By Peter Holleran


A feeling-contemplation through music, astrology, and philosophy.


"Transcend, Purify, Glorious"
       - Neil Diamond

"Music...is itself a yoga path and can be not only a means of expression
but one of lifting thought and feeling to the higher realm of illumination."
       - Paul Brunton




           Prelude




          "Remember the Soul, the Verdant One, El Khidr, ever-blooming in springtime, forever young.
          Hear its quiet call and return Home to its loving arms. Abide in peace, and be happy."




           The Chant of Metta




Astrological Basic Life Pattern


  7        Youth                    1st Saturn Square
14-15    Puberty                 1st Saturn Opposition
21        Independence         1st Uranus Square, 2nd Saturn Square
28-30   Adulthood               1st Saturn Return
42        Mid-Life Crisis        1st Uranus Opposition, 2nd Saturn Opposition, 1st Neptune Square
58-59   Serious Adulthood   2nd Saturn Return
63-64   Sanyas/Retirement  2nd Uranus Square
72-73   2nd Retirement!       3rd Saturn Opposition
84-87   Transition                3rd Saturn Return
           Blessed Hope          1st Uranus return
           Dissolution              1st Neptune opposition


  "O Nobly Born, also welcome buddha-transforming Pluto, while awaiting the Master's promised touch
  of grace, and fulfill and transcend the basic life pattern with seed karmas as innumerable as the
  sands of the Ganges, thus blessing your ancestors and descendants for generations upon generations":


           Search for a Guru
           Initiation
           Dharma Debate
           Long Path
           Short Path
           Metanoia
           Awakening
           Realization



Sutras on the above

"In the early years, the childhood years, the soul is basically preoccupied with the building up of what Plotinus called the Animate, the ego complex. Then as it reaches a certain level - I would say puberty - it can turn its attention to other things. But until then it has to be preoccupied with building up the Animate." (Anthony Damiani, Living Wisdom, p. 156)

"He is always kneeling metaphorically before the Divine in self-surrendering renunciation and often actually in self-abasing prayer. Yet side by side with this, he is always seeking to develop and apply his own intellect and intuition, his own will and experience in life." (Paul Brunton (PB), Notebooks, v13, 20:5.16)

"Anyone who has been on the quest for a number of years will sooner or later find the world that he lives in, the world that he knows, blowing up in his face. Everyone who has been on the quest a few years has that experience automatically. It's very rare that things go along smoothly for too long a time. For almost every quester, that's to be understood, in the sense that it can't be helped. It's our very nature, because of the way we are and the way our whole past history is. Our whole history is of such a nature that when we want to get to the highest part of our being, when we want to touch the soul within us, certain changes have to be made. And usually things happen so that these changes are brought about in the person....In the presence of a sage, a past habit which is still alive in you is brought up to the surface and now you have to overcome it once and for all." (Anthony Damiani, Looking Into Mind, p. 134-135)

"If you're under the guidance of a sage, the sage can release you from a certain destiny which is indicated in your chart....The Master can assign you to a certain work or God can assign you to a certain work. A Master can release you from certain compulsions that you feel your destiny allotted to you....We're speaking about the quintessence of Divinity as far as humanity is concerned...about someone who is in touch with the Lord of the Universe...The sage is guided by the Logos in the other person's soul as to how to relate to that person...If you talk to a sage, the sage doesn't tell you what you want to hear, the sage tells you what you need to hear." (Living Wisdom, p. 235-236)

"There are even times when the World-Mind will bring in experiences that are not even destined for you in terms of your karma, but are just brought in ad hoc! Just out of curiosity, you know: "Let's see what you're going to do with this one!...Ultimately you'll see that the World-Mind is teaching you...you get the greatest education that can be conceived of, and you're not even grateful for it." (Living Wisdom, p. 50)

"There is however an unpredictable element in the pattern of human life, which increases rather than decreases as the quality of that life rises above the average. We see it markedly in the case of a maturing aspirant who has to undergo tests and endure ordeals which have no karmic origin but which are put across his path by his own higher self for the purpose of a swifter forward-movement. They are intended to promote and not delay his growth, to accelerate and not impede his development. But they will achieve this purpose only he recognizes their true aim....Thus human life is not wholly confined within the rigid bounds of karmic law. The Overself, which is after all its real essence, is free. he who has entered his name in this high enterprise of the quest, must be prepared to trust his whole existence into its sacred hands..He has entered a stage where he is being assayed from within and without, where his yearnings and attachments, his virtues and vices, will be forced to show their real strength." (PB, Essays on the Quest, p. 197)

            Bhajan

"The philosophic discipline demands that the whole soul, all the parts of the soul, are readily available to respond to the variety of situations that can be presented by the World-Idea. That means that at one time the soul insists that the ego do its own thing. Another time the soul insists that the ego keep quiet and listen to what's to be done. At other times, it may be required that the complexity of the whole psychic organism be reorganized or temporarily be disowned for the purposes of acting from different presuppositions than the ones it inherits.... It's like looking at the two charts together: the natal chart and the transits going on. There are times when you must act from within the center of your ego; your ego has to decide what to do. There are times when you shouldn't let the ego decide but let the transits or the higher mind [i.e., Uranus, Neptune, and Pluto] tell you what to do." (Living Wisdom, p. 96-97)

"Life in this world is like foam on the sea: it passes all too soon; but the moments given in adoration and obeisance to the Soul count for eternal gain. The most tremendous historic happenings on this earth are, after all, only pictures that pass through consciousness like a dream. Once the seeker awakens to the real, he sees them for what they are. Then he will live in Its serenity, and it will no longer matter if the pictures are stormy and agitated..It is possible to reach such a state. The seeker may have had glimpses of it already. Someday, sometime, if he is patient, he will enter it to stay - and the unimaginably rewarding and perfect purpose of his life, of all his lifetimes, will be fulfilled." (v12, 1.5:5-6)

"Although personal effort and the will toward self-mastery do much to advance him on the quest, it is grace, and grace alone, which can advance him to the goal in the last stages or assist him out of an impasse in the earlier ones..We must exert our own will and strength to prepare the way for, and make us receptive to, the divine grace. Thus the one complements the other; both are necessary parts of the World-Idea." (v.12.2.5.157, 160)

"If he offers himself to the divine, the divine will take him at his word, provided his word is sincerely meant. The response to this offer when it comes is what we call Grace." (v12.2.5.33)

"It behooves him to be heedful that spiritual opportunity does not pass him by unrecognized or unseized. In this affair, the heart is often a better guide than the head, for the intellect doubts and wavers where intuition inclines and impels."(v12.2.5.284)

"If he wants the full Grace he must make the full surrender. He should ask for nothing else than to be taken up wholly into, and by, the Overself." (v12.2.4.100)

"The shoulders of the aspirant must be strong enough to bear the bitter blows of destiny without getting bowed down. He has placed his life in the hands of the gods, and he must be ready to suffer with a sublime fortitude." (v12. 2.5.113)

"The days when he could speak glibly and assuredly on the most recondite phases of spirituality gradually go. A new humility comes to him." (v12.2.3.58)

"In earlier years, questions peppered his mind. Now they have ceased to do so. Not only because he does not want to disturb the peace he now enjoys; nor because his intellect has decayed; but because he knows that behind it all is Mystery: that one man cannot play the role of omniscient God, that he may well leave to God the endless questions that arise." (v16.1.3.179)

"In the end, after many a rebellion, he learns to trust God and accept his lot, like a tired old man." (v12.2.4.26)


          Going Home