Yesterday, I returned to one of ‘Arthur Avalon’s’ texts, primarily, at that point, to recover the transliterated spellings of the seven kundalini chakras. This morning, I continue at the point of study, and follow my recent lines of thought back through the different ‘esoteric’ framings of consciousness and the body; and I recognize how so many of the frames were first defined for me, not by Tantra, but by Upanishad. As I touch back through Avalon’s text, I start to see how Upanishadic structures stand behind most of the tantric symbolism.

          Finally, I start to think that I missed my turn when I failed to begin teaching Upanishad twenty-five years ago, even though I hadn’t properly learned Sanskrit.

          But then, of course, the thought shifts. The seven are not in the Upanishad – as far as I can remember (not having returned to it for twenty-five years). Once again, I have the sense of Thomas in Mumbai, the trade partner with Rome at that time. The caduceus antedates the tantric exposition of the seven chakras.

          Seven, of course, is the peculiar number of the prophetic. To say this directly raises the issue I am concerned with here. The core question is number itself. My own course of study has convinced me that the small numbers have a kind of absolute value with respect to ‘dialectic’ – that is, that they in fact define dialectic, the full metaphysical aspect of conscious activity. But when I try to ‘prove’ this within a reasonable compass of discursive presentation – such as this blog – my dissatisfaction with the result raises the old beast of my own doubts.

          So I remember that the defining text of my knowledge is not Upanishad, but Tarot.

          Again, a great wave of doubt rises out of its grounding flesh. But the Tarot, as a textbook of the esoteric, has been the most profound and comprehensive teacher I have had. The problem is that the deepest knowledge – in terms of intimate certitude – has arisen from the most abstract portion of the Cards. The doubling of the sevens in each suit of the Minor Arcana ultimately points to the doubled level of reflective awakening.

          If we could begin by seeing reflection ‘objectively’, it would only make sense that we must experience some transitional ‘state’ between original or animal awareness and the reflective awareness in which we have the sustained field of ‘experience’ or ‘witnessed content’. But since our analysis begins, necessarily from within reflective awareness, with its compulsive and preclusive nature, recognizing this second shift into our present inertial state – with its sense of stasis in self and world – opens the eye to the differential world that exists between original awareness and our present reflexive state.

          This is signified by Eight, the inertial number.

          But, again, these numbers only self-justify within the context of the field of values created by the numbers within the frame of the Cards, with their sets and symbols. So all I can offer here is the fact that, through the Cards alone, I recognized a pre-inertial world, between original awareness, which lacks a self, and the full self-awareness with ongoing certainties that is our present inertial world. This act of recognition objectified reflective awareness for me. And it only arose from my study of Tarot. I had the pieces of self-awareness. And I had the knowledge of self-awareness: that self-awareness frames the world and that a self knowledge of self-awareness opens the gates of Spirit and religion. But, until the Tarot and the direct recognition through it of this ‘intermediate’ state, I was not able to articulate what I knew.

          The caduceus and the chakra system are more or less self-justifying, in certain circles. But if, as I am saying, there is an essentially unlimited power properly ascribable to the number seven – at least in any descriptive structure for awareness – neither the kundalini chakras nor the caduceus will serve, all baldly, as empirical proof. Can I convince all my readers to investigate their ‘feelings’ until they identify the body structures involved? And, if so, does this knowledge then qualify for a basis in ‘philosophy’ in any purely analytical sense.

          And it is this ‘analytical’ mind that I suppose I am trying to proselytize – my own as well as yours.