Finding Accurate Information

By George A. Boyd ©2023

Q: In what ways can information be presented accurately in modern media? There is so much misinformation that is disseminated.

A: There are a variety of presentation formats in which information can be presented in various media. Here are some of the different types:

  1. News reporting – This gives brief information about what is going on in the world today. It identifies important events and presents significant personalities to the viewer. The Nightly News on most broadcast media is of this type.
  2. Brief interview – Here a news anchor or moderator asks questions to a guest to understand a newsworthy question more completely. This can devolve into a defensive, argumentative exchange if the host and guest are on different wavelengths—for example, if host and guest have different religious or political views—or if the interviewers’ questions are accusatory, or challenging the guest’s veracity or account of events. Short three to five minute news interviews on different media, or brief segments on shows like “60 Minutes.”
  3. In-depth exposition – In this format, there is an article or program that goes into depth on a particular topic or through an interview with someone—typically 30 minutes or more. It cites many sources, both those who corroborate the evidence and those that are critical of the evidence. Documentaries and investigative journalism take this approach.
  4. Monologue – In a monologue, a host discusses the news, often presenting it in a humorous way. It aims to elicit laughter; but it does communicate the host’s viewpoint on current events. You see this in late night comedy shows, where the hosts discuss the day’s events in a clever and funny way. This same format is used to interview celebrities or present new musical talent to entertain the audience.
  5. Deep exploration of ideas – In this presentation, an interviewer will ask questions to get a guest to elucidate and expand upon his or her ideas. This may ask a writer to talk about the ideas in a book; it may ask a producer or director to elaborate on the themes in a movie. Podcasts and in-depth interviews utilize this method.
  6. Sensationalism – This presents a point of view in an emotional way, which aims to stir sympathy, anger, fear, or outrage. At one extreme, this can be outright indoctrination into a political or religious doctrine designed to shape belief and behavior; at the other extreme, it presents information without any criticism or analysis—thereby transmitting distorted information, conspiracy theories, or propaganda to the public. This shows up in religious and partisan political programming, and tabloid journalism.
  7. Synthesis – This weaves the many strands of a story together to get “the big picture.” It presents commentary or analysis of the many strands that make up the disparate themes of the story and what their implication is. Experienced news commentators and independent journalists adopt this style.

Information gathering and dissemination types 3, 5, and 7 undertake a serious inquiry to uncover the truth and to gain an accurate grasp of the topic under investigation. Type 6 is the least likely to present the truth; it often presents a covert agenda to influence readers, viewers, or listeners to believe distorted or false information.

We suggest that you examine the format of the news and information you receive through various media—newspapers, magazine articles, radio, podcasts, television, and internet videos—to identify which of these types the hosts or anchors use to communicate to you. Notice which of these formats seem to unearth the truth, and which obfuscate it.

You cannot blindly believe whatever is presented through the media; you must use discernment and critical thinking to identify the information that is disseminated is valid, accurate, and reliable.

What Is Illumination?

By George A. Boyd ©2023

Q: Spiritual groups talk about Illumination. What is Illumination?

A: When we examine the activation of the intuitive thread, the Antakarana, we note several different levels of heightened intelligence and intuition along this cord that connects the brain with the Soul:

  1. Intellectual brilliance – This is quick application of intellectual problem solving strategies. This operates in the Metaconscious mind.
  2. Creative association – This finds novel associations between ideas, and alternate perspectives for viewing phenomena. This is used in art, creative writing, and invention. This level operates in the Abstract Mind Plane.
  3. Intuitive sciences – This uses an symbolic array like Tarot cards or astrology to tease out meaning and insight in a structured Psychic Reading. This level draws from the Psychic Realm.
  4. Revelation – This seeks to interpret the symbolic and archetypal material in scriptures and Mystery School teachings. This level can be found in the First Exoteric, Mesoteric, and Esoteric Planetary Initiations.
  5. Synthesis – This ties together mental functions to create a big picture, which allows comprehensive understanding. This level is activated in the Third Planetary Initiation.
  6. Illumined insight – This is the downpour of knowledge of the Illumined Mind or Buddhi. When this dawns on the mind in the state of Samadhi, the inner teacher within awakens. Those taking the Fourth Planetary Initiation directly awaken their Illumined Mind.
  7. Jnana Shakti – This Ray of Light Fire awakens the intuitive stream (Antakarana) and reveals the insights embedded along this thread. Those who have activated their Monad and have been empowered at this level can send this Ray to awaken the Antakarana.

Illumination occurs when there is activation of the Buddhi at level six. Masters and their advanced disciples have the ability to activate Jnana Shakti to stimulate the innate Illumination that dwells within the Soul.

We train people to access their intuitive thread in the Jnana Yoga section of our intermediate classes, the in-person Mudrashram® Master Course in Meditation and the by-mail and online Accelerated Meditation Program.

Eight Meditation Themes

By George A. Boyd © 2022

Q: People meditate, but they don’t appear to have a similar experience. Can you shed some light on why this might happen?

A: Depending on what pathway you are focusing your attention, it evokes different content from the Higher Mind. Here are eight major meditation themes you might encounter:

  1. Direction – In this theme, you receive guidance for action. This comes from the Soul communicating its purpose to the personality. In advanced disciples and Initiates, they may receive the impress of the Divine Will (Agya). This is associated with the First Ray, which taps into the Will Stream.
  2. Visualization – In this type, you obtain an image or seed thought upon which you contemplate. This might appear as an image that will help you focus your attention on a spiritual essence—attentional principle, spirit, nucleus of identity, or ensouling entity. Sometimes, this might employ revealing a mystery that veils a spiritual essence. This Second Ray meditation theme draws from the Intuitive Wisdom Stream.
  3. The Wellspring of Love – This type opens into the virtue, unconditional love, and compassion of the Soul. It is associated with Agni Yoga, which sends healing attunements, and Nada Yoga, in which the spirit travels back upon the tracks of the Nada and unites with the Divine Beloved through love. Loving kindness meditation and meditations that enhance virtue and improve character also access this pathway. This alternative Second Ray meditation draws from the Love Stream.
  4. Inspired Discourse – This explains spiritual ideas to promote insight and understanding. It may also act as a voice over in guided meditation, which leads attention into union with a selected spiritual essence. This Third Ray pathway channels the Vocal Stream.
  5. Experience – This views the present time unfolding of life at different levels, and becomes fully aware of the content of the mind, wherever attention is focused. Mindfulness and Vipassana enters this track, and allows you to be aware of your present time experience; Raja Yoga moves attention along this inner corridor through the levels of the mind and lets you become aware of the content at each focal point. This Fourth Ray immersion in experience leads your attention upon the Thread of Consciousness.
  6. Analysis – This carefully studies spiritual forms or vehicles of consciousness to reveal their structure and function. It identifies the major landmarks and content of the Continuum of Consciousness through the four bands of the mind. The Mudrashram® Correspondence Course utilizes this approach. This Fifth Ray path of study contemplates Form and Structure.
  7. Invocation – This calls upon a spiritual being—an angel, a spiritual guide, a god or goddess, or a form of the Divine—to fulfill a fervent desire, to ensure success in an endeavor, or to receive Grace, Blessings, or Divine Comfort. This Sixth Ray aspiration activates the Thread of Faith.
  8. Synthesis – This ties together disparate insights or revelations to create comprehensive understanding: it constructs a global picture that places each idea or insight into an ordered context. This Seventh Ray perspective draws upon the Intuitive Thread (Antakarana).

These eight different meditation approaches evoke different aspects of the Higher Mind. Different systems of philosophy and meditation emphasize one of these pathways:

  1. The Will Stream is prominent among Karma Yogis, who seek to know the Divine Will and enact it.
  2. The Intuitive Wisdom Stream uses evocative images, spiritual ideas (seed thoughts), metaphors, parables, and stories to spark meditation and inspire contemplation. Many religions and spiritual groups embed parables and stories in their scriptures and their commentaries to provide guidance and inspiration.
  3. The Love Stream taps the healing love of the Divine to awaken the heart. Nada Yogis immerse their spirit into the river of the inner light and sound, and travel back to their Divine Beloved. Agni Yogis taps this everlasting fount of love to minister the Light to others. This immersion in Light awakens the love and devotion of the spiritual heart.
  4. The Vocal Stream gives rise to satsang or preaching. It directly communicates spiritual revelations to teach and guide others.
  5. The Thread of Consciousness is the native track of the attention, and enables the meditator to experience each level of the mind directly. Vipassana and Raja Yoga practitioners interiorize along this pathway.
  6. Contemplation of Form and Structure enables exact knowledge of the forms through which the immortal essences of consciousness—attentional principle, spirit, and ensouling entity—operate. It facilitates the construction of maps of consciousness for each of the levels of the mind. This enhances discernment: it helps you know exactly where you are in meditation.
  7. Awakening the Thread of Faith allows you to remember and commune with selected spiritual beings. Most established religions emphasize this pathway, and adopt some form of prayer and worship to connect with the spiritual source that they invoke. Bhakti Yoga practitioners commonly adopt this approach to worship God and dedicate their lives to serve the Divine.
  8. Contemplation of the Intuitive Thread leads to Enlightenment and Gnosis. The Soul reveals its essential nature and accesses the layers of insights and discoveries it has experienced along its inner journey of spiritual evolution. Jnana Yogis gravitate to this track.

We recommend that aspirants and disciples learn to access each of these eight themes. They can use these pathways to:

  • Get direction
  • Receive ideas for contemplation
  • Become immersed in healing love
  • Tap into spoken words of guidance
  • Directly experience the levels of the mind
  • Study the levels of the mind and the Continuum of Consciousness
  • Call upon the Divine for succor and support
  • Achieve a complete understanding of their station on the Path and realize their Soul

We teach ways to access approaches (2), (3), (5), (6), and (8) in our intermediate meditation courses, the in-person Mudrashram® Master Course in Meditation and the by-mail and online Accelerated Meditation Program. We introduce you to approach (1) and go deeper into approach (8) in our Mudrashram® Advanced Course in Meditation. We invite you to study with us to learn to connect with these different meditation themes.

What Is Synthesis and Why Is It Important?

By George A. Boyd © 2022

Q: What is synthesis? You mention a Synthesis Center during the Light Sitting, but I’m not sure what synthesis is and why this is important.

A: Synthesis occurs at different levels of the mind:

  1. In the physical body, a metaphor for synthesis is the state of homeostasis, where the body creates the optimal balance between acid and alkaline blood chemistry.
  2. In the mental center of the Conscious mind, synthesis appears as the common area of two overlapping shapes in a Venn diagram.
  3. In the intellect, synthesis is the resolution of an argument in a common point of agreement that transcends, yet includes, the viewpoints of both opinions.
  4. In the Temple of Philosophy on the Abstract Mind Plane, synthesis is the next stage of thesis and antithesis, in which the apparent conflict of these two opposite positions is harmonized.
  5. In the Psychic Realm, synthesis reveals the nature of the Soul above the conscious zone of the mind and the unconscious zone of the mind, as the transcendent essence that reconciles both polarities.
  6. On the Wisdom Plane, synthesis occurs as an emergence phenomenon that reveals a new level beyond a current condition and the forces that hold you in dynamic stasis in that condition. Synthesis in this context occurs when you move to the next level that you cannot truly grasp when you are in the container of the level before it.
  7. In the First Planetary Initiation, synthesis takes the form of rebirth as the Moon Soul nucleus of identity, which the Holy Spirit awakens through Grace. This is the holy essence that transcends both virtuous and sinful actions.
  8. At the entrance to the Second Planetary Initiation, synthesis emerges as the powerful creative vortex of the Mighty I AM Presence, which appears as a third transcendent force that resolves the conflict between conscious volition and the unconscious motivation that opposes it: this inner Divine command breaks this impasse between these levels of the mind and clears the way to move forward.
  9. In the Greater Mystery School Subplane of the Second Planetary Initiation, synthesis is shown to be the activity of the Fourth Ray, which harmonizes the pairs of opposites.
  10. In the vehicle of the Manasic Vortex in the Third Planetary Initiation, synthesis exists as an inner center in which each octave of the mind is actively aligned with the Soul’s purpose, turning the personality and the higher vehicles of consciousness of the Superconscious mind into an instrument of the Soul.
  11. In the Buddhic vehicle of the Fourth Planetary Initiation, the downpour of the Illumined Mind purifies the mind, brings about mental healing and harmony, and re-establishes the attention in union with the Soul again—transcending the sense of separation.
  12. On the Monadic Plane, upon liberation of the Soul in the Nirvanic Flame, the Monad appears as the reunifying essence transcending both the Soul and the portions of the mind it has turned into light and the darkness of the karmic accretions of the unconscious mind.

When the mind is in conflict and turmoil, this hinders making decisions, generating forward movement in life, and allowing clear expression of the Soul’s gifts. Synthesis resolves this conflict, and allows physical and psychological tension to relax—freeing up energy for constructive use.

Whether this conflict arises as arguments in intimate interpersonal relationships, discord at work, disagreement in the political area, or a clash between nations, synthesis is a way forward beyond the deadlock. Learning how to achieve synthesis is the goal of mediation and its efforts to reach conflict resolution.

We teach the Synthesis technique as a supplemental exercise for our Intermediate meditation classes—the in-person Mudrashram® Master Course in Meditation and the by-mail and online Accelerated Meditation Program. We encourage you to find the key to produce synthesis to resolve internal and external stress in your life, and make progress, both personally and spiritually.

Personal and Spiritual Cognitive Strategies

By George A. Boyd © 2021

Q: What cognitive strategies would help me make progress in my personal life? Which cognitive strategies are helpful in spiritual development?

A: Personal cognitive strategies are primarily functions of the intellect. Spiritual cognitive strategies are functions of the intuition and Illumined mind in the Superconscious mind.

Personal cognitive strategies include:

  1. Goal setting – This visualizes a clear goal image. It determines a plan to achieve it. Then, you execute that plan.
  2. Empathic listening – This operates when you listen to the words of other people and sense their meaning; this can take the form of internal dialog with subpersonalities to understand your psychological issues.
  3. Project management – This identifies the steps of multiple activities and scheduling them so they are coordinated, and the end product is delivered on time and within the allotted budget. This can be applied to organizing homework assignments in school, caring for children and family and coordinating each family member’s schedule, and to achieve work objectives.
  4. Creative listening – This receives ideas from the Subconscious and Metaconscious mind and organizes them in a “presentation envelope”—for example, as music, poetry, an essay, a screenplay, or a marketing proposal.
  5. Analysis and testing – This subjects hypotheses to rigorous testing and uses specific criteria to determine whether the findings are valid. This is the primary approach of scientific research.
  6. Introspection – This searches your conscience and notices how you have deviated from your standards and moral values. It looks for solutions to improve your behavior and reform your character.
  7. Synthesis – This ties together the contribution of multiple factors in a system to enable you to visualize the whole, and to understand the relative influence of each factor with that system. It identifies key factors within the system that can be “perturbed,” to bring about necessary, desired changes.

There are also spiritual cognitive strategies drawn from Jnana Yoga, the Yoga of Intuition; Raja Yoga; and other invocational techniques. These include:

  1. Yoganidra – This examines the track of one level of the unconscious mind and identifies each issue within it. You then apply methods to work with each issue that you find there.
  2. Contemplation – This focuses attention on a particular object of meditation. You allow your awareness to open until you are able to become aware of the content that surrounds and arises from your object of meditation.
  3. Studying Interrelationships – This studies individual elements in an array and notes their interrelationships with other elements in that array. This cognitive strategy plays a role in Pathwork and the intuitive sciences. In Pathwork, you might adopt this strategy in working with an Enneagram, or studying the Tree of Life (Kabala). In intuitive sciences, this is used in doing an astrology reading, a tarot card reading, or in numerology.
  4. Becoming Mystery – This enables you to penetrate beyond words to become one with the object of meditation. This state of fusion has been called Gnosis, Samadhi, and Oneness.
  5. Finding the origin – This strategy uses a technique to trace a trace an issue to its origin. Examples of techniques that help you achieve this aim include sustained attention to an issue as a felt sense in the body and opening into it (Vipassana); asking repetitive questions to the unconscious mind (Process Meditation); identifying progressive layers of the issue down to its core (Mandalic Reasoning, the Mandala Method); and dialoguing with the issue and finding its core (Rainbow Method).
  6. Remembrance and Invocation – In this strategy, you bring your attentional principle or spirit into “center”—this may be the nucleus of identity or the ensouling entity in your spiritual tradition upon which you meditate—and from this location, you invoke the Grace and Guidance of the Divine or the Masters of your tradition. This inner listening—to the voice of the Soul, the Holy Spirit, an angel, or a guide—is called Receptive Meditation.
  7. Dimensional expansion – This progressively opens the mind to encompass a broader experience of the object of meditation. These dimensions include:
    • 0 – the point where attention focuses (focal point)
    • 1 – the thread of consciousness that connects focal points
    • 2 – the field of perceptual content contained within each focal point
    • 3 – The space containing the focal point, which appears as a form or inner body, which we call a vehicle of consciousness
    • 4 – The present time experience at that focal point, where you notice what arises in that level of the mind in each moment
    • 5 – Integration center; this is the aspect of the mind that contains and operates that facet of the mind. In the Conscious mind, ego is the integrating center; in the Metaconscious mind, the Self is the nexus; and in the Superconscious mind, the Soul ties together the functioning of the vehicles in this zone of the mind.
    • 6 – Inner witness; this is the essence of consciousness and intention, which we call the attentional principle. It witnesses each of these dimensional states and can use intention to open the origami-like folds of the mind to expand awareness into these larger perceptual and experiential frames.

Depending on your dominant Personality and Soul Rays, and your training and experience with these different personal and spiritual strategies, you may find that certain of these approaches are easier for you to utilize. These personal and spiritual strategies that are almost like second nature to you are your strengths.

The challenge for the aspirant and disciple is to learn to use these non-dominant strategies when required. This ability to switch Rays and dimensional perspectives empowers you to understand what you currently cannot grasp; to solve problems employing new methods that you do not currently apply; and to find ways to surmount your obstacles through an alternate approach.

See if you can learn to use each of these personal and spiritual cognitive strategies to enhance your ability to function in your life and to receive insight and guidance from your spiritual pole. For those of you who would like to learn several of these evocative spiritual cognitive strategies, we teach them in our intermediate meditation courses, the in-person Mudrashram® Master Course in Meditation and the by-mail and online Accelerated Meditation Program.