April 2009 Sydney Goodwill Newsletter

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No 264 / April 2009

Dear Friends,

Everything within the rhythm of our living moves with an ebb and flow, an inspiration and expiration, and, between them, moments of interlude – of receptivity and being. The living dynamic is not so much a swinging between opposing sides of a stationary point of balance but a progression, powered by the vibratory pulse of a mutual resonance between what is manifest and what is yet to be manifested – between matter and spirit. The progression is an expansion which embraces more and more of our global life until we live in terms of the whole through time and space, of the one shared life.

As we watch politicians and representative leaders debating the issues of the day (which continue to become more clearly global in implication and effect), we realise how accustomed we are to challenging, questioning, testing, criticising, assessing and judging. It sometimes seems that the more life-critical the issues the more divisive the views and the more heated the debate. It is an old dynamic we have practised down the ages and has become a habitual mode with its opposing forces, polar opposites and resulting sense of separation. Having dealt with issues in this way for millennia, we have developed our analytical faculties to a point at which the human mind is highly sensitised and interpretive.

The potency of this capacity is now capable of either great destruction or miraculous creativity. Limited by a personal perspective within the material plane of living, it can breed prejudice, judgement, authoritative assumption, competition and all the distortions that lead to abuse, criminality and even terror. Yet applied within a true sense of our place within a greater whole, the One in Whom we live and move and have our being, it provides an interpretive field for divine inspiration and a point where divine intention transfers into material expression in the outer world.

The mind is then no longer the “slayer of the real” but the transmitter of the essential life into truer reflection in the outer forms. It becomes the discriminative faculty which distinguishes “...illusion from the centre of reality, the real from the unreal, the self from the not-self...When man quickly sees the truth in all that he contacts, and automatically chooses truth or the real, then he learns the next lesson of joyful action, and the path of bliss opens before him.” [A Treatise on White Magic, page 80]

The true place of this instrument we call “mind” emerges as we grasp the larger implications through time, space and plane – from a greater sense of being and identity than the immediate personal or group identity and yet including and embracing all persons, groups, kingdoms and atoms within a sensed context of a greater, subtler universe unfolding into expression. The Tibetan Master wrote for students: “Your major task ... is to cultivate the higher sensitivity; to render yourselves so pure and selfless that your minds remain undisturbed by the happenings in the three worlds; to seek the attentive spiritual sense which will enable you to be impressed, and then to interpret correctly the impressions received.”

He goes on to explain: “The life of the (esoteric) student is consciously lived in the world of energies. These energies have always been present, for the whole of existence in all the kingdoms of nature is manifested energy, but men are not aware of this. They are not conscious, for instance, when they succumb to irritation and find themselves voicing that irritation in loud words or in angry thoughts, that they are taking astral energy and using it. The use of this energy admits them with ease to a level of astral living which is not suitable for them; continual use of this energy brings about what the Master Morya has called ‘habits of residence which imperil the resident’. It is when the aspirant recognises that he himself is composed of energy units – held in coherent expression by a still stronger energy, that of integration – that he begins consciously to work in a world of forces similarly composed... This world of energy in which he lives and moves and has his being is the living, organised vehicle of manifestation of the planetary Logos. Through it energies are circulating all the time and in constant movement, being directed and controlled by the head centre of the planetary Logos; they create great vortices of force or major points of tension throughout His body of manifestation. The Spiritual Hierarchy of our planet is such a vortex; Humanity itself is another, and one which is today in a condition of almost violent activity, owning to its becoming a focus of divine attention.” [The Rays and the Initiations page 549]

Today the growing focus on human rights indicates an expanding sense of human “being” and the need to redirect energies in a way that is coherent with the planetary flow of life-sustaining and life-sharing energies. We are participating more consciously in the planetary life – through all its planes and kingdoms. Still emerging from an inherited sense of conflict and separation, humanity is taking steps towards a newer identity by seeking to enforce our current understanding of human rights through legal controls. We are in a time of transitionary expansion of understanding. The right of all to share in the planetary life will become automatic when the majority of human beings live from the understanding that we share the one life and that nothing is ever lost from that great expression though outer forms may come and go, be discarded or created to better fit the emerging miracle of our oneness. We may be involved in any one of a myriad specific areas where this new understanding is working out but it is the same deep, essential understanding of the sacredness of the One Life that is the key to all and will become eventually the prime motivation for all outer activity.

This time of immense transition – from the individual to the universal – is an intense and complete re-direction of energies from the centre of all life outward to the whole instead of the illusory acquisitive tide we have been trying to swim (against all odds and even against nature). A new freedom, power, peace opens up as we flow with the mightier river of life; a new discipline emerges based on joy, free-flow and achievement rather than fear, blame and limitation. We are moving: “...from darkness to light, From the unreal to the real, From death to immortality.”

Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj is recorded as saying: “...everything experienced is an experience. And in every experience there arises the experiencer of it. Memory creates the illusion of continuity. In reality each experience has its own experiencer and the sense of identity is due to the common factor at the root of all experiencer-experience relations. Identity and continuity are not the same. Just as each flower has its own colour, but all colours are caused by the same light, so do many experiencers appear in the undivided and indivisible awareness, each separate in memory, identical in essence. This essence is the root, the foundation, the timeless and space-less ‘possibility’ of all experience.” When asked how to get at that essence he replied: “You need not get at it, for you are it. It will get at you, if you give it a chance. Let go your attachment to the unreal and the real will swiftly and smoothly step into its own. Stop imagining yourself being or doing this or that and the realisation that you are the source and the heart of all will dawn upon you. With this will come great love which is not choice or predilection, nor attachment, but a power which makes all things love-worthy and lovable.” [from I Am That, Talks with Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj]

It is easy to say that life is one – but the mantric power of the words is lacking unless the living realisation is present and pouring through them as with enlightened teachers. Then it becomes an energetic shared experience which transforms us and we enter a more essential being, where the student and teacher, personality and soul, matter and spirit are not separate. We may speak of the getting of wisdom and yet continue to live and toil in the fields of knowledge. Knowledge is a training ground for the instruments of perception. All knowledge already exists, awaiting our knowing; we have but to discover it. Discovery comes with extended sensitivity, then the resulting impression and realisation as truth draws us into the central life. The Tibetan writes: “We are ... in process of re-interpreting and re-arranging what can be called the ‘doctrinal structure underlying the relation between knowledge and wisdom’. This involves the destruction of old concepts ... and the assembly of those new and more correct ideas which must inevitably be substituted for the old... This...will gradually seep downwards into the consciousness of humanity...” [Discipleship in the New Age vol II, page 403]

If we might discuss the issues of the day from a perspective of common purpose and sense of shared ‘being’ perhaps a deeper consultation may emerge that will transform our individual areas of knowledge into a collective wisdom. Inevitably and inexorably we will rise into shared life and livingness as Christ and all great teachers have demonstrated and continue to serve as beacons, magnets and inspirers of the One Life of our World.

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