The Three-Storeyed Universe
Notes on Our
Cosmos by Ian Elliott
I am collecting notes about our cosmos which seem suggestive
and relevant.
The first thing to note is that our cosmos is local. A cosmos is an ordered habitation, and does
not mean everything within reach of our telescopes. It is still under construction and goes
through cycles of birth, growth, decay, dissolution and incubation. We shall understand what these cycles mean
when we understand how life, evolution and intelligence fit into the dynamics
of a cosmos.
The Sun is the principal deity and world of our local
cosmos, while the Earth is its principal ‘field’ of nurture. The Moon, which is the same apparent size as
the Sun, serves as a circuit breaker for solar energies and governs the cycles
of reincarnation.
The Watchers are the Suns or principal deities of four other
cosmoses who provide astral cross-fertilization to the Earth through the agency
of elementals: sylphs, salamanders, undines and gnomes, from the stars
Aldebaran, Regulus, Antares and Fomalhaut, respectively.
The astral Earth is a higher dimension of our physical
world, where our root souls reside and gradually grow to maturity through many
incarnations. The point of growth of our
current incarnation is our everyday identity, where we look out through our
eyes at the physical world and inward at the thoughts and feelings in our
astral world. Ordinarily our awareness
of the two alternates rapidly, but we can learn to look out and in at the same
time, serving as the Threshold Guardian of our inner cosmos. When we succeed in
learning to do this, sudden noises will not frighten us. This was noted by the heathen Ainu of
Sakhalin, who warned their anthropologist that sudden fright opens one up to
the ingress of malicious spirits.
Records from many ancient civilizations, such as the
Hittite, Sumerian, Mongolian and proto-Voodoo (Vodun), indicate that the Sun is
the Threshold Guardian of our local cosmos, or that the Threshold Guardian
resides in the Sun.
The dissolution phase of our local cosmos does not
necessarily involve the destruction of the physical globe itself, but initiates
a general dying-off of life on the land and in the sea. The greatest extinction was in the Permian event,
about 252 million years ago, which separated the late Palaeozoic from the
Triassic /Mesozoic eras and destroyed about 95% of all species. Dinosaurs evolved during the latter
period. The great ecological crisis we
are currently in may well lead to another such extinction, as predicted in the
Volva’s prophecy in the Elder Edda.
A dissolution phase may or may not affect the astral Earth
dimension, but incarnation activity would cease until conditions favoring life
are re-established.
When root souls in the astral Earth have matured sufficiently,
they will undergo a transmutation and travel to the Sun to receive bodies of
light, as taught by both Italian stregheria and the Hindu Prasna
Upanishad. Thereafter the transmuted
soul lives in the solar world, that is, the local starry world, and assists the
Gods in their labors.
The Caucasian mystic Gurdjieff taught that in order to take
account of everything that can be contained in a cosmos, three cosmoses must be
considered together. This fits in with
what has been said above about the structure of our local cosmos. Each of us contains an inner cosmos, with an
inner cosmic pillar or tree by which our dream soul [1]
can descend to the root soul and then reascend to the physical Earth. Each of us serves as the Sun of his / her
inner cosmos and can become its effective Threshold Guardian by means of
maintaining simultaneous awareness of outer perceptions and inner thoughts and
feelings, as already mentioned above. This is the first cosmos.
By means of the sacred household and the offices of household
spirits and demigods, including the house’s Threshold Guardian, we are put into
contact with the local physical cosmos, and can receive energies from the Sun
through the crown chakra, which is open at birth and can be re-opened through
special exercises. This teaching is so
widespread it is well-nigh universal. By connecting with the Sun and the
root-soul and spirits and elementals in our physical world, we help to
construct the second cosmos, or cosmic level.
Finally, by undergoing transmutation in the astral Earth (or
more rarely, and formerly, on the physical Earth), we travel to the Sun and are
there given a body of light. Thereafter
we dwell in the solar or third level of our local cosmos.
The Gods, it would seem, are developing and building the
local cosmos on three levels in imitation of a pattern established by higher
Gods, perhaps in the galactic world. So they, too, have Gods.
* * *
[1]
The reincarnating bud-soul is dual in nature, with the dream-soul able to
travel to the root-soul and back, while the bud-soul proper keeps watch over
the body. Only the dream-soul rejoins the root-soul after death.
