Theos-Talk Archives (June 1998 Message tt00715)

Dear Thomas,

This will be a condensed explanation of my own experience with
these practices.  I first learned how to meditate in a formal,
disciplined way through the ARE literature based on the Cayce
readings, and in a group devoted to their study.  This involves a
drawing down of energy from the crown and brow chakras through
the throat to the heart, while saying "Our father, which art in
heaven, hallowed be thy name.  Thy kingdom come, thy will be done
on earth as it is in heaven."  Then energy is drawn upwards from
the root through the lower chakras to the heart, while saying
"Give us this day our daily bread.  Forgive us our debts as we
forgive our debtors.  Lead us not into temptation, but deliver us
from evil."  The the energy returns from the heart to the brow
and crown while saying "For thine is the kingdom, and the power,
and the glory."  There is a lot of detail about parts of the
prayer corresponding both to specific glands and to chakras, but
this gives the basic pattern.

That was in 1978, the same year I discovered theosophical
literature in the ARE library and got more interested in
Theosophy than Cayce.  I soon gravitated to the Judge lineages,
which discouraged any such practices and led me to abandon them.
For many years I didn't think much about the Cayce material,
although I did meditate in a variety of other, more
Theosophically approved ways, like using the paramitas as points
of aspiration/contemplation.  But in the mid-1990s, while
completing my last book on Theosophy, I got interested in the
relationship between HPB's teachings and those of the Radhasoami
sect of Hinduism.  Particularly The Voice of the Silence and the
idea of raising focus to the Third Eye, contacting the Masters in
this way, hearing a soundless sound.  All this is straight out of
the Radhasoami books.

So I started using Radhasoami practices and hoping for some
guidance about *Eastern* Masters to follow.  But what happened
instead was that my Third Eye seemed to be more interested in
Jesus, and what I experienced in the RS practices reminded me of
the long-abandoned Cayce stuff, which I soon picked back up and
have been following rather faithfully ever since-- about three
years now.  The RS practices strongly *de* emphasize any chakras
lower than the Third Eye.  I think, from my Internet
conversations with various practitioners of these techniques,
that they don't lead anywhere I want to go.  People just get more
otherworldly and indifferent to human needs of others by taking
that path.  Whereas practices that integrate the Third Eye
techniques with focuses on the heart chakra make for a more
balanced and joyful presence in the world.  This is what I feel
it has done for me, and also what I feel in the difference
between ARE people and those I've encountered in paths focused
solely on the Third Eye.

There's a fair amount about all this in my own forthcoming book
on Cayce.

Cheers,
Paul