WHAT I’M WRITING ABOUT in this series is not intended to destroy or offend anyone’s faith or belief, nor discount the moral and social values of religion — although being good for a reward of eternal life and avoiding sin for fear of going to hell are hardly worthy or healthy incentives for right action. Just do what is right because it’s the right thing to do. I suspect that few Christians really care about or have much interest in the history of their religion, Catholics or Protestants. The experience of community, the most valuable contribution of church life in my opinion, overshadows the turbulent and at times bloody history of Christianity and its politics, especially Catholicism. I write simply to set the record straight and to honor the unredacted truth. If I offend anyone’s religious beliefs or fervor, it is truly unintentional and I humbly ask your forgiveness. Thank you.

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ALL CHRISTIAN RELIGIONS have their shared foundation on the “rock” of Jesus the Christ, the Son of the Living God. Not one of the seven branches* of Christianity, however, can lay claim to being the “true religion” established by Jesus, as Jesus did not establish a religion. What He did attempt to re-establish as an actual experience for humanity was the Kingdom of Heaven and oneness with His Heavenly Father on Earth. This is what His visitation to the planet as the Lord of lords and King of kings was all about . . . and it was His unconditional love for humanity that moved Him to come down from Heaven and live as one of us in human form.

ZEALOTRY PERSISTED

I want to talk about what occurred in the wake of His visitation and ministry, which ended with His crucifixion, an execution for which was demanded and shouted out by the very people whom He loved and came to redeem from their captivity by . . . religion — belief in the old laws of Moses, which foretold of the coming of a “Messiah” that would restore the kingdom to the Jewish Nation of Israel.

Up to the very last forty days of His presence with His disciples just prior to His ascension, the disciples still hung onto that belief, asking Him that inane question recorded in Acts 1:6: “Lord, wilt thou at this time restore again the kingdom to Israel?” The Zealotry of Judas that got Jesus arrested was also paramount in the consciousness of some of the disciples. They sincerely believed that Jesus was the promised Messiah who had come to restore the kingdom to Israel and deliver the Jewish Nation from the oppression and persecution of the Romans. I can only imagine what sadness must have entered His heart upon hearing that question after three-and-a-half years teaching the Gospel of the Kingdom. One can only imagine also the confusion and disillusionment that must have come over Judas and the disciples when they realized that Jesus wasn’t going to call down the angelic hosts of heaven to deal forthrightly with the Roman soldiers in the Garden of Gethsemane, and proceed to restore the kingdom to Israel. There was such a mixture of hopeful, ambitious, zealous and agonizing energy stirring around in this historical event — the stuff of political enterprising.

It’s what John the Beloved Disciple closes his Gospel with that I wish to consider in this post, along with what is poignantly implied. Jesus had just asked the apostle Peter three times “Simon, son of Jonas, lovest thou me?” giving him the opportunity to receive the Lord’s forgiveness and unconditional love, especially after his thrice denial of his Lord. Here is the passage (John 21:19-23):

“And when he had spoken this, he saith unto him (Peter) “‘Follow me.‘ Then Peter, turning about, seeth the disciple whom Jesus loved following, which also leaned on his breast at supper, and said, Lord, which is he that betrayeth thee? Peter seeing him saith to Jesus, Lord, and what shall this man do? Jesus saith unto him, If I will that he tarry till I come, what is that to thee? follow thou me. Then went this saying abroad among the brethren, that that disciple should not die: yet Jesus said not unto him, He shall not die; but, ‘If I will that he tarry till I come, what is that to thee?'” [In other words, “Mind your own business.”]

JESUS’S APPOINTED SUCCESSOR

Let’s back up a bit to the foot of the cross on Golgotha Hill — the “place of the skull” — where Jesus hung in ignominy gasping for breath as he was loosing consciousness. This is a pivotal moment for the entire world of humanity when the Lord of Love incarnate in Jesus handed over His mantle of authority to His beloved disciple and bosom friend, John, as his successor to His position of leadership of the apostles. Here’s the passage in John’s Gospel:

When Jesus therefore saw his mother, and the disciple standing by, whom he loved, he saith unto his mother, Woman, behold thy son! Then saith he to the disciple, Behold thy mother. And from that hour that disciple took her into his own home . . . . After this, Jesus knowing that all things were now accomplished . . . saith, I thirst. (John 19:26-28)

John, the only disciple who witnessed the crucifixion, does not mention Jesus crying out “My God, my God! Why hast thou forsaken me?” That would have negated His entire life and ministry. Only Matthew and Mark mention it. It is Luke who records Jesus as having said “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.” Luke also records Jesus as having cried out “Father, into thy hands I commend my spirit. And having said thus, he gave up the ghost.” (Luke 23:34, 46)

The word home is italicized above where the account has John taking Jesus’s mother into his own home. This may be conveying the false impression that he took care of her in her latter years. However, I think this word was added. This was not a case of John becoming Mary’s guardian. It is rather a case of John taking the place of Jesus and becoming just as much a son to His mother as Jesus was. In taking His place as Mary’s son, John was commissioned to continue as Jesus himself, ministering to His followers and disciples, and finishing the work He had initiated — which was to draw together His disciples into One Body after they had scattered themselves each into his own place, fearful of the Romans.

THE KEYS TO THE KINGDOM OF HEAVEN

I would like to visit a pivotal incident recorded in Matthew’s Gospel when Jesus gave the keys to the kingdom of Heaven to His disciples. No, that’s not a typo nor a misstatement. Let’s see how Matthew worded his account.

When Jesus came into the coasts of Caesarea Philippi, he asked his disciples, saying, Whom do men say that I the Son of man am? And they said, Some say that thou art John the Baptist: some Elias, and others, Jeremias, or one of the prophets. He saith unto them, But whom say ye that I am? And Simon Peter answered and said, Thou art the Christ, the Son of the living God. And Jesus answered and said unto him:

Blessed art thou, Simon Bar-jo-na: for flesh and blood hath not revealed it unto thee, but my Father which is in heaven. And I say also unto thee, That thou art Peter, and upon this rock I will build my church; and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it. And I will give unto thee the keys of the kingdom of heaven: and whatsoever thou shalt bind on earth shall be bound in heaven: and whatsoever thou shalt loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven.

The word “Peter” means little stone. The “rock” Jesus was referring to was Himself, “the Christ, the Son of the Living God,” as Peter’s inspired words acknowledged. I don’t think Jesus would have his church built upon a little stone, especially an impetuous and unstable one such as Peter was. Besides, He was addressing all of His disciples when He gave out the keys to the kingdom of heaven, not only Peter — a controversial issue and political debate over papal primacy and succession from Peter that lasted into the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.

The history of the Catholic Church is fraught with heated debate among theologians, bishops, cardinals and popes — patriarchs and church fathers — over papal primacy and who will exercise power and control over the many churches that began springing up like weeds in a flower garden. The contentions led to “The Great Schism” of 1054, an ongoing break of communion between the Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox. “Michael H. Crosby, a renowned religious studies expert, says in his book Repair My House: Becoming a ‘Kingdom’ Catholic, that Matthew 16:18–19 does not support the authority given to Peter and that the keys were given not to Peter alone but to the whole church.” (Wikipedia)

Jesus didn’t mince words a few verses later when Peter rebuked Him for speaking of His future death at the hands of the chief priests, elders and scribes, and of his resurrection on the third day, saying to Jesus, “Be it far from thee, Lord: this shall not be unto thee.” Jesus turned and said to Peter:

Get thee behind me, Satan: thou art an offense unto me: for thou savourest not the things that be of God, but those that be of men.

Quite a contrast to the blessing Jesus had bestowed upon him earlier. Let me share something from Uranda’s legacy: (The Leadership Jesus Ordained, March 16, 1947)

He [Jesus] was revealing the Father, and revealing the Way by which we could come into Oneness with the Father so that we also could reveal the Father. [At the Last Supper] He said, “This bread is my flesh.” That unleavened bread was a symbol, and the wine was a symbol . . . . Here, in John 15, He said, “I am the true vine, and my Father is the husbandman. Every branch in me that beareth not fruit he taketh away; and every branch that beareth fruit, he purgeth it, that it may bring forth more fruit. Now ye are clean through the word which I have spoken unto you. Abide in me, and I in you. As the branch cannot bear fruit of itself, except it abide in the vine; no more can ye, except ye abide in me.”

We find that He had been teaching intensively the manner in which His Body should continue on earth. The disciples were supposed to be the continuation of His Body on earth, or what we call the One Christ Body, and through a consideration of John 14, 15, 16, and 17 especially, we find that those four chapters are dealing with the formation and manifestation of the Christ Body. “I am the Vine … abide in Me.” Oneness.

He expected His disciples to be His Body on earth through which He could continue to accomplish His purposes on earth after His Ascension. They failed to do that. They did not carry through, but that was His intention, that was His teaching. Then, when we recognize His intention that they should be His Body, the idea that He was just talking about the bread itself, when He said “This is my Body,” is seen to be extremely limited. The disciples to whom He spoke, the group of individuals to whom He was speaking, were to be His Body, and the bread was simply a symbol of that Body.

As He took that to His lips, into His body, and each one there took it, that bread ceased to be a thing of itself, losing its identity as bread. Just so were they supposed to be received into His Body, so that they would lose their identity, in the sense of being scattered segregations, and become members of that One Body, so that as branches of that Body they could let the works be done on earth. Just so, when they took the wine, it symbolized the life stream, the living expression of the Christ Life on earth, which was to continue to manifest through His One Body on earth, but the disciples failed to let that Body come into formation, and that Body has not been in formation until now, and it is only beginning to manifest as a nucleus now. There is just beginning to be a recognition of what Jesus meant that His disciples should do. But they failed and did not let John head the development. Peter plunged out and started doing this, that and the other thing.

Jesus particularly stated that His place of leadership was transferred to John. He never authorized Peter to take any place of leadership. He authorized John, and they ignored John, and John was the only one who understood what was to be done in the Christ Body. The failure of Christianity, as meaning the true teachings of Christ, was very marked after the ascension of Jesus. They had so prostituted the teachings of Christ that just three hundred years afterward, the dark ages came in—just to illustrate my point. When He said, “This is my Body,” He was illustrating the fact that this was the symbol of that which they were to be, and as they partook of it they were to come into the One Body to continue His work on earth.

https://greatcosmicstory.blogspot.com/2021/11/the-leadership-which-jesus-ordained.html

The celebration of the Eucharist is a communion of the members of the One Body of Christ and not a transubstantiation of bread to flesh or wine to blood. The Body of Christ are the faithful who participate in the communion service and not an unleavened wafer. The fellowship is the sharing in the lifeblood of that Body.

When you have time to relax, click on the link above and read Uranda’s entire presentation, which has been a stark awakening for many, and continues to be. I will continue with this series in my next post. Until then,

Be love. Be loved.

Anthony

tpal70@gmail.com

*Christianity is divided between Eastern and Western theology. In these two divisions there six branches: Catholicism, Protestantism, Eastern Orthodoxy, Anglicanism (Episcopalian), Oriental Orthodoxy and Assyrianism. Restorationism is sometimes considered the seventh branch. (Google)

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Solar Eclipse on a cloudy night

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“For when I kept silent, my bones wasted away.” (Psalm 32:3)

AS CATHOLICS the world over don sackcloth and exercise mortification of the flesh by fasting and various other means during Lent, I recall a passage from the Gospels where Jesus was challenged by the Pharisees to explain why they and the disciples of John fasted but his disciples did not. His answer was to the effect that the time for fasting is not when the bridegroom is present. In other words, his presence in their midst called for rejoicing and celebration. The entire passage is worth revisiting here.

And Jesus saith unto them, Can the children of the bridechamber fast while the bridegroom is with them? As long as they have the bridegroom with them, they cannot fast. But the days will come, when the bridegroom shall be taken away from them, and then shall they fast in those days. (Mark 2:19)

They challenged him further when his disciples plucked corn on the sabbath day, which was not lawful. Again Jesus’s answer suggested that a new consciousness and observance was replacing Moses’s law of old and their literal interpretation of the letter of the law overshadowing the spirit:

Or have ye not read in the law, how that on the sabbath days the priests in the temple profane the sabbath, and are blameless? But I say unto you, That in this place is one greater than the temple. But if ye had known what this meaneth, I WILL HAVE MERCY, AND NOT SACRIFICE, ye would not have condemned the guiltless. For the Son of man is Lord even of the sabbath day. (Matt. 12:5-8)

There is another saying that comes to mind about the Lord being in His temple: “But the Lord is in His holy temple: Let all the earth keep silence before Him” (Habakkuk 2:20). Well, the Lord is in His Holy Temple, and my heart cannot be silent, . . . nor my voice . . . lest my bones waste away and my presence on earth be of little value. I resonate with Jesus’s words recorded in the Gospel of Thomas, Logion 84:

“Jesus said: When you give rise to that which is within you, what you have will save you. If you do not give rise to it, what you do not have will destroy you.”

Here’s what I’ve been holding back from saying for years: Christianity does not uphold the teachings of Jesus the Christ, and Catholicism leads the pack of too many religions down the road of not-so-good intentions, barring the faithful from entering the Kingdom of Heaven here and now, where Jesus declared his Kingdom is located: “The Kingdom of Heaven is at hand, within you and all around you. Repent, turn around and see that you are already in it!” We are in the Kingdom of Heaven here and now. We do not have to die in order to enter it, because we are already in it while we live!

I’m reminded of the incident where Jesus berated the Pharisees for the same hypocrisy and abuse of power:

But woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you shut up the kingdom of the heavens before men. For you neither enter, nor even do you allow those who are entering to go in.

This “good news” of the Kingdom is not what the churches are preaching to their believers, bless their faithful misguided souls. They preach that they are sinners and must be redeemed by the blood of their crucified Redeemer. That they are dust and unto dust shall they return, totally contradictory to what Jesus taught, and what the Bible teaches: “Know ye not that ye are gods . . . made in the image and likeness of God . . . sons and daughters of the Father.” Human beings are not dust. Our very bodies are the temple of the Living God, as St. Paul declared.

Not many preachers, if any, preach the Gospel of the Kingdom. If they do it’s about the Kingdom of Heaven they insist is hereafter, not here now. This all became the dogma and doctrine of Christianity no less than 325 years after Jesus had completed his mission on earth — which was to reveal and glorify His Heavenly Father on earth — not to “die for our sins” and shed his blood on a cross to redeem men’s souls from the devil. That was totally unnecessary to the purpose of His incarnation, and to the redemption and restoration of mankind. The Truth has been eclipsed by religion all these years and centuries.

In His own words:

“Father, the hour is come; glorify thy Son, that thy Son may glorify thee: As thou hast given him power over all flesh, that he should give eternal life to as many as thou hast given him. And this is eternal life, that they might know thee the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom thou hast sent.

I have glorified thee on the earth: I have finished the work which thou gavest me to do.

This was before his ordeal on the cross. It is significant that He spoke of Jesus Christ as someone separate from Himself, The significance lies is what was happening with Him at this time of completion: He was ascending in His consciousness as the Lord of Love, the Son the Father, who had incarnated in and through the body of Jesus the Christ, the Anointed One. But that’s not who He was nor is. In just a few more moments, He says something else significant, which indicates that he had left this world.

And now, O Father, glorify thou me with thine own self with the glory which I had with thee before the world was. I have manifested thy name unto the men which thou gavest me out of the world: thine they were, and thou gavest them me; and they have kept thy word. Now they have known that all things whatsoever thou hast given me are of thee. For I have given unto them the words which thou gavest me; and they have received them, and have known surely that I came out from thee, and they have believed that thou didst send me.

I pray for them: I pray not for the world, but for them which thou hath given me; for they are thine. And all mine are thine, and thine are mine; and I am glorified in them.

And now I am no longer in the world, but these are in the world, and I come to thee. Holy Father, keep thou through thine own name those whom thou hast given me, that they may be one as we are. While I was with them in the world, I kept them in thy name: those that thou gavest me I have kept, and none of them is lost, but the son of perdition . . . . And now come I to thee; and these things I speak in the world, that they might have my joy fulfilled in themselves.

I have given them thy word, and the world hath hated them, because they are not of the world, even as I am not of the world. I pray not that thou shouldest take them out of the world; but that thou shouldest keep them from the evil. . . . Sanctify them through thy truth; thy word is truth.

As thou hast sent me into the world, even so have I sent them into the world. And for their sakes I sanctify myself, that they also might be sanctified through the truth. Neither pray I for these alone, but for them which also shall believe on me through their word;

That they all may be one; as thou, Father, art in me, and I in thee that they also may be one is us; that the world may believe that thou hath sent me.

And the glory which thou gavest me I have given them; that they may be one, even as we are one. I in them, and thou in me, that they may be made perfect in one; and that the world may know that thou hast sent me, and hast loved them, as thou hast loved me.

Father, I will that they also, whom thou hast given me, be with me where I am; that they may behold my glory, which thou hast given me; for thou lovedst me before the foundation of the world. O righteous Father, the world hath not known thee; but I have known thee, and these have known that thou hast sent me. And I have declared unto them thy name, and will declare it: that the love wherewith thou hast loved me may be in them, and I in them. (John 17) [All emphases added]

These words for me are heart rending: the Lord of Love praying to his Heavenly Father for me and for all who believe he came directly from the Father and incarnated in Jesus Christ, the Anointed One. Do you hear what he is saying in this prayer to his Father — which reads much like a debriefing of his entire life and mission with His Father who had commissioned him and sent him to Earth? Nowhere does he even mention his impending crucifixion, because it was not part of the Divine Plan of Salvation. He knew there was a devil in the mix of the twelve disciples, but I believe that he was giving Judas a chance to change his course and abandon his self active Zealotry.

These words embody the Lord’s entire purpose for incarnating. Anything added later — by the Council of Nicaea, by Peter and Paul and by all the other evangelists, except John, — are redactions of the truth and blatant lies intended to create yet another religion by which power and control could be exercised over the souls of the faithful by fear of hellfire and reward of eternal life after death. The Beloved disciple John was exiled to the Greek island of Patmos where he recorded for posterity the Revelation of those things which were to come about in the next cycle of the Plan of Salvation and Restoration of Man to his original and ordained state of oneness with his Creator. The cycle which the Lord of Love through Jesus initiated with the twelve apostles was aborted by the apostles themselves, who abandoned Him at the very end. Only John remained true to Him and stood at the foot of the cross with a few women. (I will speak to the significance of this in a later post).

During all my seven years in Catholic seminary studying for the Roman Catholic priesthood, this prayerful passage in the Gospel of John was never considered in the light of the Master’s true and completed mission and purpose. It had been eclipsed by religious dogma. His ignominious crucifixion was made and still is the celebrated center of the Christian dogma. I’ve only come to be aware of this redaction a few decades ago and it shook me to the very depth of my soul.

How could the world have been so deceived and misled by a self-serving and self-appointed priesthood?! Yes, the priesthood, a false priesthood. It was a conclave of over five-hundred bishops of the Church (over a thousand were invited) who conspired with the Emperor of Rome, Constantine, at the Council of Nicaea in 325 A.D. to redact portions of the Bible, throwing out those gospels that didn’t serve their purposes, and establishing Christianity as the universal, or Catholic, religion of the Roman Empire. Those bishops who did not align themselves with this declaration and ruse, were expelled from the Council and condemned to death, along with thousands of Gnostics, Cathars, “witches” and other declared “heretics” who didn’t ascribe to the narrative imposed by the Council: the Nicaean Creed.

The truth is you don’t need a church or a religion to enter the Kingdom of Heaven. Simply give expression to the Spirit and character of the King, which is Love and Truth, in your living and you become aware of your presence in the Kingdom. To know it simply give it consistent expression. It’s that simple, as Truth always is.

A LIFE OF VICTORY

The visitation of the Lord of Love incarnate in Christ Jesus was a life of victory, which He celebrated with His Heavenly Father in that beautiful prayer. His victory is what I celebrate, in my heart and in my remembrance of Him, during these days leading up to Holy Week and culminating in Easter Sunday. I invite all of my Christian brothers and sisters to celebrate this with me. Let the joy that was His be fulfilled in ourselves this day . . . when the Christ Spirit of Love is so expressively present and felt in the hearts of millions the world over. The Bridegroom has arrived! Let all of the earth rejoice and be glad! I will continue with this series in my next post. Until then . . .

Be love. Be loved.

Anthony

tpal70gmail.com

Blessed are the pure of heart, for they shall see God

There are two passages in The Gospel of Thomas that intrigue me:

83 Jesus said: The images are revealed to people. The light within them is hidden in the image of the Father’s light. He will be revealed. His image is hidden in his light.

84 Jesus said: You are pleased when you see your own likeness. When you see your images that came into being before you did, immortal and invisible images, how much can you bear?

Images of the Father are revealed to us in the imaginal realm of the heart that is pure. That word, pure, can mean utter, complete and one-hundred-percent; nothing of the world cluttering or distracting. The pure of heart sees the image of the Father, hidden in His light, revealed. This is a powerful teaching.

Cynthia Bourgeault speaks to this “seeing” in her insightful book EYE OF THE HEART:

SO WHERE DO I begin to tell the story? How to introduce you to my neighborhood? It is all too easy when exploring topics as inherently elusive as the imaginal to hide out in mental maneuvers. . . . If there’s one thing I’ve learned from these two-and-a-half decades of imaginal bushwhacking, it’s that the imaginal realm is entered only through the heart. How you get there is where you’ll arrive. And so by whatever route our exploration leads us, it will need to stay close to the heart.

Fortunately, that is not really so difficult with the imaginal realm, for the heart really is its native ground. And when all the intellectual abstractions have been stripped away, and it is allowed to speak in its own native tongue, what it speaks of, with surprising simplicity and directness, is beauty, hope, and a mysteriously deeper order of coherence and aliveness flowing through this earthly terrain connecting it to the infinite wellsprings of cosmic creativity and abundance. Instead of the isolation and anomie [social instability due to lack of purpose or ideals] so often conveyed in our postmodern cosmological roadmaps (where we are simply an insignificant planet in an insignificant galaxy in a random “big bang” among a ceaseless cacophony of big bangs), it speaks of the preciousness of our human particularity and the exigency of our human contribution (tiny though it may be) to that vast, dynamic web of cosmic interbeing, which can be seen, in toto, as the heart of God. It calls us to a renewed sense of dignity, acountability, belongingness, cosmic intimacy, and love. That is why I am writing this book, and for no other reason. Our hearts get this language already. With only a bit of a shove — and perhaps a slightly new roadmap — our heads may be able to get it too. Pray to God, while there is still time.

So perhaps “where to begin” in a more heartful way might be with that striking image furnished by Jesus himself: “In my Father’s house are many mansions.” Picture the imaginal realm as one such mansion, belonging mostly to the Western spiritual tradition and deeply related to the Western experience of the heart of God. It is perhaps not a high mansion and certainly not a universal one (since many spiritual traditions seem to get on perfectly well without it). But within its own domain, i.e., the Western mystical and esoteric tradition, it is a pivotal one. Something important happens here.

The image of God is revealed here . . . our very own divine Being, made in the image and likeness of God. Here is where Man — now being restored to His original state — is revealed as the “image of the Father”. . . foretold by the Incarnate Son of God himself as “the Son of Man coming in the clouds with power and great glory” in the end days. That’s our role as incarnate angelic hosts.

How much can we bear today as we come to know our own images that came into being before we did, immortal and invisible images, coming in the clouds of heaven, where we as angels came into being before we donned these earthen forms. We carry authority as sons of the Father. We have the power and the authority to reprove the world of unrighteousness — for one, to issue the command to those who threaten the world with nuclear war: “Don’t do it! Don’t even think about it! Thus far and no further! This Earth is sacred, as are all beings who dwell in her fullness!”

Join with me in speaking this rebuke into the Consciousness we share with every human being, including Russian President Vladimir Putin. Speak it as an individual. Speak it as a group. Let Love, the fire of fusion, command and defuse those who would destroy the world with the fire of fission. *(See footnote)

Oh that we lived continually in the conscious awareness of the many mansions in our Father’s House! But no, we as “mere humans” choose to live with our noses held to the grindstone, as the saying goes, comfortable in our frail physical forms and temporary habitat . . . or not so comfortable these days. There are many more mansions above this one where disease and death hold no sway, neither does war.

Cynthia broadens and deepens her perspective:

Please don’t think of it as a place. I know it’s nearly impossible for the Western mind not to go there. We did the same thing with heaven and hell, didn’t we? Turned them into miniature planets, complete with fiery furnaces or pearly gates. But a realm is not fundamentally a place; it is more like a set of governing conventions that make possible a certain kind of manifestation.

In our own earth realm we are subject to many such governing conventions (we call them “laws”). Gravity holds our feet to the ground. Time flows in one direction only. We cannot walk through walls, be in two places at once, or wish ourselves ten pounds lighter. There are a lot of laws (forty-eight of them, Gurdjieff postulated), making our earth plane a fairly dense and determinate place. There are other realms that are lighter and a few that are denser. We will meet some of these in due course. For now it’s important to keep reminding ourselves that from a metaphysical perspective, realm has less to do with physical location than with density. In fact, virtually all spiritual teachers in all traditions have insisted that the “higher” (i.e., less dense) realms are not somewhere else but within — already coiled inside us as subtler and yet more intensely alive bandwidths of experience and perception. The reason we do not typically notice them is that the laws governing any realm are generally too coarse to allow the penetration of those finer vibrations emanating from the next realm “up” into its normal sphere of operations. As St. Paul reminds us, we do indeed “see through a glass darkly.”

But why do we call it “imaginal?” I admit that the whole issue is problematic. The term itself has its immediate provenance in Islamic mysticism, where it denotes a subtle and fluid “intermediate” realm suspended midway between form and formlessness. But the idea itself — or archetype, actually — is a mainstay of the Western tradition of sophia perennis, or “perennial wisdom,” with roots going all the way back to Plato.’ Within this wider tradition it is typically understood to be a boundary zone separating the denser causality of our earth plane from the finer causalities that lie “above” us in the angelic and logoic worlds. Put more simply, it sits on the dividing line between the visible and invisible worlds-or, according to the older, pre-Einsteinian metaphysics, between the “spiritual” and “material” worlds.

It is called “imaginal” because, while it is invisible to the physical eye, it is still clearly perceptible through the eye of the heart, which is in fact what the word imagination specifically implies in its original Islamic context: direct perception through the eye of the heart, not through mental reflection or fantasy. Of course, in the modern West we now view the interior landscape through the filter of Wordsworthian romanticism and hear the word imagination as suggesting something personal,
subjective, illusory, or “made up”-which is of course exactly the opposite of what the term is actually intended to convey.

I know this causes a lot of unnecessary confusion, but once you get used to the real metaphysical meaning of the term, it sheds a lot of light not only on the Islamic mystical tradition but on the Christian mystical tradition as well. I am quite certain, for example, that this direct noetic seeing is what St. Paul had in mind by the term faith (as in “faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen”). But in our own diminished age even faith has now gone dark and tends to be understood as a “blind” leap into the dark rather than a luminous perception of the invisible golden thread. Small wonder that the imaginal has all but dropped off the contemporary metaphysical roadmap.

I spoke of the imaginal realm a few paragraphs ago as a “boundary realm,” but it is actually more of a confluence, for the word boundary suggests a separation while what is really at stake in this realm is an active flowing together. “Where the two seas meet” is a beautiful Sufi metaphor to convey the essence of what actually goes on here. The imaginal is a meeting ground, a kind of cosmic intertidal zone-and as in all intertidal zones, nourishment and metamorphosis furnish the principal order of business here. In this realm the fruits of our human striving — both conscious and unconscious — are offered up to the whole. From this realm, in turn, we receive blessing, inspiration, guidance, and vivifying force, which are ours to share and bestow here below. Like a Sufi dervish, we receive and bestow, receive and bestow, as we turn and are turned within the greater cosmic dance.

EYE OF THE HEART, Chapter One, “Introducing The Imaginal”

As the Christian world dons sack cloth and observe mortification of the flesh during the Lentin season of forty-days leading up to Holy Week, I will leave this series to speak to the preposterous redactions of Sacred Scripture passed down by the Roman Emperor Constantine and the Council of Nicaea in 325 AD as the rationale for the crucifixion of Jesus and his resurrection from “the dead” that form the foundations of Christianity. I welcome any thoughts and insights you may have and wish to share. I will return to this series on the Imaginal Realm after the Easter Season. Until then,

Be love. Be loved.

Anthony

tpal70@gmail.com

* Nuclear fusion and nuclear fission are different types of reactions that release energy due to the presence of high-powered atomic bonds between particles found within a nucleus. In fission, an atom is split into two or more smaller, lighter atoms. Fusion, in contrast, occurs when two or more smaller atoms fuse together, creating a larger, heavier atom. (Diffen.com)

“Knowest thou the ordinances of heaven? Canst thou set the dominion thereof in the earth.”

CONTINUING in this series on “The Imaginal Realm,” I am guided by my intuitive heart to speak to the power of our collective consciousness—oriented upward and open to receiving and transmitting the ordinances of heaven as instructions for the creation of a new world upon this dawning New Earth—when a critical number of incarnate angels with “attuned hearts” come together in one place of accord to let love radiate into the mass consciousness of humanity and into the world—without concern for results, but not without right expectancy. Cynthia Bourgeault writers to this in the following excerpt from her beautiful and enlightening book EYE OF THE HEART:

Because of this demonstrated capacity to affect outcome in this world, the imaginal realm has long been associated with the world of prophecy and oracles. To attuned hearts, it does indeed seem to send “messages,” as it surely did for the disciples, for Jonah, and for Johnny and me. That is why it often is equated with the “subtle” level of consciousness in contemporary roadmaps such as those promulgated by philosopher Ken Wilber.’ There is truth here, to be sure, but remember that these “levels of consciousness” maps are all essentially “upper left quadrant” metaphysics, to use Wilberspeak—or in other words, geared to the individual interior journey and individual transformation.

Properly understood through its own Western filter, the imaginal realm is collective and evolutionary; its ultimate purpose is to guide, shape, nourish, and, where necessary, offer course corrections to our entire planetary and inter-planetary unfolding. As an objectively verifiable realm interpenetrating our earth plane and operating at a twice-higher frequency of spiritual intensity and coherence, it is a life within a life, and its laws, interpenetrating our own, provide the inner template by which the outer unfolding can proceed rightly.

And that point, perhaps underemphasized in the traditional roadmaps, turns out to be the linchpin.

A linchpin as in Webster’s second definition: “one that serves to hold together parts or elements that exist or function as a unit.” That “one” can be an individual holding a point of focus for one’s world, or as a group of people holding the world together in their consciousness and extending a current of blessing.

There is such a gathering of incarnate angels in the heaven of consciousness who come together every day in different time zones to offer a blessing into our troubled world. That “one” who has “called the circle” so-to-speak is my friend and Attunement colleague in Toronto, Canada, Paul Price. Here in the Central Time zone I join him and several hundred other angels mid morning at 10:30 for a half-hour of meditation and unified radiation. The following is a call-out by my friend to any and all who are amenable and available to participate in this unified release of radiant love into the world—something many of us have been doing with regards to Ukraine these past several months. Paul writes:

It has been eleven months since we set this most recent cycle of unified radiation in motion, specifically with regard to the Ukraine, with intent to provide a loving surround to assist in raising the vibration. This was about allowing the best possible outcome for all.

As the situation in the Ukraine rages on, many other hotspots are flaring up around the planet. Let Love Radiate Without Concern for Results. I learned this basic premise of Attunement over fifty years ago. Note to self: it does not say “without results”. The power of Attunement occurs in our holding a steady current of love and blessing that will raise the vibration on this planet, making it impossible for war, illness and disease to exist. I hold true to this understanding, to this day, though there are times I’m tempted to take a peek for a possible result.

I am thankful to all who have participated in this past year. We have experienced amazing blessings at our hands. There is still a long way to go. Many of us have the strong sensing that these are the days we have been training for; to allow greater clarification because I AM here.

Toronto and surrounding area have been my home for eighty years. Over those years, Toronto the Good, as it has been known, has boasted a very low crime rate, even as the population has grown from one million to five. However, the last few months have brought about a surge in random violent crimes: swarming, stabbings, shoving old people to their deaths. Such crimes have been occurring at a rate of two or three times a day!

Perhaps this is the backlash of our pandemic lockdowns: people out of touch with society, overwhelmed with pent-up aggressions. I think we can agree that the current state of energy these days is pretty raw. No doubt there is much more to come, on the global scene of politics and war and these situations closer to home, which is why I write this letter. My sensing is this: for the next three months, if we can band together in unified radiant blessing, as we have done in relation to the Ukraine, the power of our agreement could have a great impact on times to come, if only as a soothing balm.

There is a group of us meeting “in the field” daily at 11:30 am., EST, or 16:30 GMT. I would so appreciate any who care to join us, bringing your unique blessing into the mix. If these times are not possible for you, then choose a specific time for you and possibly your group of friends. In our half hour meditation we can give thanks for the gift of life, our spiritual awareness and this beautiful planet. In this energetic field, see what specific thoughts may come to you for this blessing.

So many situations are calling for our love, now. I trust that our intent to increase the refined substance of love and truth, will assist in this purifying process. The substance of the collective radiant blessing will guide the process.

Much love to you, Paul Price

Paul mentions “specific thoughts” that may arise during the half hour meditation. These could well be essences of the ordinances of heaven coming down as seeds being planted in the collective Consciousness through each individual. It would fare well to let them be planted there, nurtured in our expressions of love and gratitude during our days, and allowed to grow and bear fruit in our collective engagement offering healing to the body of mankind and to the planet, while setting the ordinances of heaven in the earth. We can do this. It’s why we incarnated at this time. Why we are here now.

I leave you with these thoughts and actions to consider and perhaps implement. Until my next post,

Be love. Be loved

Anthony

tpal70@gmail.com

P.S. Please let me know if you join in this world-blessing time.

“When you make the two into one, and when you make the inside like the outside and the outside like the inside, and the upper like the lower and the lower like the upper . . . When you make an eye to replace an eye and a hand to replace a hand, and a foot to replace a foot, and an image to replace an image, then you will enter the Kingdom” (Jesus, from The Gospel of Thomas)

♦ ◊ ♦

CONTINUING OUR EXPLORATION of the Imaginal Realm, I would like to share with you something from my book Attunement With Sacred Sound which expands and deepens our consideration. Due to length, I will add a second page with a link to it at the bottom of the first page.  This is from the chapter 6 “Cell Replication in a Musical Matrix of Light.” Thrilling as it is to me, this excerpt is a bit dense, so you might want to set aside some quiet time for reading it — with your heart as well as with your mind.  Enjoy!

UNTIL RECENTLY, it has been thought that cell replication was on the basis of a genetic template, or blueprint, which served much as a pattern bearing a fixed design for the construction of new cells and tissues and the repair of old ones.  It is now being suggested by scientists and biologists that, whereas DNA may determine our physical features, it is not alone in determining the design and function of the individual cells of the body. They are designed to function in the particular environment into which they are being born and to adapt to the changes occurring there.  As the environmental factors change, so does the “instruction” change to prepare the cells for what they are about to encounter.  And this all takes place in a living, vibrating musical matrix of light. The DNA molecule itself unfolds its patterns of design triggered by sound frequencies. Information is shared and transmitted by way of neuropeptides, hormones and enzymes bearing bio-photons (light) messengers throughout the body. Every cell gives off light.

In Quantum Healing – Exploring the Frontiers of Mind/Body Medicine, Dr. Deepak Chopra explores and expounds upon the mechanism by which intelligence is transferred from the quantum world to the material world. He writes:

But if the DNA is the bottom rung of this neat stepladder [DNA – Cell – Tissue – Organ – System], what makes DNA unfold in the first place? Why does it initially divide on the second day after conception and begin to make a nervous system on day eighteen? As with all quantum events, something inexplicable happens beneath the surface to form the all-knowing intelligence of DNA. The point is not that DNA is too complex to understand, being a super-genius molecule; what makes DNA mysterious is that it lives right at the point of transformation, just like the quantum. Its whole life is spent creating more life, which we have defined as “intelligence tied up in chemicals.” DNA is constantly transferring messages from the quantum world to ours, tying new bits of intelligence to new bits of matter. 

No matter where you look, the visible universe is fundamentally a set of signals. Yet these signals all hold together, turning totally meaningless vibrations into full-blown experience that have human meaning. The love between a man and wife can be broken down into raw physical data, but to do this is to lose the reality. Therefore, Eddington says, all these codes must stand for something more real. [Sir Arthur Eddington was an English astronomer who, anticipating inter-connectedness of all things decades before John Bell’s theorem surfaced in 1964, wrote “When the electron vibrates, the universe shakes.”] At the same time, that something is very intimate to us, for all of us can read the code, turning random quantum vibrations into an orderly reality.

A good image for this would be a pianist playing a Chopin etude. Where is the music? You can find it at many levels—in the vibrating string, the trip of the hammers, the fingers striking the keys, the black marks on the paper, or the nerve impulses produced in the player’s brain. But all of these are just codes; the reality of music is the shimmering, beautiful, invisible form that haunts our memories without ever being present in the physical world.

The music, like all reality, emerges from out of the invisible quantum world of time-space, and it emerges as vibrational signals coded by Intelligence with information. I received the following from a friend during an internet conversation challenging familiar thinking:

All the information for embryonic development is contained within the fertilized egg. So how is this information interpreted to give rise to an embryo? One possibility is that the structure of the organism is somehow encoded as a descriptive program in the genome [that is what we were taught!]. Does the DNA contain a full description of the organism to which it will give rise? The answer is no. The genome contains instead a program of instructions for making the organism – a generative program – in which the cytoplasmic constituents of eggs and cells are essential players along with the genes like the DNA coding for the sequence of amino acids in a protein.

A descriptive program, like a blueprint or a plan, describes an object in some detail, whereas a generative program describes how to make an object. For the same object, the programs are very different….(Christopher Alexander, The Nature Of Order, Vol. 2)

This “generative program” is a revelation of the genius of Life.  It is how evolution unfolds. That instruction is given by the innate intelligence animating the physical body and overseeing its many and varied internal functions and re-creative cycles.  It could be thought of as the score for the Music of the Spheres, edited and updated to accommodate changes in the environment, applying Pythagoras’ planetary symphony model to the symphony of Life playing in and through its many and varied forms of expression, in this consideration our human capacities.

Rewriting the Music of the Spheres

Dr. June Wieder cites the research of Jean E. Charon, a French physicist-philosopher, in her book, Song of the Spine.  He demonstrates how electrons store and share information with other electrons during each pulsation period of its cycle by means of photons (light molecules). This communication process takes place “in whole number steps – in a harmonic progression, much like a musical scale. It is as if electrons are communicating their ‘tones’ to one another. Thus it appears that the harmonic laws of the planets have characteristics that are similar to the laws that apply to orbiting electrons.”

Dr. Wieder then cites the work of Wilfred Kruger, a German musicologist, who, expanding on Charon’s work…

…discovered a great correlation between the structures of atoms that sustain life, such as oxygen, nitrogen, carbon and phosphorus, as well as in RNA and DNA, and the intervals found in a musical scale.  He suggests that oxygen, having an atomic number of 8, is the element that represents the octave. He went on to say that the eight electrons and eight protons of the oxygen atom form a major scale in which the positive spin is the full tone and the negative spin is the semitone.” She explains: “Remember that spin is the movement of a body around its own axis and that the spin is always a whole-number ratio – in other words, in harmonic proportion.  Kruger went even further, showing a close relationship between microcosm and the harmonics of music.  He explained that the nucleus of the oxygen atom, with its protons, has twelve steps – the precise number of intervals found in the scale formed by the atomic model.

Dr. Wieder then cites Lama Govinda (1898-1985), a noted scholar of Tibetan Buddhism, as poetically depicting a similar idea: “‘Each atom is constantly singing a song, and each moment this song creates dense or fine forms of greater or lesser materiality.’” This suggests that the Creator is constantly evolving with Creation and rewriting the Music of the Spheres.

STRING THEORY

Then there’s this that really puts a finale on the tireless search for the nature of the material world for me – again from Song of the Spine:

 In modern physics, string theory provides strong support for the idea that vibrations are at the heart of all matter. In his book and TV series [PBS) titled The Elegant Universe, Brian Greene of Columbia University applies the term “strings” to the tiniest bits of matter. Strings are “wiggling strands of unimaginable smallness” that combine to create the subatomic particles that collectively make up atoms. The different ways that strings vibrate, Greene explains, give the subatomic particles their unique properties, such as mass and charge.

It is interesting to note that vibration is what characterizes strings.  Just as the vibrations of a single cello string can create different musical notes, the tiny strings that lie at the deepest core of matter vibrate to create different kinds of particles and forms of energy. These oscillations compose a grand cosmic symphony that is the same from the micro scale strings, connecting to the macro.  What we perceive as reality is strung together by these squiggly-wiggly strings, connecting us to the many hidden dimensions of this universe.  ‘As above, so below.’  (Wieder, Song of the Spine, p. 33)

The analogy of a cello creating musical notes insinuates a cellist, presumably playing in another realm and creating the music of creation. As a friend and colleague recently commented, referring to the PBS series, would he not also be the sustainer and Healer of the vibratory world he creates and centers? Is he/she not the Healer within each one? One purpose of our service as healers, then, could be “to provide a vibrational control pattern in the area of need to enhance the Healer’s work – help tune the cello if you will,” as my friend went on to suggest.

Continues on page 2

Link to Page 2

The Vesica Pisces — Womb of the Great Mother

“In my Father’s house are many mansions . . . I go to prepare a place for you so that where I am ye may be also.”

THE WORDS ABOVE are recorded in the gospels as words spoken by Jesus with his disciples just before his ascension. He was standing on earth in the imaginal realm when he said “so that where I am ye may be also.” — just as He was when He came to Miriam in the Garden after His resurrection.

Miriam asked Jesus “‘Lord, when someone meets you in a Moment of vision, is it through the soul [psyche] that they see or is it through the Spirit [Pneuma]?’ The Teacher answered: ‘It is neither through the soul nor the spirit but the nous between the two which sees the vision, and it is this which . . .[sees].’” (Pages 11-14 are missing.)

In this same passage from The Gospel of Mary Magdalene by Jean-Yves Leloup, “Miriam of Magdala” speaks directly to Jesus in her vision of him: “Lord, I see you now in this vision.” The Teacher responds: “You are blessed, for the sight of me does not disturb you. There where is the nous, lies the treasure.“

Webster gives two definitions of the word nous: “a – an intelligent purposive principle of the world; b – the divine reason regarded in Neoplatonism as the first emanation of God.” It is the realm between the soul and the spirit; where the Spirit of God reaches down and communicates with the soul, and where the soul sees and communicates with the vision of an apparition from the spiritual realm . . . and it is more than that.

In this instance, Miriam had a vision of her “Rabboni,” her Beloved Lord and Master, — who also told her “Touch me not; for I am not yet ascended to my Father, and your Father, and to my God, and your God.” Here was the Son of man who had risen from the tomb as the Son of God. In other words, He had transmuted His physical body — evidenced by the image of his face and physical form burned into the Shroud of Turin — and was still in the process of taking his body temple up through the “many mansions” of His Father’s House back to His Father in Heaven. In a word, He was in complete control of His body temple all through the ordeal of His crucifixion and resurrection. This is a profoundly powerful and historical event, forever altering human consciousness and setting in motion radical transformation in His Father’s world, a world which He came to save not to condemn. l can do no less.

Where He appeared to Miriam was not in her imagination. It was a real and dynamically charged realm between heaven and earth where the vibration of spiritual substance was and is at a higher frequency than the physical realm where she stood on the earth. It was out of concern for her safety and wellbeing, as well as regard for His ascension-in-process, that He cautioned her not to touch Him. This is a powerful moment in the story of His transition. This was and is a real place — one of position without magnitude.

With that introduction — setting the stage for the insight Episcopal priest and author Cynthia Bourgeault offers in EYE OF THE HEART — A Spiritual Journey into the Imaginal Realm, I delight in bringing her to you in this series on The Imaginal Realm: Place of Creation. I think from her writings you will see her as truly a window opened in Heaven pouring out blessings of insight and inspiration. Her comprehension of the esoteric is remarkably clear and profound. Enjoy!

* * *

Is It Real?  

I cannot emphasize strongly enough that the word imaginal does not mean “imaginary.” That unfortunate but all-too-understandable confusion was created by Henry Corbin, the noted Islamic scholar, when he introduced the term mundus imaginalis to name that intermediate, invisible realm of causality that figures so prominently in mystical Islamic cosmology. But in so doing, Corbin was drawing on a highly technical and quintessentially Islamic notion of imagination as itself being one of those higher and more subtle energies, possessing will, objectivity, and creative agency.

To our modern Western ears, the word imaginal may indeed seem to suggest some private or subjective inner landscape, “make believe” or fanciful by nature. But while it is typically associated with the world of dreams, visions, and prophecy, i.e., a more subtle form, the imaginal is always understood within traditional metaphysics to be objectively real and in fact comprising “an ontological reality entirely superior to that of mere possibility.” It designates a sphere that is not less real but more real than our so-called “objective reality” and whose generative energy can (and does) change the course of events in this world. Small though it may appear to be, it is mighty, as those who try to swim against it will readily attest.

Walter Wink, one of the few contemporary mainstream Christian theologians who have been bold enough to venture appreciatively into the terrain of the imaginal, describes how this “generative” causality played out in the events following the resurrection. His comments below offer a clear window into both of these key points: imaginal reality is “objective,” and it carries real force:

“It is a prejudice of modern thought that events happen only in the outer world. What Christians regard as the most significant event in human history happened, according to the gospels, in the psychic realm, and it altered external history irrevocably. Ascension was an “objective” event, if you will, but it took place in the imaginal realm, at the substratum of human existence where the most fundamental changes in consciousness take place. The ascension was a “fact” on the imaginal plane, not just an assertion of faith. It irreversibly altered the nature of the disciples’ consciousness.”

One need only to read the Book of Acts to sense the breadth and power of this change in the disciples’ consciousness and to grasp the implications of what Wink is saying here. It is true that not all constructions are illusions. However and wherever these disciples came to it, they emerged from the post-resurrection events infused with a clear and high sense of purpose, resolve, empowerment, and above all, the unshakable confidence that their Lord was still present with them — which at the imaginal level is undisputedly true. With their oars planted firmly in that kingdom, they moved forward to change the world. This is exactly what Corbin was trying to convey by the word imagination, understood in the traditional sense. Imaginal reality is a valid construction which, by changing consciousness in its inner ground, changes the nature of reality in the outer world.

* * *

PLACE OF CREATION

“In my Father’s house are many mansions.” The Imaginal Realm is one such mansion. “I go to prepare a place for you, that where I am ye may be also.” We belong in this mansion with Him, the mansion between Heaven and Earth. The place of miracles. The place of creation. The nous as the first emanation of God, where “the treasure lies,” and where the ordinances of Heaven are sown as seeds in the Consciousness of Man, male and female, to be set in the Earth.

I am Job — WE ARE JOB — here in THIS day to give the LORD, who yet demands of us — from out of the whirlwind of turbulent human consciousness — an answer to His questions: “Knowest thou the ordinances of heaven? Canst thou set the dominion thereof in the earth? . . . and answer thou me if thou knowest. Where wast thou when I laid the foundations of the earth? declare if thou hast understanding” (Job 38:4)

We were there with Him. The Creator did not, and will not, circumvent His means for creating this world: Man restored to our appointed mansion in the Father’s house . . . whose “pleasure” it is to give us as our dwelling here on earth. We were placed in the Garden for this purpose: to set the dominion, the governing ordinances of Heaven, in the earth. But first we have to know those ordinances, and to do know them we have to rise up and be “where I AM”— and not as separate individuals but as a collective Body of angels incarnate standing together in one place and in one accord.

This is the Kingdom of God where our LORD and KING reigns over His Kingdom with Man — who is the tabernacle of God, the sanctuary for the One what dwells within the flame of Love that burns eternally, enveloped within the cloud of glory that is Shekinah. Selah

* * *

(I elaborate on this biblical event Cynthia cites in the Book of Acts on page 2 https://healingtones.org/the-imaginal-realm-place-of-creation-page-2/ )

“The true delight of the soul lies in love, harmony and beauty, the outcome of which is wisdom, calm and peace; the more constant they are the greater is the satisfaction of the soul.“

I spent three-and-a-half hours viewing a video documentary created by esoteric astrologer Phillip Lindsay entitled “The Hidden History of Humanity” while a severe thunder storm raged outside with wind gusts up to 50mph providing the perfect atmosphere for the subject matter of this story. Here’s a link to it when you have two-and-a-half hours to spare. It will blow your mind seeing how vast and traumatic our history is, and that of our planet, and how we arrived where we are today.

I will now share more from the writings of Sufi Inayat Hazarat Khan. This excerpt from THE MYSTICISM OF SOUND is entitled “HARMONY.”

THE PEACE for which every soul strives, and which is the true nature of God and the utmost goal of man, is but the outcome of harmony; this shows that all life’ s attainments without a sense of harmony are but vain. It is the attainment of harmony which is called heaven, and it is the lack of it which is termed hell, The master of it alone understands life, and he who lacks it is foolish in spite of all other knowledge that he may have acquired.

The Sufi gives great importance to the attainment of harmony, believing that light is for angels and darkness for the devil, but that harmony is necessary for a human being in order to keep a balance in life.

There are three aspects of harmony: eternal, universal, and individual.

Eternal harmony is the harmony of consciousness. As it is in itself eternal, all things and beings live and move in it; yet it remains remote, undisturbed and peaceful. This is the God of the believer, and the God of the knower. All vibrations from the finest to the grossest are held together by this harmony, as well as each atom of manifestation, and both creation and destruction take place in order to uphold it. Its power ultimately attracts each being towards the everlasting peace.

Man is drawn in two opposite directions by the power of harmony: towards the Infinite and towards manifestation. He is less conscious of the former than of the latter, and by facing towards one direction he loses sight of the other. The Infinite, being the essential spirit of all, finally attracts all to itself. The Sufi gives the greatest importance to harmony with the Infinite, which he realizes by resignation to the will of God, the Beloved.

The existence of land and water, the land for the water, and the water for the land; the attraction between the heavens and the earth, all demonstrate the universal harmony. The attraction of the sun and moon to each other, the cosmic order of the stars and the planets, all connected and related with each other, moving and working under a certain law; the regular rotation of the seasons, the night following the day, and the day in its turn giving place to the night; the dependence of one being on another; the distinctive-ness, attraction and assimilation of the five elements, all prove the universal harmony.

The male and female, beast and bird, vegetable and rock, and all classes of things and beings are linked together and attracted to each other with a chord of harmony. If one being or thing, however apparently useless, were missing in this universe of endless variety, it would be as it were a note missing in a song. As Sa’di says, “Every being is born for a certain purpose, and the light of that purpose is kindled within his soul.” All famines, plagues, and disasters such as storms, floods, volcanic eruptions, wars, arid revolutions, however bad they may appear to man, are in reality for the adjusting of this universal harmony.

There is a story told in India of how once all the inhabitants of a village which had suffered from drought, gathered together before the temple of their God, praying that for this year an abundance of rain might fall.

A voice from the unseen replied, ‘Whatever We do is for the betterment of Our purpose, ye have no right to interfere with Our work, oh! ye men’. But they again cried for mercy, and continued to do so more persistently. Then came the answer saying, ‘Your prayers, fastings, and sacrifices have induced Us to grant for this one year as much rain as ye desire’. They all returned home rejoicing.

In the autumn they worked vigorously on their farms, and after having prepared the ground and sown the seed, they prayed for rain. When they considered that sufficient had fallen they again had recourse to prayer, and the rain ceased. In this way an ideal crop of corn was produced and all the inhabitants of that country made merry over it. This year more corn was grown than ever before.

After the crops were gathered in how-ever, all those who ate the com died and many were the victims. In perplexity they again sought the God bowing low before the temple crying, ‘Why hast Thou shown such wrath to us, after having shown so great a mercy?’ The God replied, ‘It was not Our wrath, but your folly for inter-fering with Our work; We sometimes send a drought, and at other times a flood, so that a portion of your crops may be destroyed, but We have Our reasons for so doing, for in this way all that is poisonous and undesirable in them is also destroyed, leaving only what is beneficial for the preservation of your life.’

The villagers prostrated themselves in humble prayer saying, ‘We shall never again try to control the affairs of the universe, Thou art the Creator and Thou art the Controller, we are Thine innocent children, and Thou alone knowest what is best for us.’ The Creator knows how to control His world, what to bring
forth and what to destroy.

It’s a good story about trusting Divine Providence to provide for our needs. “The Lord giveth and the Lord taketh away. Blessed be the name of the Lord.” What’s missing from their prayer, however, are the words “According to Thy will, O Lord.”

There’s another story this one brings to mind that offers a little different, and participatory, perspective. It’s about a farmer working his fields when his pastor drops by for a visit. Looking out over the farm and plowed fields the pastor exclaims “My, look what the Lord has done with this land!” To which the befuddled farmer exclaimed: “Yeah, well you should have seen it when the Lord had it all by himself!”

We are rightly the keepers of the Garden of Eden, however we are no longer mere “innocent children” as the villagers thought of themselves in relation to their Creator and “Controller.” We are co-creators with the Creator and one another, the collective Body in and through which the Great Spirit dwells and acts on Earth.

There are two aspects of individual harmony: the harmony between body and soul, and the harmony between individuals. The soul rejoices in the comforts experienced by the external self, yet man becomes so engrossed in them that the soul’s true comfort is neglected. This keeps man dissatisfied through all the momentary comforts he may enjoy, but not understanding this he attributes the cause of his dissatisfaction to some unsatisfied desire in his life. The outlet of all earthly passions gives a momentary satisfaction, yet creates a tendency for more; in this struggle the satisfaction of the soul is overlooked by man who is constantly busied in the pursuit of his earthly enjoyment and comfort, depriving the soul of its true bliss. The true delight of the soul lies in love, harmony, and beauty, the outcome of which is wisdom, calm, and peace; the more constant they are the greater is the satisfaction of the soul.

If man in his daily life would examine every action which has reflected a disagreeable picture of himself upon his soul arid caused darkness and dissatisfaction, and if on the other hand he would consciously watch each thought, word, or deed which had produced an inward love, harmony and beauty, and each feeling which had brought him wisdom, calm, and peace, then the way of harmony between soul and body would be easily understood, and both aspects of life would be satisfied, the inner as well as the outer. The soul’s satisfaction is much more important than that of the body, for it is more lasting. In this way the thought, speech and action can be adjusted, so that harmony may be established first in the self by the attunement of body and soul.

There’s an easier and sure way to bring love, harmony and beauty to one’s soul, and that way is simply to express these qualities in one’s living, for one knows that which one expresses. The first one to experience a smile is the one who smiles. The one who loves is first to experience love. And the one who gives is the first to receive. This is the Way of spiritual expression that is now open and available to all who wish to awaken to the Truth of Love, which is Life. Unfortunately, not everyone wants to awaken from slumber. I am still amazed at how hard it is to convince some people they have been hoodwinked and fooled into believing a lie. It’s easier to fool them than to awaken them from their slumber. The ancient Persian proverb still holds true and applicable today:

“He who knows not, and knows not that he knows not, is a fool; let him slumber. He who knows not, and knows that he knows not is awakening; be a light unto his dawn. He who knows, and knows not that he knows, is awake; teach him. He who knows, and knows that he knows, is a wise man; pay heed unto his words.”

There needs to be more of those who know and know that they know in this day of radical change and transformation. “This is the day that the Lord hath made. Let us rejoice and be glad in it.”

I welcome your thoughts and insights. Until my next post . . . .

Be love. Be loved.

Anthony

tpal70@gmail.com

IN ALL MY YEARS and in all my walks in woods and forests I’ve never heard a tree growing. And yet trees, like the great Sequoias in California, grow to towering heights without making a sound — except when the wind, another invisible force like the silent life that grows a tree, whistles through the branches announcing its presence — on occasion blowing trees down, root ball and all, in tornadic and hurricane-force gales. An awesome sight to behold down here in Louisiana where storms blow through from time to time. In contrast, Nature grows her lifeforms in peaceful silence — even in the darkness of the womb.

Sufi Hazarat Inayat Khan speaks and writers of the peaceful “silent life” as finding joy in surface activities. “The silent life appears as death in comparison with the life of activity . . . The life on the surface seems to be the real life, because it is in this life that all joy is experienced.” Well, I’m not sure that’s entirely so as the angels in heaven are said to be joyful . . . and quite musical as well. I do get his point, however. Our senses are so filled with the illusion of a material world that we have little capacity available for entertaining the presence of the silent invisible Reality behind the surface play of activity, making it at all possible. In fact, we fear death because it steals us away from what we know and sends our souls in a direction toward that which we don’t. Inayat Khan has an intriguing view of the silent life.

In the silent life there is no joy but only peace. The soul’s original being is peace and its nature is joy, both of which work against one another. [In a manner of speaking, I suppose.] This is the hidden cause of all life’s tragedy. The soul originally is without any experience; it experiences all when it opens its eyes to the exterior plane, and keeps them open, enjoying the life on the surface until satisfied. The soul then begins to close its eyes to the exterior plane, and constantly seeks peace, the original state of its being.

FINE AND GROSS VIBRATIONS

The inward and essential part of every being is composed of fine vibrations, and the external part is formed of gross ones. The finer part we call spirit and the grosser matter, the former less subject to change and destruction and the latter more so. All that lives is spirit and all that dies is matter; and all that dies in spirit is matter and all that lives in matter is spirit. All that is visible and perceptible appears to be living, although subject to death and decay, and is becoming every moment resolved into its finer elements; but the sight of man is so deluded by his awareness of the seeming world, that the spirit which really lives is covered under the garb of matter and its true being is hidden. It is the gradually increasing activity which causes vibrations to materialize, and it is the gradual decrease of the same which transmutes them again into spirit.

[While I do see his reasoning here, the illusory world of matter becomes visible and tangible as the frequency of vibrations becomes slower, and matter is transmuted at higher frequencies.]

As has been said, vibrations pass through five distinct phases while changing from the fine to the gross; and the elements of ether, water, air, earth and fire, each has a savor, colour, and form peculiar to itself. Thus the elements form a wheel which brings them all in time to the surface. At each step in their activity they vary and become distinct from each other; and it is the grouping of these vibrations which causes variety in the objective world. Man calls the law which causes them to disperse destruction.

Vibrations turn to atoms and atoms generate what we call life; thus it happens that their grouping, by the power of nature’s affinity, forms a living entity; and as the breath manifests through the form so the body becomes conscious. In one individual there are many fine and small beings hidden; in his blood, in his brain cells, in his skin, and in all planes of his existence. As in the physical being of an individual many small germs are born and nourished which are also living beings, so in his mental plane there are many beings, termed Muwakkals, or elementals. These are still finer entities born of man’s own thoughts, and as the germs live in his physical body so the elementals dwell in his mental sphere. Man often imagines that thoughts are without life; he does not see that they are more alive than the physical germs and that they have a birth, childhood, youth, age and death. They work for man’s advantage or disadvantage according to their nature. The Sufi creates, fashions and controls them. He drills them and rules them throughout his life; they form his army and carry out his desires. As the germs constitute man’s physical being and the elementals his mental life, so do the angels constitute his spiritual existence. These are called Farishtas.

Vibrations as a rule have length as well as breadth; and they may last the least fraction of a moment or the greater part of the age of the universe. They make different forms, figures, and colours as they shoot forth, one vibration creating another; and thus myriads arise out of one. In this way there are circles beneath circles and circles above circles, all of which form the universe. Every vibration after its manifestation becomes merged again in its original source. The reach of vibrations is according to the
fineness of the plane of their starting-point. To speak more plainly, the word uttered by the lips can only reach the ears of the hearer; but the thought proceeding from the mind reaches far, shooting from mind to mind. The vibrations of mind are much stronger than those of words. The earnest feelings of one heart can pierce the heart of another; they speak in the silence, spreading out into the sphere, so that the very atmosphere of a person’s presence proclaims his thoughts and emotions. The vibrations of the soul are the most powerful and far-reaching, they run like an electric current from soul to soul.

All things and beings in the universe are connected with each other, visibly or invisibly, and through vibrations a communication is established between them on all the planes of existence; as an ordinary instance, if one person coughs in an assembly, many others begin to do the same, and the same is the case with yawning. This also applies to laughter, excitement and depression. This shows that vibrations convey the conditions of one being to another; therefore the seer knows of the past, present and future,
and perceives conditions on all planes of existence.

Vibrations work through the chord of sympathy [resonance] existing between man and his surroundings and reveal past, present and future conditions; this explains why the howling of dogs foretells death, and the neighing of horses the approach of danger. Not only animals show this but even the plants in times of sorrow begin to die, and the flowers to fade, while during times of happiness they grow and flourish. The reason why plants and animals can perceive the vibrations and know of coming events while man
is ignorant of them, is because he has blinded himself with egotism. The influence of vibrations is left on the chair on which one sits, in the bed where one has slept, in the house where one lives, in the clothes one wears, in the food one eats, and even in the street where one walks.

[This has been verified scientifically by DNA sampling of energetic residue left behind where a person has sat or slept.)

Every emotion arises from the intensity of the vibrations, which when active in different directions produce different emotions, the main cause of every emotion being simply activity. Every vibration while active raises the consciousness to the outermost surface, and the mist caused by this activity collects clouds which we call emotions. The clouds of emotion obscure the clear sight of the soul. Therefore passion is called blind. The excess of the activity of vibrations not only blinds, but weakens the will, and a weak will enfeebles the mind and body.

—The Mysticism of Sound

There are surely thoughts and impressions to contemplate in Khan’s words. What I come away with after reading this passage is the responsibility I have as a divine being incarnate to use my human capacities according to their intended purposes for the manifestation and expression of the truth of love in this world. In other words to sound a tone in my living that sets into motion creative vibrations rather than destructive ones — such as words of accusation, blame and complaint. Such vibrations hurt the heart and dissipate the fine substance of Spirit. They don’t feel very pleasant either, do they? Not like words of appreciation, praise and compassion do. We have the unique privilege and capacities to make audible the silent life of the vibrations of Heaven through our words and actions. To bless our worlds and the people in them with uplifting vibrations. To bless our own human bodies, minds and hearts with creative energy. That feels so right, doesn’t it?

I welcome your thoughts and insights about these important matters. Until my next post,

Be love. Be loved.

Anthony

tpal70@mail.com