Inner Temple: Meditation 3

This visionary form is, in essence, one of the best known visualisations of the Western esoteric tradition. I have taught this method in the UK and the USA from 1987 to the present day. Early workings with the Inner Convocation and the Library in the UK were included at private meetings at my house in Bath, in the 1980’s, with various members including Gareth Knight, John and Caitlin Matthews, Marion Green and Richard Swettenham. From the late 1980’s the Inner Library formed part of the basic Inner Temple Traditions InnerConvocation material that I taught publicly.

The concept of a spiritual “Library” was widely taught and practiced in all the older magical lodges, and has significant parallels in Jewish Kabbalah and in Sufi mysticism. There are many variants of this form, in private circulation and in publication. Dion Fortune describes the Library in her books and in more detail in her papers from the 1930’s, (now edited and published by Gareth Knight) and it is found (of course) in the 19th century writings of Madam Blavatsky, such as Isis Unveiled and The Secret Doctrine. It is Blavatsky to whom we should credit the origins of the popular idea of the “akashic records”, borrowed and adapted creatively from Buddhist tradition. The Library and the Records are virtually synonymous in modern popular practice, though a detailed analysis, and deeper exploration, soon reveal that the Library is a spiritual location or place, while the Records may be found in that place, but are not the Library itself. We will return to this idea shortly, when we explore the nature and reality of the Library.

I first experienced the Library in 1971 while working with W G and Roberta Gray (Bill and Bobby), at their home in Cheltenham. Bill introduced me to the Library in a guided vision, a standard version used by many teachers and occultists of the older generation. This widely taught vision of The Library is the foundation for my own work, though I have made many changes according to my own insights and experience, and created a new text integrated with my overall Inner Temple Traditions InnerConvocation work. As a result of my first encounter with the Library, back in 1971, I discovered that, among other things, it can contain and reveal accurate details of the future. Here is what happened:

Bobby, who was a science-fiction writer in addition to being an astrologer and Celtic scholar, told me this (in 1971): “What I look for in the Library are the little silver discs, like circular mirrors, that you post into a slot, like a letter box, and anything you want to study comes up on a TV screen. Don’t think that the Library is limited to antique scrolls, the ways of the future are there too!” At this time, personal computers were unknown in general use, and the CD ROM had not yet appeared. When I was shown an audio CD a few years later, while recording film music for the BBC, I was astounded to realise that this was the technology of communication that Bobby Gray had seen in the Inner Library. Shortly after audio CDs, I saw such “little silver discs” linked to information displayed on a visual screen, on a home computer, the familiar data and program CDs which we all use now. Yet Roberta Gray had seen this technology, and used it, in the Inner Library in the 1960’s and earlier, years before it manifested in outer form.

Such future-vision is not, of course, the main purpose of entering the Library, but Bobby’s story serves as a historical moment, of my own introduction to the Library, and beginning to work with it in the early 1970’s. When teaching this visionary Form to students, from 1987 onwards, I have often recounted this story as a way of introducing the idea, and demonstrating its potential.

What is the Library?

The Library is a presentation, a visionary model or interface, of the Universal Mind, associated with the 6th Sphere of the Tree of Life, a spiritual consciousness of knowledge centrality, relationship, and harmony. It is the place in which past and future merge together in the time-free present, and thus it is a storehouse of transcendent and trans-temporal Knowledge.

In association with the Inner Temple Traditions InnerConvocation, the Library becomes a focussed innerworld place. Priests and Priestesses have been using the Library, in various forms, for thousands of years. Before we progress to our visionary Form for entering the Library, some basic concepts will be helpful to the reader, student, and practitioner, intending to work seriously with this Form.

The Structure of The Library:

The Library is a spiritual location, a place and state of consciousness and energy. In the esoteric traditions the body, vessel, or “building” of the library is an ark formed of angelic beings. They constitute the collective form, the energetic field or shell that holds the content. These angels are, specifically, those that record, observe, know, communicate, and hold in balanced motion. (If you know Hebrew, each of these angelic functions is also the name of an order of angels on the Tree of Life, which you will recognise).

The Content of the Library

Within the angelic structure of Recording, Observation, Knowledge, Communication, and Holding in Balance, that comprises the vessel or ark of the Library, is the originally empty space of the interior. This is imminent knowledge, which gradually becomes manifest. It becomes manifest partly through interaction with time, and partly through interaction with consciousness. We interpret that manifestation historically, as books, scrolls, engravings, communications technology, and so forth. For us knowledge manifests as information in the outer world, but the Library holds deeper modes of knowledge that we can also access with practice, knowledge before information, and knowledge beyond information.

Over millenniums, the empty vault of the Library, the vessel of imminent knowledge, becomes shaped and defined through interaction. In other words, the Library fills up. The most significant interaction for us, as humans, that which arises when individuated consciousness enters the Library. In our general experience, the consciousness that enters the library is often human or transhuman, but many other beings also use the Library. The long practice of going there in meditation, especially among priests priestesses and initiates, has built a reservoir of energy and consciousness in the vessel, in the Library. Thus, when we use a traditionally based vision, that of a grand building with many books, scrolls, and other forms of recording and communication, we are using these historical stereotypes as an interface for relationship with Knowledge. When we enter the Library at a deeper level of awareness, we also find other forms therein…sometimes those of the technological future, and often those of the organic libraries of life-forms in nature. Occasionally we may encounter beings that are completely “other” in their nature, though this is relatively unusual.

In the Library we do not merely study books: the popular, and highly reduced and simplistic idea of the “akashic records” is often modelled as reading a book…every spiritualist medium and channeller knows how to present or to pretend a version of this, though usually without the context or deeper contact of the Library. There is much more to the Library than is known in the popular themes of the Records.

In the Library, we may meet inner plane beings, just as we do in the Temples and the InnerConvocation. With practice, the Library becomes a meeting place for sharing, giving and receiving, knowledge. It is, in fact, a higher octave of the Crossroads that is used in folkloric faery and UnderWorld magic, whereby humans meet spirit beings and exchange with them.

Being a Crossroads, the Library also acts as an interim place, a consubstantial locus in which the edges or thresholds of many other loci (spiritual places) merge together. Traditionally these are envisioned as halls, chamber, chapels, shrines, rooms, corridors leading in and out, and so forth.

Students of classical history and culture will recognise connections to the Theatre of Memory that was used by the orators of the Roman and Greek world… a mnemonic system that built an amphitheatre and temples in the mind, to store and rearrange information. This method derives directly from the older temple arts of memory which were practiced in the Library for sacromagical purposes.

Why do we go to the Library?

In the basic training known to every lodge member or Western tradition student, the Library is taught early on. It is still one of the basic introductory forms that I teach to all Inner Temple students or new group members, and have done so since 1987. This is because its outer levels, the most accessible, can provide the student with a resource for learning. You can learn anything you want in the Library, plus many things that you had no idea were relevant to you. Often the practise of using the Library stops at this level, and goes no further. As mentioned above, the popular notion of the “akashic records” is the most superficial level of accessing the Library…usually attempted without any knowledge of the real nature of the Library itself.

Repeated use of the Library, in an informed and dedicated manner, coming and going, studying and learning, gradually opens out certain innate inner abilities, potentials of consciousness, perception, reception, that we all have within us. Such abilities are enhanced and amplified by the Inner Temple techniques acquired through our other Forms, such as Entering Stillness, the Pillar of Light, and Experience of the Four Temples.

The Library also provides an interface, within its visionary scenario, for communication between the outer world and the occupants of the Inner Temples. They will teach us things in the Library, and find appropriate ways of communicating with us, through the long standing patterns of consciousness-exchange stored in the Library.

Finally, the Library leads to some deeper spiritual realms of awareness, due to its Crossroads function. We will explore these deeper realms elsewhere, in our other Inner Temple Inner Convocation Forms.

On to The Library

Now let us proceed to Part (2), which is the empowered vision, or Inner Temple Form, for entering the Library.

NOTE: this text is strictly copyright © R J Stewart 1987-2005. Any use of the whole or part of the text without permission is strictly forbidden and is illegal. For copyright permissions contact R.J. Stewart

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Last Update:

May 5, 2005