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

No 208/May 2004

Dear Friends,
The pull of nostalgia, the yearning back to "better times", and the pull of an anxious looking forward to a "better" future and an end to the current trials and tensions - both of these pulls draw us out of the momentary and temporary identity. Together these illusions help to expand the scope of who we are through time. While both are fraught with glamours and illusions that blur the truth and distract us, still the underlying tensions they create draw us inexorably out of the lesser part and into the greater whole.

Our sense of place and geographical location also is expanding as we live in one place, work in another and take vacation anywhere in the world. Even the work "place" is expansive as each individual's area of operation and impact is spread over larger and larger distances often involving physical travel as well as virtual movement and communication transporting our sense of identity instantly to anywhere in the world or indeed the universe. The pace of the expansion process has increased rapidly as instant communication, any time and any place, is available via mobile phone or cell phone - perhaps evocative of how we each form a cell within a vast interconnected organism of living, dynamic relationship.

So we move through time and space virtually at will, and we learn that it's not the things, the forms themselves, which initiate, drive and motivate but it is what pervades them - what flows through them - that directs. The principle movement throughout the whole of creation as we know it is a constant flow through. The material world reflects this - food moves through us, air moves through us, blood flows through us, thoughts flow through the mind, feelings flow through our emotional response mechanism. The attempt to possess and hold has only temporary effect. We move through time and space but who are we if the material aspects are constantly changing? What is the point of identity in this vast flow of life?

Down through the ages man has learned to settle and create his world from out of his own centre - to intensify and focus his energies. So far this has been applied to the temporary and material world and great centres have arisen, ruled and fallen. What persists is a sense of spirit and an inherent need for spiritual "belonging" and identity - as demonstrated in the "Spirit of Anzac", shared with previous foes as both a commemoration and a celebration of a deeper sense of human identity. This continues through the millennia, moving through deeper and deeper levels of awareness as man evolves through the dimensions and takes dominion over them. But to do this he too expands. As he approaches the centre of the great wheel of life flowing continuously through all - cycling and recycling - he learns that is his true "place". He learns, as the Tibetan Master describes,

"… 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 (only truly possible after the mind has been developed), and he begins to realise himself as the soul. Then, later, comes the 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 in 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.

… All that remains is a point of light. This point is conscious, immutable and aware of the two extremes of the divine expression: the sense of individual identity and the sense of universality. These are fused and blended in the ONE. … no difference is recognised between these two because … it is realised that there is no identity apart from universality and no appreciation of the universal apart from the individual realisation, and this realisation of identification with both the part and the whole finds its point of tension in the will-to-be, which is qualified by the will-to-good and developed by the will-to-know. …

Such is the destiny of the race. Such is our essential identity from which comes the strength, the will and the living flow of relationship which enables us to walk through the shadows but not be contaminated by them, to be "in the world but not of the world", to be a "spiritual being having a human experience rather than a human being having a spiritual experience". The well-known and loved psalm affirms: "Though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil; for thou art with me; thy rod and thy staff they comfort me. … Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life: and I will dwell in the house of the Lord forever."

The Tibetan adjures all world servers to "regard the Ashram (the spiritual centre, the "house of the Lord") more definitely as a place of spiritual enveloping … to regard it as a circle of protection, remembering that if their consciousness can escape into the Ashram, they are in a place of complete safety where naught can reach or hurt them. Neither pain nor anxiety can overwhelm the man who dwells in the consciousness of eternity; this sense of the eternal, coupled with the realisation of essential unity, marks all dwellers in an Ashram … a sphere of focussed awareness where the minds, the love, the aspiration and spiritual consciousness of many meet, and meet in truth."

We are told that: "Every cyclic Representative of Deity furthers the approach of the (spiritual) Hierarchy to mankind, and seals this service by some final act which becomes the historical nucleus whereby later generations remember Him" and that there have been "many such histories of sacrifice and service, dating far back into the very night of time". The Buddha and many others have built that great line of living contact that unites us all through time and space and provides the incentive for the great cyclic appearances. We never work or walk alone. The revelation in which we are engaged is the revelation of oneness, and nothing else. It is everywhere present if we have the eyes to see it. Its emergence into view comes via our every experience in the world.

The Bible tells us that the Christ will come in the air and that He will bring the "healing of the nations in His wings". In His wings is the growing realisation of humanity that we are at one with Him and with all life. It is a revelation in human consciousness, an expansion, that is in process now and will work out in a conscious commitment to the great spiritual forces working through the world - irrespective of race, culture, religion or political ideology. These forces do not comply with man's arbitrary categories. They flow through any and all barriers we care to define. Deity is greater than any human concept of it in time and space. Definitive interpretations of Deity provide a breeding ground for prejudice - where the many are judged on the actions of a few under the imposed authority of a few. The new era is one of universality and the unity of the human spirit across all illusory barriers. The Age of Authority is passing as mankind finds the spiritual wellspring within himself because he realises who he is.

The Buddha and the Christ unitedly prepare for the coming of the Avatar who waits and already influences the momentous changes being wrought through our world. We are told that the Christ "will again come as the World Saviour, but owing to the stupendous nature of the work ahead, He will be fortified and buttressed by the 'silent Avatar' Who will 'keep His eye upon Him, His hand beneath, and His heart in unison with His'." Thus are we called - together and as one - to keep our hearts in unison with His.

Into the future, which already is beyond the elongation of time and space, the Avatar will make His appearance. Then, as an ancient prophecy indicates, will the …

"Sons of men who are the sons of God withdraw Their faces from the shining light and radiate that light upon the sons of men who know not yet they are the sons of God. Then shall the Coming One appear, His footsteps hastened through the valley of the shadow by the One of awful power Who stands upon the mountain top, breathing out love eternal, light supernal and peaceful silent Will.
"Then will the sons of men respond. Then will a newer light shine forth into the dismal weary vale of earth. Then will new life course through the veins of men, and then will their vision compass all the ways of what may be.
"So peace will come again on earth, but a peace unlike aught known before. Then will the will-to-good flower forth as understanding, and understanding blossom as goodwill in men."