Theos-Talk Archives (October 1993 Message tl00038)

Regarding lower and higher magic, I would say that we can take the
activities of any of our principles or elements of consciousness and
have them function in a lower or higher fashion.

The physical senses used for excesses of self-indulgence are a lower
activity, used for art and the appreciation of the spiritual are a
higher activity. And their extension is what I'd call psychic
development. (Linga Sharira)

The vital energies are necessary to sustain and give motion to one's
life. Their lower use is to exhaust them in personal pleasures. Their
higher is to sustain one's unselfish and self-forgetful activities.
(Prana)

The creative will, the deliberate choice to bring things into being,
the entangling energy that gives outer expression to things, can be
used to ensnare one further in mayavic existence, or used to conceive
and bring about wonders in the world. (Kama)

If you call kama "will" and prana "power", then kama-prana would be
"will power". These two aspects of conscious more particularly
describe what is needed to make things happen. Making things happen,
directed towards the material world, is a lower use of this power.
Making things happen, directed towards inner states of consciousness,
is a higher use of this power. I would use "magic" to describe the
extended use of this power, beyond what most people have, in the same
way that I'd use "psychic" to describe an extension of the physical
senses.

Raising one's consciousness to union with the divinity comes in
stages, as one learns to shift the seat of consciousness from the
lower principles to the higher. This shift is one of emphasis or
awareness, not the adding of a new consciousness. The higher principles
are present and functional the whole time, it's just that we're so
preoccupied with the activity of the lower that we don't pay attention
to them, although they are still there as an active component of
our consciousness.

The entire seven principles are present in us as fully embodied beings.
They are also present in dogs, cats, trees, even in the rocks. But
they are not all functional in a self-conscious, self-directed,
individual manner. A dog has manas, but not self-conscious manas, a
dog knows as "a gift" via instinct, a dog does not know because of
cognizing. And we likewise sense higher things as "a gift" via a
higher instinct, because of a lack of self-consciousness in our highest
principles.

There are a number of ways that we can cultivate the goal of the
raising of our consciousness to the divine. Yoga and high magic may be
among them. But it does not matter what particular things that you do
to your body, nor what particular things that you see and touch and
here--on this or any plane--, or the particular beings that you meet and
interact with. Certainly some enoble and others degrade, but the
specific activity of the personality is not so important as the fact
that we learning to appreciate something that is deeper within than
what is happening to the personality.

Changes to the personality carry over to the next personality, they
affect future lifetimes. But the real value from a life is the
spark of a higher awareness, an sense of something that goes beyond
the personality, the aroma or essence of that which is high and holy
in the life. This is what separates from the personality in the
after-death states at the second death, when we leave the personality
behind as a dead shell and withdraw into the bosum of the Triad and
begin our devachan.

This essence is the budding consciousness of the individuality in us.
It is what can only be sensed as the "something more beind life" that
we feel but cannot give direct expression to. It is not the highest
there is to all existence, a sense of the ultimate, but rather it is
the budding spark of light within us that will someday both brighten
our lives and provide an entirely new experience of being.

                                 Eldon Tucker
                                 eldon@netcom.com