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

No 196/April 2003

Dear Friends,

As we watch the events unfolding in the world many are pondering on what the real barriers are to world peace in this new age that we are entering. We have previously interpreted the "barriers in men's minds" not so much in terms of the mind but in visible external forms such as differences of geographic location, of trade specialisation, of social, cultural and religious forms. Under the influence of an old way of thinking, unifications were attempted through colonisation and conversion but these brought only the suppression of true unity by imposing a common appearance on the diversity of the one life we share.

The underlying truth could not be suppressed, however, and the great interaction of peoples and cultures brought about not the conversion to sameness or the suppression of differences but instead a revelation of the astounding diversity of expression of the human spirit and also its common inspiration and needs - the one spirit and the one realm of substance with which to express that spirit. So we have been finding our common humanity, our common needs and the common reservoir of resources on which we draw to fulfill them. It is the same well of Life that sustains all and it is the resilience of the human spirit that persists through to this truth.

Yet we are still grappling with the commonality of our inheritance. Just as in the grieving process relatives may vie for a piece of the material possessions of the loved one who has passed on, there has been a grasping at pieces of the truth in a desperate search for meaning, for a sense of the purpose behind living. The answers are not found in the external forms or in the world of appearances but in the world of oneness which it is humanity's role to know, express and reveal.

For this reason humanity also has access to the power of destruction - but its true use is in the breaking down of the barriers to the realisation of reality or of the oneness of Life in its many expressions. When we are living that reality the true role of the human kingdom becomes possible - we become the key agents in the resurrection of matter into its right relationship as an aspect of Spirit. And at this time of the Easter Festival, the festival of the risen, living Christ, it is appropriate to recall the words of the Tibetan Master, Djwhal Khul:

"resurrection has been applied in many cases to the resurrection of the body; it is also applied to the fact (the selfishly motivated wish) of immortality; it is applied also to the physical resurrection of the Christ after he supposedly died upon the Cross. Resurrection teaches essentially the "lifting up" of matter into heaven; it does not teach the eternal persistence of the physical body of a man, . . . it does teach the "livingness of Life" and the state of "unalterable Being". This unalterable Being constitutes the nature of the Monad, and it is to this condition of awareness that Christ attained when He functioned as a World Saviour and thereby guaranteed, by the force of His achievement as a personality-soul, the same point of achievement for us, for we are equally and essentially sons of the Father or expressions of the Monad, the One. It does not, however, signify the resurrection of some personality in a particular vehicle used in a particular incarnation."

The forces of destruction are powerful indeed but these too ultimately must be subject to the realisation of our essential unity. In the past our limited progress along Life's way has led us to distort the truths placed before us. Thus the demonstrations of great Teachers have brought illumination but always through the filter of mankind's point of understanding. We have been told that when the Christ reappears:

"He will not come . . as a conquering hero . . for that would certainly fail to identify Him and He would be simply classed as another military figure; of them we have had a plethora; . . He belongs to
the whole world and no . . people have special rights or unique privileges or may claim Him as their own; He will not come to convert the "heathen" world for, in the eyes of the Christ and His true disciples, no such world exists and the so-called heathen have demonstrated historically less of the evil of vicious conflict than has the militant Christian world. . . . When He came before He said: "I come not to bring peace but a sword." (Matthew X:34). . . The sword which He wields is the sword of the Spirit; it is the sword which produces cleavages between a true spirituality and an habitual materialism. The major effect of His appearance will surely be to demonstrate in every land the effects of a spiritual inclusiveness - an inclusiveness which will be channeled or expressed through Him. . . all who see no true difference between religion and religion or between man and man or nation and nation will rally round Him; those who embody the spirit of exclusiveness and separateness will stand automatically equally revealed and all men will know them for what they are. The cleaving sword of the spirit will - without wounding - bring revelation and indicate the first needed step towards human regeneration."

And so, paradoxically perhaps, unity is revealed through discrimination or the separation between the true and the not true, between the real unity of life and the false distinctions and exclusions placed on it by a partial view or by identification with some temporary form or other as superior to others. At the same time we recognise the part played by these illusions we have created in demonstrating the unreal and revealing it for what it is.

Our expanding awareness breaks through the barriers to reality stage by stage. We emerge from the realm of desire-directed form life and eventually find ourselves, with the Christ, in the kingdom of God - no longer pushed and pulled through the conflicting reactions of pleasure and pain but responding to the reality of the whole and its underlying purpose. And this we do with free will, as sons of God, liberated from the fears and desires of materially focused living. This is the true freedom - freedom from want and from wanting.

Because we are not separate Christ's resurrection draws us all through the possibilities that Love presents. He undertook to dispel illusion by drawing to himself (by the attractive potency of love) the hearts of all men, and stated this determination in the words: "I if I be lifted up, will draw all men unto me" (John XII:32). The effect opens the door to our realisation - our becoming who we really are - it is a door in consciousness. This shared life and responsibility (or responsiveness to central purpose) is reflected also in the prediction: "Greater things shall ye do". And as this truth becomes externalised in the world we find the potency of the sharing means that we make revelation together.

And at this amazing moment in time we are witness to the illumination of the human mind as millions of thinking men and women take responsibility to think through the issues of peace and peaceful living, as they think from the perspective of a shared life and its resources and wonder at the huge investment from the past in the destruction of life through the last desperate attempts to shore up the barriers in thinking, feeling and identity that they now know do not exist. They begin to usher in the new age of universality while the remaining representatives of the age of authority demonstrate their obsolescence. As defined so beautifully in the enclosed statement for the "Share the Spirit of Peace" summit, peace is an idea whose time has come.

The growing potency of the thinking public around the world indicates "the wonder of the divinity which is in man and the success of the divine plan for humanity" as the Tibetan wrote in the 1940's. "Divinity, however, awaits the expression of man's free will; his intelligence and his growth in goodwill are already being expressed." We are now, in 2003, seeing free will being expressed by millions around the world. He spoke then of "that period which will surely come in which an enlightened people will rule; these people will not tolerate authoritarianism in any church or totalitarianism in any political system; they will not accept or permit the rule of any body of men who undertake to tell them what they must believe in order to be saved or what government they must accept. When the people are told the truth and when they can freely judge and decide for themselves, we shall then see a much better world." So, together, we bring about the resurrection of the planetary life and all that it sustains.