Concerning the Three Threads

Posted on November 25, 2022 by George Boyd

Q: You speak of three threads that connect with the Superconscious mind. What are these threads? Can you explain how these threads function?

A: The three threads are the thread of faith, the thread of consciousness, and the thread of remembrance, also called the Antakarana.

The thread of faith connects you with the Self, the Soul and the form of God in the First Mesoteric Initiation. This is activated when you believe in your Self, your Soul, and God. This thread is associated with praying to God.

The thread of consciousness is the track on which attention travels in meditation. It passes through each level of the mind and every level of the Continuum. It runs through each vehicle of consciousness and through each active ensouling entity. The attentional principle and spirit can be accessed along this track. Raja Yoga meditation trains you to move your attention along this thread.

The thread of remembrance contains your insights, revelations, realizations, and inner experiences that you have had at each nodal point of the Path. When you open this track, you contemplate upon the knowledge and understanding that you have gained at each step of the Path. In response to your questions, this thread gives you answers. It can channel its knowledge through you via automatic writing, intuitive transmission, and inspired speech. Jnana Yoga meditation taps into this thread, and allows you to access its intuitive knowledge for each of its seven chords:

The first chord accesses the conscience. You activate this chord through introspection and values clarification.
The second chord opens into the intellect. You utilize this chord through study, using problem solving skills, conceptual thinking, and review and testing.
The third chord unlocks your worldview. You enter into this level through philosophical inquiry, journaling, and inner dialog.
The fourth chord channels your psychic guidance to inform your decisions and promotes finding meaning and understanding of your life experiences. You turn on this chord when you ask for guidance for your life, using Reflective Meditation.
The fifth chord taps into your Soul’s wisdom to gain insight into the meaning of ideas, symbols, and archetypes. You awaken this level when you reflect on the meaning of symbols and archetypes, scriptural passages, or evocative ideas, applying Reflective Meditation and contemplation.
The sixth chord brings remembrance of the true nature of the Soul. You commune with this chord when you use advanced Jnana Yoga practices that promote discernment, enlightenment, and Gnosis.
The seventh chord tracks across the unconscious mind. It connects you with the origin of your vehicles of consciousness, your spirit, and ensouling entity. You go through this thread when you practice advanced Jnana Yoga practices and consciously move through the unconscious band of the mind.

You learn to employ the thread of faith in religious groups, who train you how to pray and invoke the form of the Divine known in that tradition.

You can learn how to activate the thread of consciousness and the thread of remembrance in our intermediate meditation classes—the in-person Mudrashram® Master Course in Meditation and the by-mail and online Accelerated Meditation Program.

Eight Meditation Themes

Posted on September 2, 2022 by George Boyd

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:

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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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:

The Will Stream is prominent among Karma Yogis, who seek to know the Divine Will and enact it.
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.
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.
The Vocal Stream gives rise to satsang or preaching. It directly communicates spiritual revelations to teach and guide others.
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.
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.
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.
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 Focal Awareness?

Posted on July 29, 2022 by George Boyd

Focal awareness means your attention is fully focused upon an immortal essence of consciousness—attentional principle, spirit, or ensouling entity. Seven stages mark the attainment of focal awareness:

Nescience – you don’t know the essence exists and you don’t know what and where it is
Conceptual knowledge – you learn about the essence, so you know it exists, but you don’t know what and where it is
Map – you are given a description of the place you find the essence, but you are unable to go there and merge with it.
Remembrance – you locate the essence along the thread of consciousness and you acquire it as a meditation target.
Traveling to it – you move your attention along the thread of consciousness until you come into its presence and you mentally touch it and feel it
Union – you use micro concentration to merge into the essence at its brain center and look out from its perspective
Fusion – you become one with the essence so observer and observed become one. You are the attentional principle, spirit, or ensouling entity and experience what it experiences.

How do you learn focal awareness?

To gain focal awareness, you need to enter stages six and seven.

You achieve stages two and three by reading our articles and books.

In our intermediate meditation classes—the in-person Mudrashram® Master Course in Meditation and the by-mail and online Accelerated Meditation Program—you learn to remember the essence and move your attention into its presence, which enable you to reach stages four and five.

In our advanced meditation class, the Mudrashram® Advanced Course in Meditation, you learn about the fine points of gaining union and fusion, which help you experience stages six and seven.

Focal awareness is key to:

Having a depth experience of meditation
Seeing and hearing within
Traveling the Path in full consciousness
Having conscious communion with your guide and Supervising Initiate
Being able to contemplate and study your essences of consciousness, your vehicles of consciousness, and the bands of the Continuum
Consciously carrying out Attunements and spiritual ministry
Performing the work of transformation and experiencing the downpour, feeling your ensouling entity and its vehicles unfold, and sensing your spirit opening the channels of the Nada

If you are having difficulty achieving focal awareness, you may want to schedule a meditation consultation to learn ways to overcome your difficulties identifying and traveling to these spiritual essences, so you can shift into union and fusion. We stand ready to assist you reclaim this core meditation proficiency that will allow you to move into your next level of spiritual experience.

If you don’t know how to reach these spiritual essences and you have never taken our classes where we show you how to focus on them, we recommend that you sign up for the Mudrashram® Master Course in Meditation or the Accelerated Meditation Program. If you are not sure whether that is right for you or not, schedule a spiritual discovery session with us.

The Three Threads

Posted on August 27, 2021 by George Boyd

Q: What is the difference between faith, philosophy, and meditation? Do they arrive at the same point ultimately?

A: To understand the difference between these transcendental functions of the mind, you need to become clear about the three threads.

The thread of faith and remembrance – This thread connects with the ego and tracks into the presence of the form of God in the First Mesoteric Initiation—this is the faith aspect of this thread. Then, it connects with each form of the Divine above the First Mesoteric Initiation from the Second Planetary Initiation to the Infinite Stage on the Seventh Transcendental Path—this is the remembrance aspect of this thread. So we believe in God up to the First Initiation; beyond that, we remember God. This is the conduit through which we pray to God.

The intuitive thread (Antakarana) – This is the thread that runs from your brain, through your conscience, your intellect, and the Superconscious mind to the Soul’s consciousness, what we call the Illumined mind. This is the thread that allows you to ask a question and receive an answer. Philosophers, theologians, psychics, and psychologists tap this thread to receive understanding and guidance—this allows you to dialog with your Soul. We teach you to tap into this thread in our training in Jnana Yoga, which we present in our intermediate classes, the in-person Mudrashram® Master Course in Meditation and the by-mail and the online Accelerated Meditation Program.

The thread of consciousness – This thread connects the attention in its ground state through each focal point in every level of the mind—Conscious, Subconscious, Metaconscious, and Superconscious. You access this thread through isolating the attention (mindfulness) and guiding it to travel along this thread to specific locations along this thread. We teach how to accomplish this in the Raja Yoga portion of our intermediate classes.

The cord of faith is primarily emotional; the intuitive thread, mental; and the thread of consciousness, noetic. You use the thread of faith and remembrance when you want God to help you and guide you. You tap the intuitive thread when you want to gain insight and understanding. You travel on the thread of consciousness when you want to have direct experience of the object of your meditation.

We suggest that you need to be able to utilize all three threads effectively, when it is appropriate to use them. You are taught about how to have faith in God or to remember the Divine in your religious training, and how to pray to this Being. We point out that it is also important for you to be able to activate and utilize the other two threads.

Study and explore these three threads. Learn to apply them.

The Six Levels of the Mind Beyond the Brain

Posted on April 25, 2020 by George Boyd

Our modern scientific worldview identifies the mind with the brain. There are, however, six additional orders of mind that dwell beyond this neural surface of cognition. These seven layers of the mind are shown below.

In the waking state of awareness, it appears the mind is the activity of the brain. This is the empirical viewpoint that modern Science holds.
In the next octave of cognition, you activate the astral brain. When this occurs, you become capable of lucid dreaming. Your imagination is enhanced. You are able to do astral travel and remote viewing. You can produce voluntary hypnotic phenomena through giving suggestions to your astral body. You can learn to perform psychic or impressional readings, which gather information not accessible through the physical senses. You become aware of other beings in their astral bodies and of the Astral Planes or worlds of dimension.
At the next octave, you become aware of the lighted area of human consciousness embedded in the matrix of the unconscious mind. You become aware of distinct forms or vehicles of consciousness that have discrete functions that they carry out. You may begin to have experiences of the Kundalini awakening the etheric chakras. You may obtain glimpses of your Higher Self in peak experiences.
At the next order of mind, you become aware that you are attention—a ball of mind-stuff—that observes the activity of the mind and the content of these vehicles of consciousness. You become aware of the thread of consciousness that allows your attention to travel through a series of focal points to deeper bands of the mind. You become capable of mindfulness and contemplation at this stage.
When you move to the next level, you become aware of the Self, which integrates and coordinates the activity of all of the levels of your Conscious, Subconscious, and Metaconscious mind. You discover your volition, which enables you to take charge of your life and create your personal destiny. This is the stage of personal empowerment.
Once you awaken your Superconscious mind, you become aware of the vehicles of consciousness that your Soul has activated. You rise into the vast vista of you your Soul’s consciousness, which grants intuitive knowledge about the vehicles of consciousness you have opened and the bands of the Continuum in which they dwell. It also stirs the unconditional love of the Soul, and the love and devotion of your spirit. It animates the higher abilities of your Soul at each stage of the Superconscious mind that you have opened.
When your mind fully awakens, you realize the essential nature of your Soul and your Illumined Mind becomes fully active. This grants wisdom, understanding, highest discernment, the ability to become aware of every level of the mind (mandalic reasoning), and bestows Gnosis—where the Soul realizes its own true nature.

You normally experience the mind as the brain when your attention dwells in the waking state of awareness. At this level, habit largely governs your functioning.

The astral mind operates during the states of sleep, hypnosis, anesthesia and intoxication, and astral projection. Most people experience this state through dreaming, but have little control over their experience.

You typically tap into the etheric mental helix during deep sleep, when your attention is drawn deep into the unconscious mind. The causal body operates in this state: it consolidates your daily experiences into long-term memory and sets into motion the regenerating and recharging processes of deep sleep. You may also tap into this matrix if you practice hatha yoga, martial arts, or breathing meditations, or if you do exercises to awaken your Kundalini.

The state of inner alertness or mindfulness occurs when you collect your attention and become present at the entrance to the thread of consciousness that travels through all vehicles of the mind. This is the gateway to meditation.

Centering techniques enable you to unite your attention with the Self. This activates the entire personality, and enables your Self to operate its vehicles of consciousness at full efficiency.

You reach into the Superconscious mind through uniting your attention with your intentional consciousness, which we call the attentional principle, through the practice of Raja Yoga. You can learn to raise the Kundalini through the higher vehicles of consciousness of the Superconscious mind and stir then into full activity.

Through the practice of intuitive meditation, Jnana Yoga, you gain discernment and Gnosis. When you achieve the state of Superconscious Illumination, which is called Samadhi, you fully activate your Illumined Mind, which teaches you about the mysteries of the Soul and about matter, energy, mind, and consciousness.

We introduce you to your vehicles of consciousness, traveling along the thread of consciousness, and activating the Self—levels three through five—in our beginning meditation class, the Introduction to Meditation Program. We teach you how to access and awaken levels four through seven in our intermediate classes, the in-person Mudrashram® Master Course in Meditation and the by-mail and online Accelerated Meditation Program.

We encourage aspirants to familiarize themselves with these deeper layers of the mind beyond the physical brain. Meditation is the master key to unlock these other zones of the mind veiled to this surface mind of the cerebral cortex. We invite you to learn how to meditate with us, to transcend your brain, and experience these other six levels of the mind.