9:1 And the fifth angel blew his trumpet, and I saw a star fallen from heaven to earth, and he was given the key to the shaft of the bottomless pit. 2 He opened the shaft of the bottomless pit, and from the shaft rose smoke like the smoke of a great furnace, and the sun and the air were darkened with the smoke from the shaft. 3 Then from the smoke came locusts on the earth, and they were given power like the power of scorpions of the earth. 4 They were told not to harm the grass of the earth or any green plant or any tree, but only those people who do not have the seal of God on their foreheads. 5 They were allowed to torment them for five months, but not to kill them, and their torment was like the torment of a scorpion when it stings someone. 6 And in those days people will seek death and will not find it. They will long to die, but death will flee from them.
[7 In appearance] the locusts [were like horses prepared for battle: on their heads were what looked like crowns of gold; their faces were like human faces, 8 their hair like women’s hair, and their teeth like lions’ teeth; 9 they had breastplates like breastplates of iron, and the noise of their wings was like the noise of many chariots with horses rushing into battle. 10 They] [have tails and stings like scorpions, and their power to hurt people for five months is in their tails.] 11 They have as king over them the angel of the bottomless pit. His name in Hebrew is Abaddon, and in Greek he is called Apollyon. [2]]
12 The first woe has passed; behold, two woes are still to come.”
Rev 9:1-6, 10, 12
One of the greatest psychological discoveries of the last century was the discovery of the unconscious. It was Sigmund Freud who showed that the forces sealed in the subconscious could erupt into consciousness and create severe trauma and upheaval in the life.
When the fifth centre, the brow centre is charged with the new energies at the sounding of the fifth trumpet, then two changes take place. The first is that our spiritual sight begins to open, and so we start to become clairvoyant. When clairvoyance opens we first perceive self, but what is this self that we perceive? It is the self that is created from all the internal energies that have accumulated over thousands and thousands of years of physical incarnation. These memories are stored within the etheric centre, which was the previous centre to be charged with spiritual power.
There are actually two centres connected in the head. The brow centre is connected to a centre in the centre of the brain, the pituitary centre. It is the pituitary centre that connects directly to the etheric centre. Revelation calls this connection “the shaft of the bottomless pit”. With this opening, all the pent-up energies and memories rise up into the subconscious, the pituitary centre, and then force their way into consciousness, the brow centre.
We like to think that clairvoyance is truly “clear vision”, the original meaning of the word, but Revelation tells us that this perception is first clouded by a dark smoke. This means that it first becomes more difficult to perceive what is real. Then, “from the smoke came locusts on the earth.” These are the old energies that have lived in us for so many years. Revelation especially tells us that these energies “have the power to hurt people”. This is because our consciousness at this stage, is projective. In this stage of the opening of clairvoyance, we project the old energies out into the world, trying to create an image of what exists within our mind. We see this in relationships between people, where instead of accepting the other person as they are, we try and mould them into what we think they should be. We see this in our relationship with the earth. The energies within us conquer and destroy, so we have conquered and destroyed the earth. Leaders of countries can project their false images and visions onto other countries, to such an extent that war becomes inevitable.
We have a choice here. Our projections have a time limit. Revelation says that we can do this for five months. We have this time to observe the results of our projections on people and on the world.
The pituitary centre is not just connected to sight. It is also connected to hearing. Hearing is a passive sense. We can’t project through this sense, we can only receive. If we focus our attention on listening, rather than engaging our mind in opinions, then we attune to the sound of evolution, the sounding of the angel’s trumpets, the voice of the Christ Self.
The image
This picture from an illuminated Bible shows the devastation when the contents of our subconscious erupt spontaneously. In the last one hundred years this has happened more and more. Our world wars and other conflicts are often the results of the huge energies that have been repressed for perhaps thousands of years, but which, because of the gradually increasing clairvoyance of human beings, now become potent energies and forces which take control of our thinking.
More than any time in recorded history, we need to become conscious. That is, we need to become self--conscious. We need to engage in self-reflection and self-observation. Only in this way do we disengage from those powerful, destructive forces within the psyche.
Let us practice this today by watching our thoughts, and then praying - which means to connect to the divine within. Let us apply the Christ consciousness and live in a state of forgiveness.
“He opened the shaft of the bottomless pit, and from the shaft rose smoke like the smoke of a great furnace.”
Don’t you think that is our subconscious? There are repressed things held there ... I sometimes think that mental agony is the worst pain there is, much more agonising than physical pain. You and I can have mental pain about things that have been repressed for 20, 30 or 40 years.
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What agony, what pain, countless incarnations coming to the surface! All these millions of years we have progressed through, all these years that have not been redeemed, forgiven, and to which we have not applied the Christ consciousness. So the sins of all these incarnations still stand because they have not been forgiven by that Christ consciousness.
Rev Mario Schoenmaker, The Book of Revelation, 1983 Lecture Series