New Book Project Mysteries of the Kybalion -Chapter 2: Principle of Correspondence– Part 1

THE PRINCIPLE OF CORRESPONDENCE

We welcome those of you who are coming to visit us, to study the practice of our religion: Shetaut Neter. In this lecture we will discuss the principle of the Kybalion that relates to the concept of “Correspondence.” Before going forward we should understand that the practice of religion has three main steps and those are myth, ritual and mysticism or metaphysics. The myth talks about the story of a religion. Myth does not necessarily relate to factual events or histories but provides facts about spiritual truths that transcend histories; it gives an idea as to the origins of a people, their spiritual beliefs, the form of the Divinity that they believe in as well as it informs the customs and traditions of a society and more. It gives their culture a character and the rituals related to that myth are the manner in which the people practice certain traditions, certain acts that relate them to the myth, their origins and the divinities and spiritual forces they look to so as to give them purpose in life, to give life meaning.

Chanting and divine singing is a part of the devotional aspect of ritual. Uttering the Divine name, as we have, the words of power that elevate our consciousness that take us to a different vibration. We maybe doing many things in the world, but when we come here and we do the divine singing and chanting and hear the vibrations of the drumming and so on and so forth, then we are transported into a different quality of feeling, that allows us to be better in touch with the spiritual planes and the mythic teaching.

There is another aspect of the teaching, and this is an aspect of ritual practice, it is the study of spiritual scriptures. In the beginning of the process we are studying myth, we are simply telling the story, but when we discuss the teaching related to the myth, then we are doing the ritual of wisdom spiritual practice, the study of the teaching, studying the wisdom teaching, which is what we are about to do now.

Currently we are studying the myth if you will, the mythic teaching of the Kybalion. The Kybalion is a collection of Hermetic teachings, teachings as we said last time that are related to the ancient Egyptian God Djehuty. We talked about the history of Djehuty, how he emerged, within the whole family of Kamitan gods and goddesses, the Neteru. Lets look again at an image of Djehuty, he is the Divinity on the right who is looking at the balance scales; that is Djehuty.

Above: from the Papyrus of Ani, the soul of Ani (far left) observes the balance of his heart.

You see him with his scribe equipment. He is the one who brought the Medu Neter, the words of power, to the physical plane and, as we said earlier, he is known as “the thrice-greatest one.” He is three times great; And what this relates to is the three worlds in which he operates or in which his wisdom extends. This brings us right into our teaching for today, which is related to the next great principle of the Kybalion. Last time we discussed the mental universe, how the universe is mental; How everything exists, emerges and is perceived in and through the mind, the mind of God, or the Goddess, if you will, and human beings experience a microcosm of that reality through their mind, because they create their own reality based on their capacity for perception which is limited by their aryu which may be pure and enlightened or impure and ignorant.

Remember we discussed that the reality you perceive with your senses is an illusory reality. It is not the absolute reality. We also discussed that there is no time, that time itself is also illusory, and many of you were taken with that conception. Actually, time is a mental construct, created by the human mental process, to judge the passage or the transformation of energies. You see a car driving on the street and you say the car is over here, couple seconds later the car is over there. You say time has passed, but actually no such thing as time exist and this was proven by …, (this teaching comes from thousands of years). But this was proven in the twentieth century by Einstein, with his theory of relativity. You see, anything that is relative, if you can bend something, if you can change something. If something is changeable, it is unreal, it is relative. It is variable. Only that which is abiding, can be said to be real. Therefore that brings the question, what is abiding in you, what is real about you. You are born into this world and you grow older, you go through your adolescent years, then you grow as an adult; you get older, then you get sick, then you die. Did you notice that there is a sequence of events that “happen” or “seem” to happen? In reality nothing is happening but in a sequence things appear to move, interact, change form, etc. but actually the matter that composes the objects in Creation that seem to move and change, from birth to death, etc. actually does not change. The underlying essence of Creation, the energy, the consciousness that composes the apparent objects of Creation, including your body, does not change. Rather, Creation and all the objects in it are a projection of that underlying essence. This means that the world that is perceived by the senses, the world that seems so “solid” and “real”, has no more abiding quality than a dream you may have when you sleep at night. So then we need to ask: what is the reality behind you? Did you exist in the beginning? Did you exist when you were an adult? Do you exist when you are an elderly person, when you are on your deathbed, etc.? Did you exist before you were born and do you exist after you die? What is the reality behind all of that?

These are the questions that have intrigued spiritualists and mystics since the beginning of time. These brief teachings are the hallmark of their discoveries since ancient times, when they entered into internal research, research into themselves. The first great discovery and teaching that they came up with was that the universe is mental. Not only is the universe mental, everything is created by mind. Everything exists in and through the mind. There is no physicality and you recall that in the past we discussed that this wisdom predates the modern discoveries the discoveries of modern quantum physicists of the twentieth century like Fritjof Capra and Stephen Hawking, and their discoveries almost make them sound like the mystics of ancient Egypt. That is because they are also saying that the universe is not physical, that the universe is energy. This is what the Kybalion and other Ancient Egyptian texts have said for thousands of years, long before these concepts were confirmed by modern science including quantum physics.

So, if the physical world is not actually solid, where does that leaves us? Why does the universe feels so concrete and real? Why do your life events and experiences seem so real and compelling and so abiding? Remember what we discussed last time; we talked about how, in a dream, when you are in a dream, you are perceiving with your dream senses. When you are on your bed, you are not using your physical senses, to be aware of the physical world. Yet you are aware of the astral world, your dream world. And if someone was to come and say to you, hey this dream world isn’t real, this dream world is not solid, it is illusory, what would you say to that person in your dream?

That dream seems compelling, doesn’t it, that dream seems solid and real. If you were to find a stone in your dream world, that you can touch, the stone would feel hard but yet it is not real. If there is someone there talking to you or if there is some terrible aggressive thing that is happening, somebody is running after you with a knife, etc. It all seems very compelling, very real, very fearful and you might even feel you will be killed. Or somebody is beating you up, or you have a car crash and you can feel all the tumultuous problems; And yet when you wake up in the morning, what happens to your real, solid, abiding dream? What happens to your compelling dream? You discover that it wasn’t so compelling after all.

When you go to sleep at night actually, you are going to sleep to the physical world and you are waking up to the astral world. If someone was to ask you, when you are in the dream world, what do you think about the physical world? What would you say at that point? What would you say then? In the dream state you are so convinced of the reality of the dream world, that you say, “oh that physical world, ‘that’s not real.” Then later, when you wake in the morning to the “physical” world again, you say the dream world is not real. So, which is the real?

What about when you go to sleep and when there are no dreams, what is happening there? What do you say about the “physical” world and the “dream” world at that point and the physical world at that point? The idea is that, philosophically speaking, none of these worlds are real, the physical world is not real, and the astral world is not real, and your dreamless sleep world is not real. Yet there must be something that is real, because we are experiencing something, aren’t we?

The conception behind those “worlds”, the understanding behind that is real, the consciousness that is aware of those worlds is real. Consciousness is like the ocean and your dream world are like waves on top of that ocean. Every once in a while you come out from the depths of your conscious awareness that is beyond dreams, physicality and duality to swim and for some reason you come to think that the swimming is the real and that the underlying essence supporting the swimming, the depths of the ocean, is somehow something illusory. Sometimes you come out so much to swim, that you forget about the depth of the ocean. And therefore, since you have forgotten about the depths, you come believe and say that there is no spirit world, or there is no deepness to me, I’m just who I am, it’s my body and my feelings and emotions, that is me. People say those things without realizing that’s their surface, their swimming on the surface and that’s all they know about themselves. That becomes their reality and from our perspective that is what we call spiritual ignorance and this is the source of feelings of mortality, limitation, mental frailty as well as all manner of sufferings that a human being can experience in life.

If you ignorant to this metaphysical philosophy, you if you were swimming, say on the coast of Florida, you have a certain myth about your existence; you are a Floridian, and if you should meet somebody who swims on the surface on the coast of Spain, they have a different myth about their reality and existence. And if you two should meet, then you say to each other, well my myth is the reality, because that what I know, I swim in Florida and I’m a Floridian and you who say that you are from Spain, I don’t know about that reality, that’s a dream to me so your reality is not real to me and therefore it is also not valid. This is how bigotry, intolerance and animosity between peoples, cultures and societies begins. That is also how people who practice the first level and perhaps the second level of religion, the myth and ritual, feel and talk about those who practice the metaphysical level, which is deeper. Those who are the mythic and or ritual practitioners are swimming on the surface of spirituality and therefore cannot perceive the depth of their own nature nor the depth of the natures of other human beings or of Creation itself and therefore their life is on the surface of perceptions of reality based on the senses and their ego idea of who and what they are. In other words, the higher reality, the spiritual reality, the transcendental reality, is lost to them, beyond their ideas, concepts and ability to fathom.

For people who swim in the shallows of life, the myth aspect of religion is like the surface of the ocean of existence; the myth and the ritual part of religion are like the surface of the perceivable “physical” Creation and of the perceivable “dream” world of the ocean of mind. In this context, mysticism is like the vastness of the ocean of Creation, the depth. As for those people who only swim in the surface of their religion, their always going to be bound to be in conflict with other people, who swim on the surface of their religion too. If people were able to discover the depths of their spirituality, to discover the depths, they would discover that their depths are the same depths as the depths of other peoples, regardless of their religion. It’s the same essential depth and they all would discover the reality of all of our existence, all existence. Therefore there should be no conflict in religious practice and yet there is in the world, because we are carrying on in an ignorant, limited fashion.

The deeper reality behind you as a new born child, is the same reality behind your adolescent years, the same reality behind your adult years, the same reality behind your elderly years. The same reality behind all that, is the same reality your dream, that is sustaining your dream world. It sustains your dreamless sleep world. And it is the same reality behind other people’s apparent surface realities as well as the same reality sustaining nature, the planets, stars, galaxies, etc. So, beyond the apparently but illusory solid and physical reality of the waking and the dream states what would you say if someone were to ask you how did you sleep and during your sleep you did not have any dreams? You might say, “I didn’t have any dreams, but I knew I was happy, I know I was relaxed, I knew I was feeling full. How did you know you were relaxed, feeling fullness and happiness? That is possible because there is something that is the depth of you beyond the physical, dream and dreamless sleep levels of existence and perception.

Think about it. Think about sometime when someone has come to wake you from a dream, and how you said “leave me alone, I don’t want to get up. Leave me, I’m relaxed…” During those times you want to go back to your sleep state, you don’t want to come back to this crazy and physical world. What is that that you are enjoying so much in your dream world, that you forsake the physical world for? If the physical world is so compelling and so real, why do you leave it everyday? If something is abiding, it should not stop, it should be constantly real. Why do you have to fall asleep, why do you have to leave the physical world; and then why do you wake up from the dream world or from the dreamless sleep states?

Another question is where do you go when you leave the physical world and go to the astral dream world or when there are no dreams? If a group of people were to fall asleep in the same room they might all start dreaming. Where does the dream world happen? Are all the dream worlds going to start bumping into each other? Before you say that the dream world is not like the physical world, think again. Look to the quantum physicists. Now they are talking about plains that exists in the same space, as the physical universe. Right now there are intersecting worlds in different dimensions or different levels of subtlety that are just as solid and apparently real to those who perceive in them. To them this physical reality is the dream. Therefore, this physical reality has no more validity than any other reality and this is is what we call “relative reality”. Anything that is relative, meaning relative to something else or derivative of something else, or generated by something else, is not the “abiding” reality. If something is not abiding it is relative and therefore illusory, temporary, etc.

The quantum physicists are also talking about forms of energy that permeate, that go through the more dense, the more gross, the more physical world. They sound like mystics to me. But this wisdom was known thousands of years ago. And yet why is it that these hard scientists and their new findings are not studied in school and why have the history, social science, and politics not been adjusted to take these findings into account? Modern society does not deal with their researches, because if we did, we’d have to stop the whole way of thinking that we have about the world and what would happen to the world? You might say well, the world would start crumbling, because everybody would be going crazy, with these crazy theories; I say no, I think the world would be a better place, because people would be living by truth instead of the lies and ignorance that allows a minority to deceive the masses, control society and maintain themselves in power and in wealth while the majority languishes in ignorance, suffering, poverty and locked in a perennial struggle for survival.

The reality behind a tree that is chopped down, is made into furniture, then when the furniture gets old the same wood is broken down again and it is used to make planks for a log cabin is all the same reality. That same wood is chopped into bits and made into particle board for another panel. The termites eat it out and they leave little droppings there. What is the reality behind that wood, behind the same tree, behind that same furniture, behind that same particle board? It is the same reality, but the form changes. And what is real in you, even throughout your form changes (birth, childhood, adulthood, death?

You are there as a child, you remember your childhood, you remember adulthood, your adolescence, etc. What is the reality in all of that? That’s what we are talking about here. That reality that was existing in the beginning of time and it came into existence so-called, at a particular time and place is the same reality at all times, before birth and during life and after death. You were born at a particular hour and you grew up and you experienced all kinds of activities. Then you die and you supposedly go out of existence. What is the answer to all this changing form and apparent passage of time? What is the reality behind you? The reality behind you is spirit and the way that you are using to “come into reality”, that is, to be aware of your reality is mind.

So therefore, the universe is mental, and you, that is, what is abidingly real within you, are aware of the physical reality which is a projection of cosmic consciousness and you are projecting your reality of yourself within that cosmic reality, Creation, as well as your dream world and your dream identity. Just as you project your identity and dream world in a dream, you are sustaining the reality of your awakening existence, which is a dream of the ALL MIND. The crux of the matter, from the standpoint of a spiritual aspirant, an initiate, a mystic, is of finding a way to dispel the illusion and discover the abiding reality. If that were possible then at anytime you desire you could stop sustaining that illusory reality of Creation or of your dream world relative reality. The process if what we are studying here which is by engaging in three things, myth, ritual and mysticism. If you do not desire to do that, then you will stay away, stray away from those things that awaken you and remain on the surface, forever swimming in the shallows where there are storms and waves crashing into each other, where there is strife, unrest, agitation and distraction that takes one away from the truth. In that case, if you want to stay at the surface then you want to stay asleep to the higher reality. You want to stay on the surface of the ocean and you can remain so, as long as you want, but your deeper reality stays the same regardless of whether or not you are aware of it. Even if you stay ignorant for a billion years.

However, if you remain in ignorance, regardless of how you manifest, that period of life that you call existence, as a human being, as a male or female, as an animal, or whatever it is, that is just a segment of eternity that you are calling “time”. Time is only a piece of the infinite stream of eternity. Time is the segment or span of a person’s lifetime or of a set of events that occur in space but if time and space were recognized as illusory then it is also recognized that the changes and events that seem to occur in time and space are also illusory as behind all that there is eternity. That means, lets say that eternity is a line {though in reality it isn’t} but lets use this idea for learning purposes. Then we begin at some point in the distant past and we are going to some point in the distant future and someone is born at a particular point on that line, then they die at this particular point on that line and the ignorant are calling the period between the point of birth and the point of death, time. We must realize that time has no existence, only eternity has existence and what you are calling a span of time is merely a mental construct, so that you can understand some passage of some physical changes that occur in space, which as we saw earlier is also illusory (physical space, dream world space, etc).

If you start to live this way, you start to become free from your physical bonds, from your limitations and your limited ideas of reality, existence and so on and you start to become more aware and more open to the eternal aspect of yourself. If you were to become fully aware of this, you would then be called an enlightened being and when you get to the end of that time span of life, “so-called”, of your body’s’ existence, you continue to be aware of eternity, as you go along. So, having achieved that magnanimous awakening to the higher reality, death of the body does not affect you, does not bother you, does not hinder your perception of abiding and eternal existence.

As a leaf falls from a tree, does not bother a tree, and this is recap of what we discussed last week and taking it a few steps further, the mental reality of your perception and that mental reality of the universe is sustained by the All, the all encompassing Divinity called Neberdjer. Neberdjer is that essential nature of existence, the consciousness that transcends time and space as well as concepts and definitions, is that which brings forth Amun (witnessing conscience), Ra (interaction medium between witness and projection) and Ptah (projection of reality in time and space) and that brings us to the next Kybalion principle, which is the Principle of Correspondence.

There is a great teaching that is given for this principle and that is, well which I’m sure you have heard it somewhere: “As above, so below and as below, so above.” And very succinctly, what this means is that Creation is an expression of the Divine, the underlying essence. When the bible says that God created Man in his image, of course the female gender is left out of that, but in the Kybalion understanding, in the Neterian understanding, the ancient Egyptian religion understanding, this teaching is given as the following definition: the entire universe is a reflection of the Spirit Being, the All Encompassing, which is termed Neberdjer. That means that, not just man, but everything that can be perceived in the universe and things that cannot be perceived in the universe, these are all reflections of the Self, the Spirit. We will develop this mystery in the following section.