Course XV - Teaching 9: The Abyss

What may the abyss symbolize as subject of meditation?
First, we must emphasize the analogy between the graphic picture suggested by this word and the environment in which mankind in general lives, struggles, enjoys and suffers to die.
As a matter of fact, an abyss suggests a deep and dark place of doom; an environment, on which man has fallen, carried by his desires, has the same characteristics. This environment is dark because of ignorance covering the soul of man in this state of his living, and it is of doom because the human being desires in an excessive way to live the life of this environment and becomes intensely attached to the latter, and so he loses the Eternal Life, which is his heritage and fatherland.
Hence meditation about the abyss tends to give to the soul a sensation of desolation in this world of continuous and intense emotions, and this way prevents the soul from its doom and from spending life after life in this true vale of darkness and death.
On the other hand, the abyss also symbolizes what recently has been called collective subconscious, which also could be called collective mind.
Certainly, men not only take part in a common or general structure, whether physical or biological, by virtue of laws of heritage and species, but also take part a common way of feeling and a common mentality. Mankind indisputably progresses in developing mind. The grade of mental capacity achieved by a generation is conveyed to the next generation by laws of heritage. When the humans come into being, regardless their individual grade of evolution, they flow into a grade of more advanced collective mentality possessed by previous generations.
Knowledge gradually acquired by men and experience achieved in different areas are essentially conveyed to future generations, which bring it like something known and lived, and that takes part in their evolutionary experience.
So, if the Son wants to achieve his individuality, to be independent of collective sensing and thinking, to be an artifice of his own ego and refuses to follow the long way observed by mankind in general, has to abandon the route followed by the collective mind, by tracing his own new, individual grooves on his brain.
He has to overcome the influence of this general mind for the prevalence of his own mind. He has to leave behind the route followed by men of Pisces and follow the route announced by Aquarius. The Abyss is also a symbol of this collective mind.
After determining the concept of abyss and the purpose of meditation, we let us see why desolation is pre-established as an effect. Again it is patent how deeply the Holy Masters know the soul of the humans and what therapy can be prescribed to their evils or what laws may be applied to their education.
A soul that comes to the Spiritual Path comes from the world and from its collective feeling and thinking, gets used and likes to live the collective aspect, and escapes from loneliness. It vibrates with tonalities of happiness while living the vibration of the collective aspect; then the path must move the soul away from this pleasure and habit called worldliness.
Desolation is for the soul the most suitable sensation to get this estate of isolation and detachment from worldliness. Please, understand properly this: spiritual men must not abandon streets and fields, living closed and isolated; they must live in streets and cities being desolate within, with hunger of loneliness within, internally escaping from the sensation of worldliness, from pleasure for worldliness, from the sensation of apparent security given by the collective aspect, and from the common rule, emotions, opinions and way of life.
Such sensation is indispensable in the beginning of the spiritual life and quite necessary in such a way in the soul so that the individual takes for sure that the memory and pleasure shall not overwhelm him for the collective past, which represents the abyss.
A definitive rooting in the world of the spirit shall not exist until this inclination to worldliness is purged and cleaned. Meditation must give these fruits; to live in the world being desolate.
How to meditate?
The quest of this desolation can bring two different sensations. One of them has to be of distress before the dimensions and force of worldliness.
A soul that strove to discover its own defects and purged from them, goes to the world and sees that to remove evil from within is not enough, but that there is a extraordinary force in the environment, which by its continuous influence on senses and mind, brings into the soul what the soul tried to extirpate.
The boisterous image of this world before the purified soul causes the latter to feel alone, strange and desolate. On the other hand, usually a grief invades at those moments the soul of the meditator, a grief for the lack or destiny of mankind in general. Far from the reality, in the oceanic maelstrom of its varied sensations, desires, inclinations and passions, mankind runs, laughs and weeps, and does not pay attention to God, and then the soul of the meditator suffers of this blindness and of this implacable human karma sealed off, and this sensation forms the truly spiritual desolation. It is not difficult to choose imaginative pictures with this concept of worldliness since if we open our eyes to see the surrounding reality it is enough to observe how those pictures multiply rapidly.
It is important to get the truly wished desolation. Generally, meditators require desolation of the Divine Matter, but in their souls they do not wish it. They do not notice that the spiritual building that they are erecting has no bases when desolation is absent. The winds of worldliness, which continuously and uninterruptedly blow on the unprotected valleys of the world, at any moment shall thrown down those castles if previously an intense desolation had not annihilated those worldly pleasures by granting to the soul its certainty that shall triumph by its own efforts. Desolation forges a protective wall and sure foundations of the spiritual building. We may properly say a soul imperfectly desolate is a soul totally unsteady in its journey through the spiritual road.