In honor of Jesus Christ, I want to review the eight layers of consciousness, represented by the series of planets and metals of astrology and alchemy, the trigrams of the I Ching, and the colors of the aura. The familiar quest of the alchemist was to transmute lead into gold, as represented by the following sequence of colors.
On the bottom is Black, solitude or death, depending on your frame of reference. Nothing to see here. Then, from the view of the bottom of the whirlpool into Black, we see the struggle for life between the anger and violence of Red and the oppression or defeat of Purple. For a large part of the human race, this is the horizon of consciousness ~ dog eat dog, and rat eat rat, as people strive to get ahead of others by theft, deceit, or violence. At a higher level than that, there is Orange, conflict or engagement, which may be anything from war to market struggle, or any work involving close interaction. At a far remove from all of that, above the fray, there is the peace and rest of Blue, where everything is in harmony with Tao. This is the object of Buddhism.
As the horizon of consciousness rises, it includes the earlier layers, but each layer is only aware of those at that level or below. Levels higher than the ideals of Buddhism are hard to find, but there are two more levels above the Blue, not counting the union, White, at the top ~ Yellow and Green, love and grace. Yellow expresses the radiance of positive energy as love, and Green expresses the blessings of the grace of God.
The most important lesson to be learned from this alchemical sequence in the transmutation of lead into gold is that everything gets better as the level of the consciousness rises. If everyone would understand this, they would want to raise their consciousness as high as possible. Jesus Christ is the most famous advocate of this level of consciousness, and this is the foundation of his message. The theology of the Christian Church has been developed by later scholars, but his foundational message coincides exactly with the secret tradition of alchemy which studies the transmutation of lead into gold.
A new commandment I give unto you, that ye love one another;
as I have loved you, that ye also love one another.
By this shall all men know that ye are my disciples if ye have love one to another.
John XIII, 34-35
