Physicist
Max Planck summed it up in his autobiography:
Observing a major scientific debate " ... gave me also an
opportunity to learn a fact—a remarkable one in my opinion: A new
scientific truth does not triumph by convincing its opponents and making
them see the
light, but rather because its opponents eventually die off, and a new
generation grows up that is familiar with it."
Coming
from a scientist who rubbed shoulders with the leaders of
twentieth-century physics and philosophy, this statement is a scathing
denial of the widely touted ‘objectivity’ of scientists.
Planck confirms that the reasons for theory rejection are more
psychological and educational than theoretical or scientific.
To
put the case a little strongly, many of the logical positivists and
Skinnerian behaviorists of the 1950s and 1960s neither converted to nor
consented to the new waves of psychology.
But they are now becoming supplanted by a new breed of scientists
who have themselves experimented with meditation and mind-altering
drugs, and who can no longer accept the mechanistic philosophy of the
nineteenth century and are hence much more open to the possibilities of
survival research. The next
century may see an increasing liberalism in this area, coinciding with
an increasing interest of ‘legitimate’ young scientists in
alternative paradigms which allow for the survival or reincarnation
hypotheses.
~~Carl B. Becker
..
I turned toward the Light. The Light was very similar to what many other people have described in their near-death experiences. It was so magnificent. It is tangible; you can feel it. It is alluring; you want to go to it like you would want to go to your ideal mother's or father's arms.
As I began to move toward the Light, I knew intuitively that if I went to the Light, I would be dead. So as I was moving toward the Light I said,
"Please wait a minute, just hold on a second here. I want to think about this; I would like to talk to you before I go."
To my surprise, the entire experience halted at that point. You are indeed in control of your near-death experience. You are not on a roller coaster ride. So my request was honored and I had some conversations with the Light.
~~Mellen Thomas
Benedict [This man died from cancer
that had taken its course over a period of eighteen months. His
typical physical deterioration had been professionally monitored over the course of
this time, and everyone, himself included, fully accepted his eminent
death. He wakened at about 4.30 a.m. one morning and knew
"this was it," and contacted a few loved ones, one of whom was
his Hospice nurse, to say a final goodbye. Medically documented,
Benedict was dead for at least one and a half hours. After he
returned, over time his health improved to the point that he regained a
sense of normalcy in his life. He eventually went to be examined
by doctors who could find no trace of the cancer that had killed him.]
[The
following incident was given merely a brief mention in Mellen-Thomas
Benedict's well-known story of his "after-death"
experience. It gives you a new perspective with which to consider
one's daily challenges.]
I had a descent
into what you might call Hell, and it was very surprising. I did not see
Satan or evil. My descent into Hell was a descent into each person's
customized human misery, ignorance, and darkness of not-knowing. It
seemed like a miserable eternity. But each of the millions of souls
around me had a little star of light always available. But no one seemed
to pay attention to it. They were so consumed with their own grief,
trauma and misery. But, after what seemed an eternity, I started calling
out to that Light, like a child calling to a parent for help.
Then the Light opened up and formed a tunnel that came right to me and
insulated me from all that fear and pain. That is what Hell really is.
So what we are doing is learning to hold hands, to come together. The
doors of Hell are open now. We are going to link up, hold hands, and
walk out of Hell together. The Light came to me and turned into a huge
golden angel. I said, "Are you the angel of death?" It
expressed to me that it was my oversoul, my Higher Self matrix, a
super-ancient part of ourselves. Then I was taken to the Light.
~~Mellen Thomas
Benedict
It's
all a question of story. We are in trouble just now because we do
not have a good story. We are in between stories. The
old story, the account of how the world came to be and how we fit into
it, is no longer effective. Yet we have not learned the new story.
~~Thomas
Berry
|
Who
would decline a sacrifice
if
once his soul had been accosted,
his
virtue recognized
and
he was assured that
the
Watcher, the Holy One, followed
him
ever with long, affectionate
glances
of inexhaustible love?
~~William
Blake
|
Who
would decline a sacrifice
if
once hir*
soul had been accosted,
hir
virtue recognized
and
heshe was assured that
the
Watcher, the Holy One, followed
hir
ever with long, affectionate
glances
of inexhaustible love?
~~William
Blake
|
|
*
As a general rule I do not alter gender words in quoted
text. But this is a cherished poem of an 'old friend' who I
am sure would not mind and would probably even encourage it!
It is so personal, it is best 'heard' at least in
gender-neutral, if not gender-specific.
By
the way, does anyone recognize the poem this comes from?? |
Speaking
of the direct experiential relationship the author actively experiences with the Christ:
None of this should surprise us, for more and more today
the veil between the worlds is parting. Heaven and earth, held
apart for so long, seem to be coming together, and there is a new sense
abroad of the nearness of the human and that which is more than
human. The divine, long experienced as distant and inaccessible,
is felt by many to be intimately interwoven in their lives. Many
now speak of experiences in which God, encountered in many shapes and
forms -- Christian, Jewish, Islamic, Hindu and even Buddhist -- is
familiar: a friend or close relation. And if not God, then
angelic beings, guardian angels, saints, risen human beings -- the
so-called dead.
This
is largely a silent, hidden, unacknowledged revolution. You would
not necessarily know it from what you read in the newspapers or see on
the nightly news. Yet there are signs everywhere. ... Once one
wakes up to it, one is constantly surprised coming across others who
have also woken up to it. A friend says, "We recognize each other
by the look of clarity in our eyes."
~~Claire
Blatchford
Re: [The] question of what is the relationship of thinking to
reality. As careful attention shows, thought itself is in an
actual process of movement. That is to say, one can feel a sense
of flow in the 'stream of consciousness' not dissimilar to the sense of
flow in the movement of matter in general. May not thought itself
thus be a part of reality as a whole? But then, what could it mean
for one part of reality to 'know' another, and to what extent would
this be possible? Does the content of thought merely give us
abstract and simplified 'snapshots' of reality, or can it go further,
somehow to grasp the very essence of the living movement that we sense
in actual experience?
It
is clear that in reflecting on and pondering the nature of movement,
both in thought and in the object of thought, one comes inevitably to
the question of wholeness or totality. The notion that the one who
thinks (the Ego) is at least in principle completely separate from and
independent of the reality that he thinks about is of course firmly
embedded in our entire tradition. (This notion is clearly almost
universally accepted in the West, but in the East there is a general
tendency to deny it verbally and philosophically while at the same time
such an approach pervades most of life and daily practice as much as it
does in the West.) General experience of the sort described above,
along with a great deal of modern scientific knowledge concerning the
nature and function of the brain as the seat of thought, suggest very
strongly that such a division cannot be maintained consistently.
But this confronts us with a very difficult challenge [[Bohm's
fundamental question]]: How are we to think coherently of a
single, unbroken, flowing actuality of existence as a whole, containing
both thought (consciousness) and external reality as we experience it?
~~David
Bohm
What follows is quoted from David Bohm, who wrote this for a friend's
memorial service:
In considering the relationship between the finite and the infinite, we
are led to observe that the whole field of the finite is inherently
limited, in that it has no independent existence. It has the
appearance of independent existence, but that appearance is merely the
result of an abstraction of our thought. We can see this dependent
nature of the finite from the fact that every finite thing is transient.
Our ordinary view holds that the field of the finite is all that there
is. But if the finite has no independent existence, it cannot be
all that is. We are in this way led to propose that the true
ground of all being is the infinite, the unlimited; and that the
infinite includes and contains the finite. In this view, the
finite, with its transient nature, can only be understood as held
suspended, as it were, beyond time and space, within the infinite.
The field of the finite is all that we can see, hear, touch, remember,
and describe. This field is basically that which is manifest, or
tangible. The essential quality of the infinite, by contrast, is
its subtlety, its intangibility. This quality is conveyed in the
word spirit, whose root meaning is "wind, or
breath." This suggests an invisible but pervasive energy, to
which the manifest world of the finite responds. This energy, or
spirit, infuses all living beings, and without it any organism must fall
apart into its constituent elements. That which is truly alive in
the living being is this energy of spirit, and this is never born and
never dies.
~~David
Bohm [found in: Infinite Potential: The Life and
Times of David Bohm, by F.
David Peat]
Once we begin to really understand that we are not from Here, we are from There, that we all chose to come Here and were chosen to come Here, that we were somebody and something long before we came Here, only then do we comprehend that we are not poor, pitiful, stupid human beings. We are all great, awesome, powerful and mighty spiritual beings! What then really becomes important is realizing the true purpose of our lives.
~~Dannion Brinkley
[Saved by the Light]
Dannion
Brinkley, who has also now had at least three core NDEs, came back 'on
fire' from his first near death experience [pun intended -- it was a
lightning strike] with 117 predictions, that he had 'seen' in the other
world. By the time he published At Peace in the Light in
1995, he had identified evidence that convinced him that 95 of these had
come true. "The Beings of Light, however, told me something
important about these revelations, something that shows the importance
of each and every one of us. Here it is:
There
is a great spiritual movement afoot on the earth. This is a
movement that has the power to change the direction of mankind.
All
we have to do is realize that the future is not written in stone.
All of the events that I saw in my visions and all of the events that
seem to be taking place in the world around us can be altered by group
effort. All we have to do, the Beings told me, is view ourselves
as spiritual beings, living in a spiritual place, with a spiritual
purpose.
The
rest will follow.
~~Dannion Brinkley
[At Peace in the Light]
It
is my conviction, based on the scenes [of the future observed from my
first near-death experience], that by 2012 humanity will experience
unprecedented mental and spiritual transformations, coinciding precisely
with the Earth's passage through great physical upheaval. I
sincerely believe a dramatic shift in consciousness will occur within
this designated time frame in order to set the stage for what is to come
in the years directly following.
In
this new state of being, we will embrace an awareness of the companion
spheres of life all around us. And within that awareness, we will
possess the knowledge of our simultaneous existence within these
multidimensional realities.
~~Dannion Brinkley
[Secrets of the Light]
There
is no doubt in my mind that collectively we have the power to change the
world for the better. We simply have to collectively agree on the
changes we want to see. Mahatma Gandhi said, "We must become
the change we wish to see in the world." So, if we were all
to become the changes we collectively desire, imagine what the world
would be like. I think about it all the time: a world
without war, a safe place to raise our children, a world devoid of all
environmental pollution, a place where equal opportunities are available
to everyone and freedom overlooks no one. How do we achieve
this? Do you even believe it's possible to create such a
world? I believe it is. The visions [from the first
near-death experience] showed me that it is.
~~Dannion Brinkley
[Secrets of the Light]
Earth's crammed with Heaven,
And every common bush afire with God,
But only he who sees takes off his shoes.
~~Elisabeth
Barrett Browning
Bill
Moyers [an extraordinary journalist who has brought to public viewing
some of the most brilliant and deeply wise people on the planet] and
Joseph Campbell [considered to have been the world-renowned
scholar on mythology, second-to-none; in another age we would have
honored him as a great sage] are conversing in one of the most
enlightening television events of our time, the Power of Myth
series, in the mid-80s.
Moyers:
Scientists are beginning to talk quite openly about the Gaia principle.
Campbell:
There you are, the whole planet as an organism.
Moyers:
Mother Earth. Will new myths come from this image?
Campbell:
..You can't predict what a myth is going to be any more than you can
predict what you're going to dream tonight. Myths and dreams come
from the same place. They come from realizations of some kind that
have then to find
expression
in symbolic form. And the only myth that is going to be worth
thinking about in the immediate future is one that is talking about the
planet, not the city, nor these people, but the planet, and everybody on
it. That's my main thought for what the future myth is going to
be.
And
what it will have to deal with will be exactly what all myths have dealt
with -- the maturation of the individual, from dependency through .. to
the exit; and then how to relate to this society and how to relate this
society to the world of nature and the cosmos. That's what the
myths have all talked about, and what this one's got to talk
about. But the society that it's got to talk about is the society
of the planet. and until that gets going, you don't have anything.
Moyers:
So you suggest that from this begins the new myth of our time?
Campbell:
Yes, this is the ground of what the myth is to be. ... When you see the
earth from the moon, you don't see any divisions there of nations or
states. This might be the symbol, really, for the new mythology to
come. That is the country that we are going to be
celebrating. And these are the people that we are one with.
~~Joseph
Campbell and Bill Moyers, IN the book: Joseph Campbell and the
Power of Myth, with Bill Moyers, edited by Betty Sue
Flowers
We
all live under the shadow of our many and various pasts. They are
an integral part of us and can help or hinder us, depending on how we
draw on our deeper feelings. One of the purposes of our different
lives is to learn to interact with others, and we are presented with a
variety of ways of doing so.
... And since the demarcation of our
roles [over a multiplicity of physical lives] is only temporary, the
only real relationship that counts is one of equality, caring, love and
respect. Perhaps this is what we really come back to learn:
to heal our relationships with ourselves and others so that we can
express in our physical lives the oneness from which we all come and to
which we return between lives.
~~Jenny
Cockell
One
day your death will catch you. And
will you lie down and say, 'Oh, come.
Take me. I've been
waiting so long for you'? Or
will you snivel and whimper for all the things you never were or did?
Or be overcome by the terror of annihilation?
I tell you, … for one who meets his death and lives again, the
world changes. They know
what it is to lose everything. They
have felt the very nature of death, and they know that it is not
annihilation but a movement.
They
sense the value and uniqueness of our world and cherish it and their
time within it beyond all else. Life
itself becomes their beloved. They
gain the ability to turn decisions into
power.
~~Kay Cordell-Whitaker
[From the final chapter of the book,
The Relevance of Bliss: A Contemporary Exploration of Mystic
Experience]
Whereas ... at the beginning of the book I mentioned that I had never had the full, unmistakable Bliss Experience but only 'mini' or 'micro' ones in a semi-permanence of awareness, potentiality, even expectation -- by the time all the material dealt with here had imprinted itself on my consciousness, I could feel the 'big one' hovering ever closer, all its overwhelming characteristics about to explode into reputed supernal radiance.
The strange discovery I made was that I could probably have the
experience anytime I altered the gears of my consciousness and allowed
it; or, rather, became wholehearted about inducing it, instead of
anticipating it as a someday-perhaps spontaneous bombshell.
I think what I was becoming imbued with and convinced of, in a still
vague way, was that while one is an incipient mystic, a lot can be done
to turn the incipience into actuality. One doesn't have to hang
about the edges of 'show me', give me some sign', but by immersion,
absorption, interest, exposure and familiarity stir it into prominence
in one's thoughts and feelings until it seems just as real as any other
facet of life, as everyday as sleeping, eating, being in a body and
moving about, which is mysterious enough to have engaged philosophy for
thousands of years.
But this 'power of suggestion', of which I was well-aware by the time I
was only partly through the book, had another, quite unexpected
counter-effect. I was suddenly not sure I really wanted or could
handle this kind of experience, this Bliss-Shock. What would
happen to me, my plans, my way of life, the identity I am so accustomed
to, with its strengths and weaknesses in obvious and therefore
not-too-frightening display? Was I ready yet, prepared for this
blitz of transformation? Would it shatter me beyond
self-recognition?
As spiritually-oriented and inclined as I am, and my life is, did I want
to go the WHOLE WAY, as so graphically described by these people in my
book? And there was another consideration: Could my system
withstand the colors, the light, the immensity of this illuminated
moment with the veils torn off, the selective apparatus of my transient
consciousness 'damped down' or withdrawn to leave me naked to
unfiltered, blazing glory (after all, I find even its intimations
overwhelming!)? With that, I found a reservation in my thoughts, a
guilty sense of evading my own salvation -- not only this, but of my
responsibility to be all that I potentially am. .
.
~~Nona Coxhead
[Re:] . . the inherent paradox of subject-matter, the seeming
cul-de sac
or impasse of the one main imperative echoed again and again throughout
the literature of mysticism, which is: you can talk about mystic
experience until words run out and language collapses; you can write
about it in a million volumes packed with erudition, poetry, revelation,
opinion and philosophy; you can analyse, dissect, sculpture it into
quanta of probability-particles ad infinitum... But unless you
have experienced it -- you cannot know it. If you know it, you
can't talk about it in a way that does it justice. As Ravi
Ravindra said so well -- you should not confuse the experimental with
the experiential.
~~Nona Coxhead
We
are not human beings having a spiritual experience. We are spiritual
beings having a human experience.
~~Pierre
Teilhard de Chardin
RE:
... questions about the mysterious relationship between mind and body,
about how consciousness shows up in a universe of physical things.
The story of how these things came to be is the story of science, but it
is incomplete -- incomplete in a deeply problematic way. What's
missing is not a matter of more details in the great cosmological
narrative from big bang to human beings. What's missing is what
makes the story -- any story -- possible at all. The
problem is we have a wonderful cosmology story that fails to include the
storyteller -- consciousness.
~~Christian
de Quincey
Why
... should we bother with philosophy of mind and exploring the basis for
a science of consciousness when there are so many other pressing
problems that we, along with philosophers and scientists, could be
addressing? ... It is critical, it seems to me, that the scientific
knowledge that shapes and limits the contours of our social reality --
our communal "paradigm" -- should be expanded to include and
honor nonmeasurable phenomena such as values, meanings, purposes, and
feelings. For modern science to do this will require a radical
reorientation of its basic metaphysical assumptions about the nature of
reality. It will require a thorough reassessment of the
epistemology underlying science -- of how we know anything about the
world, particularly consciousness itself.
I
am personally and professionally committed to this transformation of
science and philosophy, an opening up to a sense of the sacred, and
honoring the vast potential of humanity and of the whole living system
in which we are embedded -- including the domain of consciousness.
..
I am aware that research at the level of metaphysics of ontology and
epistemology, is remote from what matters to most people. I have
repeatedly asked myself: "How can this work be of value to
the community?" [Later
he gives us his answer, one all too familiar to most of us. De
Quincey says,] I
have seen the persistence of poverty and injustice, of pain and
confusion, and the repetitive patterns of ignorance and greed in our
society. I have experienced the despair of hopelessness in the
face of world hunger, the ingrained sorrow and suffering of the human
condition, and global destruction of our ancient and diverse
ecosystems. I have asked myself: "What, most of all,
needs to be done?" And my soul and cells have answered that I
must use my life to help root out the deepest levels of ignorance that
got us into this mess. What is the source of the fear and greed
that bring us, personally and collectively, repeatedly to the threshold
of disaster and extinction?
...
Science has exorcised the ghost from the machine and left us with a
desacralized and despirited world. And it has done this because
its fundamental beliefs about the nature of the world (its ontology) and
what we know about the world (its epistemology) and how we can know the
world (its methodology) are based on a set of assumptions grounded in
the metaphysics of matter-in-blind-motion, of reductionistic mechanism
and materialism. This is what must change. Without such a
profound metaphysical shift, all the good works in the world will never
amount to anything more than well-intentioned Band-Aids.
~~Christian de Quincey
There
is a pain – so utter –
It
swallows substance up –
Then
covers the Abyss with Trance
So
Memory can step
Around
– across – upon it.
As
one within a Swoon –
Goes
safely – where an open eye –
Would
drop Him – Bone by Bone.
~~Emily
Dickenson
[# 599, page 294 of The Complete Works of Emily Dickenson]
[NOTE: We're
so easily snared by, seduced by, immersed in, compulsed by opportunities
to dip or flat fall into negative STUFF, I don't feel it's in any way
useful to provide another "opportunity" to go there. But
as we all know, most of our best learning has been through the
initiatory gates of great pain and woundings.
This
is here because it so speaks to the white-heat core of the core within
all of us who Journey on this Earth. Sometimes it can be helpful
and wholeness-making to acknowledge this. When we are able to
embrace the 'deva-stating aw[e]-full' with unconditionally accepting
love and compassion sourced in the Deep Self we all are, whether we are
addressing this within ourselves or for others, only then may we know
the profound healing and deepening strength that comes. This is a
Holy act of great love and courage.]
Most people assume that
belief in an afterlife is strictly a matter of faith. A few may have heard of scientific investigations of reported contacts with deceased persons made through "mediums" at spiritualistic
seances; if so, however, they have probably dismissed such reports as instances of fraud or self-delusion. Fewer still are familiar with the great mass of evidence that has been steadily accumulating since the first psychical researchers in England began their
investigations into spiritualistic phenomena at the turn of this [20th] century.
Colin Wilson, the well-known British writer, is one of the few people who is thoroughly familiar with this evidence. An essay by Wilson ... describes his own introduction to the facts in the case for survival and how he was gradually converted from skepticism to belief by the sheer weight of the evidence. "A skeptic can usually find some loophole in the most well-authenticated accounts," writes Wilson. "Yet when we read perhaps a hundred accounts, all of which seem to point to the same conclusion, it
becomes very hard to feel so certain that they all amount to self-deception or willful mendacity." After presenting some of the most fascinating and compelling cases encountered in his own research for several books, Wilson observes that in his estimation the overall case for survival is so strong that "it would be rather perverse to go on thinking up objections."
~~Gary Doore
The most beautiful and profound emotion we can
experience is the sensation of the mystical. It is the sower of all true
science. He to whom this emotion is a stranger, who can no longer wonder
and stand rapt in awe, is as good as dead. To know that what is
impenetrable to us really exists, manifesting itself as the highest
wisdom and the most radiant beauty, which our dull faculties can
comprehend only in their primitive forms – this knowledge, this
feeling, is at the center of true religion.
~~Albert Einstein [most recently rediscovered on
www.Panhala.net/Archive/Sensation_of_the_Mystical.html;
original source?]
The
cosmic religious experience is the strongest and noblest driving force
behind scientific work.
~~Albert Einstein
[found this on
www.projectmind.org;
what's the source?]
All
too often, a docile public has been easily dominated by a religious or
scholarly hierarchy claiming to know or to have seen more. In
religious matters, given the place of scholarly elites in upholding
religious ones, this has been the case more often than not.
... Only a knowledgeable and enlightened public can change this
state of affairs. I have done my best to make the Dead Sea
Scrolls, which have come along as if miraculously to redress the balance
or haunt those who would adopt an ahistorical approach, available across
the board to a wider populace. It is now time to move to the next
level and a wider subject matter. The matters before us are not
for those who docilely accept biblical writ or scholarly consensus as the
final word. The criticism we are doing is historical and literary
criticism, looking at the way a given author actually put his materials
together and to what end. It is the weight of the gradual
accumulation of detail and textual analyses of this kind that ultimately
renders the presentation credible.
~~Robert
Eisenman [speaking of the Dead Sea Scrolls and all that has evolved
into the Christian [and also Jewish] beliefs of today]
[Betty
Sue Flowers:] "..[I] wonder if we'll discover that our
journey together is really about coming to understand democracy
itself. We live in societies that espouse democratic ideals and
have certain mechanisms of democracy, like voting, but by and large our
institutions function very autocratically -- often literally like small
dictatorships. I've been thinking about this more and more
lately. Maybe we're just at the beginning of the age of democracy
and self-governance. What if the past two hundred years have been
a sort of preparation and initial prototyping period? What if
democracy itself is really in its early stages of development?"
"I
had a premonition of that when I watched the fall of the Berlin
Wall," Otto [Scharmer] said. "It felt as if we
were entering a transitional period. Act One was the collapse of
the Soviet Union and the communist block. Act Two is what we are
witnessing now [[they had been discussing the then recent experience of
9/11]]: the limits of the U.S. brand of capitalism and democracy
are becoming painfully obvious. Maybe Act Three concerns the
emergence of a new constellation of global forces.
"What
would happen if rather than thinking of democracy as something we
inherit, like a suit of clothes passed on from our grandparents, we
thought of it as a learning process -- one where we've only taken the
smallest baby steps so far, and new prototypes will come."
...
~~Betty Sue Flowers,
Otto
Scharmer,
Peter
M. Senge, and Joseph
Jaworski [in Presence:
Human Purpose and the Field of the Future]
Speaking
of instantly immortal phrases, here's one to enjoy: '"inoculation
of immortality" of the Light Experience'
-- a high-end cosmic tool for consciousness-shifting that tends to
become permanent as a result.
~~Anya
Foos-Graber
Here
is a classic case of what happens with a lot of people. They have
usually from early in life certain anomalous experiences that they often
simply take for granted others are familiar with as well. Edgar
Cayce, for example, did not realize others generally did not see auras
as he did until he was eight years old.
As a very young child, and
on into adulthood, the woman quoted below used to see people deep in the night who
just looked like white outlines against the darkness. If any of
them noticed she was awake, one would come give her a pat on the head or
back, and she would soon drift back to sleep. She says,
"Looking
back now, it is as though this particular experience served as almost a
kind of flexor for my consciousness. Whatever those white figures
were, it was a result of their spectral companionship, and the fact that
I grew up with them as such a normal part of my childhood that I
developed a totally unique set of parameters for the expectations of
life's extraordinary possibilities." Extraordinary is certainly apt. Her first two children, daughters,
learned at 9 and 8 years old they could read and speak, chant and
understand Sanskrit with no prior training; it's like they came in with
these innate gifts. They eventually used their amazing abilities
as the basis for their singing / chanting performances as a musical
ensemble with their father.
~~Linda
Forman
Most
experiences are subtle. Taken singly, they are easily dismissed as
coincidences or random anomalies. Taken together, they have great
power.
~~Joseph
Gallenberger
[T]raditional
science is capable of behaving as a religion when confronting new
thought: it suppresses data that doesn't agree with its current
belief system, chiefly by ignoring it.
True
story: I am aware of a prestigious university laboratory that
completed an exhaustive, fully-controlled study that showed that humans
can affect physical matter through thought alone. When the
researchers sought publication in a peer review journal, they were told,
"When you can send us the data by telepathy we will look at
it." Inability to publish equals inability to get major
funding.
~~Joseph
Gallenberger
Believe
nothing just because a so-called wise person said it. Believe nothing
just because a belief is generally held. Believe nothing just because it
is said in ancient books. Believe nothing just because it is said to be
of divine origin. Believe nothing just because someone else believes it.
Believe only what you yourself test and judge to be true.
~~Gautama
Buddha [originally
found on New Heaven New Earth's great website: www.nhne.org
]
Whatever
sets the human spirit free without giving us mastery over ourselves is
harmful.
~~Johann
Wolfgang von Goethe
I
have come to the frightening conclusion that I am the decisive element.
It is my personal approach that creates the climate. It is my daily mood
that makes the weather. I possess tremendous power to make life
miserable or joyous. I can be a tool of torture or an instrument of
inspiration; I can humiliate or humor, hurt or heal. In all situations,
it is my response that decides whether a crisis is escalated or
de-escalated, and a person humanized or de-humanized. If we treat people
as they are, we make them worse. If we treat people as they ought to be,
we help them become what they are capable of becoming.
~~Johann
Wolfgang von Goethe
Clarity:
Like
traveling through a fog filled valley
My
senses struggle to make sense of the blurred landmarks
I
have grown used to.
Searching
for a familiar turn,
the
swirling mist gives way to clarity,
assaulting
me with what I had feared most . . .
An
unfamiliar landscape.
Fear
replaces the blandness of not knowing
as
ominous terrain beckons me forth.
Turning
back to the luxury of ignorance
I
find no fog behind me,
and
realize that what I had felt familiar
was
really only more of the black unknown.
Lost
and alone,
I
sink to the ground in surrender,
Mourning
the loss of all I have known,
And
seeing my first glint of light
in
the tear
that
falls
from
my eye . . .
~~Sandy
Goodman
We
are born with two incurable diseases, life, from which we die, and hope,
which says maybe death isn't the
end.
~~Andrew Greeley [source?]
I believe the NDE is one of those puzzles that just
might force scientists to develop a new scientific method, one that will
incorporate all sources of knowledge, not only logical dedications of the
intellect, and empirical observations of the physical, but a direct experience
of the mystical as well.
~~Bruce Greyson
[Greyson, C. B., "Editorial: Can
science explain the near-death experience?" Journal of
Near-Death Studies, v. 8]
[Note:
Arthur Guirdham was a psychiatrist in England, having first published
the book from which this quote derives in 1970. The
"twenty-six years before" he refers to is circa 1944 and
concern the disturbing dreams and visions of one of his patients, whose
nightmares ceased from the very first time she was able to talk to this
man as her therapist.]
The
major proportion of her revelation s occurred twenty-six years ago, in
an intensive uprush of memory in her early teens. It gave her a
detailed knowledge of Catharism, though until she met me she was even
unaware of the name of this heresy. She also acquired a vivid
realization of life in the Languedoc in the thirteenth century.
Neither mediaeval history nor literature were taught in her
school. Twenty-five years ago the history and ritual of Catharism
were not imparted to girls of thirteen in English grammar schools.
The same applies today. At the present time little enough is known
of Catharism in this country. Its ritual and practice are known to
a few savants and sympathisers. The number of these was still
smaller a quarter of century ago. Nor is it, nor has it even been,
a practice for English girls of thirteen to transcribe their thoughts,
visions and feelings in mediaeval French or in the quite distinct
language of the Langue d'Oc.
But
I have still more important proof of the reality of the experience I
intend to describe. Twenty-six years ago this girl knew and noted
in writing what was unknown to any of those who had written on this
subject in any language, in the seen centuries which have elapsed since
the eclipse of this so-called heresy. All writers who mentioned
the subject insisted that the robes of Cathar priests were inevitably
black. For twenty-six years, including her six years
correspondence with me, she stubbornly maintained that they wore dark
blue. She was proved correct by Jean Duvernoy of Toulouse but
only in the last four years. In editing the register of the
Inquisition of Jacques Fournier, Monsieur Duvernow revealed that Cathar
priests wore sometimes dark blue or dark green. This book was
published in 1965. The truth was known to my patient as far back
as 1944. She expressed it in writing more than a year before the
publication of Duvernoy's book.
~~Arthur
Guirdham
One
quiet evening while I was visiting with friends and listening to music,
a slow heat began rising from my heart. It burned its way up
through my spine and on out of the top of my head, melting everything
into a great ocean of light. ... [T]here were no boundaries or
borders. it was as if my mind had once long ago made up a story
about separate objects with boundaries but the story wasn't true.
The true story is that there is a luminous, spacious energy that flows
through everything all the time. It's within matter, within things
as well as within space, and you can tune in to it at any time, just
like changing the frequency on the radio. There is no
distance between this essence and ourselves. It is not
otherworldly. It is right here closer than our own flesh.
[And
later she was to say:] I feel a kind of current from my heart that
goes out into the universe and then it pauses and comes back into me,
and goes out again. There are streams, matrices, lattices of light
that must be some universal pattern. Sometimes you see it and
sometimes you don't. But when you relax, it's there like a great
web connecting with everything. It feels like it has always been
there.
~~Vijali Hamilton
The
Gospel of Thomas really is, I believe, the clearest guide we have to the
vision of the world's supreme mystical revolutionary, the teacher known
as Jesus. To those who learn to unpack its sometimes cryptic
sayings, the Gospel of Thomas offers a naked and dazzlingly subversive
representation of Jesus' defining and most radical discovery: that
the living Kingdom of God burns in us and surrounds us in the glory at
all moments and the vast and passionate love-consciousness -- what you
might call "Kingdom consciousness" -- can help birth it into
reality ... [The] Jesus we see in the Gospel of Thomas saw
and knew this world as the constant epiphany of the divine Kingdom and
knew too that a wholly new world could be created by divine beings, once
they had seen this and allowed themselves to be transformed and
empowered as he was, by divine wisdom, ecstasy, and energy. What
Jesus woke up to and proceeded to enact with the fiercest and most
gloriously imaginable intensity was this new life of "Kingdom
consciousness," not as a savior and not as a guru
claiming unique status and truth -- the Gospel of Thomas makes this very
clear -- but as a sign of what is possible for all human beings who dare
to awaken to the potential splendor of their inner truth and the
responsibilities for total transformation of the world that it then
inspires within them.
~~Andrew Harvey [IN Foreward to: The Gospel
of Thomas Annotated & Explained, by
Stevan
Davies]
The
more awakened you are, the more alert you become to the purpose of
challenges and all you have to gain from them. When you trust that
the most difficult experiences offer the greatest growth potential, you
start to identify them as opportunities and the people involved in them
as your greatest teachers.
...
So when you step back and look at the bigger picture (or pull the camera
back, as I like to say) to estimate the nature of the lesson and what
new perception it presents to you, you increase your ability to move
through old barriers that have held you back for lifetimes.
~~Louise P. Haucker
The
Cry of the heart for God is the cry that reaches heaven and brings down
blessings from that high source.
~~A
woman folk artist of North Carolina, who lived in the last half of the
20th century, whose name has escaped me but her last name, I am fairly
certain her last name is
Herndon [Elizabeth? -- can anyone help me with this one??]
Every
boundary, every finite limit to the seeing and hearing of my
perceptual field, declares its latent infinity. Each limit in
containing the known declares there is an unknown beyond it.
It announces a series of limits that is unlimited, boundless.
In one horizon we have tacit acquaintance with infinite
horizons. The circumscription of our perceiving is fraught
with the boundlessness of the given. Likewise, my finite
centre of reference has no ultimate centre, it is an infinitude
within, and unlimited potential filling a space of no volume, the
emptiness of any point. It is a pregnant void. Where the
infinitude within the void, first breaks into the manifest it
appears as a finite locus, the centre of reference that is the
distinct person.
~~John
Heron
(1998)
What
is so far unknown is a form of sacred science in which human beings
co-operate together to inquire in a rigorous manner into the nature
of their own spiritual and subtle experience, without prior
allegiance to any existing school. An increasing
number of spiritually minded people are currently busy with their
own lived inquiry, and are seeking open and constructive dialogue
about it. I call this social phenomenon a newly emerging
and self-generating spiritual culture. It is a loose, informal
network of individuals and groups who are creating their own
spiritual path from a diversity of ancient and modern sources.
It involves a growing and significant minority of people across the
planet.
This
culture is born from the post-war [WWII] boom of adult and
continuing education, of people-centred and peer self-help movements
of all kinds, of the democratization and laicization of
knowledge-acquisition, of health care, of psychological and soul
growth. There has been in the second half of the twentieth
century, a growing deprofessionalization
of the skills of taking care of body, mind and spirit. At the
same time a vast proliferation of methods of self-care has
mushroomed, from innumerable diets to every kind of spiritual
practice. The human race stirs itself to fulfill the legacy of
the Renaissance: the idea of the free and self-determining
human person, active in all spheres of human
endeavor.
What
this means is a doctrine of universal political rights. This
is an advance on the widely accepted right of any person to
political membership of their community, that is, to participate in
the framing and working of political institutions. The
universal version expands such participation so that every social
situation of persons to participate in any decision-making that
affects the fulfillment of their needs and interests, the expression
of their preferences, values, and above all, the inner life of their
spirit. This right to political participation in the universal
sense is on an unidentified march throughout the world, claiming
attention not only in political institutions, but, in piecemeal
fashion, in the family, in education, in medicine, in industry, in
research, and, finally, in religion. It is the
emergence of personhood as the imago dei: each human a
responsible co-creator of their domain within the universal estate,
in relation with others similarly
engaged.
Religious
authority has for centuries been the lynch-pin which has kept in
place the whole wheel of authoritarianism in society.
Traditional religious institutions, East and West, are still today
major bastions of the restriction of rights, for example, the
spiritual rights of women. Religious authoritarianism ...
makes its continuing bid for control, even in modern transpersonal
theory and practice. Yet people
on every hand are bursting out of this ancient containing chrysalis
of the free human spirit.
Emerging
self-determination in the religious sphere is, in my worldview, the
sign of immanent spiritual life at work at a breakthrough level, not
as in the past when this or that religious innovator started a
modified version of Christianity or Buddhism or some other
traditional creed, but in large numbers
of ordinary people generating their own lived inquiry into religious
practice and deep inner transformation.
My sense of it is that there are three interrelated criteria which,
applying in varying degrees to any one individual, identify people
in this self-generating spiritual culture:
|
|
They
affirm their own original relation to the presence of
creation, find spiritual authority within and do not project
it outward onto teachers, traditions or texts. |
|
|
They
are alert to the hazards of defensive and offensive
spirituality, in which unprocessed emotional distress distorts
spiritual development, either by denying parts of one's
nature, or by making inflated claims in order to manipulate
others. |
|
|
These
are open to genuine dialogue about spiritual beliefs and to
collaborative decision-making about spiritual practices
undertaken together. |
~~John Heron (1998)
[I
confess the idea of the context this person puts forward as a possible
"new theology" is not what I would choose, but that's my
bias. Regardless of what we may call this new collective creation
-- theology or social way or culture or spirituality, etc. -- which is
beside the point, his heads-up about our being suspect of any claim to
authority that seeks to undermine personal autonomy in one's spiritual
path-making is well taken.]
Any spiritual school or tradition that claims any kind of authority for
its spiritual teachings and practices will ... seduce, disregard or
downgrade human autonomy and its internal authority expressed as
critical subjectivity, independent judgement, individual discriminating
practice, inner-directed unfoldment, personal freedom of spirit in
defining spiritual reality and in choosing and shaping the spiritual
path.
When human beings join together to support each other, and find
collective power, in fully respecting each other's internal authority,
then, I surmise, a radical new theology may well emerge. It may
perhaps affirm, not the primacy of redemption or salvation or
enlightenment or release or emptiness or god-realization, for all these
things appear to have been promoted to maintain the mediating role of
authority figures. It may celebrate, by contrast, the primacy of
charismatic practice, of co-creative engagement with divine doing and
becoming, found where autonomous humans co-operatively inquire into
world-transforming skills within their universal estate. It may
not be meditation and prayer that stand at the forefront of spiritual
practice. The paramount path may be the creative work of the
cosmic citizen, for which interior transfiguration hones the laboring
blade.
~~John Heron (1998)
If
the structure of the spiritual path were really based on transcendental
inquiry involving consensual validation in a community of peers, then we
should expect to see this at work among those who claim to be
spiritually accomplished, the so-called spiritual masters. Current
masters of the same and different schools would meet regularly and
engage in ecumenical dialogue and experiential inquiry. This would
parallel what goes on in ordinary science, where leaders in any field
are in regular peer exchange to review the validity of each other's work
and try it out experimentally. But of course spiritual masters are
notorious for each becoming a law unto himself. They sedulously
avoid acknowledging the existence of other masters. The authority
each master claims for himself -- as a basis for eliciting spiritual
projection in devotees -- precludes any kind of peer relationship with
any other. There are important exceptions to this tendency, such
as the Dalai Lama, who need to be honoured [whom Heron quotes
here]:
I
suggest that we encourage meetings between people from different
religious traditions who have had some deeper spiritual
experiences ... genuine practitioners who come together and
share insights as a result of religious practice. According
to my own experience, this is a powerful and effective means of
enlightening each other in a more profound and direct way. (Dalai
Lama, 1996)
~~John Heron (1998)
Jean
Houston is talking about the work of
"English biologist Rupert Sheldrake and his theory of 'morphic
resonance.' Sheldrake states the very basis of paradigm
shift: things are as they are because they were as they
were. The laws of nature are not absolutes; rather, they are
accumulations of habits. The law of gravity, for example, is a
pretty well-fixed habit, probably owing to the trillions of beings
throughout the universe who give it general assent. Yet yogis,
swamis, and more than a few Catholic saints report that, in deep
meditation or spiritual rapture, they have been known to bump their
heads on the ceiling. Rapture is nothing if not a paradigm
shift."
~~Jean
Houston [in: Russell Targ's Limitless
Mind]
We believe that it is through the individual's transformative, direct spiritual experience of the Ever Present Origin that they both discover and transform into their fullest and highest spiritual selves. This spiritual transformation then results in the best possible relations to other selves, all other life forms and a better world more reflective of their highest selves and truth of the Ever Present Origin.
~~www.integrativespirituality.org
The fruit of thinking
is sometimes a seemingly simple, quiet idea that stands out among a
crowd of passing thoughts. It arrives unannounced. Truth, a
mentor of mine once said, is like a deer that comes to stand at the edge
of the woods to drink. If you make too much noise, it runs
away. How quiet are you?
~~William
Isaacs
Humberto Maturana
... says that love is the space in which others arise as legitimate
selves: "Love is the domain of relational behavior through
which another arises as a legitimate other in coexistence with
oneself" ... I believe that respect is the quality of love that in
particular allows this quality to be present.
~~William
Isaacs
These four pathologies of thought -- abstraction, idolatry, certainty,
and violence -- underlie most of the difficulties we face -- in
ourselves, in our families, our organizations, our society.
Together they reinforce our experience of fragmentation. At the
same time, the four principles for dialogue -- participation, unfolding,
awareness, and coherence -- make up the outlines of a way of being human
that might help us to overcome these difficulties and provide a basis
for bringing about a very different way of working and living.
~~William
Isaacs
Behind the practice of speaking your voice is another principle for
dialogue. This principle encourages us to remain aware of the
constant potential waiting to unfold through and around us. By
doing so I am able to take seriously the possibility that there is
something to listen to.
Bohm's notion of the implicate order is one development in science that
correlates with this principle and illuminates it. The implicate
order is based on a premise about the nature of "unfoldment and
enfoldment," where reality unfolds from a patterned invisible level
into the visible world that we see, and then folds back up again into
the invisible state. Reality consists both of a surface level
"explicate order," which has a relative independence, like the
individual notes of a piece of music, and a deeper implicate order out
of which the explicate flows. As David Peat, Bohm's biographer
indicates, Bohm "proposed that the reality we see about us (the
explicate order) is no more than the surface appearance of something far
deeper (the implicate order) ... the ground of the cosmos is not
elementary particles, but pure process, a flowing movement of the
whole." The implicate unfolds, both in an external sense and
in thought, to produce the explicate world we experience.
~~William
Isaacs
Today,
unfortunately, there is a tendency either to mythologize altered states
of consciousness or to discredit them. Both tendencies are equally
harmful.
~~Holger
Kalweit
Each
time a person stands up for an idea, or acts to improve the lot of
others, or strikes out against injustice, (s)he sends forth a tiny
ripple of hope, and crossing each other from a million different centers
of energy and daring, those ripples build a current that can sweep down
the mightiest walls of oppression and resistance.
~~Robert
F. Kennedy
[IN: Leadership and the New Science: Discovering Order in
a Chaotic World, by
Margaret J. Wheatley.]
If
you are not ready for [NDEs] you will not believe what I tell you.
But on the other hand, if you know already [through
experiences], then they could hang
you by your toe nails and still you would know.
Do you see the difference between knowing something and believing
something? Once you know, no
matter what they do to you, you will know that death does not
exist.
~~Elisabeth
Kübler-Ross
My
overarching sense of religious purpose rests on two cornerstones.
From the Bible and my Jewish tradition, I learn that people are not born
as human beings. They are only potentially human. The great
challenge of our lives, and the one to which religion addresses itself,
is to realize that potential, to become authentically human, to take a
man (or woman) and make a mensch of him. [[J.
Houston: "A Mensch
is a full person ... the human possibility in all of us. A Mensch
is not a hero. A Hero is a one-shot deal while a Mensch is
forever. ... When a Mensch walks down the sidewalk even the sidewalk
feels good."]] (Konrad Lorenz made this point
beautifully when he announced that science has discovered the missing
link between higher apes and human beings. It's
us.)
~~
Harold Kushner [IN: The
Courage of Conviction, edited by
Phillip L. Berman]
This
is the setting out.
The
leaving of everything behind.
Leaving
the social milieu. The preconceptions. the
definitions. the language. The narrowed field of
vision. The expectations.
No
longer expecting relationships, memories, words, or letters to mean what
they used to mean. To be, in a word: Open.
~~Rabbi
Lawrence Kushner
[IN: Leadership and the New Science: Discovering Order in
a Chaotic World, by
Margaret J. Wheatley.]
As cultural and species members, our historical pattern has been to relegate anomalies of experience to specialists in shamanism, alternative healing, and psychic experience, rather than to individually and collectively bring them to consciousness and focus on them as real information patterns relevant to both our survival and growth. Attending to these unnamed experiences instead of relegating them to the status of unimportant exceptions to the rule, we might--as did the originators of chaos theory when they included anomalous patterns in their data bases--open up our experience of the world, remove the effects of our current blindness, and discover better practical and theoretical ways of being in the world. In effect, by responding to the real world as it is, we would be co-creating a world of experience that increases our happiness and restores our true identity as spiritual beings in a loving and creative universe. Such a practice would amplify growth in our relationships as well.
~~Cynthia Sue Larson and Anne Menne
[See their
fascinating article: "When Worlds Collide: How Parallel Realities Can Heal Interpersonal Relationships."
Presented at the 21st International Conference on the Study of Shamanism
and Alternative Modes of Healing, Santa Sabina Center, San Rafael, California,
September 4 - 6, 2004. web address:
http://realityshifters.com/pages/articles/worldscollide.html]
We
have split up life into two parts far too drastically.
We have drawn a line, and we must gradually erase that line.
We have talked about the spiritual life, and the earth life or
the physical life. The two
are one and we must make them one again.
There is no line, there is no line at all.
Man has drawn a line and it must be erased, and it will take some
time to erase it completely, but we must work towards that.
We must do that in the same way that we must erase -- shall we
call it? National boundaries, national boundaries and limitations,
racial ones.
All
these must go, and [especially] the boundary that we have, quite
unnecessarily, erected between what we now call our two worlds, which
are one. It is only one
world. There is only one
world. There is only one
world and we must take down these … barriers of illusion that
compelled us to think there must be two, because through our limitations
and ignorance we are unable to look over the self-erected barrier, or to
look through it. It must
come down. It is your work,
it is our work.
~~Attributed to
Sir Oliver Lodge [after his passing
-- given to the medium, Gladys Osborne
Leonard in: Journal of the Society for
Psychical Research]
Think about the need to educate ourselves about 'all things EHE' and the
influence they can have on the survival of our planet, "if
enough of us do it":
What I most
regretted were my silences. Of what had I ever been afraid?
... I was going to die, if not sooner than later, whether or not I had
ever spoken myself. My silences had not protected me. Your
silence will not protect you ... it is not difference which immobilizes
us, but silence. And there are so many silences to be broken.
~~Audre
Lorde [found
in: The Cultural Creatives: How 50 Million Are Changing
the World, by Paul
Ray and Sherry Ruth Anderson.]
The United States is in a particularly strong position to take a leadership role in this transformation of consciousness. We are a pluralistic society with a long experience of living with diversity. The relative security that our privileged isolation has provided has given us the luxury of freedom, even though it has left us unprepared to deal with the terrible assault upon our nation that occurred in September, 2001. Yet this very safety and freedom has allowed us to become strong and creative in developing a practical understanding of the human psyche. We are jittery in the face of our new vulnerability, especially since we seem to receive alternating messages to beware of new attacks, but to go on living as if all were normal. But as we have been pioneers in creating a new political form—a democracy that has inspired the world in its discovery of the power that resides in diversity, and a unity that can transcend differences— we could also lead the world in developing the transformation of consciousness that could lead the human species away from the brink of disaster.
~~John E. Mack [from an
article by Dr. Mack found on the internet: "Global Mind Change - Deeper Causes: Exploring the Role of Consciousness"
on http://shiftinaction.com/node/67.]
The Great Turning is a name for the essential adventure of our time: the shift from the industrial growth society to a life-sustaining civilization.
The ecological and social crises we face are inflamed by an economic system dependent on accelerating growth. This self-destructing political economy sets its goals and measures its performance in terms of ever-increasing corporate profits--in other words by how fast materials can be extracted from Earth and turned into consumer products, weapons, and waste.
A revolution is underway because people are realizing that our needs can be met without destroying our world. We have the technical knowledge, the communication tools, and material resources to grow enough food, ensure clean air and water, and meet rational energy needs. Future generations, if there is a livable world for them, will look back at the epochal transition we are making to a life-sustaining society. And they may well call this the time of the Great Turning. It is happening now.
Whether or not it is recognized by corporate-controlled media, the Great Turning is a reality. Although we cannot know yet if it will take hold in time for humans and other complex life forms to survive, we can know that it is under way. And it is gaining momentum, through the actions of countless individuals and groups around the world. To see this as the larger context of our lives clears our vision and summons our courage.
~~ Joanna Macy [from her website,
www.joannamacy.net]
A
Truth for All Transformative Experiences:
Despite cultural
bias, religious admonitions, and scientific denial of the possibility or
morality of communication with the dead, people persist in claiming they
have had such experiences. Why?
As hundreds have told us, their personal after-death contacts
were of a character and intensity that made the reality simply
undeniable. The incredulous
reactions of friends and families, old cultural and religious taboos,
and even doubts about their own sanity were simply no match for having
been in the presence of a deceased loved one, even if for just seconds.
~~Joel Martin and
Patricia Romanowski
Our
greatest need at the present time is perhaps for a global
ethic
--
transcending all other
systems of allegiance and belief
--
rooted in a consciousness of
the interrelatedness and sanctity of all life. Such an ethic would
temper humanity's acquired knowledge and power with wisdom of the kind
found at the heart of the most ancient human traditions and cultures
--
in Taoism and Zen, in the
understandings of the Hopi and the Maya Indians, in the Vedas and the
Psalms, in the very origins of human culture itself.
~~Federico
Mayor
["Crucible for a Common
Ethic"
in Our Planet 8:2, Aug
1996]
What
will it take for us to Become indigenous once again? -- not as we
were, but as we might be?
~~Bill
McDonough [an American environmental architect; found in Presence:
Human Purpose and the Field of the Future, by Peter
M. Senge, C. Otto Scharmer, Joseph Jaworski, and Betty Sue Flowers]
My
mother tells me I came into this world screaming -- not crying in pain
or confusion, not yelping with fear, but screaming in fury and
indignation. this wasn't a difficult birth (I was her fourth
child), and Mom never used drugs during labor or delivery, so there was
no extraordinary pain or injury. but still I raged, with a lung
power that astonished everyone in the delivery room. As I look
back, I can see my fury as the perfect herald of my coming into this
life. Anger in any form is a boundary-building tool, and I would
definitely need strong boundaries in the months and years to come.
I have always felt that I dropped into this world, not accompanied by a
lilting song of angels, but with a fierce shout to God:
"Cover me, I'm going in!"
~~Karla
McLaren
We
Are Privileged to Be Present at the Birth of a New World.
What
is indispensable in every case is the ardent will for progress, the
willing and joyful renunciation of all that hampers the advance:
to throw far away from oneself all that prevents one from going forward,
and to set out in the unknown with the ardent faith that this is the
truth of tomorrow, inevitable, which must necessarily come, which
nothing, nobody, no bad will, even that of Nature, can prevent from
becoming a reality -- perhaps of a not too distant future -- a reality
which is being worked out now and which those who know how to change,
how not to be weighed down by old habits, will surely have the good
fortune not only to see but to realize.
People
sleep, they forget, they take life easy -- they forget, forget all the
time. . . . But if we could remember . . . that we are at an
exceptional hour, a unique time, that we have this immense good fortune,
this invaluable privilege of being present at the birth of a new world,
we could easily get rid of everything that impedes and hinders our
progress.
So
the most important thing, it seems, is to remember this fact; even when
one doesn't have the tangible experience, to have the certainty of it
and faith in it; to remember always, to recall it constantly, to go to
sleep with this idea, to wake up with this perception; to do all that
one does with this great truth as the background, as a constant support,
this great truth that we are witnessing the birth of a new world.
We
can participate in it, we can become this new world. And truly,
when one has such a marvellous [sic] opportunity, one should be ready to
give up everything for its sake.
~~The
Mother [Mirra Alfassa. See
Wayne Bloomquist]
Belief is only
the beginning. To be strong you must see. Then you can bear
anything and do anything. Then the work can be done simply.
What is needed is the Awareness of Unity at all moments. From that
come love and truth and divine power.
~~Mother
Meera
Visions are helpful, and you must be grateful for them. They are
signs; they deepen faith; they show you what you must aim for. But
the real work is in building love and silence, in changing your whole
character and mind. Visions come and go. The silence
remains. The silence brings continual connection, continual
presence. [It's as if Rhea White's exceptional human experience
and EHE Process are an exact reification of what Mother Meera is saying
here.]
~~Mother
Meera
When
you know you are ETERNAL, you can play your true role in time.
When
you know you are DIVINE, you can become completely human.
~~Mother
Meera
To
Walt Whitman everything was awesome and wondrous. To most of us
miracles are events that force us to stop and take notice. Our
usual way of seeing the world is jostled and its inadequacies
exposed. We realize that our usual worldview just might not
account for everything we encounter.
...
Alcoholics Anonymous says, "Expect a miracle," modern medicine
says, "Expect the worst." Do we get what we expect?
A
miracle, then, is an event that lies outside our usual medical
predictions and understanding. These are the anomalies that show
us the limitations of our concepts. We will know medical research
has changed when we study the exceptions rather than the
rules.
~~Lewis
Mehl-Madrona [MD, PhD, and Experiencer]
Love,
allowing the other to be a legitimate other, is the only emotion that
expands intelligence.
~~Humberto
Maturana
[A
psychologist and his client are in the middle of processing a dream with
someone who is expected to die any day now:]
...Assuming that
dreams are processes trying to happen in consciousness ...
Peter:
Who was that woman on the floor? [in his dream]
Arny:
Do you feel "dropped" like she does in some way?
Peter:
It seems that she is someone who has just become hopeless and who needs
to be reawakened. I have been hopeless and have almost given up on
life.
Arny:
What would awakening her mean?
Peter:
God only knows. What do you think?
Arny:
For me there is no life or death anymore, there is only the process of
becoming yourself.
Peter
(laughter): You are unbelievable. That would be a real
awakening!
[Arny's
written comments, looking back to that conversation:]
...There are many ways of looking at dreams. Rather than enter
into a theoretical discussion about them, I prefer to stay close to what
happened. It is useful to understand dreams as descriptions of
processes that are only partially in our awareness, processes that are
trying to happen with more consciousness. In other words, Peter's
dreams implied that a part of him had "dropped out" of the
outer situation. Indeed, he was about to enter a coma, drop out of
consensus reality, and awaken to a new life.
At
the time, however, I assumed that the sleeping woman was a part of him
needing to e awakened, perhaps a feeling part that he had
"dropped" in some way. I realize only now as I write his
story down that the sleeping woman was a symbolic formulation of a
powerful experience that was about to happen. He was about to
sleep. He needed to drop everything, to enter a coma before he
would wake up.
~~Arnold
Mindell
[Arnold
Mindell was listening to a woman who was pouring out her feelings about
her loved spouse who was dying and her anxieties and grief about the
uncertain future.]
I
told her that if she felt like dying, she should do it now in a
fantasy. Dying in a fantasy is a way of regenerating.
...
Because of my having seen so many people die, life and death have a new
meaning for me. They are relative concepts. Death is
frightening only as long as we identify ourselves with who we have been
in life. That is why I recommend to people who worry about death
to go through the death fantasy in detail. The fantasy of dying is
often the need to drop an attitude or identity that has run out of
time. When people imagine that they are dying, they frequently
close their eyes, take a pause from their momentary identity, and enter
a new phase of life.
~~Arnold
Mindell
Imagine:
Your whole life for months, years, perhaps decades has been largely an
immersion in numbers-crunching and the various mechanical and related
disciplines of a scientist and engineer. The journey has been to
push- push- "push the outside of the envelope" as a test pilot
and finally as a member of the first team of USA astronauts to venture
well beyond the limitations of the most advanced jets. And one day
you find yourself suspended within a tiny capsule so far above the Earth
that you can see the whole orb beyond your tiny window, and beyond that,
the pitch of the mostly empty universe. For the very first time
you SEE ... really SEE ... the whole living planet cradling not only
the billions of human beings but all living physical beings we have ever
known. If you could but reach out, you could embrace the whole of
it in the span of your arms. That is where astronaut Edgar
Mitchell found himself one life-beginning day, when for him, briefly,
Tic-Toc stopped.
Whether suddenly or gradually, (when) one has an epiphany (an EHE), which allows one to
perceive a previously unseen order and meaning in the universe -- a recognition that gives significance to life by merging the boundaries of the self with the cosmos, … the deepest aspect of himself is one with all creation.
…It is a state in which there is constant awareness of unity with the universe pervading all the aspects of one's life.
Every activity, every relationship, every thought is guided by the knowledge of oneness between the self and the world. Inner and outer space are unified, and the inhumanities that people perpetrate on one another and the stupidities that people mount against nature become impossible to commit.
This internal self-regulation is the surest safeguard against the destruction of our world.
~~Edgar
D. Mitchell
[Apollo Astronaut]
It
would be very nice for the scientists if (paranormal) abilities lent
themselves to the type of investigations that are easily reduced to
mathematical expressions and statistical scoring.
Unfortunately, nature is seldom so kind.
She does not adapt herself to the preconceived notions of man.
It is for man to adapt the techniques of investigation to
discover the truth about nature.
~~Edgar D. Mitchell
Dr. Raymond Moody, Jr. is probably the first person in the Western
modern world who has commented on this. He says,
The very best person from whom to hear the details of a [his
specialty:] near-death experience is always a close relative, a sage,
grounded, experienced, sensitive person of long personal
acquaintance. Almost everyone knows someone who has had a
near-death experience, and that has afforded tens of millions of
people the opportunity to hear the story firsthand from a beloved
other person long known and long trusted -- a wise Aunt Pearl, a dear
grandmother or grandfather, a respected close friend. By now,
that is probably as large a factor as any other in why so many people,
lay or professional, dysbelievers [sic] about the paranormal, or not,
have become aware of the actual occurrence of these life-changing
episodes.
Hearing the story directly from a good, solid, honest person with whom
one has already been long and personally acquainted brings the
near-death experience home in its most wondrous immediacy this side of
the near beyond.
Much of what most folks' wisest loved ones have to say about their own
visits to the near hereafter is soothing, loving, and cheerful in
spirit. It is easy to appreciate the amusement value of happy,
comforting, near-death experiences.
~~Raymond
A. Moody, Jr. (1999)
Those who have out-of-body experiences (do not) come back with a death wish. On the contrary, they live life to the fullest, and enjoy their journeys so much, they eagerly await the next one. These travelers also come away from their experiences no longer fearing death.
~~Dianne Morrissey
(an NDEer who has taught thousands to have
OBEs)
[From
one who has been there, done that (NDE)!]
Often, the
dying patient wants to hold onto life only for the sake of the
survivors. I assure you, a
dying person will be overjoyed once on the Other Side.
Remember, none of us dies; we only change form.
~~Dianne Morrissey
Melvin
Morse talking about one of his young patients:
She describes
a classic near death experience. I wanted to present this video [on his
website; see below] of her
experience so that you can see the look in her eyes as she describes her
experience. Now you can understand why I feel so privileged to
hear these experiences so soon after patients are resuscitated. Once
they have told the story again and again, that initial look of amazing
awe is lost.
~~Melvin Morse
talking about one of
his young patients, recounting for one of the first few times her NDE.
Alas, the video does not seem to be functioning on his site -- but there
is a photo of her expression in the midst of the telling him her story. www.melvinmorse.com/light.htm
Preachers
err, [famous mythologist Joseph Campbell] told me, by trying 'to talk
people into belief; better they reveal the radiance of their own
discovery.'
~~Bill
Moyers speaking of Joseph Campbell, IN the
book: Joseph Campbell and the Power of Myth with Bill Moyers,
edited by Betty Sue Flowers
The
last time I saw [preeminent mythologist and teacher Joseph Campbell] I
asked him if he still believed -- as he once had written -- "that we
are at this moment participating in one of the very great leaps of the
human spirit to acknowledge not only of outside nature but also of our own
deep inward mystery."
He
thought for a minute and answered, "The greatest ever."
... the soul's high adventure, the quest of mortals to grasp the reality
of God ... not merely to fear less but to welcome what he described as
"a mighty multicultural future."
~~Bill
Moyers speaking of Joseph Campbell, IN the
book: Joseph Campbell and the Power of Myth with Bill Moyers,
edited by Betty Sue Flowers
[W]e may gain an ultimate
incandescence where science and religion fuse into one cosmic evolution of
Energy into Life, and of Life into Love, which is Joy."
~~Frederic W. H.
Myers
As
the world continues to shrink we are beginning to understand that we are
relational beings who generate meaning together. The new frontier of
social transformation is one in which both scientific and spiritual
worldviews meet in confirming the charged, creative and generative
nature of great masses of individuals communing together and creating
webs of meaning and networks of influence. The World Wide Web is both a
vehicle and a symbol for this sea change in human consciousness.
Even though there are major forces that seek to make the Internet the
new commercial frontier and view it as a kind of prime real estate to
capture, it
is demonstrating a resilient capacity to be a global commons where a
great multiplicity and diversity of voices can be heard. People are
participating in a global conversation as never before.
The
shift in awareness from being spectators of a collective human drama
which is primarily influenced by superstars in the political,
intellectual and religious spheres to one in which each of us begins to
recognize ourselves as participants and even as ‘players’ is indeed
a very significant one.
There
may be hope for an evolutionary shift in consciousness that will both
heal and transform our relationship to the past. It is a shift that
requires humility and an exploration of the science of being itself.
~~James
O'Dea, President of the Institute of Noetic Sciences
Speaking
of one of the Nag Hammadi documents referred to as "The Secret Book
of John": The
Secret Book suggests that the story of Eve's birth from Adam's side
speaks of the awakening of this spiritual capacity. Instead of
simply telling about the origin of woman, this story, symbolically read,
shows how the "blessed one above, the Father" (or, in some
versions .. "Mother-Father"), feeling compassion for Adam,
sent him
|
a
"helper" -- luminous epinoia
["creative" or "inventive" consciousness]
which comes out of him, who is called Life [Eve]; and she
"helps" the whole creation by working with him, and by
restoring him to his full being, and by teaching him about the
descent of his kind, and by showing the way to ascend, the way
he came down.
|
Thus
Eve symbolized the gift of spiritual understanding, which enables us to
reflect -- however imperfectly -- upon divine reality. ...
The
Secret Book intends this story to show that we have a latent capacity
within our hearts and minds that links us to the divine -- not in our
ordinary state of mind but when this hidden capacity awakens [us to] . .
. modes
of consciousness susceptible to revelation.
~~Elaine
Pagels
~~Nicanor
Perlas
We
understand why children are afraid of darkness, but why are men afraid
of the light? For those who
have experienced the light beyond death say, 'it cradles you with love
and you are never again the same.' The
rules and pathways to the light are numerous, but the goal is the same:
reunion with the one source, God.
~~Plato [From?]
The
voyage of discovery lies not in seeking new vistas but in having new
eyes.
~~Marcel
Proust
[found
in book by Suki
Miller]
There
is no event that is so inevitable as to be resistant to the focused
intent of the beings present. Efforts to orchestrate a common
focus on a given concept, in unison with vast numbers of other beings,
have a profound effect on an outcome that may have been predicted
[otherwise].
~~Rasha
...
[R]eality is only as each of you experiences it. The nature of
your world is no more and no less than a reflection of the composite
vision of the consciousness present. In the times to come, the
nature of the consciousness present will have transformed. And the
world that reflects it, in which you may choose to experience Life, will
resonate accordingly.
This
world in the times to come will radiate the essence of harmony. It
will hold the resonant frequency of the higher, nonphysical realms and
thus will Be the "heaven on earth" that has been
prophesied, throughout your history, for the days to come. Not
because some big, Almighty God, who is up there in the sky somewhere
made it that way. But because You -- each of you -- exercised your
Divine Will in harmony with Divine Intent. It is You who will have
created this world anew, by recognizing yourself as Oneness -- and
resonating as One. Just as it was In The Beginning.
~~Rasha
[Given
in the context of our "history of intimidation" and
"beings in positions of authority in every aspect of your reality
whose task it is to make you feel 'wrong' about what you know to be
'right.'"] Hold your vision. And
know that your perspective is what it is, because you are what you are
-- unique. Your purpose in being present in physical form is to
embody that uniqueness, not for the purpose of imposing it upon another
being, but for the purpose of graphically depicting it to yourself.
Thus
the approach of choice, when addressing your spiritual development, is
not to reject your cultural conditioning simply for the purpose of
substituting one vision for another, if your purpose is to impose
that view upon others. Your vision is sacred because it is yours
alone. it is not your mission to convince others of the validity
of what you know and the way you have chosen to express that
knowingness. It is your mission to develop and to explore the
richness of the depths of that gold mine for your own benefit, and to
allow others the grace to exercise the same freedom.
In
the times to come, you will encounter much in the way of so-called
"new thought," presented in self-righteous packaging by
visionaries who blaze the trail at the new levels of human awareness
[that are now prolifically coming into our awareness as this collective
consciousness transformation]. It is for you, who are amongst those
whose eyes are truly open, to know that the collective experience of
which you are a part, does not come with a newly stylized set of rules
and regulations. The truth that characterizes the essence of the
new levels of awareness is no different than the underlying essence of
all spiritual mastery. That which you seek is within yourself.
~~Rasha
[Published
circa 2000:] The internet is a
phenomenon of the global information society, creating connections
across the globe. The media companies are pushing for commerce and
entertainment, but its potential for creating online communities and
education is opening up almost as fast. Soon we will be able to
see each other's faces and hear our voices over the Internet, not just
send text and still pictures. The quality of personal
relationships on the Internet will go way up, because a much more
nuanced personal connection will be possible.
The
Internet's potential for global integration is remarkable.
... Direct person-to-person connections among ordinary people take
the authorities and the experts out of the place of control. The
consequences are just barely imaginable. ... When all of humanity
regards all the rest of humanity as real human beings, not as dangerous
Others or faceless ciphers, then the next era will have begun. If
we add connectivity to the spread of conflict negotiation skills and
solutions for health and ecology, then vast inequalities and old
enmities will be harder and harder to maintain.
[Note:
The following was fun and exciting to discover (6/07) after years of
this being the objective for building these two web projects --
wHeretwoworldsTouch.com and this one. Ray and Anderson, authors of
The Cultural Creatives, continue:]
What might this connectivity look like in the near future?
Imagine a Web portal that is an online community and also a
business. It gives seminars and workshops and scans the World Wide
Web for information to share. It also has a business district,
with a variety of e-commerce "stores" that share the values
and worldview of the community. To make money, the business must
give away information, services and support to anyone who enters the Web
portal, as well as to their customers. It's worth it, because the
"stores" are hoping to buy the loyalty of their community
members.
Is
this scenario a business or a community, profit or not-for-profit,
self-interested or altruistic? It is all of these. The old
distinctions are breaking down--again. In January 2000 there are
about a dozen Web sites and portals that want to fit the above
description and are in different stages of planning and development,
several print magazines and cable channels as well. All are
designed with the Cultural Creatives in mind. And all of them want
to promote both community and commerce and support the kind of changes
introduced by the social and consciousness movements. ... Building a community from an electronic base will not replace
face-to-face community, but it could go a long way toward making the
Cultural Creatives aware of one another.
If
the Cultural Creatives of the future form real online communities, then
a new politics cannot be far behind. And perhaps an education
movement. What else can you imagine?
~~Paul H.
Ray and Sherry Ruth Anderson
Mythos
carries the soul-level truth of a culture. When that truth begins
to change, we thirst for new stories and images: not only to help
us make sense of the changes, although that is immensely important, but
to help us find our connections to each other, to the natural world, and
to our past and our future. Without these stories and images, we
lose our connections. It is as if we are chopped into fragments
with our worlds broken apart, the physical separated from the
imaginal. Jungian analyst Marion Woodman told us, "At that
point, we lack the cosmos that keeps us in touch with the universal
reality. Without stories, we have no way to recollect ourselves
when our personal world
shatters."
Is
this right? could our modern sense of disconnection, our lack of
continuity wit the past and lack of responsibility for the future, be
caused by lack of a story? Or even more unbelievable, a
myth? Any schoolchild will tell you that myths are stories that
aren't true. But, as storyteller Erica Meade says, a myth is a
story that's true on the inside. And its a story teller's work to
reveal the inside of truths of a culture. It's a natural part of
what Cultural Creatives want and value: a way to remember that
they do not stand alone, a way to weave new patterns into the social
fabric, spinning lifelines that link the
generations.
~~Paul H.
Ray and Sherry Ruth Anderson
...
[Joseph Campbell has said,] Modernism has no shared myth that gives it
coherence, no guiding story that educates the individual in the stages
of life and grounds the community in the great mystery of being.
We are ... just going in raw.
There's
another way to see this situation, however. It's not just that we
have lost our story, but that we had to lose it, because every age needs
its own wisdom. Clinging to old stories is not only dangerous and
foolish, it keeps a culture stale and without imagination. Because
we are living in the time of the Between, we dare not be lulled into
listening to the old stories over and over again. And that means
that those who carry the wisdom for our time cannot be simply
storytellers. They'll have to be story-listeners, story-evokers,
artists and teachers of every sort who can call forth the stories we
need now.
When
an individual loses his story, Jung observed in the wake of the
conflagration of World War II, confusion and disorientation result; but
when a people lose their story, the entire culture suffers from
strange pathologies. We have been living in the aftermath of that
loss for centuries. At the beginning of a new millennium, our
landscape is still like the first season after a forest fire. But
out of the ashes sharp green shoots are sprouting everywhere, growing up
between the blackened stumps.
One
of the marvels of our time is precisely this new growth that has never
been seen before. After the holocaust of the Nazi Reich and
Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and the tragedies of the native peoples of North
and South America, many wisdom traditions were destroyed. But the
dead wood of the feudal system, the absolute power of the Church and the
agrarian empires, has also been burned away. From all our grave
losses and all our fortunate releases, a space has been cleared for
innovations and creativity.
This
fertile soil is where the Cultural Creatives are working, preparing the
way for a new culture. The new growth .. includes the large social
and consciousness [also environmental / ecological] movements of the
last forty years. But it also includes one of the oldest and most
powerful forms of human social life: mythos. Its fruits are
story and image, visual and performance arts, theater and song, music
and metaphor and ritual. New forms of the mythos are springing up
today [including] a world culture of music and story [that] is growing
as moderns understand ancient teachings in a new way. And
everywhere that harbingers of a new mythos are appearing, Cultural
Creatives are preparing the way.
~~Paul H.
Ray and Sherry Ruth Anderson
Hurrah,
we've won the hearts and minds of the people!
... pause for celebration ... Omigod, now what do we do?
With
70-90 percent of the population supporting even the strongest
pro-ecology statements, the environmental and ecology movements have won
the battle for the hearts and minds of the Western world. But now
they must face a difficult fact. It's no longer enough to tell
people how bad things are or to raise awareness. Not only do
people already know it, but they pretty much agree with the movement's
views, too. Agreement must now be turned into
practice.
Our
studies show that huge majorities of Americans want ecologically
sensible "green" products and services, but most aren't
willing to pay a premium to get products that should not have been
destructive in the first place. Similarly, they want business to
stop inflicting environmental damage, and they believe that a better use
of technology could do the job without destroying the economy. (As
Natural Capitalism argues, they're right.) They want actual
leadership and proactive initiatives from all levels of government that
aren't sellouts to big business. And they want practical proposals
on how to change their behavior and lifestyle. But nobody's
delivering.
Certainly
big money and some big industries (oil, gas, coal, nuclear, utilities,
chemicals, autos, agribusiness) use their control over big media and big
government to paralyze attempts at concrete action. But that's
only part of the problem. Additionally, no institutions have been
set up to translate public sentiment favoring ecological sustainability
into practical action (including the work of lining up all the elites
and power groups, and facing down the financiers). Green
activists, accustomed solely to raising awareness, have not constructed
those institutions.
~~Paul H. Ray and Sherry Ruth Anderson
The
hour is striking so close above me,
so
clear and sharp,
that
all my senses ring with it.
I
feel it now: there's a power in me
to
grasp and give shape to my world.
I
know that nothing has ever been real
without
my beholding it.
All
becoming has needed me.
My
looking ripens things
and
they come toward me, to meet and be met.
~~Ranier
Marie Rilke [IN: Rilke's Book of Hours, by
Anita
Barrows and Joanna Macy]
TRANSFORMATION OF OUR LIVES
HERE AND NOW ON THIS EARTH IS THE URGENT AND ESSENTIAL POINT:
"Wouldn’t it be tragic if this central message of the near-death experience, that life is inherently sacred and must be lived with sacred intensity and purpose, was obscured and lost in a facile romanticizing of death? Wouldn’t it be even more tragic if such a facile optimism further deepened the disregard for our actual responsibilities to ourselves and our world that is menacing the survival of the planet?"
~~Kenneth Ring
Three informal surveys of college students enrolled in a semester-long course on near-death experiences (NDEs) suggest that exposure to information about the NDE may bring about substantial changes in beliefs about NDEs, life after death, and God, as well as reduce fear of death and increase one’s level of spirituality.
~~Kenneth Ring
The pace of our lives is so hectic that the last thing we have time to think of is death. We smother our secret fears of impermanence by surrounding ourselves with more and more goods, … things, …comforts …All our time and energy is exhausted simply maintaining them. …And so our lives drift on, unless a serious illness or disaster shakes us out of our stupor.
…Our myopic focus on this life and this life only, is the greatest deception, the source of the modern world's bleak and destructive materialism. No one talks about death and no one talks about the afterlife, because people are made to believe that such talk will only thwart our so-called "progress" in the world.
Yet if our deepest desire is truly to live and go on living, why do we blindly insist that death is the end? Why not at least try and explore the possibility that there may be a life after? Why, if we are as pragmatic as we claim, don't we begin to ask ourselves seriously: Where does our real future lie? After all, no one lives longer than a hundred years. And after that there stretches the whole of eternity, unaccounted for ….
~~Sogyal
Rinpoche
The
practices of the spiritual path, if done with correct understanding and
application, bring results. Results develop faith. When
faith is strong and based on certainty, it furthers practice.
Faith and practice together lead to wisdom and happiness.
~~Tenzin
Wangyal Rinpoche [2002]
...
[O]ur faith is not foolish; it is not a credulous stupidity but a fore-knowledge,
something in us that knows before we do, sees before we do, and which
sends its vision and knowledge to the surface in the form of a yearning,
a seeking, an inexplicable faith. Faith, says Sri Aurobindo,
is an intuition not only waiting for experience to justify it, but
leading towards experience.
~~Satprem
All is He. "Himself the play, Himself the player,
Himself the playground."* It is He outside time and space, pure
Being, pure Consciousness, the great white Silence ... self-contained,
still formless. And He who becomes: Force separates from
Consciousness, She from Him, and Her journey begins:
...
scattered on sealed depths, her luminous smile
Kindled
to fire the silence of the worlds.**
She flings herself forth from Him in an outburst of joy, to play at
finding Him again in Time -- He and She, two in one. What then
was the commencement of the whole matter? Existence that
multiplied itself for sheer delight of being and plunged into numberless
trillions of forms so that it might find itself innumerably.***
~~Satprem
*,
**,
***
are from the writings of Sri Aurobindo: Respectively, from The
Life Divine ; Savitri ; Thoughts and Glimpses.
[Sri
Aurobindo Ghose and also Mirra Alfassa, his spiritual companion, best
known as The Mother, undertook what they eventually described as
"the Great Experiment" and "Mother's
Agenda."** They invited us to bring our own efforts into
the Experiment, saying right out front, they did not know what the
result would be, nor if we would succeed as a race in the objective of
this work as they saw it. They may together represent the
most extraordinary inner courage and adventure of anyone ever to grace
our earthly Humanity in recent times, and perhaps for all recorded
hirstory. They found the idea of their work becoming the basis
for a new or old religion to be a reprehensible thought! They
insisted on being understood as two quite ordinary individuals who,
like any of us, simply found their way into exploring what became for
them life-leading questions in their individuation process. This
is the privilege of each of us to pursue our own determined paths of
interest. They saw that we are all and each co-adventurers in
Life-Writ-Large.]
We
want to bring down the supermind as a new faculty. Just as the
mind is now a permanent state of consciousness in humanity, so also we
want to create a race in which the supermind will be a permanent state
of consciousness.* And so that his intentions might not be
misintrepreted, Sri Aurobindo repeatedly stressed the following
point: It is far from my purpose to propagate any religion,
new or old, for humanity in the future. A way to be opened that
is still blocked, not a religion to be founded, is my conception of
the matter. We cannot say whether the supramental adventure
will succeed. The Vedic rishis were unable to "unblock the
way," they could not open "the great passage" for
everyone and transform their personal realization into a permanent and
collective one. There must have been a reason. What
remains to be seen is whether that reason still holds today.
[* where the author, Satprem, is quoting directly from Sri
Aurobindo. Also: **
see
Parts 1 and 2 of Connecting
the Dots for
more about how we stand to gain so much as a species in learning what
our spiritual and religious and
other-described (EHE) Experiential exemplars have in common.]
~~Satprem
… the key to our existence, here or elsewhere, is always our capacity of consciousness; if we lack consciousness in life, we will lack consciousness in every other way; death will be really death and sleep really a stupor.
Becoming aware of these various degrees of reality is therefore a fundamental task. Once we have done this work exhaustively, the artificial boundaries that separate our various modes of existence will crumble; we will pass without interruption, without any gap of consciousness, from life to sleep to death; more precisely there will no longer be death or sleep as we understand them, but different ways of perceiving continuously the total Reality, …
This physical life in this physical body therefore assumes special prominence among all our modes of existence, because it is here that we can become conscious – this is were the work takes place, Mother says, the meeting point of all the planes in one body. This is where the work takes place because it is the starting point of evolution, or almost the starting point; it is through this body that slowly, after countless undifferentiated lives, an I takes on individuality by coming in contact with higher and higher planes and vaster and vaster reaches of consciousness on each plane. There exist therefore as many different kinds of death or sleep as there are lives, because they are the same thing; all depends on the degree of our evolutionary development; there are all possible degrees as in life, from the total zombie to the completely awakened and individualized consciousness. Hence there are no general rules regarding sleep and death, because everything is possible, just as it is here.
~~Satprem
Sri
Aurobindo's yoga. We are surprised to find that the guide has an
amazing ability to make the most intricate concept simple and
obvious. With him, we understand the virtues of mental silence,
the invisible gradations of consciousness above the mind and the many
beings that inhabit us. All our unknown potentialities come
alive before our eyes. Most importantly, we appreciate how these
untapped possibilities relate to our daily life, how they can change
it from the inside, and how, ultimately, Sri Aurobindo's experience
leads to "a divine rehabilitation of Matter."
"We have denied the Divinity in Matter, to confine it
instead in our holy places and now matter is taking its revenge -- we
called it crude, and crude it is. As long as we tolerate this
imbalance, there is no hope for the earth. We will swing
endlessly from one pole to the other -- both equally false -- from
material enjoyment to spiritual austerity, without ever finding true
fulfillment. We need BOTH the vigor of Matter and the fresh
waters of the Spirit . . . Now the time may have come at last to
unveil the Mysteries, and to rediscover the complete truth of the two
poles within a THIRD POSITION, which is neither that of the
materialists nor that of the spiritualists."
~~Satprem
More
and more people are beginning to realize that the "modern
experiment" has failed. It received its early impetus from
what I have called the Cartesian revolution, which, with implacable
logic, separated man from those Higher Levels that alone can maintain
his humanity. Man has closed the gates of Heaven against himself
and tried, with immense energy and ingenuity, to confine himself to the
Earth. He is now discovering that the Earth is but a transitory
state, so that a refusal to reach for Heaven means an involuntary
descent into Hell.
~~E.
F. Schumacher
It's common to say that trees come from seeds. But how could a
tiny seed create a huge tree? Seeds do not contain the resources
needed to grow a tree. These must come from the medium or
environment within which the tree grows. But the seed does
provide something that is crucial: A place where the whole of
the tree starts to form. As resources such as water and
nutrients are drawn in, the seed organizes the process that generates
growth. In a sense, the seed is a gateway through which the
future possibility of the living tree emerges.
[The
seed "that organizes the process that generates growth" and as
a "gateway [that "something crucial"] through which the
future possibility of the living tree emerges," could also be a
perfect metaphor for an exceptional human experience.]
~~Peter
M. Senge, C. Otto Scharmer,
Betty Sue Flowers and
Joseph Jaworski [in Presence:
Human Purpose and the Field of the Future]
...
[M]any visions are doomed from the outset because those who articulate
them, whether consciously or not, are coming from a place of
powerlessness. If we believe that someone else has created our
present reality, what is the basis for believing that we can create a
different reality in the future? ... Only when people begin to see from
within the forces that shape their reality and to see their part in how
those forces might evolve does vision become powerful. Everything
else is just a vague hope.
~~Peter
M. Senge, C. Otto Scharmer,
Betty Sue Flowers and
Joseph Jaworski [from Presence:
Human Purpose and the Field of the Future]
The
inventor Bukminster Fuller used to say that all of us are scientists; in
other words, we all have the capacity for primary knowing, for seeing
the generative processes of life. Today we've put science on a
pedestal, where it occupies a position similar to that of religious
institutions in the past. Scientists have become people who tell
us how things "really" are, and most of us have become passive
recipients of their knowledge.
Fuller
had a very different view. For him, science was "putting the
data of your experience in order." He believed that the
future lay in cultivating the scientist in all of us. If science
is an unfinished project, the next stage will be about reconnecting and
integrating the rigor or scientific method with the richness of direct
experience to produce a science that will serve to connect us to one
another, ourselves, and the world.
~~Peter
M. Senge, C. Otto Scharmer,
Betty Sue Flowers and
Joseph Jaworski [from Presence:
Human Purpose and the Field of the Future]
[The channeled being Seth is talking to
Robert Butts, Jane Roberts' husband. Jane has been in the hospital
for over a year at this point with some serious health
challenges.] Remind [Jane] also to
remember that [she] does not have any particular disease. Society
would be much better off if man labeled multitudinous levels of physical
health rather than dignifying negative concepts by giving them names and
designations.
~~Seth/Jane
Roberts/Robert
Butts [IN: The Way Toward Health, a Seth Book]
[[Personally,
I (R. Rocamora) have wondered if this and the acute fear we are
accustomed to feeling under such physical duress have everything to do
with why many cancerous conditions seem to take on a life of their own
-- because we give them so much powerful attention like this. We
make of it an "entity," residing in the body. We could
learn much from this in our efforts to understand the creative process
itself.]]
We
now move into the second half of life [re: current midlife crisis
of Western science] as we face the potential destruction of life on
Earth made possible by the products of science. With awareness of
our mortality, we must negotiate the midlife crisis of science.
Rather than defend our ossifying old definitions of science, let us open
ourselves to renewal. Let us welcome the soul, the Feminine, to
science. At midlife, consciousness tends to continue to establish
attitudes and does not notice the inner renewal taking place under the
surface. Often renewal comes from where we least expect it -- from
children, from simple people, or from an officially despised part of the
psyche such as the Feminine.
I
do not believe in spurning technology or think that imposing more
bureaucratic layers will solve the problems of science. I see it
as a challenge to all individuals to open our minds to new
possibilities, to reflect deeply, to reexamine our values, to come to
know ourselves, to develop our feeling and intuition to complement
thinking and sensation, to integrate the Feminine -- to become more
whole people. Then each of us can begin to infuse science with
heart and humor. We can reach out to colleagues and build
cooperative networks based on love, trust, and curiosity.
...
Everyone we touch with our lives will see the value in this
way of doing science. I believe in the power of the small, the
cumulative power of individuals leading conscious, ethical lives.
As chaos science teaches us, once we reach a critical threshold, the
institutions of science will reorganize themselves.
~~
Linda Jean Shepherd
What
is unknown to us often appears fearful, and I am sure this is another
reason the spirit world is trying to communicate with us.
They want to break through the chains of superstition with which
we have bound ourselves. Since
that is the world to which we will all, sooner or later, go and call
home, it is wise to learn as much as possible about it before we move
there.
~~Harold Sherman
Personal
myths are not what you think they are. They are not false
beliefs. They are not the stories you tell yourself to explain
your circumstances and behavior. Your
personal mythology is, rather, the vibrant infrastructure that informs
your life, whether or not you are aware of it. Consciously and
unconsciously, you live by your mythology.
~~June
Singer [from the Foreward to The Mythic Path: Discovering the
Guiding Stories of Your Past -- Creating a Vision for Your Future,
by Daniel Feinstein and
Stanley
Krippner.
There
are many, many religions. Most of them are intolerant of each
other. Who are we to say which ones God approves of or not?
Only God can do that. ... But if we are trying to say, 'I Love God,' how
can we say 'I hate my brother for worshipping God differently than I
do'? It misses the entire point of being a Godly person!
~~Tiffany Snow
God
has historically used Supernatural intervention to connect with Him, and
continues to today. .. That tiny voice inside is just
one line of connection to God. if you truly want your life choices
placed on a stronger footing, and a sense of certainty and confidence in
everything you do, you need to develop more Tools to Connect.
~~Tiffany Snow
[F]or
us to ever admit to anyone that something Untraditional has happened in
our lives can be akin to committing a form of social suicide!
Especially in a church or place of worship! But, once you have
empirical evidence, nothing will shake you now from knowing that
Something exists beyond yourself. Because, you experienced it
yourself, and no matter what anyone else says, it cannot be taken away
from you. Often there is nothing to compare it to that would let
your brain acknowledge what your mind and spirit already knows and
believes.
~~Tiffany
Snow
Talk
to ten average people, and see how many have had "Something"
out-of-the-ordinary occur to them that they consider unusual,
supernatural, or Divine. It might take some conversational digging
for them to open up, since often they feel alone in their experiences
and have hidden it deep in the fertile soil of the God Spot, where it
waits as a precious seed, full of possibilities.
Often
we find ourselves never watering this seed or giving it the slightest
hint of sunshine because we fall into the trap of measuring our personal
empirical (first-person) experiences up to the traditional
(second-person) ones. Yet, if ours aren't on the board, we may
doubt the validity of the tradition, but never our own experience.
We are just afraid of being thought of as different or odd, or stupid,
if we don't embrace all of the tradition. So, we keep quiet, and
try to forget or hide away the most wonderful one-to-one Divine
Supernatural moment we have every had. But, time after time, the
person who has a 20 second experience with God will keep his belief that
GOD IS, better than a scholar who has spent several years studying
someone else's experiences!
~~Tiffany
Snow
Sing
to God, write poems to him! Know that you can talk to him
casually, and with respect, as you would a dear trusted friend. ... How
many times have you just "dialed up" God and asked how his day
was going? ... It is two-way communication we have with our friends,
mates, and relatives. How long do you think these relationships
would last if we did all the talking and never allowed them a word in
edge-wise? Think of God as a buddy who "hangs out" over
your right shoulder. You are not talking to yourself. You
are communicating with the Power of the Universe, and if you are
listening in return, you will know he's talking back to you.
~~Tiffany Snow
We
were created with a "God-Spot": Hundreds of religions in
the world ... thousands of ways and rules of worship...missions of
different points of view. Everywhere, in all parts of the earth
and in all periods of time we find people expressing a need to worship,
whether it has been the sun, idols of stone or TV personalities.
As a person searching for the face of God, it may easily seem like an
insurmountable and impossible task. But, yet, a gnawing feeling
inside of us keeps driving us -- we need to have validation of
God. We need the personal realization in our lives, the
manifestation of "I AM." Why is that ? Why can't
people feel complete happiness in just meeting the needs and wants of
life? Because we were made that way! We were meant to be
empty without God.
~~Tiffany
Snow
The
greatest blessing comes to us on the way to madness.
~~Socrates
[found in Holger Kalweit's Shamans,
Healers, and Medicine Men]
Manifestation
is an act of co-incarnation disguised as an act of acquisition.
... [It] is a way of using any desire as a starting point for a
spiritual journey. ... To
shape a reality that honors and reveals our full nature and that, in
co-creative alignment with the sacred, empowers and nurtures all of life
is the highest calling. ... It is that calling that is the heart of
manifestation. ... the essence of the Inner Art.
~~David Spangler [1996]
When
you make manifestation a spiritual practice then the perspectives it
brings overflow into other aspects of your life. You begin
naturally seeing yourself and your world in terms of interconnected and
co-incarnational patterns. The reality of a community in which we
all live becomes more apparent. The vision of your incarnation
becomes broader, more ecological, more compassionate. Your
attitudes and actions reflect a larger, more complete
humanity.
~~David
Spangler [1996]
It
is important to realize that we are not trapped in the particle of our
history and our habits and the dictates of a purely linear logic in our
lives. Other possibilities are available to us as we reach into
our wave state and step out of the locality and particularity of our
situation. We can deliberately work with the waves of probability
to transform our lives [which is the essence of what the author calls
the 'inner art of manifestation].
As
particles, I and that which I want to manifest may be separated.
But as waves, we are already together. Manifestation is the art of
making a given wave of possibility more probable than it would have been
otherwise. [So,] Manifestation is the art of transforming a
wave of possibility into a particle of
actuality.
~~David
Spangler [1996]
It
has always seemed to me a paradoxical failure of imagination on the part
of many new age groups ... that while they could weave the most
fantastic scenarios of earthquakes, polar shifts, the tilting of the
earth on its axis, visitations from flying saucers, and various
supernatural happenings, they could not imagine transformation brought
about by thousands of people learning to see themselves and their planet
differently. This assumption of powerlessness and helplessness on
the part of humanity has always been a failing of the apocalyptic
viewpoint.
~~David Spangler
[1984b)
I
believe continuing research into parapsychology and the untapped
resources of the human mind is important. This is not the same as
developing spirituality, however. It is no substitute for putting
holistic insights to work in our lives. We do not need more
perceptions and powers to begin the practice of connectedness in loving,
wise and caring ways. At the heart of spirituality is a
relationship with God, a covenant that holds both parties accountable in
a bond of love, and then extends this love and accountability in
nourishing and empowering ways into our relationships with each other
and our world. Simple perception or the receiving of information,
however exotic the method, is not such a covenant. It holds us to
no bond of accountability to and for each other, though it can serve
such a bond.
~~David Spangler
[1984b)
'The
new heaven and the new earth are forming in your midst. What I am
is not a form. I am life and the spirit of life. My new
heaven and new earth emerge throughout the world . . . . The
Choice is not between forms but between consciousnesses.' [Limitless Love and Truth as transmitted through David Spangler, circa
1970]
...
The identity of this world is one in which humanity confronts itself as
a divine being and takes on with wisdom and with skill, in wholeness and
in love the truth of its identity as co-creator with God. ... What this
new world shall be like will be discovered and enunciated by many men
and women throughout the world, whose voices will grow to become one
voice as they recognize their oneness.
.. I proclaim the kingdom
that is within the kingdom of the image of humanity, which encompasses
the worlds of lost and saved and strives to make them one that [we] may
move from conflict into peace and from limitation into freedom.
~~David
Spangler [1976]
[The]
personal context o Revelation is that the New Age is fundamentally a
change of consciousness from one of isolation and separation to one of
communion, attunement, and wholeness. ... all things proceed from
consciousness. The New Age is within us. It is not coming
tomorrow. It is here now. this is the essence of
Revelation: that there is now a presence of new life, new culture,
new promise active in the world. The individual does not have to
struggle to create a new world. He simply must learn to attune to
the reality of the new world which is already here and manifesting its
energies about us. Then through that attunement, he changes his
personal consciousness and becomes increasingly part of the rhythms of
the new cycle. In this way, he leaves one world and enters
another. ...
The creative energies that will bring the new culture into
manifestation are flowing from within each of us. ... We are called upon
to embark on a creative project, not to destroy, not to rebel, not to
retreat, but to attune to the new life within us and release its
creative impulse in co-operation within others in order to reveal the
new heaven and build the new earth.
~~David
Spangler [1976]
There
is a principle which is a bar against all information, which is proof
against all arguments and which cannot fail to keep a man in everlasting
ignorance--that principal is contempt prior to
investigation.
~~Herbert Spencer
[from ??]
If
the human race had never left the spiritual world to take up its
evolution in the realm of matter, there could have been no such things
as a social problem. Human souls would have remained light-beings
in a world of light where each would have been seen and known and loved
for its shining qualities.
Bun
in order that sight and knowledge and love be developed in freedom, men
had to be separated from the light-world of their origin and plunged
into the darkness of the earth. As a result of that
separation, the light within them was "hidden under the
bushel" of their bodies. Thus, from the time of man's fabled
Fall, walls of matter have shut him away from the gods and from his
fellow human beings, cast their shadows deep into his soul, and divided
him from his own spirit. ...
first, the earth seemed alien to these outcasts, their flesh a
prison-house they longed to flee. But with time they began to take
the earth and fleshly bodies quite for granted. They forgot where
they came from and that they had been exiled from
the light in order that they re-discover it of their own seeking.
More and more they accepted darkness as the normal state. And in
their darkened soul-condition it became possible to dislike -- yes, even
to hate and despise and to try to destroy -- their fellowmen because of
their dark, body-begotten limitations.
Herein
lies the true root of the social problem. Man sundered from God is
by the same token also sundered from his fellow human being's spirits.
~~Marjorie
Spock
What
is the difference between the exoteric and the esoteric way through life
if not that the latter awakens the capacity to look behind the veil of
seeming with which the former rests content? -- that esoterics
everywhere seeks the spiritual reality behind the physical?
~~Marjorie
Spock
Amidst
the many attacks and oppositions which this or any spiritual work
encounters ..., we depend on the help of those in the spiritual world;
we depend on those who have only changed the form of their existence,
and who, in spite of their passage through the gate of death, are still
truly united with us in soul, and are most significant and important
co-workers. ....
The trust in our work that we
require, will often be strengthened by the knowledge that we must thank
our departed friends and family for being in our midst in order that, by
uniting our forces with theirs, we can accomplish the labor which is
laid upon us for the spiritual civilization of the world.
~~Rudolf
Steiner [from "The Forming of Destiny and Life After
Death," Berlin, 1915]
[A]
human being cannot determine rightly what he himself is unless he is in
a position to see truly into himself as a spiritual being. Man
does not acquire a unitary world view unless he can see beyond
birth and death, if he does not look into the higher worlds. In
order to understand his entire, total being, man needs a consciousness
permeated by knowledge of his connection with the spiritual world.
~~Rudolf
Steiner [from "The Waking of the Human Soul and the Forming of Destiny,"
Prague, 1923]
We must acquire serenity in all
feelings and sensations about the future.
We must look forward with
absolute equanimity to all that may come
and
we must think only that whatever comes is given to us
by a world
direction full of wisdom.
It is part of what we must learn in this
age, namely,
to live out of pure
trust, without any security in existence –
Trust, in the ever present
help of the spiritual world.
Truly,
nothing else will do.
~~Rudolf
Steiner
Only
what is chaotic can be made beautiful. When we transform the chaos
into the cosmos, beauty arises. Chaos and cosmos are thus
interchangeable concepts. .. Cosmos ... means the beautiful world
..
~~Rudolf
Steiner [in a little booklet, "Concerning Beauty, Truth, Goodness,
Love and Freedom"]
