Course XV - Teaching 15: The System of Meditation

Is there any relationship between the seven classical subjects of meditation so far analyzed? Does this order respond to the process that naturally must develop in the soul of the meditator?, obviously, yes. It is really a regulated journey by stages from the common state of sensibility, limited as to its projections and possibilities, maintained static in certain limit, toward the most divine exaltation of its possibilities and of its absolute freedom attained by the vast identification with the divine infinitude.
A hasty look at the different subjects shall prove our statements.
In fact, the Black Lady is the first purgative exercise whose influence on the lower nature of the practitioner tends to reduce its natural ends by removing bad habits that keep the soul as a prisoner of the animal limitation and human primitivism. It is the fight against the old and natural man.
The Abyss emphasizes this fight by cutting those primitive defenses rooted in the collective. Individuality becomes stronger when external security is lost. The soul, eager for purification, returns to itself.
The Two Ways represent the next step; it is a determined attack against the primitive nature surprised in its darkest and innermost redoubts. It is not only extraction of evil, but also extirpation of its affective root.
This purgative stage only can have positive consequences if its results are immediately channeled upward. Otherwise the soul would not go beyond a moral realization.
Meditation on the Standard is then the first impulse of offering made by the meditator to the Divine Mother by means of his purified affections.
But by the sorrow that the worshipper stands and by the revelation about his lower nature that he recently attained he cannot start the loving stage if he neither found consolation earlier nor learnt to enjoy this divine privilege that is so necessary later.
So, the Temple of Gold is at this point of the road to assuage the thirst of the wayfarer, to heal his wounds and to let him ascend to heights of his own affective world unknown to him.
To exercise to become intimate with the Mother is to fit to the divine amplitude. To love Her is to be loved by Her. To find Her everywhere is to carry Her in the soul and to have a great soul to be able to lodge Her. So, the Veil of Ahehia is the constructive exercise in the spiritualization of man. Its amplitude just can be surpassed by the Rapture given by Hes’ Resurrection.
So it is by perfect knowledge of the soul and of the way of the divine quest that this order exists, according to an ideal system.
Of course, certain practitioners perhaps do not need to start meditating on the Black Lady, but certainly they must do when the loving way emphasizes their need of purgation.
It is likely that some practitioners, at certain point of their process, indispensably need divine consolation, with purposes known and recommended by the Spiritual Director, but this in no way reduces the true perfection of the system in general, with gradual stages that the soul must fulfill.