New Consciousness- Tom Carney

Tom Carney 1504 Walnut Avenue Manhattan Beach, Ca. (0266 (310)749 5638 Tomcarney@msn.com

THE NEW CONSCIOUSNESS

By

Tom Carney

64,700 words

Copyright © 2011 by Tom Carney Introduction Are We Up For This?

The present time is severe. One can read in various Puranas [Sanskrit writings about primordial times] about dates. If some scientists can calculate eclipses and earthquakes, other scientists can calculate other dates—the transition from Kali Yuga to Satya Yuga has been described with considerable accuracy, and the gravity of the time has been indicated.

— Fiery World I Master Morya is not alone in his observations. Many folks in the esoteric community and many of the world’s more mainstream thinkers and intellectuals have been saying for some time now that humanity is on the brink of great change. Personally, I think we passed the brink some time ago and that we are well into the Great Change or the transformation of the world. That die was cast longer ago than most of us can imagine. The future holds the promise of the Golden Age of Satya Yuga towards which the nebula of The Great Wheel of Cosmic Evolution has been relentlessly spinning these many years of Kali Yuga.

From most observers, we get one or another of two views of this presently grave, extremely fluid, and totally confusing world situation. On the one hand, we get a vision of gloom on the brink of doom; on the other, we are presented with the jumping-off place into all sorts of salvation scenarios. It is very hard for us to see the changes that are actually happening because they are so in our face. Clear vision requires that we withdraw from the physical morass, the maya of the thing, and try to see the picture whole.

From an elevated position on the mountain, the valley becomes understandable, and the truth is that both of these options are going on simultaneously. We have on the one hand, strident and unending messages, to say nothing of daily graphic and horrendous examples of gloom and doom or, to give these two frequencies their ancient Kali Yugic names, fear and death. And on the other we have, here and there, examples of joy and birth, new light and new life, new order and new living going on right now in the very center of the gloom and doom. You understand, of course, how all nebulas have these incredibly bright centers of impelling power.

As Life moves into manifestation, something has to make room for it. Something has to go. Those of us who endeavor to work on the subjective side of this equation understand this Cosmic fact as yin/yang, the ceaseless motion of creation, that two-phase process of birth/death wherein death is simply the shattering

of the old forms that have embodied or imprisoned the Life, and birth is the movement of the Life into new, more appropriate forms or “stately mansions” as the poet said. Creation is the passage of truth and beauty —which two always and only co-exist—in and out of time and space.

This is all very well, lovely even. The knowing of it—and many of us really do know it— makes a comforting glow on the horizon of our daily lives, gives us hope and reassurance, fortifies our courage and strength in the darkness. We need these gifts of spirit, the strength and hope, and we are grateful for them. For the fact is that we do not dwell constantly, or even very much on the mountain top. We live and move and have our being right down here, right in the middle of the vortex of change the Great Wheel is generating.

The Master Morya put it very clearly: “Man has fallen into a dark pit and closed the outlet with a black cover.” Thus, we have Kali Yuga, the Dark Age. This is where we are. And friends, it can be terminal for humanity if we forget or ignore that fact. We are in the trenches where the action is. We are precisely where we need to be if we are to be useful to the Inner Community we call the Hierarchy—the Custodians of the Plan and “dispensers of assignments.” Another of Master Morya’s injunctions comes to mind: “the complete task of the future Satya Yuga must be expressed now, amidst today’s animosity and destruction.”

That being the case, what I want to talk about is what we need to do down here in this black pit. Let me assure you that there is much that we can do. Indeed, friends, there is much that we absolutely must do.

“One can see the end of Kali Yuga,” the Master says, but “it depends upon humanity where will be the beginning of Satya Yuga. We know that Satya Yuga is preordained, but its location and conditions may differ.”

What we can do to make sure that Satya Yuga goes according to plan is easily summed up in the assignment that was given to all disciples by the Master Djwhal Khul. The assignment, you will recall, was that we were to reveal with greater emphasis the fact of the kingdom of God, the Inner Community or Brotherhood to which we refer as the planetary Hierarchy. This is, I know, a very strange sounding assignment, an awesome assignment to be sure, but strange, indeed.

Frankly, I would prefer an assignment like the ones they gave to Brother Hercules: Go out there and slay that nasty old nine headed hydra. You will find him hanging out in this cave in such and such a place. Also, let’s get rid of that crazy lion that’s been eating everyone in sight. He hangs out in a cave too, in a place called Nemea. And when you’re done with that stop by and clean out Augeas’ stables. Better take a facemask. They’re really a mess.

Now that’s what I call an assignment. Those were clear-cut, things you could see, things you could do. They were somewhere. You could go there. You could get them and get rid of them.

This present assignment, on the other hand, is very strange. First off, rather than get rid of something, a task at which we are quite good, we need to reveal something. That in itself is not such a big deal. In fact, it’s a nice change of pace. The catch is that we have to get it and put it on display; however, what we have to get and reveal doesn’t have any form at all. It can’t even be seen, at least not by ordinary eyes.

Of course, as the Wisdom tells us, if you have the eyes to see it, well, then you can. This is all well and good for those with the high tech eyes. The issue for us is that we need to reveal this kingdom of God to people without the eyes to see it.

This is our problem. And so, the question that today confronts every disciple everywhere is, are we up for this? Part of the deal here about getting the Satya Yuga going is that until there are enough disciples who are evolved enough, enough who have the skill, the courage, the love, the right firepower, until the disciples of this world and this time, today’s Hercules, are able and willing to do what D.K. calls this “simple task,” humanity, will not be going in any direction that resembles forward.

Well, we, the disciples of humanity, have come a long way. True, we look around; we think of Hercules with his muscles and his club and all, and we think, we’re not all that formidable. However, here we are, and we didn’t get here because we were weak or fearful. We have faced many challenges on the Path, and we are undaunted. I think that we, most of us anyway, accept the assignment without qualification. We can do this, and we are not afraid.

The solution to this problem and to most of the problems we are facing these days will not be found in that sort of research. We need to look to the future for solutions. That, I assume, is why we put so much of our energy into meditation.

There are two factors about this assignment that seem to differ widely from the earlier ones. First, rather than terminating something, those creepy swamp birds for example, or that dog with the three heads—you remember, Cerberus—anyway, rather than terminating something, we are revealing or birthing something.

The second factor is the absence of physicality, the very abstractness of the kingdom of God. This Kingdom lies outside of the dense physical planes which we think of as reality and are so familiar God’s Kingdoms are Kingdoms of Idea and Principle. It is these Kingdoms which are supposed to be the templates for what happens in the dense physical domains.

These two facts are clues on how to proceed with the project. And they reveal the dangers we need to avoid in the execution of this task.

The First Clue In this work, we are bringing something into manifestation. We are not personally involved with the demolition or destruction of the old forms. We are not terminating or removing anything. It is true that in the degree to which we are successful in our task, there will be destruction on a large scale, the destruction of, “the present world structures in the field of religion, of economics, and of politics.”

But the destruction of those forms is not the focus of our work. Like the quicksand around the Hydra’s cave, this is the lure and the trap for us. We cannot allow ourselves to be diverted into the destructive side of the field.

True we are very good at it. It is, in fact, for many of us in the warrior caste, our line of least resistance. But as we have demonstrated time and time again over the millennia, we also know how to use our firepower, our courage, our love of humanity, our intelligence to climb the mountain.

Now in this assignment, our focus is and must be totally on the revelation or birthing side. It’s a Capricorn thing, really. It is the freely accepted assignment of the disciple who has seen and found the mountain top “Lost am I in the light supernal, but on that light I turn my back.” This assignment will take everything we have—everything we have and everything we are.

The Second Clue

The second clue on how to proceed with this revelation is the realization that what we are dealing with is not dense physical form but substance. We are not being asked to manifest the Masters or the Christ in the flesh here. We are dealing with Spirit and Divinity, with Love and Will. We are trying to reveal to humanity the fact that the formless dimensions which we call the kingdom of God actually exist.

If we can do this, if we can make this fact a palpable, acceptable reality in the minds of the planetary intelligentsia, or even enough of them, we will be doing more to bring the individual man and woman and humanity as a whole closer to the Masters and the Christ and, therefore, the kingdom of God, than anything else we could possibly do.

For now, this all has to do with Light. In fact, D.K. quite specifically says, “[our] work is to let in the light, and where the light goes the Black Lodge must fade out and disappear.”

Esotericists know what Light and Love are. They are Lives which exist. So where are they? It finally becomes clear that something must be keeping them out, blocking their presence.

And, friends, I am not talking about our personal hang-ups and blockages here. I am talking about the general condition of the dense physical planes. The goal of the Forces of Retrogression is to create an astral miasma so dense that the Light from on high cannot penetrate. As anyone who is tuned in at all to the world situation knows, these forces have whipped up the astral or emotional dimensions into just such a frenzy. They have done and are doing this, Master D.K. tells us, through the “uses [of] the voices of lying propaganda [so called pundits who characterize workers for the common good as communists, socialists or any other name that strikes fear or engenders anger], the Word of death [we are constantly being urged to give up this or that human right or to bring war and death on this or that, greatly inflated if not downright lied about, threat], . . . and the sound of the densest aspect in manifestation—the sound of power in the mineral kingdom [the explosions of bombs and gunfire].”

Their primary effort is the creation of fear which they generate through constant and relentless references to and examples of terror and death. Fear and its knee-jerk brother, hatred, are the two densest formulations of deva life possible on the Astral Plane. The equivalent of astral lead, they present a layer of darkness that is virtually impenetrable to the Love/Wisdom Rays from the Hierarchy.

In The Rays and The Initiations D.K. says, “today, desire for peace at any price, for adequate food, warmth and housing, for the restoration of stability and security and for the cessation of anxiety controls the mass of human reactions and makes the astral plane loom so large in men's affairs and in world decisions. This is so dominantly so that the realization which the mind could reveal and of which the intelligentsia are the custodians is lost to sight and has small influence” To give just one example of the accuracy of this observation, particularly the “peace at any price” statement, think of the US Patriot Act. Here we have a law that literally strips basic rights and freedoms from the people. This is a piece of freedom-destroying legislation that people were willing to allow because they are so terror-stricken.

It seems that we have to somehow counter this darkness with light. The only light we have is the light within ourselves, so we need to figure out ways to make that light shine. We need to make it brighter, steadfast, and more like a floodlight than a spotlight.

A cautionary note: Just as becoming involved in the demolition side of the unfolding Plan is a trap for us, so is focusing our attention on our own problems and blockages. The quickest and actually, the least painful

way to transform our lives is to totally focus on the assignment. As D.K. has pointed out innumerable times, “when your interest in hierarchical work and the program of the Ashram . . . is adequately strong, it will then dominate all your actions, and all your thoughts (waking or sleeping); you will then find that the grip of the Dweller will be broken, that its life has been destroyed by the force of attrition and its form destroyed in the fires of sacrifice.” Does this sound like transformation leading to transfiguration?

The Three Principles and Three Laws The New World Order cannot be constructed with the methodologies and techniques of old world order totalitarianism. The techniques and methodologies which we must use are to be found in the three principles—Essential Divinity, Goodwill, and Unanimity—and three laws—Right Human Relations, Group Endeavor, and Spiritual Approach—“which will control the coming era, the new civilization and the future world culture.” . Embedded within these six ideas lie the methodologies and techniques for building the New World Order. These principles and laws hold the secrets of the Aquarian Age, of the long awaited Satya Yuga.

Three Kinds of Firepower In addition, keeping focused on the Plan gives us access to three kinds of firepower. These are love for humanity, our motive power, and two kinds of will power: the Will to Good (which will ultimately replace the need for motive) and Goodwill. I do not need to say much about our motive power, love for humanity.

If that were not a main staple of all of our lives we in the esoteric and spiritual communities would have long ago left this worldwide company of brothers and sisters. And the aspect of firepower that we know least about is the Will to Good, so I will save that for last.

Goodwill It’s the light of Goodwill that we really need to focus on. I suppose we know a lot about Goodwill. We think we do anyway. Still, I have observed that we have steadily learned more about this energy as the years have gone by. We have learned that the essence of Goodwill, what really empowers and lies at its core, is the heart-grasped realization of the essential divinity of all beings. We have also learned that at the core of all efforts of Goodwill-in-action lie the virtues of acceptance of personal faults and forgiveness of other’s harms.

We have had over the years much talk about the Mother of The World. It is interesting to realize that the primary energy of The Mother of the World is Goodwill. Goodwill is the mother, the nurturing aspect of the Will. It is the feminine side of the Will, a feminine energy. As such, it is interesting to understand that Goodwill is the energy body of the Mother of the World. Her energy body interpenetrates every atom of matter and is evident everywhere we look. Goodwill is not an object. It is an energy field. An aspect of God, it is omnipresent and omniscient, and we can draw on it at will.

Goodwill, simply does not deal with the illusory, old totalitarian world order concepts of superiority and inferiority. The power of Goodwill flows exactly from its willingness to search for and find the inclusive common ground that weaves the diversity of the Father’s Plan together. Goodwill is the energy which discovers the unities in the diversities which in turn, reveal the synthesis that is. The Mother omnisciently knows what forms will best embody the unfolding ideas of the Plan.

As D.K. has said, “when [people] of Goodwill meet, no matter what their political party, nation or religion, there is no problem which they cannot eventually solve and solve to the satisfaction of the various parties

involved.” This quote gives us an insight to what D.K means when he says “that goodwill is the touchstone which will transform the world.” This comment should not be taken lightly. It is interesting to ponder on the notion that Goodwill is the energy of transformation.

Is it possible that the disciple, humanity, is approaching the second gate, and that the conscious use of Goodwill on the part of the committed disciples is the key to the passage for all of humanity? Is this the power that will rent the veil from top to bottom once again? I have frequently thought that the ancient aphorism of the angels “Peace on Earth, Goodwill to men” was more specifically a radical prescription for peace rather than just a nice wish for humanity.

It is clear that a part of our task is to manifest a balance between the father and mother aspects of the Will.

As Master D.K. has said, “the will-to-good is the Father aspect, whilst Goodwill is the Mother aspect, and from the relation of these two the new civilization, based on sound spiritual (but utterly different) lines, can be founded. I would commend this thought to your consciousness, for it means that two aspects of spiritual work must be nurtured in the immediate future, for on them the more distant hope of happiness and of world peace depends.”

Well, friends, this is what we have to work with. Our love of humanity brings us to the task. Goodwill is our primary firepower for our work in the veils. And the Will to Good is the hidden driver behind all our work.

The Will to Good is Inspiration; it is the Fire of God, and it is, once we open ourselves to it, unquenchable.

The basic difference between Goodwill and the Will to Good is the difference between the mother/Receptive and the Father/Impulsive and when we are driven by principle, we will overcome the darkness, and the New Age will be upon us.

So we are faced with this assignment to reveal with greater emphasis the fact of the kingdom of God, the Inner Community, the planetary Hierarchy. The only way the Light of that kingdom can penetrate these lower veils is through the daily livingness of the disciples of the world. This is truly why we are here just now, why we chose to be here. As we employ the firepower of the Will to Good and Goodwill, building relationships of mutual respect and care in every interface, throughout our environments, as we go about our daily lives being the light that is the kingdom of God, we will hasten the day when the Christ will once again walk among us.

The Crisis Decade! It’s About Consciousness Humanity believes today that its major need is peace and material comfort and is working vaguely for both; the Hierarchy knows that its major need is the recognition of the folly of past separateness and the cult of goodwill.

—Alice A. Bailey, The Rays and the Initiations An arbitrary starting point for the Decade of Crisis would be the year 2000. About that time, evolutionary forces which had been active for a very long time in areas of consciousness not registered by the general population or the materialistically oriented scientific community began to manifest in physical phenomena that was highly noticeable by even the least sensitive of people. It is the dense physical manifestations of these long brewing subjective forces which we see as the crises points of modern times.

Let me begin by listing just a few of the major crises facing humanity and the World at this moment. First we have the obvious, easy to see, dense physical crises: Global Warming, which is still being denied by large and powerful factions in the Corporate block, the Near East crisis, the Somalia, Uganda and Darfur crises, the AIDS crisis, the hunger, food and pure water crisis. There are a number of others, but these few indicate the gravity and ubiquitous presence of crisis on the planet.

In addition, there are other and actually more serious kinds of crises facing humanity just now. These are non-dense, esoteric crises, what I call crises of Light. These kinds of crises are much more difficult for formfocused persons to see or understand; however, it is these crises that are at the causal nexus of the dense physical crises we see unfolding in every aspect of planetary life.

Let me give just two examples: First there is the crisis in what we call religion. It concerns a fanatical effort by certain factions of deluded people to impose a highly distorted view of God’s Will upon humanity and the resistance to that imposition. The second, and by very far, the most serious of the crises facing humanity is the crisis facing the people of the United States and by extension, the world. Government “of the people, by the people, for the people” is once again being threatened by a kind of Fascism. This time the threat is dressed not in the uniforms of the Storm Trooper but in the respectable clothing of the Corporate CEO. Although the most difficult to actually see because of the non-dense manifestation of its “meltdown”—no rising sea levels and disappearing glaciers, no insane people blowing themselves and others to “Kingdom Come,” no body counts of the massacred and starved—this last example, the meltdown of Democracy, is probably the major point of crisis in the world and the linchpin for what will happen in all of the other world crises, both major and minor.

I think we can gain a better understanding of this crisis and the other world crises and see the way through them to practical, workable, equitable, and just solutions if, in addition to focusing our attention on the dense physical effects of these forces and energies, we will examine the underlying or esoteric energies and forces which are at play and which are, in fact, causing these issues to manifest in the way that they are.

When we look at a crisis, any crisis, from an energy or esoteric point of view, we can see that crises are actually points of opportunity. They are possible points of growth, opportunities for humanity to make “moves” into the future. These opportunities are brought about when the Life, the Will attempts to unfold the next iteration of the Plan towards which we have been moving for many years through the matter of the planet. This unfolding idea encounters resistance within the already formulated, dense-manifested world. It is the juxtaposition of these two forces that creates what we call crises, those moments of upheaval which are actually opportunities for evolutionary advancement.

Meditators the world over have brought expanded understandings of the scientific Principles, the Life Concepts which underpin and are driving evolution, in to play in human thinking. When these new, deeper, more accurate understandings are brought into relationship with the old ways, a crisis—an opportunity for evolutionary growth—begins to manifest.

We are familiar with and understand this process in terms of the individual meditator. When an expanded, a deeper, more profound, understanding of an idea is registered by a meditator, it brings light into the meditator’s mind, New Light. Sometimes this New Light is “Loud and everywhere like bells,” but always it lights up the field of the mind.

For as long as music, poetry, and art have been made, this process that Master M. refers to as Straight Knowledge has been described by every poet, musician, and artist that was worthy of the name, men and

women who have, over the eons, been the meditators, the impulsing innovators of the Life wave for humanity. T.S. Eliot referred to this process as being struck by lightning, instant knowing.

With this flash of understanding, this new Light reveals not only the way ahead but the shortcomings and misconceptions, the imperfections and errors, the pure lack of understanding and vision of the previously understood situations. In most every instance, this Insight generates an immediate reaction from the “way things are,” the thoughtforms and conclusions which populate the meditator’s consciousness and with which he is very much identified. This results in a sense of being threatened, of being seen as wrong. Thus a sense of pride opens the way for doubt and skepticism. These entities which Master M calls the Black Deluders are let loose in the consciousness. One begins to deny or reject the New Light. Thus a crisis emerges, and an opportunity for growth becomes apparent.

This is the true “War of the Worlds.” This is the true “Point of no return.” This is the crevasse on the Mountain of Consciousness which confronts the climber on every new pitch between belay points. This is where the bridge must be built so that the traveler may move from the previous place of familiarity and comfort into a place of greater Light. This is evolution. It requires the relinquishment of the old truths. To cross the bridge, we must leave the other side behind.

This process operates in both the micro, the individual person, and the macro, the planet-wide spheres of human existence. It is precisely this issue that is facing humanity at this moment. Life or New Light will continue to flow into the planet and be made known through the efforts of the planetary meditators in all fields of human endeavor. It will not abate.

Yet, as we know, it is not easy to leave the perceived comfort of the warm fireside and venture into the cold Light of the unknown. Thus we have a condition of increasing tension being generated between the crises points by the steady inflow of New Light and the resistance or reluctance of people to move into that New Light. This growing devastation and tension should help us realize that the side of the bridge, the comfort zone, onto which we so tightly hold is really the cemetery, the graveyard of humanity.

That we see these crisis points as relatively suddenly appearing phenomena and, in popular language, refer to them as Shifts is indicative of another problem we have in facing these issues. Because of humanity’s focus on and identification with the dense physical planes of manifestation, we have lost the ability of far sight. We do not understand events in terms of an unbroken stream of cause and effect unfolding through eons of time.

In our myopic sense of Life and Time these kinds of shifts come on suddenly and appear to be enormous.

We speak of the sudden appearance of a one hundred year storm or a one thousand year flood. However, even elementary science tells us today that all dense physical manifestations such as volcanoes or weather patterns are interconnected and are natural manifestations of events and forces that have been “brewing” for anywhere from several months to several thousand, or hundreds of thousands of years. A tiny example of this can be noted in the shifting tectonic plates. The tsunami appears to happen in a few minutes or hours; however, it was on its way for a very long time.

The more one considers the esoterics of the crises which are besetting humanity on every side, the more obvious becomes the nature of the pending evolutionary shift. The Ancient myth or poem, Genesis, has it that The Great Creator finished on the seventh day. One of the notions that this metaphor may be trying to communicate is that at the end of the seventh day, the development of the dense physical planet was essentially complete. The “day” that the initiate poet of Genesis was considering was very likely a day and

night of Brahma. Such a day and night consist of 8 billion, 640 million years, so seven of these would be 60 billion, 480 million years. Given what we know about bureaucracy, this seems like a reasonable amount of time to get an Earth size planet together. At any rate, at the end of the “seventh day,” everything necessary for the unfoldment of the rest of the Plan was present. Incidentally, esotericists refer to this period as the Involutionary Cycle.

From the eighth day forward The Great Creator, Life, or to use the common term, God has been exclusively concerned with the evolution of consciousness. How many days this spiral has been unfolding is only imaginable. However, it is probably fewer than seven because it appears that as evolution moves forward, that is out of dense matter, it accelerates.

Who knows how many days of Brahma the mass conscious “animal man” prowled around the planet? And yet there came, finally, a crisis point. Animal man finally developed a form, a body, or, from an esoteric point of view, a brain or a chip that enabled it to process a stream of self centered consciousness. This kind of consciousness enabled animal man to separate himself from the surrounding Life Stream and to identify with his self as a separate part of the whole.

This Biotech electronic marvel with additional kalpas of training would eventually be able to embody and process a self-conscious focus in living color and surround sound that could also smell, taste and touch. The system can systematically organize all of this input into multi-level, fully relational databases with, so far, unlimited storage capacity. This system can also output, with fresh sorts and light speed recall, a practically instant aural/verbal performance report with accompanying highly sophisticated and automatic body language.

This was a momentous point in the unfolding of the Great Creator’s Plan. Consciousness, a kind of pervasive electric knowing was able to move from a mass undifferentiated point of view to an individualized focus that allowed each of these beings to have an awareness of him or herself as a unique and distinct part of the One Life. At this point what we call modern humanity began the long march to this very moment.

The crisis or point of opportunity or Shift that humanity faces today is of equal, if not surpassing, importance to the shift from mass to self-consciousness made too many eons ago to imagine. Presently we are concerned with the shift from the self-conscious point of view toward a new vision. The self-conscious generated vision had over the millenniums grown more and more identified with the illusion of its separate self and less and less identified with the One Living Whole we call creation. The present shift is from the illusory vision of separation toward a vision of inclusion, a kind of consciousness, a kind of pervasive electrical knowing that does not lose its sense of individual existence but is able, at long last, to, simultaneously realize its commonality, its essential unity with the One Humanity and the One Life. This is truly God’s point of view. He sees the One in the Many, and Many in the One. In my imaginative recollection of our past, it has occurred to me that this is not the first time humanity has stood on the brink of crises like those which we now face. We have been here before, perhaps several times.

Noah and the Ark The myth of Noah and the Ark has certain similar vibrations to today’s crises. However, it is the breaking of the world that occurred in ancient Atlantis that is most similar. In Atlantis it was the illusion of the Great Lie, the insatiable greed and insanity of separative consciousnesses using dark and evil forces that resulted

in the destruction of Atlantis, the withdrawal of the Spiritual Hierarchy from the dense physical plane and the long reach of the Kali Yuga.

These are the very Forces of Retrogression which humanity is once again facing in its effort to implement the Plan of Life. This time, if we can find the courage, humanity will emerge triumphant and move forward into its planned destiny.

Human Free Will This raises another very important, and seldom realized and/or understood aspect of this pending shift.

This has to do with human free will. The evolution from mass into self-consciousness brought with it the intrinsic, unavoidable, and inviolable factor of human free will. This factor has played a major part in the unfolding of human life.

What we walk today is the freely chosen Path that we, that is humanity, have been following on this long march back to the Father’s House. Although, thanks to the function of crises, all Paths will eventually lead to the Father’s House, The Great Creator did not choose this Path for us. We chose it. What would be the point of evolution if The Creator did it for us?

That this path has veered from the original intention or Plan is very probably so. However, it is our selfchosen Path. We will continue to walk this path, even into another period of darkness and oblivion, unless we are able to implement, through our own free will, the visions made available to us through the expansion of consciousness from self into what we have been calling group consciousness.

Multi-track Evolution So again, who knows how many days of Brahma we have been about the business of developing our selfconsciousness? It is interesting that evolution appears, to my myopic vision, to be able to simultaneously follow multiple tracks of development through multiple dimensions. Somewhere back there in a day of Brahma, individuals who were self-conscious began to become aware of “otherness.” They began to see what the Ageless Wisdom refers to as THAT . They began to see and understand that although every one of their physical senses indicated that they were separate from everything else in the world, another deeper electrical way of knowing, a new sense, began to feed them “experiential information” that indicated that they were THAT TOO!

So, we have had these two simultaneous tracks of evolution going forward. As more and more individual units of humanity became self-conscious, there was a growing movement of individuals who were evolving into the next level of consciousness we have been calling group consciousness. Thus unfolds the evolutionary spiral of consciousness, moving from mass to self to group.

Inner Workings We can look at the inner workings of any of the major or minor crises, and at their heart, we will find the tension of the difference between reality as seen from a self-conscious point of view in conflict with the greater or higher or deeper reality as seen from a group conscious point of view. Very simply, the selfconscious viewpoint sees a reality of separate individuals and things in a constant, never-ending struggle for dominance and what they perceive as life. Group consciousness sees the reality of the

interconnectedness of all life and realizes that it is THAT at the same time that it is an individual conscious part of THAT. There are over 6 billion humans on the planet now. It seems apparent that a very large majority of humans today are self-conscious. On a parallel track, the shift from self to group consciousness has been going forward also and for an almost equally long time.

We have, it seems, reached a crisis point in consciousness. Enough of us have moved far enough into the condition of group consciousness which includes individual consciousness that we are able to see a new way ahead. We are bringing this new vision into juxtaposition with the previous vision held by separative self-conscious individuals.

It is this juxtaposition of self and group consciousness that accounts for the moment of crisis on the Planet.

We could not have the present conditions of crisis unless we were able to see them from this new point of view, a point of view that lets us know, among other things, that we are One Humanity.

It was the lack of prevalence or sufficiency of this new vision that made us blind to the specter of Global Warming which has been approaching us for at least the last 100 years. It is the continuing lack or presence of the group conscious vision that is driving the greed and ignorance of many powerful people who persist in denying the existence of this specter. Likewise, it is because of the lack of the prevalence of the group conscious vision in the councils or our governmental bodies that we are still killing each other in mindless and heartless wars over material possessions and the illusion of exclusive and separative power. These wars could very possibly erupt into atomic holocausts that would end life as we know it on the planet.

This is insanity, friends. This is what psychosis actually looks like on a macro or planet-wide scale. If an individual were to act this way in society, we would immediately sequester him in an institution for his and our wellbeing. Let me mention two points: 1. According to ancient lore, the center of Old Atlantis was the continent of North America.

2. Atlantis did not happen in a twenty-four hour day.

Evolution is actually the manifestation of Truth in the world of appearances. It is the unfolding of Cosmic Scientific Principles through matter. Esoterically, we know these Cosmic Principles as the Principles of Essential Divinity, Goodwill and Unanimity and the Laws which govern human life: the Laws of Right Human Relations, Group Endeavor and Spiritual Approach.

These deep esoteric concepts were formulated most recently in the best thoughtforms or language available in our time by the Founding Fathers in the Constitution of The United States. We know them as Equality, Justice, Liberty, Free Will, the freedom of speech, religion, the press, and the other freedoms outlined in our bill of Rights. Together these formulations reveal the fact of the One Humanity and the sacredness of each and every Individual as well as the sacredness of all life forms on the planet, including the planet, which we see as a Living Being.

Thus, this time, this Decade of Crisis marks an opportunity for humanity to make a quantum leap into a new world, a world our poets, our artists, our visionaries have been exploring for eons, a world they call the Far Country. This world will be totally unlike the world created by “the folly of separateness.” The dimensions of its manifestation are the stuff of which dreams, visions, poems, and symphonies are made. It will be a Brave New World, a sane and conscious world, a “loving synthesis in action” indeed.

So, here we stand in Capricorn of 2008, facing humanity’s Initiation. Success in terms of the Plan will result in a humanity that, on an individual level, sees and lives its life in harmony with the Greater Life because we will know and understand that simultaneously, we are that Greater Life.

What did you think Synthesis meant?

The End of Isms: The Beginning of Unity Friends, this moment which comprises our lifetime is but a tiny fraction of the Endless Path of countless kalpas over which humanity has been traveling toward its destiny. We know that, as on any trail, there come moments of great significance. There are places, turns, swamps, crevasses on the trail, even places where the trail seems to disappear.

These are the places where human history is made. They are places of high danger, points of extreme crisis, and opportunities for great growth. They are places where Principle is in the balance, where The Forces of the Light and the Forces of Retrogression meet. The free choices we make as we face these challenges determine how the Great Unfolding we call evolution will proceed.

For example, we have Elizabeth’s response to the Spanish Armada, The Founding Fathers’ response to the tyranny of England and George III Abraham Lincoln’s response to slavery and the threat to the Union, The Free World’s response to the rise of Fascism in Nazi Germany, America’s response to the terrorist attack which destroyed the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001.

Thus humanity moves relentlessly, if not always directly, toward its destiny. We make the Path, as it is said in the Ageless Wisdom, by becoming The Path. In these moments of deep significance we define ourselves.

We always choose our own way along the Endless Path.

This time, friends, this time right now, the time in which we are living today is one of those moments of great significance. Most, if not all, of my immediate and not so immediate acquaintances are old warriors, acompañantes. We are veteranos of many campaigns in many previous incarnations during the ages-long struggle between the Forces of Light and the Forces of Darkness. I think that, as always in the past, we have once again incarnated as a group.

We seem to know one another instinctively. We have a particular, if somewhat peculiar, point of view. We share a number of convictions with one another and the Masters who lead us all. For example, Master M.’s comments regarding our work: “The new must be seen as urgent and useful. Inapplicable abstractions have no place. We are weary of air castles.” Also, we tend to be a “hands on group.” In this we follow the examples of our leaders down the ages; it is our special lineage, the lineage of the warrior. As Helena Roerich observes in her letters, in their earthly lives, all the Great Teachers applied their thoughts expressly to action, expressly to construction. Not one of Them tried to withdraw into anchoretic life. All of Them labored with human hands and human feet toward new achievements. Therefore, one must insist upon action, for air castles have no place. And at the present time this is more necessary than ever before, as humanity struggles against the gigantic attacks of the dark forces.

Time Perspective

One of the hardest issues that we have to work with as we face these challenges is the myopic view of people in general and even with some of our co-workers. This is not a criticism. It is just a fact that we humans tend to have very short attention spans and as far as history goes, extremely short time perspectives. For example, the remark above, “and at the present time this is more necessary than ever before, as humanity struggles against the gigantic attacks of the dark forces,” was published in 1934.

People will dismiss this remark as no longer applicable because it was made “last century,” but the warriors all know that it is even more pertinent now than it was then.

As you know constant vigilance is an essential of the warrior, and the question always at the forefront of our minds is “why this, and why now?” Why is humanity standing on this brink of change just now? I think that those of us who are warriors who incarnated at this time are really beginning to get a handle on this question.

The Warrior The assault—and friends there is no other word to describe the intentions of those who would derail the evolution of consciousness, than assault—the assault about which Helena Roerich speaks has been ongoing from the beginning: “it would not be correct for a battle to disrupt the current of life. Battle is our destiny, and one must simply include it in the daily plan.” It is not important to argue or to try to pin down dates about when this present escalation started. It is very important for us to realize that it has been ongoing and getting more ferocious over the years. The battle is raging right now at an unprecedented level. This is not the time for “inapplicable abstractions,” and air castles, truly, are a disservice to our efforts.

While it is not important to try to give a start time to the present escalation of the Ages long struggle, it is of some value to realize the motivation driving the Forces of Retrogression. They are simply reacting to the growing power of the Forces of Light. They are reacting to the emerging Hierarchy and the reappearing Christ.

When we speak of the externalization of the Fifth Kingdom and the reappearance of the Christ, we tend to think in forms. Thus we scan the skies looking for the Christ to pop in or some of the Masters to get elected president. This is form-focused data processing, creating self-conscious wish castles in the air.

The Evolution of Consciousness It is not this kind of wishful thinking to which the Forces of Darkness are reacting. They are reacting to the actual documentable evolution of consciousness which is occurring everywhere in the world. It is the unfolding of group consciousness that is driving the present upheavals on all planes in the Three Worlds, and it is the evolution of consciousness that is motivating the reactive ferocity of the Dark side.

What dearly needs to be understood is that group consciousness is the quality of Life in the Fifth Kingdom.

The growing appearance and manifestation of group consciousness within humanity is literally the reappearing Christ. The externalizing Hierarchy is the Christ’s Ashram.

This is not an idle statement. It is not a wish or an air castle. The interplay between humanity and Hierarchy, the rapidly expanding group consciousness, the awakening of many, many millions to their own dignity and the fact of the One Humanity are indicators of an all-out effort to “restore the Plan on Earth.”

These are the facts of the Great Unfolding. And the Forces of Retrogression which depend for their very existence on the maintenance of the status quo of the separative self-conscious humanity are doing everything of which they are capable in the effort to arrest the Restoration of the Plan.

From the center which we call the race of man, Let the Plan of Light and Love work out.

Let Light Love and Power Restore the Plan on Earth.

It is humanity’s job “To Restore the Plan on Earth.”

I know that when we think about things like this—struggles, battles, warriors—we tend to think in terms of arms and the man, of swords, guns, barbwire, hand grenades, air strikes, and so forth. These are all a real and gruesome part of the battle but not the most significant part and, truth be told, not the most gruesome part either. Today even as many people are dying as a result of dense physical shooting wars, many, many more are dying as a result of starvation, disease, and exposure.

The Children’s War For example, there is a war being waged against the children of men by the forces of retrogression. It is estimated that over 5.6 million children die of hunger-related causes each year. We need to understand that this is a war, a struggle, a battle for the lives of children. I could go on and make a list of conditions on the planet that would make all of us cry, literally, and that would make what is going on in the actual shooting wars seem insignificant.

The Interconnectedness of War We need to realize that all war is interconnected and that what we euphemistically call social injustices are a major part of the struggle we are fighting on the dense physical plane. These battles are occurring on the dense physical plane, and we need to confront the dark forces and defeat them on the dense physical plane. However, what we, as esotericists, need to understand is that all of these dense physical wars are interconnected effects of the real battle which is being waged on the plane of mind in the global struggle for humanity’s consciousness.

Strength That Strengthens Others This struggle appears quite bleak. To actually look at it is frightening. The Dark Side expends enormous resources to make it bleak and terrible so that we will not look. We need all of our love and courage, all of the training and experience we have gathered over the incarnations in countless battles. We realize of course that in all of these battles we eventually triumphed, or we would not be here today. As you know, I often recall the Masters words: “Twilight will end. Do you not see that the Cosmic Consciousness is in convulsion? We know the course of the battle—the Plan of the Creator cannot be altered. From the Beginning the dark ones struggled. From the Beginning We conquered.”

Well, friends in what may be the darkest hour humanity has ever faced, we can realize that nothing has changed in the Plan of the Creator. Huge shifts are occurring in consciousness, and these shifts will ultimately and utterly destroy the Forces of Retrogression as they are presently constituted.

The Great Unfolding

The shift to which I am referring and which is really an aspect of the Great Unfolding, is the shift in consciousness from self to group. Let me give one example of how this shift is working to defeat the Forces of Retrogression. The phenomenon we call “global warming” is a direct result of a separative selfconsciousness view of reality and the world within which we live. The realization of the perils of this condition by many of our scientific intelligentsia is a direct, documentable result of the unfolding group conscious view of life. A self-conscious point of view is literally incapable of registering these perils.

Qualitative Shifts One could list many other specific events, but what I want to do in this essay is to indicate the qualities and kinds of shifts that are resulting and are going to continue to result as group consciousness continues to move through humanity. There are areas where we can observe the unfolding power of the Light. These are the shifts in consciousness which are causing and will continue to cause even greater upheavals and corresponding changes in human life.

It is shifts of this quality and kind to which the Master D.K refers when he says, therefore the call goes out at this time for hierarchical workers to reveal with greater emphasis the fact of the Hierarchy. This—if done on a large scale and through proper organization—will destroy on a large scale the present world structure in the field of religion, of economics, and of politics; it is already doing so. An increase of pressure on the part of all who recognize the factual nature of the inner subjective kingdom of God will produce amazing results.

An Aquarian Armageddon When most people think in terms of such massive shifts, Armageddon, as it is called, they imagine huge dense physical disasters: continents sinking, volcanoes erupting and wiping out huge population centers, or today’s favorite horror vision, atomic warfare. All of these things are, I suppose, possible; however they are not necessary. They are very avoidable. Armageddon does not have to happen on the dense physical plane.

Remember that the disaster in Atlantis was caused by the ruling class’ refusal to shift.

Today, the very nature of the shift which is presently occurring—from self to group consciousness—seems to be finding a very fertile soil in which to grow. This is our best hope that most such disasters, at least those, like global warming, or religious warfare which would be a direct result of self-conscious insanity, greed, and ignorance, are avoidable. It seems eminently possible that humanity can shift its focus from greed to love without killing off half of the world.

The type of consciousness one has determines, among other things, a point of view. It is a point of identification and focus which, in many respects, determines what we see. Most of the detrimental, inefficient and even destructive problems we are dealing with these days are simply products or implementations of a self-identified or self-conscious, separated point of view.

From the perspective of the self-conscious individual, life is seen as a separated reality. Self-consciousness is, in reality, non-conscious or unconscious. It sees nothing but itself. Nothing is joined with anything else.

The common ground of our human being is not visible to a self-conscious person. Self-consciousness does not get Essential Divinity. It rather sees a battlefield in which everyone is struggling for his or her own

separate existence. And that humanity is connected as intimately to the world of nature as we are to one another is not conceivable to the self-conscious individual.

Such a consciousness built the world in which we are now living. Our systems— educational, economic, governmental, religious—and much of our basic attitude about life have been generated from this materialistic, separative point of view. The shift that is unfolding in the world is the outworking of new systems and attitudes that are being generated by the new consciousness—group consciousness. This point of view sees in terms of light rather than form. It sees the light in every from and in itself, and it understands intrinsically that it is one with the light that inhabits all forms. This point of view completely shifts the focus of all systems and attitudes 180°.

D.K. speaks of this new consciousness, which is actually the externalization of the Spiritual Hierarchy, or the appearance of the innate quality of the Fifth Kingdom within the Fourth, as destroying “on a large scale the present world structure in the field of religion, of economics, and of politics.” The notion of destroying world structures conjures up all kinds of horror scenarios: The crash of the Market in the 1920s when people were supposed to have been jumping out of windows in squads, religious warfare on a global scale, which is something the Forces of Retrogression are trying to get going, and the crumbling structures of our self-serving and corrupt political systems leading to some kind of anarchy are examples.

Religion, Economics and Politics It is important, very important, to realize that the destruction of “the present world structure in the field of religion, of economics, and of politics,” does not mean the destruction of religion, economics, and politics.

The present structures of these systems were primarily envisioned, designed, and built by self-conscious individuals. The problems lie not with the principles of government, economics, and religion. They lie with the consciousness that has embodied them.

Religion Imagine for a moment what the world’s religions will look when they have been transformed through a group consciousness which is actually able to understand Essential Divinity, Goodwill, and Unanimity. This is going on now. All over the world men and women of goodwill and relative group consciousness are meeting and working. A key indicator of a group consciousness at work is that it is much more interested in building bridges than walls. Only an understanding of Essential Divinity will allow this.

Economics Imagine what will happen to capitalism when it is embodied by an enlightened group conscious people.

Business will still be business, but the bottom line will be the general welfare of the people and the planet rather than the exclusive wealth of a separative few. A businessman named Gary Hirschberg, president and CEO of the successful and profitable Stonyfield Farm Yogurt, put it this way: “I realized that only the power of enlightened business could save the world—that until commerce is harnessed for the benefit of the planet, the planet doesn’t stand a chance.”

The Good News This attitude is possible only from a group conscious perspective. The good news is that this attitude is growing under the influence of the power of synthesis at a very rapid rate. Huge self-serving corporations are very much like dinosaurs. In the light of the new consciousness people everywhere are realizing how

the self-serving nature of these corporations is detrimental to the common good. These corporations will not necessarily disappear, but their bottom line focus will absolutely change from the separative greed driven goals of the present to a primary concern for the common welfare and the common good.

This will be a great change indeed. Those in power will resist it tremendously. But they have been resisting for eons and, as in bygone eons, they are failing now.

The New Enlightened Politics As for the political system consider D.K’s remark, circa 1945 or so, from The Rays and Initiations, a book which D.K. says was written for this time: True Democracy is as yet unknown; it awaits the time when an educated and enlightened public opinion will bring it to power; towards that spiritual event, mankind is hastening. The battle of Democracy will be fought out in the United States. There the people at present vote and organize their government on a personality basis and not from any spiritual or intelligent conviction. There is a material, selfish aspect to Democracy (rampant today), and there is a spiritual aspect, little sought after.

In the present election cycles in this country, we are seeing what to me appears to be an extraordinary display of a meeting between the forces of self-consciousness and group consciousness. It is to me quite exhilarating to watch this unfolding phenomenon. It is one of the most dynamic examples of the evergrowing presence and proliferation and of the power of this new consciousness we have.

Other “isms” too, will go the way of structural disintegration. For example, consider all of the “isms” like race, sex, age, class, national origin. Without exception these “isms” are aspects of self-consciousness. To a group conscious person it would be inconceivable that a brother’s or sister’s race, sex, age, class, national origin would indicate either inferiority or superiority. These are self-consciously generated aberrations.

Seeing the Light Group consciousness is enlightened. Enlightened doesn’t mean smart. Plenty of self-conscious people are very smart. Enlightenment is the result of love merging with intelligence. It has much more to do with wisdom than intellect. Master M. points out that “The measure of understanding is the degree of love.”

Enlightenment means that one can see and understand the Principle of Essential Divinity and that one will act, live one’s life in accordance with this reality, be, as D.K. says, a “loving synthesis in action.” One can see the light in one’s self and that very same light in every other person. An enlightened person realizes that in the Light he will see Light and that Light is at the heart of every atom of substance in the universe.

Creative Salvage One could go on here for pages. But the point is for all of us to review this self-conscious world in which we have been unfolding from this group conscious perspective. This will make you happy, even joyful. We will see that the world is well. We will see that the world is beautiful and quite creatively salvageable.

We will see that we are awake at last and that more of us are awakening every day. We need to transform or reformulate from a group conscious perspective a number of our systems, adjust a number of our opinions and attitudes about the nature of the real and the unreal. And we have the warriors of Light here now, individuals who know who they are and why they incarnated; “their name is legion.” More join the ranks of the enlightened every day.

Synthesis It remains to make a small remark about the energy we call Synthesis. Esotericists are aware of the presence on the world scene of the Avatar of Synthesis. At this time, this Avatar brings to us the synthesis energy. The presence of this particular kind of energy is largely responsible for the speed of the unfolding of group consciousness on the planet. Synthesis acts by absorbing the Light or Life from the outworn forms and systems and transferring that light into the new systems, hence the destruction of the old, outworn forms. This is a very powerful energy, and it works very fast. And that is good because we do not have a great deal of time here.

Expect miracles, or what will look like miracles to the non-warriors.

Building Our Lighted House

I wanted to share with you some thoughts about the importance of this building project in the immediate coming cycle, and the particular kind of tools we use.

First, as we know, there are hugely significant changes in process of unfolding on the planet. We have been experiencing these changes at a rapidly accelerating rate over the past 50 years or so. Although the changes that are at this moment in process on the dense planet are huge, one of the most significant of these is that the planet itself is shrinking at an alarming rate.

Many people think that this planetary shrinkage is the result of the speed of our airplanes which has reduced the distance between New York and London from 3 months to 5 hours. Others think the shrinkage is the result of the reach of our rockets, which has enabled humanity to view, for the first time ever, the entire planet all at once.

T-S=M Time Minus Space Equals Media Still others think that the blame for this shrinkage of planet Earth can be laid at the feet of the omnipresent media. Space is actually no longer a factor in time. For example, “media” recently revealed to the people inhabiting the most remote reaches of New Zealand the dramatic spectacle of the release of Paris Hilton from a mid-city Los Angeles jail cell in real time, that is as it was actually happening and in living color. You were there! Another earth shrinker, the ubiquitous internet, carries to any location on the planet, also in real time and living color, not only the most vital secrets of our deepest international political intrigues, but the latest intrigues of every fifth-grader anywhere in the world who happens to have a cell phone.

Media and the Internet are actually relatively dense manifestations of the “nonphysical” Human Metamind.

True, this version of the Metamind is mostly our lower mental body, and as we can see, our lower mental body resembles a dumpster more than anything else. However, we are used to digging through trash to get at the jewels. It’s a human pastime.

Anyway, as we esotericists know, these startling and very observable changes are really only the results or the dense manifestations of another much more subtle and very much more powerful, world girdling, and pervasive evolutionary development. In frequencies which are well beyond the ability of most people to

register, this development has thus been going on undetected for some time. However, this development is now finally reaching a level of effect that can be registered by large numbers of the planetary intelligentsia.

The Evolution of Consciousness We are talking, of course, about the evolution of consciousness. Human consciousness is evolving from identification with the separate self to a realization of group belonging and identification with wholes.

While it may appear that this is a recent happening, we know that consciousness has been moving or evolving out of the prison house of self-identification for a very long time. We call this phenomenon “new” because we are just now picking up on what has been going on for at least a few thousand years. The two hundred plus year-old Declaration of Independence and the founding of the United States, for example, are relatively recent examples of how this new consciousness is unfolding in our lives and institutions.

Still, as I have said, many of us are noting that this pronounced increase of in-pouring Light seems to be resulting in a very rapid expansion of group consciousness. Changes of comparable significance that used to take several hundred, if not thousands of years to come into observable manifestation, the move from sailing ships to airplanes for example, now occur in decades or even in just a few years. Even more significant than such dense physical examples are the changes in human awareness. The rapid expansion of this new consciousness is resulting in an unavoidable and growing realization by millions of people the world over that they are in fact not isolated, not separated, not alone. Rather, they are realizing themselves to be individual yet interconnected members of a vast living organism called humanity.

Kindness, Our Common Ground In addition, this in-pouring Light is generating a growing understanding by many, many millions that one’s livelihood and quality of life are directly linked and intertwined with the livelihood and quality of life of other people. These others are not just the Joneses who live across the street but people who are living half way around the world, people of different colors, cultures, and languages. Although these other people are very much unlike us, we seem to have realized or discovered this universal, innate, unquestioning sense that these others—regardless of the outer differences—these others are our kind.

The outer differences give to humanity its wonderful diversity, its beauty, its fun and joy, and we are coming to realize, that under this marvelous diversity of outer forms lies the bed rock of our common ground. We see, and we are reaching for, grasping and holding on to our essential humanity, our sense of one another as kindred. From this realization and holding there is flowing a growing awareness, a recognition and an insistence on the importance and value of each individual and our understanding, our demand that each of us is entitled to be treated with respect and dignity.

What is humanity, after all? We are grandmothers, grandfathers, mothers, fathers, sisters, brothers, children. Every human being fits into one or more of these groups. We are coming to realize that this is who we are. This is humanity.

We are kindred, a bunch of mothers, fathers, sisters, brothers. When we see people half way around the world wearing strange and beautiful garments, celebrating their marriages with joy and abandon, we sense this inner bond of belonging. We share in their livingness, their joy and love, their friendships, their travails and triumphs because we are them. Millions more of us every day are coming to realize our common humanity. We are all each other. We are the One Humanity.

This is the good side of group consciousness, the bright side. However, the Light, as was promised in the ancient biblical prophecies, is making all things visible. We may not be that ready for it, and we may not like it; but we have learned that when we open our eyes we can see. And we see everything.

What we are presently seeing is, very often, not that great. In fact we think it is pretty awful. So, when we click on Truth Out and see the videos of Iraqi people, or the people in Darfur, mourning, grieving for their murdered children, fathers, mothers, elders, we share in their horror and their sorrow; for we are them, too.

Tipping Point For some time now many of the thinkers of the world have been looking for the so called “tipping point,” the point where it will start to get better. We forget that “getting worse” is actually a step we usually have to take on the path to getting better. Perhaps we were not ready for what we are seeing, but, in my view, the fabled “tipping point” happened on the inner side sometime ago. The “awful and getting worse,” as well as the “good” stuff that we are presently registering in the dense physical are the effects of that point having been tipped.

The Point of No Return These events, and the ability to register them indicate that the point of no return has been passed.

Humanity is moving into its next cycle. There is no stopping this. As M said, “twilight will end. Do you not see that the Cosmic Consciousness is in convulsion? We know the course of the battle—the Plan of the Creator cannot be altered. From the Beginning the dark ones struggled. From the Beginning We conquered.”

We are experiencing much these days that is really unpleasant, sad, terrible things. If we can understand this, it is the evolution of our consciousness into the new field of group awareness that was the “tipping point.” These events are actually the results of our evolutionary development. Cosmically, “tipping points” happen over millions of years. In our body, the Earth, “tipping points” take perhaps tens of thousands of years to “happen.” So, the fact that we can see this, that we do have a global sense of unfolding events, is an aspect of our growing group consciousness.

This is a significantly huge development in the history of the planet and the Fourth Kingdom. In my mind it is on par with the planting of the germ of mind in animal man.

The Medium of Revelation This new consciousness reveals. This new consciousness lets us, compels us to register what is happening to our brothers and sisters all over the world. We are registering these events and the emotional and even physical pain that accompanies them on a deep and individual level because we have opened our hearts and because we are them. We are them, and we know that we are them, not as some epistemological intellectual construct, or some advanced aspect of the latest theories in physics. We know, as an experiential living fact registered in the heart, that they are us, and we are them.

Still, these things that we are experiencing as we become more and more conscious of the One Humanity should not be surprising to us. As we have learned from living and evolving within our own little spheres of individuality, when through our meditation we bring new light into a system, any system, the existing

protocols and methodologies of the system are upset and frequently react with violence, force, and destruction.

We know how this works within our own social structures and psyches. We meditate. We connect with the Light and bring in new understandings regarding right human relations, group endeavor, how we are treating our spouses, children, co-workers, employees, or whatever.

No Pain, No Gain This new Light prompts us to change the way we have been doing things, to bring our livingness more into line with this new level of Truth. This new Light also calls up its polar opposite, the atmosphere of existing thoughtforms within which we all move and which governs most of our actions and reactions, causes us to feel threatened, and, almost instantly, we set up an energy field in conflict to the new Light. Consequently, we experience the pains of growth within all three of our vehicles. The old saw, “no Pain, no gain” is actually true.

This is a reality through which we have lived many, many times. We all know and understand this scenario as an experiential fact. And this singular fact, is what I want to focus our minds on this evening and the coming cycle.

Meditation: Driver of Evolution Esoterically, it is all pretty simple. Meditation is what drives evolution on this planet. If there were no meditators, there would be no evolution and probably no planet either. The Father of the World, whose body this planet is, is evolving. He is evolving through His meditation. In doing His meditation, He is bringing new Light, new for Him, into His system. He moves or transfers that Light—from whatever levels he gets it —into his body through his brain and throat center. Hello! Humanity is the brain and throat center of the Planetary Logos.

As Above, So Below Humans who are able, meditate. We register the “Gift Waves” of Light that are constantly being showered upon the planet from the Father. These inflows of Light come to the Father in great cycles which are older than we can imagine. He transmits them to us through His meditation.

Human consciousness has evolved over the millenniums to the point where we are able to begin to register some of these “gifts” such as Essential Divinity, Good Will, Unanimity, Right Human Relations, Group Endeavor, Spiritual Approach. Rather than embodying these Principles and Laws into ideals that rapidly turn into concrete and untouchable idols, we work through further applications of creative meditation to embody them in living organic social structures.

Being able to perceive the Plan as a living, organic, evolving process rather than a static tablet of stone is an effect of the new consciousness. From this understanding we are able to fashion or embody the principles in dynamic and living institutions which are capable of evolving along with the people who live with and through them, hence the evolution of the Fourth Kingdom through the evolution of consciousness from self into group.

And hence also, friends, the present world situation with both its triumphs and terrors.

It is at this point exactly that the daily meditation of every single individual disciple becomes crucial. Just as we are One Humanity, we are One Disciple. It is the combined effort we make to register the New Light that brings the new light into the One Mind of the One Humanity.

Forces of Retrogression As we have noted on our individual levels, this new Light generates an instantaneous and often violent reaction from the existing forces and structures within our consciousness. When we, the One Disciple, bring this new light into the consciousness of the One Humanity, we experience a similar reaction on the part of the forces of materialism. The embedded forces of retrogression feel threatened. So working through individual consciousnesses which they control and using systems and procedures that govern and dictate humanity’s present style of livingness and are based on old and mostly inaccurate thoughtforms, they are reacting violently.

The Veil of the Great Lie Thus we have the past thousands of years of human history characterized by separation and strife, by the illusion of form identification, the fear of death and the efforts to maintain the physical status quo. This Entity, a group of thoughtforms, really, is being intensely challenged. It is literally fighting for its existence, what it thinks of as its life. If it prevails, this would result in another lengthy cycle of human slavery and life under the veil of the Great Lie. Daily Renewing of the Light It is the constant renewing of the Light through our daily meditation that enables us to triumph over the brothers of darkness. Our daily meditation, bringing in a continual stream of new Light is akin to the supply lines that an Army needs as it advances into enemy held territory. Through the violence and corruption which they generate, the forces of retrogression constantly try to cut this line of supply. They use weapons of fear, anger, distrust, doubt, discouragement, and depression. All of these dark whisperers, like so many nits or flies, issue from the door where evil dwells.

Through our Sun Hearts, our meditation focuses a constant and powerful stream of Truth on the thoughtforms, the structures the veils of the Great Lie. This is why we meditate every day, and this is how we will build that lighted house and slam that door where evil dwells.

As Master M. has noted, that we will come out into the Light of the Aquarian Day was foretold in the beginning. We understand now that the foretelling knew that there would be a dependable cadre of meditators prepared to carry out “the Plan of the Creator.” The issue before every meditator is clear.

Humanity’s future literally lies in the hands of the disciples who incarnated to do this work.

Why did you think you were here now?

Group Consciousness: The Reappearing Christ

Our typical approach to the issue of the externalization of the Hierarchy and the reappearance of the Christ has been to see them as events that are supposed to happen someday. We often engage in lengthy, deep,

and passionate discussions regarding the many things that need to be done “before the Christ can reappear.” Many of us use our longing for His return as a kind of motivator to do all these things.

The list of these projects, depending on who is making it, is rather extensive and ranges from specifics like feeding everyone and providing for a safe and secure place for everyone to much more abstract issues such as revealing the fact of the spiritual dimensions of reality, including the Spiritual Hierarchy. One of the more inclusive of these “preparations” is perhaps this often quoted statement, “the major required preparation is a world at peace; however, that peace must be based on an educated goodwill, which will lead inevitably to right human relations, and, therefore, to the establishment (figuratively speaking) of lines of light between nation and nation, religion and religion, group and group and man and man.”

So we engage in deeply focused and powerful meditations. We scurry about the planet trying to create world peace, trying to make people safe in their own homes. We collect millions of dollars, and engage thousands of people trying to feed everyone. Still, when we meet to discuss, we focus on what is obvious to us all: the fact that there is still not world peace, it seems that there are more and more hungry people every day, people do not have potable water, and millions are living under a kind of terror that we can only imagine.

To the degree that it feeds and makes people safe, all of this effort is good. However, it seems to focus us on working toward something that we hope will happen rather than something that is happening, happening from moment to moment, breath to breath. When we stop to think, we all know that “desire is the mother of immobility.” Consequently, we are perpetually expecting and waiting for something to happen. We are never quite sure that we have satisfied all or even any of the requirements although they were spelled out over a half century ago by Master D.K. in the numerous books he caused to be written and made public.

And yet, it seems to me, and I think to many of us, that the Christ is closer to humanity than He has ever been even when Jesus was walking around in old Palestine. Maybe that is because there are unimaginably more of us today, 6.5 billion, than there were two thousand years ago. This is true, but I think there is another reason for this sensing of His closeness that so many of us in so many parts of the world seem to have. I think it has to do not only with the fact that there are many, many more of us, but that there is a different kind of us now than was here two thousand years ago.

I know we are different today than we were two thousand years ago. Yet we are still prone to using old problem solving strategies. This may sound simple, but I think it is key.

Many of us are conscious of the fact that we are talking not about the One who will come someday but the Coming One. This has to do with understanding that externalizing and reappearing are processes that occur over time. All we need to do is consider for a moment the appearance of our own souls within the field we call our personalities.

Just when one is able to register these as process in motion, as occurring events, depends a great deal on one’s point of view. If one believes that thus and so will not happen until all of this and that is accomplished, that is what one will get. Our old methods of thought processing and our identifications with our forms continue to blind us to the Divine Unfolding Plan.

The attitude of getting all this stuff done before the Christ can appear actually fixes our focus on the dense physical plane. It even causes us to ignore the lower mental and astral planes where His presence is more evident than it ever has been.

It isn’t that we need to do anything different. We simply need to change the consciousness, the energy and focus behind that which we are doing. We need to consciously realize, and embrace the expansion of consciousness that has taken and continues to take place. The externalization and reappearance are not something we want to happen. These are events that are happening. We put our will behind them. We approach the issue of world peace with peace, the peaceful silent will of the Christ. It is not something we want to happen. It is something that is happening.

As long as we are engaged in the old outside-in thought form processing, from the form to the principle, all of this churning is quite normal. If D.K. can be believed, the externalization of the Spiritual Hierarchy—by which we mean the recognition, by at least, the intelligentsia of humanity, of the factual existence of the Fifth Kingdom on both dense and spiritual levels of Life—and the reappearance of the Christ—by which we also mean the recognition of His factual existence on both dense and spiritual levels of life—are unavoidable.

It’s about consciousness, friends. Group consciousness on at least one level is the awareness of the essential divinity of every single individual on the planet, of Christ in us, the Hope of Glory. This is the externalization of the Hierarchy, and it is going on right now.

D.K. talks about “creative salvage.” This creative process has very little to do with “saving” anyone from hell or anything like that. It has to do with making it possible for each one to discover within his or her own individual self that spark of Divinity. This is happening now on a global scale.

I am calling it the expansion of group consciousness. This evolutionary phenomenon is generating a shift of such massive proportions that it is hard to imagine. We are shifting the focus of humanity from God transcendent to god immanent. Can you imagine what our planet will look like when, after more eons that we can know, humanity finally realizes and comes to grips with its divine role in the Plan under the aegis of the Seventh Ray Lord, The Whirling Sphere, The Fiery Unifier, The Expression of the Will?

By the way, why did you incarnate just now?

The Reappearance No, I doubt it.

He won't pop in Or up Like some well-done piece of Morning toast Ready for buttering or jellying.

Roses reveal themselves Petal by petal, A process of fluid motion.

No—I really do doubt it.

There won't be any news flash Announcing an incredible event Or a freak Occurring at some unexpected moment Like a train wreck or skyjack.

I watched the sun rise From a dark November sea.

It slipped up… gradually, Turning blacks To burning oranges, Palest blues and deepest pinks.

Gently it came, But irresistibly Until it dominated the sky And was the only Star.

Even then it caught one or two by surprise

Are You The Christ?

I have been pondering and discussing for a very long time, and for the past 5 or 6 years, rather intensely with some close co¬workers, the reappearance of the Christ and the major issues around that rather significant event. You all are well acquainted with these questions and issues. Just to mention a couple of examples, “we are told in the Bible that Christ will come in the air and that He will bring the ‘healing of the nations in His wings. I would,” Master D.K. says, “call your attention to this thought and to its appositeness to this day and generation.” What is the meaning of “coming in the air”? Is this ancient biblical comment talking about airplanes, the radio and TV, and now the Internet? D.K. says that this time “every eye will see Him, every ear will hear Him and every mind will pass judgment upon Him.”

And, what does the “healing of the nations in his wings” mean? Could it refer to those who will accompany Him, those in the wings? “That His radiation will reach forth and surround His disciples, struggling in the conflict with evil, is also certain and sure. This will enable them to make the supreme effort which will win the battle for humanity.”

Some 40 years ago when I first encountered the esoteric community, this discussion was going on hot and heavy. Those of you who are familiar with the community and the literature of that time know that one could go on in this manner for many pages. However, there has been, I must say, a rather interesting shift in the discussion in the past ten or so years. The focus used to be almost totally on issues and/or questions like those above. Lately, however, the issue of consciousness has become more and more important to this whole subject as Master D.K. indicates. “As I have earlier pointed out, the return of Christ will be expressed, in the first place, by an up surging of the Christ consciousness in the hearts of men everywhere; its first expression will be goodwill. . . . When Christ comes, there will be a flowering in great activity of His type of consciousness among men.”

It began to become clear that the answer to many questions—how He will appear, in what field He will appear, politics, or perhaps science, or education, who will be able to see Him—depended very much on one’s state of consciousness, on the point of view of the observer. Not only for the ability to recognize Him when He is seen, but for the conditions to exist that would tolerate his appearance, there had to be a significant shift in state of consciousness in the ranks of humanity.

Group Consciousness This is a shift from the self-conscious sense of reality to group consciousness, to “His type of consciousness.” This truly tectonic shift in the consciousness that pervaded the Piscean age and still pervades the majority of today’s human family started to be noticeable in world events and literature about a hundred years ago. The shift has been accelerating greatly in the past forty five years. Its effects are beginning to be seen.

The people who will be able to recognize Him are those who have begun to express a group conscious sense in their daily living. These are individuals who have made either conscious or unconscious contacts with their own souls and through whom soul consciousness, which is what group consciousness is, is expressing. AS Master D.K. indicates, “When Christ comes it will be for the advanced units of the human family; they will recognize Him because He has always been with us, whilst His advent will evoke a responsive vibration from the masses, but not straight recognition.”

Of course, to say that these people are advanced does not indicate, as it did in the old self-conscious paradigm, that they are privileged or entitled or members of the ruling class. It means that they have moved out of that state of self-consciousness which characterizes the Old Age into the new state of consciousness which is characteristic of the Fifth Kingdom, the Kingdom of god. This new state of consciousness, group consciousness, will gradually dominate the New, Aquarian Age and produce a civilization “in which right human relations and worldwide cooperation for the good of all will be the universal keynote.”

This pondering and these discussions, as you can see, have ranged widely and been the source of much stimulation and inspiration. It was not surprising to me, then, that although I am not given to dreaming very much, I had a dream, a rather intense and vivid dream, about this subject.

In this dream I was kind of floating around, flying you might say, observing a man who was going around asking people at random, I suppose, if he or she was the Christ. As in most dreams, this man was able to move around the world rather easily. He appeared in all sorts of places, some of which I recognized and others which could have been anywhere. His thing was always the same. He would just walk up to a person and ask, “Are you the Christ.” He had a lantern of some sort that he would use to illuminate the person’s face when he spoke to him or her. Everyone he spoke to either ignored him or said no. Or so it seemed.

He began to appear rather discouraged about the whole thing, but he kept doggedly on. Suddenly, he was in a very large shopping mall with thousands of people, all busily engaged in shopping for this or that. His luck did not seem to get any better, and in fact, he had trouble getting anyone to actually stop and talk to him.

Kind of dragging along, he ventured into a department store and took an elevator up a bunch of floors.

When the door finally opened, he found himself facing a large square-ish room filled with decorative mirrors. In he walked, and, of course, his reflection appeared everywhere. Turning to a very large ornate mirror, he held up his light and asked his reflection, “Are you the Christ?”

Then this strange thing happened. In the very center of his reflection, like in the middle of the chest, a tiny light began to pulse and grow in both diameter and brightness. Pretty soon it filled up the whole figure in the mirror. He looked down at his body, and it too was glowing. Then a clear voice came out of nowhere and said, “Christ in you. This is the hope of glory.”

So, this was the big flash of realization. The man, who now had turned into me, got back into the elevator and went down to the first floor. When the door opened and I stepped out into the Mall, many of the thousands of people that were going hither and thither were glowing.

Everyone had at least a tiny spot light shining within his or her body, and some of the people were like beacons. The children, I noticed, were almost universally bright lights. It wasn’t necessary to ask anyone if he or she was the Christ. It was obvious that they all, to some degree or other, were.

We all know the old adage, “seeing is believing.” Well, here is a new adage: “Being is seeing. There is nothing to believe.”

There was another interesting experience I had recently that seems to bear on this whole issue. About a week or so before this dream thing happened, I was down walking on the beach. It was near sunset. It was a glorious evening, a brief period between the relentless storms we had been experiencing in Southern California. Huge thunderheads graced the sky, all turning a million shades of pink, and the sky was beginning to take on the incredible pale blue that you see so often in a sunrise sky. A strong off-shore breeze was whipping the edges of the incoming surf into a frothy whiteness which immediately became tinged with gold and pink.

I was, as usual, stunned into a state of deep reverence and silence, just drinking at the fountain of beauty.

God, when I call it up in my mind’s eye to relate it to you, it practically bowls me over. When we have experiences like this, it is easy to understand the esoteric implications of such images as the following: “The response of the astral elementals and the consequent ebb and flow of the waters. The dangers of the midway spot, its nature and the opportunity it affords. The place where magic is wrought.”

Anyway, the sun was about an inch or so above the horizon. I was standing right at the water’s edge and focusing on the path of golden light that was coming right from the sun to me. I was drinking in the last rays

of “the ritual of Sanat Kumara’s daily living.” I glanced to my left and noticed that I could not see the golden path over there. I glanced to my right. There was no path visible over there either. I turned left and ran about twenty yards and again faced the setting sun. There was the Golden Path. Looking back at where I had been standing, I could see no path.

I realized then, in that instant, that if I lined a hundred, a thousand, ten thousand, or a million people up along that beach, every single one would have a path of golden light that connected each of them individually to the sun. Each would have his or her own unique Path to the sun.

I Got It! So, I “got it” again. Every person—man, woman, or child—is connected to the Lord of Light by his or her own path. Every path is uniquely one’s own. We can see only our own paths, but we know that every single one of us has a Path, and every single Path leads to the same sun.

What can I say? It was what we used to call a rush.

A few days later, when I was again on the beach with a couple of brother warriors, my wife and a dear friend, I had to demo this phenomenon for them. We each stood about ten feet apart and observed the fact of the many paths that lead to the same sun. The rush was three times as high.

So, what am I saying in all of this? Only this: In His relative and unfolding appearance, Christ is here now. He has replicated Himself by the millions. You just have to be one to see one.

The Light of the World: Light/Love/Consciousness/Christ Many of us are familiar with the astonishing statement Master D.K. makes in The Rays and Initiations: “Does it mean anything to you”, D.K. says, when I say that the ceremonial ritual of the daily life of Sanat Kumara, implemented by music and sound and carried on the waves of color which break upon the shores of the three worlds of human evolution, reveal—in the clearest notes and tones and shades—the deepest secret behind His purpose? It scarcely makes sense to you and is dismissed as a piece of symbolic writing, used by me in order to convey the unconveyable. Yet I am not here writing in symbols, but am making an exact statement of fact. As beauty in any of its greater forms breaks upon the human consciousness, a dim sense is thereby conveyed of the ritual of Sanat Kumara's daily living.”

The implications of this comment are enormous, and the doorways into the higher realms that it places in front of the serious meditator are, and, I repeat, astonishing.

My reason for bringing this comment to our attention is to indicate a problem that has plagued many explorers of the esoteric Teachings for many, many centuries. It is simply this: when we encounter something in the Teaching—and it does not matter whether we are talking about the ancient Teachings such as the Bhagavad Gita or the most recent of which I am aware, The Rays and Initiations and the Cedercrans releases—when we encounter something that seems so cosmic or out of our range that we

simply cannot grasp it, we chalk it up to, “symbolic writing, used . . . in order to convey the unconveyable.”

And we say something like, “isn’t that inspirational or fabulous.”

Teachers, artists, scientists, true disciples, all those who attempt to reveal the Truth within the dimensions of the Great Illusion which we mistakenly call reality, always deal in what we call metaphor. D.K.’s comment above is a metaphor. Metaphor is the only way we have of conveying the Truth of the Principles of Cosmos.

Metaphor has meaning because of its significance. Metaphor is an effort on the part of the creative artist, regardless of the medium in which he or she works(number, language, paint, stone, music, sound or notes), to create or “formulate” and thus reveal within the world of form his or her experience of the non-manifest world of Principle, of Truth.

So, with all that as a kind of introduction, I want to mention a couple of other comments akin to the comment from The Rays and The Initiations that have existed for centuries and which have almost universally been considered to be symbolic language rather than metaphors or statements of fact.

I Am the Light of the World The first of these, upon which I want to dwell for a bit, is a statement which, according to the Lore, was first made eons and eons ago by Hermes, and repeated only a few thousands of years ago by both the Buddha and the Christ: "I am the Light of the World.” I, probably like most everyone else, always thought of this as a symbolic statement in the vein of the comment D.K. makes regarding the daily life of Sanat Kumara. The problem facing an Avatar or a lesser revealer, an artist or poet, is to find the language or “symbol set” that will adequately convey the facts regarding the Cosmic Principles of Life which he or she is trying to convey.

It is becoming more and more obvious that when the Christ said, “I am the Light of the World,” He was not using “symbolic language in order to convey the unconveyable.” He was using metaphor and making a statement of fact.

There are, as we all know, many lengthy discussions in many of the great scriptures and world Teachings regarding Light and its “properties.” In the comment we are talking about, a being, the Christ, who was occupying a dense physical body is saying the he is the Light of the World. Consider this remark from the point of view that the statement is not symbolic language but a fact. Here is a guy with arms, legs, and a head, just like ours, saying he is the Light of the World. What are we supposed to think?

I know it is a hard leap, but simply put, Christ was pointing not to the symbolism or meaning but to the significance of his being. He was saying I am the Light of the World. I do not symbolize that Light or mean that Light. I am that Light. I am not just a dense physical body or even a subtle body that symbolizes or means something. I am the Light of the World. Metaphor doesn’t just mean something; it is something.

We have to ask the next question. What is that Light? Among the answers is the concept of Consciousness.

There are many passages in all of the Teachings that speak to the notion of the role of the Middle Way in the polarity of the Great Creation. In all of these passages, Light, Love, Consciousness, and Christ are equivalent metaphors for this Middle Way between the Great and Dark Sea of Matter we call the Mother and the Endless Lighted Sea of Life we call the Father. Love, the Christ, the Light of the World, and Consciousness are all metaphors for the carriers of the Father’s Intent.

This carrier wave, Christ, Love, Light, Consciousness, penetrates the Divine Mother who, without the Will of the Father carried by the Son, has no light, color, motion or form, in a word, no Plan of Her own. (Plan is another wonderful equivalent metaphor, pregnant with significance.) Love carries the Intent of the Father,

the Father’s Will, and delivers it into the Great Sea of Matter we call the Mother who responds to that impulse by giving birth in form to Divine Intent. We call this particular offspring Planet Earth.

We have been meditating on a statement from one of D.K’s. books: “To stand really free is to stand in the clear unimpeded light of the soul which is basically and intrinsically group consciousness.” This metaphor states simply that the Soul is light, and that light is group consciousness. As we have been saying, the formulation “group consciousness” is a metaphor revealing the nature of the Soul. As we mentioned above, the challenge for the revealer or artist here is to find a formulation, a container or frame for a kind of consciousness that is totally unlike anything that is presently known in the world of form.

The consciousness of the separated self, that which we call self-consciousness, is the kind of consciousness with which we are very familiar. It is a consciousness of and identification with the forms of the lower three dense dimensions, the solids, liquids, and gasses of our world and truth be told, of the astral and lower mental dimensions as well. Most humans, however, by a very large majority, are totally conscious of and identified with their bodies. Most people assume that they are, in fact, their dense physical bodies, and they doubt the existence of any “non¬dense” dimensions at all. Their identification with their astral and lower mental bodies, although equally powerful in the cases of integrated personas, is mostly subconscious.

Thus, it is our identification with the forms of our world which imprison us, including, of course, this form which we use to get around, our dense physical body. It is this delusion, our identification with our forms that impedes the Light, the Soul, from registering on our brain awareness. As we are gradually able to shift our identification—as a result of our efforts to explore the non-dense levels of reality through the daily use of the only tool we actually need, meditation—to what we experience in these exploratory efforts, we free ourselves from identification with form and allow the Soul or “group consciousness” to enter our brain awareness, and we can begin to realize that “we are that and that are we.”

Still, we are entangled with forms. Many of us continue to think of “group consciousness” as being aware of groups—collections or gatherings of things or people like a number of people working together on a project, or a family—or on a larger level, of gradually becoming aware of what we see as the interdependent reality of life on the planet. We cite the dangers of global warming. We understand the intrinsic interdependence of all nations and people as well as the kingdoms of nature. All of these realizations and connections are really great leaps forward, and all are actual effects of allowing the presence of group consciousness or Soul into our brain awareness by shifting our identification from forms to the life in the forms.

However all of these great leaps forward are still consciousness of forms in the three worlds. The Soul is consciousness on an entirely different level. Soul consciousness is fifth dimensional consciousness, the dimension of Life we call The Kingdom of Souls.

We have to ask, what is the Kingdom of Souls? Is it just a more ethereal version of the dense planes? Is there, for example, really a guy, a maybe not so dense form, named Saint Peter who stands before The Pearly Gates with a ring of keys?

Such an apparition exists, no doubt, on the higher levels of the form world we call the Astral Plane, but I think the Fifth Kingdom is rather different. It is a Kingdom—or a dimension which is probably a better more scientific term—a dimension in which there is a kind of consciousness, soul consciousness, that reveals that which precedes form and even Ideas.

Principle Awareness Soul consciousness is Principle awareness. Principles have no form and, when in deep meditation, seem to be registered, at least by me, as Light. When registered, they do not mean anything; they just are something, an Intent a Will, a Silence, an overwhelming Presence in the face of which one learns gradually to stand steady. When returning from such an experience, one has a sense of having stood on the very outer edge of an endlessly deep vortex, an immense Truth whose significance is vastly greater than one can imagine.

One is driven then, and driven is the correct word, to endeavor to find a way to reveal what one has experienced. Thus we have a kind of formulation which takes place on the higher mental planes. We call these initial formulations ideas, what Master M. calls images of Truth: That a situation is without solution is only imagined by those who would rely on other people rather than upon the power of their own thought. Grief experienced by others flows like the ripples of a stream; but the images of Truth, which you call ideas, rule the karma of the world. It is astonishing to see how images of Truth participate in the spatial battle. While the multitudes disintegrate in a blind fury of ignorance and betrayal, the thoughts of Truth weave their heavenly nests, which for real evolution are far more vital than any worship by entire nations.

This effort, this unavoidable urge to try to reveal that which we have experienced, is on our level what passes for creation. It always leads to the anguish one experiences when one tries to communicate, through whatever medium one uses, that which one has glimpsed. We know our efforts, no matter how beautiful or powerful they appear, are but mist on a windowpane, or a glimmer of golden light in the heart of a deep, deep pool.

Still, the common denominator of all successful efforts to reveal Truth is, as D.K. points out above, Beauty/Harmony. All of us who are attempting to reveal the reality of Life participate in the energy of the Fourth Ray Lord of Harmony, “the Trumpet of the Lord, The Light within the Light.” For harmony “is in essence the inner esoteric sound or vibration of God indwelling the manifestation of Cosmos. . . . Harmony whether recondite or outwardly visible, is an integral part, an essential ingredient of everything that is.”

When Christ stands in the Presence of the Father and registers, if such a word suffices, the Father’s Intent, He too must be driven to reveal that Intent which He formulates as The Plan.

Anyway, all of this has led me to the present conclusion that the Soul is Light. The Soul is Light, and when we stand as Soul in that Light, we do not see forms; we see Light. We see The Plan. We have “a dim sense of the ritual of Sanat Kumara's daily living.” We see, very superficially I think, “the deepest secret behind [The Father’s] purpose.” Our vision is imperfect, of course, for we know that there are higher levels of awareness which are way beyond what we think of as consciousness. However, the Light of consciousness is simply everywhere. It underlies and is at the core of every possible form on all dimensions. Where the Light is dim, we know in an instant that an identification with form of some kind on some dimension is blocking it.

What’s the point here? Well, we need to start looking beyond the forms to the Soul that lights them. It is good to think of Soul as a verb as well as a noun. Perhaps we need to modify our statement a bit to say that Soul is something that does something. It carries the Light into the darkness.

Remember we are always dealing with metaphor. It would be good if we could begin to think of and see light as something other than what comes out of a light bulb. We need to not be alarmed when we begin to see the Light which we will see if we start to look for it. And, we need to stop that knee jerk reaction to immediately make it into a familiar form. Most importantly we must avoid doubting what we see. As Master M. has pointed out, “Doubt is like a hole in the balloon.”

Sight is, after all, only one of the five senses. We are quite familiar with how it works on the dense physical, but we, most of us, have not considered how this sense will function in the higher dimensions.

Consequently when we begin to “see” behind or through the forms of the lower three worlds, and when we began to “see” on the higher mental and Buddhic dimensions where there are no dense forms, we doubt what is occurring. We doubt what we are “seeing.” This is a great inhibitor of the Light of the Soul.

As are the lower, the higher dimensions are registrable through any of the five senses. However, we have been conditioned over many millions of years to deny anything other than what we can register through these senses as they operate on the dense physical planes. We are very quick to search out a physical reason for whatever subtle “feeling” or vision or smell or taste or music we might register. A brief example: I was leading a meditation for a group of about nine or ten people one morning at Meditation Mount in Ojai, California. The meditation room at the Mount, a smallish room, well lit by windows, has a “Tibetan” style tapered roof capped by a glass skylight and a very heavy double wooden door that opens inward. This door was closed as it always is when we meditate. In the alignment, along with the Mother of the World, I invoked the Deva of Meditation Mount. Very shortly after I did that invocation, the doors of the room opened with a rush, and light poured into the room. Personally, I was focused on building the alignment. I noted a sudden rise in the light which is not that unusual in building this alignment, but I did not realize that the doors had swung open. I felt no rush of air or wind. After the meditation, individuals speculated about this event, and many attributed it to a gust of wind. Interestingly it happened twice more at precisely the same place in the alignment in the next couple of weeks.

The point here is that we doubt the existence of the subtle energies and forces of not only the higher dimensions but the subtle beings that inhabit our own dense physical dimensions as well as our ability to invoke and register their presence. This must change. We must develop the courage to hear the “music of the spheres,” to taste, smell, feel the energies of the higher dimensions and of those who, although perhaps unseen by our present single dimension sight, are working alongside of us.

So, to conclude this rather longish effort to convey the unconveyable, I would suggest that we consider in our continuing meditative explorations of the far country a few other ancient comments concerning Light: •

I build a lighted house and therein dwell.

• Remember, we are the Light, not the house. Wherever we go we carry the Light of the World. This is group consciousness.

•

When thine eye be single, thy whole body will be full of light.

•

The Union of the three Selves. There are always three new selves to unify.

•

Do not hide the light under a bushel.

• Identification with form obscures the Light. The greater the focus in and on the Light, the more transparent the form.

•

In that Light, we see Light.

•

We can only see the Light when we are in the Light.

• As identification with the Light grows, (“I recognize my other self and in the waning of that self I grow and glow.”) the form becomes so transparent that we vanish to the sight of those who are not seeing in the Light. We become IN¬VISIBLE. Learn to see the IN-VISIBLE. Seeing in the Light: A Brief Practice Exercise.

1. Within a circle of brothers and sisters, Focus in the heart.

2. See a golden globe of light in your heart.

3. Watch it grow and glow brighter and brighter. Observe the form, your form, becoming more and more transparent until the Light breaks out of your body and engulfs your surroundings.

4. For two minutes, hold an intent focus on this Statement: “Lost am I in light supernal, yet on that light I turn my back.”

5. Now standing as that Light in that light, slowly open your eyes, and looking around the group, see the Light in the Light.

Transformation: Group Conscious Living in a Self Conscious World.

Forty some years ago, group consciousness was a deep esoteric topic. I seldom heard the term used outside of the esoteric community. In the academic and business circles in which I moved, consciousness was aligned with being literally awake or asleep, conscious or unconscious. There was even very little awareness regarding self-consciousness. However, in the intervening years, and especially in the last twenty or so years, the concept of consciousness has moved very much into the consciousness of the contemporary intelligentsia.

What made the concept of group consciousness so deeply esoteric to the general educated public of the last century and is still a significant factor so far in this century, was the point of view from which the concept was being viewed. People, not realizing that they were doing so, were looking at the concept from a self-conscious point of view. It is simply not possible to see, that is to understand, group consciousness from a non-group conscious perspective.

Experience Matters One can intellectualize about it, formulate it, create a frame of thoughtforms which attempts to out-picture the concept. Much of this was done in the past fifteen or twenty years. Still, however much one can talk about it, the reality of this place in consciousness cannot be realized in this manner. To see, to understand group consciousness, requires the conscious experience of it. To see it one must be it.

The fact that is inescapable to individuals who do see from a relative group conscious polarization is that group consciousness, quite unobtrusively, is sweeping through humanity like a grass fire on the Great Plains. Although they hardly realize what it is, more and more people are actually experiencing the phenomena of group consciousness. This is how evolution works. People are usually demonstrating a relative level of consciousness long before they actually realize or become aware or conscious of the fact that they are. Many people, for example, still do not realize that they are self-conscious.

A Sudden Insight I think that group consciousness has been evolving along with self consciousness for many thousands of years. It seems to work something like this: usually in a sudden way, one will have an experience, a sudden insight into how things are connected with one another. In his great book, The Immense Journey, Loren Eiseley tells how one day he casually picked up a grasshopper’s leg which had a twig attached to it. The twig was attached to another piece of grass and in that moment he realized that the entire globe was one whole interconnected thing.

These kinds of openings have occurred to many, many people. It is difficult to convey this next bit because it is really an experiential thing; however, sooner or later during one of those moments of realization concerning the interconnectedness of all life when one is perhaps acutely aware or deeply moved by the beauty one encounters, one will make an additional realization, and that is that one is. That is that one’s self is a part of this vast interconnectedness. This is how John Keats put it: Then felt I like some watcher of the skies When a new planet swims into his ken; Or like stout Cortez when with eagle eyes He stared at the Pacific—and all his men Looked at each other with a wild surmise— Silent, upon a peak in Darien.

One realizes that one is not separate from the web of life but an integral part of it. One begins to see that he or she is it and them.

Many of us have experienced such openings, and very frequently these kinds of events occur when we are in nature. However, being “in nature” is not a prerequisite. Once one is open to it, transformative experience is omnipresent.

One morning I was watching the huge, green trash trucks come through my neighborhood collecting the trash. These trucks are equipped with a device that shoots out from the front of the truck on a telescoping arm and with a claw-like appendage, grasps the trash container around the middle, hoists it up into the air, and dumps it over its shoulder, so to speak, into the body of the truck. The truck puts the empty barrel down and moves on to the next container.

The Life Cycle

It was like this Disney Truck Being was going along the street feeding itself. All it lacked was the smiley face.

I went all still, which is what happens to me when these kinds of experiences occur, and in “no-time” I saw the entire interconnected cycle of life, birth, death and life as a great recycling event. What amused me about this particular experience was the realization that when we throw something away, there really is no “away.” There is just another cycle of life.

Well, as any esoteric meditator will tell you, these kinds of unifying experiences also occur in the Silence. In fact, rhythmic esoteric meditation is actually a kind of training for group consciousness. One develops and perfects this group conscious point of view, and learns to “stand steady in the Light.”

Through the simultaneous transmutative and transformative processes of esoteric meditation, identification with the personality and its apparatus, the physical/etheric, emotional and mental bodies is diminished, transformed, and eventually transfigured. Gradually one realizes that one is actually the consciousness, the Soul, the Life/Light that indwells the forms rather than the forms one is occupying.

In the Light We See Light In this new and clear light of the Soul, one sees Light. One sees the consciousness that is one’s self in any form. One still sees from a location, from an individualized space, but this point of view is no longer separated. It is seen as an interrelated part of a larger Life. Thus we are able to see whole systems and the interrelatedness of all life.

This is the Path of Transformation. As Master D. K. has said, “it involves the reaching of a right mental altitude. Yes, I said altitude, my brothers, and not attitude.”

Programmed Living Obviously, the space between self and group consciousness will not be bridged by one or two or even ten or twenty such experiences. Because we are so identified with our separated self and, as a result of this self-conscious perspective, have been programmed to persist, to survive as self-conscious individuals at all costs, we will frequently forget or even reject such notions as fancy or romantic non-sense or, as has been done rather recently on the contemporary political stage, as false hopes. It is always so easy to doubt or deny or forget what we have actually seen and known for a brief instant especially when what we do see actually threatens the very basis of our own self-consciousness and makes us very uncomfortable.

However, once one has had even one such experience, even if it is only momentary and even if it is forgotten or rejected by “the man in the brain,” the frequency, the reality of the perfectly harmonious, integrated, and coherent unified field we call the dense physical spheres will be there in one’s consciousness. It cannot be removed by even the dark whispers of doubt, skepticism, and cynicism. It will grow in the silence, and it will be reinforced and tend to reveal through other unexpected and unusual experiences the true group nature and frequency of reality.

Born in Spring One day this realization will literally Spring, as in a rebirth, for that is essentially what the experience is, into one’s awareness. It will become an incontrovertible knowing. Becoming group conscious is a just a matter of time and evolution. It is unavoidable.

So, as many, many people are beginning to realize, evolution is about consciousness and not the physical world. Many, many thousands of kalpas ago, when humanity was mass conscious, there was no separation

in the view, no sense or awareness of a separated self. Nature including the seas, plants, trees, animals, tribes, herds, groups of evolving humans was perceived by the members of these infant human groups as one seamless web of life. Dense physical Life was literally a chord of manifesting frequencies.

The Lost Chord When consciousness evolved to the point where an individual could actually register him or herself as being separate from the others in one’s tribe or herd or group or natural settings, the reality, the truth of the harmonious, integrated and coherent unified field gradually slipped into the background and was eventually lost to view or consciousness. Thus the once common vision of whole systems was lost. The ability to consciously register the unified field of reality is the Lost Chord.

This condition of consciousness, self-consciousness, a virtual hallucination, has dominated human vision for longer than anyone can realize. However, we, that is, the One Humanity, once again under the inexorable Laws of Evolution are now in the process of transforming our vision. This process of transformation between self and group consciousness has, as I have mentioned elsewhere, been going on for kalpas. It is now far enough along that, in the relative terms of how long it took to get to this point, it is fairly exploding.

The message of Master M. is literally unfolding before our eyes: “twilight will end. Do you not see that the Cosmic Consciousness is in convulsion? We know the course of the battle—the Plan of the Creator cannot be altered.” If we care to look for it, we can see it.

The Great Illusion So far, I have been talking about transformation in terms of the individual; however, a point of caution here is worth noting. The systems, the dense physical/etheric, the emotional and lower mental spheres, in which humanity is presently living and moving have been structured, formulated, informed, built, generated by the separative self-consciousness which has dominated human living for so long. The world, “as we know it” is basically an illusion, a house of playing cards built by us, a people suffering from a kind of psychosis and blindness.

It is the nature of consciousness to move into matter and to impress it with its purpose. Matter simply responds to the direction of the informing will. If the purpose of the consciousness is flowing from an identification with the separated self, it will result in the manifestation of self-conscious systems of all kinds. These systems will strive to perpetuate their own purpose.

Natural Competition The purpose of the separated self is to persist, to survive as it sees itself, and it sees itself as a form separated from other forms. Thus it is the very nature of self-consciousness to always strive for greater and greater degrees of separation. In a separative, self-conscious world, this will and has patterned out as the competitive, dominate-or-be-dominated world in which we now live. This is the hallucination which we call The Big Lie. System Creation Well, humans are creative beings. Not only do we create children, we create art, poetry, music. We also create systems. We endow these systems with our consciousness. It would be most helpful if we could

realize that the systems that we have created over the eons do, in fact, esoteric or energy fact, have a substantial existence.

We are accustomed to thinking only of individuals as possessing a will and a substantial existence.

However, it has long been common to think and talk about the phenomenon of bureaucracies that seem to run on their own power. Within the worlds of form, the systems of government, education, economics, all have a kind of life.

Self-Conscious Corporations It is perhaps easiest to see this phenomenon in operation when we think of the giant corporations like Exxon Mobile, Royal Dutch Shell, BP, Wal-Mart Stores. There are well over two thousand of these mega corporations and many, many thousands of smaller ones. These corporations are viewed by human law as individuals. They are in fact, in esoteric fact, living entities which exercise all of the powers of any human being. The key point here is to realize that these entities are separative self-conscious beings, and like any separated self-conscious being, they want to “live” forever, to perpetuate themselves on an ever increasing spiral.

Confronting Reality Group conscious living in a self-conscious world squarely confronts this reality. An individual can have experiences that will open him or her to the reality of the inner and interconnectedness of all Life.

However, these system entities in which we have invested tremendous power are basically heartless and incapable of reaching the required mental altitudes for insight. They are not likely to have “opening” experiences.

This reality is, if not the major, one of the major issues facing any disciple or would be disciple in today’s world. How we respond to this, reality, how we go about helping our human created systems, both governmental and economical, to transform from being self-conscious separative entities which consider only their own welfare and survival into group conscious entities that hold the common good and the general welfare of the whole system, including the Planet itself, at the core of their reason for existence is the preeminent challenge facing humanity today.

Off the Grid Solutions to this problem have from time to time been offered. For example, it is popular among some folks today to imagine that they are “getting off the grid.” This does not always mean finding alternative ways of generating electricity which is actually a manifestation of a group conscious sensitivity which will improve life on the greater grid, the unavoidable reality of the etheric interconnectedness of all life. Frequently the emotional impulse to “get off the grid” is simply a reframing of the old 1960s mantra of Tim Leary and company to “turn on tune in and drop out.” Rather than try to transform the world, we were supposed to leave it.

The Dark Towers It should be obvious, however, that these corporations and government systems cannot be transformed from the outside. They must be transformed, just as we must, from the inside out. It turns out that just as there is no “away,” there is no “off the grid.”

The path ahead leads to the corporations, The Dark Towers of separation and illusion. We built this world as it is. It is our karma to make this right, and it is humanity’s path into the Light. As Neo and Frodo and countless heroes of song and legend before them learned, one must go through the Dark Tower to reach the Light.

We Are Them One of the more profound lessons learned by the climbers on the Mountain of Consciousness, probably the lesson that keeps the Frodo or Neo, the hero in us persevering, is that not only are we our brother’s keeper, we are in fact our brothers. Therefore, our best and probably only shot at achieving this transformation in time to avoid the catastrophic consequences which are resulting and will continue to result from the actions of these mega self-conscious, basically psychotic entities competing for power is the expansion of consciousness from self to group on the part of individual human beings. When enough of us are on the planet living and thinking from this conscious perspective, we will be able to effect rapid and significant change within these mega entities because we will be working within them. Just as we are our brothers, we are our corporations too.

Among the immediate tasks ahead of us at this time is the effort to focus humanity’s sense of reality. As Master D.K. points Out, “humanity believes today that its major need is peace and material comfort and is working vaguely for both; the Hierarchy knows that its major need is the recognition of the folly of past separateness and the cult of goodwill. . . . Hierarchical workers must therefore express the true need in form, appropriate to the registering capacity of humanity at this moment.”

The Truth Will Set You Free We have often heard the clarion call of the Forces of Light: “Know the Truth and the Truth will set you free.” Never has it been more appropriately sounded. If we want humanity to be free from the bondage of the Big Lie, we need to summon our courage and express the Truth.

The Aquarian Age, “the coming expression of the group consciousness which is the first and immediate revelation of the ever-present Christ consciousness on a large scale in humanity,” is going to be unfolding for about another two thousand years. And as Master M. has said, “we know the course of the battle—the Plan of the Creator cannot be altered. From the beginning the dark ones struggled. From the beginning we conquered.”

Struggle Is Our Brother However, this victory will require a struggle like none we have known over the kalpas of our training as warriors. What we learned during those many incarnations was not so much the skill and force of arms as how to finally stand unmoved in the Flame of the Heart, in the center of Christ’s Peaceful Silent Will.

What we each do each day in whatever way we can to constantly hold the fact of our group consciousness, of our oneness with all of humanity and the planet in the forefront of our minds and hearts and to act from that inclusive and loving perspective will carry the light into the Dark Towers of self-consciousness, separation, and exclusivity. We create with every thought. And when we realize that we are in fact a group, we begin to create with great power.

The Flame of the Heart

“Hence each consummation, each union, each great cosmic unification is achieved through the flame of the heart.” Watch for the Flame of the Heart in the people you encounter. Watch for individuals that are demonstrating group consciousness. The indicators are inclusiveness, loving understanding, concern for the common good and the placing of the general welfare above personal and/or separative concerns, the realization that humanity is one entity, that every single individual and all members of all kingdoms are parts of the Divine Life, and the courage and fortitude to take appropriate action along these lines.

When such an individual “swims into your kin,” support him or her with your entire economy, your love, your thoughts, your encouragement, and your money and your vote.

Meditation: The Engine of Change If you know how to consciously and deliberately meditate, great. You either are or can be part of the solution. If you do not know how to meditate, it is time to learn!

As humanity moves ever-deeper into the new scientific age of Aquarius and penetrates, finally, the higher or more subtle dimensions of reality, there will be a growing stream of revelations concerning the nature of the our world. It is these revelations which are generating the amazing changes in all of the known areas of life and in many of the forms with which we are familiar. My guess is that these changes will continue unabated and will eventually be of such magnitude that we can hardly imagine them.

This is not a way out or extreme notion. If we look back just a hundred years or so, say to December 17, 1903, we have the first controlled, powered airplane flight by the Wright Brothers. Who could foresee just sixty-six years later that a human being would walk on the moon? Another more current example: I can remember being really impressed with the ten megabyte hard drive in my IBM P.C. circa 1982. Today, we have zoomed past megabytes to gigabytes and have now entered the unimaginable realm of terabytes. And that’s not all. The size of these drives has become smaller and smaller, weighing less and less, and costing practically nothing. I paid five hundred dollars for an eighty megabyte drive in 1986 or so. Today I can buy a one terabyte drive for one hundred and thirty-nine dollars.

I mention these things not only to give easy to see examples of the dramatic nature of the changes we have been living though but of the increasing speed of the appearance of these changes in technology as well as in all other areas of life. The population of the planet, for example, has gone from 1.6 billion in 1900 to 6.7 billion today and is expected to reach 8.9 billion by 2050.

Significant changes in the appearance of the manifesting Life have occurred with what seems to our myopic vision, a glacial slowness over the kalpas. However, even we can now see that over the past three or four thousand years, there has been an undeniable acceleration in the rate of this change. And, again, from our myopic point of view, in the past three hundred years or so, the change rate has become startling, in some cases, the population explosion and Global Warming to name just two, even alarming.

This accelerating change or development is occurring in every aspect of life on the planet, including the rarely considered area of consciousness and the technology we call meditation. It is this technology which

is driving the acceleration of our expanding consciousness. When finally understood for what it is, meditation will be seen to be the engine behind all evolutionary development on this planet.

I know that today we still, by and large, do not see meditation as technology. This is because meditation, like all other things considered spiritual, has always been seen as non-material and therefore non-scientific. In the pre-Aquarian mindset, non-scientific mainly means non-dense physical which in turn means non-measurable or weighable or seeable by the available technological instruments. Still, as in all other aspects of the Great Unfolding or evolution, we have been making great advances in the sensitivity of such apparatuses, and humanity is rapidly approaching the point where the facts of the “physical” and therefore measurable existence of etheric, astral, and mental dimensions of substance within which we live and move will be undeniable.

In the meantime meditation training has been presented through various releases or thoughtform presentations of the Ageless Wisdom around the world cloaked in rather allegorical and metaphorical language which for many reasons has tended to reinforce a rather mystical and amorphous frame rather than the actual practical value of this human technology. However, in the past one hundred years or so, much headway in this area has been made in the more modern presentations of the Ageless Wisdom which we have today. I have in mind the Teachings that were presented through Alice Bailey, Lucille Cedercrans, and Helena Roerich, all of which have their origin within the Ashram of Synthesis.

Even though the technology we call meditation is being steadily moved out of the mystical, amorphous and even esoteric realms where it has been for the many thousands of years into an exoteric frame and a range of substance which can be or will shortly be measured and demonstrated as having always existed, there remains a very high and rigorous bar set for access to the inner workings and facts of this technology. In the Ages which precede this age of the New Science which we old esotericists call the Aquarian Age because it is occurring during that period of time when our system is passing though the zodiacal sign of Aquarius, only those who were willing to undergo the rigors of a highly disciplined focus leading to vertical expansions of consciousness were able, so to speak, to “meditate.” Besides the basic lack of the actual language to present the more esoteric or energy and force aspects of meditation, the reasons for all of the metaphorical and allegorical language as well as the demanding and deep disciplines within which the teachings on meditation were and, to some degree still are, embedded, have to do with the power that true meditation puts in to the hands of one who becomes adept at or “masters” it.

All of this remains true, in fact “more true,” today than ever. The understanding of what meditation is, how it works, and how you “do it,” like all else in the Plan, has been accelerating at an astounding rate. Those individuals who are willing to let go of their previous learned, mostly mystical half-truths and assumptions regarding this technology and venture into the scientific arena are becoming ever more close to the ability to consciously and deliberately actually meditate, that is move—by what appears to be magic because one cannot “see” with the dense physical sight what is happening— his or her will into form.

In Nine Chains to the Moon, Bucky Fuller coined the term ephemeralization. By this concept he meant the process of doing more with less. He was referring to the power of evolving scientific understanding of cosmos and technological advances that were enabling man to constantly accomplish more of everything with less and less of anything. This process, Fuller held, is resulting in ever-increasing standards of living.

Talk about doing more with less! One marvels at the leap from the megabyte to the terabyte, but consider meditation. Think of meditation as a non-material dense or “spiritual” software technology. The purpose of

this software technology is to enable incarnated humans to access, in full consciousness, the higher dimensions of realty.

A skilled meditator can “call home.” This software runs on or in a dense, totally mobile or portable operating system that, when properly aligned or attuned, is able bring the omnipresent but seldom realized unity of the dense physical planes with the non-dense dimensions of Life into the conscious awareness of the individual unit of Life we call a human being. You are there, and it is not a TV program.

That electro/biological operating system is what most humans think we are: our dense physical bodies.

Every one of us is equipped with the necessary “hardware” to run this software. The software programs are tiered, and one of the major objectives of the discipline and training in meditation is to create the correct alignment of the basic hardware to run ever more sophisticated and powerful levels of the software. Trying to run an advanced software program on an un- or ill-prepared electro/biological operating system leads to the same problem that it leads to on a computer. The system freezes or crashes. In the case of our operating systems, the equally unpleasant results could and sometimes do include insanity and death.

Well, the point here is that there has been some rather interesting and even startling acceleration in the understanding of meditation which has led to the development and use of new alignment techniques. For those who have developed the discipline and courage to access them, these new techniques have greatly enhanced or expanded the consciousness or “awareness reach,” into the higher dimensions of reality.

There is, of course, nothing that makes anyone who has begun to move into these new alignments superior, exclusive, entitled, special, or more deserving than others. These kinds of attitudes or notions act as impediments to focusing on the higher realms of Life.

Motivation for the work that slips into attitudes of exclusivity and superiority generate various kinds of program malfunctions. The Teaching calls these malfunctions glamour and/or Illusion. Basically, these terms are names for several basic kinds of alignment glitches. The majority of these malfunctions are the result of identification loss. They stem from an identification of the meditator with his/her equipment.

When we think that we are our equipment, we become lost in the machine, so to speak. It is this loss of identification with the real, with the Light, our Spiritual Source, (you can see in this example just how limiting our language is as a medium for conveying the nature of reality) and our immersion into a selfdeluding and separative identification with the unreal, temporal world of forms that has led us into the world of desire and lies at the heart of all suffering.

This basic misplaced identification lies at the heart of every tragic hero in all of the world’s literature and art. This condition generates what we think of as separative, exclusive, and personal attitudes and causes an aberration in the primary identification of the Self. When these attitudes are present in the meditator, they cause a glitch or improper alignment to occur in either the astral or mental dimensions of the equipment. The faulty alignment results in a shutdown of access to the internet service provider, what we refer to as the Soul. Literally!

These alignment glitches create a blockage to the vertical ascent and make it impossible for the consciousness to register the frequencies of the higher formless dimensions which require a disidentification with form and a realization of one’s essential, non-formed, spiritual nature. Identification of the self with the dense equipment or any psychological aspect of the self, such as one’s persona, position, power, fears, wishes, act as a circuit breaker and inhibit or cut off access to the higher levels of consciousness. Consequently the meditative efforts direct the consciousness of the seeker into various

lower dimensional or horizontal pathways. These horizontal paths will, in all probability, temporarily satisfy the seekers desire, but they will eventually lead to some form of system crash. If repeated over time, these system crashes will almost invariably involve what we call disease and psychosis.

Rigorous, unforgiving, that is no short cuts, discipline and training, which leads to the proper attunement and alignment of the equipment and opens up these higher levels of the software, eliminate any discordant sense of separative or exclusive existence. Individuals who have not sufficiently removed these hindrances from the alignment will be unable to access the higher realms of possibilities and power.

Continued efforts to meditate within such a misalignment only serve the separative illusion. Highly skilled meditators, even not so skilled meditators, can move their will into form. The issue is, of course, that if their will is not in alignment with the overlighting Plan for the evolution of the planet, it is separated from the whole and is productive of further separation and chaos. However, in place of the separative sense of superiority, the discipline and training that leads to proper alignment and the resultant experience of the Higher Realms instills a kind of humility and sense of beauty that leads to an ever-increasing sense of responsibility for all of humanity, all of Life actually, and an unavoidable urge to serve.

These rapidly accelerating changes in the technology of meditation are demonstrating in the relative levels of new awareness in millions and millions of individuals from all walks of life and from all corners of the globe. Today, for example, people universally are rejecting the ages-old notion that humanity is childlike and needs wise kings and rulers to tell us what to do. People the world over are demanding government of, by, and for the people. Another interesting example is the planet-wide demand for what is called transparency.

Mostly we think of transparency in terms of government secrecy, and we demand open relations about what politicians are doing behind closed doors. This sense of the need for transparency and the willingness to be transparent is an aspect of the growing sense of what we call group consciousness. It is a growing realization and awareness on the part of millions of individuals of the fact of the universal self, of the reality of the interconnectedness of all people as it replaces the separated and largely hidden for protection self of the pre-Aquarian ages.

The control of present day institutions is largely in the hands of individuals with pre-Aquarian consciousnesses who find transparency terrifying and are doing everything they can to block it. However, this new manifestation of transparency is not waiting for the controlling powers of today’s institutions to act. This new consciousness aspect is demonstrating daily on popular social networking sites like Facebook and Google/Blogger where people post their entire lives for anyone to see and update them from day to day.

An additional aspect of this new consciousness is readily observable in almost any of the virtual reality games on the internet. In many of these games, some of which are rather gory, the players create what are called avatars. This is a word which used to mean, among other things, the incarnation of a Hindu deity like Vishnu. Today, to almost anyone under 40 whom you might ask, this term refers to the electronic image of a created character that the player uses in the game. These characters or avatars can be quite psychologically complex and possess many powers and skills as well as certain hang ups. They can be created and discarded. They are upgraded, (evolved) and pass tests, (take initiations) to gain new and more vast powers as a game progresses.

On various psychological levels, within both the virtual and real reality, a player identifies with these avatars. In terms of how the players see themselves moving through their “real” or non-virtual lives, there occurs a certain sense of identification transference from the virtual reality games to another level of game.

That other level is the apparently “real,” non-virtual reality, the game we call daily living.

Many of these players have hit on the realization that their real life is very much like a virtual reality game.

They understand that in this “real” reality, they are really not their avatars or their bodies. They understand that they make themselves with their will and they can change what they are and what they do, perhaps not as easily as they can change the virtual reality avatars, but the concept is clear. They are not their forms. Hence they are not that concerned with keeping them secret or hidden. When the nuances and implications of this understanding become conscious and are consciously applied to life, we have a modern form of meditation.

Many of these people are what we call alienated from society. This so called alienation stems in part from the perception of the preference to live in worlds of their own creation where they understand the rules and are basically immortal. We think we need to rescue them when they represent the future. The present personality world in which we mostly live is, as we have been saying for eons, as virtual as the virtual reality games. It too is an illusion, and who is to say which is more gory?

The issue is to see that these kinds of developments are aspects of our accelerating consciousness expansion. The ancient mantra, “from the darkness to the Light, from the unreal to the Real and from death to Immortality,” comes poignantly to mind.

There are other very interesting and, once one recognizes them and thus creates a relationship with them, very obvious manifestations of this post-Piscean consciousness which I keep calling group consciousness.

This is a term that speaks to the obvious interconnectedness and basic unity of Universe. With this growing awareness of their interconnectedness to all humans and, indeed, to all life, alienated individuals have a yearning, an almost unavoidable urge to work for the common good and the general welfare even in the face of increased efforts on the part of the powers that support the Great Illusion of separation. Such men and women, and indeed more and more and more children from all over the world, are involved in this work not for some political reason or as the devotees of some ideology but because they were born with the incontrovertible understanding of the interconnectedness of all life, and they see themselves as a part of that greater good.

In the Teachings on meditation much is given regarding the demonstration of effective right meditation. It falls under the concept of Service which will, as I mentioned above, someday be seen as a science. What we have in the manifestation of group consciousness is Service in action, a momentous demonstration of the success of evolution. D.K. makes all of this very clear: Service can be briefly defined as the spontaneous effect of soul contact. This contact is so definite and fixed that the life of the soul can pour through into the instrument which the soul must perforce use upon the physical plane. It is the manner whereby the nature of that soul can demonstrate in the world of human affairs. Service is not a quality or a performance; it is not an activity towards which people must strenuously strive, nor is it a method of world salvage. This distinction must be clearly grasped, or else our whole attitude to this momentous demonstration of the success of the evolutionary process in humanity will be at fault. Service is a life demonstration. It is a soul urge, and is as much an evolutionary impetus of the soul as the urge to self-preservation or to the reproduction of the species is a demonstration of the animal soul.

This is a statement of importance. It is a soul instinct, if we may use such an inadequate expression and is,

therefore, innate and peculiar to soul unfoldment. It is the outstanding characteristic of the soul, just as desire is the outstanding characteristic of the lower nature. It is group desire, just as in the lower nature it is personality desire. It is the urge to group good. It cannot, therefore, be taught or imposed upon a person as a desirable evidence of aspiration, functioning from without and based upon a theory of service. It is simply the first real effect, evidenced upon the physical plane, of the fact that the soul is beginning to express itself in outer manifestation.

Group Conscious Meditation: How and Why It Works We often talk about how superficial is the understanding of the concept of consciousness. However, from an energetic or esoteric perspective, the understanding of the concept of group is equally superficial. A gathering of people is not necessarily a group, and meditating with a gathering of persons in the same room or at the same time does not necessarily make a group conscious meditation.

Basically, three elements are required for any meditation to be a group meditation. These are “The unity of aim, the desire to serve, and the recognition of the present focused intention of the Hierarchy (under the guidance of the Christ).” These three elements are the essentials of group structure on the etheric and dense physical plane. When these three are present, one need not be even in the same country or dimension, let alone room, as those with whom one has aligned and with whom one is meditating.

The unity of aim means that each participant is aware of, understands, and stands through the exercise of his or her own free will in unequivocal alignment and agreement with the Purpose of the specific group within which one is working. There is no place for coercion or manipulation of individuals in a group conscious group. The individuality and unique qualities and gifts of each soul are realized and honored by every other soul in the group.

Obviously, one can be, and most meditators are, integrated members of a number of different groups, any or all of which may be working on very different aspects of the One Plan. However, it is essential for the success of any meditative effort that the focus of each disciple in the meditating group is in synchronous alignment with the group of the moment. The invocative demand or the alignment process is really the creation of a harmonious and coherent communication the sending of which generates a clear channel or linkage between the invoking center and the evoking respondent, indicting to those being invoked that the invoking receptive field is unified, balanced, stable and ready to receive the response to its demand. The purity of motive, the unity and coherence of the invoking group’s intent determines absolutely the quality and content of the evocative response. Any non-harmonious or non-integrated motivations, intentions or agendas will create static and poor reception on both the invocative and evocative side of the communications effort.

The desire to serve is a bit more abstract. Each of us needs to have a basic understanding of what service means in its true, that is its energetic or esoteric sense. True service is a “Soul urge.” When we involve ourselves in a true group meditation, we desire nothing for the separated self or personality, nothing at all.

In fact, as an act of sacrifice, we consciously dedicate all that we have and all that we are to the service of the common good and the general welfare. Any evocative response to our invocative effort is totally dedicated to the objectives of the group Purpose.

A Soul Demonstration Service to humanity is actually a “soul demonstration in the world of affairs . . . a momentous demonstration of the success of the evolutionary process in humanity.” Also, in the more modern groups, the “desire” to serve is firmly replaced by the will to serve. As I said, service is a Soul urge. It is interesting to realize that the Soul does not desire. The Soul urges with the indefatigable, peaceful, silent will of the Christ of which it is a fragment. We let nothing stand in the way of our service to the group’s objectives and the common good.

The third essential, “the recognition of the present focused intention of the Hierarchy (under the guidance of the Christ),” is even more abstract. It means that the group is conscious of and in alignment with the Hierarchy. The group sees itself as at least a potential instrument of the Hierarchy incarnate. It signifies that as Soul, the group has a relative understanding of the immediate objectives of the Ashram within which it is functioning, and that the group’s soul intention is to work within the frame of its best understanding of the Hierarchal Plan.

Dimensions of Hierarchy It would probably serve here to attempt to give some clarity to the meaning of the very misunderstood and abused term, Hierarchy. The general understanding and common use of the concept of Hierarchy is, as are the understanding and common use of most abstract concepts, based on necessarily superficial, materialistic, and self-conscious understandings of reality. Hierarchy as it is generally used in this selfconscious paradigm has meaning only in an exclusive, materialistic frame of reference. In this framework, hierarchy is seen as a “top down” kind of rulership in which “top” means the most powerful or wealthy or in strictly material terms, “superior” person. In this hierarchy, the “top” persons are the “deciders.” They rule. All others are subjects. That is, all others are “subject” to the rule of the top people. In this sense of the concept, our world is and has been for many, many thousands of years ruled by a hierarchy of wealthy, powerful individuals.

Group Conscious Framework However, the group conscious framework includes, along with the material dimensions of reality, the omnipresent but largely unseen or unrecognized non-material or abstract dimensions of Life. We refer to these dimensions as spiritual. In this framework we have a much deeper, more scientific and coherent view of the Real. Hierarchy still means “top down.” However, top has nothing to do with the material status or personality power or domination by extra dimensional beings, personalities, or groups of people or of any of the defining concepts of hierarchal power in the self-conscious materialistic paradigm.

In the group conscious view, hierarchy has to do with the inner realities of Cosmic Principles and Laws that are gradually unfolding in an involutionary and evolutionary process through the many spiritual and material dimensions of Life. On the dense physical plane, these include the dimensions of the animal, vegetable, and mineral kingdoms as well as that of humanity. On the spiritual or non-material levels, there are numerous dimensions and kingdoms of beings of which we know little or nothing.

So, an understanding of the Hierarchal Plan means one’s best, present, relative conclusions regarding the Principles and Laws of the greater Life. These conclusions—in the face of an always expanding understanding of the Principles and Laws that are seeking manifestation through the many dimensions of Life—are always tentative and serve only as steps into the next revelation. It was this understanding that led Socrates to continually remind his pupils that he really knew very little. It is this understanding that is the root of the wise person’s humility.

Flexible Balance In this framework, the over-arching fundamental intention or purpose of a group conscious group will seldom change. However, the group realizes that the Plan is a living evolving conception of the Will to Good. Therefore, a group’s methodologies and ways of working to implement its specific aspect of the Plan will change and evolve as its understanding of the Principles and Laws and the developments of and how these are unfolding through the Plan change and evolve. Thus, flexible balance in the face of changing conditions in both the subtle and dense realms is what keeps a group active and useful. Without such flexibility and balance, the group will become form focused, crystallize, and become less and less useful to the unfoldment of the Plan.

The presence of these three essentials—the unity of aim, the will to serve, and the recognition of the present focused intention of the Hierarchy (under the guidance of the Christ)—create “an invocative, magnetic state of group consciousness,” a sensitive receiving plate upon which the higher impressions can play and will evoke “from the Christ and His informed Masters an identification of Their united thought with the group aspiration.”

This, basically, is how and why group conscious meditation is successful. These days a large number of groups are very deeply involved in group meditation on various aspects of the unfolding Plan. As we understand, the Plan is a very great and complex whole, and each meditating group plays “its part in the Plan of the Great Ones.” Group consciousness and the wider world view which comes with it enables us to see these different group meditative efforts weaving together to foster and aid the Great Unfolding we call evolution.

A Few Examples One area in which we see the externalization of the inner hierarchies of truth is in the intense efforts being made by men and women of goodwill all over the world toward the inclusive participation of all people in their governments and destiny. These efforts are gradually replacing the outworn modes of rule by the power elite, whatever their name, in many places in the world. In addition, we see on the part of many, many millions of individuals a growing consciousness of our essential divinity and our relationship not only with other peoples but with the other kingdoms of nature and the Spiritual Kingdoms as well.

The Law of Spiritual Approach Humanity is beginning to understand and respond in a new way to the Law of Spiritual Approach. This Law does not refer simply to the use of theological or religious frameworks of worship. In the group conscious paradigm, obedience to this Law flows from the incontrovertible realization that the Spiritual Dimensions are real. They are beauty and harmony. These spiritual dimensions constantly approach us with expanding visions and revelations of what can and will be as we approach them and consciously and deliberately open to them and invite them in.

Equilibrium Equilibrium is being reestablished in many of the areas of our lives that have been deplorably out of balance. Perhaps the best example of this is the imbalance between the masculine and feminine principles.

This imbalance, one of the more damaging and tragic results of the separative delusion of selfconsciousness, has been in place for many thousands of years. By establishing the feminine as the weaker sex, the masculine eliminated 50percent of the “competition” from the never-ending self-conscious struggle for power and dominance. Today, the heart centered, group conscious perspective is bringing this situation to a close, and the feminine principle is being recognized for what it is, an “essential foundation and essence” for each important achievement.

The Will to Good The success of the group conscious science of synthesis, the science of invocation and evocation or what we refer to as meditation, is demonstrated through these and many other evolutionary developments. The incoming energy, the evocative response to the invocative demand which is largely responsible for these dynamic and far reaching evolutionary developments is composed of the various frequencies of the Will to Good. As D.K. has said, “the will-to-good is the Father aspect, whilst goodwill is the Mother aspect, and from the relation of these two the new civilization, based on sound spiritual (but utterly different) lines, can be founded.”

Synthesis The Will to Good is manifesting at this particular time through the energy of Synthesis. This synthesis energy is being brought into our system through the efforts of the extra-planetary Avatar of Synthesis.

Goodwill Goodwill is the Mother aspect. Goodwill is the embodiment and the out-breathing cycle of the Will to Good or Synthesis. In effect, goodwill is the "carrier wave" for the synthesis energy. Goodwill manifests as the power of kindness, loving understanding, patience, tolerance, and non-blaming. These are some of the qualities of goodwill. These powerful energies are able to open the way and call out that embedded spark of divinity which lies at the heart of each of us and which will respond to the frequency of the synthesis energy.

The Prisoners of the Planet The synthesis energy, once its way is made clear through the essential presence of the feminine principle, calls out the soul within. Hearing and responding to this energy, the inner spark of Divinity turns of its own, now freed will to the Father and is abstracted or withdrawn into the Father’s House. Thus, the qualities or consciousness aspects, the Souls that have been "trapped" or imprisoned deep within the walls of our separative self-conscious delusion, are freed and return to their Source. Likewise, the sparks of soul that give life to and have been imprisoned in the "forms" of the worldwide institutions and systems created by these separative consciousnesses over the past thousands of years are re-called and withdrawn.

The forms which housed or imprisoned these sparks of Divinity, including our old and outworn personality forms, crumble into the dust from which they came. The matter from which they were fashioned is

returned to the Mother’s reservoir of Divine Intelligence where it becomes available for the construction of new civilizations and new, more beautiful, more transparent and lighted personalities.

The main vehicles used to create the systems of the old civilizations and cultures were and still are the exclusive, separative, materialistically focused hierarchies of governments, theologies and the "priest" cultures, police forces and armies that uphold and enforce them. As we all know, these entities worked and still work through the forces of fear and ignorance which is made possible and strengthened by the identification of humanity with its forms rather than with its inner reality the Spiritual Soul.

The Tipping Point As the meditation work of focused and dedicated groups continues, the expansion of group consciousness slowly replacing self-consciousness throughout the human genome will continue. It is a fact that “hearts can inspire other hearts with their fire”. Gradually group consciousness will reach a point of balance with self-consciousness, and humanity will reach the fabled “tipping point.”

It is my opinion and the opinion of many others that humanity as a whole is rapidly approaching this tipping point. And, as they grow less and less sustainable, we can expect the gradual speedup of the disappearance of the old form focused hierarchies and civilizations. As this evolutionary process grows in magnitude and speed, gradually the hierarchies of spiritual reality will begin to be the source of sustainable life for all.

To demonstrate the success of the meditative efforts of the many group conscious groups of meditators around the world, I suggest that we revisit a document that came out of a World Service Intergroup, Conclave gathering of disciples over the five days of Wesak in May of 2001. This document was published under the title, The Darjeeling Declaration. It can be read, starting on page five, at the following location: http://www.meditationtraining.org/thoughtline/tl-2001-10.pdf Needless to say, and as we only too well know from our own, often painful experience, these old forms will not go quietly. They will struggle, sometimes violently. It is the will and love, the compassion and courage of the world’s knowers and the world’s meditators that ensure the movement of humanity into the inevitable sunrise of the Satya Yuga.

Thus the Christ, with the fused energies of love and wisdom, with the aid of the Avatar of Synthesis and of the Buddha and under the influence of the Spirit of Peace and of Equilibrium, can implement and direct the energies which will produce the coming new civilization. He will see, demonstrating before His eyes the true resurrection—the emergence of mankind from the imprisoning cave of materialism. Thus He will "see of the travail of His soul and shall be satisfied.

The New Consciousness Alignment

In most of the following remarks, I am talking not only about myself. I am referring to a significant and growing sector of humanity. I want to share with you some thoughts and insights about certain developments to our alignment that occur as we move from our self-conscious focus ever more deeply into

the reality of the group consciousness of the Soul. I use the term alignment as it pertains to meditation but also to describe the effects of these developments on our vision or sense of reality—to describe, for lack of a better term, subtle psychic “upgrades” in our equipment. Overall, the insights I want to share have to do with how we perceive and understand reality. These insights have occurred and continue to occur unabated as each day passes.

It’s challenging to talk about these insights and shifts in what we consider to be reality because the necessary language does not yet exist. There are very few similes or words in our present language that convey the meaning and significance of the revelations which are being progressively unfolded as we penetrate more deeply into the New Consciousness. This is not surprising because the language that we currently use was developed to explain and discuss a perception of reality that is very different from the one which is unfolding before our eyes every day.

Our current language carries meaning based on a view that sees reality as dense physical existence, as person, place, or thing: pickles, automobiles, bodies, trees, oceans; even semi-abstract things such as a “foreign policy” or an “educational program.” Existence in this old language set actually means measurable dense physical plane material presence, and so far it extends from galaxies to quarks. Furthermore, this old view of realty which has generated most of our language saw and to a very large degree still sees all of these things as separated from each other and basically in competition with each other for their existence.

In addition, most of the language that is available for embodying New Consciousness concepts is so weighted down with the effluvia of tradition and absurd connotations that it is relatively useless. If, for example, one wishes to dialogue with anyone outside of the relatively small esoteric world community about more subtle dimensions of reality than the dense physical, one encounters much difficulty in trying to use words such as hierarchy or Christ. The principles which such thoughtforms actually embody are so buried under layers of emotionally charged, misleading, and at times absurd connotations that using them actually acts as a barrier to communication regarding the higher dimensions of reality such as the Inner Community of Brothers, the Spiritual Hierarchy, Love, the Christ.

So, because the esoteric realms defy revelation through the available language of the lower mental plane, we must resort to metaphor or as many of the ancient revealers did, parable, the language of the arts and the muses to give these new conceptions of reality meaning and significance. Once again, we can see the incredible importance that the arts and song have played in the unfolding revelations of the Plan over the centuries.

In recent times, many of us have been and are being born out of sync with the old materialistic, selfconscious view of Life. We have come in with an unconscious, but unshakeable understanding that Life is very much more than the dense physical plane. In most cases this understanding was, as I said, unconscious. Therefore, as small children confronting the dominant materialistic paradigm, we were bewildered, confused. If we happened to express our sense of what we perceived and inwardly knew was so, we were considered to be cute or precocious or by the time we became teenagers, geeky or weird. The numbers of children and young adults who are in this category today is very much larger than we realize.

This number is growing daily because evolution is not, and for untold kalpas has not been, a matter of form.

It is a matter of consciousness.

Like most of you who will find this interesting enough to actually read, early on in this incarnation I knew there was something screwy about the way stuff was happening and generally, with the way the nature of reality was being presented, but I was never able to really put it into any kind of frame of sense until I was

in my late twenties. Then, like some giant hunk of a cosmic puzzle, things clicked into place. It was like a shade being raised.

I had a number of realizations about the nature of the real world, and such understandings are becoming more and more the norm to this day. One of my earliest insights of this kind occurred many years ago one beautiful afternoon in January when the tides were very low. I was sitting on a big rock among the tide pools below the cliffs of Palos Verdes in the south part of Santa Monica Bay. I was just sitting there musing, watching the receding tide and going in and out, kind of being with the rhythm of waves. Suddenly, or so it seemed, I was being engulfed by a big roller from the incoming tide. In that space, I kind of got it, if you know what I mean.

Infinity I do not see Sea combating cliff Or shore assaulting sea Each locked with the other In some absurd competition Through eternity.

I see Sea and Cliff As symphony, Always and only coexisting, Giving meaning and form Each to the other.

It is the rock strewn shoreline Which orchestrates the wave— That breaks the breakers Into foamy spires, That releases all that roll and rush Into momentary And wondrous

Shapes.

And sea arranges shore— Shaping, sculpturing.

Carving, cutting, etching Filling Barring, building.

It is sea and shore In concert That the ear hears: After the roar Of the rush to shore, Consider the hiss of the wave Withdrawing down a sandy strand.

And then— The bridge of silence As the sea gathers Itself And the shore extends itself Each preparing for the next Note.

Well, ever since then I have tasked myself with the job of trying to communicate through this really insufficient language what is really going on around here. An early problem I had in this work was personal arrogance. I was so shocked by the suffering, the hunger and greed, endless wars, exclusivity and on and on, all as a result of this insane sense of a separative reality, and thought myself so superior to it that I rejected the old reality out of hand. This, I gradually figured out, was not a very effective response.

The Path of discipleship and initiation is Experiment, Experience, and Expression. It is an interesting aspect of Life, which I learned through experiment and experience, that even illusions of reality can mess up the dense physical vehicle, or, seemingly, kill you. One must not disparage the controlling reality, even if it is an illusion. One must also play by its rules if one expects to have an appearance of any length or to participate

in any kind of an effective way in the service of the Great Unfolding. It’s the old story of the Teaching.

Disciples need to have one foot anchored in the reality of the Inner Community and one foot anchored in the somewhat illusory outer community, and this brings me to our alignment.

I have noted that this tendency to initially and somewhat arrogantly reject the controlling paradigm is rather typical of the relatively group conscious incoming souls. However, I have also noted that although still somewhat common among these sorts of young people, the pattern seems to be diminishing with each new generation. As the Plan unfolds, the old paradigm is losing its power over the systems and structures of society which are used to influence, to actually cloud the minds of the incoming souls.

In the old paradigm, which though diminishing is still very much with us, personality struggles to connect with the Soul by trying to register it through a system of dogmatic and frequently contradictory religious tracts which serve only to confuse us and convince huge numbers of us that we are actually unworthy of such a connection anyway. The only other perspective is a materialistic one that denies the existence of the Soul altogether.

It is elementary that one will seldom see what one thinks does not exist. In addition, being faced with the constant reminder that one is an unworthy sinner certainly pours water on any tiny spiritual spark that might get started. These two situations present a formidable gate through which one has to pass if one is truly going to “connect with the Soul.”

When functioning within this Old Consciousness, even when we manage to catch an occasional glimpse of the Truth—that we are the Soul—this ages-in-the-making, separative self-conscious notion of reality together with the deep sense of self-loathing engendered within most of us—a condition, by the way, that Master M. refers to as Chaos—either immediately denies the touch of Light or institutes a search for a dense physical explanation for it. We often will do almost anything to avoid the realization of our identification with the illusion of our forms. So, caught in this vortex of being identified with and therefore living in what is basically an illusion of reality, we have spent many years being jerked around, back and forth, swinging between the polarities, like a teeter-totter completely out of balance, confused, bewildered, lost.

As long as we are oblivious to what is going on and belong to the relatively comfortable classes, we often think we are having the time of our lives. It is only when that “splinter in the brain” to which Morpheus refers in The Matrix begins to get our attention that we begin to get that something is out of whack, that something is missing, something is not making sense, and we find the courage and the will to consciously make the decision to experiment with stepping on to the Path. This is, as we recall, the first step from the comfort of living in an illusion to the building an alignment which would connect us to the reality of the Soul.

We all know about the basic requirements of alignment building: steady, daily exposure of the mind to the Light of the Soul, daily study of the Teachings, preferably in the presence of co-workers, and service for the Common Good and the General Welfare, all carried on under the credo of self-forgetfulness, harmlessness, and right speech. Each of these basics, the ABC’s of esotericism, is, of course, really a doorway that leads the experimenting, experiencing, and expressing individual into deeper and deeper understandings of Truth —of what is really going on here. It is, as we know, a path of unceasing wonders.

In the initial stages of the building, there is a great deal of self-consciousness in the alignment. Most of what is done vis-à-vis meditation study and service is heavily tinged with self-development and personal

enhancement. Of course, this all works out quite well. An independent and self-confident persona is an absolute requirement of alignment. The Soul needs such an instrument for its world service.

It actually takes an independent personality to become part of a group. Group affiliation is not a giving up of individual responsibility and initiation. It is taking over. It is based on a loving understanding of a purpose and a free will choice to subordinate the personal will to a co-creative alignment with others in manifesting the purpose for the good of the whole.

When one is really able to work in this way within a group, one is experiencing what we call group consciousness. The views and positions of the separative persona will becomes less and less involved as the Soul becomes more and more central in one’s life. This is an unavoidable development because one begins to see reality from a more and more inclusive point of view, a point of view which is impossible for the selfconscious persona to grasp or to even understand. This is a very natural development of the individual’s continuing experimentation, experience, and expression.

As group consciousness expands, the alignment comes more and more into synchronicity with reality. As we synchronize with Truth, we begin to actually register with our sensory apparatus the frequencies of the higher dimensions. This, as you may have experienced or as you might imagine, generates a lot of mind blowing realizations. Those years and years of daily experimentation and practice standing steady in the Light which we call meditation begin to reveal their value.

The major hindrances to establishing the higher alignment that is to open and expand our consciousness from self to group are thoughtforms that support a materialistic, separative view of the nature of reality. It is these thoughtforms which make up what we call Chaos. Remember, they are ancient and powerful, and many are still resident in our lower mental equipment. They will generate doubt, skepticism, and disbelief.

They tend to drown out our hearing, desensitize our feeling, cloud our vision, and dull our sense of taste and smell.

We all know about Alastor "Mad-Eye" Moody. I have mentioned this Auror before and remarked on his frequent comment regarding constant vigilance. Mad-Eye is referring to a kind of vigilance that is essential for anyone who is building the higher alignment. The vigilance needs to be focused inwards, precisely on motivation. Any shred of motive that would feed or energize the separative self-conscious aspects of our psychic life will open the door to the frequencies of chaos: doubt, skepticism, disbelief, fear. These are the Mind Killers which dumb down our senses, destroy and prevent Soul alignment.

The higher alignment is all about synthesis. As we work to deepen our alignment we expand our group consciousness which is essentially the normal action of synthesis. An expanding consciousness leads to an ever-wider awareness of inclusiveness or wholeness. D.K. points out that synthesis is instinctual to Deity: “This instinct [the tendency to synthesize] is the governing principle of consciousness itself, and consciousness is the psyche or soul, producing psychical life; it is awareness— sub-human, human and divine.”

As consciousness expands, the ability to use the higher frequencies of our sensory apparatus begins to come on-line. The two things, consciousness expansion and higher sensory brain awareness, are natural results of the ABC’s of meditation: daily meditation, study, and service to the Common Good and General Welfare. Consciousness expansion and higher sensory brain awareness always and only co¬-occur.

Meditation work that is undertaken without the safeguards of group study and service to the Common

Good and General Welfare will not lead into the higher alignment and often will generate a host of various common psychological problems.

Consequently, it is precisely here that vigilance is essential. We must maintain an impersonal serviceoriented detachment, the attitude of the scientist, experimenter, or explorer. We are not skeptical. We do not doubt. We do not indulge in the comforting, mind-closing energies of believing or disbelieving that which we encounter. We need to experience the developments which are the results or effects of our meditative efforts in the same manner that any true scientist would experience the results of any experiment. It is at this level that we begin to understand the deeper esoteric meanings and significances behind the fundamental injunctions given to every aspirant to the Path: detachment, discrimination, and dispassion.

There is one other aspect of the group conscious alignment that I want to bring out, and that is how the principle of Equilibrium manifests in the alignment. It is not a coincidence that the Avatar of Equilibrium is standing in the triangle that at this time is supporting the enormous task being undertaken by the Christ as the head of both humanity and the Inner Brotherhood.

The gradual progressive experience of building an alignment results in the appearance of a perfecting balance or if we prefer, harmony. We progressively walk a finer and finer line on the Middle Way until we reach a state of perfect alignment, complete harmony, perfect balance. As Master R. has pointed out, “in perfect balance, there is no weight.” It is at this point, by the way, that we can understand the significance of levitation.

To finish this brief effort to shed some light on what we might see as a group conscious alignment, let me offer an example of how it works by referring back to the personality struggle to connect with the Soul which I outlined a bit earlier. I mentioned that as the Plan unfolds and the presence of group consciousness expands, the old paradigm is losing its power over the systems and structures of society which are used to control and dumb down the minds of the incoming souls.

The realization, the insight that floods into the expanding group conscious individual is that even as we focus our meditative power on the birthing of the new civilizations and world cultures, the ancient monolithic systems of control—religious, financial, and political—are crumbling right in front of our eyes. It is very much like seeing new shoots of life growing through the rubble of last year’s crop. The ability to register with our higher sensory apparatus the occurrence in real time of such developments is a major aspect or effect of a developing group conscious alignment.

As the alignment comes more and more into harmony with the Plan, there results a kind of binocular consciousness. One registers the outlines of the new manifesting civilizations and simultaneously sees the collapsing old forms. The revelation is the realization that this is how evolution works. These two processes always and only co-exist.

The statement “energy follows thought,” rather than a hackneyed shibboleth, is an immutable law of Cosmic Physics. As our group conscious, co-creative meditation continues in the focused building of new thoughtforms which reflect and embody the Principles of Essential Divinity, Good Will and Unanimity, and the Laws of Right Human Relations, Group Endeavor, and Spiritual Approach, the cycle of demolition and destruction and cultivation and seeding of the new civilizations into which humanity has progressed will continue.

Since we have every intention of increasing the focus and power of our meditation work, the present cycle will probably progress at an even more dynamic rate over the next couple of years. The very act of meditating to bring in the Plan also brings in the energy of The Avatar of Equilibrium which initially works through the destroyer aspect of the Will of the Logos. New civilizations and world cultures which resonate in a more harmonious chord a more perfect manifestation of the Intent of the Logos, grow in and through the rubble of the old. That destruction which we see going on today in the areas of finance, politics, and religion is not terrible. It is part of the pain of growing up.

We represent the Outer Community of brothers and sisters who are living in service to the Common Good and General Welfare. We need to remember that “Joy is a special wisdom.” We therefore rejoice in the efforts to bring the Plan into manifestation. We do not focus on the destruction aspect of the energy. We focus totally on the Principles and Laws which repeated numerous times, underlie the new civilizations. The Laws of Physics do the rest.

As Master M. has pointed out, and as I have repeated numerous times, Shield and lance! God has blessed the warriors.

All will come. Twilight will end.

Do you not see that the Cosmic Consciousness is in convulsion?

We know the course of the battle!—the Plan of the Creator cannot be altered.

From the Beginning the dark ones struggled.

From the Beginning We conquered!

Disciples of Synthesis The Piscean Age was brought in some three thousand years ago through the heart of the Golden Age of Greece. Among its numerous progenitors were the great Philosophers Pythagoras and Plato. These progenitors were collectively a group Avatar. They carried the code for the next phase of the Great Unfolding and revealed it through their writings and teachings. These Teachings were the thoughtform presentations of the Ageless Wisdom in the initial stage of the Piscean cycle.

One of the great tragedies of the Piscean era was the shift of focus, very early in the cycle, from the inner truths of the initiating ideas upon which the Teachings were focused to the outer forms of life and the fixation on these idols. This shift of focus in all areas of human life, from micro to macro, generated a split between the dimensions of becoming and Being, the world of forms and the World of Truth. This shift turned science into technology, the search for truth into the extrapolation of forms. Thus was the ancient illusion, The Great Lie of Separation, reinforced in the mind of humanity, and it is today this delusion

regarding the nature of Reality that is providing the karmic lessons for us in this new beginning we call the Aquarian Age The Great Piscean Avatar By the time the Great Avatar of the Piscean Age appeared and revealed the most significant Principle for the Age, Love, the shift of consciousness from the inner dimensions of immutable Truth to the world of ever-changing and shifting forms was fairly dominant in human thinking. What happened to this Avatar and the Code for Life that He brought into humanity is clearly evident in the history of the past two thousand years or so.

The mission of the Aquarian disciples, or as I think of them, the disciples of synthesis, is to bridge the split, reestablish the continuity of human consciousness between the formless dimensions of Idea and Principle and the unfolding of those Principles and Ideas through the ever-evolving world of their manifestation, that dimension we call the physical dense. We are the long looked for bridge builders. We build this bridge by being the bridge. We know and heed the words of Master R.: As you move in the world of form, and as you observe both the old and the new, seek truth in the idea.

Look past the form to that idea which is its Soul, its cause, in order to preserve and perpetuate the good, the true, and the beautiful gained in the past. Thus is that error which sends humanity into the experience of the dark ages avoided during a new cycle.

In light of the above, I think it is wise to recall that the Plan is a living consciousness. Over the centuries since the Code or the Plan was released, many words were used to express its inner Intent. These words were only thoughtforms. They were and are not the Plan. In spite of the obstacles of the Great Lie, much has occurred over the centuries, and new forms are constantly coming forward to better reflect the Intent of the Logos.

In either a macro situation, such as a country or a particular government administration, or a micro situation, such as an individual’s personal life, any time that form gains prominence in consciousness over the idea or the inner light which gives the form its presence, a “dark age” occurs. The form literally blocks out the light of the idea. The wisdom of the truth that the Idea is attempting to reveal through any given form is occulted.

This unfortunate occurrence, as current events daily reveal, is still very strong in global life. It remains one of the primary hindrances in the way of humanity’s taking its next step, micro and macro. Any breath of progress, any attempt to move from the past into the future is met with extreme force by those human souls who still see these entrenched idols as reality.

Any one of us can see this cycle at work in both our national and world lives as well as in our own personal lives. Any effort to shift our focus, macro or micro, from service to the separative persona, or from the darkness to the light, from the unreal to the real, to an expanded participation in service to humanity is met with all kinds of attacks, arguments and justifications to continue whatever it is that we are doing.

These opportunities and the consciousness which opposes them are very subtle things, and in the end, free will must and will prevail over our choices. What we see unfolding daily is what we have chosen to unfold.

It is in our power to choose a better way, but to choose the better way, we must be able to see it. The way ahead will not be seen by looking backward. Extrapolating a new version of an old form is not the Way ahead; it is the continuation of the Dark Age. The lessons of our dark history are not to be found in the

forms of the past—the wars, the kings and queens, and so forth—but in the unfolding consciousness demonstrated by the gradual manifestation of the Principles basic to evolution.

The Aquarian Code These basic Principles are the bedrock of the Ageless Wisdom, the Code, the Plan. They are formless, immutable, unchangeable Truth. Humanity is becoming aware of a few of these Life Principles: Essential Divinity, Goodwill, and Unanimity. However if we have our eyes so closely focused on the forms with which we are familiar and comfortable that we cannot see clearly, then we are in for another dark age, another round of experiment, experience, and expression.

In terms of the group of disciples of synthesis, it is very clear that each individual must see what he or she can. Master D. K. says we need to master the art of revelation. We need to share our insights within the group as well as in our daily comings and goings both through directed telepathic transmission and in dense forms, through acts of kindness, consideration, respect, compassion, speaking, writing communicating, or creating new, fresh thoughtforms through which the inner reality can be revealed. As the poet teacher Gerard Manley Hopkins said, I say more: the just man justices; Keeps grace: that keeps all his goings graces; Acts in God’s eye what in God’s eye he is— Christ—for Christ plays in ten thousand places, Lovely in limbs, and lovely in eyes not his To the Father through the features of men’s faces.

My understanding is that many of the present day disciples who were sent in after the 1925 Conclave and since the end of the World War are being sent by the thousands are what I call, for lack of a better term, disciples of synthesis. What this means to me is that these workers, conscious of their discipleship or not, are relatively group conscious and are therefore able to work at relative levels, with the energy of synthesis. As a simple example, they seem to not be restricted by the ray make-up of their equipment. They are able to relate to and work with all of the various ray energies in various combinations.

Also, I am finding that my views or understandings of virtually every concept (such as forgiveness which we have been meditating upon in the current cycle) are being exploded. It is clear that the understandings with which we “grew up” were/are the products of lower mental, three dimensional comprehension. When we begin to look at these principles through the lens of group consciousness or synthesis, things change radically, or so it seems. Disciples of synthesis seem to automatically approach issues from a synthetic point of view. This appears to me to be one of the natural effects or qualities of Love or group consciousness.

I was not aware of approaching issues in this manner for a long time. In fact I was trained in the usual academic manner and sort of insisted on that linear approach of the Third Ray to most of life. At the same time, I was struck by Master Plato. I had a natural resonance with his work. I was thinking this way naturally.

From the Darkness to the Light

As a result I have frequently found myself to be out of sync with many of my contemporaries both in and out the esoteric community. Although, like most of the others, I had been trained to respect details and had gotten enmeshed in the lower mental planes, there was always this alternative view, always operating, always revealing a different level. As a result, I have been frequently labeled an idealist and encouraged to become a realist, to abandon the world of ideas and deal with the “real” world.

Fortunately, I resisted this false choice. I was supported in my resistance by everything I read in literature, poetry, legend, and much of philosophy. All of this wisdom indicated that the so-called real world is not only an illusion, but a fraud, a masquerade. And so I have persisted even unto this day. And although we esotericists are still seen as weird idealists by some folks, it seems now that the time for the holistic view of reality is finally here. It has been a long time coming.

Along with this emerging acceptance by the intelligentsia of the subtle dimensions of life, I am ever-mindful that disciples are simply practicing to be initiates. Consequently they are experimenting with initiating things. They gain the experience of their efforts and express them in their next initiation.

I know that some will find these notions a bit “out there,” but for me they simply represent a step in the evolution of discipleship. As far as I am concerned, all of the former ways of the Path are still very much in evidence and are needed, for we, the community of disciples, have a very wide “bandwidth,” so to speak.

As has always been the case, it is the prerogative and duty of each individual to determine where on the Path he or she is. Nothing has changed in that regard.

It is my understanding that it is the assignment of the Ashram of Synthesis, one of the Ashrams within the great Ashram of the Christ, to guide the unfolding of the present stage of the Divine Plan. Those of us who sense that we are affiliated with this Ashram and sense that within the frequencies of our meditation work we are being guided by the suggestions and directions flowing from this Ashram are learning to work with the energy of synthesis.

We are experimenting, experiencing, and expressing. There is no failure in these experiments, just learning and adjusting. This is the Path of true Science. The direction for our adjustments comes not from the forms we used in the past, but from the future, a better, deeper understanding of the purpose we were attempting to implement.

The Scientific Method This is the true Scientific method. It involves working from the top down or from principle into form rather than from the old broken form to an adjusted form. It involves experiment and experience in manifestation of the principles in physical dense programs, institutions, social systems the purpose of which is to benefit the Common Good and the General Welfare and to carry all of humanity, indeed, all of the Planet into the next stage of the Great Unfolding.

This method of working represents a huge shift in the way we have worked for the past two thousand years. Rather than trying to fix what went wrong with the old form, our efforts are to build a new form that better represents the purpose we are attempting to embody. This scientific method avoids the trap of becoming fixed in or on a form. It is the way off the cross, so to speak.

And so it is on the Path. So it is within the community of discipleship. Nothing is discarded. The disciples of synthesis endeavor to work on the leading edge. They are always pushing into the future. Being inseparable

parts of the One Community, they endeavor to always lead the entire community into the future with them. They leave no one out. This is, by the way, a living example of true leadership.

Working in this scientific method, we can start with what everyone can see, the dense physical planes.

What the physical sciences have revealed to us in the aspects of universe which we are able to cognize with our physical senses is order, harmony. This order exists in the micro worlds of atoms, electrons, hadrons, quarks as well as in the macro universe of planets, suns, and galaxies which are revealed to us through our telescopes.

There is nothing evident in the known physical universe to indicate that what we do not yet know about it, either its micro or macro aspects, will be anything other than a continuation of the harmony and beauty we now behold in those levels that have become open to our awareness. All are governed by laws of physics.

From the tiniest machine seen particle to the vast vault of the heavens, all is a symphony of harmony and order. It is an unavoidable, scientifically observable fact that the physical universe is full of Love or Pure Reason.

Of course we also encounter discord, mayhem, chaos in great abundance within the fabric of human life.

However, this is a condition of our own making generated by our immersion in the Great Illusion of Separation. The discord, mayhem, and chaos which exist within our systems are the direct result of our having violated the Principles which govern Universe.

One of the most obvious facts accounting for a major part of the discord, mayhem, and chaos we live with yet still not understood or considered in the development of human institutions is revealed to us by science: There is . . . nowhere to be found any basis for separation or any possible point of separation or of essential division. Any sense of separateness is due simply to ignorance and to the fact that certain energies are as yet unable to make adequate impression upon the human consciousness, functioning in time and space.

The essential synthesis exists and the end is sure and inevitable; unity is attainable because unity exists and the sense of separateness is simply the Great Illusion.

It is from this point that the Disciple of Synthesis begins. We recognize the Truth of this statement, and we apply it to all the myriad separations we use to understand the worlds in which we live. In the dense physical, we must indeed understand that “things” are “separated” from other things. It would be a very short incarnation if we did not get this down quickly.

However being Disciples, and that at a minimum means being cognizant of the fact of the higher dimensions of Life, we can see that separation is only an apparent if necessary illusion of the densest of the dense physical planes. We can see with the mind’s eye if not as yet through our own eyes that everything, every identifiable unit of matter, is inseparably connected with every other thing through the great energy web we call the etheric planes. Splitting the atom did not separate some matter from other matter; it deconstructed a unity and released the energy that was binding that unity together. All was still intrinsically connected in the web of energy.

Foremost, it is this basic truth that we need to communicate to our brothers and sisters. We need to put to rest the Dark Age of separation, lies, mayhem, and delusion. We are facing with courage and Intent, the brightening New Age. As Master M. indicates, it’s not that difficult to actually see the coming Light.

The essence of the Supermundane World is beyond words. Communion with the great essence must also be beyond words.

Let human thought be silenced for a moment, let the eyesight be dimmed, let the ear be dulled, and the sigh will transfer man into the higher Supermundane Worlds. He does not plead, does not demand, does not praise, but is experiencing the great Beness. Everyone can find a moment for such exaltation. Everyone can feel rejuvenation from this kind of contact with the Higher Worlds.

No special incantations are needed; the spirit striving to its Motherland, attracted by the Great Magnet, is enough. Give freedom to the spirit; do not bind it with human limitations. It will soar by itself and return triumphant; thus man becomes attuned to the Supermundane World. Such communion occurs more often than one might imagine. People do not understand how the rejuvenation comes, and ascribe it to some kind of earthly process, but the value of a silent attunement to the Supermundane World is great! People should not forget about these gates.

The Thinker advised His disciples, “Learn not to demean the greatness with thoughts of earthly bustle.”

Group Conscious Religion Religion is the name given to the invocative appeal of humanity and the evocative response of the greater Life to that cry.

—Alice A. Bailey, The Rays and the Initiations There is almost universal agreement that the current religious institutions and the approaches they follow have not been that successful in making the world a better, safer, more rational and fulfilling place.

Contrariwise, religious institutions have often been the bane of human development of almost any kind.

These institutions seem to have missed the primary purpose of human spiritual development: the connection with and the understanding and manifestation of the Higher Forces of Life.

What follows here is not an attempt to remodel the old religious approaches. Like most systems of the Old Era, old systems of religion cannot be fixed because the concept upon which they are based, the Great Illusion of Separation, is intrinsically flawed. Any modification of the dense physical form or structure will only result in a different model of a fundamentally flawed system.

Virtually all religious institutions are excellent examples in one way or another of this fact. The current crises in and failure of the world’s political and financial/property systems is further evidence of the folly of adapting fundamentally flawed systems by trying to fix them.

The Fatal Flaw The design flaws flow from the fact that the systems are built on a foundation of illusion regarding the nature of reality which denies the synthetic/spiritual nature of Life and asserts instead an exclusive material reality. This flaw dooms any remodeled system to eventual failure.

It is true that for as long as these systems have been in place, which is, as far as I can see, “forever,” there have been individuals who have whole-heartedly struggled often at the cost of their lives, to make the

systems work for the benefit of the Common Good and the General Welfare. These heroic efforts have resulted in what little evolutionary progress humanity has been able to make over millenniums, “measureless to man.” However as we have seen over and over, eventually, the basic flaw of the system reasserts itself. It co-opts, bends, and wipes out much of the progress made on behalf of the Plan.

So, it is finally dawning on a growing number of humans that these old systems cannot be fixed because they are not broken. They do not work for the Common Good and the General Welfare by design. They do not work, beautifully. We begin to see the irony in such statements as, “don’t fix what is not broken” that we often hear when we are trying to implement proposals that will benefit the Common Good into present systems.

Evolution, Not Revolution Consequently, we need, not a revolution which has proved, all too often, to be the same game with new costumes for the controllers, but an evolution. We need new systems. We need systems which are designed and built on the fundamental Principles and Laws of the synthesis in which we live. These new forms will replace the fatally flawed present institutions governed by separatist “elements of the personal will.” The mere presence of these new inclusive systems will literally cause the disintegration of the old systems through a process of what appears to be evaporation. The new systems will have so much more light and vitality, meet so many more needs in so many more effective and harmonious ways, that they will simply pull, through that Love which we call magnetic attraction, the life force from the old failed systems.

Setting the Baby Free These new systems will not involve “throwing the baby out with the bath water.” They will actually free the “baby,” the germ of the Idea upon which the separative system was constructed, and build in accordance with the Principles and Laws of the Real World. We simply have to shift the focus of the motivational thrust from the exclusive notion of reality as a separated material universe to the inclusive Spiritual Reality, a view of reality which recognizes the synthesis of the dense physical dimensions with an infinitely multidimensional Universe.

This shift appears to be very simple, and concept-wise, it is. However because it will cause massive core changes in the way we live, this shift will be very difficult for individuals who are strung out on the illusion of material reality to accomplish. That means, of course, that efforts to actually birth the new systems will be strongly, unconsciously, consciously, and often even fanatically resisted in most areas of human life. We can see this resistance now, for example, in the current debate around reform of U.S. health and financial systems.

For now, I want to focus on the system we call religion. There has long been a movement among those who comprise the members of the Outer Community, frequently referred to as the New Group of World Servers, to generate what has been called the New World Religion. Many of us have been thinking of the New World Religion as the New “World Religion.” This way of thinking has generated many new iterations of the present, flawed systems but has done little to alter the central concept of separation.

However, taking a fresh point of view, namely a group conscious perspective, much becomes clear.

Thinking in terms of a New World “Religion” or more clearly, religion as a synthetic aspect of and in the New World gives one a decidedly different perspective.

The New in “New World”

It becomes necessary to understand that it is precisely this group conscious perspective that makes the “New World” new. Just this simple shift in seeing diametrically changes the focus of religion. From a system served by the world for the benefit of a few, religion will become a system that serves the world for the benefit of the World, including all kingdoms.

In the old materialistic paradigm, religion was made up of systems created by people who outlined rules and prescripts for how and when and why one would worship God or the supernatural. As Master D.K. points out, The ecclesiastics of the world have made a great line of demarcation between what is human and what is spiritual, between what is material and what is not; in so doing they have created sin and greatly complicated human living and understanding. They have given a selfish import to human aspiration; they have not taught mankind that meditation and prayer were simply phases of cooperation with the divine Plan. Individualism was fostered and group understanding was lost.

When we look at our world, our planet and try to comprehend the myriad life forms which it compasses, we are moved to silence. In this present Age, we have all seen images of our planet which were taken from space by some of our brothers and sisters who have actually seen the planet from that perspective. To those who have the eyes to see, it has become unavoidably obvious that Earth is just one Planet, that it is a Synthetic, Living manifestation of intelligence love, wisdom, and power. Its compass is beyond our ability to grasp.

Thus it dawns on more and more of us that separation is simply an illusion. It has become clear to millions perhaps billions of us that we, human beings, are an intrinsic part of this One Planet. We have understood that everything is interrelated, that synthesis is intrinsic to Universe.

Co-Creators with Divinity We are likewise beginning to realize that we play a significant part in the Life of this Planet. We are beginning to understand that given our ability to think and thereby direct energy into form, we are actually co-¬creators with Divinity. How we behave and what we think has material effects which have unavoidable consequences.

This has been a “secret” kept from most of us for eons by the Great Lie. But some have known of humanity’s power and responsibility as co-creators for a very long time and have been trying to communicate that knowledge to the rest of us. The number of us now aware of this secret—those among us who are even a tiny bit group conscious—has reached a point where the secret is going to become a universally known and understood fact of life in a rather short time. Remember friends, time to us and time to the Logos is a bit different.

When this expansion of consciousness enables us to grasp the true role human beings are meant to play in the Plan of the Great Ones, we are stunned by our past ignorance. We realize that not only do we not know everything as we rather arrogantly claim to, but that a great deal of what we think we know is either totally wrong or based on very partial, frequently warped understandings of reality. Being what we are, souls in forms, we crave Truth and set out to find it.

The Law of Spiritual Approach

Helping humans to find this Truth is an essential and primary function of the Law of Spiritual Approach. To complete the comment from D.K. given above, Maybe—owing to the work of the Brothers of Darkness—there was no way to avoid this dangerous sidetracking of human intent and truth. But the time has now come when the great rhythm of meditation, ranging from desire through prayer to worship, and from thence to meditation and invocation, can be imposed by men upon their own thinking.

As D.K. indicates, it is right here that the Old Time Religion, which the world serves, changes 180°.

Understanding somewhat the fact of the synthesis of life, we know that there are dimensions of reality internal to or higher than the dense physical. We also know from experiment, experience, and expression that we can access those dimensions through the science of meditation and seek a higher Wisdom. Thus, the system of religion in the New World will be based on the Law of Spiritual Approach.

Simply put, Spiritual Approach is a two–way, scientific system of inner rhythmic communication that enables the user to connect with inner realms of Life and to receive direction, guidance, understanding.

This communication system opens the door into the Universe of Truth which stretches, “like gold to airy thinness beat,” into infinity. Its discovery and eventual mastery lie within the scope of every human being’s innate ability. The situation is for every person, after all, exactly as Emerson indicated, “he, equally with every man, is an inlet into the deeps of Reason.”

To accomplish penetration of these higher realms, we must leave behind much of what is comfortable to us. As co-creators with Divinity, we will have to learn new ways of thinking which are utterly different from the processing of the thoughtforms of information and the knowledge we do so well. We will have to master the conscious process of creation though meditation.

There is no angry God. There is no one who is dictating how to behave. No one is demanding obedience and threatening punishment of a dire nature if one deviates from the directions.

There Is Instead Free Will There are also Principles and Laws of the Universe that we can freely choose to follow or not. All choices, whether in harmony with the Cosmic Laws or not, will result in experiences that indicate how the actions are or are not working. Actions that result in what we might call negative feedback, like the broken leg which results if one would rather “fall down the stairs than look at the next step,” are not examples of God punishing us. Likewise, feedback of what we might see as positive, such things as good health and clear thinking, are not examples of God rewarding us. They are examples of either faulty or appropriate applications of the Laws of Cosmos.

Smoking cigarettes is very likely to lead to a serious illness or even death by some form of cancer. This is cause and effect. It is the cosmic feedback loop which in the old language was called karma.

By the way, one other aspect of this feedback loop we call karma which is little understood and which we do not have time to go into in this piece has to do with reincarnation. The Divine Programmers whose function it is to keep track of and correct all glitches and to bring into balance all imbalances in the Cosmic System, those beings whom in the old language we call The Lords of Karma, are not constrained by or limited to a single incarnation of an individual. The imbalance will be adjusted in good time when correct conditions to foster the greatest possible results for harmony are prevalent.

There are multitudes of examples which would illustrate how this shift in the basic functions of religion will affect current religious institutions. Let me give just a couple of major examples. Trying to save individual’s souls from the created terror of hell’s fires through the imposition of penance, the exchange of money, or good works for indulgences and other various acts of contrition such as sacrificing their lives by blowing up themselves and some random others, would be replaced by the realization and understanding that the individual is already an immortal soul.

As an immortal soul, one does not need saving for some great afterlife. One needs all available support and opportunity to demonstrate one’s soulness in this life. It will be understood that the vast majority of “sin” is simply ignorance and a mis¬identification of self with form rather than soul. This fact will, of course, not eliminate the opportunities to learn provided by the inevitable feedback from wrong choices.

The growing phenomenon of group consciousness, the gradual recognition that synthesis is the nature of reality and that consciousness on the dense physical plane is not separated but only differentiated by the forms that it takes, will result in a total reformation of human civilizations and cultures. What is common among them in the way they all reflect the Principles of Essential Divinity, Goodwill and Unanimity and the Laws of Right Human Relations, Group Endeavor and Spiritual Approach is what signifies their synthesis and essential unity, will be apparent for all to see, and is apparent now for those who are looking.

Community Meditation Meetings The rapidly expanding worldwide participation in what we are presently calling Community Meditation Meetings is another example of how the synthesis energy is affecting and will continue to present day religious institutions. The purpose of these meetings is to contact, and download or embody and then implement in new forms the frequencies of the guiding Principles upon which the new civilizations and world cultures are being constructed. They have nothing to do with saving one’s always already saved soul or getting forgiveness for sinning, or any personal agenda at all. They have totally to do with service to the World.

These meetings are aligned with a particular rhythm, based on the scientific understandings of energy movements and alignments which have been known and utilized for many kalpas. They will continue to attract people into their magnetic field as “the great rhythm of meditation . . . and invocation” become more and more understood.

The forms used to participate in the alignments are and will continue to be designed differently according to varying cultural practices. But people are not being attracted by the particular forms used by the participants of any given group endeavor. Rather, they are attracted by the synchronicity of their own inner sense of these ancient rhythms, all forms of which are based on an understanding of the inner dimensions of Life, the source of our being.

One more example of how the rapidly expanding phenomenon we call group consciousness will reform the way religions “do business” will become apparent in how they use money. First of all recognize that the difference between corporations and religious institutions is only a veneer. The war for position and power within the various religious corporations has been raging quite as long and ferociously as the war between the “business” corporations. In each situation, the relative position in the hierarchy of materialism and the bottom line is what matters.

Today, many billions of dollars are pouring into the coffers of the various religious institutions. This energy is largely being removed from circulation and stored in various vaults or otherwise sequestered. That

portion that is used is mainly used, as it is in most economic or business corporations, to pay enormous executive salaries, reward the “stakeholders,” (a concept which has some really ironic and eerie overtones), and to fund huge “public relations” or propaganda campaigns and lobbying efforts. The point of these powerful public relations campaigns—generated and managed by individuals who are probably ancient and highly skilled sophists—is to create a façade of service and to convince the donors to keep on donating or the Government not to meddle in the shell game of profitability.

The Absent Countervailing Force That people are actually starving to death, freezing to death, dying from exposure and disease fostered by malnutrition, being killed in numerous wars on this planet, that love and compassion and just plain old concern for our brothers is so not present, is heart and mind numbing. While not solely responsible for these effects of the current systems, the lack of the countervailing force to this humanicide, which should be the main business of religion, is among the most obvious failures of a system based in the old paradigm of separative materialism. This is another major flaw of the system that the New World’s religion will correct.

As the rationality and the true function of the Law of Spiritual Approach continues to impact the consciousness of individuals and expands through the creation of these new alignments, it will become more and more clear that the role of religion in the New World is to enable humans to seek guidance for and design programs that actually implement the Plan and do all the things that are mentioned over and over in the Ageless Wisdom: feed the hungry care for the poor, heal the sick, support the soul, create and keep the peace (balance), and so on. Rather than sequestered for the use of the exclusive few, the energy, money, that flows into the system will be circulated. It will be directed toward service to the Common Good and General Welfare.

Evolution cannot be stopped. “The essential synthesis exists and the end is sure and inevitable; unity is attainable because unity exists and the sense of separateness is simply the Great Illusion.” Change, development will be radical and from our tiny point of view somewhat slow. The understanding of the fact of the One Humanity and the Essential Divinity of every individual being in all planes and living a spiritual life in synchronous rhythm with the ancient energy flows will replace “religion” as we have known it and be the normal daily business of every person.

This is our unavoidable destiny.

Religion: A Post-Piscean View Therefore the call goes out at this time for hierarchical workers to reveal with greater emphasis the fact of the Hierarchy. This—if done on a large scale and through proper organization—will destroy on a large scale the present world structure in the field of religion, of economics, and of politics; it is already doing so. An increase of pressure on the part of all who recognize the factual nature of the inner subjective kingdom of God, will produce amazing results.

—Alice A. Bailey, The Rays and the Initiations A significant, but seldom recognized fact is that all institutions, including these very basic three, are artifacts. I have already written about the shift in consciousness that is generating the massive changes

manifesting in the area of economics and politics. In this essay, I want to focus on what religion based on this post-Piscean group conscious point of view is looking like and how it offers an entirely different from of spiritual approach than the system developed under the impact of the Piscean era.

There are many, many ways to look at religion. If we take a straight definition from Webster, it says religion is “the service and worship of God or the supernatural.” Religion “is a personal set or institutionalized system of religious attitudes, beliefs, and practices.” We can see immediately that an “institutional religion program” was not included in the original Genesian software package. It was not something made in heaven by God; it was made right here on Earth by man.

So with that understanding, I want to look, as I said, at this aspect of the ongoing massive shift in consciousness as it manifests in the area of what we call religion. We will discuss the difference between religion as we have come to know it and the new or reformulated and presently manifesting post-Piscean religion.

Like the institutions of economics and politics, the artifacts, or dogma and dogmatics, which makeup the body of religious attitudes, beliefs, and practices we call religion, are a product of intellect, or, to use the esoteric name, the Third Ray of Active Intelligence. Understanding just how the Third Ray functions through humanity “in its present evolutionary status” is key to understanding the magnitude and significance of the shift that is occurring in the manifestation of these areas of human life. As Master R. states, The Third Ray deals with what I will refer to as numerical magic, or numerical creativity. It deals with facts and figures, with the organization of the energy force and substance of that system (whether that system be an overall One Life, a humanity in its totality, or a government or a business etc,) into an activity which will result in a specific detailed goal within a given period of time. It [Active Intelligence] does not deal, as it is worked out by the consciousness of humanity in its present evolutionary status, with purpose. It does not deal with a goal which goes beyond a particular incarnation or the interest of the few who are concerned with it. The Third Ray expression, insofar as organization is concerned, deals with the actualities as they presently manifest for the purpose of producing another actuality which is the logical conclusion of the particular organization of energy, force and substance. In other worlds, the end is obvious from the beginning. The beginning is not actually dictated by the end.

The present gradually decaying manifestations of the major religions are based on such an organization “of actualities as they presently manifest.” These actualities have presented a vision of an ideal existence which is unattainable except through sin, suffering, death and a resurrection into an enjoyment of . . . a radiation of the ideal. . . . This ideal renders humanity hopeless, for it is one that places the human being in the position of being the polar opposite of that ideal, of being a creation conceived and born in sin, whose life is one of sin, utterly imperfect and incapable of attaining perfection, worshipping perfection but incapable of attaining it. Therefore, humanity, in the darker regions of its consciousness, while it aspires to that ideal, becomes, within its own subconscious identification, the Satan or Devil, the Antichrist.

This sense of a basic separation of the dense physical world of material forms from the Supermundane, the world of Spiritual Reality, lies at the core of the Great Illusion. As we all only too well know, this Illusion or the Big Lie, as I think of it, holds that only the material world is real. There is no pre or post existence outside of the dense physical experience. In the dense physical world, all beings, including all human beings, are separate and independent from one another. All are engaged in a never-ending struggle over

insufficient resources for survival and existence with all other beings. In the case of human beings, this struggle involves not only physical survival but one’s sense of self-worth and intrinsic value.

The sets of thoughtforms which constitute the post-Piscean religion are, contrariwise, rooted in an incontrovertible experiential knowledge of the Supermundane and the basic unity underlying all forms. One understands that Life is a cycle. In this eternal cycle the dense physical worlds are the most dense manifestation of Spirit, and the Spiritual realms are the least dense manifestation of Spirit.

Separation is an illusion. Understanding is based on the experiential realization of these facts. While still struggling to maintain the fact, one realizes that one is the builder not the building; one is in fact a point of conscious loving light within a Greater Light.

The constantly evolving appearance of the new religion is being formulated through the use of the incoming Seventh Ray energy. This energy is governed by cycles and works directly from principle into form without any regard for previous forms which may have been used. To this end, the unfolding post-Piscean formulation of religion is revealing to the world in a multitude of forms: The nature of the Christ consciousness which knows no separation, which recognizes all men everywhere as Sons of God in process of expression . . . all as essentially one and as brothers, which repudiates all manmade theologies (religious, scientific, political or economic) and says to all men everywhere: “We are all the children of God; we are all equally divine; we are all on our way to the revelation of divinity, and this upon the physical plane of existence.

The thoughtforms which are building the post-Piscean religion are, therefore, reflective of the Cosmic Principles of Essential Divinity, Goodwill and Unanimity and are based on the Laws of Right Human Relations, Group Endeavor, and Spiritual Approach, as well as the scientific certainty of the existence of the higher dimensions of reality. These Principles and Laws are the source concepts from which the new postPiscean religion is being formulated. And gradually what we presently call religion will be recognized simply as the Science of Spiritual Approach or the Science of Invocation and Evocation.

It is the experiential realization of one’s inner divinity and, via this divinity, connectivity to all life that is transforming religion from a set of thoughtforms which—because of their logical extrapolation in to new forms based on the original illusions of separation—have become so rigid over time that they have grown from ideals into idols, the concrete forms of theologies, churches and their trappings. These idols have been and are being presented to humanity as God’s unquestionable Truth.

In place of these crystallized ideals, we are presenting a set of living principles which celebrate the essential divinity of all beings. The presently evolving or unfolding post-Piscean religion is composed of a multiform and mutable diversity of constantly evolving thoughtforms and rituals. This living formulation grows and adapts as the understanding of the self-evident Cosmic Principles which underlies and gives it Life becomes ever clearer.

Institutionalization, a natural effect of the Third Ray, has resulted in an apotheosis of the forms and codifications which replace the Principles from which they were derived. Institutionalization, not only of religious systems but also of economic and political systems, will virtually disappear. Religious dogmatic institutions, as well as economic and political dogmas, will either evolve into living breathing growing and adapting organisms that provide doorways for people to participate in co-creative efforts with the higher realms of Life or the inner builders, or they will follow the dinosaurs and disappear into the night of time.

The separative dogma of politics and economics has played a necessary and powerful part in the evolution of consciousness; however it has been the frozen rigidity of the religious dogma, naturally arising from its form focused nature, which has been the central cause of, or at least used to justify, most of the wars on the planet over the past thousands of millenniums, if we could see that far back. Looking back just less than a thousand years, we can make a very long and very bloody list of the tragic interfaces between these competing systems of religious dogma. However, we will give just three examples: firstly, the nine Crusades launched by Christians against Islam in 1095 through 1272 which killed untold millions and are today at the root of the hatred of many of today’s Islamic groups toward the West, secondly, the centuries-long wars between the Catholics and Protestants in Europe and England which killed additional millions and which still smolders in the extreme elements of both the Catholic and Protestant dogmatics, and finally, a very graphic example of the clash of these systems, the Inquisition established by Catholic forces to halt the advance of what was called heresy, which meant anything that did not agree totally with Catholic dogma or dogmatics.

The post-Piscean, group conscious formulation of religion, or man’s approach to God for the purpose of cocreating the new civilizations, celebrates and rejoices in the diversity of human appearances. Post-Piscean religion recognizes that it is uniformity that is anathema to Life. Unity is based on essential divinity rather than form, and unity is impossible without diversity. All diversity in form flows from the same Divine source — witness the starry vault of the heavens—and all are co-creative efforts to reveal the nature of the Grand Unanimity.

Gone will be wars of religion or any other wars. As more and more of us realize that we are each a strand of Love within the stream of Love Divine, we will gradually—but rapidly, compared to the snail’s pace of the last millenniums—cease seeing ourselves as “the evil, and sinning, wicked creatures which we have believed ourselves to be” when compared to the ideal which we had been worshiping over these past millenniums.

Goodwill, a unanimity based on a realized essential divinity and driven by the feminine Principle underlying all of creation, will eliminate enforced uniformity. Gradually restoring the Plan on earth, we will instead become the humanity that was meant to be, “points of sacrificial fire focused within the fiery will of God,” and living under the Laws of right human relations, group endeavor and spiritual approach, we will become co-creators with Divinity in the Great Unfolding.

Getting Back to the Garden: The Inevitable Sequel Lead us, O Lord, from darkness to light, from the unreal to the real, from death to immortality.

—Brihadaranyaki Upanishad I, 3, 28

Opening Scene The Great Sea, dark, motionless, endless. Suddenly, out of Nowhere the ineffable harmony of the Sound of The Great Spirit, moving over the Dark Sea. Then, unfolding in a series of seven incredible montages, The Creation. Out of Nowhere, the Earth, the visible Heavens appear, immediately followed by the Garden of

Eden scenario: the Creation of Man and Woman, the interface with Evil, the eating of the Forbidden Fruit, the dramatic and traumatic Eviction from Eden of Man and Woman.

Roll the following over an image of the disgraced Adam and Eve, fleeing in shame from Eden. Numerous scenes from ancient times to the present follow.

Largely lost to us in “The Night of Time” are the scenarios of the billions of years since that incredible opening and fantastic Garden Eviction scene (which begs this sequel) in the closing moments of Genesis One. We have our rags of myth. We have stories of great heroes and horrible tales of deep and dark treachery but little in the way of anything like a chronology of events. Most of these myths are discounted as useless by modern science which is only able to conceive of a beginning that goes back a few millions of years.

Well, it turns out that just about every identifiable group of humans which has ever inhabited a place, any place, on the planet has generated an understanding of the Creation of the planet and the heavens. These understandings, as I have said, come down to us through those vast periods of time as myths. They were originally formulated as metaphor and art which was the only medium of expression available to the seers of these ancient cultures.

As W.H. Auden pointed out, “The worlds of the dead are modified in the guts of the living.” Thus, most of the myths of creation, which are much more ancient than we generally realize or admit to, have undoubtedly undergone reformulation and modification many times to make them accessible to the people of the time. However, the basic thematic similarities in these metaphorical accounts, regardless of how ancient or of how many re-writes they must have gone through, are stunning.

The one of these many versions of Creation that is most common to the modern Western World is the version of Genesis and its accompanying Garden of Eden myth which appears in the Christian Bible. Most of us are quite familiar with the Garden of Eden Myth, as it has been used for most of our recorded history as a handy vehicle for implanting, especially within the minds of children, the notion of our being born with a core of basic corruption or evil.

I have no evidence other than intuition that the version of this myth that has come down to us is either a wholly manufactured episode or a clever and insidious re-write of the actual original version. In either case, I would venture to guess that this effort was managed by that same group of Initiates from the First System who “deliberately refused” to move on to the next phase of the Great Unfolding. In The Rays and Initiations, we learn that they “remained of fixed and selfish material purpose” and intelligently created “a planned distortion of the divine will.”

The Eviction Detour The closing Eviction Scene in the Garden Myth sets up this “planned distortion” as the act of an angry and vengeful God. A major aspect of the distortion planted in the Garden Myth is that God did not want humans to eat the fruit of the tree of knowledge because it would involve knowing the difference between good and evil, the left and right hand paths. I suspect that this was actually the secondary reason. The primary issue was that they would now figure out that they too were immortal beings.

Whatever the reason, this forbidding of certain behaviors thing is basically out of synch with a core aspect of the Plan. Forbidding discounts totally the key aspect of evolution which is the free will to consciously know and to choose. This is the same free will that the re-write Brothers consciously knew and exercised in

their refusal to move forward. Denying humanity the basic ingredient of a free will makes being human little more than being a dog. What’s the point?

First Encounter When I encountered this tale in my first grade catechism class, it had an enormous impact on me. It is hard to explain what goes on in the imagination of a 5 year old, but my recollection is that I suddenly felt as if I had something to hide, something to keep secret, something dirty of which I was ashamed. If you can visualize an almost 6 foot tall giant who is dressed in pitch black clothes draped in a huge flowing black cape, and whose scowling and pinched face, which seems to extrude from a pure white starched opening, is glaring at you in utter disgust, you get the idea.

After that initial encounter and several other equally terrifying experiences with Christian Dogma, which lasted for about three years, I pretty much instinctively, I think, avoided religion of any stripe.

Somewhere along the way I began to become conscious of how things seem to be either fair or unfair, and gradually I figured out with the help of Plato, the Greek playwrights, and the great poets and writers of the last four thousand years what was going on. I gradually came to the realization that the Builder, the Planner, the Logos, The Grand Architect, The Old Master Painter from the far away hills (I am running out of words here) could not have possibly been the Angry Old Man caricatured in the Garden of Eden Myth.

Those Old Magicians from the First System, the ones who planned the distortion, knew everything. The First System was all about intelligence, and in the first system, that quality was developed to the max. They knew and they chose, deliberately, not only to just hang out in the past but, in the delusion of their arrogance, to screw up the next round.

Even so, as we know, “The Plan of the Creator cannot be altered.” And, although probably somewhat more slowly and painfully than necessary, it continues to Unfold.

The Plan of the Logos “which cannot be altered” involves the evolution of consciousness through free will.

Once entering the dimensions of conscious awareness, evolution without free will would not be evolution.

This is the deep truth behind what we call Democracy. Evolution of consciousness is always and only inclusive. Nothing is discarded. Old forms which are no longer useful to the expansion and demonstration of understanding are voluntarily relinquished, having no practical value in the Plan of evolution.

The Distortion The Life of the outworn form, that point of Light which created and actuated it, is abstracted and moves on to the next level of manifestation. There is no separation. Like it or not, these Brothers who refused to relinquish the forms of the First System, thereby arresting their personal evolution, became part of this the Second System. Through an exercise of their free will, they are themselves the distortion of The Plan. We know this distortion as The Great Lie of Separation or Materialism. The primary purpose of this distortion is to establish and maintain humanity’s identification with the form world and to thus keep us imprisoned in the forms of the First System.

Obviously, although there are gates or barriers between the different levels of consciousness, there are no limits or forbidden areas in the True Plan, no places in consciousness that are off limits, that one cannot freely go. However, if one were to try to go where one is not equipped to go, he or she would eventually encounter obstacles over which they could not triumph. And if one were to persist in attempting to access

levels of consciousness without gaining the equipment necessary to manage them, the experience could be fatal. Imagine climbing Mount Everest without oxygen.

Anyway, what would be the sense of a plan for evolution that was full of no-noes? The Path is an expression of God’s Pure Reasoning Will. The Master Builder is not psychotic, deranged. There are no barriers to consciousness expansion that cannot be harmonized or penetrated through the synchronizing of frequencies. It is important to realize that the Third Gate is impassable to the Brothers of the Left Hand Path because they refuse to relinquish forms they possess which cannot synchronize with or exist in the higher frequencies. The Logos did not exclude these brothers form these higher dimensions. They excluded and exclude themselves. And they would like to arrest, or hijack, the evolution of the rest of humanity as well.

The nuances of their hijacking device, The Great Lie, are many and insidious. These three are among the most damaging and effective in terms of keeping humanity imprisoned in the Great Lie: 1. The destruction of the essential link of evolution between the father and the mother.

2. The implantation of mortality and the terror of death.

3. The casting of God as an angry and bitter Old Man who was into making stupid laws and then punishing people for disobeying them.

The Divine Feminine The destruction of the in-dissolvable/essential link of evolution between the father and the mother or Spirit and Matter was very effectively accomplished by desecrating the essential feminine principle, thus distorting the Truth. Rather than the essential, pure and divine, nurturing Mother, the Source of all matter for the construction for all forms, Woman is cast in this scenario as being a subordinate object, manufactured as an afterthought from the flesh of the male (which translates into ownership of all property). She becomes the original betrayer of “God’s Will,” the vessel of iniquity, the doorway through which evil made its entry into the world.

The destruction of the knowledge of our basic immortality as souls was achieved by generating the original identification of humans with their bodies and the planting of the seeds of betrayal and self-disgust. Thus entered the specter of unavoidable death along with eons of self-hate and disgust. We have come to realize that this self-disgust, which is still sadly evident in humanity, is the Stone of Hate that can only be dissolved by the alchemy of Love.

The third lie, casting God as an angry, negative, bitter, jealous, and vengeful, old man who would be ridiculous if he was not able to kill one with a glance, generated a deep respect for God not out of love but out of fear. Thus fear rather than Love became the apparent driving force of evolution.

It is increasingly difficult for an expanding consciousness to integrate with reason the numerous overlays of negativity which reinforce the distortion of the Logos as this caricature of a vindictive and just plain mean old man. Reason indicates that forbidding so many actions would be counterproductive to the purpose of evolution. In evolution there is nothing that is forbidden.

Humanity has been struggling under the illusion that we were kicked out of Eden by an angry God, forced to wander the earth unworthy and with death, cut off from the of our immortality by a whirling sword and a couple of angels. This ridiculous and humiliating travesty was designed to intimidate those who are

looking for the Light. There is no Garden of Eden or Shangri-La or Utopia hidden away in some remote spot on the Planet. Blinded by the illusion of separation, people have been running around the Planet for thousands of years looking for such a place. Being separated from all other life forms, we think that Eden exists somewhere outside of our self.

The Truth: As always, “The Garden lies within.”

Forbidding is not a tool in God’s creation tool box. Besides, forbidding anything, especially on the pain of death when you have brainwashed people into thinking they are mortal bodies rather than immortal souls, makes slaves, not human beings. Forcing one to act out of fear of death or anything else destroys free will, and one will never learn how to thread one’s way along the Path. Fear obscures rather than reveals the Path.

Karma At the core of The Ageless Wisdom Teachings, including all of the great literature of the world (which explains the motive for the retrogressive forces’ hysterical but successful attacks on a liberal education) are indicators of actions that will not result in consciousness expansion if pursued and will, as any action does, trigger a basic Law of Cosmos: “Any action will cause an equal and opposite reaction. Universe will always maintain a perfect balance.” We call this law of cosmic physics, Karma.

We see this Law in constant demonstration throughout the dense physical universe. We also see it in unavoidable psychic effect in our daily lives.

The Path is strewn with such messages. Even on the dense physical plane we have signs that warn us that this or that behavior is unproductive, that there is danger ahead: Dead End, Crevasse, Bridge Out, Thin Ice. That we often refuse to heed these suggestions is not God’s fault. The resulting effects of the actions are predictable and unavoidable.

On the subjective or psychic level, our conscience is constantly letting us know that this or that is stupid, unproductive, even harmful to ourselves and others. If, in the exercise of our free will we choose to override, doubt, or ignore these helps from our inner sense of knowing, we engage in an experiment in physics. We experience the results of ignoring the inner guide, and if we are sensitive enough, we get the message. If not, we repeat the process until we do. Imagine climbing Everest without oxygen for four or five lives. Would it take that long to get the message?

At any rate, even after four or five lives, The Logos has no hand in this. He is not making us suffer or punishing us. We are our own architects. We build our own past by understanding and walking the Path that leads into the light, or not. It is simple. It is evolution.

It should be obvious that the notion that we are no longer in the Garden of Eden is a part of the Great Lie of separation. It is this unconscious, for most people, conviction that we are separated beings which has blinded us to the reality of what is. This Big Lie keeps us from realizing our unity not only with one another but with all that exists. After the many kalpas of living in this huge illusion, killing ourselves and everything else that lives on the planet with us over and over, humanity is, given the advent of atomic weapons and the development of other weapons of not mass but total destruction, actually facing the brink.

Restoring the Plan

To get back the Garden, that is to restore the Plan, we need only to realize that we never left it. We need to simply open our eyes to what is so obvious. We are living in the Garden every day. It is our garden. Earth is what we make it. Technically, this is not a big deal. It is simply a matter of using common sense to override a few thousand millennia of negative conditioning. In reality the journey is beyond arduous, but the beauty that is revealed with each forward step, makes it all worthwhile. Many have, over these kalpas, made this longish trek, and everyone that manages to remove the scales from his or her eyes moves all of us closer to Eden. For there is but One Humanity made up of billions of sacred individuals.

To conclude, please consider the following, From the centre which we call the race of men Let the Plan of Love and Light workout.

And may it seal the door where evil dwells.

Let Light and Love and Power restore the Plan on Earth.

—From The Great Invocation

Group Conscious Politics POLITICAL 1. Characterized by shrewdness in managing, contriving, or dealing 2. Sagacious in promoting a policy 3. Shrewdly tactful Given the timeless connotations of the concept of politic, I am almost at the point of saying that group consciousness does not involve politics. The sense of politic is very much in the “managing, contriving or dealing” frequency. Even the concept of sagacious carries the sense of shrewd, wily and artful ways or dealing. One is reminded of “Slick Willy,” a recent U.S. President. There is this undertow of crafty, selfcentered motivation which like an invisible virus infects politics and all things political.

Let us also not confuse politic with tact. Tact carries a completely different frequency. Tact is, “a keen sense of what to do or say in order to maintain good relations with others or avoid offense.” The point of politics is to maintain one’s grasp on power. When one is politic, one is saying what one thinks will ultimately get one what one wants. The truth or good relationships are not determining factors.

None of this is new of course. It is the same old game that was played in Athens. It was politic to murder Socrates, portray Anaxagoras as an ass braying in the public square and drive him into exile on a charge of

contravening the established religion, and to drive Pythagoras into exile in Mesopotamia with the threat of murder.

Still today, “politicians” employ individuals to do such things as “swift boating” or smearing or backstabbing. The difference is that today we call these people spin doctors. They share a skill and a moral code of great similarity with the ancient sophists.

Spin Doctors The list of the sophists’ victims is great. It includes not just the ancient Greeks but Confucius and Seneca, Joan of Arc and Aspasia and many modern individuals who would dare go against the conventional wisdom.

We think of Abraham Lincoln, Jack and Robert Kennedy and of Martin Luther King, and Malcolm X. We worry about who will be next, for the long knives of the “Spin Doctors” it seems, are always ready to move from words to steel, if words do not accomplish their ends.

So, it is hard for me to see how politics really has anything to do with the new consciousness, group consciousness. Still we are in the throes of a very hotly contested political climate in the United States, and what seems to me to be the issue that will be decided upon by the electorate is much more than who will be the next party in power. What will be demonstrated is the success, or at least the growing success, of the evolution of humanity.

As we have been saying, evolution concerns the progressive development of consciousness. As far as human beings are concerned, the evolution of consciousness has been from a state of mass consciousness into what we now know as self-consciousness. In the really pre-human mass conscious state, the unit, living in a herd or tribe, really did not sense that it was in anyway separate as an individual with unique drives and feelings from any of the other inhabitants. As we have learned from the Ancient Lore, as a result of the implanting of the “Spark of Mind,” this condition evolved over who knows how many kalpas from a condition of mass consciousness into what we today call self-consciousness. (For more information on “the spark of mind,” read Alice A. Bailey’s A Treatise on Cosmic Fire.)

Today, as we all know only too well, self-consciousness has reached a kind of apotheosis. In the gradual development of self-consciousness, humanity has drifted far from the harbors of its original Truth. We have become deeply separated from one another and from the whole of which, in reality, we are an intrinsic part.

We have arrived at a dead end. We are facing a condition that can only be described as a state of psychosis, a loss of contact with reality including delusions about what is happening, what is going on, and who we actually are. We live within the grip of a Great Lie, a deep illusion of separateness.

This condition which has rendered us more unconscious than self-conscious, characterized by delusional assumptions of lack and the need to fight for survival for self-worth, identity, and meaning has resulted in a state of constant war in virtually all areas of our lives. It has brought down upon us a constant state of suffering and doubt. It is such an absurd state that we call the few and far between periods when there is not actually a declared war going on in the world peace. The condition has actually brought us to the brink of destroying not only one another or life as we know it but perhaps the planet.

However, we also know that evolution is and has been unfolding according to the Plan of the Logos.

Somewhere back there several kalpas ago through contact with that “spark of mind” which was deeply buried in each human unit, various individuals within the human family began to touch the Soul. This

touching between the “spark of mind” and the Soul results in a connection which allows the nature of the Soul to flow into one’s mind and heart. Thus the next phase of the evolution of consciousness, group consciousness, began its appearance in the midst of the evolution of self-consciousness.

We can still experience, somewhat, what it must have been like when long ago, an individual “woke up” and realized that he or she was actually not separated but an intrinsic, interdependent member of humanity, a relative to the creatures of nature and even nature itself. And this individual found him or herself surrounded by people, who were basically not conscious although they were undoubtedly our brothers and sisters. They were engaged in a kind of insane life in which they were identified with the dense physical plane and saw war and death as the way to ensure that they existed and would stay alive.

Today when this connection between spark and soul occurs or when an individual who has gradually established this connection over a series of previous incarnations incarnates, we are not so lonely. Still, surrounded by our relatively unconscious/self-conscious brothers and sisters, we do find one another, and we work together to aid the Great Unfolding and to bring humanity into its next cycle.

We know from experience that communication with these brothers and sisters with whom it was and is unmistakably clear we were and are unavoidably bound has been, over the millenniums, very, very difficult.

It is like trying to talk to someone who is deaf and blind. As I pointed out above, efforts to do so would and still do frequently result in some form or other of silencing.

The Appearance of Soul Over time, more and more human beings have been appearing who have established, at least to a relative degree, that connection between the “spark of mind” and the Soul. These individuals are continuing, actually are compelled by that contact to speak out and to try to bring the light of reason and love into this dreary vale. The presence on the planet today of many, many millions, perhaps even as many as a billion or two of us, is proof that the forerunners and the power of the Great Unfolding Plan were successful, at least so far. The big and basic difference between self and group consciousness is that group consciousness carries with it an innate, incontrovertible sense of one’s brotherhood with all living things, and the understanding that all things are, including even the mineral kingdom, living. All beings of whatever form embody a spark of divinity and are essentially our brothers.

It is in the light of this understanding of the evolution of consciousness that the real meaning and the significance of the political events which are occurring not only in the United States but the world over can be seen. This condition of Soul contact and the resulting expansion of consciousness from self to group have been developing or evolving in the human family for kalpas. And it is today manifesting in a manner that is finally significant enough for many of us to actually register.

Soul contact or group consciousness results not only in the realization of one’s undeniable solidarity with all of humanity and all of life but with the unavoidable compelling urge to serve, to aid the unfolding of that realization throughout humanity. Group consciousness results in the celebration of one’s identification with the One Humanity and, in a word, the unavoidable urge to serve that Life.

The Clash of Consciousnesses As I said above, today, particularly in the United States, we are, in the throes of a very hotly contested political climate. What we are seeing in the present political drama is very much more than a clash of Republicans and Democrats. What is actually going on here is a clash of consciousnesses. Self-

consciousness and all it is and stands for is engaged in a gigantic struggle with a new kind of consciousness, group consciousness.

On the one hand we have self-consciousness. As I have said, self-consciousness is an ancient, ancient, inborn, unconscious urge to fight for survival, identity, self-worth, self-meaning and value. It is fighting to the death. It knows no other way. It will use any weapon or advantage to secure its goal, whatever that may be.

On the other hand we have group consciousness. This is a new kind of urge. A group conscious person does not see him or herself as separated from the whole. One, therefore does not have the sense of having to gain value, identity, or self-worth by contesting with and dominating others. One sees that his worth is the common good and the general welfare. Thus one approaches an adversarial situation with an entirely different set of attitudes and tools with which to work.

First, one employs kindness. Kindness is not just being nice. It is a deep and abiding recognition and love that one is actually dealing with one’s own kind, a brother or sister who, caught in the illusion of separation, only thinks we are the enemy. One has a considerate perception of appropriateness. Because of what one understands about life from a group conscious perspective, one is at ease and in control of one’s emotional and mental equipment. One is self-possessed rather than possessed by some passion or fervor or fear of being a loser, of suffering a loss of face and identity. One remains unruffled and in control and likewise consciously responsible for one’s actions and behaviors.

Service The dominant characteristic of a group conscious individual is something we call service. Perhaps, it would help to try to give some clarity around this concept of service as it manifests in a group conscious person There is little or no sense of separation in such an individual, so there is no urge or need to protect or serve the separate self in any way. In the group conscious paradigm, service is a “spontaneous effect of soul contact.” Initially, as we all know, this connection will be intermittent, and one will oscillate between a separate self-conscious and group conscious state of identity. However eventually, even if it takes several incarnations, the connection will become, “so definite and fixed that the life of the soul can pour through into the instrument which the Soul must perforce use upon the physical plane.”

Then service becomes a “soul demonstration in the world of affairs.” Service to humanity—selfless service, the service that seeks nothing for the separated self and is willing to give all to the general welfare, to the Common Good of which it knows it is an interdependent part—is a “momentous demonstration of the success of the evolutionary process in humanity.” Thus, this consciousness carries the frequency of the Soul. The “spark of mind” which lies within every human being resonates with this frequency. Even when the embedded aspect of soul is deeply enmeshed in the illusions of self-consciousness, there will be momentary and faint glimmers of a better way, a more fulfilling way. The hundreds of thousands of individuals who are suddenly donating money and flocking to the polls to vote are simply responding to the group conscious frequency of the Soul.

I think that if we would look from a group conscious point of view at the drama that is unfolding today in real time on the stage of the United States, we would understand with a great deal more clarity what is going on, and we would be able to assist our brothers and sisters on both sides of the apparent struggle with Will, Love, and Intelligence (otherwise known as Wisdom), all of which are the evolutionary gifts of the Soul.

Economy Consciousness Economy is the organization of the energy, force, and substance of any organized life into that activity which will manifest its purpose and plan. This applies equally to the individual and to the group.

—Lucille Cedercrans, The Disciple and Economy As is the case with most of our concepts, the concept of economy has been reduced in its meaning and significance by the form-focused materialistic paradigm of self-consciousness from a holistic, multi¬dimensional view of reality to a very narrow band of its actual essence. It has been reduced to a material dimension only. In this materialistic, self-conscious paradigm, economy has to do with the acquisition and use of dense physical tangibles such as real estate, minerals, manufactured products, production capacity, and something we call money or coin.

Initially, coin was an actual hunk of some metal or other. As things developed, however, coin which was very cumbersome gradually became a piece of paper which today we call money. Other kinds of documents were invented to represent a quantity of one or more of these dense physical items like corn or cloth or timber or land or whatever.

The Self Conscious Paradigm In the separative, self-conscious paradigm where one is actually identified with one’s form or body or property, one’s value, indeed one’s worth, one’s very identity as a being or person, is based on how much of this kind of economy one has secured and locked away in one’s personal, separative account. The King of a country owned the whole country by the divine right of being King. Thus we had individual personalities like Henry VIII and Louie XIV, which was only yesterday in the span of history, referring to themselves as England and France.

Today, the methods of ownership—what the delusive sequestering and locking away of various forms of material economy is called—has become very sophisticated and highly secretive. It is next to impossible to find out who “owns” this or that. The electronic trading and manipulation of a multitude of documents— some of which are “money” and others of which are deeds and bills, stocks and bonds, and contracts as well as innumerable other highly sophisticated documents like derivatives—has moved into a space in the ethers akin to Ancient Mysticism in which only the High Priests knew what was actually going, or more likely, not going on.

This situation is simply a logical extension of the separative materialistic paradigm which has evolved this concept of economy. It is a modern, motivationally the same but with technologically updated methodology, manifestation of the ancient, mostly corrupt and evil Priesthood, complete with labyrinthine “Dark Towers” full of uncountable rooms and untraceable accounts which make it ever so much easier for those who operate in the dark to manipulate for their own self-centered ends the uninformed others.

The Multidimensional View Economy is a very different concept when viewed from the point of view of the new consciousness. From this holistic, multidimensional, group conscious point of view, we realize that we are not separated from

the whole. We are not separate, independent individuals at constant war with every other separate individual for our self-value and identity. We are, in fact, simultaneously both the whole and consciously interdependent individuals acting within the principles and laws which govern the Whole. From this point of view, a number of things become apparent, and several big illusions evaporate.

The first illusion to evaporate is the notion we call the ownership of property. A self-conscious individual identifies with the dense forms energy takes. One actually assumes, quite without thinking about it, that one is one’s belongings starting with one’s physical body and extending to one’s external surroundings, house, car, whatever. We have all seen a child clutch a doll or truck to his or her chest and say with power, “mine.”

The group conscious parent will try to call out the child’s innate sense of sharing. However, unless the parent is constantly vigilant and takes continuous measures to protect and nourish the child’s inner knowledge, the emotional and mental impacts of a child’s surroundings, including other adults and children who are, by a very large percentage, unconsciously self-conscious and the virtually continuous stream of self-conscious media generated data will easily overwhelm the resources of most parents.

The child will grow up to be a “normal” adult who is identified with his or her body and belongings and consequently separated from the awareness of the truth of his or her interrelated reality. Furthermore, the now adult human will be thoroughly programmed to assume that ownership of property is as natural as sunlight and that getting and spending and amassing property is the normal thing for a human to do. We have all heard the refrain, “he who dies with the most toys wins.”

Ownership, the belief or assumption that one can exclusively possess or claim separate and exclusive rights to quantities of material substance of whatever kind, is a psychotic effect of the notion of the separated self. It is the height of irony that in this separative, self consciousness paradigm, “normalcy” is actually a psychotic state.

The New Consciousness In the paradigm of the unfolding new consciousness, it is understood that the material world, including the planet and everything on it, is only a very temporary manifestation or densification of energy and force into substance. Energy, force, and substance are in constant motion, and the substance part of this triangle, the dense manifestation of the planet and everything on it, is constantly undergoing change in appearance.

Our scientists, through the traditional science of analysis, have demonstrated the facts of constant motion and change down to the micro level of a quark, to exhaustion. On the dense macro level, the planetary changes that are being brought about by “global warming” are examples of this constant motion and change. These changes are big enough for even the most self-conscious of us to see.

The Science of Synthesis The group conscious individual understands through the science of synthesis the reality of additional dimensions of Life and the fact of the constant motion of energy, force and substance. He or she also understands that one does not “own” one’s body and things. We understand that because one is an integral and conscious non-separate part of the endless motion of Life, one does not own anything. One is rather responsible for nurturing and sharing for the sake of the Common Good the temporary vehicles which one inhabits and whatever objects or possessions may come into one’s temporary keeping.

This inborn and, once experienced and registered, incontrovertible sense of relationship, of belonging to the whole which is characteristic of the group conscious individual is basically the reunion of the Mother, the Feminine Principle—an intrinsic quality of Matter, or Mother in which there is absolutely no notion of separation—with the Will of the Father. It is the re-union of the Father and Mother through Conscious awareness. As the ancient saying goes, “When thine ‘I’ be single thy whole body will be full of Light.”

“Let us not forget that for each important achievement the Feminine Principle is essential as a foundation and essence.” The self-conscious paradigm, by creating the illusion of separation in the three worlds, negates the Feminine Principle. The group conscious person reunites his or her humanity with this essential aspect of human life.

Another major aspect of the Big Lie or the Great Illusion which is key to the self-conscious view of economy is the distortion of abundance into lack. It is this sense of “not enough” which has been dinned into human ears for eons that fuels the separative illusion of ownership and drives the forces of competition and greed.

It is this illusion upon which the temple of materialism is built. The reality, of course, is that there is nothing but energy.

The fact of the interrelated, multidimensional reality of all Life begins to become apparent from the new consciousness point of view. This new consciousness reveals the unity of Life and not just the unity of the dense physical plane which the modern science of analysis has documented over and over again but the interrelated unity of the higher dimensions of reality which the science of synthesis reveals.

Multidimensional Spheres We are always looking for evidence of evolution, for the endings and beginning of cycles. And as might be expected, there are always innumerable indicators or harbingers of the Great Unfolding Truth. For example, the ongoing phenomena of the expansion of consciousness, from self to group, about which I have been talking, is an indicator of the beginnings of a potential new cycle. It signals the re¬emergence, the return into human awareness from higher dimensions of the Life of the Spiritual Kingdom, the externalizing Hierarchy, the Reappearing Christ, and the Coming One. In this kind of observation, the science of synthesis is most valuable. For example, realizing that endings and beginnings are not linear events but always happen within one another’s multidimensional spherical field of occurrence allows one to see signs of change that are otherwise not apparent. And, looking from this point of view, today the harbingers of change, indicators of both coming and passing cycles, are numerous.

Paralleling these (to many) obvious indicators visible on the dense physical plane are changes on the higher, non-dense physical planes of human life. For example, assumptions and notions based on the selfconscious paradigm regarding the nature of the “real” are undergoing massive shifts. Ancient thoughtforms —such as the valuing of a person according to the level of wealth he or she has amassed—which have controlled and blinded humanity for eons are being destroyed.

The ancient saying, “Truth will out” is a not a quaint old saying; it is a fact of the science of synthesis. Truth is. It is Life and Power. It is an omniscient, omnipresent unstoppable presence in every dimension of Life. As Truth Outs, consciousness is expanding from the prison house of the separative self into the freedom of unity and brotherhood. As the ancient thoughtforms are being destroyed, Truths which have been veiled by the forces of retrogression for centuries are beginning to emerge in the consciousness of millions.

The fact of the One Humanity and the intrinsic essential divinity of every individual is rapidly gaining realization and understanding in the mass mind. Likewise, the fact of the wholeness of the planet, of humanity’s unavoidable interrelated life with the animal, vegetable, and mineral kingdoms is beginning to be recognized. These are indicators of the emergence of a possible new Era. The science of synthesis is revealing this unity. It will soon be understood that it is humanity’s ignorance of its relationship with the Mineral Kingdom that has engendered the phenomena we call global warming. It will be our understanding of this interrelated reality and our normal role as stewards that will bring about the healing of our relationships with the lower kingdoms including the mineral.

Change, which is constant, only seems to happen in a flash. It is our myopic vision that makes it seem so.

Life unfolds. It is, as I have said, unstoppable. Time is always on the side of unfolding Truth. Like a powerful river cutting its way through the planes, Truth will continue until it manifests its intrinsic beauty and perfect harmony in dense form. Thus we have, for example, the Grand Canyon.

And so, we have harbingers, harbingers both of the ending and of the beginning of changing cycles. It is difficult for humans, particularly self-conscious humans, to see these messengers or recognize the signs of the approaching beginnings and ends even when they are physical and huge like global warming. I have mentioned a few of the harbingers of the coming cycle we call the Satya Yuga, the “new life, the age of great discoveries, the Era of Happiness.”

Humanity is blessed with free will. We are creators, or co-measurers. Because of this unavoidable fact of Life, there are, in the short term at any rate, no guarantees. Humanity must choose its own way forward.

I think it would be helpful, therefore, to draw attention to one or two additional signs, signs of what I think, what I hope with all the audacity and willpower that I can muster are the ending of a very long cycle known as the Kali Yuga. I have mentioned already global warming, and have laid the responsibility for this phenomenon at the feet of human ignorance and, to be honest as one must be if one is going to practice the science of synthesis, humanity’s ages-long romance with comfort and sloth.

Global warming is a massive indicator of change. That recognition and understanding of this approaching behemoth is still being doubted by the self-conscious power centers of humanity is among the best evidence of the psychotic nature of self-consciousness. However there are a couple of other huge harbingers of change that are also not being seen by the self-conscious rulers as well as a large percentage of the 6.5 billion inhabitants of the planet.

The first one, every bit as massive and dangerous to human life on the planet as global warming, is so obvious that it is astounding it has not been seen by the whole world for what it is. I am thinking about the unjust, preemptive, unconstitutional, lie-launched war that the self-conscious leaders of the United States, with the sloth and greed driven complicity of many legislators and individuals, are waging in Iraq and threatening to spread to the entire world. This action is a macro example of the levels to which the psychosis of self-consciousness has grown.

It is hard, given the tiny scope of the self-absorbed focus of many folks, to see global issues. Maybe if we made the issue smaller, it would be more evident.

So, if this war were enacted on a micro scale, say between two neighbors, here is how it would look:

Mr. Duke is a member of the power elite, one of the “Have and Have Mores. He considers himself to be a superior being with a superior way of life to that of his neighbor who lives across the street. Mr. Duke’s neighbor also happens to have some stuff that Mr. Duke covets. Mr. Duke assumes that his neighbor, whom he hates, hates him too. Mr. Duke’s neighbor is much smaller and very much poorer than Mr. Duke.

However, Mr. Duke is certain, despite the neighbor’s numerous denials, that his neighbor is a threat to his life. Although he has never seen it, Mr. Duke imagines that his neighbor has a gun which he intends to use to kill Mr. Duke. Mr. Duke says his neighbor will come in the night and kill him. To prevent this Mr. Duke gets his own, much bigger gun, runs across the street, and kills his neighbor and a bunch of his kids and relatives too. Mr. Duke takes over his neighbor’s house and gets whatever it was that he coveted.

It is obvious, or should be, that if such an event happened in the respectable, upscale, low crime town where I happen to live, or in many of the towns or cities in which any of you are living, Mr. Duke would be captured and placed in an institution for the insane.

In the micro scenario above, I have given the benefit of imaginary delusions to Mr. Duke. It is very possible that in the actual macro scenario which is the Iraq war, the rationale for preemptive invasion was consciously and deliberately manufactured rather than imagined. This only makes the demonstration of psychotic behavior more ominous. However, no matter how you cut it, when one has the capacity to see on a larger scale than one’s tiny town or neighborhood, it is clear that what we have in the Iraq war is psychotic behavior on a national and worldwide scale.

This action on the part of our leaders is a harbinger of enormous magnitude. It signals the end of something and the beginning of something. During the mere six or seven thousand years of history that we know much about, time and time again, the Big Lie has threatened to engulf humanity in its veils of The Dark Madness. In a brilliant, visionary essay in 1946, Science, Liberty and Peace, in which he sees, among many other things, the coming horrors of a society built on oil and insists that non¬violent action is the only way humanity can survive, Aldous Huxley sounded the warning quite clearly: “As Athens and Sparta died of idolatry and flag waving and jingoism, so shall we die of idolatry and flag waving and jingoism.”

And so once more, we find ourselves on the brink of Madness. Yet, time and time again the Forces of Light have been able to rally the inner truth of humanity’s soul. Through the focusing of our own free will toward principled living, we have succeeded in throwing back the forces of the Darkness. As Master M. has pointed out, “not magic, but purified will sends into the world the command, ‘Let there be Light!’”

Throughout ancient and modern times, construction projects, some on truly colossal levels, have appeared in various places in the world. Frequently these marked the turning of an Age. Occasionally the project served some purpose for the common good like the construction of the rail and road networks in the United States and other countries or the development of space travel. Most often, however, the projects were demonstrations celebrating the supremacy and power of this or that King or Pharaoh or Emperor, or, in modern parlance, Tycoon.

There is, for example, a relatively “colossal” construction project going forward now in Dubai. When I first became aware of this project, I was struck by the timeliness of its appearance. We are clearly approaching a New Age, and this project, http://www.bentbay.dk/dubai_construction.htm, is definitely an indicator of this change.

I have thought a lot about what this project symbolizes. At first I thought of it as a portent of the future, but as I considered it, I began to see that it is really a reflection of the past, the ancient past. At first, I was impressed with its scope and ambition, but as I thought about it, rather than a pointer into humanity’s future, it appeared as a kind of extrapolation of self-consciousness rendered in architecture, a backwards pointer toward the Ages out of which humanity has crawled its way. It is an “if you got it, flaunt it,” or to use the more genteel words of Thorstein Veblen, an “ostentatious display of conspicuous consumption.”

In thinking about this Dubai project from the point of view of the science of synthesis, it becomes clear that the will directing the energy and force that manifested the project was not concerned with the common good of humanity even remotely. The energy or economy that is building this very impressive city is clearly flowing from the commonwealth of humanity through the pipelines of selfconsciousness into the manifestation of a grandiose display of personal power and wealth. A primary generator of the enormous stream of common wealth that is being directed into this project is quite clearly the Iraq war. The beneficiaries of the estimated two trillion dollars United States taxpayers have spent pursuing this war are by and large not the commonwealth, not the 6.6 billion human beings who populate this planet.

Thinking about this project and the global warming phenomena, I began to get visions of ancient Atlantis before the flood. Also, Shelley’s “Ozymandias” came to mind: “‘My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings:/Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!’/Nothing beside remains. Round the decay/Of the colossal wreck, boundless and bare,/The Lone and level sands stretch far away.”

The Internet There are, of course, numerous new construction projects on the planet that are pointers into the New Age and that are greatly beneficial to the common good, and are actual demonstrations of the Law of Economy.

Not the least of these is the Internet. This is a construction project, still under way after twenty or so years, that dwarfs by several magnitudes any previous construction project that we know anything about in history. This project, the result of a group conscious direction of energy and force into the substance which we call the Internet, has become as omnipresent as the group conscious minds which collaborated to envision and build it.

Internet Ownership The project is an early example of how economy directed by a group conscious humanity will manifest. It is the embodiment of cooperation and right sharing. Although under serious attack by the forces of retrogression, the Internet, it is very important to realize, is owned by nobody, no king, no sheik, no tycoon.

It belongs to nobody and therefore belongs to everybody, to the One Humanity.

The Internet is an enormous contribution to the common-wealth. In linking humanity together around the world, it brings into manifestation the simple and immediate access to the essential area of communication or human relationship that lies at the core of the law of right human relations. Probably more than any other single event in the past several centuries, the internet is helping to reveal the fact of the one humanity and of humanity’s essential divinity.

In closing this I want to mention one of many of the smaller building projects around the world, like Disney Hall in Los Angeles, that do point to humanity’s future, do serve the common good, and that are products of the new consciousness. There is William McDonough’s Tangye New Town Concept Master Plan

(http://www.mcdonoughpartners.com). This is a project to build an entire city that will house 180,000 people. The project embraces McDonough’s group conscious concept of Cradle to Cradle building rather than the old age, self-conscious vision of Cradle to Grave or the Gillette Blue Blade, use it once and throw it away methodology. It is an example of what the group conscious builders build for humanity as we move into the New Age. They will ask you how it is possible to reconcile the threatening signs of the destruction of the planet with the possibility of a harmonious and auspicious future. The fact is that humanity has a free choice, either to enter the new life, the age of great discoveries, the Era of Happiness, or, by the power of free will to choose catastrophe.

The New Consciousness and the Ownership of Property Both groups of aspirants (the black and the white) stand before the door of initiation and take the needed steps to open it on two similar occasions. Both overcome glamour after the second initiation, and see their way clearly ahead; but their goals emerge as widely different; one treads the broad way which leads everdeeper into matter and materialism, into darkness and ‘black power’; the other leads to the straight and narrow way, to the razor-edged path which leads into light and life. One group has never freed itself from the principles which governed the first solar system. They were principles entirely related to matter and substance, and were at that time and in that period (so remote that the number of years of distance can be stated only in super-astronomical figures) the conditioning factors for the initiation of the time. Certain units of humanity—then existent—were so completely conditioned by these material principles and so deliberately unready for moving on to the comprehension of another set of principles (more expressive of the divine nature) that they remained of ‘fixed and selfish material purpose’ and a planned distortion of the divine will was intelligently created by them.

—Alice A Bailey, The Rays and the Initiations Many of the customs and virtually all of the institutional structures of modern civilizations are primarily based on the old consciousness materialistic paradigm of reality: the dense material world is the real world.

Other conceptions of reality are illusions. Each self is an independent, separate individual, and the acquisition or ownership of property is the goal and indicator of a successful life. This Old Consciousness is perpetuated in the raising of children to value the separate self and material possessions over the needs of the group.

In this respect, as Master M. points out, nothing much has changed over the kalpas.

Unfortunately, the present time fully corresponds to the last period of Atlantis: The very same pseudoprophets and a pseudo-savior, the same wars, the same treasons and spiritual barbarism. We take pride in the crumbs of civilization; the Atlanteans likewise knew how to fly across the planet in order to speedily cheat each other. The temples likewise became defiled, and science became a subject of speculation and dissension. The same occurred in construction, as if they did not dare to build solidly! Likewise, they rebelled against Hierarchy and were stifled with their own egoism. Likewise, they disturbed the equilibrium of the subterranean forces, and by mutual efforts a cataclysm was created.

It is not hard to draw the parallels. “When the brokers are roaring like beasts on the floor of the Bourse,” and the daily trumpeting about jihad, crusades, and raptures fill the air, the barbarism, spiritual and

secular, of the extreme reactionaries and fanatic fundamentalists of the various religious, political and social sects is all too obvious. We have politicians and lawyers who twist and deform the Principles and Laws into justifications for torture. Where the Atlanteans violated laws that generated massive earthquakes, we are violating laws that are resulting in the poisoning of the soil, the rivers, the oceans, the atmosphere, and the melting of the ice caps. Who knows what kind of subterranean reactions this will excite!

We also have scientists who provide the polluters and poisoners with “scientific” justification for their destructive behavior. We actually sell pollution rights! And even as we sing praises to God, we create islands and build temples in Dubai, Manhattan, Beijing, and many other places on the planet, all raised to the glory of greed and exclusivity.

This unconscious driving force to possess, to own stuff, is basically a reflex of our separated selfconsciousness and our identification with the forms which give us our value as individuals. The child who lives on a garbage dump in India and who possesses a rusty pocket knife is admired and deemed to be of much more worth than other children who have nothing but the rags in which they are clothed. The billionaire who has a fleet of exotic cars, who owns a personal jet and what is at the moment the largest yacht in the world, who has untold numbers of secret Swiss bank accounts, who owns an island or one of the sky-scraping temples in Dubai, is deemed as a vastly superior person to one who has to fly econo-class or who could afford only a berth in the lower decks of the Titanic.

I think the wrecking of the planet, the generator of countless wars and carnage, the cause of our suffering and pain lie in the simple fact of our identification with our bodies. This ancient cycle keeps us separated from truth, beauty, and actual Life.

Caught in this fleshy density, Imprisoned behind these bones, Peering through pulpy eyes, Man proclaims. I Am. While still meat-bound, Man, One level living and that the least, Cannot see the Unfolding Plan.

I have not been to every place in the world, but every place to which I have been is primarily characterized by this identification with our bodies. The institutions of every country to which I have travelled have been formulated and built to fulfill this need to have, to get. We educate children not to be more human, intelligent, and loving members of a society but so that they can “get ahead,” assumedly ahead of their friends and neighbors who, once they are “left behind,” are rapidly forgotten. We educate children so that, by virtue of striving to get more stuff than they presently possess, they can become “better” people. One could go on and list example after example of how every institution that we have is built on this unconscious need to acquire self-worth through the ownership of property, title, power, material things— in the end, exclusivity.

An amazing, mostly overlooked or denigrated fact in the paradigm of material getting and spending is that the essence of every person—that which is totally one’s own, which defines one as a human being, that comes with the birth package, the true source of our strength, of our value to the Common Good and General Welfare of which we are an inseparable part—is our free will and our labor. Within the illusory paradigm of the Great Lie, it is not realized that labor spent in the effort to become separated from one’s brothers and sisters, to become exclusive is suicide of a most dreadful kind. In the Old Consciousness paradigm, a person’s labor is not honored. It is in fact seen as a commodity, something that can be bought or sold and that has as little value as possible. The point of acquisition of material worth is to remove oneself from labor, to buy others to do the labor while one enjoys the delusional fruits of one’s exclusivity and worthiness.

Given Master M.’s description of the forces that brought about the self-destruction of Atlantean civilization and the tiny part of human history that our material science has been able to document, we can see that this force is deeply buried within our collective psyche and has driven human development for untold kalpas. This is not surprising given that certain units of humanity [from the first solar system] were so completely conditioned by . . . material principles and so deliberately unready for moving on to the comprehension of another set of principles (more expressive of the divine nature) that they remained of ‘fixed and selfish material purpose’ and a planned distortion of the divine will was intelligently created by them.

The Lurker Gene Understanding that these “certain units of humanity,” “were the initiates of a previous solar system,” I would not be surprised to learn that there is something like a lurker gene, a kind of implanted programmed virus gene in the thoughtform coding we call human DNA. This program generates not only the overpowering sense we have of being separated from each other and from all other forms but a sense of ownership of forms as well.

This “lurker gene” would have naturally evolved indicators that one could use to keep oneself assured that one was not that other guy or girl who, for all intents and purposes, looked and acted exactly like oneself.

That other person was born. He ate. He grew old. He died just like everyone else. So how was one supposed to fulfill this inner drive that said constantly and powerfully that one was a separate individual from the other person?

The answer springs to mind. The overpowering instinctual (implanted, is more likely) sense of self identification which we know as self-preservation forced the individual to justify his or her inner sense of being a separated reality. The notion of being “the same as” would not work. One had to be “different from.” Different from quickly transformed into better than or not as good as. Thus evolved the battle to the death and the survival of the fittest. Thus was a totally unnatural, inaccurate, paradigm, The Great Illusion, nurtured. Ever since, as Emerson pointed out, “things are in the saddle, they ride mankind.”

This alien sense of separation eventually metamorphosed into the variation of self-consciousness which we call the separate self or persona. Over the passing Kalpas it metastasized like any cancer cell into the deadly cancer consciousness we call The Great Lie of Separation. The Great Lie is potentially terminal to humanity as we know it.

However, as Master M. points out, “The Plan of the Creator cannot be altered. From the beginning, the dark ones struggled. From the beginning we conquered.” The Light will triumph over the darkness. The

issue is whether we will, through our free will, find the Will, the Love, and the Courage to take the necessary steps to continue to implement the Plan now. That we (humanity) have been triumphant in this effort over the past eight or nine hundred years is evidenced by the growing manifestation of Group Consciousness, what I am calling the New Consciousness. There is much reason for hope. The power of the Great Lie, although still formidable, is losing its hold over humanity.

An interesting thing to note is that the notion of an individual consciousness is not in and of itself problematic. It is a basic part of the Divine Pattern. But this basic necessity of divinity, the notion of individuality, was warped through “a planned distortion of the divine will” into the sense of a separated, non-connected, temporary existence. Hence the materialist paradigm and the specter of death.

Christ said to the disciples that they should love one another. Love, requires at least two, for it only exists within a linkage.

Loving, truly loving another, any other, also requires a couple of basic consciousness comprehensions.

These very simple comprehensions reveal the fundamental inaccuracy or error in the paradigm of The Great Illusion of Separation. First, separation is, as material science has demonstrated through millions of experiments and examples, an illusion. That “other” of whatever form, from a tree to one’s wife, is essentially a divine and indivisible part of the Whole of which one is also a divine and indivisible part; and, therefore, the other is oneself. Second, the other self of whatever form is at its most primal core an absolutely unique and divine expression of the One Life. As the Bhagavad Gita, says, "having pervaded the entire universe with a fragment of Myself, I remain."

It is obvious that as the New Consciousness evolves and becomes more and more prevalent among us, the sense of being a self-reliant, individual person with a free will does not dissipate or go away. The individual does not surrender his or her identity to some totalizing Will. Instead it becomes apparent that individual identity and group consciousness are not at odds. Rather they are mutually constitutive. What replaces the other cancerous concept of a separate verses individual self is a powerful and growing awareness of the fact of interdependence. The great revelation of group consciousness and the fruit of Love is the Truth of the interdependent nature of reality itself. It is this growing revelation of the Synthesis that governs consciousness itself.

And just how does all of this relate to the ownership of property? We speak of the horror of slavery. We have in mind the rendering into property of our brothers and sisters. We can recall that it has been only the briefest of time since this nation was so benighted that it agreed to such a practice in its Constitution. That we have since ended and repudiated this practice in our nation is evidence of the growth of the New Consciousness.

But this dark and barbarous practice still flourishes in many areas of the world, and the ownership of humans by other humans is only one aspect of the property issue. As long as we identify our personal worth with material possessions, we will be fostering the illusion of separation and denying Divinity, our own and that which we think we own. It is the Illusion of Separation that allows us to view the earth and its creatures as commodities that can be acquired and controlled to enrich the separate self.

Individuals “own” forests and destroy them through clear cutting for what they think is their individual profit. But the desecration of the land, destruction of the living places of other beings, generation of flashfloods and wildfires has dire consequences for every creature on the planet, including those who seemingly profit. In the capacity of my work in Children’s Protective Services, I have distinct memories of confronting

fathers and mothers who were beating their children or husbands who were beating both the children and the wives. I was told over and over by these abusers that these children and these women belonged to them, and they would treat or beat them as they saw fit.

I could go on and list many examples of how the sense of ownership warps one’s relationships with the other beings or things on the planet. Simply put, the concept of ownership is in itself separative. It generates that exclusive sense of superiority and entitlement on whatever level the ownership is occurring.

It eventually leads to paranoia and other psychotic behaviors such as world wars.

How, actually, can an individual “own” anything? The matter from which all things are made is an indivisible aspect of universe. It was here from the “beginning.” Whenever that was, we know that it was present many kalpas before the individual who claims to own it appeared; and it will be present for many kalpas after the individual’s present dense physical body is returned to what Walt Whitman called the Divine Float or dust if you prefer.

After all, what does it mean to “own Property”? What does it mean for an individual person to own twenty or thirty thousand acres of land or, as does the Queen of England, hundreds of square miles of Scotland and England? It means, among other things, that a huge hunk of the commonwealth has been separated and removed from the commonwealth and made the exclusive domain of an individual human being. It means that it is one’s private property and one can do with it what one will without regard to the Common Good and the General Welfare. It means that one is a slave holder. One is enslaving or making property out of the land and animals that live on the land and by extension by all those other human beings who depend on that land for livelihood.

Owning property is simply incompatible with the New Consciousness. In saying this, I am not advocating that everyone give all his or her stuff away. First of all, “away” is no place. It is simply another phantom of the Great Illusion of separation. There is no “away”. We cannot get “away” or go “away,” and when we give something or throw something “away,” we are simply attempting to transfer it to another person or aspect of our self. We are recycling the responsibility for it.

The idea that one would give all of his possessions away and go to India or wherever to follow God was, in most cases, a big cop-out from responsibility. What I am advocating is that we quit thinking of owning stuff and start thinking of being responsible for stuff. When we acquire things of either a psychic or material nature, we acquire the responsibility for using them according to our own free will. We can use them either for the benefit of our delusional separate comfort and glory or for the Common Good and the General Welfare. There is no way around this, and it is not possible on this planet to not acquire things of either a psychic or material nature. Accepting responsibility for how we implement our energy is the first indicator of the presence of the New Consciousness. It is also an unavoidable condition of living on Earth.

It is basically this evolutionary expansion of consciousness generated through the collective efforts of experiment and experience by untold numbers of brothers and sisters, all of whom paid dearly in one way or another over many thousands of years, that has made the realization of the facts of the interconnectedness or interrelatedness and essential divinity of all beings and the Unanimity of Life, that synthesis we call Brotherhood, possible. All of the Teachings, the poetry, the art, true science, true statesmanship, and true spirituality, over the intervening uncountable Days of Brahma since the first Solar System have been conveying these simple facts of reality in the face of the “planned distortion of the divine will,” the Great Lie of Separation.

The issues of ownership of property are deeply planted in our psyches, and it will take some very careful gardening to gradually weed them out. I had the following recent experience. In fact, it was this experience that initiated this entire essay.

My Ring I owned a ring. It was mine, and I thought of it exactly that way. I liked the ring. It was silver, with a large turquoise heart. It was made by the Hopi perhaps a hundred or so years ago. People admired it, and I felt good that they did. It reflected on me, on my taste, and my coolness. While in Portland, Oregon, we attended an exhibit of paintings from the period of Madame Pompadour. Somewhere in my passage through the exhibit, my ring apparently fell off of my finger. I searched the museum, bothered all of the museum people, called the lost and found. My ring did not re-appear. I felt bad, like I had lost something dear.

The Ring As I was pondering on this a few days later, I realized that I had started thinking of “my ring” as “the ring.”

And so I came to understand, in a flash, as it were, that the ring was never mine. I just had it and was responsible for it for a while, and now it was needed elsewhere. I did not lose the ring; I had passed it on to another who had a need for it and who would look after it. This made me feel much better.

Somehow this all plays into the ownership of property. If we can see the things we possess, from our dense physical bodies to our rings, as parts of Life for which we are temporarily responsible, I think we will have a much healthier, more joyful and meaningful, to say nothing of more efficient and useful, psychic relationship with our worlds.

So, the other day, I was relating all of this to my 8 year-old granddaughter, for whom I have a deep sense of responsibility, to sort of hip her to life. She paid very close attention to every word. Her face was only a foot or so from mine and she never took her eyes from me. I thought that she was drinking in all of this deep wisdom. When I finished, she said, “Grand Pa, you have a lot of veins on your nose.” What can I say? This is a multidimensional group-conscious child.

Letter to the Group on the Occasion of the Death of Senator Edward Kennedy, August 29, 2009 Dear Friends: The following essay, “The Death Prologue,” deals with the thoughtform of death. It had been in process for a couple of months, and was finished on the Friday before Senator Ted Kennedy died. Most of us, I presume, realize that there are no coincidences, just manifesting confluences of the ever-present synthesis which we do not normally see.

Even more intriguing is the fact that one of our most recent and best examples of a disciple “in progress,” as are we all, and clearly a member of the New Group of World Servers died in the depth of the inbreathing cycle of Virgo. Virgo, we all agree, is about what is being born. I see no contradiction in this. Rather I see a

graphic and beautiful statement that underlies all of the Ageless Wisdom teachings regarding Life and the doorways into and out of dense form.

On the micro level, we understand well the processes of making a space for a new life to come into form, a baby to be born. We know about the preparations, the reorganizations and the rearrangement of priorities that are natural to parents who are birthing a child. The study becomes the nursery. Closets must be emptied to make space for the accouterments of baby and childhood. Certain priorities around scheduling of one’s time shift. Frequently the giving up, at least temporarily, of some of one’s favorite things must occur, and the reorganization of how family resources and money are used is significant.

On the Macro level, we have all seen time elapsed photos from the Hubble telescope that record the birth of a star. Similar, to the birth of a baby, although mega times greater, rearrangements and reorganizations of vast heavenly bodies occur. If all of this rearranging and reorganizing on both the macro and micro levels involved human beings rather than closets, studies, and heavenly bodies, we would think of it as death.

And death is what it is.

Just to focus for a moment on the present passing of Senator Ted Kennedy. Senator Kennedy’s focus was much broader than the health care issue. His central focus was, to introduce a term, Right Human Relations. A more common term for Right Human Relations at least in this country is Civil Rights. All of the programs that support and give life to the Common Good and the General Welfare flow from this genesis.

Right Human Relations is a cornerstone of the agenda of the Forces of Progression. It provides the moral prerogatives, the Wisdom of the Heart, and the pure reasoning Will of Love.

Right Human Relations was also the focus of Jack Kennedy, Robert Kennedy and Martin King. These three brothers were murdered, Jack in November, 1963, Martin in April, 1968, and Robert in August, 1968.

Besides the almost immediate implementation of the Civil Rights Act and other legislation in support of the Common Good and General Welfare that followed the murder of Jack Kennedy, these three deaths played an enormously important role in the creation and expansion of a new kind of consciousness. We call this group consciousness, and although much legislation of a deeply draconian nature has been manifested in the intervening 50 years, this consciousness has continued to grow and expand. It recently elected a new President of the United States. This president does not march to just a different drummer, he hears the whole orchestra. It is this always and only coexisting nuance regarding the doors which we call birth and death which lie between Life in and out of Form that we miss either in the joy of the new birth or the grief of what we think of as death. Eventually, when we grow wise enough, humanity will realize that Life or Love is all there is.

The passing of Ted Kennedy made an enormous space into which something is being born. It remains now to see how the essence of the Soul whom we knew as Ted Kennedy which was released into the well of the human heart and the Common Good will manifest.

The Death Prologue I speak about Death as one who knows the matter from the outer world experience and the inner life expression: There is no death. There is, as you know, entrance into fuller life. There is freedom from the handicaps of the fleshly vehicle. The rending process so much dreaded does not exist, except in the cases

of violent and sudden death, and then the only true disagreeables are an instant and overwhelming sense of imminent peril and destruction and something closely approaching an electric shock. No more.

—Alice A. Bailey, Esoteric Healing The forces of death are abroad today, but it is the death of liberty, the death of free speech, the death of freedom in human action, the death of truth and of the higher spiritual values. These are the vital factors in the life of humanity; the death of the physical form is a negligible factor in relation to these, and one easily righted again through the processes of rebirth and fresh opportunity.

—Alice a. Bailey, The Externalization of the Hierarchy As all esotericists know, death and dying are major topics covered in depth in all manifestations of the Ageless Wisdom. My own engagement with the Ageless Wisdom has been primarily through the works of Master D.K. in conjunction with Alice A. Bailey, the body of writings we call the Agni Yoga Teachings from Master M., and the works, which we call the Nature of the Soul Teachings, from Master R. in conjunction with Lucille Cedercrans.

Students and practitioners of the Ageless Wisdom have much information regarding what actually occurs when a soul reaches the end of his or her incarnational journey and begins the return journey to the Ashram from which he or she came. I have had the experience of being relatively close to known disciples who were approaching this transition experience, and depending on the degree to which the information has been transformed from knowledge into wisdom, it has relatively offset the fear and power that death has over those who do not possess such in-depth understanding.

However, putting disciples, relatively learned or not, aside, it is the easiest thing in the world to see that the specter which we call death has a major hold over the vast, vast majority of humanity. Apparently, if the reactions of the monkey who is about to be eaten by the lion are any evidence, death exercises a similar hold over at least significant portions of the animal kingdom.

The experiences I have been having as a result of my rhythmic participation in the apparently everdeepening meditation work of a worldwide group of esoteric meditators vis-à-vis group consciousness have caused me to re-examine much of the “knowledge” which I possessed regarding most of the areas of my life and time in this incarnated state. This re-visiting and re-examination included some rather extensive knowledge of death and dying. This knowledge is available to anyone who can read. It will be found in Alice Bailey’s A Treatise of the Seven Rays IV: Esoteric Healing. And it is presented on practically every page of a number of Master M.’s books but prominently so in the four volumes called The Supermundane. Master R.’s writings also give much information and data regarding the continuation of the one Path upon which the door of death opens and how to deal with it.

I have been sharing the fruits of this re-visitation through conversation, discussion, and writing via Thoughtline and a few of the other little things I cause to be released with the individuals in the small workshop groups and in the larger Community within which I work and to whom I owe all I understand. The ancient chant of those making the third approach, “All that I am and all that I have belongs to others not myself,” is deeply meaningful in relation to death and dying.

For the most part, all of us have been conscious students of the Ageless Wisdom in previous incarnations. I thoroughly understand the value of meditating, studying and serving with group brothers and sisters. One of the great joys of this work is introducing new friends to the current thoughtform presentations of the

Great Teachers and, of course, finding old friends from previous incarnations, helping them to recall the Ancient Wisdom, and see it in the present thoughtform presentations. I spend the majority of my time in this pursuit.

I have come to realize, however, that a number of the crises facing humanity, those in the global financial system, environment, politics, planetary health, education, which are at this moment forming the battle field upon which death is stalking, have not seen solutions, have not been resolved or even very widely understood from a causal perspective through the methods of meditating, holding classes and discussions in esoteric lore, and training meditators here and there.

A major current example of the inertia that has overcome our normal engines for bringing in new energy and ideas is totally visible in the stalemate that the Brothers of the Shadow, by manipulating and enhancing the fear of death, have managed to cause in the effort to reform our communal systems such as the healthcare system in the U. S. All of the wisdom of the Ages which can be found in the books I mentioned above and many others including many written by the academics of today concerning “near death experiences” and so forth have done very little to raise consciousness in this area. The fear of death has been used time and time again by the Brothers of the Shadow to implement their agenda. Another prime example of this is the way in which the United States of America was consciously manipulated into initiating the Iraq war and the resulting carnage over the past seven or eight years. This is so typical of how the sophistry of the dark side works. Humanity is frightened by the fear of death into killing itself, liberty, justice, truth, decency . . . you name it.

To impact this situation is, therefore, going to take much more than the efforts we are making in our training and workshops and conferences. It is going to take more than this. It is going to require esotericists to put aside their fear acquired from having been time and time again killed, exiled, enslaved for speaking the Wisdom out loud in the public squares and courts. It is going to require us to find the courage to come out of our closets and to speak as plainly and clearly as we can about the nature of Reality and the fact of the Great Illusion. We, after all, are the ones who actually understand what is going on. It is a crime for us to keep what we know and understand from the public discourse because we are afraid of our credibility within the power structures of the old civilization. We can no longer be intimidated by being labeled weird by establishment forces, as they labeled Jerry Brown (Governor Moon Beam), the governor of California when he ran for the Presidency. I do not think that we have to worry much about being sold into slavery, at least not yet. However, common sense and the long view of the Great Unfolding assure us that the Forces of Retrogression will stop at nothing to “protect their turf.” Witness the murders of Jack and Robert Kennedy. And who is going to say that Dr. King was not an esotericist. These initiates were brothers of courage whose hearts were aflame.

Step up to the plate brothers and sisters. It is our turn at bat.

Thus the following essay deals with that great terror, death. The approach attempts to be as non-esoteric as possible and still convey the facts regarding the nature of the Real. In this issue I speak about the effects of group consciousness on our conscious awareness of death. I am approaching this subject which is a major, major blockage to the higher frequencies of Truth attempting to penetrate human awareness in a kind of straightforward way. I am an esotericist; I freely admit it. And I must work from that point of view; however, I am attempting to speak in a language that bridges into the areas of understanding where most of our brothers and sisters live. At times I have no choice but to wax esoteric. There is simply no language to cover some of very abstract concepts of the Real with which esotericists deal.

On that point, I must beg your indulgence. In The Nature of the Soul, Master R indicates that in order to register the concepts with which he is going to deal, the students must clear their minds of all preconceived or limiting ideas that they may be entertaining in regard to certain terms that will come up: “We tend to define, and thus limit, a concept in those terms which express a familiar experience within our own tiny sphere of awareness.” To the degree possible, I am avoiding the overt use of much of the technical aspects about death and dying that we as esotericists know; however, this knowledge and understanding underpins every word I use. I ask for your attention and appreciate the time you will take to look into “Group Consciousness: Fear and Death.”

Group Consciousness: Fear and Death The most ancient mantra/prayer known to present humanity is “lead us from the darkness to the Light, from the unreal to the Real and from death to Immortality.” This mantra is divided into three parts or formulas. The last bit, “from death to immortality,” is known as Formula Three. The other two are Formulas One and Two. “The three directives embody and express the oldest invocative appeal in the world, and (because of the age of this appeal) these three formulas have given a direction that naught can offset; the resultant conditions are inevitable.”

As we know, “any sense of separateness is due simply to ignorance and to the fact that certain energies are as yet unable to make adequate impression upon the human consciousness, functioning in time and space.” There are a couple of things that we need to understand here. One is that “these three formulas have given a direction that naught can offset; the resultant conditions are inevitable.” The other is that the Great Illusion functions in the time and space field occupied by those of us who find ourselves incarnate.

The Death Program Perhaps the most powerful subroutine of the Great Illusion program is the Death Program. Thanks to our ancient and very deep identification with our form, the illusion of death has an enormously powerful grip on the human psyche. Consequently, death will probably be one of the last aspects of the Great Illusion to fade into the Light of the Real.

Thus, at this moment in time and space consciousness, much of what I am going to discuss below is about the reality that exists in the higher dimensions and is still “on its way into form.” It is not “here” in terms of time and space dimensions yet. Nevertheless, what discipleship is about, what Lanoo, The Archer, is ultimately looking for as he follows his arrows of reason ever-deeper into the Light, is this final jewel of Truth: our immortality. So let us examine this greatest of all charades of The Brothers of Shadow. We can map out, at least in its outlines, the path before us and begin to expose the terror of the death program for the sham it is.

The Grand Transition When inevitably, it is our turn to make the grand transition or, to be more scientific about this common occurrence, to be born into the “Real from the unreal, from the darkness into the Light, and from death to Immortality,” we will get the opportunity to demonstrate just how much of this Truth we are able to embody. Conquering this illusion, by which I mean dissipating it so that Truth can be seen and experienced, not only leads one out of the clutches of the death boogeyman which has terrified us and controlled almost our every move from virtually the “beginning,” it reveals and enables us to establish our balance on the

unassailable path of the continuity of consciousness. It signifies our final approach to the Third Door and the impending transfiguration, so to speak.

A little background will be helpful in understanding just how we came to be in this deadly state of mortal unawareness, or unreality. The generating virus is an ancient virtual reality program, or game, if you like.

We call this game The Grim Reaper. It comes as an embedded aspect of the kernel in the C.P.U. or the human psyche. It automatically loads and runs at the get-go when the system is booted or slapped into dense physical awareness.

The Grim Reaper is a highly sophisticated, four dimensional virtual reality game. It comes complete with a selection of Death Avatars which we can modify to fit whatever illusion of guilt or fear is currently freaking us out. Perhaps you are very cool and would like someone like Joe Black?

The default avatar is, in terms of today’s horror movie genre, rather lame but still quite effective. He comes with a semi bony face, no nose to speak of, and runny eyes. This lash up seems to lurk over a gash that exposes a mouth full of teeth in various stages of rot. The mouth is twisted into the kind of smile one would associate with total madness. A couple of bone arms to which are attached a pair of boney hands protrude from the sleeves of a rotting black hooded robe. The default is clutching a notched and rusty, or is that bloody, scythe with which he plans to reap us.

The Original Stalker The Death Avatar has been stalking us in one form or another ever since our first birth. When it is actuated, there is an auto-release of a deep and very subtle, in most cases overwhelming, fear frequency: that sudden sense of grave danger, the cold sweat and feeling of your hair all standing on end. This frequency has been used to manipulate us and keep us enslaved in the Great Lie, or Illusion.

The game is so simple that it escapes conscious recognition, hence the unawareness of this pseudocondition of mortality. The game goes like this: over uncountable eons, The Forces of Retrogression have totally convinced us to the very core of our being that we are in fact our dense physical or fleshy bodies.

They then point out that dense physical bodies simply do not last that long. There is, of course, unlimited hard evidence to back up this last bit of sophistry.

Dust to Dust This last bit, we are but flesh and bones, “from dust you came to dust you return,” is so deeply ingrained in our psyche that Webster defines mortal thusly: “The condition or quality of being mortal; subjection to death or to the necessity of dying” and “Those who are, or that which is, mortal; the human race; humanity; human nature.” As we can plainly see, it is an accepted fact that we are mortal and that death is inevitable. Human life has been reduced to the basic fundamentals as pointed out by T.S. Eliot, “Birth, copulation and death, those are all the facts when you get down to brass tacks.”

One of the things I find almost amusing about this if it were not so diabolical is this basic syllogism which I dutifully memorized along with every student who has been taught Logic in the world’s educational systems over the last 2500 years or so: “All men are mortal. Socrates is a man. Therefore, Socrates is mortal.” Here we see the way in which the name of Socrates, one of the foremost spokespersons of the Ageless Wisdom in the last 3000 years, has been used to drive this bit of the Great Illusion even deeper into the human psyche.

In the typical sophistic way of the Brothers of the Shadow, the conclusion of this syllogism, “Socrates is mortal,” is not the point being driven home. That point is the Major premise asserted as an incontrovertible truth: “All men are mortal.” Then, as an afterthought, even Socrates is mortal, and by the way, we proved this by having him killed with the hemlock draught.

The Killing Fields of Daily Life After thoroughly convincing us beyond any question or doubt of this basic lie, the Shadow Brothers proceed to kill us in a variety of ways, chief of which are war, famine, and disease. Actually, and this next point really indicates the depth of the evil of these Brothers, they do not do the killing. They get us to kill each other in the absurd notion and blind fear that we are thereby extending our own lives.

Furthermore, in a subset of this Death game called Daily Living, having made death an unavoidable eventuality, they proceed to con us into all kinds of sick agreements to extend our lives and the perceived value of them by playing on the fears of death and the powerful desires for material wealth that they have manufactured with the illusion that we are our bodies New Consciousness Old Lies This pretty much sums up the status quo for being a “regular,” that is non-group conscious, human on planet Earth. What I want to do now is examine the effects of the ever-expanding evolution of consciousness from selfhood into grouphood as it impacts this darkest of all aspects of the Retrogressive Forces’ “end game.”

The End of Death Basically, group consciousness will, granted, over a somewhat long run, eliminate the concept of death as we now know and shudder before it. Presently, without our even noticing it, our consciousness is evolving.

Through the process of synthesis, consciousness expands very gradually to a point where we begin to include in our awareness the fact of others.

One could say that we are always aware of others, and this is so. However, our initial awareness of others does not spring from this evolving awareness of recognition of others as extensions of ourselves. It flows as a natural result of our identification with our dense physical forms. The point of view of the large majority of humans is that of a separated from others self-consciousness.

We see others as contestants and competitors in The Grim Reaper game. The Avoidance Module is the motivator engine of the game. The objective is to avoid the Grim Reaper as long as possible. This is accomplished by accruing personal power (which on the upper levels of the game, corresponds to the ownership of material wealth) by whatever means are available and using this wealth to prolong consciousness in the form. Cloning and the creation of cyborg or bionic bodies, for example, will soon be a fad pursued by the super wealthy and a multibillion dollar business.

The Grim Reaper Game is played at the many different levels of humanity which we call classes, but it is relatively all the same game. One’s ability to accrue power at whatever level one is a player usually enables one to avoid death for longer periods of time than his or her immediate fellows. There are many examples of this grim truth: entitlement to such things as food, shelter, medical attention, children of wealth are frequently able to avoid going to war and so forth.

There is even, we surmise from many tales of humanity’s distant and not so distant past, a Lets Make A Deal Module. In this module, one can trade one’s free will or soul (as revealed for us in The Devil and Daniel Webster) for a kind of immortality.

However, In spite of the best efforts of the Retrogressive Forces to prevent it, consciousness inevitably evolves into an expansion of awareness beyond the tiny aura of one’s own self-centered focus. “The essential synthesis exists, and the end is sure and inevitable; unity is attainable because unity exists and the sense of separateness is simply the Great Illusion.” The view gradually shifts so that others begin to be seen not as contestants fighting for a piece of a very limited pie, but as somehow related to oneself, somehow connected.

Recognition of Essential Divinity A very tenuous point where there is a conscious recognition of mutual value, mutual needs, mutual longings, fears, loves, and hopes emerges, and gradually expands. As the consciousness expands, a relationship of mutuality and a recognition of essential divinity is gradually born. As this awareness grows and becomes brain conscious real, we are progressively able to detach from our identification with our separate material bodies. As this growing sense of unity becomes real in terms of brain recognition, we begin to be able to have conscious recognition that we are the others as well as ourselves. We begin to include otherness, other people and things, nature for example, and animals in our sense of self.

The others become transfigured. From enemies and competitors, they turn into ourselves, other beings which we realize are at their core, exactly like oneself. We can finally say, these are me. I am them. One begins the transition from death to life.

What we have here is an intellectual description of the Real. It is not that difficult to get this as truth. It only makes sense. This intellectual comprehension of a reasonable reality, as opposed to the absurdity of the Grim Reaper Program, is a first step into the Light. One never finds what one cannot see or imagine or thinks does not exists.

The actual experience of this all happens over a period of time. It gradually rises from below the threshold of realization into awareness. The Death Game is still very prevalent. However, in the recent election cycle in the United States, we witnessed a huge demonstration of the fact of our expanding consciousness from selfhood into grouphood. People in the millions at various levels of realization were responding to a group, or to use an esoteric term, a Soul-Centered call for freedom and justice, for equality, for the shift from private greed and corruption—“Politics as Usual”—¬to the support for the General Welfare and the Common Good.

This phenomenon did not occur over night, and it was not ginned up by the candidate, Barack Obama.

Rather the fact of its presence within the human psyche called out Barack Obama and made his election possible. There are a couple of aspects of evolution that are not very well understood or even considered much outside of esoteric circles. One is that evolution concerns consciousness. Except in the fact that they are manifestations of the ever-evolving consciousness, evolution does not concern the dense physical plane and its appearances of body types, programs, phylums, kingdoms and so forth. The evolution of consciousness has been underway in all aspects of planetary life including the One Humanity from the “beginning.”

The other seldom considered, and little understood aspect of evolution is the role in evolution that human Free Will plays. Free Will, expressed by every single human being and by humanity as a whole, is an

unavoidable aspect of evolution. This fact accounts for the seemingly longish time it takes to get anything done on the macro level of the human race. It takes a certain number of individuals choosing the higher way for evolution to manifest the next appearance. This is partly what Master D.K. is alluding to when he points out that “any sense of separateness is due simply to ignorance and to the fact that certain energies are as yet unable to make adequate impression upon the human consciousness, functioning in time and space.”

The evolution from selfhood into grouphood continually widens the area of human consciousness that is susceptible to these higher energies. This expansion in no way diminishes one’s sense of Self but rather sets the Self free from the terrible, tiny prison cell of self-centeredness into the realization and experience of our true unity with all beings. As noted above, “unity is attainable because unity exists and the sense of separateness is simply the Great Illusion.”

It is this growing expansion of consciousness that opens the door between death and immortality. It leads eventually to the incontrovertible knowing, an unshakeable realization of Truth that we are not our bodies; we are that immortal something which endures, which goes on and on and on until we find that jewel for which Lanoo has been searching. This realization creates a Light so bright that the specter of death fades totally out of the picture, and we begin to learn what it means to be free, at least on the Cosmic physical plane.

Our Brothers’ Keepers In conclusion, we gradually come to realize a deep and profound aspect of this union with our brothers: the release from selfhood to grouphood, from the prison of form identification into Spiritual awareness is also a release into responsibility. We finally get to know what the Ancients meant when they told us over and over that “we are our brothers’ keepers.”

Let Our Elder Brother Master D. K. have the last word here: The right attitude is now present in many people in every race, and it is the recognition of this which has called forth the activity of the Brothers of the Shadow at this time. They realize that the time of their power is shortening. The hold of the materialistic values over man is steadily becoming weaker. So far has man progressed that there are enough people in the world today to turn the tide if they can be aroused from their apathy.

Salvaging Love

I was watching an interview with Alan Greenspan, a chief architect and supporter of the collapsed financial system. He agreed with the interviewer that greed was at the root of the collapse. The interviewer said that we were going to put regulations in place to prevent that from happening again. Alan Greenspan said to go ahead and try it, but that it would ultimately not work. It may take some time, but greed would again manifest itself because it is an intrinsic aspect of the nature of man.

The Great Illusion of Separation

For many, many Ages now, humanity has lived under what we call the Great Illusion of Separation. Simply put this illusion holds that the only reality is the dense physical plane. It postulates that everything within that plane is not only separated from everything else but is at endless war with all other things for its survival or life. Like Alan Greenspan, many today see this formulation of reality as “The Nature of Man” and are convinced that it is impossible to change. In this view, greed is not only a natural aspect of human behavior; it is essential for long life. Even though greed is “natural” to human behavior, it, like any other “natural” attribute, is a skill, and it has to be honed. The successfully greediest live the best, i.e., most luxurious and longest lives, for whatever that’s worth.

For probably the majority of humans, the conscious sense of who we are flows from our identification with this illusory notion of the Real. The civilizations we have built and destroyed, the political systems, the economic, financial and educational systems as well as the great religious systems that are the fabric of our civilizations are, in very large part, the products of this psychotic dead end notion of the Real. Basically, the system principle is that one must kill to live. Any student of history will remark on the vicious horizontal circularity of life under these systems. Other than the technology used to kill or dominate and enslave one another and the titles of the players, evidently very little has changed over many ages.

Without a doubt, forms, although temporary, are very real in the context of the dense physical planes. The problem is that we are stuck, hung up, identified with this level of temporary reality. We are practically incapable of understanding or experiencing or even theoretically accepting as a possibility the non-physical, dense dimensions of Eternal Cosmos.

Scared To Death It is precisely our intimate relationship with the unavoidable temporality of the form world, including our own dense physical bodies, that empowers this delusion. We have all been present at the death of a loved one, a wife, mother, father, husband, child. We have had the fact of the impermanence of form life deeply etched into our psyche, seen cities, governments, whole countries disappear, and this over many lifetimes.

We have been scared to a kind of blindness, by death. Still, in spite of the blinding and dominating power of the Great Illusion, the soul of humanity, the existence of which the Great Illusion denies, has gradually eked out a path.

This Path, upon which humanity has been trudging, footstep by bloody footstep lo these many kalpas, leads, in the words of one of the most ancient of all mantras, “from the Darkness to the Light, from the Unreal to the Real, and from Death to Immortality.” Just to deconstruct that language a tiny bit, The Path leads from our identification with the impermanent material world of forms to the realization of and our identification with the formless worlds of energy, of Idea and Principle. And to deconstruct that a bit, I would say that humanity, with our big thing about things, is literally SOS─stuck on stuff. There are very few of us who, for example, realize that we are not our bodies. We think that our forms are real even though they come and go with the blink of an eye, hence the fear of death and all the rest of it.

It is my assumption that everyone here this evening either has experiential evidence of the non-physical dense dimensions of universe, those realms we call the subtle and supermundane worlds, or is willing to accept the possibilities of such realms for the purposes of discourse. If these lands are not open to at least experimental exploration, there can be no discussion; for what one cannot experience, or at least theoretically accept as possibility cannot be considered in rational discourse.

And so, our little journey begins in dimensions far more subtle than the one in which we are sitting.

Instantly we are confronted with the age old challenge which any explorer of the supermundane faces. We know well the formidable challenges of penetrating the dimensions of Be-ness. These challenges make up the experiences on what we call the paths of Discipleship and Initiation which lead to the summit of the Mountain of Consciousness.

However this evening, it is the descent, the return down that Mountain with which we will be dealing. The descent involves the creative effort to formulate the subtle dimensions of Truth which, however slightly, one has contacted during the penetration into Reality, into form. These formulations must be created in such a way that they can be communicated to others in a credible, comprehensible, and practically useful manner. This presents us with a wonderful opportunity to co-create with the Father, to attempt to reveal that which is but which is perhaps not so evident.

These less dense dimensions of the Father’s Life which we can penetrate through the Silence but to which we can refer only as Principle or Truth, will always be greater or deeper or more inclusive and synthetic than any form we can create to embody or reveal their essence. The means we have to communicate with one another in this particular dimension are, as any artist will tell us, woefully inadequate to reveal what was beheld in the World of Be-ness. We know this, and we accept it as the creative challenge. Things, you see, three dimensional things like words, symbols, numbers, as well as music, painting, any of the arts, are all we have to bring Principle into the range of human intellect.

The highest function of intelligence is to provide a point of reception, a receiving station for the gleanings of the Spirit’s quest. Into this receiving station, the returning Spirit will deposit the formless Light of realization contacted in the realms of Be-ness. From here it becomes the creative opportunity of the incarnated soul sitting in the brain to move this Light into a medium where it can be registered and known by human intellect. This transference is accomplished by the creation of forms to embody the essentially formless Principles which “people” the dimensions of Be-ness and which we contact when walking that Land.

We call these things, be they creations of words or one of the other Arts of revelation, thoughtforms. It is thoughtforms, not Truth, which human intellect knows. Thoughtforms are things. We manufacture or create these things, employing the matter of the lower mental plane, the chitta, to use an ancient term. It is these thoughtforms that humans use to understand this dense physical dimension in which we find ourselves. And, although thoughtforms are just illusory shadows, husks of the Principles which they endeavor to embody, they are what I am using now to try to communicate some inkling of that non-place we call the Supermundane or the Future.

So, now that we understand that this is basically impossible, let me begin: I want to focus our attention on just one of the innumerable inhabitants of the higher Dimensions, most of whom we do not have any sense of at all. We are, however, intimately familiar with one of these Principles of Cosmos. In its initial appearance, this particular Principle of Universe was identified by a single word. As a word it was and is a thing, but it does not mean or signify a “thing.” It is not a name for a physical object, person, place, or thing. It is, however, a word. It is made up of letters which, when pronounced, make a sound.

This word does not symbolize anything. It does not relate or point to any object. Rather it carries the frequency of its universal Principle. That is, this word embodies the deep meanings and significances of that

Principle. This word is, in essence, a Word of Power, and if it is pronounced, that is if its frequency is made manifest by a person who understands its inner significance, it is a word of creation. The sound will create within the physical dense world the energy field which it embodied.

This may all sound way out, but it is simply the nuts and bolts of creation, the power of sound.

I do not have any idea when this word first came into use within modern humanity; however, in the past two thousand years or so, it has become so immersed in the world of thoughtforms that it is basically unrecognizable. The inherent meaning and significance of this Principle has been so larded over with the effluvia of sentimental emotions and the lime of superficial and incoherent thoughtforms that, in spite of the best efforts of the world’s greatest artists, it is still struggling to recover its original Being.

This Word of Power is Love.

If I start out by saying what love is not, I will be here for the next several years. So I am going to just skip over all of that by stating that Love is not what it is commonly thought to be. In making this statement, I am not denigrating any of the things that have been given as definitions for or identified as love, including an uncontrollable passion for chocolate or copulation or anything else. I am good with all of these things; they are just not love.

Love is something else. Here, one could string together a bunch of quotations from the Ageless Wisdom in an attempt to define this indefinable Principle. I have tried that route numerous times. Although such an exercise really floats my boat, it does not seem to yield the looked for effect in the people with whom one is trying to communicate. It frequently just muddies the water. One ends up with a whole bunch of other Principles and abstractions that are almost as meaningless to one’s interlocutor as is love. This is especially the case for those of our brothers and sisters who have not been exposed to the inner-esoteric Teachings And, frankly, it is not for the knowledgeable esotericist that I write. It is for a couple of other groups of our brothers and sisters. One group comprises all those who, to one degree or another, are basically still chained up in Master Plato’s cave, still, so to speak, identified with their forms, with the darkness, the unreal, and death of the form world. And the other is the large and rapidly growing group of brothers and sisters who have to relative degrees freed themselves from the Great Illusion and are making valiant efforts to struggle out of the cave and into the Light of Day. There is within both groups ample evidence of the presence of love. Most of those who are struggling towards the Light are not actually aware of the fact that it is this energy love that is driving them. However, there is the beginning of awareness, and it is moving with great rapidity through their consciousnesses.

Well, as simply as I can put it, Love is a carrier of energy. It is a Principle of Universe, an essential, inseparable aspect of the One synthetic Life. Like any Principle or Spiritual Being, Love does not have mass or matter. Love is not anything, many splendored or otherwise.

Love does, as do all Principles, have a function. The closest I can get to this is to compare love with one of the laws of physics which have specific, scientifically demonstrated functions or roles within the dense physical world such as gravity which, in my view, may actually be a sub-function or effect of love. Anyway, the basic function of Love is to relate.

Love is the great relational energy in the universe. Love relates everything and every non-thing to every other thing or non-thing. Love is nothing, but it is everywhere all the time. Love is also inseparable from the

supermundane worlds of Be-ness, and it fulfills the same scientific function in the non-material worlds as it does in the dense physical plane.

If you will permit this little lapse into the esoteric, esotericists understand the function of love as the intermediary, the link between the Father and The Mother, Spirit and Matter. Hence the name of Son. This is a bit misleading, because love is not the result, or the progeny or offspring of the intersection between Spirit and Matter, it is the enabler. Father being Intent, Mother being Matter, Love is the verb, the energy the medium through which Intent is conveyed into Matter. Love makes relationship possible.

It is the inability of intellect to comprehend what I can only call fourth dimensionality that makes it so difficult to see that we cannot think One or for that matter Two. Three is the spontaneous appearance of the first division of Spirit of The One Life.

Love Is Consciousness Well, I am sure that that did not do much for either of the groups for whom I am writing, so I will try to deconstruct, or at least put all of that into different, if not that much less abstract, language. Another more useful, to me, way of comprehending the meaning and significance of Love is to understand love as consciousness. Love is awareness. It is love that drives the flower to track the sun across the heavens. It is love that causes the herring to swim in “schools” and birds to fly for thousands of miles in formation across the planet. It is love that fosters the amazing gentility of lions, wolves, all beings, even badgers, toward their young and that creates the linkage between “pets” like dogs and humans.

This awareness of otherness and, in the same moment at a very deep, usually unconscious, level that spark of recognition of kindness of sameness, of a kind of brotherhood of one another, is the presence of Love.

This is not a religious proposition. It is rather the scientific evidence of the non-separateness of life. It is Pure Reason or Love that reveals this fact to us. The intense sense of clarity and beauty that one experiences when these particular kinds of realizations Light us up, is the effect of the presence of the Second Divine Aspect, Love.

The manifestation of love is beginning to become apparent at another somewhat higher level of consciousness than the visible presence of love between parents and children of whatever breed or phylum. A very significant event within the population of humanity is occurring. Many, many millions, one might even suggest a couple of billions, of individuals are becoming lovingly aware, not emotionally, but reasonably, that is understandingly aware, of other humans.

People the world over are becoming aware of or conscious of other people, and not just other local people, but other people in other countries. They are becoming conscious of the inherent sameness, of the equality in spirit, of the essential divinity that lives within themselves and all others regardless of nationality, race, religion, and, wonder of wonders, class. This awareness of otherness and in the same moment—and this time in a conscious, rapidly, almost explosively expanding realization—that recognition of a kind of sameness, a kind of brotherhood, this is the presence of Love.

Demonstrating the Unfolding Plan This worldwide phenomenon unfolding before our eyes is the demonstration or manifestation of a major development in the evolution of consciousness. Humanity is demonstrating the success of the Unfolding Plan even within the present struggle and horrendous efforts of the Forces of Retrogression to hold it back.

Humanity is demonstrating group consciousness. The “leap”—incredibly slow and painful crawl would be more like it—from self to group consciousness is here now for anyone who has eyes to see. So you see, Love is consciousness, and Love has evolved into the light of the Aquarian Day. There is one more thing about Love that really cries out for clarification. As I have been saying over the years, the only hope that humanity has had to make visible the invisible was through art and science. Let us make no mistake about this; pure science is a high art because it reveals Truth just as does any poem, painting, or symphony.

So perhaps a bit fancifully, but fancy is all I have to work with at this point, I envision the Planetary Logos sitting in some impossible to fancy splendor in the ineffable Cosmic Mental Plane, pondering on how to help humanity—considering their rather rock-like consciousness—to become aware of, maybe just to register a little bit, the existence of the great Life we call Love. In the dim, to us, but not Him, past, the Logos tried all kinds of stuff: thunder storms, lightning bolts, burning bushes, tidal waves. He even did graffiti once, tagging a wall with that great Truth, “Where There Is No Vision, The People Will Perish.” After its initial shock, that major revelation, as far as He could tell, went ignored. He concluded that “Shock and Awe” really do not get the job done.

In addition, most everything He tried was appropriated by some cult or other and used to dominate anyone who did not go along with their particular, and usually, woefully ignorant interpretations. So, none of that really worked that well. Any small successes He had were through the use of metaphor, and being the Grand Artist that he is (Take a look at a sunset one of these days), he decided to go with metaphor. His most successful metaphor, big enough for even doubters to see, is actually the Planet, but on a lesser level, He had the most success with what we call Avatars.

An Avatar is a work of art. The art form, in this case, is the four dimensional life of a being—a human being.

This being, either woman or man, embodies, models, and, through his or her livingness, anchors within human consciousness an aspect of Truth. Depending on the aspect which they are bringing in, Avatars may be what we would call minor or major.

The Avatar for this particular assignment, bringing Love to the attention of human consciousness, was not, as are many lesser avatars, a messenger of Love, but Love itself. Love resides in our system in a dimension esotericists call the Buddhic Sphere. Again, the only way we, humanity, have of revealing these fourth dimensional states is through art and science. So we do our best to metaphorize these non-dense physical locations. One thing we do is give them names, all the while understanding that we are talking about nonphysical, dense Spiritual Energy Centers which are found within these fourth dimensional states. The “Spiritual Energy Center” or the Being who embodies or is the focus of Love on our Planet has been given many names by different artists and scientists over the kalpas of human existence. The name for Love which we in the Western World know best is The Christ.

So, the point here is to kind of salvage Love, or as we call it, The Christ, from the clutches of all those who have claimed ownership of this Spiritual Energy Center. The energy of Love is an inseparable aspect of Reality. It belongs to no person, no cult, no religious institution no matter how big or powerful it may be within the physical dense dimensions. Love or Christ is a present and unavoidable field of consciousness which lives within and moves through every single human being regardless of nationality, race, creed, culture, sex, even political persuasion.

Love, the Cosmic Energy System

The effort here is to help us become aware of Love, that Cosmic Energy System which has been known by many names over the centuries and which now in the past few centuries some number of humans have called Christ but which anyone can call anything he or she wants to. Love is not a name; it is a real, palpable living presence in the consciousness of every one of us.

Love is the consciousness that makes it possible for each of us to see ourselves as we are in Love or Christ.

It is this energy within us that makes it possible for each of us to see the presence of Love not only in ourselves and everyone else, but in the entire World, and in the heavens, the stars, the great wheels of Life we call galaxies and in the Beyond, in the Be-ness.

When we really get this, we will understand what the Master meant when he said, “Sacrifice is not a giving up it is a taking over.”

The Ideology of Love: A New Ideology for a New Age The New Age will have a new ideology. That's how you can tell it is a New Age and not the same old Old Age. Life, Quality, Appearance; Idea, Ideal, Idol; Purpose, Plan, Model: this is the basic pattern of creation, whether we are talking about the cosmic creation of galaxies, solar systems or planets or the creation of a sonnet or a painting. Evolution is the common name for this process. I know it is not usual to think of the artist as an evolutionist, but the great artists are among the foremost evolutionists. In the past two thousand years, they, more than most, have tapped the intent of God and through their art, pulled Idea and Plan into form and pushed humanity toward its ultimate destiny. We have a purpose. We conceive a plan to implement our purpose. We build or manifest the forms through which we will achieve our purpose.

Evolution is a living process; it is a gradual, very gradual to our limited vision, unfolding of purpose through plan into form. It is impossible, for me anyway, to conceive of an end to this unfolding.

All of the systems that we can imagine, like galaxies or solar systems or planets or institutions, like our political and economic systems, are components of larger or macrosystems. So, our little planet Earth is the end result of a chain of Will, Plan, and Manifestation. And, as Earth is part of our Solar System, we can assume that Earth's purpose, or the Will behind our planet, a being whom we call Sanat Kumara or God, is undoubtedly a subset of the Purpose of the Solar Logos. The surrender which we have been told occurs at the Fourth Gate for humans in their final transition into the Hierarchy, must occur on the Way of Higher Evolution, too. "Not my will, but Thy Will be done, Oh Lord," is the remark of the Christ as he was taking the sixth initiation. "The Law of Correspondences is infallible if rightly approached and applied."

Another and to me more meaningful way of thinking about Purpose is to think of Purpose as Future. Sanat Kumara's Purpose is our Future, our unavoidable Future. This Future, relatively inscrutable to humans, is conceived as a Plan by those who can see more deeply than we. So, relatively speaking, the Plan which is formulated by the Fifth Kingdom, the Hierarchy, is our Future. Humanity's role in this unfolding process of creation we call evolution is to read the Plan and make the forms.

Our reading of the Plan results in ideologies. We say reality is this or that, the intentions of God are thus and so. The role of humans on the planet is to do this and that. As we gain the power to see this future or as we gain insight into the Plan we become the vehicle through which it manifests. Thus, an ideology is a part of the channel through which Purpose makes its way through Plan into form.

An Age is a kind of cosmic incarnation for God. The New Age, whatever it happens to be, sort of sets the goals and gives the parameters for the Plan through which the next phase of the Will will manifest. In the present case, the goals that have been set and the qualities that will characterize the New Ideology, or the New Paradigm, are those of Aquarius.

The Piscean Age through which we have recently traversed brought humanity to the pinnacle of SelfConsciousness. Pisces is, as anyone may observe, still qualitatively and ideologically very much with us. Our present institutions and systems of beliefs and concepts regarding the nature of reality are based on the ideology of Pisces, which is an ideology of self-consciousness.

Self-consciousness, like everything in our dualistic Universe, cuts two ways. In one sense, the Piscean experience generated an ideology that has led us deeply into the illusion of separation. There are, it seems, other Wills or forces which have plans and which very strongly influence what patterns forth as models on the physical plane.

The development of self-consciousness has, in many cases, added to the great illusion, and the ideology of materialism and separation grew well during the Piscean Age. The influence of this ideology over even the most advanced and inclusive institutions of the most advanced and enlightened nations is very easy to see.

Jonah, one could say, had a big hand in building the whale that arrived just in time to swallow or imprison him.

The materialistic ideology of separation and exclusivity is reflected in all of the institutional systems which we have fashioned to implement our best concept of the Plan. One example will suffice. In this country, which is one of the most enlightened on the planet, the bars of separative and exclusive ideology that run through our institutional systems, or the whale's ribs, have actually created an entire class of humans.

Ironically, we call these prisoners of the whale, these fellow souls, the Underclass.

The Underclass are a group of people, men, women and children, who are separated and deprived from participating in or enjoying the goods of the system only because the ideology of materialism posits as a principle a ladder of exclusivity or privilege. It is a principle of this dark ideology of limitation that people must compete for a limited amount of resources and that in this competition, the truly deserving, the truly strong, will rise to the top and, rightly so, enjoy the fruits of the system. And then, of course, we have the generous ideology of "Trickle Down."

The ideology of materialism is schizophrenic. It separates human from human and sets us at war with ourselves. The forces of retrogression, working through strong, individual, self-conscious people and using "the voices of lying propaganda, the Word of death . . . and the Sound of the densest aspect in manifestation—the sound of power in the mineral kingdom," toil tirelessly to maintain the illusory veils of separation and materialism.

Not a pretty picture. It is so un-pretty that millions and millions of people do what they can to avoid looking at it. Imagine how much human energy is spent on watching sports contests and shopping for stuff.

Well, if this was the only side to this story, it would be bleak indeed, but fortunately, as any sober "adventuring disciple" who is out there in the trenches knows, it is not. In addition to this separative and selfish twist of self-consciousness, the Piscean experience also brought forth the great Humanistic ideals of self-control and self-reliance. The Piscean experience produced the divine and unique individual who is capable of self-mastery, self-responsibility, and ultimately, self-surrender or surrender to the Greater Life which his or her highly focused and one-pointed intellect finally reveals. The keynotes of Pisces are

bondage, renunciation, and sacrifice. Although God is not quite through with him, Jonah does get himself out of the whale.

The United States is just over two hundred years old. As the existence of the poor and hungry, the disenfranchised, the separated, the underclass indicates, much remains to be accomplished. However, only a blind person would fail to see the tremendous strides we have made in the arena of human relations, in the spread of human freedom and equality.

In that relatively short period of two hundred years, self-conscious individuals who recognized the fact of the One Humanity and the value of the individual have caused a democracy, an idea conceived at the very outset of the Piscean Age in Greece twenty five hundred years ago, to be established on the planet. And, while successfully resisting several concentrated efforts engineered by the forces of retrogression to destroy this democracy, these men and women have actually caused democracy to proliferate until it is the primary ideology of government on the globe. These individuals, strong, self-conscious men and women who have recognized their connection to the whole and have devoted, indeed, in many cases sacrificed, their lives for it, are the glory of the Piscean experience.

It has long been said that the Kingdom of Heaven can be entered only through the “eye of the needle.”

Passing though the eye of the needle must be a self-conscious and deliberate act. Only the highly developed, self-conscious individual can know what is needed in the surrender that allows one to pass through the eye of the needle. During the Pisces passage, the development of self-consciousness to this high point has prepared untold millions of souls for the next step on the Path of Return.

The great success of the Piscean ideology has brought humanity en masse in the intervening twenty five hundred years to the point where we have actually started the construction of the bridge of synthesis which we like to call the Antahkarana between humanity and Hierarchy, between the Fourth and Fifth Kingdoms. This is the bridge over which the "adventuring disciples" of Aquarius will move the new "ideological concepts which deal with wholes and which militate against division, separation and isolation" into the range of humanity's planners.

In the sacrifice of the self to the larger Life, the long night of the ideology of exclusivity, limitation and separation, finally gives way to the breaking day of an ideological presentation of love and group consciousness, the Aquarian ideology of wholes, of unity and abundance, an ideology of pure reason.

I know that there was a period during the Piscean Age which historians call the Age of Reason. The reason of that age was, for the most part, based on intellect and self-consciousness. However, it was a great age that gave us the political genius of Elizabeth, the immortal literary works of Shakespeare, Donne, and Cervantes, the art of Rembrandt and Rubens, and the insight of Galileo, Francis Bacon, Montaigne, and eventually, Rene Descartes.

In the Aquarian Age, humanity will continue to move from self-consciousness to group consciousness and from intellect to intuition. Aquarius will be a new age of reason, a pure reason based on intuition or Love which is, after all, what pure reason is.

Here I want to make a few summarizing remarks about what I call the ideology of reason, and to mention what I think some of the potential impacts of this new ideology will be on life in this new age. Reason is harmony, cooperation, coherence. Reason is what is right in right relations. Reason is the energy which holds things in right relation, which keeps the planets from colliding. Absence of reason, as I have said on other occasions, is chaos.

Pure reason, as we are told, is Love. It is instant and perfect comprehension of causes. Pure reason is not 'A." Pure reason is not "B," not the Father and not the Mother. Pure reason is that which relates "A" to "B," which gives "A' and "B" existence and meaning. Intellect studies "A" and "B" to discover how they relate.

Pure reason knows already if "A" and "B" relate; pure reason is why, and it knows itself. Does this sound like intuition? It is supposed to.

Intuition, love, and pure reason are synonymous. When one says, "I love you," and really does, one is saying, "I pure reason you," or "I intuit you," or, as Michael in The Stranger from a Strange Land said, "I grock you." That is, “I understand instantly and perfectly where you are, why you are where you are, and what, if anything, is out of harmony in your relationship pattern." As Morya pointed out, "The measure of understanding is the degree of Love." Love understands. Wisdom reveals the way to help. Service, an expenditure of Will, is putting Love/Wisdom into action.

Pure reason reveals to men and women that they are the other. What appears to be separated and alien is dissolved in the fight of pure reason, and men see that they, in fact, are brothers. When man “A" considers woman “B" in the light of pure reason, he discovers that he is she. Pure reason reveals the bridge that is there, the common ground or good that exists.

Let us remember, however, that Love does not do anything; it enables or makes possible the doing because Love sees all, knows all, and Love is motivational. If one truly loves, one will care, but the doing is Will.

I leave it to our meditations, to our imaginations, to the dreamers and visionaries among us to continue the formulations of the towers of Aquarian life on this planet. I simply say, in your imagining, in your visioning, be bold, be daring, for there is nothing that Love cannot conceive and Wisdom build if disciples have the Will and the courage to serve.

Loving Us

All of us who practice discipleship as a way of life know that the primary instruction which flows from the inner Master is to love all beings. This would of course include ourselves, and we have all heard over and over again the injunction that before we can love anyone else we need to love ourselves. This is one of the simplest yet deepest of esoteric truths. It is also one of the most misunderstood.

Many of us, including many among those who are attempting to walk the Path of discipleship, already love what we assume to be ourselves very much. Most of us, deeply and intensely identified with our own separate physical bodies, literally think that we are these physical bodies. In a great many cases this identification with our dense physical self expands to include all of the aspects of that self such as our personal possessions—we know how young men love their cars as if they were themselves—our emotional and mental bodies and even our immediate physical environment what we might call our aura. Thus we speak of our personal space and do not like to have it “violated.”

Generally speaking, this mental, emotional and dense physical manifestation of ourselves is the self we love. What characterizes this sense of self is separation. Who we are on any of the three planes I mentioned is determined by who we are not. The thoughts and emotions of others, we say, are not our

thoughts and emotions. Their body is not our body. Their car is not our car. And so it goes all the way up to the nation or country. The race, culture, language or religion of others is not our nation or country and so forth.

Inherent within all of this, of course, is that our sense of self-worth is dependent on how we compare ourselves with others. If we want to be good or fine, beautiful, smart, then we find that our thoughts, emotions, body, nation, culture, race, religion need to be and are superior to the thoughts, emotions, culture, language and so forth of others.

This love affair with the separated self, at whatever level, is, as most esotericists know, not a new situation.

Fostered, developed and fed by the Lords of Desire through the generation of their intent in The Great Lie or the Great Illusion of Separation, it has been going on for many thousands of years.

As a result we are being blinded to the reality of the One Life by the illusion of separation. The very basis of the Great Lie is that to matter, to have any value, one must love one’s self to the exclusion of all other selves or beings. As we have seen over the millenniums, this frame of self-focused reference works out in systems, programs, and practices, that are based not only on the exclusive love of the separated self but on the actual opposition to others, both humans and Mother Nature Herself. This single fact is behind a particular, horrendously brutal and bloody, chapter of our history on Mother Earth, referred to in the esoteric lore as the Kali Yuga or Dark Age. We all know of the present deadly and awful conditions in various parts of the world, Darfur and Iraq to name just two of the current places of sorrow and death. Simultaneously with this ongoing carnage there is, in the so called “developed countries,” an observable new high in the mad dash after the material fruits of self-love or gratification. A “New World Order” fostered and maintained by the International Corporations which make up what is called the Military Industrial Complex is upon us.

The Military Industrial Complex, by the way, is simply the newest face in an eons-long line of faces which the Forces of Retrogression don to mask their presence within our midst. The Plan of this International Corporate cabal for a New World Order seems to be to establish a worldwide, exclusive and frenzied consumer civilization with only the slightest concern for the environmental condition of the planet in the midst of an eternal global war.

However, and thank God, this is not the entire picture. There is in the middle of all of this a multitude of signs that give great hope and which have engendered among those with the eyes to see a profound optimism. Contrary to the apparent state of world affairs, it is clear to the close observer that the Forces of Light have achieved a balance in the struggle for the minds and hearts of humanity. I do not have time in this piece to enumerate at length these signs; however, they are clearly present in every compartment of life. They can be seen in the advances in virtually all departments of science: math, physics, medicine and technology. They are visible in the shift in education from the one-size-fits-all vision to the recognition of the innate value and uniqueness of each child, the advances in healing the environment, including the global warming issue, and what is developing into an amazing shift in the world’s political systems. These are all indicators of the opening of humanity’s heart and the emerging Christ consciousness.

It seems clear that the scale has passed the tipping point. The momentum is with us, and the trend is very much in favor of the triumph, at long, long last, of the Light. As we have been assured by Master M., “We know the course of the battle—the Plan of the Creator cannot be altered. From the Beginning the dark ones struggled. From the Beginning We conquered.”

The close observers of the current scene on Planet Earth tell us the Kali Yuga is drawing to a close. The Dark Ones are being compelled to withdraw. Their ticket has been punched. Their time is over. The door where evil dwells is being finally and firmly shut.

Although they lack the flamboyance and the access to major media outlets which are mostly owned or controlled by the forces of darkness, it does appear that the lovers of humanity who also love the One Self are making the long hoped and looked for progress. The internet which is open and free to all and is by far the most powerful communication system ever seen on the dense physical plane of Earth is rapidly offsetting the power of the major media outlets controlled almost totally by those in opposition to the Light. Moment by moment all over the world, the ancient phrase, “the truth will out” is being demonstrated on hundreds of millions of computer monitors and cell phone screens.

In addition, every day, new, unforeseen pathways in communication and interconnection are opening.

Blogging, Skype, and podcasting are examples. People who are literally continents and poles apart and who have never seen one another are communicating with each other on a daily basis. Information is changing minds faster and more completely than is realized or understood.

These new light speed connections are revealing the common ground upon which all people stand. They are generating realization and understanding regarding the reality of our essential unity, of our brotherhood, of the One Humanity. We are coming to the point of understanding and literally feeling that when a man or woman or child dies of hunger or is killed by the insanity called war, regardless of where that happens, that child is our child, that mother is our wife or mother, or sister, that father is our husband or father or brother.

The world, friends has become a very, very small place. It was written that in the end all things would be revealed. Focused as we were on humanity’s dark and dire history, never did we think, at least never did I think that among the things that would be revealed would be the shining star of our commonality, our deep and abiding love for one another, the facts of the One Humanity and the intrinsic, essential value of every single individual.

Thus, the unstoppable and irreversible unfolding of these new interconnections and communication pathways are creating, in the esoteric sense of this phrase, an atomic fusion in the consciousness of humanity. We are truly and literally becoming the One Humanity and One World.

Furthermore, these changes are occurring with a speed that is astonishing. For example, more people worldwide read, hear, and see information regarding our political systems and elections here in the United States via non-corporate controlled and owned internet connections than was imaginable five years ago.

This situation will only increase as the months go by. The level of the Light, that is good and true information, will drive out the darkness of lies and quarter-truths. To me the use of the “air waves” (think of the astrological sign for Aquarius) and electronic media for this release of Truth is a significant aspect of the reappearance of the Christ. It was said, as I recall, that He would come on the wings of the air, or something like that. Once we can move beyond the notion that Christ is a mere body or form needing to be transported around in airplanes or whatever to the realization that He is a Living Idea, it becomes easy to see His reappearance everywhere.

Also intrinsic in this particular phenomenon is the revelation concerning the new consciousness, group consciousness that is beginning to impact and strongly affect the actions of separative individuals including separative nations. The day when an individual or a nation, any nation, can act as a selfish, separate and

irresponsible entity is rapidly drawing to a close. The power of the people is a phrase that is actually beginning to mean something.

With greater and greater rapidity, these developments are bringing to the light of consciousness the ancient truth regarding the self. They are revealing to many, many millions, perhaps even billions, of people that one’s true self is perhaps not the separated personality or physical body with which they have been identified these many years, but some deeper more subtle aspect of themselves.

People, the world over, are beginning to sense some other aspect of their being, some deeper kernel of consciousness, some sense of belonging, some sense of connection and some feeling of brotherhood with others. Eventually there occurs a shift, a deep realization, an epiphany of the fact of the One Life. Out of this springs a profound sense of optimism, of empathy and oneness with one’s brothers and sisters.

In this process, we begin to understand the ancient injunction that to love anyone else we must first love ourselves. The Self we love is the self that we find within and also reflected in everyone around us. And here we begin to understand that other injunction, “with self-forgetfulness we gather what we need for the helping of our fellow [beings].” We shift our love from the old consciousness of the separated self to the One Self. We begin to be able to see, and in a multitude of other ways, sense not that which separates us but that which unites us, the common ground of our Truth.

Loving ourselves, in this sense, takes on a very different meaning. It means that we see ourselves perhaps for the first time as we really are. We see our whole self, not just the self-conscious aspect but the super, and sub conscious aspects of the One Self. Now, we are able to see our self as a part of a larger self, a part of humanity. We begin to realize that a great many of our behaviors and actions, both as individuals and as the One Humanity, have been based on an illusion concerning the nature of reality. We begin to understand that our separativeness, our exclusivity and selfishness were based on surviving in a false reality. We began to see that we live in a world of abundance rather than lack, that we do not have to hoard, or steal. We do not, in a word, have to compete for life with others. We begin to see that these modes of seeing and the resulting behaviors are not necessary and are, in fact, destructive and harmful to those we love, including our personal self.

Right here is where loving the self, the individual self, becomes very important. Most of us actually, deep down, are not that fond of ourselves. Most of us have thought, felt and done things, if not in this life then in an earlier incarnation, which we loath, about which we are deeply ashamed, and for which we hate ourselves. We tend to keep these things bundled up and buried in some dark and secret place. In some of the esoteric lore, this bundle of regrets and self-loathing is referred to as the “stone of hate.” It lies in the deepest pit of most everyone of us.

Everyone, of course, has heard of the great magicians of the Middle Ages whom we call the Gnostics. Some of these great magicians, we are told in the ancient lore, discovered the secret of Transmutation, the secret of transmuting lead into gold. Many, many is the number of people who tried to unravel the secret formulae for this miracle. Men of great intellect and endless energy spent their entire lives in endless alchemical experimentations trying to create the miracle of Transmutation.

The vast majority of them, of course, failed. The primary reason for their failure was that even though the formulae for transmutation lay right in front of their eyes, they were not able to see the truth which they were seeking. And the reason they could not discover the formulae was that they were lost in the Great Lie generated and fed by the Lords of Desire, The Illusion of Separation.

They sought gold rather than Truth. They simply did not, could not see the true gold, the simple fact that life was One. Thus, they could not see the Great Magician, The Philosopher’s Stone, whom we know as the Soul and Who is the Wielder of the Secret of Transmutation.

We understand now that hate is the darkest, densest, heaviest stuff there is. We know that this dark force corrupts the Light and spoils much of our life with grief, pain, guilt and suffering. This stone of hate is the base metal that the Soul alone can transmute into radiant gold.

And Love, friends, Love, the essential quality of the Soul, is the secret, the real secret, the elixir that transmutes the lead of separation and hate into the gold of living energy.

Well, bigger is better. On a planetary level, visualize the planet buried, immersed and interpenetrated for hundreds of thousands of years in the dark veils of the Plan of the Lords of Desire, their Great Lie of Separation. This situation is humanity’s base metal, our stone of hate. We can see that as the level of Love and the corresponding realization of our essential divinity and brotherhood grows, it releases a radiant Light that is actually shredding and destroying the veils of the Great Lie. This is not science fiction or fantasy, friends. This is just simple scientific fact. The process works like this: as we go about the business of our daily lives, and remember that there are about six billion of us now, this process of transmutation goes forward. Every kind and loving thought, feeling, and act on the part of every one of those six billion radiates the energy of Love into the etheric network of the planet.

As we face and transmute our own fears and self-hates by shinning the light of understanding love and forgiveness on them, we release within ourselves the light that has been blocked, impounded or trapped by our self-hate. With each small understanding and loving forgiveness, our subsequent radiation becomes more and more powerful. As we move through our daily lives, performing small acts of kindness and radiating goodwill and cheer into our environments and our other selves, our brothers and sisters, our fellow humans of whatever culture, color, language, religion, we are destroying the veils of separation that feed and support the Lords of Desire.

In addition, our radiation actually penetrates the darkness surrounding our brothers and sisters and creates a kind of chain reaction within their systems. Thus we speed up the process of transmutation for each other. This accounts for the explosive growth of group consciousness, the New Consciousness, and the resultant worldwide demands for peace and right human relations which we are seeing today.

The radiation of Love does not stop with just our fellow humans; it goes forward into the lower three kingdoms, penetrating every atom of our surroundings. Eventually we will learn to live life etherically. We will move through our environments like radioactive atoms emitting living rays of loving truth.

This is the science behind the statement in the New Testament that “the shadow of Peter passing by healed.” And this, friends, on a worldwide scale that includes every aspect of every Kingdom on every plane and the entire Devic Kingdom as well, a planet engulfed, immersed, swimming in a sea of Divine Love, is the big picture of what we have been calling the New Evolution Impulse. This is the reappearing Christ. It is the hope of Glory in the Aquarian Age.