The Astrology of Space

[Michael Erlewine]

Hi Bruce,

Most of what you write leaves me no real points to discuss. We do see things in a similar way and that is remarkable! I will include a few fine points that might be fun to at least mention.

The inner and outer are not just connected; they are the same thing. Like I have written elsewhere our physical body is the ultimate talisman. The same goes for anything physical, which is like the crystal that forms in the center of the solution, etc.

I will skip over the ‘diamond soul’ reference for now. Perhaps another time for that.

As for identifying with outer space or as you put it ‘let their hearts and minds go out into deep space..." Without that ‘out’ breath, there cannot be an ‘in’ breath. It is like the baby that can’t breathe. Mommy has to spank its bottom a bit until it cries and begins to breathe, in and out. We can’t hold our breath forever. My experience of “embracing” deep space resulted in my discovery of the Sun and everything within our solar system, because that was mostly what could be embraced. When you embrace "out," you find it suddenly within. That idea. You are familiar with my poem, “The Point of No Return,” which is about this concept.

The ‘egocentric’ you mention is just a mis-take, a simple confusion, but a very ingrained one. It is the Soul or Sun shining in the mind. The personality is just the “terrible crystal’ that we all have precipitated as a center, literally the skeleton of the soul, so to speak. Discovering the nature of the bones of the personality is like the old game of pick-up-sticks. When it is over, there are no more sticks.

As for making all these mental connections, my Rosicrucian teacher used to say “My God is no beggar! He doesn’t need me to make the ends meet. The ends already meet.”

It can be uncomfortable to remind ourselves, but there is (in my opinion) still a subtle duality here with these correspondence references. When we try to make the ends meet, the largest noise is the “try,” which tells us right off that we are reaching or conceptualizing rather than experiencing, much less realizing. We can’t try to make the pieces of the puzzle fit together. They just fit or not.

‘We’ don’t ever figure it out, by definition. The “we” is part of the problem. Not a problem to be removed, but one to be seen through. Again, my teacher used to say “It is not true because I say it; I say it because it is true.”

Let me put it in another way: “Identification ‘is’ circulation” might better be phrased as “Identification is our form of circulation.” Identification does not take time or movement.

My main point here is that in this identification you and I like to talk about, we see not only beyond the personality, and beyond the soul, but also beyond the GC and anything physical. It is not about that stuff.

These things we are discussing are merely a prelude to the mind itself, which can embrace all the supergalaxies there are in an instant, and without so much as a thought. My dharma teacher made it clear to me that astrology, with all its beauty, is but one of the limbs of the yoga, not the root. At best, astrology is a relative truth, a way for us to crawl across the cobwebs of the soul on the way to the true nature of our own mind. In this sense, astrology is but a sidebar.

Sorry to keep quoting my teacher, but that is traditional. One of the phrases he most repeated to me personally was this: “Michael, if you spend all of your time in the sideshow, the main tent will be gone.” I am sure he knew me well.

I will leave it like that.

[Ray Mardyks]

Michael,

First time reading your dream story. I personally appreciate those personal stories the best from all your writings. After a few years absorbing Astrophysical Directions and what it implied, I went to Hawaii. I looked up, saw and felt the stars and proceeded to throw away all my astrology books. It's now what, over 20 years later? About halfway, I found the Maya system and realized it as a navigational tool for doing "galactic" astrology. Quite a surprise finding a fully developed galactic astrology system, I must say.

[Michael Erlewine]

Ray,

That book (Astrophysical Directions) was published in 1976, some 33 years ago. At the time of publishing, all I had was an electric typewriter and a pocket computer. This was before the advent of home computers.

The only other astrologers interested in the deep-space material that I was aware of were my close friend Charles A. Jayne and my friend Theodor Landscheidt. Jayne knew very little of this material, but Landscheidt knew more, not the nitty gritty facts, but the wider issue of resonance and the fact that systems the size of a galaxy could only cohere by the circulation of information, much like we circulate blood through the human body.

At the time I was not aware that anyone with a personal sensitivity to something as vast as the galaxy or the supergalaxy was bound to be more than a little unconventional. By definition, because this material is beyond convention, almost no one knew (or cared) what I was talking about, what I was trying to point out. You were one of maybe two people that even resonated to that book in a way that I would call reflection, the other being Phillip Sedgewick.

It is one thing to understand the concepts involved, but quite another to actually respond personally through a conscious experience of the material. It is the experience that pushes one beyond conventional knowledge and into the realm of shamanic experience, at least that is what happened to me.

Now that I have lived a little longer, I understand why it was not more interesting to more astrologers. They were not sensitive in that way. And for myself, I was the very most interested and the very most sensitive to the center of the Supergalaxy and the clouds of galaxies that rain down on the late part of tropical Virgo and early Libra.

It was there that I found the heart of Compassion, what goes by the name of Buddhism in the world today. For that I am grateful. Thanks for the note. Glad to have you on board!