The Blue Planet Teaches Unity
With All, But It Also Produces Illusions
Carlos Cardoso Aveline
Life is like a sphinx. It confronts us with a challenging riddle and a dilemma:
“Answer me, or I will devour you.”
Perplexed before the unknown, we seek to expand our understanding. It is inevitable to transcend the old small world which we are attached to. It is also desirable. Yet the mystery of the Universe – astrologically associated with the planet Neptune – must be unriddled with common sense and moderation, while we avoid falling into traps.
The search for happiness is a mathematical equation to be solved. To correctly live every moment and to recognize the presence of sacredness in daily events are two factors which produce peace. In order for us not to be devoured by routine, it is enough to have a clear and altruistic goal in our lives; to concentrate on it; to believe in ourselves – and to develop full attention.
Each circumstance contains lessons which help us get rid of ignorance. Instead of trying to dominate others, the correct thing to do is to observe every event as part of a riddle we must solve. Three steps are useful in this task:
1) To look at reality from the point of view of a transcending and lasting victory, because optimism is the fuel of life;
2) To identify, understand and abandon habits and psychological mechanisms which cause suffering to ourselves or to other people;
3) To use the available energy in those actions which produce an expansion of consciousness, inner well-being and stability.
The Blue Giant
Happiness is the common goal to individuals and societies, but it is not always sought in wise ways. As a result of unintelligent manners to seek for satisfaction, one can see today many a sign of decadence, both cultural and moral.
Millions of people find it difficult to combine in a correct way two essential factors in human life: stability and transcendence. If stability is a lesson from Saturn, transcendence is something we must learn from Neptune, one of the most distant planets in our solar system.
Travelling since almost incalculable ages at a distance of more than four billion kilometers from the Sun, Neptune is a giant if compared to Earth. It is covered by clouds of frozen methane which move around the planet in speeds of up to 2,000 kilometers an hour. It possesses four rings and 13 known Moons. Its biggest Moon is Triton, which moves in the direction opposite to all the other satellites.
The climate and weather in Neptune are not fine to our humanity. Compared to the Earth, the blue gaseous which stimulates universal compassion receives 900 times less energy from the Sun. This frozen celestial body has a rotational conglomerate of tempests whose size is similar to the planet Earth, and which slowly moves in the anticlockwise direction, leaving behind a vast trail of clouds.
In spite of appearances, Neptune is not quite one of our local planets. Helena Blavatsky wrote that its connection to our solar system is illusory.[1] Dane Rudhyar, an astrologer who studied Blavatsky, considers it an ambassador to our solar community. Neptune represents and brings to us the cosmic energy of the Milky Way: hence its unfathomable character. On the lower levels of consciousness, its mysterious aspects can be seen as mischievous. On the level of the heart, the blessing flows.
Blavatsky wrote in several occasions about sources of human inspiration which are far away from our solar system, among them the Pleiades.[2] Although Neptune is near to us, it has much of the outer Cosmos. Since it does not entirely belong to our local system, it brings to us information about transcendence and the infinite.
Different celestial bodies have influence over various aspects of life. While the Moon regulates the cycles of our planet which determine ocean tides, agricultural harvests and the evolution of emotional states, Neptune inspires and directs in human beings the need for a transcendent union with the Cosmos as a whole. It stimulates the feeling of an eternal, silent unity with Life unlimited. Together with Jupiter, the blue giant is co-regent of Pisces, the most mystical and the last sign of the Zodiac. Pisces symbolizes the culmination of the evolutionary journey and the occult identity of each individual soul with the cosmic ocean.
Although all beings search for transcendence in one way or another, those who live under a strong Neptunian influence experience it with more intensity. And this is not always done with wisdom and discernment. The Neptunian search for transcendence can become a trap, as in the cases of drug-addiction, alcoholism and other forms of exaggeration and dependence.
The Need for Discernment
The universe is a large family. Every healthy human being has a spiritual relation to planets and stars. The energy of transcendence is situated in a strategic place in his soul. The way the individual manages such an energy in his daily life, however, depends on his talent to live correctly. Transcendence can liberate a human being from his limitations and make him happy. It can also cause confusion and make it impossible for him to see anything in a clear way.
Individual life must maintain a balance between stability and transcendence. The two things are necessary. If someone is too attached to routine, an illness can be the natural instrument to make him recover his contact with the infinite. Death and other forms of loss are passports to transcendence, when common sense is abandoned.
If a society falls victim of materialism and forgets ethical values, then a social disease emerges which forces it to re-examine its basic assumptions and re-establish its commitment with the progress of human soul. Violence, drug-addiction, alcoholism, the exaggeration and commercial exploitation of sex and the lack of ethics in politics, all result from the wrongly managed impulse to transcend, which comes from Neptune. Its distortion threatens the nations which forget their true goals. And the destruction of a nation is first moral, then physical.
The Drug-Addiction Trap
The conventional strategies adopted by political leaders to fight the problem of drug-addiction have had poor results, because politicians prefer not to see the wider context of challenges like alcoholism and the abuse of drugs.
Many a political leader uses drugs in the first place. Drug cartels are often influential in the political world and operate with huge amounts of money. They have more than one friend in the banking system, and they finance political campaigns.
One must also acknowledge the fact that fighting the use of drugs is fighting an effect. It is useful. However, unless one fights the causes of drug-addiction, one’s effort is condemned to play the role of an aspirin: it fights the fever, and does not eliminate the sickness. It prevents the worst, and cannot win the struggle.
The temptation to use psychotropic drugs is created in the minds of millions of people by the fact that psychoactive drugs seem to cancel in the consciousness of the user the immediate practical effects of the Law of Karma and the limitations that he must face as a citizen.
The appearance of transcendence is only a trap. The drug-addiction puts the individual into a prison and disconnects him from the natural rhythms of life. Through it he acts with violence against his own organism. The use of psychoactive drugs steals from him common sense; it destroys lucidity and prevents the correct work and coordination of his five senses.
Defeated by the false transcendence caused by the drugs, the individual gets stuck into a subtle underworld in which he loses the notion of limits, and deludes himself in the belief that this is a form of freedom.
The loss of his ability to see limits in life is a hallucinatory form of anesthesia. The truth-seeker who has correct information about the Path feels deep respect for the limits of life in the outer realms of reality. He transcends them in peace and in a balanced way. He expands his consciousness while preserving a thorough and accurate perception of the lower levels of life, which he observes with detachment.
The citizen who has common sense develops a clear project regarding his future. Instead of trying to escape from an unpleasant reality, he gradually builds the reality he would like to see. He does that in harmony with the law of karma. He humbly obeys the law. He knows it is necessary to sow, before harvesting. Many are not so blessed.
Millions of people have no clear goal in life and get vulnerable to drug-addiction and other harmful forms of wasting time. A few examples among many are the addiction to “journalistic” news about a thousand different subjects; dependence on futile information about the “personal lives of famous people”, about football championships or the excessive use of television in general.
Dispelling Hypnotisms, Seeing the Whole
Both TV-centered domination of minds and drug trafficking serve the power schemes of materialistic civilization. These two mechanisms attack the creative potentialities of younger generations. False transcendence makes it impossible for them to deeply question reality and largely erase from their minds the ability to change the world for the better.
Individuals who have definite and noble goals in their lives are dangerous from the point of view of those who manipulate psychological games of power. They reject blind obedience to the god Money. They do not believe in the God of Appearances and Personal Comfort. From the point of view of organized mediocrity, every idealist is a troublemaker.
New generations can and must avoid the drug-addiction trap. It is up to young people to discover the power of self-respect and respect for life, and to adopt and manage the non-violent force of universal wisdom: according to Theosophy, the whole Nature is sacred, and the true meaning of life is transcendent. The author and psychotherapist Viktor Frankl wrote that “the drug scene is one aspect of a more general mass phenomenon, namely the feeling of meaninglessness resulting from a frustration of our existential needs which in turn has become a universal phenomenon in our industrial societies.” [3]
The Western society lives many a dilemma. The good news is that human beings are expanding the use of the right-side hemisphere in their brains and learning to see life from integrative points of view.
It is ineffective to try to solve challenges as if they were isolated and disconnected from one another. Directly or indirectly, each problem affects all the others. Viktor Frankl demonstrated in his books that conflicts among human beings take place when no common goal is shared by them. Disharmony does not disappear because an authority represses it, but after someone shows or proposes a common goal that is recognized as important by most members of the community.
The Aquarius Age has started. The Neptunian dream of universal brotherhood, which inspired Pisces Age, is being liberated from a chain of misunderstandings and making progress towards its gradual fulfilment. [4] Old collective hypnotisms are destroyed. Yet there is a gap that needs to be neutralized. The large scale power structures which lead the economic and political operations of our mankind are still working in the old ways.
One of the characteristics of the old Pisces age is the divorce between dream and reality, and between the sky and the earth, human being and natural environment, poor and rich, speech and action. An example of the grandiosity and misery of Pisces Age is the glorious discovery of the Americas, followed by the insane genocide of millions of slaves and indigenous nations, in the name of “God” and “Christ”.
The citizen of the 21st century still carries in his karma the signs of the Pisces Age. He wants to transcend mere materiality and is not mature enough. His dreams are vague. Many of his attempts to elevate himself only plunge him in a deeper confusion and materiality. It is the time now to awaken from such a difficulty.
The Revolution in One’s Soul
Since the 18th century a series of social revolutions were made aiming at the establishment of a universal brotherhood among all human beings. Their failures were not complete. The French Revolution made the universal proclamation of human rights. A much more effective revolution brought political independence to North America. In the 19th century, Marxism inspired socialist revolutions in Russia, China and Cuba. The Second World War brought a stronger understanding about the importance of democratic values, human rights and peace. The Cold War (1946-1985) showed we can’t afford a large scale nuclear war.
The majority of revolutionary attempts was inspired by Neptunian dreams of solidarity and equality. With a few exceptions, they ended up causing utter frustration. Yet even by stumbling one can go ahead. Little by little an international community emerged.
Due in part to the global spreading of means of communication, we are one step away from eliminating the barriers among nations, as proposed by the Neptunian visionaries of every country. This is the Dharma or Duty of the Aquarian Age. The pacification of human soul liberates the energy of brotherhood. The transcendent forces of the giant Neptune are getting stronger every day in human heart. If they sometimes manifest themselves in destructive ways, it is important to remember that it is not enough to repress destructive dreams. One must, above all, use the creative energy of transcendence in correct ways, so that it can produce good things and reduce the ignorance which causes pain in human soul. The true revolution is not material. It does not depend on political parties. It happens in one’s own consciousness and helps enlighten the world around.
The basic human need of transcendence expresses itself through the feeling of love and the ability to be creative. You transcend your personal limitations as you understand you are part of a larger environment: your family, your community, your job, your ideals, the whole universe.
To live the transcendence is to be everything and to be nothing at the same time. It means not having a frozen image of oneself, or the others. It teaches us the art of silence, and of plenitude.
One can live transcendence looking at the sunrise, taking a deep breath, studying classical theosophy, taking a meditative walk, fulfilling one’s duty in every department of life or helping an altruistic Cause. He who transcends is in search of that “power which makes him appear as nothing” in the eyes of others.[5] To transcend is to be happy right now, without imposing any previous conditions.
Someone could argue:
“If you had half the problems I have, like raising children and working 12 hours a day in order to make ends meet, you would see that I have not the time and the tranquillity necessary to seek for transcendence.”
And I would say:
“Wrong”.
Difficult circumstances often force us to question the limits of established realities, and to transcend them.
Psychologist Viktor Frankl lost his brother, his father, his mother and his wife in Nazi concentration camps, where he also lived for various years. It was precisely in a concentration camp, while the chances grew stronger every day that he would be sent to death in a gas chamber due to his physical debility, that Frankl discovered the starting point from which he would create, years later, his own school of psychological thought. The central idea was that, once an individual adopts a personal goal which is larger than his own life, he gains access to an unlimited amount of transcendent energy. And this elastic force makes him superior to any outward obstacles.
The Psychology of Universal Love
When nothing was left any longer to Frankl as a source of hope or victory, he decided to live for his wife.
Her image in his memory made it possible for him to transcend and become larger than the forces which pulled him down and invited him to accept the idea of dying in that concentration camp. One day, as Frankl staggered along his way, he started talking in his mind to the woman he loved.
“I asked her questions, and she answered; she questioned me in return, and I answered.”
The living unity of the two went on. While the physical and verbal aggression of Nazi guards proceeded against the prisoners, Frankl realized that something had lost its importance:
“I didn’t even know if she was still alive. I knew only one thing – which I have learned well by now: love goes very far beyond the physical person of the beloved. (…) I did not know whether my wife was alive, and I had no means of finding out (during all my prison life there was no outgoing or incoming mail); but at that moment it ceased to matter. There was no need for me to know; nothing could touch the strength of my love, my thoughts, and the image of my beloved. Had I known then that my wife was dead, I think that I would still have given myself, undisturbed by that knowledge, to the contemplation of her image, and that my mental conversation with her would have been just as vivid and just as satisfying. ‘Set me like a seal upon thy heart, love is as strong as death’.” [6]
The Journey From Pain to Victory
Viktor Frankl founded the logotherapy after the war and based his work in accepting the existence of a tragic triad in life: pain, guilt, and death. By doing this, he acknowledged in his own way the first noble truth of Buddhism, Dukkha. As an alternative to the threefold suffering he saw in life, Frankl recommended a “tragic optimism” and a three-point strategy:
1) To turn pain into victory and inner growth;
2) Transforming guilt into an opportunity to change oneself for the better;
3) Seeing the transitoriness of life as an incentive to act in a responsible way. [7]
Frankl said that an effective recipe to overcome difficulties and transcend materiality consists in living for something we love unconditionally. In this he coincided with the highest Neptunian teaching, which consists of universal, boundless love, accompanied by self-sacrifice.
Unlike other schools of psychological thought, logotherapy does not lose too much time with the vicious circles of self-centered thoughts. It aims at going beyond egocentrism through self-transcendence. One should concentrate and organize his life around that which one wants to do in the future and which one chooses as his special goal and mission.
As optimism corresponds to the lessons coming from Jupiter, the fulfilment of one’s duty relates to the wisdom from Saturn. The “tragic optimism” combines both factors and makes transcendence possible in the daily life. A sage once said: “As we see the divine world, the rest loses its importance.”
The way to avoid being devoured by the sphinx of life’s mystery is to decipher it. This can be done by transcending the charming prison of short term facts. When the personal horizons expand, immediate actions are performed to attain an enduring and long-term goal, and we can see the radiant presence of sacredness, in ourselves and in all life.
NOTES:
[1] “The Secret Doctrine”, H. P. Blavatsky, Theosophy Co., Los Angeles, volume I, p. 102. See also “Collected Writings of H. P. Blavatsky”, TPH, USA, vol. XII, p. 292.
[2] “The Secret Doctrine”, H. P. Blavatsky, Theosophy Co., vol. II, p. 551.
[3] “Man’s Search for Meaning”, Viktor E. Frankl, Rider Publishing, London-Sidney-Auckland-Johannesburg, 2004, 148 pp., see p. 113.
[4] On the beginning of the Aquarius Age, see the article “The Theosophical Movement, 1875-2075”, by Carlos Cardoso Aveline. This chapter of the book “The Fire and Light of Theosophical Literature” is available at our associated websites.
[5] See rule 16, in “Light on the Path”, Theosophy Co., India, 2008, Part I, p. 4.
[6] “Man’s Search for Meaning”, Viktor E. Frankl, Rider Publishing, London-Sidney-Auckland-Johannesburg, 2004, 148 pp., see p. 31. The verse Frankl quotes is from the Song of Solomon or “Song of Songs”, 8:6.
[7] “Man’s Search for Meaning”, Viktor E. Frankl, Rider Publishing, London-Sidney-Auckland-Johannesburg, 2004, 148 pp., see p. 111.
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On the role of the esoteric movement in the ethical awakening of mankind during the 21st century, see the book “The Fire and Light of Theosophical Literature”, by Carlos Cardoso Aveline.
Published in 2013 by The Aquarian Theosophist, the volume has 255 pages and can be obtained through Amazon Books.
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