The twelve-petalled lotus radiates outwards from the region of the heart that envelopes those we choose to love. It is also an organ of perception. What I truly love will open itself up to me and reveal it;s secrets.
Enveloping someone in love in this way is an exercise of the imagination. Of course, imagination is not to be confused here with fantasy. It is a true perception of a higher reality -- and the organ of this in both East and West is the heart chakra. this is what is being referred to on the road to Emmaus, where disciples who have just recognized who it was they have just encountered, say to themselves, ' Did our hearts not burn within us as while he talked to us on the road?'
When the heart chakra blossoms and shines, we may perceive the Outword in a supernatural way. A loving heart can also give me conscious experience of the heart of the cosmos, of the loving intelligence that lives beyond the Outerworld and controls it. "Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God.'
Love works on the will as well as powers of perception. When we really love someone, we are willing to do anything for them.
This is why the heart chakra blossoms when love moves me to act according to my conscience. I am not then acting wearily, like Marcus Aurelius. I am not acting in a cold, unenthusiastic or inauthentic way. I am not doing my duty while part of me resents it. I am acting out of love and devotion.
Initiation forges a new form of consciousness. It revives ways of being conscious of the spirit worlds that were common in the earlier stages of human evolution, but now with new elements. The initiations of Pythagoras that set the tone for the ages of the ascendancy of Greece and Rome, for example, had been concerned with achieving an alternative state of consciousness involving free communications with the spirit worlds that had been an everyday occurence for, say, Gilgamesh or Achilles, but witha crucial difference. Initiates of the school of Pythagoras were able to think about their spiritual experiences in a considered, conceptual way that would have been impossible for Achilles or Gilgamesh.