The Splendour of Tiphareth: the Yoga of the Sun (The Complete Works, #10)

by Omraam Mikhaël Aïvanhov

Kriya-yoga is the yoga of light. This is the yoga of the great Babaji, and it consists in thinking of light, of getting to know and understand light and colours, and of drawing them into oneself and projecting them all around. It is a magnificent way to work.

And it is precisely this spiritual aspect that I want to explain to you: how to grow spiritually by getting to know the sun, by learning how to look at and contemplate it, and even how to enter into it mentally.

The very first thing to do is to realize the importance of the centre and what great changes will begin to occur within you, even without your knowing it, as soon as you start to seek it. The nearer you get to the sun in spirit, soul, thought, heart and will, the nearer you will be to God, for on the physical plane, the sun is the symbol and the tangible, visible representative of the Deity. All those abstract, remote names by which men designate God – Source of Life, Creator of heaven and earth, Prime Cause, Almighty God, Universal Soul, Cosmic Intelligence – can all be summed up in the one concrete, familiar reality of the sun. Yes, the sun can be seen as the summary and synthesis of all those sublime, abstract ideas which are beyond our comprehension. The sun is the gateway, the physical link, the medium through which we can unite with the Lord.

You simply have to rise mentally to the subtlest regions and, once there, maintain an expectant, receptive attitude and wait. Yes, just wait! Your soul and spirit are highly skilled doctors and chemists who know the exact nature of every etheric substance and are able to choose those you need and leave aside all the others.

since the sun is the centre of the solar system, when you look at it you are drawing closer to your own centre which, although you have lost touch with it, is still there within you. The sun, being itself a centre, uses its magic influence on your centre to awaken it and restore it to its rightful place. And when you have found your centre again, all the different currents which flow through you today, in disorder, will begin to fall harmoniously into place round it.

sun also practises Jnana-yoga, the yoga of knowledge. He sees and observes and knows everything. Nothing is hidden from him, for his rays are like a beam of light from a projector, a very extraordinary projector whose rays travel more than ninety million miles, and he can see us here, on earth.

As for Kriya-yoga, where could you hope to find the yoga of light more excellently practised than in the sun? Kriya-yoga consists in being luminous and radiant and projecting light in all directions, and the sun does nothing but that. And since he has become so proficient, and acquired such perfect mastery of the art, why not go and seek instruction from him?

The case of Shabda-yoga is even better, for the sun is the divine Word. Nobody knows this, but the fact is that the sun sings. He sings and talks and explains things to us even though we cannot hear him yet. It is only recently that scientists have begun to try and decipher the sound waves emitted by the sun; they have already heard certain sounds, but they still have not understood them. There is music coming from the sun, the most beautiful music that exists; the sun sings, speaks and creates, and one day astronomers will record the music coming from the sun and the planets.

I wanted to tell you today, my dear brothers and sisters; it was not long but it is very important. When you gaze at the sun your soul begins to resemble it and assumes the same shape. Before long I intend to explain how you should look at the sun, and exactly what it is. For it is a whole, vast world that contains living beings, dwellings, palaces, trees, cities and oceans – a world with a culture that is beyond anything you can imagine. It is the loveliest of lands, the ‘land of the living’, which is spoken of in the Bible: ‘I will walk before the Almighty in the land of the living.’4 ‘The living’ are the immortal, eternal beings who dwell permanently in light. The sun is their home, and it is they who send us light. The sun is the most marvellous of worlds, peopled with angels, archangels and divinities, who go to and fro, to work in each one of the planets and help the creatures who inhabit them before returning once more to the sun. It is all very highly organized. In fact, some of these extremely beautiful, intelligent and powerful beings often come to visit us on earth.

Most people throw only criticism and abuse in the direction of the unfortunate people who bear the burden of government, so that the added burden of so many negative, harmful thoughts leads to their making the wrong decisions. And, of course, it is the whole population that suffers from their mistakes. If you want to help your country, you have to make contact with the person in charge and send him a great deal of light, so that he may always be well inspired.

Light is more intelligent than anything or anyone, because it has chosen to remain free. It refuses to let itself be weighed down, and this is why all those who wish to resemble the light refuse to assume heavy loads, to put down roots, or to be caught in the snares of matter.

The stereotypes in our brains are etheric and, therefore, invisible, and you will, perhaps, understand this better if I illustrate it with an example. What is a seed? A seed is a stereotype. You cannot see the lines of force traced on it, but if you sow it and water it and allow the sun to warm it, you will soon see a shoot and then a stem, pushing up out of the ground. All the necessary instructions have been written into the seed from the start, by a very intelligent hand. How could one explain its perfect proportions and the beauty of the mature plant if it did not contain a secret blueprint to define the lines of force and channel the energies at work in the growing seed? Similarly, if certain human beings are continually impelled to commit a particular type of crime, it is because they have inner stereotypes which are like lines of force constantly urging them to do so. At some point in the past – we cannot know exactly when, perhaps in this life or in a previous incarnation – they entertained a thought or feeling, or committed an act which etched itself into the etheric matter of their brain. And once this etching existed, that original act or thought or feeling went on repeating itself, for nature is faithful and true. If you start putting your hand into other people’s pockets, you will soon find that the habit has become stronger than you. You will not be able to stop your little voyages of exploration (this is what they call kleptomania). Ah, yes, all the vices go...

you must prepare yourselves. No one is ever sufficiently prepared. How often I have told you that you must prepare yourselves in advance for the sunrise! Go to bed the night before with the thought that it is the Lord himself that you will see when you gaze on the sun the next morning.

of course, the sun does not talk as we do. He speaks through silence. He sends waves and particles and we have to decipher them. Once you have learned to listen to what the sun is saying and to interpret his words, you will be amazed to find that he is, in all truth, capable of solving every problem, even the toughest and most inextricable.

Yes, you should expose your back to the sun from time to time because the roots of the chakras lie along the spinal column,2 and when you have your back to the sun they can absorb the solar energies they need to set them in motion.

The earth is a great mystery, and we are going to have to study it in detail in the future, so as to know and understand all the processes going on in its laboratories and workshops, and the entities who work there. Only the great initiates have any idea of what the earth is, because they penetrate mentally into its depths in order to study it.

Night prepares the day. Day prepares nothing, it is open handed, a spendthrift. All manifestation is prepared by night. Before the sun, moon and stars appeared in the sky there was a time of preparation in darkness, in the obscurity of night. This is what esoteric science teaches: night is a preparation for day. Take the example of coal; it is completely black, but its blackness is a prelude to the brightness of the flame that will spring from it. Darkness comes first, therefore, and from darkness springs light. Within the womb of darkness the brightness of day is prepared and made possible.

Alchemists understood this. When they said that light emerged from darkness they were referring implicitly to light as the fruit of the immense work that takes place in darkness. Bees too work in darkness, because they have a light of their own. It is possible to work in darkness, for in reality there is no such thing as darkness. The night is lit by a dazzling light, but, as it is an astral light, we cannot see it. The darkness of some is light to others; darkness and light coexist.

The egotistical, egocentric, materialistic intellect that manifests itself today in the work of so many thinkers, philosophers and scholars is the assassin of reality. This is what prevents men from seeing, and the more they rely on it, the more they demand of it, the less capable they become of feeling or believing in cosmic immensity, and the more completely they cut themselves off from this greater reality, and become individualistic, personal and destructive. Is this state of affairs going to last for ever?

the development of the intellect is only one phase in the Lord’s plan for humanity. Obviously, God knew that if man developed his intellect it would cut him off from the whole, prevent him from perceiving immensity and end by making him sceptical, atheistic, materialistic, and positivist. But he also knew that this state of affairs would not last.

A comparison of the solar plexus and the brain shows that they are both made of the same kinds of tissue, grey and white, but that the relative positions of the two kinds of tissue are reversed. The grey matter of the brain is on the surface, and the white inside, whereas in the solar plexus it is just the reverse. It is the grey matter that enables man to understand, and the white that enables him to feel. The grey matter of the brain, therefore, being on the outside, disposes us to understand the outer aspects of reality, whereas that of the solar plexus disposes us to grasp the inner, more profound spiritual dimension. This is one of the most important lessons of initiatic Science.

Now I want to draw a conclusion from what I have been saying. Light and darkness are two divine principles. There is nothing intrinsically evil in the night, any more than in the day. Evil exists only in men’s minds because there are things they do not understand, but in nature there is no such thing as evil. Darkness does the work for which it was created; light does the same. Light is born of darkness. It is darkness that gives birth to light. Remember what I told you about that yesterday.

We may sometimes have wondered who first taught men the arts of writing and agriculture, and the use of fire and certain tools. Various names have been suggested, but the truth is that it was not a human being at all, but the sun. Yes, the sun was at the origin of these discoveries. You will perhaps object that that is impossible, since the sun is not endowed with intelligence; he has no brain to think with and no tongue to talk with. According to you, then, human beings have a monopoly on intelligence, and the one being that has made life on earth possible is not intelligent.