Speaker’s Report - March 2022

Consciousness Con Carne - Rick Levine

We had Rick Levine from US presenting in March 2022. In a nutshell, this session provided us with new perspective to reincarnation (and dis-incarnation). Rick used a non-linear way to present his ideas including looking at relationship between the physical world and the consciousness, the role of Saturn in reincarnation, dis-incarnation, and ‘change’. He also touched on the concept of reality (which is supposed to be Saturn’s domain) and illusion (mostly associated with Neptune), and a bit of history about how modern Western world discovered / embraced the idea of reincarnation. Rick then questioned the concept of time being linear which added another layer of complexity to the topic.

Rick started off by elaborated on the title noting we are (human-being) consciousness with a physical form (Con Carne means meat in English), and we reincarnate when we are born and disincarnate when we depart this lifetime (and any other lifetime). Rick believes consciousness exists before physical form and it continues with or without form.

We then established the fact that human ‘see’ the world through the lens we built for ourselves throughout history. From naming and describing the leaves in summer as ‘green’ in colour to labelling ‘things we see’ and experiences we had.  The reality is the physical world is made up of frequency and particles (modern science accepted this) and there are much more beyond what human’s naked eyes can ‘see’ (such as infra-red and ultra-violet light). We change ‘our world’ as we ‘change our perception’.

A very good example Rick used about the changing of perception and consciousness in astrology is - we used to have a slightly different perception towards Mars, Saturn, and Jupiter before we assigned modern rulers to Scorpio, Aquarius, and Pisces. For example, Mars is not just God of War but also the Lover – he is associated with the ‘wet’ and ‘passion’ of Scorpio. The planet changes meaning as we perceive them because our consciousness changes.

If we accept the fact that we only ‘see’ part of the ‘real’ world and are only using ‘lens’ we built for ourselves, then the concept of Saturn is the reality while Neptune is illusion may require re-examination. After all, the physical world we live in could be ‘real’ only to ourselves and the ‘reality’ Saturn is usually associated with can be an illusion that there is a ‘reality’.

Another angle Rick used to further dive into the topic of ‘reality’ vs ‘illusion’ is the concept of Nodes – coming from a Latin word knot, which means the intersect of two lines. All we ‘see’ and ‘feel’ as physical objects in this world are only high frequency electro-magnetic waves (light) intersect and therefore forming nodes. Everything is just made of ‘light’. If such is the case, we do need to ask the question - what is ‘reality’.

Interestingly, Rick noted that in Vedic Astrology, Nodes are considered ‘bad’ regardless of North or South. The reason is that the Eastern philosophy believes the material world is an illusion and so the concept of focusing in gathering experience in the physical world for evolution purposes is a trap.

Rick then spent more time on Saturn, starting with the symbol – which is formed by the cross of matter (looks like the alphabet ‘t’) and a backward looking ‘s’. The symbol of the cross is significant because the intersect of two waves at 90 degrees is where light create the strongest knot (or interference) and matters being formed. The backward looking ‘s’ represents the moon’s forever changing pattern. Combining the two we get the symbol of Saturn. Rick further pointed out that if we flipped the symbol of Saturn, we would see the alphabet ‘S’ and ‘T’. Interestingly, we find a lot of words with saturnian meaning having ‘s’ and ‘t’ in it – for example, ‘structure’, ‘status’, ‘list’, ‘stop’, just to name a few, and adjective adding ‘-st’ at the end to create the boundary and the limit (such as ‘biggest’, ‘smallest’, ‘best’, ‘least’, ‘first’, ‘last’, etc).

We then touched on the Tibetan Book of Dead and its description of death, the in-between stage, and rebirth. Interestingly, Rick pointed out that when Pluto last conjunct Neptune in 1890s, we had Sigmund Freud discovered the subconscious mind and dreams and developed psychoanalysis. He worked his way backward and discovered the last stage described by the Book of Dead without knowing the existence of the book. In a way, the ‘talk therapy’ developed by Freud is very Plutonian as it involves using ‘talk’ (Mercury) to uncover what’s hidden in the unconscious (underworld). Carl Jung continued this upstream journey and found the 2nd stage described by the Book of Dead - archetypes and collective unconscious.

Rick noted while the Western world stumbled across using hypnotisation to access neonatal consciousness, past-life regression did not come to existence until late 20th century, and the concept of past life and reincarnation finally found its way back into the Western world - something the Eastern culture has believed in for thousands of years, existed in the ancient Egypt, Greek and Roman worlds but wiped out by Catholicism. If we accepted consciousness exists beyond physical form and it reincarnate and dis-incarnate, then Saturn is not the end or the boundary but part of the process of ‘change’ that moves the consciousness between physical and non-physical realm.

We then touched on the concept of time being non-linear in the non-physical world and Rick quoted scientific study that showed human consciousness interfered with events that happened prior to study subjects being asked to interfere the event. Rick stated he is not questioning reincarnate but the illusion of the linear nature of lifetimes (ie. we go from one lifetime to the next and to the next). In fact, all that existed in the past and all that will ever exist in the future exist in the current moment. Rick supported his argument by noting we know a person’s birth chart continues to work (and make sense) even after death and a person’s current chart (including birth and transit) can act as a receiver of energy pattern for the same consciousness in another lifetime.

Rick ended the session by reading out 2 poems which are both related to death and consciousness.