An Exercise from the Vault of CRC

The following exercise was found among the papers of my late great-uncle, Edward Tischler, a long time student of Rosicrucianism. The paper has no date, but is most likely from either the 1940’s or 1960’s and was either delivered at a Rosicrucian Order, AMORC Conclave in San Jose, California, or in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. The style and tone of the writing suggests the latter, as well as it having been possibly part of a lecture presented by Joseph Weed, author of Wisdom of the Mystic Masters an expose on basic AMORC teachings and practices first published in 1968.

The exercise is designed to help place the practitioner in greater harmony for Cosmic attunement through a systematic meditation and visualization on the four principle psychic centers of the heart, throat, pineal, and pituitary (crown) glands or centers.

The aversion of any meditation or energizing of the centers below the heart is typical of AMORC techniques, and of Weed’s approach to psychic development.

Notation has been added at the end of the exercise to make it more compatible with qabalistic practices and doctrine.

The Technique

1. Center your consciousness in your heart and visualize your entire chest area enveloped in a pink aura.
2. Take in a breath to the count of six while you hold this visualization.
3. Hold your breath in for a count of twelve and as you do so raise the pink cloud to a point 3 inches above the top of your head.
4. Release your breath slowly to the count of eight and at the same time expand the pink cloud so that it includes your head and the upper part of your body.
5. When your breath is expelled and your lungs are empty, hold your breath out to a count of twelve and at the same time keep in your minds eye the visualization of the shining pink cloud surrounding your head and upper body.
6. Repeat the process only using the color blue in your throat.
7. Repeat the process centering your consciousness in your pituitary gland, between eyebrows and above the bridge of your nose, about ½ inch behind your forehead. Visualize a brilliant white light around your head to the count of six as you breath in.
8. Hold for a count of twelve, raising the white aura to a point three inches above your head.
9. Release your breath to the count of eight and as you do so feel the pituitary center join with the center above your head so that they become as one while the light created by this fusion lights up the whole room.
10. When your breath is expelled hold your lungs empty for a count of twelve and see that brilliant sun-like aura expand so that it includes your head and the entire upper part of your body above the waist.
11. relax and sit in quiet meditation for about three minutes. During this period petition for what you need. If it is a worthy petition it will be granted. Before you rise say to yourself “Let good befall the world.”

Commentary

The exercise requires an increase in breath control similar to basic pranayama such as suggested by Swami Vivikenanda in his work Raja Yoga. This ability to hold the breath in and out for counts beyond four to six seconds requires a degree of conditioning and preparation. It is advisable that before performing the breath section of the exercise, several minutes be devoted to the simple Square Breathing used in many esoteric circles. This consists of breathing out to empty the lungs and holding out for a count of four. Then, the breath is take in for a four count, held for a four count, exhaled for a four count, and held out for a four count. This is repeated for two to three minutes. This seemingly simply exercise can be very difficult, as it increases the body and mind’s energy reserves, the ph of the blood, and causes the cells of the body to harmonize in a singular rhythm as well as purge the body of toxins. In addition, the will, or ability to concentrate on a single task, is strengthened.

This will cause the lungs to expand, the body to relax, and thus increase one’s ability to perform the suggested periods of breath retention as suggested in the above exercise.

Secondly, the exercise can be dramatically increased in effectiveness by feeling the body becoming filled with an intense white heat as the Square Breathing is performed; then for the final minute or two of the preparation period, focus the attention on the area above the head, visualizing it as in intense white point of light. This is the Kether of the qabalists.

Hold this image for one to two minutes, and then with the breath move it down into the heart, filling it with intense white light. Change this light to an intense scarlet, or cherry red, and then either move on to step one of the exercise (Pink aura around the heart) to combine these colors and mediate their potency, or move on to step two of the above exercise (Blue aura around the throat).

The colors red and white are well known in qabalistic and alchemical works for their symbolism of the intense creative powers of our psyche. See: “Part One, Imagination and Will-Power, Flying Roll No. II, Part III; and No. VI”, in Ritual Magic of the Golden Dawn, Works by S.L. MacGregor Mathers and Others by Francis King.

However, the problem with many exercises such as this, or any that suggests of the transpersonal, is that the element of emotion is so often missed. The question many ask is, “What should I be feeling (or often hope to feel) when doing this exercise?”

Here the answer is quite simple, and in fact is an answer that can be applied to any esoteric exercise. The goal of these exercises on an emotional level is a sense of wholeness. For many this can most easily be described as Maslow put it “a peak experience”. This feeling of success, victory, joy, and bursting enthusiasm all around a single event or moment. A feeling so overwhelming that we can almost experience it again in its entirety just by thinking about it.

If peak experiences are an aspect of ‘wholeness’ then the emotional discharge that they create can be re-experienced and transferred (reframed in NLP language) around another, albeit separate and distinct, experience. For example, if prior to imagining the sphere of light above our head (or pink cloud around our heart) we pause and remember a time when we were having a ‘peak experience’ and allow the context of the experience to fade while holding on to the emotions, we can build a new context around the ‘old’ and highly charged emotions. Thus, when ever we imagine the pink cloud we build with it the charge of the peak experience, it in turn can trigger new peak experiences. The same with when we imagine our “Kether” or primordial light in qabala. In fact, a Psychosynthesis exercise designed for young children in new educational experiences encourages them to visualize a light above their heads and to associate it with successful and peak experiences, and to ‘re-invoke’ it prior to any new undertaking (Psychosynthesis in Education).

In exercises such as these, we not only re-invoke it and associate it with new and future experiences, we literally and imaginatively draw this power into us, and as such, our consciousness.