Astrological view of Ego/individuality place in World-Idea
Inner Connection To The World-Mind
Let them not waste so many words about or against this little ego of ours, decrying its character or denying its existence, but try to understand what is really happening in its short life. Let them find out what is actually being wrought out within and around it. Let them recognize that the Governor of the World is related to it and that we are steeped in the Divinity whether we are aware of it or not. (v6, 8:1.130)
ANTHONY: That’s what we try to see in astrology. If we say that the Governor of the World, the Lord of the World, has organized the World-Image and all the creatures within it, then of course there’s a very intimate association between the Lord of the World, the structure of your ego, and what the Lord of the World is trying to accomplish. By combining certain ideas, the Lord of the World is trying to show you something about yourself. You’re supposed to try to understand what is going on within you and around you. So if you look at an aspect, you can see something about the way this idea is manifesting you. Otherwise, how could you cooperate with the World-Idea, without a knowledge of these things?
Maybe you could also see that insofar as the Lord of the World--or let’s say the lords of karma--brings about this fabrication, your ego, for whatever number of years, it must love that very much. In other words, the Governor of the World, who creates what we look upon as the natal chart, must love that very much. It loves it completely, but the ego mistakenly understands that as love for itself.
The ego to which he is so attached turns out on enquiry to be none other than the presence of World-Mind within his own heart. If identification is then shifted by constant practice from one to the other, he has achieved the purpose of life. 8.1.127
Maybe it would be a good idea if we could try to make clearer what we mean when we say “ego,” “world,” and “consciousness.”
Is the ego the body? The body is part of the world, is part of the World-Idea, part of the imaged world. And it’s distinct from that world, or distinguished from that world. So we could separate these two in our minds. And then when PB says that resident in the body, or presiding in the body, is this power to think, to be aware, these things would belong to the Soul. So we have three factors we’re separating in our experience: a world, the ego, and awareness. Now, they’re evidently mixed up, so we have to try to unscramble: What is the ego, What is the world image or the world, and What is the Overself?
Now it’s true, if we took away the consciousness from the body, we wouldn’t be able to say that that ego is aware of a world or that it could think or move--it wouldn’t be able to do that. So we’d have the problem of saying, if we took this awareness and distinguished it from the body or the ego, then what would be the ego? If we took away the consciousness, distinguished it from the body, would that be the ego? Or would that body become the ego if the light or consciousness penetrated into it?
You have to understand what the nature of this individual existence is, because it is the cause of all our misery, and yet strangely enough, it is dearer to us than anything we can think of. So, evidently, there must be a lot of value in our suffering.
We said that this infinite light or this mind is boundless--we can’t speak about it, except in this sense of being authentic being. And only when this is associated with, or permeates a cluster of thought, can you speak about an individual existent. And then I went further and gave the example: Now I examine into my behavior, into my thinking, and every time I have a thought, I can see that that thought is a manifestation of the degrees I’m working with.
For instance, I keep pounding a thought, I get a solution to something, I’m not satisfied. I keep trying to understand it more deeply and I keep doing that. You can see that that’s one of the tendencies in my chart, right? You look at my Mercury degree and you say, “He’s got to get to the bottom of something.” You see that’s a tendency. Well, is that tendency the core, the reality of my being? No. My being permeates all that, or let’s say, has wrapped itself around that. But it takes these two mixed together, my being and the degrees/planets, to produce the entity you know as Anthony.
It is easy to recognize some of the attachments from which he must loose himself--the greeds, the lusts, and the gluttonies--but it is not so easy to recognize the subtler ones. These start with attachment to his own ideas, his own beliefs; they end with attachment to his own ego. (v6, 8:4.380)
ANTHONY: One of the reasons I spent a lot of time on astrology is: the only way you’re going to see what your attachments and your beliefs are is when you get to know your degrees. When you isolate these things you can take, let’s say, the functioning of a planet in your chart, on a certain degree, and see that this is the way you are. I don’t care what you tell me. This is the way you are. This is the way you’re going to be. This is the way you’re going to act.
PB’s not saying (of the ego) “Get rid of it.” You can’t. Because as long as you have to express yourself in the world--and there’s nothing wrong with expressing yourself in the world--this is the way you’re going to express yourself. The stupidity is not to understand that this idea that you’re working through to express yourself is an idea. It’s not you. Don’t get attached to it. Look at it impersonally.
Try to understand the way you operate--functionally, impersonally. And after a while you’ll see this is that next step--until you understand this, to talk about renouncing the ego is absurd. Because you’re going to see the way these things work in you, the way they’re going to trick you and say, “Oh, sure, now we’ll move on and renounce the ego. [laughter] You see? They’re very quick.
You really can make a marvelous use of astrology and especially the degree symbolism to understand the particular beliefs and ideas that you are attached to. Lets not use the word “attached,” I’d say you are “mis-identified with.” If you take one of those ways of working that you identify with, one of those degrees, and you understand the meaning so that it is open and available to you, then you can objectively see that this is the way you operate. You can learn to be impersonal about your ego and to watch that happen. So it’s really worthwhile.
H.E.: Would you say that if you got to see it impersonally you would be able to operate with a more positive aspect of the degree?
ANTHONY: Yes, more efficiently. But don’t expect it the first time.
It is less easy to see and even more necessary to understand that this ego, this subject, is itself an object to a higher part of the mind. (v6, 8:2.67)
In order to take this point of view, we have to shift our identification from the natal to the natal plus transiting dynamic. More and more we can see the apparent subject is really a content of consciousness. Just like the dream subject is really a thought form like the dream objects, when known to the witness.
The practice of the impersonal point of view under the guidance of mentalism leads in time to the discovery that the ego is an image formed in the mind, mind-made, an image with which we have got inextricably intertwined. But this practice begins to untie us and set us free. (p. 95)
AD:
the way I understand astrology is on this basis: that every individual in so far that he is an individual, in so far that he is part of the World Idea, there is a meaning in his life, a pattern of events, situations, circumstances. There is a growth of understanding that's taking place because of the interaction of this person with the world.
you can see how the meaning, the pattern of events, are so peculiar to this individual and no one else. And that if he really penetrates into the meaning of the events and circumstances that are going on in his life, he is getting at the quintessence of the meaning of his life to him. And I thought that this was really the fundamental purpose of astrology, that this is what astrology should help a person to understand. Never mind if he is going to meet his beloved, or if he is going to make money on the stock-market. That's all a waste of time. But in this way astrology can be a really spiritually potent tool, so that the person could try to be aware of what significances are blossoming as his life. He's living these ideas, he is these ideas, why not try to consciously understand what is going on? But most of us, of course, are living in the world like sleep-walkers. Looking Into Mind P.68
AV: Each person’s chart is unique. There is a unique set of circumstances and lessons to learn, designed to enhance your evolutionary journey and to express the soul’s deep divine intention, or “divine name” as the Sufi’s call it. In Hinduism, this unique work for you, delegated to you, is your dharma. In the Gita, Krishna says “better is one’s own dharma…” It is better to do one’s dharma as a chimney sweep and enjoy it, as in Mary Poppins, then to take on some image of perfection and glory which we have gotten from someone else (parents, society, etc.) This is why it is so important to get to know yourself, accept yourself, and “start where you are.” As the guide says in Pathworks lecture on Ideal Image, our most basic source of conflict and unhappiness is having an ideal image, which is so different from the reality at hand.
S: The chart provides a selection of the total possibilities available to a person. Can there be growth to a point where there is a freedom from those particulars, a freedom from the ego? Can you speak about an ability to use all those possibilities? Would all 360 degrees be available to a sage?
ANTHONY: Yes, the sage is much more sensitive to all the ideas than an individual who is compelled and organized by a structure of particular ideas.
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AD: The ego or natal chart is the karmic continuum: it represents traces of yourself that you are leaving behind. In a sense I can’t distinguish your undivided mind from someone else, but I can distinguish your individuality that is a result of the functioning of the undivided mind from the functioning of his. The ego is an expression of the undivided mind’s continuity, but in terms of tendencies and probabilities. Ad the world-idea is modifying itself, so are all the egos being modified, each according to their peculiarity.
At birth the individual chart already indicates the whole sequence of experiences, events, which will occur to the individual. But it is up to the soul how it will respond to these experiences, and it is in this response that we will see the growth of the soul's power. (49)
The ego is the mirror we use to try to grasp something of the higher individuality. Michaelangelo, for example, is said to have worked with a “tragic” attitude. This was something build into his soul, not the result of the experience of this life. You can easily distinguish him from Da Vinci, and these distinctions are significant. The reflection we wee is only a little section of the vastness of the archetypal individual soul. If you look at a series of lives you begin to get an idea of that archetypal individual. (4/18/83)
The uniqueness of each person, his difference from every other person, may be metaphysically explained as due to the effort of Infinite Mind to express itself infinitely within the finite limitation of time and space, form and appearance. (v16, 25:1.157)
ANTHONY: Every type and variety of person that could be expressed by the planetary functioning will so be expressed. Each one would be unique. If you think of every person ever born, look at the peculiarity and uniqueness of his or her natal chart: This infinite variety expresses the World-Mind. You could put it that way. Every possible type is going to be expressed.
The knowledge that no two human beings are alike refers to their bodies and minds. But this leaves out the part of their nature which is spiritual, which is found and experienced in deep meditation. In that, the deepest part of their conscious being, the personal self vanishes; only consciousness-in-itself, thought-free, world-free, remains. This is the source of the “I” feeling, and it is exactly alike in the experience of all other human beings. This is the part which never dies, “where God and man may mingle.” (v14, 22:3.380)
ANTHONY: Please read it again, one part at a time.
The knowledge that no two human beings are alike refers to their bodies and minds. . . .
ANTHONY: How about that? Would the natal chart prove that?
T.S.: Yes. The basic meaning of the natal chart is that it is the mind-body complex or the ideas, the reason principles, which constitute the mind and the body.
me: When you’re using the word “mind” here, what do you mean?
L.R.: Psyche?
V.M.: How about if you use mind as the collection and functioning and relationship of all those reason principles which are delineated in the astrological chart?
ANTHONY: Good. That would be good. That would be what we refer to as the “psyche.”
MY COMMENTS:
You get to know yourself individually, and you are learning the lessons of the universe. Each person’s chart is unique. There is a unique set of circumstances and lessons to learn, designed to enhance your evolutionary journey and to express the soul’s deep divine intention, or “divine name” as the Sufi’s call it. In Hinduism, this unique work for you, delegated to you, is your dharma. In the Gita, Krishna says “better is one’s own dharma…” It is better to do one’s dharma as a chimney sweep and enjoy it, as in Mary Poppins, then to take on some image of perfection and glory which we have gotten from someone else (parents, society, etc.)
In a very deep way, the uniqueness we see in the natal configuration is an expression, of course to a limited extent, of the souls vision in the Nous. “The origin of these presuppositions is in the higher soul's vision of the intelligible world, or what classical Greek Philosophers call the Divine Mind (Nous). The <horoscope> [chart] is a reflection of that, and is part of the working out of that vision.” This is the soul’s true intention, the unique idea that is being unfolded through lifetimes, and perhaps only one slice of it in any given life. Through becoming this unique idea, really being yourself, you find the deeper universal Uniqueness. This seems a paradox: the more you become yourself, your own unique being, the more universal you become, and also the reverse. His Holiness the Dalai Lama is both the incarnation of the impersonal being Avalokiteshvara, universal compassion: and also a unique individual. Each degree in his chart rings with direct literal expression in his life. Yet he brings out the universal expression of each unique idea. Plotinus says that “each idea is a unique form of the entire Nous intelligence.” And in Corbin, each being participates in God through the special and unique form of the divine which is his own Divine name, his own lord.
Looking into Mind Copyright 2019