PP 297537/00068
PO Box 627
Caringbah NSW 1495
Tel: (02) 9540 2391
Fax: (02) 9524 0025
www.sydneygoodwill.org.au

No 173 / May 2001

Dear Friends,

Many comments are made, both in personal conversation and public media, about the apparent human appetite for sensationalism. There appears to be a hunger for excitement, for stimulation - for the "adrenalin rush" of a real or vicarious sense of crisis, of life and death meeting at a point of intensity and tension. The experience has always been a part of the instinctual response to crisis where a more real sense of proportion takes over consciousness to assist with right decision in the moment. A sharpened sense of awareness, of being more alive and with all faculties heightened and energised, a sense of time and space being completely contained in the moment are reported by the adventure seekers - whether bungy-jumping, parachuting, riding rapids, surfing or whether vicariously experiencing this through film and the mechanisms of virtual reality.

In all this there is an instinctive urge towards - and shift into - a consciousness beyond the ordinary experience. This shift is being consciously sought and even contrived. The human family is more conscious of significant moments in its life and is more purposeful in bringing those moments about. In general we are aware of more things at stake in the immediate moment. In the past, great moments have more often been recognised in retrospect but the new human consciousness is becoming sensitive in the moment - and we are poised at a mighty turning point in human history. Much has been said over the last few years about the various cycles coming together with the new year, decade, century and millennium turning as one. But, more than that, is the in pouring of the energy of a new age and a new cycle of human living and growth for which the past has been merely preparatory.

What is so different now is that all dimensions of human existence, from the most subtle and spiritual to the most concrete and worldly, recognise and know the moment within their various capacities. Not only is there unity of perception but it is a perception of a more expanded significance. The in-pouring energies are met not by rare individual receptivity but by a unified expectancy (however it may manifest from one to another) thus making the moment unique and powerful indeed. An unprecedented potency is pouring into the planetary life, an unprecedented expectancy is meeting it (indeed has even demanded it) and a conscious awareness unprecedented in our history is recognising the moment as it is happening.

The human kingdom as a whole is in process of a pivotal shift - not only a growth step, as in the past preparatory ages, but an almost complete change of identity, purpose and direction. We have seen the signs emerging since the end of the second world war with the rise in the great humanitarian movements, the recognition of the old materialistic values which must give way, the intensification and crystallisation of the last authoritarian processes and governments, the recognition of an interdependent world economy and political structure slowly finding the right forms through "the little wills of men". We can see these signs in the past when we look from a point of understanding. We can also see these signs in the present moment if we look from outside of the daily events. But, perhaps more significantly, we can see the unfolding future direction if we approach it unencumbered by any past conditioning, for it is a totally new period of human living.

"Behold I make all things new" - in our true, eternal, spiritual identity unconstrained by any forms, structures, words or practices of the past, though these have served to discipline and to still the distractions of the lower nature so that we may "have the eyes to see" a new reality. The new moment is no longer backward looking onto knowledge of the past, is no longer defining identity through past achievements (a curriculum vitae or resume of the past). We cannot incorporate the new into the old forms and ways of thinking but must come empty-handed and unencumbered so that we build the new life expression out of the ashes of the old. Yet it is still the one Life expressing and only our past inappropriate forms are released to be made anew. Humanity, the world disciple, is approaching the great confrontation, and then identification with, reality but cannot see until the scales of the past identification fall from our eyes. As the Tibetan Master, Djwhal Khul, describes it:
"The disciple knows or is learning to know that he is not this or that, but Life Itself. He is not the physical body or its emotional nature; he is not, in the last analysis, . . the mind or that by which he knows. He is learning that that too must be transcended and superseded by intelligent love, . . and he begins to realise himself as the soul. Then, later, comes that awful 'moment in time' when, pendant in space, he discovers that he is not the soul. What then is he? A point of divine, dynamic will, focussed in the soul and arriving at awareness of Being through the use of form. He is Will, the ruler of time and the organiser, in time, of space. This he does, but ever with the reservation that time and space are the 'divine playthings' and can be used or not at will.
. . The evocation of the will involves identity with the larger purpose. The little will of the little lives must be merged in the larger will of the whole. Individual purpose must be identified with group purpose, which is as much of the purpose of the Whole or the One Life as the little life can grasp at any given point in time and space. . . In the long run, literally when the path of evolution is trodden to its end, what remains will be the divine purpose and the all-enveloping Life as it materialises the plan in time and space. . . In the meantime, the human being is first of all driven by desire, then by aspiration towards some visioned goal, then by his selfish will, which reveals to him the nature of the will: persistent application to some purpose, seen as desirable and to which every power is bent. Having exhausted all tangible goals, the inner life forces the man on towards the intangible, and the quality of his will begins to change. He discovers a larger will than his own and begins slowly to identify himself with it, proceeding stage by stage from one realised purpose to another higher one, each step removing him further from his own so-called will and bringing him nearer to an appreciation of the divine will or purpose.
. . by the carrying out of the plan the disciple learns the nature of the purpose, but that the purpose itself can only be grasped by one who is developing monadic consciousness. Monadic consciousness is not consciousness as human beings understand it, but is that state of apprehension which is not consciousness or realisation, as the mystic feels it, or identification, as the occultist terms it, but something that appears when all of these three are appreciated and registered in a moment of time within the orbit of space."

The Buddha and the Christ have shown that we cannot experience the new phase of revelation in the old symbols but must approach it "empty-handed", laying aside perceived individual limitations. As a group and with that larger identification, previous limitations cease to exist: "The group stimulation and the united effort sweep the entire group to an intensity of realisation that would otherwise be impossible." We are part of the great Hierarchy of Life and while we may face decision at our own point in this great enterprise, all the ranks of the human spirit are likewise - together and as one great group - moving on in life expression through their decision:

As the Tibetan describes: "Disciples can . . dimly sense the nature of the Transfiguration which characterises them, from the hierarchical point of view, and the Masters can also dimly sense the nature of the decision with which They are faced. It is this preparatory sensitivity in the disciple which produces true perception at all the various initiatory stages." And of those ranked beyond our experience: "decision is made through the development of that higher sensitivity which leads inevitably to cosmic perception. We have no adequate word for this quality or type of sensitivity. For it is not something which we can consciously understand, nor is it a form of conscious reaction; neither is it awareness as we use that term. It has been occultly defined as something akin to 'immersion in a realised state of Being,' because the initiate is a conscious aspect of that of which he forms an integral part."
* * * * * *