold of the Self and mould it indefinitely in this single direction of material consciousness if it did has not had the opportunity to reassess the way in which it experiences sensations.

The maternal imprint is without doubt the strongest because the individual in gestation can absorb some of its mother’s psychological states even before birth. We only need to draw a parallel between the young child under the age of three and any sentient animal (such as a monkey, wolf or dolphin) in order to understand that automatic codes establish themselves to manage the relationship between the subject and his environment before the faculty of discourse comes along to transform this dialogue completely. In the semi-consciousness of the little child, extremely deep habits can register the law of action and reaction, of what is gratifying and non-gratifying. The more we try to push for consciousness of the Self per se, i.e. that consciousness of self which is rooted in belonging to the cosmos as opposed to belonging to our territory, then the more we try and get rid of habits acquired during the first six years of life which will have led the subject to distort certain types of event by interpreting them through the automatic gate of tragic or wonderful first impressions and of the signals they produce. We merely need to look at the problems which can arise at any age which skew our approach to a situation due to interference on the emotional line, in order to find clues to the origin of a false or confused situation. If we are attentive, we can eventually understand that a traumatic remnant has been brought back to the surface by a corresponding situation. Psychoanalysis largely revolves around this paradigm. Humanist astrologyDane Rudhyar, An astrological Triptych maintains that certain moments are critical for everybody, particularly the end of a homogeneous cycle if this cycle has not yielded any spiritual fruits and can inflict protracted spiritual crises on the individual whose outcome is uncertain, particularly at the age of 29, at around the age of 40 and between the ages of 58 and 60. These are what we call “heavy transits” (i.e. the passage of the powerful planets Saturn and Pluto over favoured points on the birth chart) and they also correspond to periods when the self and the non-self cannot coincide in the same way, using the same overall strategy, and we have seen in readings that an individual depends on cosmic timing, whether he acknowledges it or not. A whiff of fate, which is often accompanied by a feeling of injustice then overwhelms the individual who is struggling with real life or psychologicalAlexander Ruperti, Cycles of Becoming difficulties, which are not mutually exclusive, so that it is difficult to know in what order the psychological collapse or the distress which leads to changes of direction took place . It is probable at the end of the day that reciprocity increases the damage, i.e. that the individual is less able to adapt during these periods, just when they are bringing much more difficult or different events than usual.

Precursors of consciousness were quick to spot the limitations of the structural crystallizations represented by foundation myths, religious obligations and their ceremonies which founded a conservative order, and the framework of socio-cultural values, and so they ventured forthRead or watch Jonathan Livingston Seagull , accepting the risks and dangers of a journey beyond the fixed frontiers of their clan, into the forbidden areas of Mysteries 4, 1 and 2. The need for physical security prolongs the influence of the mother over the adult and the need to submit to moral authority prolongs the influence of the father. These substitutes organize themselves, with a certain degree of scope for manoeuvre, and are sufficient to constitute ordinary values in the long term, but the conscious evolving individual transcends the objects required by these needs and is not satisfied with them. This means that intuition in the fourth Field is like a perpetual reservoir of possibilities and is finally understood through its practical repercussions: abandoning beliefs, individual demarcation and inner work.

In fact using duration is not free, wherever it is and meditation enables us to rediscover our natural feelings. All cultures incite their representatives to grasp passing time for a specific purpose. Everything which is in front of us is already our personal property in a sense, if we refer to the values of modern society stemming from the eighteenth century Western world. In this respect, acquiring what time will yield feeds the major forms of conditioning endured during childhood and fills them. The future will become the slave of archaic presuppositions and can only be desired for its imaginary conformity to a pre-existing model – having the effect of an intellectual enchantment. We must use duration at all costs to turn it into something gratifying which will elude what is non-gratifying. Out of this futile attempt to totally manipulate timetables and the non-self itself  a pedestal for the deep ego takes shape, which filters duration through psychological stencils, which will prevent the spirit of the moment from going beyond the limits imposed by fear and desire forever. The subject will retreat from thought (opening 4 up to 1 and 2 combined) which would undermine the basis of self-image and demonstrate that our feeling of selfhood is self-created and is only founded on structuring appearances and a dialectic of reactions.

In fact this system has proved itself. Life passes through all these people who experience ordinary sensations and believe that this is enough, without getting worried. They reinforce prevailing codes by approving them, following them and defending them, whilst all the while remaining in the psychiatric ruts of family, clan and race with some subjective interplay (stemming most often from our hereditary nature or astral structure), such as political opinions or religious commitment, for example. This type of human being can easily harm others because he remains convinced that his law is the right one and that he must disseminate it, as it were,, but he can be manipulated by a stronger force which partially accounts for the force of history. Such a natural feeling of smugness can in fact be a characteristic of people who identify so closely with their own culture that they decide to impose it on others, as if to develop a homogeneous universe which they had originated. This is precisely the sort of tribal consciousness which the universe seems determined to eradicate from the Earth by pouring forth celestial and universal energy. It is not a case of criticizing its legitimacy because it is based on memory of life itself and of the extraordinary leap which life has made by imposing the mind on a new creature. The mind cannot be satisfied with ecological law, but it defends it in the first instance. It transcends it by definition and only comes back to it if things go badly, when there is really something vital to defend which puts the compulsion to survive violence and all the rest back into play. Certain beings liberate themselves from all physicalKrishnamurti, The Awakening of Intelligence territory, and this is the movement of History, albeit it a hesitant one. Therefore, there is a willingness in the brain to escape from the tangible world, even if it is only in order to create new orders of interpretation for things which we have undergone, but it remains mixed with the vital, except in pure abstractions and perfect intuitions, or in the non-mental which is immobile behind thought.

The early years of our existence are purely and simply endured.

The little Self is powerless to oppose his surroundings. In this respect, everything which is endured is a double-edged sword. If a youngster suffers from an absence of love and respect, this can leave deep behavioural codes in his psychological make-up. By contrast, if he is too pampered, admired on principle and thought to have his own autonomy and thus his own authority too early, then he can just as easily adopt perverse behavioural codes in which the non-self will be considered as an object, purely and simply orchestrated to serve the ego’s ends. The semi-consciousness of early childhood is therefore the major paradox in our incarnation. If during our first year the self and the non-self are totally merged and if from the age of 30 the self and the non-self are quite distinct the whole intervening period is just a battle between dependence and autonomy, between the integrity of the Self which is searching for itself and the many pressures from the non-self with which the subject must identify. These pressures can sometimes be gratifying such as the feeling of love, be it virtual or actual, or even more restrictive pressures, like how to fit in with other people through financial independence. However, taking care of the jurisdictions which only extend our physical birth only requires a very small part of the mind’s available activity, contrary to what is claimed, whereas we are encouraged to identify excessively with our socio-professional surroundings. According to Goleman, depression is rising to dangerous levels in most of the wealthiest countries, whose culture undermines spiritual values. The role of teachers and avatars is to urge the spirit of a race or a particular age to concern itself with what lies beyond the tangible world inherited at birth, whose demands are sclerotic and superficial. All pioneers concur in describing worlds which are invisible, but perhaps more real than the tangible world which is subject to appearances, i.e. the unpredictable interweaving of accidents and opportunities, of controllable and digestible events and manifestations of chaos which reveal the limitations of our power and emotional tolerance.

Mystery 3 prevents us from forgetting that we are flesh and blood, with immutable physical needs and a set of compulsory relationships with the environment and with others. However, sacrificing everything to it is a form of behaviour dictated by ancestral memory. The more capable the spirit is of stepping back and putting more distance between itself and this scenario, between itself and the film which we are experiencing in real time, the more it is able to change its direction and its shape. This implies knowing how to shatter the law of conditioning which makes us experience time in a preconceived way and it also requires the Self to look inwards to the source of its own existence, an infinite secret which cuts the umbilical cord with our birth once and for all.

Instigating the search for the pure present can only take place in a spiritual framework. In this context, one simply becomes aware that the spirit overlays its own projections onto the passing moment and that it is virtually impossible to see the clues to new beginnings in that moment. However, once it is removed from the spiritual context, the search for the present holds countless dangers, because one can more or less consciously orchestrate the present in the quest solely for pleasure and gratification. If the Self has a genuine solar aspiration, it will not let itself get too carried away by the mirages of a present which reveals that the soul of life is made up of desire. It is in fact quite traditional in hagiographies to find the trials which wise men and saints experienced before reaching mental silence. Often a more pared-down form of contact with duration allows us to space out our thoughts and achieve new serenity. It is after this phase that meditation becomes more difficult, because vital consciousness can take advantage of the progress we have made to slip into a powerful and broad present from which desire will seem to erupt with unexpected and overwhelming strength. Legends describe the apparition of demons which try to prevent the individual from passing into ultimate reality.

The present described by traditions is a void which contains everything in immutable peace and cannot be compared in any way with the essence of life, which also inhabits the pure moment and incorporates the will to experience pleasure in order to grow. These two presents overlap simultaneously in the quantum world and it is therefore completely natural to believe that certain meditations designed to savour the Self lead, as if by chance, into the soul of shimmering life, which will emphasize the needs of the physical body with quasi-diabolical persistence. But the temptation of hedonism is not the only danger inherent in the untimely discovery of Mystery 4. If the subject surrenders himself complacently to each new day, he will end up by unravelling his own will and cultivating impossible expectations (unless he can compensate with an equivalent amount of work in Field 1, in order to let the day’s exploration settle).

Becoming somewhat fraudulently intoxicated with the immaterial nature of duration ends up giving rise to a disconnected vision of reality, in which things apparently follow on as if naturally, without us discovering the true links of cause and effect or the evolutionary connections. The spirit therefore gets into the habit of accepting all sorts of heterogeneous events which end up looking alike in a sort of homogeneous inevitability, a mixture which is attractive because it keeps changing. This topic would merit detailed development, which would justify, once and for all, the spirit turning in on itself in order to digest events (introspection, meditation, reflection and exploration of beliefs). Without the safety net of spiritual values, fascination with the present can absorb the Self into a permanent headlong flight, in which trickery will glue alien values to each other until all ethics disappear in sweeping torrents of events which have the force of law. It is among unconscious followers of Mystery 4 that we find these weak beings eager for omens and convinced that their true personality will emerge from a fortuitous combination of circumstances rather than from inner effort. Admittedly, the temporary dominance of Mystery 4 constitutes a necessary phase in initiation, for example in adolescence, when sexual desire is made more attractive by the search for an ideal object so that the Self and the non-self can henceforth agree to support each other, instead of fighting or remaining in a narrow status quo.

It is far from harmful on principle to be swept up in the wonderland of the vital mystery, because it is here that the sense of belonging to life is established legitimately and totally naturally, with an unconditional desire for life which likes momentum. Therefore, we should not be surprised that a small number of doctrines, such as Chinese and Hindu tantrism reveal the dual nature of the present, as both the essence of life and desire and as the uncreated void which frees us from all thoughts and attachments (an aspect which we place in the centre of the diagram). We should also view in this light paradoxical arts in which physical techniques combine with subtle exercises to achieve the aim of merging the transformation of the vital and the search for the Self in one single movement as in ancient Taoism, certain forms of Ki Kong, hatha yoga, or other secret practices in which breathing is required. Taming the vital through work on the physical body can accompany pure research, but this is not necessary and certain doctrines dispense with it.

All this means that knowledge comes at a price, given that the paths which reveal it carry some risks unknown to ordinary minds. Reaching the pure moment free from all projections - the Self - which one approaches initially by ridding the here and now of all finality, can bring some discouraging detours such as being confronted by lingering animal instincts (terror, anger, lust and cruelty) rooted in the Earth and Fire elements and the humiliating vision of the numerous expectations projected into a naive and childish future which is rooted in the elements of Air and Water. However, the pure present, which is the stepping stone to the Supramental, transcends all distinctions of matter and is the supreme pedestal from which all attempts to exist begin. This is why many wise men stopped here for good by agreeing to surrender themselves heart and soul. Even Buddha seems to have drowned himself there. Because he was saturated by this huge living knowledge, he seems to have stopped seeking the existence of the Divine described by Sri Aurobindo, for example, as infinite consciousness on the one hand and the Mother of all Worlds on the other.

It is hardly surprising that this fundamental zone, the quartile as it were of reality, which affects our evolution, can be approached from so many different angles, since this is where everything happens. Even philosophical thought without any meditative pretentions, such as that carried out by the ancient Greeks, shows us that time is unfathomable and that memory, which is both the imprint and the ghost of the present in the past, has no true consistency. Yet we can roam smugly around our childhood haunts using the same powers of imagination which transport us towards the future we desire.

It is precisely in this way that the mystery of the spirit, the enigma of the mind is established: what is real and what is not are one and the same thing.

 The subject sees what he wants to see in an object rather than observing it. The Self confers beauty on the object for which it lusts and ugliness on the truth which it finds disturbing, in a constant headlong flight in which each being invents its own existence with unconscious motivation and ideal arabesques rather than progressing through it in a way which is connected to its main aims - Heaven and Earth for the Chinese, God and nature for monotheists, and consciousness and energy for Hindus and tantrists. Plunging into Field 4 holds countless surprises, which become just so many cracks in the closed system of conventional representations and which dig the evolutionary tunnel. There, the Self is forced to observe movements specific to Field 3 and to appreciate the consciousness force of nature in order to free itself from it. When the speed of thought decreases, it can also see the need to appear to be a unique, whole individual, devoid of the dross of influences, in control of one’s own thoughts and searching for one’s own vertical axis. This is when consciousness of Mystery 1 flirts with that of Mystery 4 and consecrates the hope of a future shaped by unconditional discoveries. At last, in moments of extreme coincidence in which Mysteries 3, 4 and 1 support each other, supreme consciousness of the divine Self can take hold of the subject, flout the limitations of the physical body, forgive those of the personality and connect it to supreme consciousness.

Territorial law will have been repealed, our vague awareness of belonging to a single particular background determined to defend its only values at any price will have given way to a universal spirit, endowed with unfailing intelligence and which sees the Whole in every fragment, without violence or effort, transcending all places and eras. The here and now is, therefore, the absolute door through which all forms of imprisonment are shattered like eggshells and the huge expanse ceases to become a threat in order to become a promise. Abandoning oneself to 4 without redressing the balance by revisiting 1 and 2, far from purifying the emotions, increases them to dangerous levels, forcing the subject into vulnerability which will become unhealthy and could take him towards regressive lunar sensitivity, as sometimes happens to some artists and poets, particularly those who launch themselves sometimes shamelessly into immediacy without a safety net.

The feeling of permanent identity establishes itself through force of circumstance and every human being is continuously referred back to his physical body by its everyday needs. Inner and external identity are in fact merged together because of the extent to which the Self constantly projects itself onto its background to establish gratifying strategies. Our first strong emotions are proof that a self exists behind the identifications, separate from its background and thus the self can always become deeper, increase the range of first person verbs it employs and the distance itself from everyday needs. The first person “I” uses countless verbs and the dichotomy between “I feel” and “I am”, for example, forms the basis of all moral systems and religious practices and punctuates philosophy by establishing the fundamental psychological quartering of the cardinal cross, which we use in the system of Mysteries. Human endeavour has for a very long time been directed to making a structured self prevail over a self made up only of identifications with our surroundings (3) and desire (4), as well as with transient objects and this concern has also motivated and inspired philosophy since its origins.

The role of powerful emotions is to make us understand that we are not the objects with which we identify. The loss of a loved one, for example, reveals that we had mixed up the inner Self and the external Self in our affect for this person, whose hologram, as it were, lived within us and which one might say is seeking to outlive the original. Proof lies in “older” couples who part and are happy to do so because the memory of the other person survives and the presence of absence imposes itself with disconcerting force in their new existence. Transforming the dose of memory which is left in true “love” is beyond the grasp of the ordinary subject. This is because the spirit works to weave the Self with the non-self into an extremely fine fabric and this work largely passes us by, going downwards with the subconscious and upwards with the supraconscious and the subliminal. Just as the eye cannot see infra-red or ultraviolet, our feelings are coded to a certain extent in reservoirs of information which elude us, but which the supernatural, by its nature, reveals because it breaks down barriers. Meditation also demonstrates this, to a lesser extent, but still significantly and exponentially.

In fact, most human beings only return to consciousness of their permanent identity if they are forced to do so by circumstances, which are usually painful. Only priests, mystics, warriors, shamans, magi and philosophers truly seek to explore the difference between the inner and outer Self. The priest does so because he loves the principle hidden behind the manifestation and the mystic because he seeks contact. The shaman and magus do so because they are interested in effective but hidden energies. The philosopher does so because the spirit is supreme compared to the objects which it grasps (and because he intuits Intellect behind thought) and the warrior because he has to develop qualities intrinsic to self-knowledge in order to face dangers and survive. Some, but not all, artists burrow inwards because they are eulogists for Field 4. Women must transcend the pleasures of being a mother and wife to dig truly towards the self and in more general terms to become weary of the social roles they play out in order to confront the deep Self. They have just as much chance as men of achieving it because they are less easily fooled by mental constructs and more tempted by establishing a permanent synthesis between their feelings, actions and aspirations.

What is needed is to inaugurate a period in which every person’s need for self-knowledge as a cosmic being becomes natural. At the moment, most human beings looking for the structured permanence of the Self still do so through a higher quest for what is gratifying. All cultures advocate obtaining a skill likely to bring success, fame, prestige and wealth. In order to achieve it, it is obvious that some inner work must be undertaken and the foundations of the permanent individual identity appear. The feeling that life must bring some form of blossoming surfaces, but it is accompanied by a procession of archaic representations stirred up by fear and desire. The Self is looking for itself and manages to alter its ecology by stepping back from things and developing a dynamic intelligence. But until sudden recognition of the supremacy of the whole occurs, the Self which structures itself in the Field 1 forms a more powerful ego than that of nature and develops an efficient individual which will easily act against the interests of others and contrary to respect for others. It is as if Field 1 were developing on the pedestal of Field 3, without passing through Field 2 with its openings onto the unknown, while simultaneously explaining the here and now without any shame.

However, in most civilizations hypertrophy in Mystery 1 is considered a luxury to be attained, because it is establishes in a concrete way, a feeling of superiority which humans try to claim on principle, as it were, to confront otherness. A triumphant self is established, which has initiative and free will, and a certain feeling of triumphalism can also seize hold of the individual who can achieve his own objectives most of the time. It is difficult, however, to know how a reversal can take place, i.e. how somebody can reach a tipping point and recognize their cosmic identity after having struggled for a long time to become what he thought he was. This is a thorny issue, because different perspectives appear from which to approach it, each of which contains an element of the truth. If, like Sri Aurobindo, we imagine that life moves inexorably towards the Divine, we have the leisure to believe that individuals who are profoundly structured in Mystery 1 will eventually grow weary of their conquests. Individuals with a strong personality would therefore end up abandoning their material kingdom naturally, in order to submit to the spirit. In a historical perspective, however, it would seem on the contrary, that most powerful and strong people not only never call their ego into question but, on the contrary, seek constantly to extend their empire.

On the other hand, it is an absolutely established fact that the soul can change direction from one existence to another. Souls which have ventured deep into “evil” and chaos in the past can, in their current existence, feel a very powerful need to return to cosmic conformity. Weak personalities who want to serve God in some way on principle or out of duty run the risk of having a superficial faith and an indifferent degree of commitment. It is impossible to generalize on this issue and to claim that we must avoid building a strong, powerful, autonomous personal ego, independent of any recognition of the divine. The unconditional need to be can arise at the very heart of  experience because all movement towards the Self can turn proportionately towards the non-self and we can state, as do scripture and some testimonies, that it is sometimes those who have strayed from the divine who come back with the greatest passion, love and respect. This paradoxical truth establishes experience as the only path to the truth.

We come under a great deal of cultural pressure to develop hypertrophy in Field 1, which is likely to help us climb up the social hierarchy. We learn to orchestrate intelligence to material and financial ends, as if all of its power were limited to manipulating the structure of the non-self in order to extricate itself. True progress towards consciousness of the Self, through recognizing modern foundation myths such as psychoanalysis is swiftly hijacked by the need to assert ourselves in social reality. Admittedly, intelligence seems to be able to balance the needs of the inner Self and those of the external Self, but given the values currently prevailing in all societies, this balance cannot be maintained. If individuals are weary of reaching a ceiling in Mystery 1 and if they really want to start work on their own existence and discover nourishing duration, then they must generally give up increasing their social prerogatives or be particularly skilful in their own surroundings to avoid feeling weighed down by stress, responsibilities or schedules. From a certain point of view, human beings must constantly make sacrifices to the archaic idols of the territorial sphere and arrange their chaotic survival in an environment in which the economy seizes hold of the political to the point where it destroys the values of civilization itself.

Duration has been buried in empirical and pragmatic values. Hence the insistence of all wise men, teachers and avatars on the quality of meditation which counterbalances all the hours which have been hijacked by purely commercial ends or avid entertainment. It would seem that history is running out of steam, because everything that has been accomplished to free people from material survival has only alienated them further. The insane optimism of the nineteenth century has been radically destroyed. Scientific progress has not changed the value of a society in which inequalities are increasing irrespective of the regime in power. The time has come to assert that the mind, which believes that it is intelligent per se, is in reality stupid. Analytical dissection cannot grasp the systems as a whole from which it removes what it chooses, while disfiguring the backdrop in which any change has repercussions for the whole. That the best minds could be so greatly mistaken about the direction of history demonstrates how limited and unreliable thought is, despite the blind trust placed in it by leaders and intellectuals. It does not matter that some individuals structure themselves in Mystery 1 in such an autonomous fashion that they think that they are above the law and are ready to do anything to retain their power with quasi-religious cynicism. Even the most obscure forces of the Manifestation which want to seize hold of humanity can only disappear under the pressure of the consciousness of supramental reality, however long the transformation may take. Territorial law will be repealed and a conscious movement towards unity will eventually prevail through the sum of individual existences.

Unduly developing the area of the second field constitutes a sort of luxury, available only to individuals who want to adhere firmly to subtle planes. The second Mystery is in fact a place where you find what you bring to it, because we can project on it our representations of God and all the embellishments with which we want to decorate our own existence if we do not find it bright enough. There is a real lack of reference points in the second Mystery. It may be easy to observe our own existence in our environment, to check what the present moment is causing us to feel and it is natural to want to explore within ourselves the question “Who am I?”. However, it is more tricky, by contrast, to avoid mixing the very stuff of imagination with our purest and deepest feelings for the mystery of the cosmos and the secret of the Divine.

If we have a natural tendency to take refuge in the invisible ethers and we reckon that we are inhabited by superior presences, it is by staying alert to what we are in the third Mystery that we can really adjust our vision of reality and not forget that our transcendent flights and wishes can only be based on objective consciousness of our projection onto the environment. This is an Eastern paradigm from China and India, both eulogists of non-separativity and it is less common in the West, where the vision of the physical body is difficult to integrate into spiritual concepts and where “will” is considered to be the universal panacea. However, in the light of recent discoveries such as the potential sabotage of the Self’s plans by the subconscious (somatisation, repression, sub-personalities, traumatic traces) a return to consciousness of the body within its environment (vulnerable to accidents and opportunities) seems to be the obvious new paradigm for establishing not just holistic medicine, but also the principal evolutionary route devoid of all particular forms.

Today supreme consciousness amuses itself by playing with cells, exploring them and superimposing a far faster movement on the fabric of nature. The ideaSatprem, La Genèse du surhomme [The Genesis of the Superman], published by Buchet-Chastel is to recreate the being’s new overall unity by integrating the separate work being done in the subconscious, conscious and Supraconscious into one single material/spiritual being.

The seeker who places too much faith in the growth of Field 2 in order to evolve ends up by contrasting the vertical solar universe of his own aspiration with the real, contingent world. What usually ensues is the cultivation of potential conflicts between solar aspiration and the external environment, between divine wishes and practice in relationships, which leads to conflicts and spiteful judgements, preserving a favourable decor which cuts itself off from real life, and somatisation is encouraged because Field 4 no longer supplies homogeneous duration, but contrasting highs and lows which exhaust the nervoushence the need for equality, which calms the gunas in the best Hindu traditions. system and manhandle self-image. On the other hand, it has been established for thousands of years that powerful spiritual experiences cannot be transmitted. The best guru in the world cannot trigger enlightenment at will in his disciples. It is remarkable that transcendence in Mystery 2 resists any attempt at appropriationTo the Lord be all that is, so that he may inhabit it and everything, a universe moving with a universal movement. Detach yourself from all this and take pleasure in it; do not lust after any possession which man appropriates.” Isha Upanishad, commentaries by Sri Aurobindo (Arya, 1914-1915).. No formula can force the Lord to manifest himself and counting on excessive prayer or contemplation to move forward faster is just a ruse on the part of the mind to hoodwink the ego. The structure of a discipline is necessary, with the paradox that it must undergo the real imprint of duration to acquire pragmatic flexibility, i.e. truly taking into account the impact of events instead of “whistling for them ” when they depart from expected conventional conformity. It is quite plausible to spend several days or even weeks in almost uninterrupted contemplation, if circumstances allow, whereas other periods can inflict the temporary surrender of the highest aspirations or even the deepest hell. Scope for manoeuvre in exploring the four Mysteries is enormous and it is more natural to adapt to experience (the concrete supremacy of Mystery 3 unfolds and cannot be called into question) than it is to fix it in an inward-looking system which is virtual and timeless.

The supramental establishes the supremacy of the second Mystery once and for all. It dominates the other three on principle and remains the one which is most buried in experience and to this extent it can only be reached properly when duration is used afresh in field 4, which will have established a new dialectic between the contingent self of 3 and the integral and permanent self in 1, which aspires to being by passing through the centre, the Self, where the spirit is devoid of all concepts and present at its source. When observing oneself becomes natural, it counterbalances flights of the imagination which want to ornament the transition to the second field with elaborate symbolism. On the boundary between the mind and the vital, we encounter a strange force which tries to seduce the divine, like a young man who dreams up some sort of scheme to make himself look good in the eyes of the object of his desire. If this force grows, it can it can seize the individual and convince him that he is just living out his own fantasies and it is this vital mind which is responsible in some way for all types of fanaticism and fundamentalism.

Exploring the four fields can always be experienced effectively in the transverses: deep solar aspirations which still vaguely stir the self in Mystery 2 will be confronted by unflinching observation of how we handle relationships, enabling us to transcend animal impulses and compulsions in Mystery 3 aroused by circumstance. The over-dominant claims of the permanent self which would like to structure duration purely to its own advantage will be conf go or non-action in the fourth field, which will allow the spirit to broaden its vision of what is possible and to transform its self-image. Developing Mystery 2 while forgetting Mystery 3 is just as dangerous as developing 1 and forgetting 4. In both scenarios a triumphalist self avoids being part of reality by forging the bars of its subjective prison using the will. Whether they be more subtle in 2 or more concrete 1, the fact remains that some orchestrated flights can hoodwink the subject who escapes from absolute mystery in order to appropriate it for himself.

Deeper and more neutral knowledge of the relationships between the four Mysteries sometimes allows us to see the space at the centre - the self - emerging, a presence without thought which has no need to identify with anything at all and which embraces the moment completely, without grasping the object.

Being constantly forced to perceive the non-self through the body feels like a constraint at certain points in our existence and it can be tempting to keep physical needs and material and relationship cf the story of Marthe Robin. concerns separate from the spiritual path. This is a topic which can be studied endlessly both in history and in our own personal practice. In every era, new theories appear to warn seekers against the tyranny of physical needs in an approach, under the pretext that the brain acts under the pressure of evolutionary memory to bind the subject to his environment alone through his perceptions. The great religions have founded countless monastic orders to try to enable followers to live with their spirit open to non-contingent realities. However, these processes which appear to make things easier create their own new habits, which also crystallize the spirit, and few human beings are truly ready to endure all the sacrifices which accompany this difficult quest for the truth without coming to harm. Fundamentalist ascetics have even invented “mortifications” to get closer to “God”, whether they be mystical fakirs or the famous Cathars, and even Pascal apparently wore a hair shirt!

The main difficulty consists in not rejecting the body, even though we deny it  many forms of casual pleasure, for which the subconscious tries to extract its revenge.

We can often observe cruelty in people who believe they represent a higher morality and who think that it is quite normal to make individuals with superficial moralRegis Debray, describing the triumphalist intolerance of Che, for example, punishing people for trifling matters. All praise to our masters (p.189), GALLIMARD criteria suffer. This is a very thorny question, when we take into account that the Inquisition lasted for three centuries in Europe, and that people suffered unspeakable evil under the iron rule of human beings who were supposedly convinced that they were acting in God’s name. The mind can, therefore, detach itself so far from the physical body and immediate realities that it makes its victims experience an abyssal duality between the truth and the manifest world, between hope of a better life for the soul and the actual state in which the physical body finds itself. The mind can forget everything which disturbs it and it likes to decree what must exist and what must not exist based on its own authority, independently of all objective reality.

It is easy to be wary of the body or to think of it as the enemy. In fact, what Sri Aurobindo calls the vital plays tricks on us in our spiritual journey because it is an energy which has huge degree of autonomy and a particular connection with the moment and so it is the essential link between Field 3 and Field 4, if we believe that the permanent subject is slightly in the background. The vital can seize the moment and it can impose any kind of surge of impulses on the self (if it is weak). In monasteries, convents and ashrams repressed anger creates struggles for power and influence and sexual frustration gives rise to all sorts of perverse effects, ranging from guilt at feeling desire through to secret relationships, often of a homosexual nature, which represent the power of nature over our subjective will which strives to conquer the spirit without making a distinction between the forms of matter which constitute a human being. Trying on principle to create circumstances which are more conducive to using time properly - i.e. the spiritualization of matter - is a double-edged undertaking, because the natural state is forgotten in favour of a partly imaginary creation, however ideal it might be. Of course, each individual can use his own path to reach the major states of spiritual consciousness and some who scorn the body, achieve remarkable results, but in these cases consciousness of the second field will have subordinated the first, then the fourth and finally, at the end of the line, the historic subject will have submitted by controlling desires and emotions. This drastic path does not seem to be the way forward, because divine energy descends and if work is not carried out properly in the fourth field it can even reach the physical body without it having been tortured by the frustration believed to facilitate detachment. A few people choose to live in caves or in pure solitude to obtain samadhi - realization - but few of them remain in the frame of mind which leads to the Self. The rest believe that they can reach it because they have accumulated  forms of perfection in order to surrender the spirit by inventing a “transcendental” routine, as it were. Ritual perfection has always tried to buy intimacy with the Divine and it is often those who think that they are beyond reproach who have the driest hearts and the most quirky souls. Their haughty rectitude does not embrace the contours of events, which they shrivel by stifling their sensitivity.

Insofar as men and women do emerge, by contrast, into the Divine Mystery having led outwardly ordinary lives and respected ordinary facts, it seems pointless to specify the definitive status of the physical body and vital needs. On the other hand, it is certain that everybody learns to fight it and is amused to see the traps presented by mediocrity and carelessness when solar aspirations have been bruised. In fact, the vital being seeks all sorts of compensations when it does not connect the subject to his environment properly, in the simple natural joy of existing. It is there, rather, that the true issue lies. If spiritual asceticism places the self in an awkward position instead of comforting it with the knowledge that it is an unconditional part of the Whole, then all sorts of obstacles, weaknesses and demons manifest themselves to claim their due from the coarse abundance which has evaporated and been replaced by higher accomplishments, delicate sources of satisfaction and frivolous pleasures with low expectations. It is always useful to discover the reasons which enable us to avoid exploring Mystery 3. They are varied – some are natural and others are cultural.

If the subject has suffered too much in his environment, he can try to get rid of his past by evading observation of his behaviour and relationships, whilst constructing a powerful personality in Field 1, which will enable him to justify the blind spots in his vision of the world, by avoiding calling himself into question. This attitude can sometimes be legitimate if the subject has had to suppress his sensitivity in order to survive, but it is a closed one. Many people are incapable of questioning the way in which they behave with others, simply because their upbringing has been sufficiently poor to leave a permanently imprinted belief that otherness presents a threat. Certain human beings barricade themselves in the personality of the first Mystery because they would feel as if they were backtracking if they consented to observe themselves in their relationships on a continuous basis. These people easily become obsessed with power and are masters at the art of giving advice and recommendations, which conveniently obviates the need to listen. The issue is, therefore, understanding that nature knows how to set up powerful defence mechanisms when the Self and the non-self no longer coincide sufficiently.

In fact one of the merits of modern psychology is to have identified different processes for locking in information. There are countless processes and at the time they seem to protect the self from the outside world, but this protection is usually false and the subject cuts himself off from others and isolates himselfHealing Through Awakening, Natarajan, final chapters.. These automatic processes have nothing to do with the supreme distance and imperial withdrawal which non-action supplies in an awkward situation. Whereas unconscious locking mechanisms tend to deny facts and shut the self up in its own representations,  letting go, on the other hand , in a difficult time preserves vigilance and envisages the possibility of conflict, however the situation is not addressed through flight or rejection, but rather through intelligent questioning which defuses the violent emotional momentum. Insofar as incarnation stays open to the operation of the Divine on matter, then perpetual observation of one’s own territory, i.e. Mystery 3, is a necessity. In fact all psychological reactions are like so many filters which deprive us of the self and  of the supramental and so the bulk of spiritual life is accomplished in the most trivial commonplaces of everyday life. Given that this truth is disturbing because it holds onto gratifying headlong flight towards the other three mysteries where it is easy to cheat, disciples can only gain an understanding of the need for constant vigilance from teachers themselves.

The seeker often forgets to confront the ecological field for cultural reasons, on the pretext that contingent life is implacably opposed to experiencing the Spirit. This is a totally secular distortion, which opens the way to the most dangerous forms of esotericism such as certain movements and sects which manage to be simultaneously fascist and mystic, because hatred for what is common and ordinary is cleverly nurtured. Fascination with verticality which is not accompanied by horizontal exploration creates a perverse use of the mind which dominates realities while condemning and judging them. Inspiration also has its own casualties, those builders of new worlds who were unable to discover the legitimacy of multiplicity in unity and who have come back down badly after their ascents, like Nietzsche who talked a lot of hot air and had a dubious relationship with his body to say the least, as his mental will was combined with weak ability to let go in physical terms, as if onanism wanted to keep him a prisoner of the world which he wished to escape. Geniuses can partly be victims of approaches which open up new passages for humanity, but rebellion against the established order and history can take us a lot further forward today than previously if the Divine is intuited behind the tragi-comedy of the Manifestation.

Difficulties which arise from Mystery 3 can be accepted by the soul, the mind and the structured personality and in this way the higher powers also learn to make situations less dramatic, thus releasing the emotions, decreasing somatization and initiating a better permanent approach to the present moment. Other variants are so keen to highlight the merits of fields 2 and 4 that they forget to mention that unless 3 is transformed, then non-material duration remains dangerous and subtle universes are imaginary rather than actually experienced. If we intuitively recognize the need for a nourishing and flavoursome shuttle movement between the Self and the non-self, then we are ready to observe all our own sensations and it is during this apprenticeship that distrust on the one hand and complacency on the other decrease, giving way to a more objective view. We often consider Mystery 3 to be less important then the others to avoid confronting our fears on the one hand and lusts on the other, whereas even in purely chronological terms it is in fact logically their living origin.

Despite all this, we would not claim that ideal asceticism refers perpetually back to the past on the pretext of extracting archaic material from it, nor that relationships are the key to the spiritual path, that the work is more important than the rest, or that we have to become fanatical about examining our nocturnal consciousness. Field 3 contains intertwined elements and behavioural structures, because this is where the present is based on the past, on the permanence of emotional, social and affective structures and it is here that today is more an extension of yesterday than it is today itself, because we bring to each new day the structures of the previous day, with the permanent problem of flushing out those which might disappear and those which must be transformed.

In the end, if work in Field 4 begins to expand, then realizations affecting the past will take place in the pure present, emerging of their own accord. Meditation which launches itself into the moment without expecting anything from it will enable the brain to free memories which would otherwise stay locked away, and therefore inaccessible, under the control of the spirit. Given that the energetic work of the supramental affects the physical body, all the emotional psychology affects the integral seeker.

In the lunar world of early childhood, a feeling of undifferentiated unity is predominant until the first objects appear. These are the mother, as soon as a baby realizes that she is not totally available, and the physical body as soon as the baby knows how to arouse sensations by touching his own skin. By contrast, it has not been established at all whether human beings as a whole perceive duration as an object. For many of them, time has no independent existence and is simply felt as an extension of the self. From a supramental point of view, it is obvious that a lack of psychological maturity alone establishes the feeling that duration is a part of oneself. This archaic and rudimentary vision gives rise simultaneously to an attachment to the past and the naive need for the future to meet our subjective expectations. Bending the knee before the authority of time is initiatory in the true sense of the word. At the end of the itinerary it becomes part of oneself once again, but it is the mystery of Brahman, like a form of immobile unfolding and time no longer gives the impression that it is fleeing. By carrying out this work, which consists of renouncing our own lust for time, we learn to accept that the present - the self - offers its own prerogatives, independently of our volition. It is difficult for each individual to feel the virginity of the present - the self - but this rarely stems from the same causes. The excessive preponderance of one of the three other mysteries bars us from accessing the objective moment.

A/ The sense of the present can be narrow for anybody who is too focused on the past and their roots and who believes in the value of the structures of the territorial world, of Mystery 3. The present will therefore be rejected as a threat to what is perennial and which has already been described and established. Today is merely an extension of yesterday. (Entering the future backwards).

B/ The virgin moment will be banned by any individual who is too confident in the merits of his personality and who believes in the strategy of consolidating plans for total control of his own prerogatives. Today will be the means to perpetuating his ossified personality.

C/ The pure present will similarly be shunned by eulogists of the future, bogged down in excessive predominance of Mystery 2, which continuously whispers new promises in their ears. It is in this light that we must understand the intransigence of most traditional Eastern teachers, who delight in reproaching their disciples for only being worried about their own little personal transcendent desire, instead of surrendering to the absolute flow of time, whose rapid and limpid movement alone can dissolve psychological accretions, memories bound to traumatic events and the magical expectations of an ideal which dominates reality rather than confronting it. Today will be at the service of a cause which we are constantly pushing ahead of us.

By simplifying things as far as possible, we could almost go so far as to state that all spiritual evolution depends on the possibility of grasping duration without appropriating it. Close reading of Shankara or Nagarjuna reveals the potential of the spirit which has nothing left to grasp or to differentiate - especially  not the Self from what is not the self. Indian teachers force us to acknowledge this paradox and end up, like the Zen patriarchs, by convincing people that the pure spirit is not rough and that roughness  does not lead to it (any system of thought or particular movement). Of course plans can be supported and wishes retained after Field 4 has been freely explored in depth, but it will be with greater reserve and marvellous flexibility. From a technical point of view, it is necessary to discover that state of spirit in which the self no longer seeks to seize the moment, to make it say what it already knows. So if the spirit spends its time projecting the inner structure of the self onto the non-self, it is not as easy as all that to discover fundamental meditation,

   in which thoughts occur, without the Self considering itself to be their owner or originator.

Yet the most sublime message of the East does indeed consist of declaring that thoughts occur spontaneously and do not belong to us. It may take a long time to be able to see them forming, instead of identifying with them body and soul, but the result of this process is a sovereign remedy against all sorts of ills.

For example, emotions which occur can be experienced for themselves in their ephemeral manifestations and the self thus prevents them from leaving traces which are too deep in its own permanent structure. On the gratifying side, pleasures can be experienced without leading to addiction and on the non-gratifying side, deep sufferings are not necessarily somatised. It seems, therefore, that duration must also escape from the law of territory. Neither the present nor the future have by definition, the role of becoming our personal property, according to the image which we might create of it. In fact, the models for what we think we need to obtain are constructions which are limited by our current ignorance. Opening up in a freer form of surrender to all the forms of reappraisal of our behaviour in the Mysteries, as representations which we have of them, is the route which enables us to welcome what happens, whatever it is, with good will (or in any case neutrality in the face of difficulty) which opens up evolutionary horizons.

In this respect, each individual must recognize that he is his own victim if he does not succeed in surrendering to immediate realizations which the present offers.

We are victims of wanting to create a preconceived order if Mystery 3 is too predominant and swallows up duration backwards. We are victims of wanting to create without sufficiently taking cosmic laws into account if Mystery 1 has the upper hand and deliberately controls everything which occurs. We are victims of already wanting to be further along, further ahead, if the subtle magic of Mystery 2 has grasped the psyche and fraudulently pushes the present into an imaginary future. Finally the self is also a victim of itself, if it surrenders to the present without aspiration, without restraint, reinforcing the power of the soul of life in him, while moving him further away from the self , the uncreated and the supreme non-mental.

By referring the impulses of the spirit back to the four fundamental directions, each individual can reflect on the available options,
Preservation of one’s territory,
Letting go in the present,
Dialogue with one’s deep inner self,
Opening up to the soul and to the Divine,

These are all essential realities which assail us without us being able to establish that they can converge until we learn how to do it. The reptilian brain is at the disposal of Mystery 3, the limbic brain is very receptive to the moment; the neo-cortex and grey matter cheerfully serve Mystery 1 and begin to concern themselves with Mystery 2, albeit with reservations. We are forced to acknowledge that the complexity of our nature, both material and spiritual, organic, nervous and mental, constrains us to make permanent adjustments, forces us to seek balance with ever more perfect clarity and precision. There is something in this impulse which goes beyond our natural will and comes from much further, from the involuted presence of the Divine in matter, in search of his own dialectical harmonization, a Divine which finds its own route in reverse by freeing us from the vestiges of the past of the species, by a series of untimely realizations, with the facts upholding aspiration and revealing hidden meaning.

Every human being who does not feel the need to differentiate himself, to find his own truth is still being manipulated by the spontaneous outcome of the three other Mysteries. Only the self which is attempting to structure itself is capable of finding a balance between ecological laws and the architecture of relationships between the availability of the present moment and cosmic aspirations which open onto the definitive meaning of life (and therefore death). It is difficult to know on what criteria the fundamental realization will be based, which will mean that the individual will never again take for granted what he feels and thinks as dictated by the supremacy of events. All scenarios are possible, whether they be such restrictive imprisonment in Field 3 that it arouses the need to affirm oneself in a unique way, or a feeling of such bliss in 4 that it encourages the self to deepen its own mystery, or a sudden need to devote one’s existence to what could constitute the origin and end  - the Divine.

Affirming that this impulse of the Self towards itself is inevitable forms the basis of esoteric tradition, but historically the proportion of human beings who devote themselves to the exploration of reality to discover what they are remains very small. We might even consider that religions are ways of forcing the historic subject to recognize that he is a cosmic being and that he must account for himself to the universe – i.e. dig towards the second Field while accepting the first. This policy seems to have failed, as was doubtless necessary in the dark period of the Iron Age, so that the urgency of chaos ends up by waking the mental universe which can easily manage to explore the inner universe, i.e. the world of psychological content (mutual manipulation of 3 and 1) once the new direction has been set.

Opponents of interiority are powerful forces scattered across all sorts of material or subtle zones. From a historic point of view, powerful people have always tried to prevent thought from being the concern of exploited people. The liberating truths of religion have even been distorted so that the individual remains subordinate to the ruling power, when it is obvious that emancipation from tribal beliefs in favour of spiritual consecration must affect all domains to facilitate individual differentiation. But further back, as it were, the subconscious powers of nature try to dictate their laws to the ordinary spirit so that it does not call into question the very basis of perception: systematically seeking out what is gratifying and permanently avoiding what is non-gratifying.

The gamble of becoming an individual and discovering one’s own unity is based on demystifying our natural interpretation of existence and the stake is enormous. In every scenario, the mind turns in on itself and instead of being satisfied with grasping the objects which are perceived, it carefully examines what these objects yield in such an intimate and personal way that it is bound to differ from conventional cultural and religious interpretations. However, this leap forward can be difficult to achieve or can be deferred until tomorrow. Because the mind suddenly finds itself confronted by an enormous revelation: concepts cannot have any objective meaning. The only thing which confers any substance or value on them is our own inner experience of them.

We can no longer innocently contemplate freedom without wanting to free ourselves from slavery or constraints. We cannot let ourselves go and say the word God without wanting to touch Him, taste Him and know Him. We can no longer put the word “I” in front in front of any word in the natural flow of impressions, without being taken aback by the stream of haphazardly conjugated verbs.

The reasons for which the need for personal differentiation is not established as the fundamental component of existence are varied. The natural amalgamation of the other three fields is sometimes rich enough for life to be lived out in a precarious balance which is simple and intuitive, without the individual really needing to explore the mystery of his own existence any further, as this would carry the risk of giving it a meaning which is too subjective, whereas satisfactions can be truly appreciated without pride or appropriation. In countries right across the world a few people who are realized without even being aware of it still exist, particularly women, and they represent totally successful empirical blossoming of the self and the non-self which will probably disappear in the future which will create a complex civilization.

Surrender to a single mystery which then seizes the whole personality can lead  either to rejection of genuine differentiation or demonstrate that it is impossible. Many people try to respect territorial law and to obtain satisfaction from convention, duty, fashions and taboos and they graft the embryonic self from Field 1 onto the stock of Field 3, whereas the fourth Field is like a subordinate slave. Others see the world of duration as being genuinely in line with their presence in Field 3 and let themselves be carried away in ordinary life with ordinary satisfactions based on judicious avoidance and mediocre appropriation of what is gratifying. The self in 1 lies fallow and fields three and four have reached a satisfactory compromise. It can also be the case that excessive development of consciousness in the second Mystery prevents an individual from accepting themselves and from seeing their fears and desires and favours an imaginary character seeking perfection, but avoiding any form of confrontation with guilt or his own limitations. Mystery 2 then draws on Mystery 4 to the detriment of consciousness of the permanent self and management of the environment is subordinated in order to make way for the overarching supremacy of 4 and 2 combined, which cheat to avoid an encounter with 3/1.

Field 1 can also exist, but in a completely distorted, caricatured, harrowing manner in the case of those determined and demanding people whom astrologers term “Saturnian” and who reduce Reality to what it should be in their own eyes, in order to wage all-out war on it. The image of the self becomes confused with the self itself. The perception of the senses is completely corrupt, everything is interpreted, but nothing is felt without first being passed through the mill of “values” which form an impenetrable grille.

It is not unusual to note that true individuals, people who have transformed their ordinary membership of their environment into a realization of the self have been through many ordeals, endured intense psychological suffering and this is ultimately the obligatory route of emotional de-dramatization on the one hand and putting down spiritual roots on the other.

At the end of the day this deficiency can be harmful only in the context of a spiritual search. History reveals that a certain natural consciousness of divinity has already animated cultures, as if intuition of wholeness really did lie at the heart of the human being as he has been created. However this intuition cannot be developed to its limit – the search for the Self – in the framework of a religious culture, because the structures which animate the relationship between the believer and the Whole are based on unconscious mechanisms. Fear of God’s supreme authority transforms the small amount of natural love which we can bring Him into a fairly perverse form of submission which establishes blind spots. It is, therefore, not particularly helpful to dwell on the success and failure of so-called civilizing religions, or even the merits of primitive traditions in those proud and active people who have chosen  life in a sense over inventing writing and developing the mind which withdraws from sensations (and projects us  into the cult of the future). Although work on religious anthropology has already been carried out by remarkable men such as Frazer and Eliade, what interests us is facilitating the emergence of the subliminal self in human beings, which can only be done in specific conditions, independently of specific cultural and spiritual values and independently of testimony from the past.

The absolute supremacy of the Divine must not only be accepted intellectually, but profoundly felt, until the subject consecrates himself permanently to reappraising his own psychological structures. Obviously the more higher divine frequencies manifest themselves, the more natural and therefore easy it will be to intuit true cosmic development in oneself. The terrestrial atmosphere can still undergo fundamental modifications so that they create in human beings a simultaneous need for authentic differentiation, coupled with a need to conform to the higher principle of existence - harmony, inspired intelligence and a feeling of a tight bond with totality. For the time being, a lot of paths which claim to be able to transform a man are content to offer a psychological building site between the root of Field 3 and the bud of Field 1, passing via the obligatory opening of Mystery 4.

This work can only be a form of preparation and it is likely that solar mutants will become attached to establishing the complementary nature of  work of the self on the one hand (which does not have to be based on the Divine) and the opening of supreme Consciousness which opens up receptivity to higher fluxes through unconditional consecration.

This vision could appear to be partisan because it establishes mysticism as part of the evolutionary process of the self, which cannot be proven intellectually, and in a sense holds back the transition to the supramental world. We therefore come back to the need to develop a supra-rational intuition which organizes itself within a supra-logic, in which the ordinary limits of the mind are crushed (the popularization of quantum physics points out the way). It is precisely this surrender to duration which enables us to make the subjective spirit perfectly malleable. All those who venture into the pure present have experienced how intelligence of the moment eludes the constructs formed by the superstructure of Field 1 and the infrastructure of Field 3.

Aspiration to become, which does not feature in traditional teachings which target the immutable, temporal, impersonal being, is by definition rehabilitated by supramental consciousness because the body becomes the witness and the vessel for divine energy. In this respect the self (Brahman),which seemed adequate in the past (and which we place at the centre), has today become just a means of drawing oneself into the supramental shakti, which is indescribably fast, and it seeks to sculpt the human body in order to transform its sensations. Protracted thought is required in order to understand the supremacy of Mystery 2 over the others and even this is sometimes not enough. In this case, actual experience will establish this legitimacy and enable us to begin to attach the spiritual seeker to this divine future – the centre, the self – letting information, thoughts from all four quarters of the cross resurface to allow the division to take place of the four mysteries which are constantly changing in preponderance, order, proportion and transcendent balance. Moments of opening cannot be predicted, but it is clear that seekers who have already gone a long way towards exploring the other three Mysteries by understanding their relationships can sometimes be swept up, even if they are not expecting it, by a new vibration which will connect them physically to the infinite (The supramental has been working on a physical, cellular plane since 1956[Mother’s Agenda], Institut de recherche évolutive, by year.).

The processes which can impede consciousness of Field 2 are varied and can easily be combined. A psychological fear of getting lost is generally underpinned by social and religious values, which try to establish that we have our heads in the clouds when metaphysical preoccupations surface and draw the subject towards other concerns beyond moral rules and political and religious ethics. It is equally clear that that mysterious recognition of Field 2 does not bring the same certainty concerning its results and advantages. To this extent, exploration can seem so risky that one part of the self rejects it, be it the vital which does not want to waste its time, or even the mind, terrified by the idea of losing its supremacy. But it is just a question of letting higher intuitions develop in the self, which reveal the extent to which we are attached to the Whole, of overcoming resistance and finding new satisfaction in the quest for the unknown.

Those who are afraid that they will not know where to go if they recognize this field, simply state that they refuse to surrender their apparent autonomy, which they consider to be superior to every other vision or strategy. Therefore nobody can force anybody to acknowledge the supremacy of Mystery 2 and of everything which it contains. The Earth, therefore, contains types of evolution which are very different from each other in a very broad framework in which each individual can try to live in accordance with his own feelings. Our own and Sri Aurobindo’s gamble is to state that supramental consciousness is absolutely necessary and that humanity will be forced to recognize it and to surrender to itto surrender freely to it. to continue the impulse of life on Earth. Passing through meditation which leads to integral inner peace is the most traditional and appropriate path for preparing the coming of the supramental. It is therefore the whole paradigm of the existence which has been transformed in the twentieth century and it is too early to judge the forms which accompany this transition. On the other hand, what is certain is that the lateral opposition of Mysteries three and two is becoming more marked. The greater the number of humans ready to abandon their beliefs, the more those who want to impose their own law will organize themselves to govern their territory while trying to increase its surface area. These conditions are a sign of definite political upheavals, inevitable economic upheavals and catastrophic ecological upheavals. Nevertheless, supramental consciousness reveals that history is just an accident of field, the playing field chosen by the Divine himself and it prevents us from smugly identifying with subjective or collective tragedies, although unlimited compassion accompanies the vision of human suffering.

The term system must be viewed in its objective sense as a collection of structures converging towards a single end. In this respect, the diagram of the four Mysteries was preceded by analogous creations which brought renown to their respective cultures. The Chinese book of transformationsThe best translation is the recent one by Cyrille Javery, published by Albin Michel., the famous I-Ching, is also based on the division of unity into its fundamental component parts and it is well known that anybody who penetrates this geometrical puzzle ends up being enchanted by its composition and the relevance of the overall work manifests itself in what is conventionally termed a reading. Leibnitz would have opposed it. The power of the I-Ching has been confirmed for millions of years and it can be used both in practical terms (to make quick decisions) and also in an abstract way, where it reveals the principles of existence through the Yin/Yang pairing, with each of the polarities spilling into its opposite at its peak, which can be established in the reading to adapt to the natural circumstances of events. Through it we can see a perfectly mathematical system evolving which is symmetrical and enables the spirit to take shortcuts between questions and answers. The Chinese would be quite capable of creating pre-processed meditation for practical purposes.

We find a similar undertaking in the Kabbalah, which explains Creation through a catalogue of twenty-two necessary and sufficient letters, each of which can be considered as an energy, power or principle. Even though these systems are not comparable in any way, they are both part of the same attempt to represent Reality without blind spots (as indeed is creating quantum meditation) while reducing it to its essential principles, so that they can be perceived. This entails sacrificing the forms which disguise and hide them. An analogy could be drawn between hexagrams and tarot cards and the Four Mysteries).

The tarot of initiates in the Middle Ages was perhaps copied from the Kabbalah itself because it is difficult to attribute the similarity between the number of major arcana and the 22 Hebrew letters to chance. One cannot overlook geomancy, which is extraordinary and refers the sixteen essential figures to the key events of our existence sufficiently closely for the practice undoubtedly to have existed since time immemorial in regions of the world which are very remote from each other. The I-Ching is used throughout the world, which proves that certain creations of the spirit are universal, so to speak, and this must mean that the principles are the same everywhere, if we grasp their essence and not the initial forms which they assume. Obviously, for a secular mind these systems are merely a description of the world and give the impression of being pictures. However, they are something quite different, i.e. the description itself is merely the appearance or surface of a sophisticated symbol generator, capable of immediately arousing new sensations in the mind of the seeker. The I-Ching is a group of perfectly arranged mirrors, each with their own shape and different silvering, designed to create a particular resonance. The major arcana of the tarot, Hebrew letters and geomantic figures all similarly enable us to respond to their call when curiosity or a reading allows them to act on us.

Is it really necessary to enclose reality in a puzzle, under the pretext of gaining a better understanding of who we are? Good, well-ordered representations which are in line with the principles of things can enable us to create models of the fundamental connections which our lives will build with external energies in which multiplicity threatens us and entanglement predominates. Knowing exactly where we are is a permanent challenge: we are manipulated from all sides and surrounded. The subconscious manipulates us, the gunas manipulateEssay on the Gita, the divine instructor, Sri Aurobindo, Editions du rocher us, time manipulates us, other people manipulate us (although not all of them, fortunately) and culture hypnotizes us. We would be better off looking at things head-on: what exactly do we depend on and does dependence change according to the times, our own collusion or implacable fate? Like all the best types of mantic mirror, meditation answers this question.

Hindu traditions list the tattva, which are supposed to be the essential qualities of the human being and form what constitutes us from the sense organs right up to the subtle realities with which we can identify using our intelligence, surrender or consecration. Moreover, this culture reduces what is essential to just three energies – inertia, the impulse of life and the clear light of the mind. These gunas form the basis of the antagonism of creation, developing through the sattva, and they could be divided across the four Mysteries to explain their differences better.The rajas would be regally installed in the fourth field, throwing the gifts of the passions to the subject; tamas hide in the third field to preserve and possess, whilst the sattva, which is in love with potential, climbs up to the first Field and sees things from higher up, but spends its time trying to decide between its two fellows. The centre and the second Mystery transcend all three. If these fundamental frameworks for representation are founded on sensory experiences and not on purely intellectual constructs, then they have real value. In this case, the eight Chinese trigrams truly represent the modes of the single Tao which are scattered across time. Hebrew letters should allow us to contact genuine frequencies; medieval arcana and geomantic figures should encourage us to understand how we are linked to the whole at any given time if we know which frequency to tune into or which inner direction to adopt. Becoming aware of these great abstract inventions and trying to extract what concerns us in a casual manner, without becoming attached to the idea of practising them assiduously - which would become superstitious - is excellent preparation for cardinal meditation.

The system of the four Mysteries is abstract and concrete, formal and informal because each individual is invited to explore his experience in relation to only four directions conforming to the very physiognomy of the space which defines us. The symbol of the cross is a very ancient one. The horizontal line represents incarnation and the earth and the vertical line represents the sky and also the great mysteries of birth and death, i.e. everything which defies investigation, and possibly also the “duties” of the Self vis-a-vis the Whole. We can, therefore, play at reducing the four zones to two pairings. The yin pairing of Fields two and four is the left-hand vertical axis on paper in which the non-self penetrates the self, kneads it and then transforms it. The yang couple, formed by the by the first and third Fields, is the right-hand vertical line where the self must work on the outside world, take root and respond to the demands of the environment, instead of surrendering to it, or else concentrate on itself by cancelling out the pressures of the outside world. The eruption of the non-polarized self means that each individual can find a new kind of balance by developing the less dominant pole. It is not to anybody’s advantage to follow their own inclination either by reinforcing a yin which is already strong which will make us endure events, or by encouraging a predominant yang which will become intoxicated with action and initiatives to the detriment of receptivity, rest and of tolerance of the unforeseen. When you get beyond a certain degree of imbalance, factual events faithfully reproduce the inner attitude. Those with excessive yin endure everything at all times and wander in an unsatisfied manner through changing circumstances, whilst their spirit becomes diffuse. Excessively yang types plan everything, control everything with a vengeance and reject any kind of objection to their tyrannical decision-making, whilst their full schedule becomes their true home.

Like the ancient Greeks and several Hindu enlightened ones even before that, what we are creating in this work is a framework within which the intelligence will operate in full knowledge of what it is taking part in, in order to bring the parameters into proportion in the renewed spontaneity of each meditation, after having established their measurements. The infinite nature of the non-self is worthy of a whole spectrum of representations, a few paintings, a range of mirrors, all of which would form one of those topographic maps which enable us to reflect those pieces and materials which interest us. All models of spiritual doctrines respond to this need to name a few reference points which will take the place of torches for those who wish to light up the darkness of their ignorance, but which will be redundant when the day of knowledge dawns. It is all very well for teachers to emphasize that teaching is provisional, a mere bridge, but the mind becomes attached to it and turns it to its advantage so that a bland interpretation replaces words of fire. We end up by sketching rough maps in order to avoid setting off.

The intellect, which travels through thought with solar aspiration, cannot be suppressed on the pretext that feeling and intuition alone would be sufficient to bring about divine awakening, or at least not without taking major<René Guénon, once again risks. Surrendering deep intellectual rigour in the so-called “spiritual” path always leads to the same imitations: superficial and smug devotion is mistaken for universal love and envelops the third Mystery with naive, pastel-hued projections, whereas consciousness in Field 1 remains weak. Or alternatively, following the rules as prescribed will create an attachment to the letter rather than the spirit and spiritual acts therefore remain rigid and narrow. The fourth Field does not open for good onto the shining present and the subject’s self-image rules the ecological field like a tyrannical Freudian superego. Alternatively, incessantly interpreting  canons, sutras and the words of a guru produces idealistic individuals who are unable to leave behind the mind which they cherish and which constantly hones their interpretation of the present through subjective discourse, without being able to stop, thus transforming the fourth Mystery into their private property.

Even if they seem conventional (because the map is not the territory), referents, guide the spirit towards the depths if we make them simple trail markers, nothing more or nothing less, and thus encourage the intelligence to measure itself against its own creations, whilst the permanent self becomes more concentrated. Despite everything which we might hold against the “mind”, it is an infinitely supple and flexible fluid which wants nothing more than to permanently reshape the forms which it creates from ordinary thoughts into ideas and from ideas into the paradigms which organize them to obtain certain results. However, this power seems to be strangely overlooked and awakened ones must stress it constantly to reveal its power to people who cannot discover it because they attach themselves to a very weak range of projections, without realizing all the other options at their disposal (unless the route to the centre appears through meditation). Admittedly, these other possibilities require a suspension of our desire to act and a love of research which is independent of the results anticipated - a spiritual attitude which has been lost in our society of commercialism and complicated number crunching, obsessed by the fear of waste, i.e. wasting time.

Even teachers who stubbornly denounce the mind retain a few representations of Reality as sort of intellectual reference points on the one hand and  as tools for communication on the other. Although Intelligence is sufficiently mysterious to defy definition and so fast that we can only grasp its wake, we have absolute trust in it because it is the higher principal of the mind and we only dispose of thought, without harming its source - the illuminating power of the Intellect, or Self - through intuition and often also through reasoning and of course through a combination of the two which is the prerogative of the sacred arts of divination and to an extent of meditation, in which introspection raises obscure content up  towards the bright light. The art of thinking via conducive objects (symbols) has always been practised, like a sort of algebra of ideas, and myths reveal truths through the power of their images which would be more difficult to obtain without the disguise of personification. Traditional symbolic arts can be explored afresh, stripped of prejudice and this can only contribute to our understanding of the diagram of mysteries.

We are setting aside for the time being everything to do with prediction, and concentrating on the links described between the subject and the vast non-self, which comprises everything which is external to the subject, in the same way as we embark on a meditation without knowing what will happen. We do not sacrifice our freedom on the presupposition that what should happen to us is already determined somewhere and will be revealed to us by some trick or other. The ordinary mind drags down the philosophical treasures contained in the fairly large number of divinatory arts of initiates, most of which have been lost. What is of interests above all, therefore, is the overall structure, rather than discovering what purpose it can serve and the different ways of using it. If we accept the theory that these systems can sometimes pre-empt real events, then this must be because all parent situations are part of their matter, as matrices with which we can be faced. Our aim is to understand the distribution of these matrices and to accept their quantity and power, i.e. at the end of the day to accept that our lives contain highs and lows  signified by symbols, by force of circumstance, because Reality does not have to submit to our own will. We will draw on the work of ancient writers by exploring the pieces of the holistic puzzle which they constructed more deeply and we will be surprised to see that events selected to form a directory of accidents and opportunities are analogous everywhere and all describe the better approach which the person seeking a reading must adopt towards them.

It is possible to have an extraordinary encounter at any time, through the death of a loved one, receiving unexpected help, the sudden loss of professional or other support, the consolidation of a friendship, or the growth of a dislike, the manifestation of a radical realization, the intuition of an important change, an accident, or an illness which attacks the physical body. There is permanent potential for changes of direction and since they tear the homogeneous  fabric which binds the self to the non-self through identification, then the whole of our existence is in fact affected by the changes of direction represented by new opportunities and unforeseen challenges, which is something that few people understand. If everything is coherent, then  small, apparently harmless, existential changes can have repercussions on other domains The butterfly effect in meteorology which currently prevents us from making relatively accurate forecasts more than three days through their own channels, and this often escapes us. There are beginnings, middles and ends in all areas and activities and it is difficult to establish the favourable moment to begin and end any approach. It is likely that many events which do not depend on us (and which it is therefore as difficult to produce as to avoid) can surface in the here and now, calling for a specific and often completely new type of adjustment.  “Matrices” are therefore particularly intense moments in which the self is connected to the non-self in an unusual way (these are the objects represented in the tarot). This implies that all sorts of answers are possible because it is impossible to retain one’s normal stability when confronted by them and a certain degree of transcendence is required. The “everyday” self can in fact be faced with certain events which it does not expect without coming to harm, provided they remain within the limits of our emotional tolerance. Beyond this point, turbulence causes damage, even going so far as destroying  self-image, transforming the image of the world, or overturning the way in which we use time and desire (4), revealing other aspects of the self with unconscious dross on the one hand and undreamed of resources on the other. Those who are weak and believers take advantage of a death which affects them to cancel out God. Strong people, possibly even atheists or materialists, go through extraordinary suffering to discover an intense spiritual life.

Oracles are only really useful in the event of difficulties, because they suggest which type of (self/non-self) relationship is in place at the time of the reading. When everything appears to be normal, the idea of relying on a compass simply does not arise. But when we are disoriented, or in danger of it, the mantic mirror can offer a database to provide direction and, for our part, we prefer this careful approach which might seem timid, to the absolute arrogance of the modern West which has no doubts at all and destroys the Earth with a clear conscience, intoxicated by action and bereft of intelligence. Matrices leave an imprint in the psyche. Intense, extraordinary  events call for more consciousness and vigilance by definition and numerous forms of resistance manifest themselves in this very impulse to decry the loss of the usual path and to offer phony answers originating from the subconscious. Extraordinary situations call for deep resources which meditation reveals of its own accord and prepares us to face harrowing difficulties if need be. A supple spirit is capable of looking for new ways out in the impersonal reservoirs of identity behind the biological subject and his experience in which the ordinary personality does not know where to go. In a certain light, quantum meditation can act as a form of divination and it is a sort of remnant of the virgin spirit of the moment itself which draws certain cards from the unconscious by trawling the Mysteries for valuable information on the present and provisional form of the relationship between the self and the non-self.

Freud has already revealed the power of certain obscure matrices, because he establishes that particularly difficult moments leave information in the psyche, an imprint  which can interfere with the present or even permanently cause  wariness of objects analogous to what provoked the traumatic event. This has been confirmed in the United States by Vietnam war veterans, who all presented sometimes different symptoms of the same syndrome, as if the worst moments had permanently embedded themselves in the psyche to undermine the present.

However, there is no reason to suppose that things are any different for gratifying and luminous matrices. What is favourable is described differently depending on the system, but the issue is always establishing relationships between the self and the non-self, so that the self is so satisfied with what happens to it that it recognizes its true origin in the Whole – its real mother and father. (We always come back to opening up 3 to the other Mysteries). In astrology, Jupiter only  appears in ninth place out of the twelve or so which make up the whole and he consecrates the self in the Whole after having confronted himself and others. Jupiter is favourable, he establishes human beings as children of heaven who do not need to be wary of the environment and can rejoice unconditionally in their birth. This implies, of course, that the subject will learn to stand back from his dissatisfactions, tolerate them then accept them and eventually become responsible for reducing them by submitting to the true order of things. He will then be helped. He will feel gratitude, even in the midst of problems. Instead of resisting Reality under the pretext that it doesn’t suit him, he will embrace it, put up with the delay and recognize it as his master, or even as his Lord, and life will establish itself beyond whims and marvellous expectations, away from childish fears and higher denials. The great Jupiter moments which reveal a sort of precise interlocking between the self and the non-self with a blossoming which transcends the satisfactions of the ego can also leave positive traces and increase memory of the triumph of life in the individual brain, while freeing intelligence from some of its prejudices and narrow rationalism. Similarly, the star in the Tarot, for example, signifies an ephemeral junction with totality, which is wholly beneficial and totally unforeseen and there is reason to suppose that magnificent experiences, even if they do not last, leave a few living imprints of what they produce, information which can survive if nostalgia is not too strong once the experience has passed, by dissolving the self into the miraculous memory and then supporting it subsequently, whatever happens.

Of course, the two geomantic cards of greater and lesser fortune (an omen in which we need to give opportunity a helping hand) must have their dark equivalent and this is precisely the opportunity we need to understand what gives the Manifestation its status and the fourth Field its supremacy in the world of the non-self. Although principles are immutable, duration distributes them in positive or negative forms whose poles are equivalent in a way that escapes us and these poles are tamed by the qualities advanced by Eastern doctrines: detachment, equality, sacrifice of the ego and surrender to the Divine. We are no more the masters of everything which happens to us than we are slaves to events. Hence the advice of Epictetes: avoid worrying about things which do not depend on you. Reading between the lines this means: find out what really does concern you. Sift through things. This is esoteric and is the opposite of the vague, intense identification between the self and its environment as experienced by ordinary human beings, or in our jargon prisoners of Mystery 3 and of the appeal of Mystery 4, in which the present moment and desire mingle. However sifting implies something higher up, possessing criteria for making a choice.

In the same way that the divinatory arts enable us to draw information from ourselves while being guided, meditation suspends ordinary, mechanical time, repeals the normal movement of time, which ceases to flow, and becomes the mirror of what one really is. The more the self manifests itself, the more faithful the mirror becomes, the more luminous its silvering and the smoother its surface.

Difficult archetypal matrices mix up the areas of influence of our three brains. Anger or control, resentment or letting go, the desire to pull through or resignation.  And what about when an event generates an intolerable emotion ... And positive emotions too: success easily flatters our vanity and arrogance, successful passions can reinforce our lust for an object through a few processes in the depths of our brain which escape us and in which chemistry plays the main role. In short, the choices made by the present are not innocuous in the whole of the person and it sometimes assumes the role of master. It deals the cards shamelessly, imposes pain and accidents on us, social decline or sometimes a hurtful rejection perpetrated by another person, by somebody very close to us. It bewitches us with unsubtle love at first sight, just as it sometimes lets us experience total and complete ecstasy, mocking us in a sense, by merely subjecting us to a magnificent sunset or piece of music, or the veil might even tear inappropriately when we are doing the shopping!

We are connected whether we like it or not.

Certain people strive to prevent the present from manipulating us by comprehensive control.  In order to escape the reactions inflicted by the non-gratifying, they need ever more power, mastery and authority over others, fuller schedules and individual freedom. However, they cannot prevent the death of their loved ones, nor protect themselves form serious somatization in the event of a severe humiliation which will mock their mastery, because the subconscious will interpret the shock to suit itself and make a fuss about it. The opposite attitude works on the principle that the non-self is supreme and that it is up to us to adapt to what happens, whatever our plans and skill. In this vision the subject never approaches an apparently harmful event with an air of detachment, as if he didn’t deserve it. He suffers, admittedly, but accepts that this is what changes everything. This philosophy can easily develop and produce marvellous results: few events take on a heterogeneous quality, most of them are absorbed in the fullness of the self which detaches itself from approbation, from the authority to be imposed or to be followed, thus gaining inner peace which resists the workings of the fabric of relationships and the onslaughts of destiny. The nervous system is not always active and clashes no longer disturb it, but merely evoke reasoned responses.

The list of great event matrices is not endless (64 for the I-Ching). There is no reason to suppose that all events even if they appear to be unique on the outside trigger unpredictable reactions. Just as there are archetypes for situations, there are archetypes for humours excited by eventsDr Bach’s flower remedies provide a good list of emotional reactions.. What is gratifying has nuances, but overall, it seems to be beneficial. The non-gratifying can be provoked by all sorts of factors, but what it triggers internally can be summarized very succinctly. Anger, resentment, denial, complaints, the sense of being a victim, rebellion, unease, loss of the will to live, guilt and total carelessness. Even by doubling or tripling the list as a specialist might do to make it more nuanced, a unifying factor stands out from the background – the need for recovery. Obstacles are the bulwark of the process of adapting.

This means that the mind is not supreme and that the emotional part of our being is responsible for dealing with our relationship with the non-self as a whole, with criteria which may elude us, or which do not correspond to our beliefs and sometimes to our values. We are therefore confronted with two different types of interpretation of what happens to us (or simultaneous ones if we are very vigilant). If happiness and blossoming consist of making the two interpretations overlap, then life takes responsibility for countering  this with all sorts of powerful stratagems. Desire can be confused with love, but this is not always the case, or it does not last. What we accomplish sometimes flows from what we are, but we often have to act without being in full harmony with ourselves, for example in our careers and families. A permanent threat is posed by the discrepancy between the best part of us  which is fully connected with the Whole and the parts of our selves struggling with all sorts of obstacles which emphasize the lack of harmony between the willing and conscious machine and Field 3 which processes information according to the subconscious territorial law as soon as a cloud appears in the loving union which connects us to the Whole. Feeling is not a joke, or simply an attribute of childhood from which we must free ourselves, as was believed by the confirmed nineteenth century bourgeois, who took their rejection so far that they enabled Freud to develop psychoanalysis: they couldn’t sweep the dust under the carpet any more, it was overflowing Freud to Romain  Rolland (1930): “I am now trying to penetrate the Hindu jungle from which a mixture of Greek love of measure, Jewish moderation and philistine anxiety had kept me away until now. I should have ventured there earlier ... But it is not easy to go beyond one’s limitations.” Cited by Raymond de Becker in La vie tragique de Freud [The tragic Life of Freud].. It is dangerous to repress feelings and if listening to them can be painful, it is also the sovereign path to knowledge, because the contingent self, the subject of the third field, is continually referred back to his central identity, the self of the first field, and directed towards observing circumstances in the present. The individual can thus steer a harmonious course which coincides with his aspirations at the cost of permanent transformations (which become a habit) without trying to make personal preferences and attachments prevail, as if the environment, relationships and the future had to surrender.

We can also turn the problem on its head, make a list of emotions, consider that they belong to the subject then seek out the range of “events” which can trigger them. This psychological grammar is the starting point of modern psychology, whereas the sacred divinatory arts do the opposite and operate from the grid of special events. But whether we believe psychological content (usually emotions) stems from extreme events which actualize it or whether we list compulsions and ephemeral enthusiasms without taking into account what triggers them, comes down to the same thing. The self in field three is extremely vulnerable to otherness. Having forgotten its “principles”, modern culture has started from scratch empirically and according to Freud, Jung and many others, contemporary Western culture collects testimony of negative psychic imprints which can then simply be matched up with certain symbols in the divinatory arts. Contrary to rationalist beliefs, it is not fear, but caution and even a concern for the truth which have enabled us to create these wonderful systems which reproduce the whole in a relatively simple miniature puzzle, which in a sense already contained psychology: certain tarot cards describe events which are likely to arouse fear, others desire, specific dangers, hidden obstacles, changes which are required as a matter of urgency, consolidation, or a leap into the unknown. This approach can be transposed into history which turns up more than its fair share of bad cards: we can refute the persistent influence of fate in civilizations, the considerable number of misfortunes caused by errors and mistakes, lies and trickery, and in the final analysis, our inability to predict and to prevent both what is harmful and also chaos from manifesting themselves.

 Violence is an accident which can be avoided. Krishnamurti and Maharishi Mahesh Yogi devoted their lives to providing tools to dissolve the compulsions’ inherent in individuals possessed by Field 3, anxious to preserve their territory, at whatever cost, overcoming the permanent moral self on issues which arouse fear. In both examples the process by which intelligence returns to the roots of its own power to create thoughts is invoked and encouraged, without out help in the first case and based on specific practice in the other. This is what we are demonstrating by placing the self at the centre of the Mysteries and it is responsible for arbitrating in disagreements arising from the cross and for balancing ecological tensions and moral imperatives and absorbing conflicts, whilst always keeping the main priority of the self as its aim – global harmony with the Whole. It may sometimes demand that we suffer a little in material terms, that we shed a few illusions where feelings are concerned and that we finally accept that attachments and fossil-like crystallizations are barriers to the free movement of intelligence and that beliefs are carbuncles on the face of God.

In humble recognition of supreme totality, the highest form of intelligence can wander along the path of its own origins in order to avoid making the same mistakes and who knows, maybe even avoiding new ones. The most brilliant spirits who are the keenest to improve the human lot have analyzed possible lists of essential principles. This concern is found everywhere at the end of the day – in religious and occult structures in cyclical societies and in philosophical and spiritual doctrines in civilizations with a written tradition. Why should the mind not take extreme pleasure from discovering things on which it can only depend, given that it becomes aware in this way in which the self and the non-self are interwoven? This is the pact on which the divinatory arts are based: life does not obey us, reversals of fortune exist (which we can turn to good account) and that all events possess a secret, timely meaning, if we know how to use the bad as well as the good. Intelligence is indeed operative and chaos is only provisional for it is a transitional state, as it were, like an illness which is deemed to restore health, a paradoxical phase of health. We will thus be able to acknowledge the real locus of our own freedom, while seeking all the while the means to break down the boundaries of its territory once it has come up against constraints which seem immutable. (However which limitations are ever immutable?)

Everybody hits a wall sometimes -  their own wall.

It is that situation which makes somebody “lose it”, which triggers violence, gives rise to constant brooding and causes them to give up. The walls within which our freedom patrols are known to the divinatory arts, psychology lists them, astrology describes them and meditation transcends them. Spiritual knowledge therefore appears in the light of an extension of the field of consciousness and as this process is not visible from the outside, spiritualized beings, whose visions infinitely transgress ordinary perception and the conventional fields of the mind, can easily pass for ordinary people. We also believe that they are only expressing opinions when they describe the vastness of the spiritual realm, the forbidden thresholds which they have crossed and the quality of their experiences and this error significantly  reduces the impact of their testimony. People endowed with higher vision would even be forced to conceal it in certain eras, for fear of reprisals. There is even a theory that tries to establish that the tarot is a kind of Christian Kabbalah in which initiates from the North revealed their wisdom by adapting and scaling down the Eastern deck, whilst concealing it behind the strategy of personification.

 Unless a human being can envisage the possibility of higher benefit in exchange for the loss of tribal and subjective illusions, then why would he surrender to the unknown, or bend the knee before a divine, invisible, elusive and supreme authority? Lao Tzu answers this question by saying that what is bland has flavour, that the invisible can be viewed differently, that the intangible is concrete, and he discreetly directs us to recognize liberating vastness and to surrender to it unconditionally. Contrary to a widely held belief, the existential mystery is reassuring if it is experienced as an absolute and benevolent presence, in its limitless and irreducible extent. It is then completely irrelevant that it eludes our intellectual grasp and that all our arguments are shattered by its supreme silence: inexplicability (or even what has no cause, or the unborn of Buddha) is not an obstacle to a full and complete relationship with the whole. Sri Aurobindo states that the spiritual path brings so much satisfaction that if human beings could imagine it, then they would not hesitate to take up Yoga.

It would seem that “parent” events, by their truly excessive nature, can open up breaches in the natural mechanisms of the spirit, symmetrical cracks leading simultaneously to resurgence of subconscious behaviour and to solar, detached realizations, beyond the ecological territory, which immediately gives them an evolutionary impact if the paradigm of permanent transformation is accepted as being the key to becoming. Hell is the counterpart of enlightenment and matrices compete with each other to drive the subject into a corner, from fleeting ecstasy to endless crisis, and then the self finally awakens, tired of being jostled by what it cannot understand and is  ready at last to see the fourth field not as its servant but as its overlord. The vision of the open present changes our view of existence and the closed present, the systematic extension of the past, dies. The follower begins to look for what can absorb his will in a wider radius and can either thwart it or encourage it. What happens to us forces us to take a stance and this is where we find all sorts of unforeseen impulses arising in us, as an exceptional event forces us to climb out of the rut of our mental processes. Long before psychology, some people were already interested in the effects of events on the psyche and had compiled a list of essential situations, with the natural aim of making them all favourable, whether they be so or not in their physical circumstances (appearance). Obviously, there is no point in predicting disaster unless the aim is to avoid it... or to limit the damage.

One way of reading the facts enables you to see a “chain of events” forming and to deduce its consequences. However, in order to do this you have to know how to interpret signs and collect convergent information, until the whole picture can enable you to establish the likely probabilities. In this respect we might as well create the signs ourselves if we can, in order to distribute them in a representative harmony which is in accordance with the principles, as Guénon would say. There is no reason to say that the facts are easy if they are difficult or vice versa. The notion that divination does not cheat is another saying which is contrary to Reality. It opens itself up to the power of the present moment and establishes that not all moments are equal. This has been confirmed by astrology for thousands of years. (The rotation of the moon creates dispositions, humour and different potentialities, according to which segment it occupies). Divination, therefore, has to find a system where what is obviously favourable and what is obviously unfavourable are balanced, now that they have been recognized as immutable agents, produced by the simple process of time unfolding. All that is required is to reinforce the favourable if it fails and to cancel the unfavourable out insofar as possible, by limiting its manifestation or by attacking its side-on, while identifying its causes.

Nothing could be easier in the history of divination, if one agrees that everything which lies to the right is favourable and everything which lies to the left is unfavourable - an empirical deduction which is unanimous everywhere through a sort of serial coincidence which may well stem from the direction of the earth’s rotation... But other more serious conventions reveal themselves with regards odd and even numbers and the correspondence between colours and situations and over the centuries systems are devised, purified and distilled, approximations are corrected and only the signs which have proved their worth are retained. Gradually, objects which could have taken the place of factors for presages have evolved from concrete to abstract. This leads right up to complete encounters between the fruits of observation and intellectual genius, with observation serving reason, and reason arranging itself in spirals and tree diagrams to spread complementary forms or signs around a single hub which absorbs them all. Signs become more numerous and converge on the centre, starting from the basis of the probable future points which surround it and distribute what is favourable and unfavourable by listing its essential forms. However the present, as always, presides at the centre. The present is surrounded, as it were by a crowd of rival futures. We simply need to make the hexagram wheel, or to place the major arcana in a circle and we can understand straightaway. “What can happen” has a very clearly defined set of characteristics - something is bound to happen, just as the ball in the roulette wheel is bound to land on a number. The present can be considered to be informal in its essence (Tao), but it assumes forms day and night, difficult and easy, favourable and unfavourable, because we are incarnate in the present moment, different from what came before and what will come after, rooted in matter and responsible for an environment.

The central point - the present – will see file past it in random order every hexagram, arcana or geomantic figure. Intelligence is triumphant because it can frame elusive duration in the permanence of several inexhaustible models which give access to reality, circumstances and the connection between the self and the non-self. Time doubtless has some primary forms which enable us to dream that there is some sort of analogy between the triangle and the beginning, between the square and the accomplishment and between the circle and the end. Who knows if we will one day discover the type of thing heralded by poets: reading nature (and indeed all circumstances) like an open book so that we can draw what has meaning from it immediately - what connects the eye to the object, the spirit to what it grasps and the self to the undivided non-self. (This is because it is invisible and string theory which is evolving does not aim to divide up Reality. What can be heterogeneous in a galaxy of galaxies?)

Birds of omen have been replaced by symbols which are human inventions, but the principle remains the same – signs can speak. We just have to establish a framework and to lay down a few rules when reading, then symbols begin to talk freely. They cast light on the present, express the highest probabilities and because they confront us with them, we can intervene to reduce them if they are unfavourable, or to increase them if they are already of use to us. The idea of manipulating time itself is therefore a very old one. Preventing the bad seed from growing and identifying and watering the good seed is what the Chinese were trying to do with their burnt tortoise shells, long before Fo-Hi had the idea of referring everything back to a solid and a dotted line in order to represent everything.

The issue lies in identifying these famous seeds. This is where the law of analogies comes into play, along with synchronicity, which anchors it to the concrete world. If everything is coherent and we draw an element from a truly holistic puzzle, then this element is bound to correspond to what is happening. This is what happens. This has the force of law. It is impossible to draw tarot cards which do not concern us, or an I-Ching which is quirky, although we have to know how to connect the oracle to our current feelings. What comes up is “actual” and all the rest remains “virtual” – it is as simple as that. The quality of divination depends on the accuracy of the general representation of Reality in its fundamental characteristics and it would seem that from this point of view the I-Ching has the edge over other systems. It is the most mathematical, the most devoid of subjective projections and today we would say that it is the most scientific. Grasping virtualities on the point of manifesting themselves in order to influence their course is also the concern of philosophy, which imagines the different modes of time which we still have to experience, and describes higher qualities such as Beauty, Justice and Truth, for example, which we do not yet possess in order to encourage us to discover them, and it also invents political models. If we push the analysis further, the whole of Marxism based itself on a sort of prediction of the inevitable failure of capitalism in order to impose its will.

We are more worried about the future than we would like to admit and we sometimes try to make the present depend on the future and whether this is right or wrong is a very thorny issue. Some people believe that it exists within us, a long way ahead, but that we can draw it as far as the point of now. The others, who are far scarcer, are generally awakened ones, teachers and wise men who know its secret. This is the secret which we have to see, because it cannot be thought of and which has to be experienced because it cannot be imagined.

The future... is just the present which has not taken place yet.

This is how the supramental presents it to us and we refuse to “believe” in the future. When we see the extent to which the present can be muddled, rich, unexpected, intertwined, contrasting and contradictory and the extent to which the now is full of surprises, meanderings, marching on the spot, jolts and mood swings, not to mention traps, then we must apply this system of the future because it is the present in waiting. Nothing more, nothing less. This is what we must return to when practising meditation. We must love duration to the point where it becomes supreme. Each moment must be full of something, anything, but it must teach, nourish or relax us. Time is pure and pared down. Time is connected.

The future has much less substance than the past, which leaves a memory trace, but by definition we can expect of it what is lacking in the past, without any certainty of filling the void. Personally, if the best fortune teller in the world predicted a future which did not suit me, then I would try to intervene in it, using the supramental to change it. There is no need whatsoever to submit to fate. This is also the aim of meditation, because fate is nothing more than a series of rough edges in motion, on which the inflexible spirit cannot get a grip, heterogeneous psychological rough edges which mechanically trigger their own harmful consequences. The open, agile, connected spirit goes astray less often, changes direction in time and falls into fewer traps, or pulls itself out of them better. It is cleverer to learn how to break one’s fall than to dream of being infallible. In any case, the territory of life is very different from the map of happiness which we are pursuing in the wake of our ancestors. At the risk of repeating myself – it is more useful to know how to fall than to try to avoid a fall or a stumble. Life is not all smooth, but is a universe with different surfaces amidst various slopes, some of them slippery, others thorny or too steep. Life offers paths hindered by junctions which are both seductive but are also bounded by precipices hidden in the mist, and learning how to find one’s way back to oneself, wherever you might go, and to abolish the directions of the solar self centre whatever the event or path followed is an art and a science.

Given that all eras seem to create their own method for interpreting Reality, with their own particular guiding principles, it becomes obvious that mental exertion is false per se if it strays too far from the present, or rather that it is so dependent on ambient conditions that we cannot trust it beyond its immediate functioning. In this respect, science and philosophy react to contingent ignorance rather than provide a basis for knowledge, just as our opinions merely oppose other opinions, without being based on total, non-mental and immutable feeling. Otherwise certain knowledge would have become definitive a long time ago, or our personal ideas would have destined us for happiness, but happiness runs out if we are not attentive. This never happens: speed carries us along, we let go of crystallizations as soon as they become fossils, i.e. very quickly and we renew mental structures, our approach to relationships and our vision of the world, and also recognize fluctuations in our image of ourselves, which we nurture and which is exposed to major forms of turbulence. The chaos of external time catches up with those who live in a closed inner order and grinds them, and thus meditation can be a practice designed to extract us from the unforeseen turns taken by history in order to confront it with a cosmic approach. The more Field 3 is transformed, the less dependent we are on place, possessions, ties and contingent roots. Victims of their own narrowness, closed egos imagine that they are the prey whereas they have in fact all they have done is to think that they could live without attention, care and depth, with the pride of the buried self which views any reappraisal as an admission of weakness and which does not see danger coming.

We must love without barricading ourselves in our predilections, because today is sovereign. Plato does not stand the test of history. Newton had to bow to Einstein who corrected rather than contradicted, and we have now gone way beyond that long-haired Jewish thinker who famously stuck his tongue out, against a backdrop of strings, bosons, quarks, gluons and weightless neutrinos, whereas the big bang is rather too naive a theory to have much mileage left in it before it falls victim to the brickbats of outraged student geniuses. Even in religious matters, Christianity, Hinduism and Buddhism can no longer claim supremacy, even at a local level, since the supramental has brought a new dimension to human potential (although this does not detract from what they have each brought in their own way). Guatama (Buddha) was fed up with contemporary devotion and preached lightening, Christ saw in the law of an eye for an eye the senseless perpetuation of clan and territorial law, and preached a message of love. Priestly Hinduism exhausted itself trying to maintain a vision of knowledge which is accessible during our lifetime, as opposed to the salvation of the soul bought on credit (at a derisory rate) by perpetuating rites spread by dint of moral threats from smug sectarians. Freudianism was prolonged in constructs which almost seem to reject it –  by Jung, Adler, Rank, Maslow, Rogers, Laing, Grof, Assagioli, Dolto, Erickson, right through to Watzlawick, who would seem to have been secretly taught by a Zen patriarch or to have picnicked with Alan Watts amongst the sequoias. However, in all these circles which were labelling psychology, the same concern for intelligence has been thrown to the winds in order to approach the issue of the elevator between the conscious and the subconscious, as avatars were already doing with fear and desire, guilt and self-surrender, bearing a grudge and forgiveness. Each phase is necessary and wrongly appropriates an amount of absolute which can only be contradicted in the next phase. When using the mind it is enough not to expect the impossible, but we must also make it to yield what is urgent, so that the actual moment can create immediate interpretations. If everything is coherent and the past unravels and the future is anticipated, then these are all that is necessary. (When we consult the I-Ching or the tarot deck, we must choose the present moment which does not offer its own interpretation and which requires a helping hand).

Present meanings are there. The fact that they have no long-term impact proves that the future does not exist, otherwise we would eventually have unearthed it since we have been searching for it for such a long time. It has never conformed at any time with individual or collective expectations. Aristocrats did not expect the storming of the Bastille and the revolutionaries were taken aback as they were not expecting the rule of the Terror (as school textbooks call it) so soon. Everything is created and dismantled in an instant and any prediction which claims to be accurate is a wound inflicted on the sovereignty of the present. Heraclitus was totally right – whatever the spirit grasps, it is true at the very moment at which it is grasped, in pure connectivity, in the actual instant. Sooner or later on conditions will have changed and the water from the same stream will be different, so it is therefore no longer the same stream. Separating truths derived by mental effort in whatever field from their context is a process which yields unreliable results. Plato will always be more meaningful to his own times than to us today, just as Marx cast a spell on the intelligentsia of a certain era, before being consigned to oblivion. Philosophy cannot, therefore, be separated from history unless we want to assassinate and turn it into a dead form. If we apply this principle to religions we have to admit that one follows on from another, that they reflect their era and that at the end of the day they are all large-scale reforms of the one, universal religion of which the Rishis were aware and which continues today over and above any one specific form.

If we separate the mind from the actual moment of its workings, then we grant it sovereignty which it only possesses in a very small number of purely timeless areas, such as mathematics and the esotericism of the principles – i.e. whatever enumerates and defines “absolute” invariants, free from temporal and physicalRené Guénon is the champion of all categories of “invariants”, which he has discovered, listed and defended in all the cultures which he has explored. His work is homogeneous when viewed in this light. corruption. (The binary alphabet of the I-Ching, which is in line with that used in computing, seems to have a rosy future). When grasping a specific moment fully and totally, the intelligence is functioning at full capacity, taking all the materials at its disposal into account, and from this point of view, deep thought without emotion and meditation are the only accurate processes, leading the intelligence to the locus of the moment itself, without concealing the presence of the physical body which enables total alignment and must participate without any rupture between the flights of our spirit and the integration of the subject in the moment itself. Because the spirit knows how to make duration virtual, it tries endlessly to project into the future or to return to the past when the present hides and it does so constantly, because it refers us to our dreams and hopes, and to our failures and memories. Embedding the mind in the present is a legitimate aim, which numerous psychological aggregates spread across the first three mysteries reject.

A truth can fade, as it were, as happens constantly in scientific and medical fields and in the social sciences, where we still do not know how an anthropologist can see anything other than what suits him in a society which is fundamentally alien to him, as works accumulate based on the same folklore without exhausting the potential connections between psychology and culture. Everything is just perspectives, information and contracts in the present moment. It may appear to be a caricature, but it is not entirely false that we can only understand an author’s aim if we are his contemporary and affiliated to the same culture and present at the very moment he expresses it. Being present at one of Socrates’ improvisations or at a lecture by Plato is worth twenty years of complex study. Under the portico of his academy one can live and breathe the need for this new vision to take wing, in its very own setting with the scent of the sea in one’s nostrils, but you need to be able to travel backwards in time and read ancient Greek. At the Sorbonne, Plato is just one set of signs framed by titles out of so many equally similar or totally different signs: Aristotle, Pythagoras, Protagoras.... studying them is a form of necrophilia or a naive illusion!

Practising meditation releases its true nature, which cannot be understood from the outside any more than we can taste a grilled lobster by glancing at a menu. Words are deceptive. The same signifier can change meaning from one moment to the next. The word death, for example, seems harmless, but when you utter it in connection with the death of a person close to you, it will have a different resonance. Only the content is alive. The moment is real and its wake is dead and nobody knows what it will think in three minutes’ time. It is therefore natural to be surprised by our own thoughts: one thought can form in 3, another in 4 and another in 1 or even 2 for the same situation, or their outcome can even be quirky. It is quantum in a sense: in the face of danger, thought in 3 stemming from the body advocates violence and defensiveness, thought in 4 concentrates itself and waits for the adversary’s flaw with all its sense on the alert, thought in 1 steps back from emotion and prevaricates, and thought in 2 eventually surrenders. This example is helpful for practising the four Mysteries to demonstrate that our three brains work simultaneously and that, depending on the circumstances, one or other will naturally try to take control or, to put it another way, each guna offers its services. DanielGoleman, Emotional Intelligencethe author of a wonderful book, Emotional Intelligence, quotes the example of a father who shot his fourteen year-old daughter in the back of the head in her own room. She had wanted to give her parents a fright and had claimed to have gone out... Who fired the gun? It was not the father of Field 1, but the overwhelmed animal of Field 3.

In his excellent work Quantum Healing (which is a parallel form of preparation to practising the four Mysteries), Deepak ChopraQuantum Healing recalls the well-known legend of the snake and the rope. A man frightened his entire village at nightfall by claiming that a cobra was guarding the entrance to it. It was only a coil of rope. The spirit does not tolerate every situation with the same elegance or objectivity. Fear which is available on the one hand (3) and desire on the other (4) both wait in a state of quantum uncertainty until opposing circumstances favourable to embellishing dramas occur. Conflicting opinions can suddenly come between friends and thwarted hope which becomes emotional disappointment contaminates the self, which will then take steps. A pleasant surprise can boost neurotransmitters and produce a specific chemistry which enhances the moment or strips it of projections. I am convinced that nobody can adopt values unless he has discovered them for himself and true values stem from the centre - the self - and not from allegiance or imitation, i.e. from any kind of influence. Pseudo vegetarians take advantage of the Easter family lunch to stuff themselves with roast lamb, until they feel guilty but replete and pseudo Christians are unable to love their enemy (death to the infidel!). Obedient ascetics wait for higher love, without admitting it to themselves, and rationalist atheists wait for God to appear round the corner in spite of themselves, greedy for proof of his existence. Everything which the mind grasps (and let us allow it to grasp the Ideal, as that is it’s job) must be proof against fact. Being proof against facts is where the junction between the four mysteries establishes itself in a much more flexible way, whilst a larger area forms in the centre without expectations and fears, a space with an imperial presence for which the fourth field is a fruit, a source and a divinity.

The mind is the tool of our species. Let us use it without imitating anybody and especially not those teachers who have lost the use of it. Letting the spirit become autonomous always yields the same disastrous results, but referring it back to the centre - the self - makes it the personal representative of universal intelligence. Let us prevent the self from drowning in its own thoughts only to declare a hidden war between the emotional brain and our sense of personal identity in times of crisis. The self only has to cling to what is already lost if it listens to the body. It no longer seeks to circumvent the emotional brain, which is already further away, by acknowledging a new situation, as the senses have notified it of the changes which have been carried out. It is simply a case of letting go instead of letting the two brains confront each other in a form of denial of the conflict, which leads to pure suffering. Those who say “That should never have happened” will never go back through time.

MYSTERY 1

MEDITATION ON DISTANCEPreferably in a quiet, locked room, with the telephone switched off and the doorbell disabled. Carry out the exercise seriously, but in a light manner and take every precaution to avoid being disturbed.

CROSS-LEGGED OR IN THE LOTUS POSITON, PLACE YOUR CONSCIOUSNESS IN THE THIRD EYE, AND LET THE EXTERNAL WORLD GRADUALLY DISSOLVE. CLOSE YOUR EYES UNTIL YOU CAN ONLY PERCEIVE
YOUR OWN PRESENCE.

SCONCENTRATE ON WHAT YOU ARE, OUTSIDE ANY ERA, BEYOND THE PAST, WITHOUT MEMORY, BEYOND THE FUTURE,
WITHOUT IMAGINING ANY PARTICUAR FUTURE.

LET QUESTIONS SURFACE, CHANGE MYSTERY, THEN COME BACK, PLACING THE CONSCIOUSNESS IN THE THIRD EYE
LET THE QUESTION OF WHAT WE REPRESENT FOR
OURSELVES RISE TO THE SURFACE IF IT OCCURS. WHEN YOU
FEEL THAT CONSCIOUSNESS HAS MOVED,
PLACE YOURSELF AS A BEING IN THE THIRD EYE.

MYSTERY 2

MEDITATION ON ASPIRATIONWhether indoors or outside, dawn and dusk are good times. In the mountains.

IN ANY POSITION,
FOCUS CONSCIOUSNESS
IN THE SOLAR PLEXUS,

FEEL THE POWER OF THE TAO, GOD, ABSOLUTE MYSTERY,
FEEL AN IMPERSONAL FLAME BURNING, WHICH LOVES UNCONDITIONALLY,WHICH ACCEPTS THE TRUTH UNCONDITIONALLY
AND THE PRESENCE OF THE WHOLE,
FEEL THE SOLAR POTENTIAL,
THE CALL OF THE DIVINE WITHIN US,
POSSIBLY TURN TOWARDS THE DIVINE MOTHER, THE CREATIVE ENERGY,

RETAIN THE PRESENCE
IN THE CHAKRA OF THE HEART

MYSTERY 3

MEDITATION ON TAKING ROOTOutdoors in the sunshine in winter, in a quiet setting, perhaps lying down, but holding onto the feeling of being pressed against the earth. Forest, fields..

CROSS-LEGGED OR IN THE LOTUS POSITION,
FEEL CONTACT WITH THE EARTH
WITH ALL PARTS OF THE BODY
IN CONTACT WITH THE GROUND

HOLD ONTO THIS FEELING

LET THE PREOCCUPATIONS OF THE FACTUAL WORLD SURFACE
WITHOUT SEEKING THEM OUT
HOLD ONTO THE TERRITORY
WORK
RELATIONSHIPS ACROSS THE GENERATIONS
DIET AND HEALTH

FEEL YOUR BODILY STATE

RELAX YOUR FACE AND BREATH SLOWLY OCCASIONALLY
RELAX GENTLY

MYSTERY 4

CROSS-LEGGED OR IN THE LOTUS POSITION,
BUT IF EFFORT IS REQUIRED LIE DOWN AND RELAX
FREEWHEELINGVary between indoors and outdoors. Outdoors, there is nothing better than a waterfall, torrent or stream. Identify with the rapid flow. Possibly the coast. Change position to avoid any tension. Improvise. MEDITATION

LET ALL YOUR THOUGHTS DRIFT BY
WITHOUT HOLDING ONTO ANYTHING

ACCEPT EVERYTHING WHICH OCCURS
THEN COME BACK TO THE PURE PRESENT
AND WITHOUT EXPECTATON
FEEL ALL THE SENSATIONS

RELAX THE MUSCLES AGAIN
DO NOT FORCE THE LOTUS POSTION

FOCUS YOUR CONSCIOUSNESS ON YOUR SKIN,
EARS AND LUNGS
LISTEN TO YOUR BRAIN

IF QUESTIONS RECUR
GO INTO THE APPRPORIATE MYSTERY
AND BECOME RECEPTIVE TO INFORMATION

DECIDE PASSIVELY TO FIND A MEANING
IN THE LEAST
SENSATON
EMOTION
THOUGHT

DECIDE THAT EVENTS (BOTH EXTERNAL AND INTERNAL) WHICH APPEAR TO BE UNFAVOURABLE ARE AS FAVOURABLE TO YOUR EVOLUTION AS EASY EVENTS WHICH ARE IN KEEPING WITH WHAT YOU DESIRE

SEEK THE MEANING OF THE OBSTACLE
ACCEPT THAT FRICTIONS WILL ARISE
BETWEEN THE MYSTERIES
DO NOT EXPECT TO FIND IMMEDIATE SOLUTIONS
(IMMEDIATE SOLUTIONS CAN BE FALSE OR MERELY REACTIONS)

ACCEPT THE LEGITIMACY OF EACH OF THE FOUR MYSTERIES
I.E. ITS UNCONDITIONAL PRESENCE
DESPITE THE DIFFIULTIES
ENCOUNTERED IN RELATION WITH ONE OR ANOTHER OF THEM

Cardinal meditation, aside from its pure use, is also a new divinatory art, which is as deep as the I-Ching and the Chinese would readily consider it to be equivalent to a feng shui of consciousness itself. In fact, you can actually choose a meditation “at random” by dealing one of the four aces, for example, and by using dealing in the way in which will now be described. It is a natural alternative to cardinal meditation in which you instinctively choose to spend time exploring and deepening your awareness of one of the four Mysteries by making a choice which does not require any effort. This constitutes a recreational exercise for the intelligence of the present moment , by channelling it towards whichever primordial field is dealt, whilst getting the brain used to keeping its attention focused in one sector. Because synchronicity is operational, we can also claim that it is the ideal moment to face up to exploring this field, from which we will return armed with practical clues, because fate has decided that it is urgent.

By analogy, hearts refer to Mystery 2, diamonds to 4 (the lower point of the diamond indicates the way in which we must surf on the crest of the moment), spades refer to 3 and obviously clubs to 1, as the three semi-circular branches represent the past/present/future synthesis which the permanent self integrates into its own structure represented by the stem.

Synchronous meditation (with the drawing of cards) therefore offers itself as a means of deepening one’s feeling by reflecting on the content of the field designated by fate which deserves particular care during this phase, because it has been actualized, whereas all the other trumps remain virtual. By keeping attention focused on the single field represented by the card which has been drawn we are training the spirit to collect itself and this is an interesting experience in different respects. If we stay wrapped up in one single Mystery for a long time, it is possible to discover what it represents in the depth of our being by the work which takes place to distinguish it totally from the others. Some people will find that it is difficult for them to separate 1 from 3, 3 from 4, or 1 from 4, for example, and they can invite their intelligence to come back to that field until it identifies with it alone, without any amalgamation or confusion with any of the others.

The following options are available:

Firstly: demystification (of the backdrop) of Mystery 3 through distance and standing back is desirable, whilst we assess the position held by this zone by watching the sectors which constitute it as they file past. Relationships, work, family, the self in its environment and what is undergone by the body through these structures. Drawing the ace of Spades.

Secondly: the virginity of the pure moment, a channel towards the self. Drawing the ace of Diamonds, represents something - a goal, a blessing, a need. What are we ready to call into question in order to better define time which has not necessarily been orchestrated? Can we experience it first hand?

Thirdly: The quality of the permanent Self and the plastic transformation of our self-image take pride of place. Drawing the ace of Clubs. Is what we represent for ourselves dependent on controlling events, on the role of desire, time and spiritual expectations? Can we clarify what is related only to our being, without identifying with our environment or without being influenced by affects or prestige?

Fourthly: the growth of the subliminal self (Chakras, energies, the voice of the soul). Drawing the ace of Hearts, refers us back to our overall commitment to deepest reality, which eludes us, but from which we originate – the Divine, the cosmos, Earth and life.

The modern philosophical vision of a superior man who does not have to account to God or nature is a new phenomenon in historyRupert Sheldrake, The Rebirth of Nature and few people born in the West in the current era have fully liberated themselves from this cultural enchantment which deprives us of heavenly and earthly roots. The work which I am suggesting offers a quick way of taking stock of the dross of superficial beliefs inherited from childhood which can still define an approach to the potential intelligence of the non-self which is too narrow. Three centuries have passed in this same self-destructive vein, which wanted man to be the master of everything and to be able to transform all the circumstances of his existence to suit him, with the West dragging the rest of the world along in its mad stampede. We now know that the consequences of this approach are catastrophic, that living conditions have only improved for a minority, more or less, and that our climate gets more erratic every year. We now understand that we have usurped our freedom by basing ourselves on science and asking the impossible of it: a sort of abstract decoding of the laws of the universe which would allow us to continuously improve our society in a ready-made fashion. Human beings have, in a sense, imprisoned themselves in their dreams of independence, whilst imagining that they can subordinate nature and the cosmos to their own will by surrendering their hearts.

It is, therefore, always by turning back to the old truths which are almost forgotten that we will find the exact paradigm for the Manifestation: human beings are not free at all and must respond at all times to the pressure which totality puts on them, which is symbolized by the fact of death, which can strike at any moment, the demands of dead spirits, or even the commandments of God or lastly transcendental Unity. Wise beings from ancient civilizations did not try to free themselves by conscious feats from the fundamental constraints of existence, nor did they try to forget them through the obsessive cult of work and productivity. On the contrary, by trying to understand energies far stronger than the human will which they located both in the past and in the future, they submitted to them on the one hand and found their own degree of room for manoeuvre on the other. The present was experienced under a mysterious dome, which projected on either side. Although superstition finally defeated the philosophy of the Emerald“What is above is the same as what is below by the ‘magical power’ of one single thing” table, just as it also defeated the higher spirit of religions, certain intelligent civilizations from China to Greece and in Africa and the Celtic kingdoms knew perfectly well how to use oracles in a sacred way. But it is a difficult, secret art which, like the transformation of the Self by teachers, saw its traditions die out or become corrupted because it is often difficult  and erratic to ensure continuity within a framework of political change. The authority of cosmic laws is difficult to find and even harder to feel.

We can find the direction of our being in everything which allows us to recognize the authority of the non-self over us, or its right of veto at least, for the more stubborn amongst us, and each meditation therefore wants to be a window open to infinite possibilities, whose potential authority or timely invitation we no longer challenge. We can enumerate the faces of this huge non-self towards which we turn, ranging from the supramental Divine to the whole of the physical (and indivisible) universe to which we belong – heaven, earth, life, time, other people, family, the environment and work, for example. Whatever our chosen aspect or the actual perspective, it comes to the same thing: Reality is stronger than us because it surrounds us on all sides and the idea of recognizing and understanding it before setting ourselves up as masters of our own existence must prevail over our beliefs and habits to enable us to stand on an equal footing and to coincide. We must interlock with Reality.

Obviously, the symbols of the mysterious dome reveal the very fragile equilibrium to be found between events which happen to us through force of circumstance and those which we can create ourselves through the power of our own qualities and aspirations. This is one of the applications of meditation. The I-Ching, inspired tarot or transpersonal astrology and first and foremost opening up the Self, free us from the obscene nature of modern life – our belief that we can treat nature with casual scorn, rejecting the Divine as an inconvenient hypothesis and appropriate the future purely for the purposes of the individual ego. There is, therefore, a means of testing whether we are meshed with the non-self through the whole of Reality in a way which reduces the likelihood of breaches before they occur and lead to all manner of ills, including somatization which take place above consciousness of what we are and our own malaise. In this way, a fundamental return to terrestrial nature which is pure and sovereign can take place and promote ecological healing. As for ascension towards transcendence, it enables us to accept this difficult passage in history in which we are bogged down without judgement or scorn, whilst the seeker develops unconditional love for the Divine which is still hidden.

Events do not have any intrinsic meaning and it is the way in which they are interpreted which gives them their significance. Therefore, if we become aware that the same fact already has three or four virtual interpretations in relation to the part of us to which it addresses itself, we are making considerable progress towards choosing a method of interpretation and it can be an enriching exercise to feel the impulses  which take place in all directions. Many people, for example, feel humiliated in their personality (1) when purely behavioural or contingent criticisms are applied to them, which do not call them into question, but merely their knowledge or means of communication (Field 3). They have interpreted in Field 1 what takes places in Field 3. Oversensitivity is a sign that Fields 3 and 1 have not really been separated and that circumstances are constantly swamping the self. Others experience an ephemeral and intense situation in a sparkling 4 and if this experience is cut short they become affected in the self itself and are unable to separate the external sequence - the film as it were which belongs to the past - from their individuality which stands back from events, because nostalgia for lost pleasures (4) takes the upper hand over the new actual moment, which becomes more moderate. The ultimate aim is not to interpret anything, but to see the true impact of things directly with out placing any construction on it or ornamenting it, but only the Self can do this – hence the need for either quantum or traditional meditation.

Difficult events are generally hijacked in the emotions and transferred to Field 1 in the form of humiliating traces, disappointments and loss, requiring a period of mourning. This is a phase which we have to go through to overcome narcissistic wounds, whilst preparing ourselves in the integrity of the first Mystery to repel contamination from 3 , or by abandoning the wish for the Divine in 2. The two processes enable us to avoid feeling like victims, because the person who is suffering is located in 3 and 4, but the Self does not suffer in Field 1 if it leans on Field 2. It suffers through 3, with which it identifies, and it can either repel emotional attacks or absorb and dissolve them. Narcissistic wounds which are denied can suddenly liberate consciousness of Field 4 and then the subject will allow himself do anything to avenge his humiliation and lose himself. This path leads to what we call “bad karma” and produces arrogant people who think that they can do what they want and make other people’s lives a misery when the only reality of interest to them is themselves. It is likely that certain mental diseases are simply the fruit of chronic struggles between the four Fields, and the self changes depending on the Mystery speaking within it at any given time.

For the spiritual seeker, meditation is simply what enables mental processes operating on different strata to combine until the central self can adopt a stance to accept the situation as it presents itself instead of replying too quickly before having grasped all the possible options, or avoiding emotional suggestions until the body calls us seriously back into line. In our supramental optic, it is always possible for the self in Field 1 connected to the self in Field 2 to accept the most difficult events. The simplified approach to opening of cardinal meditation, an offshoot of synchronicity, therefore consists of putting oneself at the centre of the Mysteries, without thinking, and taking part in the choice of direction adopted by thoughts which arise. Once we get used to it, we realize that there is a permanent shuttling between fields 4, 3 and 1. The first field synthesizes data which surfaces from all over, trivial preoccupations (late payment of a bill) (3), inner feelings (taking stock of a relationship, navigating between expectations and disappointments), clearly-defined or structural problems, untimely memories, questions concerning the origins of actions and a return to the image of the self (1). Automatic chemical processes which elude us can sometimes be modified by faith, positive visualization or even (in difficult cases) by the addition of a physical process during letting go in 4.

The cardinal meditation which we are presenting does not try to play games with events and to make them say what suits us depending on philosophy or ideal. It is a method based a on supramental knowledge of the of the workings of the supreme intelligence in the brain, nervous system and cells, which frees us from all forms of dogmatic bias. Mental intelligence operates in several different registers. It summons up information, i.e. thoughts, which are different and contradictory, in accordance with the spirit of the single field which they represent, and which is therefore alien to the other fields. One layer of the spirit tries to ignore the promptings of the body and vital being when something non-gratifying presents itself, but the signals which are being ignored also stem from another form of radical, powerful and physical intelligence which processes the impact of events in chemical terms through neurotransmitters, endorphins and neuropeptides and can produce all sorts of feelings, some of which are so subtle that they are undetectable without sustained practice. The less the subject listens, the more physical intelligence perseveres, accentuating  imbalances until the self is forced to take note when a physical, nervous or psychosomatic illness appears.

The more clearly defined and vibrant the relationship between the Self and the Whole, the less suffering persists.

Whilst the divinatory arts limit themselves to defining parent-events - matrices in which we are especially manipulated by circumstances -  meditation, by contrast, views all events as being important and it is not a case of avoiding accidents or promoting opportunities. It is a case of listening and feeling with such awareness at all times that there will no longer be any mechanical events, routine feelings and  moments in which sensations will be dictated by memory.

Recognizing the supremacy of totality is not the same as submitting blindly to it, but it is a case of looking for the best fit between it and ourselves. Nature has to be accepted as an awkward partner, but as a partner nevertheless and desire can be viewed in different ways until it finds a homogeneous place in the self. In a similar fashion, the mind can be viewed as a power which we have at our disposal, like a trainer. Meditation, whatever form it may take, enables us to distinguish between reason dimmed by unconscious dross and pure, objective, calm arguments, which offer different solutions to those stemming from anxiety, fears or violent desires. The self will increase its field of consciousness and the spirit will branch out into the most subtle and radiant universes on the wavelength of the boundless Self. The cosmos itself will be viewed as a powerful partner which entertains itself by enabling us to test our freedom in a wide range of experiences, all of which nourish us with non-self and collectively bring us back to the self in its mysterious integrity. Finally, the Divine will become a particularly active partner, because It plays at hiding and at manifesting Itself directly, then withdrawing in a cycle which eludes us and to which we do not possess the keys.

"There is meaning in every turn of fate
There is freedom in every aspect of destiny."

Sri Aurobindo, Savitri.

Natarajan, May 2006.