TEMPUS INVICTUS

Chapter XXXIV: The Medusa

Almost everyone who has read some of the classical fables of ancient Greece is familiar with one of the central figures of that ancient era—a Grecian prince named Perseus, who became somewhat of a crusader, going about in different countries and slaying many of the monstrosities which were peculiar to that time. One of these classical figures was the Medusa, a monster whose body was that of a woman and who had instead of hair, hundreds of writhing snakes. This creature also had a strange power. Anyone who looked at her would be turned to stone. Perseus was able to slay the Medusa by a simple trick; he did not look directly at the Medusa but instead, used a mirror and thus escaped the penalty of being turned to stone. Whether or not this story is true is immaterial, but like many other legends from the past, it carries a direct message in beliefs and behaviorisms which graphically illustrates that people were in those ancient times deluding themselves in the same illusionary forms as they are so presently doing. The moral message which this fable carries is immediately apparent when we transfer the elements and action into basic psychological aspects. The Medusa and her snaky hair is the subconscious, comprising as it does in wave forms of energies, the sum and total of the present physical life, and is also directly connected with other planes of the psychic anatomy to all the past lifetimes which this person has ever lived.

Now in the normal concourse of life, every human suffers many ego deflations. Unless these ego deflations are somehow compensated for, they will accumulate to the point where a person can become mentally and physically ill. He may even become totally incapacitated. Doctors call this form of psychic blockage, neurasthenia. In effect, it is being turned to stone. Every living human, or any human who has lived before, has therefore a certain compensating device known as an escape mechanism or a defensive complex. The ways and manners in which this defensive or escape complex expresses itself are about as numerous as there are people. For practical purposes we can quantitatively classify certain similar types and when we study or analyze ourselves and our fellow man, we can easily see this defense escape mechanism at work, even though we may not have been aware of our own manifestations, no more so than the other fellow is aware.

This means simply that everyone is tremendously ignorant of the basic psychology of life—even those supposedly trained in this capacity have only part of the answers. Not until we can conceive life as a conglomerate mass of oscillating wave forms do we begin to correctly understand ourselves or our fellow human. These snake-like forms in the subconscious, the ego deflations of the past, must be at least equalized and eventually cancelled out completely so far as their pernicious negative effect is concerned. For the time being then, until any person acquires suitable knowledge which will enable him to make cancellations, he will have to equalize with the aforementioned mechanisms or complexes.

The butcher who is carving steaks and chops may have been a soldier in a former lifetime, carving and chopping other soldiers, or he may have been one of the executioners in a dungeon who carved his poor prisoners, or he may have been one of the carved soldiers or victims. In either case, he is temporarily equalizing this guilt deflationary effect by cutting and carving dead animals, for while so doing he is not incurring any ill effects or guilts; thus, he is subconsciously equalizing the pernicious effects of the former associations. This is an inversion and just as Perseus used the mirror while slaying the Medusa, so does this same inversionary principle enable a person to re-enact some reactive form of life in the present which will be subconsciously the substance and effect of the former enactments.

Thus, we will see doctors, ministers, politicians, etc., who have embarked upon their respective careers impelled by the same subversive subconscious forces. The doctor, like the butcher, may have been an executioner or he may have been a victim. The minister may have a whole host of deflations which are somehow equalized by holding power and dominion over his fellow man; or he may have been a witch doctor, a high priest in some ancient temple and is trying to equalize and expurgate the attendant guilts. There are many other classical examples to be seen in everyday life. The car salesman may have at one time sold camels in an ancient Eastern market; in fact, all forms of present-day life, individually expressed, carry their same connotations back into the distant past and through many lifetimes.

Needless to say, the same pernicious course of evolution will be the lot of every individual until he learns the true inner life as it has been described to you in these many works of Unarius. In other words, what has just been described is karma, and whether it is interpreted in this term of Eastern occultism or whether we redefine it in the modern psychological idiom, this manner and way of life so lived in ignorance and superstition will always re-create itself in the future of any human who believes in it even though he may or may not apparently like it. He may even scream against it but the obvious fact remains; he is at his present position as a material human because he believes in it and he has no other knowledge.

And so in common mental logistics, any human can see that if he wishes to change his material life he must acquire and use certain corrective knowledge which will change it. Actually, he does not change anything except himself. The Infinite Cosmogony always remains the same regardless of the human position, individually or collectively. Therefore, in the concourse of experience, Infinity is teaching every individual the necessity of progressive evolution. The problem is always an individual proposition which is not bound by the conformities and usages of the material existence. Conformities are only crutches used in lieu of a more constructive position. The conformities of political and social systems, religions, etc., are in principle basically the same today as they have always been. They are only imaginary bulwarks erected by communities of people in a vain attempt to hold back the ever-present flood tides of fear and insecurity born from out the abysmal reaches of the material existence.

Not until a human develops within the confines of his own life the power to visualize Infinite Creation does he begin to live beyond the constrictions of his various conformities. Not until a human can so visualize Infinity does he become an intelligent reasoning being. Any human so living the material life, believing in it and loving it as he does, is not intelligent even though he may be a graduate of a university, a great scientist or a politico, or a religious leader. He has, in these capacities of self-eulogized greatness, only epitomized his lust for life in his material world; and conversely, so will his self-eulogized delusion pass when in the moment of awakening, he can grasp the vision of Infinity. And when he does, he will realize how infinitesimally small he really is and he will be made correspondingly humble.

 

Aladdin’s Lamp

Another one of the more classical forms of legendary literature which has been read by almost everyone in his growing up period are the tales of the Arabian Nights, such as Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves, and the even more familiar, Aladdin and His Lamp, which goes something like this: Aladdin found an old lamp much tarnished from age and when he attempted to clean up the lamp, there materialized with the first rub a giant genie who became his slave. Now, a certain sorcerer learned about this happening and wishing to possess the lamp, resorted to a subterfuge. Taking up a lot of new shiny lamps and walking past Aladdin’s house, he cried out, “New lamps for old”, hoping that Aladdin would be stupid enough to bring out his old magical lamp with the attendant genie and trade it for an almost worthless new lamp.

Here again is another one of those strong moralizing lessons. Just as they have done in the past ages, everyone at the present time is constantly trading in his old and very valuable lamps for one of the new and worthless varieties—schemes which are constantly conjured up by the clever sorcerers who surround him on every side. There is deep within every human a magic lamp, a lamp of life, its wick untrimmed and only faintly burning. It is not beheld in the everyday life and as the ages pass and as each human lives life after life, so does his lamp of life remain hidden and gathers the tarnish of countless thousands of life’s vicissitudes.

Even in his present moments, he is constantly jeopardizing his lamp of life by trying to trade it with the next charlatan who passes his way. The ways and manners in which he is tempted are numerous. The temptations may be a new diet, a new political system, a different variation in his religion. An evangelist may pass his way and he will, in any of these moments, temporarily lay aside an opportunity to polish up his lamp of life, to trim its wick so that its flame may burn brightly. And thus he is repeatedly prevented from life to life in realizing the great and undreamed of potential power which the genie of knowledge and understanding would bring to him after he had removed the tarnish of ages from the lustrous inner surface; for surely does this genie always appear to those who so remove the tarnish and polish and trim their lamps—a great and powerful genie which is, in actual reality, their own personal development of the higher reaches and plateaus of their superconscious self.

And so the genie and the man become as one, their knowledge and power transporting them into higher regions of immortal life, which were formerly only visions of enchanted heavenly cities where life was lived completely freed from earthly taints, trials and tribulations. How tragic then does the vision of life become to any advanced individual who, from his spiritual world, looks down into the surging masses of humanity where, spawned in lust, nurtured in hypocrisies, bigotries, hatreds and other emotional vicissitudes of earth life, they struggle through the intricate maze of their self-induced, superimposed idolatries, bigotries, systems and symbologies, not knowing that within themselves there is a magic lamp of life filled with the oil of Infinite Wisdom. And saturated in this oil is their wick of life which can only be lighted when this person determines for himself the proper progressive form of evolution, and a flame which can only be kept burning by constant trimming, wherein the burned and charred shreds of the past are removed by the sharp edge of introspection. And as the wick is so trimmed, so is the ever-apparent necessity to constantly levitate this terminating end into a higher atmosphere where it can burn even more brightly. And so a fable has again been retold and its moralizing lesson uncovered.

Even so does the fable of the past, in the many lives that each human has lived, also become a fantasy, an illusion, and as it remains so covered in ignorance, so does this past corrode into a poisonous verdigris tarnish, and wetted by tears brought forth by suffering and self-incrimination does its poison constantly seep into the present. Yes, even as a man sleeps in his supposed conscious reality, at that very moment he is being saturated in all forms of consciousness by this past.

The sorcerer, the charlatan is ever about you. He is the thousand clamoring voices of your earth life; he is the ever-present subterfuge. His voice is heard in the multiple excuses which you create for yourself in attempting to evade that inevitable day when you must more fully determine your own position to the Infinite. Nor can you escape this inevitable, for surely you created it.

Each day, each hour, each act lived in your many material lives was the creation of this inevitable decision either to atrophy and drown yourself in the inexplicable complexities of the material life, the inane and inept repetitious servings of numerous idolatries, beliefs and superstitions—rather than to constructively form your life in all the basic inclusions of Infinite Creation, to live life as a progressive entity of evolution, a constructive person who is living beyond the confines of a vegetative earth life.

The choice is yours. The Infinite Intelligence is supremely wise, knowing as it does, that either the lack of such a constructive evolution or a full dedication to its cause and purpose will determine whether you will pass back into oblivion or into some future immortal life.