S Y D N E Y G O O D W I L L N E W S L E T T E R

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

No 242 / May 2007

Dear Friends,

The “power of one” is realisation. The power of the group, and eventually of humanity as a whole is in actualisation. We see this working out in many diverse ways. The Grameen bank began with one man’s realisation that the poor are lacking only opportunity. Working with others to create that opportunity opened up a stream of realisation – the poor with no assets were consistently better at repayment of loans than those to whom traditional banks preferred to lend. A whole range of options opened up around the world for providing opportunity (rather than handouts) for the poor to use their own skills and creativity to progress and feed and shelter their families – to develop their capacities in service to the whole. An idea whose time has come is powerful indeed and attracts all the resources it requires through its magnetic appeal. Where human beings focus, energy and force follows.

No matter what starting point we choose, or what path we follow, eventually we find our way into the greater Life to which all ultimately leads. The choices we make along the way are handholds or triggers to propel us on through illusions and into an expanding awareness of what is true and real. Such is the path of realisation and the human journey into Being. The Gayatri, one of the oldest mantric prayers that humanity has, lifts our gaze to the ultimate source of significance, cause and meaning:

O Thou Who givest sustenance to the universe, From whom all things proceed,
To Whom all things return,
Unveil to us the face of the true Spiritual Sun
Hidden by a disc of golden light
That we may know the Truth
And do our whole duty
As we journey to Thy sacred feet.

Our journey takes us through visionary moments of almost blinding clarity as well as through webs of illusion and deceit. All serve the unfolding revelation of truth and beauty and the “dis-spelling” of the unreal. The casual remark: “Don’t kid yourself” carries at its heart a powerful key, expressed more fully in Shakespeare’s Hamlet: “To thine own self be true, and it follows as the night the day, Thou canst not then be false to any man”.

Often the truth is painful to the personal self, the little ego, and so we hide from it as Adam and Eve sought to hide from the Father in the Garden of Eden. Yet truth remains. Our incarnations come and go and pass away. We create images, illusions and glamours to dress them and yet truth remains. Only the little self attempts to hide and to weave illusion in order to acquire momentary satisfaction of desire or ease from fear of loss – of self importance? of recognition? Yet truth remains and does not need to be packaged, marketed and sold. It ever IS.

The Tibetan explains:
“all that IS is ever present. What we are concerned with is the constant awakening to that which eternally is, and to what is ever present in the environment but of which the subject is unaware, owing to short-sightedness. The aim must be to overcome the undue concentration upon the foreground of daily life … The Kingdom of God is present on Earth today and ever has been, but only a few, relatively speaking, are aware of its signs and manifestations. … The sounds and sights of the heavenly world … are as clearly perceived by the higher initiate as are the sights and sounds of the physical plane as you contact it in your daily round of duties. The world of energies, with its streams of directed force and its centres of concentrated light are likewise present … The subjective realm is vitally more real than the objective, once it is entered and known. …It is simply … a question of the acceptance, first of all, of its existence, the development of a mechanism of contact, the cultivation of the ability to use this mechanism at will, and then inspired interpretation.” [Telepathy and the Etheric Vehicle, page 53-54]

As our sensitivity to the subtle world increases we become aware of its powerful impact on outer events and begin to realise that we are co-operators in that great process of divine expression – as the Gayatri prays: “That we may know the Truth And do our whole duty As we journey to Thy sacred feet.”

All flows according to Divine Will. The Tibetan, writing of the fifth great secret underlying our planetary purpose, explains:

“It concerns that which is working slowly into manifestation through the medium of the lower concrete mind as it controls desire and brings substance and matter into conformity with the divine thought along this line. The sumtotal of the highest phases of human thinking along all lines, materially affects what appears on the physical plane in all the kingdoms in nature, what precipitates civilisations and cultures, and which expresses the best response at the moment of human sensitivity to cosmic impressions.

This is all that can be said as we attempt to sum up the fixed desire and the pattern or purpose of divine activity down the ages. We know it to be profoundly inadequate as yet to express or to produce in manifested form the beauty of that design and to create in conformity with God’s thought; but – age by age – the thinking capacity of man and his creative imagination have wrought out the slowly unfolding design, and will continue to do so; every great world cycle sees the emergence of greater beauty, and sees the subtle effects of man’s thinking upon the subhuman kingdoms in nature steadily bringing the unknown to the surface, altering the nature of the flora and fauna of the planet, and preparing the way for that time of wonder when the (Spiritual) Hierarchy will again be exoterically directing the Plan upon the earth and aiding mankind to work with fuller understanding of the divine design.

….This fifth purpose is therefore closely related to the whole theme of ‘the garment of God’ and to the emergence into manifestation of His ‘robe of beauty’ as it is created and brought into being by humanity, acting as the medium for ideas from the superhuman kingdoms, and then influencing and swinging into creative cooperation the subhuman kingdoms.” [The Rays & the Initiations, page 244-245]

The great magnet of divine love holds all in meaningful embrace and brings divine compensation – the realisation of the truth and beauty of the whole in which we participate and of which we are an eternal part. No sacrifice is in vain within the sweep of that great life and purpose. All that we are and do forms part of the flood – “the vivid, flaming, drenching life that floods (humanity) when the (kingdom of souls) is known” – and when the realisation at the core of our being is “that life is one and naught can ever take or touch that life.” No weavings of illusion, no evilly motivated destruction can change truth or extinguish life, the divine fire in the heart.

There is a vast change moving through human consciousness – the greater whole is being sensed as a guiding force. The capacities we have used in the past to separate and divide are now being gradually brought into the service of our planetary life. Man’s concrete mind and his thinking is shifting to “making whole” where once it was used to discriminate, separate and defend. We are using the synthesising power of common purpose to guide the flow of effort and energy – to prioritise focus and directed force – and we see more clearly than before where that is lacking and needs redress. The truth of our oneness is dawning and revealing the new ideas that will shape a new civilisation, the wonder of which is only yet barely glimpsed even as it draws us on.

* * * * * *

The Wesak Festival in Taurus will be celebrated at a meditation meeting at 7:30 pm on Wednesday, 2 May, at the YWCA, 5-11 Wentworth Avenue, Sydney. The keynote for reflection is:

I see, and when the eye is opened, all is light.