Dear Friends,
We watch national
and world affairs unfolding and eventually revealing the truth, however
long it may have been concealed. It becomes increasingly clear that
all is ultimately seen and assessed in the light of that truth. And
it is the growth of human understanding that is seeing through the
outer distortions to the inner motivations and the essential causes
behind outer happenings. Increasingly we are drawn to address causes
rather than being lost in the great diversity of symptoms and effects,
and increasingly we take shared responsibility for the causes behind
world problems. Such is the power of reality that just recognition
of it is sufficient to unleash all the forces needed for resolution.
The media provides
a window into the process as, for example, we watch the analysis of
the decision to invade Iraq or Lebanon and the outcomes produced.
A politician speaks in one country and reaction or response is heard
from many others. A heart is moved by the plight of helpless people
and a documentary series brings the issues to public attention - even
if the public response takes time and many attempts to awaken it,
the goodwill of the people eventually takes effect. Nothing is without
impact within the whole of the planetary life. It requires only time
for growth in understanding.
The truth as it
reveals itself is always simpler, larger and more profound than any
previous grasp of it we may have. If we listen with an open heart
we can begin to apprehend it, as we constantly expand and enter into
new dimensions and new wonders. By its nature truth already IS but
our developing perception pierces the veils of earlier limitations
and so progressively reveals more and still more of the greater reality.
It is our own expanding awareness that "creates" revelation.
It is that "something" within us, the inner urge or magnetic
pull, that draws us onward - the magnetic essence which is "Christ
in you, the hope of Glory".
There are many
little "revelations" which stream into consciousness almost
unnoticed until the immense power and sweep of their significance
within the greater reality breaks like a wondrous dawn on our silent
awe. The revelation is, and always has been, everywhere present. It
awaits only our realisation, beyond the obvious and conditioned world
view, of the living impulse behind all things. In the latest translation
of the Corpus Hermeticum (from millennia before the modern religions)
Hermes is instructed by the essence of spirit:
" …
All is within God; but not as if lying in a place. For a place is
not only a body, but an immovable body, and what lies in a place
has no motion. Within God everything lies in bodiless imagination.
Think of Him who contains it all. There is nothing to limit the
incorporeal, there is nothing quicker or more powerful. It is absolutely
without limit, the quickest and most powerful of all.
Consider this
yourself. Command your soul to go anywhere, and it will be there
quicker than your command. Bid it to go to the ocean and again it
is there at once, not as if it had gone from place to place but
was already there. Order it to fly up to heaven and it will need
no wings, nor will anything impede it, neither the fire nor the
sun, nor the ether, nor the whirlwind, nor the other heavenly bodies,
but cutting through them all it will soar up to the last body. And
if you wish to break through all this and to contemplate what is
beyond (if there is anything beyond the cosmos), it is in your power.
See what power
you have and what speed! … Reflect on God in this way as having
all within Himself as ideas: the cosmos, Himself, the whole. If
you do not make yourself equal with God you cannot understand Him.
Like is understood by like. Grow to immeasurable size. Be free from
every body, transcend all time. Become eternity and thus you will
understand God. Suppose nothing to be impossible for yourself. Consider
yourself immortal and able to understand everything: all arts, sciences
and the nature of every living creature. Become higher than all
heights and lower than all depths. Sense as one within yourself
the entire creation: fire, water, the dry and the moist. Conceive
yourself to be in all places at the same time: in earth, in the
sea, in heaven; that you are not yet born, that you are within the
womb, that you are young, old, dead; that you are beyond death.
Conceive all things at once: times, places, actions, qualities and
quantities; then you can understand God.
But if you lock
up your soul in your body, abase it and say: 'I understand nothing;
I can do nothing; I am afraid of the sea; I cannot reach heaven;
I do not know who I was nor who I shall be.' What have you to do
with God? For you cannot perceive anything beautiful or good while
you are attached to the body and are evil. For the greatest evil
is to ignore what belongs to God. To be able to know and to will
and to hope is the straight and easy way appropriate to each that
will lead to the Supreme Good. When you take that road this Good
will meet you everywhere and will be experienced everywhere, even
where and when you do not expect it; when awake, asleep, in a ship,
on the road, by night, by day, when speaking and when silent, for
there is nothing which it is not."
Among those attempts
to convey the indescribable moment of revelation is this by Paramahansa
Yogananda:
Vanished
the veils of light and shade,
Lifted every vapour of sorrow,
Sailed away all dawns of fleeting joy,
Gone the dim sensory mirages.
Love, hate, health, disease, life, death:
Perished these false shadows on the screen of duality.
The storm of maya stilled
By magic wand of intuition deep.
Present, past future, no more for me,
But ever-present, all-flowing I, I, everywhere.
Planets, stars, stardust, earth.
Volcanic bursts of doomsday cataclysms,
Creations molding furnace,
Glaciers of silent x-rays, burning electron floods,
Thoughts of all men, past, present, to come,
Every blade of grass, myself, mankind,
Each particle of universal dust,
Anger, greed, good, bad, salvation, lust,
I swallowed, transmuted all
Into a vast ocean of blood of my own one Being.
Smoldering joy, oft-puffed by meditation
Blinding my tearful eyes,
Burst into immortal flames of bliss,
Consumed my tears, my frame, my all.
Thou art I, I am Thou,
Knowing, knower, known, as One!
Tranquilled, unbroken thrill, eternally living, ever-new peace.
Enjoyable beyond imagination of expectancy, samadhi bliss! Not
an unconscious state
Or mental chloroform without wilful return,
Samadhi but extends my conscious realm
Beyond limits of the mortal frame
To farthest boundary of eternity
Where I, the Cosmic Sea,
Watch the little ego floating Me.
Mobile murmurs of atoms are heard,
The dark earth, mountains, vales, lo! molten liquid!
Flowing seas change into vapours of nebulae!
Aum blows upon vapours, opening wondrously their veils,
Oceans stand revealed, shining electrons,
Till, at the last sound of the cosmic drum,
Vanish the grosser lights into eternal rays
Of all-pervading bliss.
From joy I come, for joy I live, in sacred joy I melt.
Ocean of mind, I drink all creation's waves.
Four veils of solid, liquid, vapour, light,
Lift aright.
I, in everything, enter the Great Myself.
Gone forever: fitful, flickering shadows of mortal memory;
Spotless is my mental sky - below, ahead, and high above;
Eternity and I, one united ray.
A tiny bubble of laughter, I
Am become the sea of Mirth itself."
All is being made new in our sight as our eyes open to the reality
expressing through all. Through us: "Behold I make all things
new". At this time of the year we celebrate a new beginning,
the birth of Christ, and are reminded of the progressive revelation
He brings. We also approach a New Year and a new opportunity for a
new world through the expression of Peace and Goodwill to ALL men.
"Fear not!" said the angel "For I bring you great tidings".
The way has been shown beyond the fears of the purely material life
to the eternal essence that requires only time and the expanding human
revelation to bring into being in our world. May the peace which passeth
understanding bless us all!
*
* * * * *
The
Festival in Sagittarius will be celebrated at a meditation
meeting at 8 pm on Monday, 4 December,
at the YWCA, 5-11 Wentworth Avenue, Sydney. The keynote for reflection
is:
I see the goal. I reach that goal and then I see another.
The
Festival in Capricorn will be celebrated at a meditation meeting
at 8 pm on Wednesday, 3 January,
at the YWCA, 5-11 Wentworth Avenue, Sydney. The keynote for reflection
is:
Lost am I in light supernal, yet on that light I turn my back.
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