Dear Friends,
How frequently
do we hear the expressions, "How time flies" or "It
only seems like yesterday that …" or "This week (or
month, or year) seems to have gone so quickly". It seems that
even children comment on the speed with which we move through events
in our world even as they look impatiently for the next stimulating
experience. And we continue to invent technologies which reduce the
time between initiation of events and their outcomes. Internet dial-up
is being replaced by broadband for faster response and download of
information; search engines respond with increasing speed and "intuitiveness"
to requests for information. "News" travels immediately
from point of cause to our TV screens, radio or internet page. Increasingly
it moves faster than censorship can intervene. Indeed censorship itself
becomes exposed sooner than censors might wish and thus truth cannot
remain hidden for long.
We are moving
towards the point of dynamic life at the centre from where the circle
of events can be seen in its entirety and from where the initiatory
impulse emanates. To manage the speed of events our consciousness
moves ever closer to that centre, to the "Father's home".
From this central point of Being comes the Revelation to St John the
Divine: "I am Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the ending …
which is, which was, and which is to come …" This comes,
as St Paul reminded us, from the One in Whom "we live, and move,
and have our being".
It is the expanding
and enlivening energies that drive divine intention through time and
space. The imposition of lesser motives and intentions by worldly
powers does not destroy the spirit of any divine manifestation even
though all its forms may be destroyed. - it lives on through other
forms in other times. The discoveries of the evidence of past times
and lives are proceeding to open human minds and to reconnect us with
the thread of life through human experience as it arcs through the
cycles of time in the history of our world. The objectivity of the
observer of history increases over time (and the detachment it provides)
and thus brings us closer to the essential truth behind outer events.
The journalist
Robert Fisk identifies the same process at work as he traces the effects
of actions by the winning powers after wars where the victors "carve
up" the overpowered territories between them. Key areas where
artificial boundaries were imposed in modern times he identifies as
Northern Ireland, Palestine, the Middle East, Bosnia Herzegovina.
We see the effect on essential life and culture of the regions of
these imposed boundaries and the struggle for the suppressed cultures
to re-emerge. As man realises a greater dignity and value by identifying
with something greater than himself he moves into the flow of a greater
life that is not limited by death of any form. He becomes willing
to give up his form life for a greater life. The history of human
martyrdom attests to this. We are told that in this 21st century "death
and the will inevitably will be seen to have new meanings for humanity,
and many of the old ideas will vanish."
Where we impose
our own lesser motive and intention in place of that which flows through
the divine will, there we have imposition of the lesser on the greater
and it is therefore temporary at best and doomed to an eventual death.
Even those actions carried out in the name of the divine but enacted
from baser motives, such as desire for control and domination, eventually
are seen for what they are and the truth is revealed. This is demonstrated
with increasing clarity where we see imposed "solutions"
for peace bring about yet more war and destruction. Only that which
emanates from the human psyche has any lasting power and persists
through time despite its outer expression being curbed by the temporal
powers of any moment in history. Arthur Guirdham traces some of the
essential understandings of the Cathars in the thirteenth century,
who were completely exterminated by the Inquisition, and we see resonances
in the recorded understanding of later times. Following is his account
of the Cathar understanding of the creation of the earth:
"
We should never think of the creation, either of this world or of
the universe, in terms of beginning and end. All the time creation
and destruction are proceeding together hand in hand. We see this
in the decay of the cells in our body and in leaf fall in autumn.
A truly cosmic view should perceive, at the same time, on the one
hand the process of creation and, on the other, the deluge and the
final conflagration. It is necessary to understand that there is a
harmony between the creation and non-creation of the ever persisting
universe. The deluge is the echo of the creation heard at the same
time. It is like a sound reverberating from a fixed point and travelling
back by the same route.
This world was created by light. Light existed beyond and apart from
our planet. The radiations of light were endowed with a capacity to
return to the ultimate source of being from which they originated.
This rhythmic movement backwards as well as forwards is reflected
in the birth of the human child …
In the creation of the world light, from a central source, is confronted
by the return of its own vibrations. It is as though light were faced
with its own echo. This confrontation produces flame. Fire appears
out of light as it does in this world when the rays of the sun are
concentrated through a burning glass.
In the beginning as well as light there was the ether of space. The
ether is primordial. It is the atmosphere outside the limits of the
zone of air around the earth. This latter zone of air is not primordial
but is a product of the creation of the earth. The ether is the air
of space. As well as being the physical atmosphere of outer space
it is the medium through which the psyche and the etheric body move.
It is through it that the psyche becomes independent of space and
time. …
… We get nearer the truth if we spoke of a centre and a periphery.
We must conceive of the centre as a vibrational node at the heart
of a circle. From this node all vibrations originated." [The
Great Heresy, Arthur Guirdham]
This resonates
with the following extract recorded in the early twentieth century
from the Tibetan Master, Djwhal Khul:
"
… the entire universe is etheric and vital in nature and of an
extension beyond the grasp of the greatest mind of the age …
This extent cannot be computed, even in terms of light years; this
cosmic etheric area is the field of untold energies and the basis
of all astrological computations; it is the playground of all historical
cycles - cosmic, systemic and planetary - and is related to the constellations,
to the worlds of suns, to the most distant stars and to the numerous
recognised universes, as well as to our own solar system, to the many
planets, and to that planet upon which and in which we move and live
and have our being, as well as to the smallest form of life known
to science and perhaps covered by the meaningless term 'an atom'.
All are found existing in Space - Space is etheric in nature and …
Space is an Entity. The glory of man lies in the fact that he is aware
of space and can imagine this space as the field of divine living
activity, full of active intelligent forms, each placed in the etheric
body of this unknown Entity, each related to each other through the
potency which not only holds them in being but which preserves their
position in relation to each other; yet each of these differentiated
forms possesses its own differentiated life, it own unique quality
or integral colouring, and its own specific and peculiar form of consciousness.
… We speak at times of an expanding universe; what we really
mean is an expanding consciousness, for this etheric body of the Entity,
Space, is the recipient of many types of informing and penetrating
energies, and it is also the field for the intelligent activity of
the indwelling Lives of the Universe, of the many constellations,
of the distant stars, of our solar system, of the planets within the
system, and of all that constitutes the sumtotal of these separated
living forms. The factor which relates them is consciousness and nothing
else, and the field of conscious awareness is created through the
interplay of all living intelligent forms within the area of the etheric
body of that great Life which we call Space.
… Each form (because it constitutes an aggregated area of substantial
lives or atoms) is a centre within the etheric body or form of which
it is a constituent part. It has, as the basis of its existence, a
living dynamic point which integrates the form and preserves it in
essential being. This form or centre - large or small, a man or an
atom of substance - is related to all other forms and expressing energies
in the environing space, and is automatically receptive to some, and
repudiates others through the process of non-recognition; it relays
or transmits other energies, radiating from other forms, and it thus
becomes in its turn an impressing agent.
… Again, each point of life within a centre has its own sphere
of radiation or its own extending field of influence; this field is
necessarily dependent upon the type and the nature of the indwelling
Consciousness. It is this magnetic interplay between the many vast
centres of energy in space which is the basis for all astronomical
relationships - between universes, solar systems and planets. Bear
in mind, however, that it is the CONSCIOUSNESS aspect which renders
the form magnetic, receptive, repudiating and transmitting; this consciousness
differs according to the nature of the entity which informs or works
through a centre, great or small. Bear in mind also that the life
which pours through all centres and which animates the whole of space
is the life of an Entity; it is, therefore, the same life in all forms,
limited in time and space by the intention, the wish, the form and
the quality of the indwelling consciousness; the types of consciousness
are many and diverse, yet life remains ever the same and indivisible,
for it is the ONE LIFE."
How do we distinguish
between divine inspiration and the charismatic power of a worldly
authority? Our human experience takes us through trial and error to
develop a sensitivity to our inner essential being and through it
to perceive the underlying truth behind the manifested forms. Truth
is concerned with the whole of life and not with the advance of one
part or group at the expense of another. Truth is. It exists in and
of itself and not through reaction to or comparison with non-truth.
There is that same essence within us that knows the radiatory presence
of its reality. This is the "Christ in you, the hope of glory".
It is God immanent within all Who calls us home to awareness of our
true being.
*
* * * * *
The Festival in Pisces will be celebrated at a meditation
meeting at 8 pm on Tuesday, 14 March, at the YWCA, 5-11 Wentworth
Avenue, Sydney. The keynote is: "I leave the Father's home
and turning back, I save."
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