Creating the New Earth Together

“Third Force” Intervention

May 31, 2023

“I have thrown fire on the world. Look! I watch it until it blazes!”

Jesus, The Gospel of Thomas.

* * *

WERE YOU EVER IN A STATE of comfortable assurance that everything was going right on schedule when something crops us that threatens to disrupt your schedule and prevent you from reaching your destination or goal on time — then a surprising event springs up, seemingly out of nowhere, that resolves the impasse and you’re on you way to a timely arrival? Well, such synchronicity is basically what Gurdjieff’s “Third Force” dynamics is all about. But let me share Cynthia Bourgeault’s interpretations and demonstrations of the “Law of Three” from her “exquisitely written love story,” EYE OF THE HEART.

THIRD FORCE

According to the Law of Three, all new arisings in whatever domain and at whatever scale are caused by the interweaving of three independent forces (not just two), which Gurdjieff calls affirming, denying, and reconciling. Where there are just two, there is impasse, and situations logjam. But since it is the nature of life in the created order, flowing as it does out of world 3, to be continuously moving and shapeshifting, third force enters. Impasses break up. New configurations emerge, for better or worse. This will either happen randomly, under the law of accident, or it will happen intentionally, under the law of fate. In the latter case it is an imaginally generated new arising, and the conscious circle often has a distinctive role to play.

Third force is a bit like quicksilver itself; under various lights it can appear to be generated, invoked, midwifed, or discovered in a situation — or it can emerge, seemingly out of left field, through a random event or “coincidence.” The conscious circle can be deployed in any of these directions. While generally its role seems to be to maintain that deep reservoir of spacious, nonidentified attentiveness out of which third force most spontaneously arises, every so often it finds itself functioning directly as third force itself, providing that requisite bridging element that breaks up the logjam and ushers in the new configuration.

The history of civilization is marked by a few great turning points, when things which had apparently been moving in one direction suddenly shift course and move in another, often under mysterious circumstances. I do not want to fall into a magical retelling of history here, where every miraculous plot twist is taken as evidence of imaginal intervention. But as I ponder how third force has played out at some of these significant crossroads in human history, I would like to share three stories, all of them basically anecdotal, that appear to me to bear the particular fragrance of conscious-circle involvement.

The first story was told to me many years ago by my dear friend and teacher Murat Yagan, who trained extensively in the Abkhazian shamanic and Bektashi dervish lineages before emigrating to Canada in 1960 to take up work as a teacher of the deeper imaginal roots of the Western Inner tradition. According to Murat — and he was adamant about this — the origins of Sufism predate Islam and in fact lie in “the order of Melchizedek,” or in other words, directly in the imaginal realm. The marriage of these two spiritualities was effected only in the ninth century through the deliberate intervention of a Central Asian Wisdom council, which directly foresaw that the external container of Islam would be the only vessel strong enough to withstand the devastation shortly to be unleashed by Mongol invasions. Moving quickly to protect a tender shoot of human consciousness beginning to bud in Central Asia, the council effected a union so sturdy that to this day the standard version of Islamic history claims that Sufism is simply “the mystical arm of Islam,” generated entirely within an Islamic matrix.

Sometimes initial calamities, once viewed from the perspective of the conscious circle, begin to make sense in a whole different way. The Chinese invasion of Tibet in 1959 is just such an example and furnishes my second story. On the one hand, this violent act of aggression broke up a Wisdom enclave of almost supernatural purity and power. On the other hand, it displaced this Wisdom to the West, where it was sorely needed and well positioned to grow the entire world. As the Dalai Lama, Lama Yeshe, and others of that remarkable lineage made their way to Dharamshala and points west, the cross-pollination began in earnest, and the reinfusion of energy into the West’s own contemplative traditions has laid a sturdy global foundation for the second axial awakening. . . .

“IS PARIS BURNING?”

My third story may be my own fantasy, but only the last connection; all the rest up to that point is verifiably true. During the dark days of World War II, when most spiritual teachers were fleeing for refuge to less war-torn places, Gurdjieff elected to stay put in Paris, in his tiny flat less than a quarter of a mile as the crow flies from the central command post of the German occupation. And in this bitter season of deprivation and hopelessness, he set about generating intentionally the energy of abundance, the missing element in a desperately traumatized world. Using skills he had gained who knows how, he managed to acquire huge stockpiles of food — not just basic staples always available in an unlocked pantry, but elegant luxuries, Armagnac and chocolates, served up in lavish banquets in an atmosphere suffused with the limitless possibility of the human spirit. Those who still remember those banquets know full well that the real food being served was love. . . .

Just over the hill, in the place de la Concorde, during the summer of 1944, the noose was tightening on the Nazi occupation. The American troops had landed in Normandy and were steadily making their way toward Paris. An elaborate scheme had been set in place by those leading the German evacuation that would have left behind a swath of destruction obliterating some of the great monuments of human culture. Dietrich von Choltitz, a general widely known for his ruthlessness, was in charge of the operations. Explosives were placed under Notre Dame Cathedral and the Louvre. It is all detailed in the book Is Paris Burning?”

Somehow, it never happened. The reasons are still not clear. There was never a moment when it was decided not to blow up Paris. There were negotiations and communications right up to the end, but no moment of decision. Like the tide turning, the moment simply receded.

I could never prove that there was a connection between these two events. But knowing how imaginal causality works and Gurdjieff’s skills in this realm, I cannot not believe it. In my heart I still fiercely hold it as his greatest gift to our West, and I offer up my prayers of gratitude. I will count him forever among the thirty-six.

LOVE CASTING

The “thirty-six” relates to the Hasidic folklore cited in a previous post which claims that our world is held in its planetary orbit by thirty-six conscious human beings, whose work is of such a fine quality as to “rise like incense into the earth’s atmosphere” creating a “sturdy bandwidth of protection, blessing, and guidance.” This, in essence, describes the nature and function of Gurdjieff’s “conscious circle of humanity.”

The number 36 is of course symbolic and can represent a group of individuals as well as individual groups of people, many of which have convened together to form what some are describing as “love casting” circles. I am a participant in a few of them myself. Modern technology today allows us to gather via Zoom conferences, which makes our conscious awareness of one another and of our work more visible and generative.

If you think that you would like to participate is such a love casting circle, drop me an email for more information and contact references. One of my group coordinators is in Jerusalem, another in Toronto and a third in Hawaii. Then there are smaller circles of light workers who “meet in the field” weekly at various times — the “field” being Rumi’s realm in consciousness “Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and rightdoing” where Rumi says : “I’ll meet you there. When the soul lies down in that grass, the world is too full to talk about. Ideas, language, even the phrase each other doesn’t make any sense.”

THIRD FORCE INTERVENTION

“Even from the days of your fathers ye have gone away from mine ordinances, and have not kept them. Return to me and I will return to you, saith the LORD of hosts.” (Malachi 3:7)

The rest of that passage is relevant today:

“But ye said, Wherein shall we return? Will a man rob God? Yet ye have robbed me. But ye say, Wherein have we robbed thee? In tithes and offerings. Ye are cursed with a curse: for ye have robbed me, even this whole nation. Bring ye all the tithes into the storehouse, that there may be meat in mine house, and prove me now herewith, saith the LORD of hosts, if I will not open you the windows of heaven, and pour you out a blessing, that there shall not be room enough to receive it. And I shall rebuke the devourer for your sakes, and he shall not destroy the fruits of your ground; neither shall your vine cast her fruit before the time in the field saith the LORD of hosts. And all nations shall call you blessed: for ye shall be a delightsome land, saith the LORD of hosts.” (Malachi 3:7-12)

Our world is cursed with a plague that is destroying the lives of our children, our youth, and our elders. With over twenty wars currently waging globally, and the pending threat of nuclear annihilation, this civilization is on a fast track to self destruction. Not the planet, just the mind-made world on its surface.

God loves this world so much that He sent His only begotten Son to save it from destruction. His coming was as a third force at a time when affirmation of the promise of a Messiah by the prophets and sacred scripture was strong in the minds and hearts of the people, and denial of the truth of the oneness of heaven and earth was strong as well. He came to reconcile the separation between His Father in Heaven and His children on earth, and to restore our consciousness to the awareness of the presence of the Kingdom on Heaven within us and all around us.

But His “Third Force” intervention in the downward path humanity was on at that time occurred on the cross when he cheated death and then, as though from out of left field — although He had forecasted His resurrection — He rose from the tomb, and in so doing altered the course of human history.

Third Force intervention is happening again today in what is called ” The Second Coming of Christ.” Only this time it’s happening in and through a collective body of chosen ones, incarnate angels who have come here to prepare the way for His coming on the clouds of heavenly human consciousness by casting the fire of love into the world and thereby generating the spiritual plasma needed to accommodate the transmission of the Christ Spirit into the world. I repeat His words recorded in the Gospel of Thomas:

“I have thrown fire on the world. Look! I watch it until it blazes.”

That fire of love is beginning to blaze, as the words of this poem by Martin Cecil proclaim:

* * *

THUS IT IS

From age to age

Love’s word rings forth,

“The truth is true and all is well,

Unconquerable life prevails.”

Oh, man, whose strident dreams

Lead gravewards,

Return to calm and noble

Character of life.

Blaze forth pure virtue.

Depart false ambition’s restless schemes.

Busy thought and troubled feeling

Trespass not in virtue’s wise serenity

Where firm control and awful power

Eternally abide.

Here earth’s pains are healed

And cruel chaos of mind’s spawning

Is called again to order and to beauty.

* * *

Let’s make our world a “delightsome land” again, by returning the tithes of our heart’s love to the One whose world this is, the LORD of hosts. For it’s through our hearts that His Spirit returns to this earthly realm.

I welcome any thoughts you may have in response to this post and wish to share. Until my next post,

be love . . . be loved.

Anthony

tpal70@gmail.com

Category:

Cynthia Bourgeault, Gurdjieff's Third Force

4 Comments

Man with God in Creation

May 28, 2023
Double Helix Nebula

* * *

Partner in Creation

by Don Hynes

Into the silence

I go without regret,

for there You are

whole and unerring,

ready to receive

this weary pilgrim

with the love

of a partner

in creation.

* * *

For you must realize that earth unfolds its properties and powers in union with Heaven aloft above us, and there is one Heart, one Being, one Will, one God, all in all. —Jacob Boehme

* * *

I WAS LISTENING to an audio recording of a presentation by Lloyd Meeker (Uranda) which he gave back in August of 1953 entitled “The Magic Of Creation #4 — Man With God in which he gives fresh insight into a passage in the Book of Genesis that had not stood out to me in the past in quite the same light. Here is the passage:

“These are the generations of the heavens and the earth when they were created, in the day that the LORD God made the earth and the heavens, And every plant of the field before it was in the earth, and every herb of the field before it grew: for the LORD God had not caused it to rain upon the earth, and there was not a man to till the ground. But there went up a mist from the earth, and watered the whole face of the ground.

“And the LORD God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul. And the LORD God planted a garden eastward in Eden; and there he put the man whom he had formed.

“And out of the ground made the LORD God to grow every tree that is pleasant to the sight and good for food; the tree of life also in the midst of the garden, and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. . . .”

(Genesis 2: 4-9)

There’s much more to this event that Uranda encompasses in his presentation. The line that stood out to me and which I wish to meditate upon in this post is: “And every plant of the field before it was in the earth, and every herb of the field before it grew:”

I really had never noticed this passage and the implications clearly evident in the phraseology, which I highlighted here. The implication is that creation of all the forms of life, the trees and herbs for example, was first in the heaven before they appeared in the earth . . . and that they appeared in the earth after man was made and placed in the garden planted eastward in Eden “to dress it and to keep it,” as verse 15 states. In other words, man was the means by which creation of living forms manifested in the earth. We are the tillers of the ground of the garden planted eastward in Eden, the dressers and keepers of the garden of Paradise. Perhaps the Double Helix Nebula pictured above is part of the matrix for the Creating Process after all.

I don’t think the Creator handed out an assortment of seeds to Adam and Eve to be planted in the garden. This was clearly an imaginal process of seeding the heaven of human consciousness with an image of the Creator’s design and desire for Creation: the invisible image to be made manifest through Man, male and female, in the visible universe of the earth.

The wording “Eastward in Eden” indicates the future, as our tomorrows come out of the East, where the morning sun faithfully appears heralding the new day.

The garden planted eastward in Eden, is Gurdjieff’s “World 24” and Jesus’s “kingdom of heaven.” It’s Cynthia Bourgeault’s “Imaginal realm.” It’s the heart, the garden which we are commissioned to dress and to keep . . . for one thing, from being troubled. “Let not your hearts be troubled,” are reportedly words the Master Jesus often prefaced what he had to say to his disciples. Nothing brings peace to a troubled heart like love and thankfulness — especially when offered upward.

GURDJIEFF’S CONSCIOUS CIRCLE OF HUMANITY

Bringing back an old Hasidic saying I shared several posts ago from Cynthia Bourgeault’s EYE OF THE HEART:

“There’s an old piece of Hasidic folklore that claims that our world at any point in time is held in its planetary orbit by thirty-six conscious human beings. They don’t know each other, and they don’t even know if they’re among the thirty-six. But the quality of their work, rising like incense into the earth’s atmosphere, creates around our fragile planet a sturdy bandwidth of protection, blessing, and guidance.”

This comprises the gist of Gurdjieff’s notion of what he called a “conscious circle of humanity” . . . through which a “Third Force” can operate to alter the course of world and human evolution and destiny. More on this later.

What exactly is the nature of Gurdjieff’s Conscious Circle of Humanity? Cynthia writes:

Essentially, the conscious circle is an intense zone of imaginal interchange in which advanced beings on both sides of the form/formless divide — i.e., some still in their physical bodies, others no longer so — join hands across the realms for a mutual exchange of wisdom, tempering, blessing, protection, and occasional course correction. You might look at it as a kind of “bodhisattva bandwidth,” in which the best of our human altruism is met and matched from the other side by a sincere compassion for our human predicament and the skillful means to help. This is the circle of “ye watchers and ye holy ones” (as the old hymn goes), antiphonally proclaiming their mutual commitment to protect, uphold, and bring to completion all that has been set in motion here.

The whole notion is by nature evolutionary, incarnational, and collective. Membership in the conscious circle of humanity is not about bailing out of our earthly responsibilities to seek personal enlightenment in more spiritualized realms. It fits squarely within the Gurdjieffian notion of reciprocal feeding; in fact, only within this framework can its purpose really be understood.

A passage from the Book of Malachi (3:7) in the Old Testament speaks to this “reciprocal feeding” and “exchange between the realms”: “‘Return to me, and I will return to you,’ says the Lord Almighty.” And a few verses further: “Bring ye all the tithes into the storehouse, that there may be meat in mine house, and prove me now herewith, saith the LORD of hosts, if I will not open you the windows of heaven and pour you out a blessing.” (Mal 3:10). We return, hearts and tithes, to the LORD through a vibrational pattern of wholehearted love response to his unconditional love for each one of us.

THE GROUP DYNAMIC

If Teilhard’s theory is correct, it is a fair surmise that the next levels of conscious emergence — into what is now popularly called “integral” and “nondual” consciousness — will not happen simply through the domino-chain aggregation of individual enlightened psyches. It will require the emergence of an accompanying new “physical arrangement,” or body featuring an even greater degree of differentiated function within an overarching unity.

Teilhard was already envisioning this new evolutionary body as the noosphere, and he had already grasped that its materiality was comprised not of corpuscular elements ordered by tangential energy, but of “thought” exchanged among humans through radial energy — or in other words, rephrased in the language of the Western Inner tradition, that it would operate according to the substantiality and causality of World 24. To the extent that the conscious circle bears witness to that higher imaginal body and in fact arises as a specific expression of it, I believe that groups and Wisdom schools are here to stay as the prime locus of conscious-circle activity as we approach that second axial threshold.

In favoring the group model over the time-hallowed solitary, however, one needs to be very careful not to fall back into outdated World 48 modalities. I still chuckle at my friend Ajahn Sona’s priceless quip: “What’s the plural of egoic? We-goic.” Wegoic fellowship with all its tricky and laborious protocols is not the way this imaginal body orders itself, and Gurdjieff was very clear in expressing his disappointment when the Babylonian School fell back into such “wiseacreing.” Mentally generated platforms and inflammatory rhetoric simply add to the pain body of this world.

The first priority of a Wisdom school aspiring to conscious-circle partnership must be to maintain a consistently high level of imaginal clarity in which something new can actually be tasted. The synergy is itself the new vibration, the seeing is itself the doing, and all that’s really needed is to hold that vibration for as long as one can, as purely as one can; then like water running downhill, it will find its way into the ground. “Truth has only to appear once, in one single mind,” Teilhard averred shortly before his death, “for it to be impossible for anything to prevent it from spreading universally and setting everything ablaze.” How we get “from here to there” is the real measure of amplitude of the conscious circle when it is doing its job rightly. (emphasis added)

THE “NOOSPHERE”

I bring this next passage forward from an earlier post as it speaks to this “noosphere” mentioned above.

In her evocative and controversial book The Meaning of Mary Magdalene – The Woman at the Heart of Christianity, Cynthia Bourgeault makes a distinction between the “imaginal realm” and imagination which I feel deserves in-depth consideration. The context of this consideration is the vision Mary Magdalene has of Jesus just after his resurrection when she reportedly mistakes him for the gardener. In her gospel, Mary Magdalene tells the apostles of Jesus’s resurrection and goes on to describe her remarkable experience with him. 

I saw the Master in a vision and I said to him, “Lord I see you now in a vision.” And he answered me, “You are blessed, Mary, since the sight of me does not disturb you. For where is the nous [the heart] lies the treasure.” Then I said to him: “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 that sees the vision….”

The “nous” is the heart, or the “eye of the heart.” It’s our capacity to discern spiritual or vibrational essences. It’s the space between the infinite and the finite, between pure spirit and gross matter — and it is said to belong to Spirit, generated as it is by Spirit for communicating with the physical world and for conveying “images” for the manifestation of “analogues”– the manifest forms. “Images do not arise in this realm, however (their origin is several cosmoses more subtle) [Worlds 6 and 12], and trouble begins when this fundamental cosmic law is forgotten. (Bourgeault)

“Pneumaplasm”

The word “pneumaplasm” was coined by Uranda eighty some years ago to represent this substance through which Spirit communicates with the material world.  Uranda was the founder of the Attunement service now being offered by attunement practitioners the world over.  I have incorporated sacred sound in my personal attunement service and have written a book about this sacred technology. I would like to share an excerpt from my book, Attunnement With Sacred Sound, from the section “Cellular Replication in a Musical Matrix of Light.”

“Image” and “Analogue” — “As Above so Below”

“Within the particular metaphysical stream that Jesus seems to be working in, image corresponds to that primordial template mentioned earlier—“the origin” of each created form. Very cautiously, you might label it an archetype. At first glance you may be tempted to transpose this teaching into Platonic categories and assume that Jesus is talking about the “ideal form” of a thing. But be cautious in doing so, for there is a distinctly different dynamism at work here. For Jesus, the “image” is not merely a static blueprint, a preexistent prototype that its earthly analogue mechanically reflects. Between image and analogue there is a dynamic reciprocity as they simultaneously articulate the same reality in Two different realms. Image and analogue are in continuously creative tension receiving and fulfilling each other, and it is in the energy exchange that their indivisible wholeness is made manifest.

I like her use of the word “analogue,” which means similar in function but not in origin and structure, as it represents accurately the “dynamic reciprocity” between man and his Creator, in whose image and likeness we are made in order to function as creators ourselves. In our energy and attunement work you might say that we seek to facilitate a clarification, balancing and intensification of this “energy exchange” between image (spirit) and analogue (form) with the intention that the oneness between them may be made manifest in the client’s experience of life, as well as in our own.

The author then offers these words of truth and wisdom derived from Jesus’ teaching:

“When the realms are in spontaneous resonance—“One Heart, one Being, one Will, one God, all in all”— the music of the spheres bursts forth. When they are not, disease and disharmony inevitably ensue. As He quickly points out (again, with a contemporary feeling to the teaching), “Confusion and disturbance resonate throughout one’s whole being”. . . . and sickness and death are the inevitable result.“

Dynamic Reciprocity — Exchange Between the Realms — Receiving and Bestowing — Reciprocal Feeding. The eternal cosmic dance between Creator and Man in Creation goes on for as long as the Music of the Spheres lasts in a world without end. What an exciting time to be living and co-creating on Earth !!!

I will continue this stream in my next post, focusing on the dynamics of Third Force intervention. Until then,

Be love. Be loved.

Anthony

tpal70@gmail.com

Category:

Uncategorized

1 Comment

My Day in History

May 20, 2023

Our Milky Way Galaxy

MAY IS NATIONAL MILITARY APPRECIATION MONTH here in the US, and today is Armed Forces Day. The sky is abuzz with jets flying overhead even as I write while the city celebrates the occasion with an Air Show. I’ll take it as celebrating my birthday. Much has happened historically in this month of a military nature, beginning in my day with the invasion of Europe by German troops in May of 1940. I was born a spark of light into a dark world on the brink of war, in the Gulf coast town of Port Arthur, Texas, where our father worked in a machine shop making bullets and mortar shells for the war machine. My mission would be to bring an increase of life and health to the sick and suffering of humanity . . . and to spike it with a bit of music! Here’s what was happening on my day in history leading up to this day.

I WAS BORN ON MAY 20, 1940, 83 years ago — the same month and week German troops invaded the low lying countryside of the Netherlands and Western Europe, overrunning Belgium and destroying the city of Luxembourg in its destructive path to Paris, France. Shortly after this, Germany and collaborating authorities initiated anti-Jewish policies and laws in occupied western Europe. Nazi Germany had been at war with Great Britain and France since September 3, 1939, but little fighting took place on the western front until May, 1940. The conquest of western Europe brought hundreds of thousands of Jews under German control. We know the atrocities this led to and where it tragically ended.

My early childhood and that of my two older sisters was spent under the dark clouds of World War II, which began for the USA on December 7, 1941 when Japan bombed Pearl Harbor on Oahu Island, Hawaii. The war in Europe ended in May of 1945, largely won by the Soviet Union’s defeat of Hitler on the Eastern Front with a death toll of over eleven-million soldiers. Fifteen months after the invasion of Normandy by Allied Forces on June 6, 1944, “D-Day,” suffering losses of only 183,000 Allies comparatively speaking, the war ended on the Western Front abruptly in Japan when the US dropped two atom bombs: one on Hiroshima on August 6, 1945, and a second three days later on Nagasaki, incinerating between 129,000 – 226,000 people (including 7 Dutch and 12 American prisoners of war) in the initial explosion, and killing many more by radiation poisoning later — not to mention hundreds born with birth defects over the years that followed. (Thanks to my friend Donald White for his historical clarifications.)

I was five years old then, hardly old enough to comprehend the gravity of the moment. The world changed drastically in that week as fear captivated the heart of humanity. America is now the most feared nation in the modern world . . . and we know from Job’s experience what comes about when fear plagues the heart and mind, In his own words, “What I have greatly feared as come upon me.”

BEWARE THE MILITARY-INDUSTRIAL COMPLEX

On January 17, 1961, in his farewell address, President and General Dwight David Eisenhower warned the world against the establishment of a “military-industrial complex.” I took this off of the web page of Milestone Documents:

In a speech of less than 10 minutes, on January 17, 1961, President Dwight Eisenhower delivered his political farewell to the American people on national television from the Oval Office of the White House. Those who expected the military leader and hero of World War II to depart his Presidency with a nostalgic, ‘old soldier’ speech like Gen. Douglas MacArthur’s, were surprised at his strong warnings about the dangers of the ‘military-industrial complex.‘

As President of the United States for two terms, Eisenhower had slowed the push for increased defense spending despite pressure to build more military equipment during the Cold War’s arms race. Nonetheless, the American military services and the defense industry had expanded a great deal in the 1950s. Eisenhower thought this growth was needed to counter the Soviet Union, but it confounded him. Though he did not say so explicitly, his standing as a military leader helped give him the credibility to stand up to the pressures of this new, powerful interest group. He eventually described it as a necessary evil.

A vital element in keeping the peace is our military establishment. Our arms must be might, ready for instant action, so that no potential aggressor may be tempted to risk his own destruction. . . . American makers of plowshares could, with time and as required, make swords as well. But now we can no longer risk emergency improvisation of national defense; we have been compelled to create a permanent armaments industry of vast proportions. . . . This conjunction of an immense military establishment and a large arms industry is new in the American experience. . . .Yet we must not fail to comprehend its grave implications. . . . In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist.”

AMERICA’S UNPARDONABLE SIN

Some sins can only be forgiven by the sinner him or herself, because the “unpardonable sin” is committed when one stops caring. It’s a death-wish in that it often leads to a despair so deep that a person takes his or her own life — and too often these days several others with them. Self-forgiveness is the only salvation and remittance of such a sin.

America’s unpardonable sin was committed when the leaders in its governing body stopped caring for the people, especially the poor and the homeless, and started caring more about keeping the top one-per-cent happily wealthy . . . and about maintaining America’s status as the top autocrat on the world stage of nations.

As I write these ominous words — in which I take little pleasure — we are in the final days of decision-making that will end the so-called “debt-ceiling crisis” one way or another: either our leaders in Congress and the White House raise the debt ceiling or the nation defaults on its debts — including its debt to the elderly who depend on our Social Security checks to live our daily lives. In the balance of this decision weighs the creation of a national budget by Congress that includes cutting excess spending. For without a balanced budget, spending swings out of control. I say by Congress because President Biden has already submitted a budget, which House Leader/Speaker Kevin McCarthy and the Republican House has failed to consider and act on and send on to the Senate for approval.

All the fear mongering and hoopla over an approaching “debt ceiling deadline” June 1st is nothing but postering on McCarthy’s part in order to get what he wants, as David Brooks and Jonathan Capehart so plainly and matter-of-factly stated yesterday on PBS National News, both agreeing that there’s nothing for Americans to fret over. The debt ceiling will be raised, reportedly by 1.5 trillion dollars above last years debt ceiling — which hovers around $31 trillion.

The “sin” lies in the priorities toward which our leaders gravitate. In this country, “home of the free and the brave,” the priorities of our partisan leadership gravitates in large part toward defense and keeping the banking system afloat — and their oligarch constituents happy. Where their priorities DO NOT gravitate toward is the welfare of the little man and “we the people.” To the contrary, our congressional leaders look first in the direction of Medicaid and Social Security and other social-welfare programs, like food stamps, in their efforts to trim the budget.

God forbid that we even give thought to cutting the military budget, — currently proposed by the Biden-Harris Administration to be $842 Billion, a hundred billion over last year’s defense budget — because, after all, we “need” 750 military bases in 80 foreign countries to defend ourselves against . . . whom? Russia and China? Both of these nations feel threatened by the US and its NATO allies, who are closing in on them on all sides. I have a real question about who actually started the conflict between Russia and the Ukraine. The answer that comes to mind is “We all did,” because we all justify war as a legitimate way of settling our differences, especially where our very existence as a free nation is concerned. The irony of it all is that war, escalated to a nuclear level, threatens the existence of our entire species . . . and all the other species as well.

Let’s face it: war is big business . . . and apathy, along with lack of love, care and respect for one another and for life itself, create a vacuum into which we fall as a way of defending ourselves and the freedom our Democracy promises to afford.

Truth is that the Truth needs no defense. If we think that our Democracy needs the larger portion of our national budget to defend itself against its enemies, then there’s something not very truthful about the grounds upon which our nation was founded and stands today; and where there’s a lack of truth there’s a lack of freedom. The elements of truth are design and control, both of which together make us free.

We do not exercise true freedom here in America, because we do not accept the natural design of Life that brings Divine design and control into our living. What we exercise blatantly before God and humanity is a lack of control: a license to do as we please — without reference to a natural and orderly design — which sadly includes the license to own assault weapons that by design have only one purpose, and that is to kill as many people as possible in as short a time as possible. Without the design of laws that offer gun-control, we are all in danger of being shot and killed by people who are angry at the world and out of control of their rational senses. Mass shootings are far less frequent to non existent in countries like Australia where guns are outlawed and where at least assault rifles are not allowed to be sold or owned by the layperson. These are military weapons and have no place on the streets of our cities and in the hands of criminals and the mentally unstable. As far as the excuse that they are used hunting game, if you can’t kill a deer with a rifle or shotgun, then you need to spend time improving your marksmanship at a shooting range, and not default to using an assault rifle. In my view, the gun industry and especially the gun lobbyists are culpable in mass-shootings . . . and I am not open to discussion on the issue with anyone.

When we stop caring about the sacredness of life, we sin against ourselves, and no one, not even God, can forgive us. We alone can forgive ourselves . . . and repent of our sinful behavior. Otherwise we continue to carry out a death-wish. Without a radical shift in direction, this civilization will go the way of the lost civilizations of Atlantis, Lemuria, the Indus and Mayans, and the great Neolithic civilization of the Anasazi Indians, not to mention the Roman Empire, in whose footsteps we are currently treading.

What is needed in this country and in the whole body of humanity, but especially in America, the land of love, is the creation and sustained maintenance of an atmosphere of love, compassion, peace and harmony in the mass consciousness, out of which we create our world. I see such beginning to appear, but it needs to increase exponentially as time is no more. With such an atmosphere we invite a “Third Force” Gurdjieff spoke of to intervene and bring about a radical and unexpected shift in the direction we are currently headed . . . the topic of my next post.

Lao Tzu gave the world a heads-up when he penned these words of wisdom: “If you do not change direction, you may end up where you’re heading.”

I welcome any thoughts, insights and inspirations you may have and wish to share, either in the comment aspect of this post or by email. Until my next post,

Be love. Be loved.

Anthony

tpal70@gmail.com.

Category:

Uncategorized

2 Comments

Cleansing Our Lens of Perception

May 13, 2023

Rainbow Heart

“Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God.”

* * *

IN CHAPTER SIX of EYE OF THE HEART Cynthia Bourgeault’s writing is, for me, the clearest and most pragmatic of all I’ve read of her writings thus far. This essay is about cleansing our “lens” of perception — not only so that we see the world, both physical and spiritual aspects, as they are; but more importantly so that we “see” ourselves as we truly are, and not as we imagine ourselves to be — the “price” of seeing clearly being the self-centered and isolated egoic self in exchange for the “Real I” as part of the greater Whole.

It’s not necessary to synthesize this chapter for the sake of brevity, as it’s already as succinct and comprehensive as it can be. I think it serves my readers best as an excerpt without interpretation or condensation. I think you will thoroughly enjoy reading and flowing with Cynthia’s stream of consciousness. (Note: you may want to refer back to my previous post when she references the various “worlds” through which we travel as we ascend in consciousness.)

IMAGINAL PURIFICATION

IN THE PAST two chapters we’ve been looking at some of the ways in which imaginal causality expresses itself in this world. Now it’s time to look a bit more closely at some of the ways in which this expression can be distorted — or in other words, areas in which some purification of the vehicle is necessary in order to ensure a greater reliability and consistency of connection.

The Sufis call this work “polishing the mirror” or “cleansing the lens of perception.” For Christian readers long accustomed to associating purification with sorrow and penance, this “housecleaning” metaphor may indeed offer a refreshing new take. In this more praxis-oriented context, the issue is not so much remorse for our moral failings (although that never drops out of the picture) as it is a deliberate effort to keep the viewing screen clear so that what falls on it is not immediately distorted by lower-order agendas.

The biggest single area of distortion lies in the tendency to drag the interpretation down to the level of magical thinking. At this level the focus is on individual “signs and wonders,” almost invariably drawn from the stock repertory. An eagle feather drops in your path, a rainbow appears in the sky, a shooting star streaks across the night sky, and suddenly you are in receipt of a personal message from God! Or perhaps you race on ahead and start filling in the pieces of the imaginal puzzle with your own imagi-nation and mental calculations. Then you are in some ways worse off than if you had never begun, conscripted to a scenario that exists only in your own head. In both cases there is a level confusion going on here, and this confusion is what will inevitably switch the message (however accurate it may have been at its initial point of impact) onto a generally unreliable track.

Who is this “I” who is receiving the message? The confusion is between two levels of consciousness, which in the classic typologies of both East and West are known as “psychic” and “subtle.” The bottom line is that imaginal causality belongs to the subtle level of consciousness; all attempts to capture it at the psychic level will lead to distortion — at best innocuous, at worst downright dangerous.

The psychic level of consciousness is that intermediate state at which a growing sensitization to transpersonal (a.k.a. “psychic”) phenomena is still firmly tied to an egoic (or narrative) self-center . . . and insofar as it does signal the initial opening of the imaginal capacities, it represents progress. But it is a very unstable place in the growth curve, and until the tension is ironed out a lot of damage can be done.

I will speak only in passing here of those more dangerous levels of magic and the occult, which happen in exactly this configuration at its extreme negative pole, i.e., a pronounced psychic capacity tied to a strong, amoral personal will. With concentrated attention and training, it is indeed possible to draw down the energy of World 24 and even World 6 to wreak havoc on this earth plane. Gurdjieff called such people “hasnamusses,” but perhaps the old term evil will serve just as well. We see them in the Hitlers, the Jim Joneses, the cult leaders run amuck, and in many more who wreak harm in a much more subtle but pervasive way (I would personally place Ayn Rand in that category): too much psychic power, too little love.

The moral inversion at work here is not only an affront to the image of our common humanity, it also badly misinterprets the nature of the higher energy itself, which appears under this filter to be simply an impersonal, amoral, “spirit in third person,” another mechanistic force to be harnessed — not, as it really is, a powerfully compassionate and coherent relational field bearing the moral heart of God. When Teilhard de Chardin insisted adamantly toward the end of his life that “God is a person, God is person,” he was not picturing an old man with a beard up in the sky. He was saying, rather, that as we proceed further and further into those luminous spheres, we encounter more and more fully the personal, radiant, tender, and intimate presence of the divine heart, which can never be relegated to an “it.” It is always a “thou,” and it pulls us inevitably toward greater thouness, the ultimate sacrifice that is love’s.

The imaginal realm properly corresponds to the subtle level of consciousness, which in turn corresponds to a different kind of selfhood. We move here necessarily from a narrative or egoic seat of selfhood to the beginnings of authentic witnessing selfhood. The concept is not well understood in Christian spiritual theology, which still tends to confuse the mythical beast of “true self” with the high egoic functioning of world 48. Witnessing selfhood is a World 24 phenomenon. That discrete sense of a personal “I” marching along a linear timeline held in place by memory and desire, gradually shifts to a larger and more unboundaried selfhood, the “wave” form of oneself, as it were.

Paying attention not to what you are but to that you are is how the anonymous medieval author of The Cloud of Unknowing summarized this fundamental shift in perspective.’ For Gurdjieff, this would be the beginning of the transition from “essence” to “Real I.” I have written extensively about this transition elsewhere, most recently in my book The Heart of Centering Prayer, so I will not elaborate further here.” But I would want to make very clear, with regard to our present concern, that imaginal causality can only be reliably read beginning at the level of witnessing selfhood and sooner or later demands that one join it at that level. The cost of admission to this new and more intense bandwidth of reality is ultimately your phenomenal self. Those things that you once thought were you — your history, your emotions, your particularities, your “descriptions” (as Beatrice Bruteau calls them) — are precisely those things offered into the refiner’s fires in order to create a being that can reliably listen and respond.

Seeing with the Eye of the Heart

In the Western Inner traditions there is a strong implicit thread that this shift to a new seat of selfhood is inextricably linked to a new operating system of perception, centered in the heart. “Blessed are the pure of heart, for they shall see God,” said Jesus, in these words of the sixth beatitude inaugurating not only a new pathway of purification but in fact a new phenomenology of it. The heart is already implicitly identified as the seat of imaginal vision, and as the teaching gets fleshed out over the centuries, particularly in mystical Sufism, the consensus continues to build that the heart (rather than the cognitive mind, i.e., the brain) is the true organ of spiritual perception and the seat of our imaginal selfhood. . . . (All embolden emphases added)

—Bourgeault EYE OF THE HEART

PURIFICATION OF THE HEART OF GOD

Over the past eighty-three years I have re-created my physical body twelve times over. With each new body a new mind was created as well, which allowed me to think anew and see anew, influenced by teachers and friends. What wasn’t created anew was my heart. Not my physical heart but my spiritual heart. That came with my spirit when I incarnated — and to the degree my mind has played its role in protecting my heart, I have retained some innocence. To the degree my mind has been self-centered and self-active, and has failed to protect it, my heart has accumulated such ill patterns as shame, guilt, and blame, to mention but a few of the many impure and disruptive feeling patterns and emotional impulses cluttering and sullying my heart’s lens of perception.

Many of these patterns were established in early childhood and during my youthful years of “exploring the field,” so-to-speak, mostly with wreckless abandon and blind disregard for how my actions may have impacted and affected those around me. Some of them came with the larger collective body of which I became a member when I incarnated. Looking back now — which can be a dangerous and even fatal exercise — patterns of regret, remorse and self-loathing crop up for release and forgiveness — literally to be given up for transmutation in the purifying fire of unconditional love.

At the end of this eighty-three-year-old tunnel, I find my Self in the Light of this New Day as inseparably part of a Body, having no isolated and insulated existence — in the presence of my LORD God, naked and unashamed, having been freed of shame and guilt in the Presence of unconditional Love. As the lens of my heart continues to be cleansed — largely under the pressure of challenging circumstances and recurring memories of past “moral failings” — I continue to participate in the purification of the Heart of Humanity, which is the Heart of God; and I relinquish all identification with the debris rising up and out of my personal field and the collective field of this Body, of which I am but one member of billions. None of it is who or what I am. I assume identity with my true Self as being one with the angelic Fire of Purification. One with Love. Love is what and who I Am. Love is what and who you are.

I know it to be the truth, for myself and for each and every one of us. We belong to One Body, outside of which we are nothing. That Body is the Body of God on Earth. So, if you think and feel that you are insignificant, a nobody, then I encourage you to let go of that isolated and insignificant self and let go to your true Self. You, as a Human Being and incarnate angel, are essential and vital to the healing and restoration of the Body of God on Earth. That’s no small and insignificant role we are privileged to play while we are on Earth.

Knowing this as truth brings with it a certain responsibility from which these is no escape. There’s work to be done — spiritual, emotional, mental as well as physical — as none of us are free of our past, personal and collective, as long as one of us is bound to it.

Let us not be “burned up” with the debris that’s on fire and disintegrating in Worlds 96 and 192. Neither let us be distraught and destroyed with it. Rather let us identify with the Fire, be one with the Spirit of Purification, whose place of presence is the Heart. Let my heart, one with the Heart of God, be purified in love’s fire so that I may see as God sees me and all the members of His Body.

We belong in Gurdjieff’s World 24 . . . in the “Kingdom of Heaven”. . . where we receive our instructions: the ordinances of heaven from the Holy Absolute in World 1, their “dominion” of which we are ordained to set in the earth and manifest Creation.

Gurdjieff’s map of the worlds may be useful in helping one see where one is currently living: in heaven or in hell . . . or perhaps in between. If you’re moving through hell, as the saying goes, remember that it’s only an illusion, so just keep moving . . . UP! Up, up and away, as the song goes. Leave the world to its own undoing, and just let love radiate through your heart without concern for results. Until my next post,

Be love. Be loved.

Anthony

tpal70@gmail.com

Category:

Conscious Evolution, Cynthia Bourgeault, Dr. Palombo's blog, Fire of Purificaiton, Healing Tones Blog, Imaginal Realm, Kingdom of Heaven, Love, Purification, Purifying your heart, The Imaginal Realm

Leave a comment

Tagged with:

Gurdjieff’s Ray of Creation: Worlds Within Worlds

May 6, 2023

“The heavens declare the glory of God; and the firmament sheweth his handywork.” (Psalm 19:1)

WHEN I WAS A YOUNG BOY I lay in the grass at night and feasted with my eyes and my soul on the magnificent beauty and unfathomable wonder of the heavens. On a clear and quiet night I could hear the stars singing in my heart. They do indeed declare the glory of God. They come out of God and shine forth His Glory, manifesting the evidence of the Presence of the “One Who dwells” within the Shekinah pattern of Being: the cloud of glory, the Light that shines and the fire that burns. All of it is created by Shekinah, the Word, as John wrote in the first lines of his gospel:

“In the beginning was the Word, and Word was with God, and the Word was God. The same was in the beginning with God. All things were made by him; and without him was not any thing made that was made.”

For me, George Gurdjieff’s Ray of Creation encompasses and declares the wonders of the heavens and the glory of the Creator.

Worlds Within Worlds

World 1

World 1 is the Holy Absolute, the Godhead. The “inaccessible light,” the holy impenetrable, ineffable, unknowable monad before “God took perceptivity and divisibility,” as Jacob Boehme describes it.

Of course, this is one of those giant forks in the road where the mystical tradition or the Christian West split theologically. For the Western theological mind—with a few notable exceptions—there is no “Godhead behind God.” The Trinity is the full, total, irreducible expression of the whole of divinity. The mystics of both branches, of course, have always smiled serenely at this. They know better.

This world corresponds with do on the Ray of Creation, or dominus—the Holy Absolute.

World 3

World 3 is the primordial ternary, whereby the Godhead—ever indivisible and unmanifest—brings himself into “perceptivity and divisibility,” i.e., a “manipulable” inner configuration that will support “the impressure of nothing into something” (again, Boehme’s words), thus launching the long march toward outward manifestation. For both Boehme and Gurdjieff, this fundamental reconfiguration of the inner monadic ground inexorably requires threeness, and what will emerge many worlds later as the theological doctrine of Trinity is in fact merely a distant echo of this more primordial upwelling of the Law of Three, rightly named by Gurdjieff as the “Law of World Creation.” Indeed, following a brilliant lead handed to us by Boehme, we can say that it is only in this realm that one can properly begin to invoke the term “consciousness” (con-scientia, meaning “with-knowing”), because until there is a “with,” there can be no “with-knowing” but only the bare, inscrutable will of the monad (which Boehme calls scientia.) Consciousness is not the fundamental ground of all being. It is rather the first manifestation — which occurs in World 3 — of perceptivity and divisibility. The two are joined at the hip.

This world corresponds with si on the Ray of Creation, or siderum — all the stars, all the galaxies, all possibilities, infinite possibilities.

World 6

This world launches the inaugural leap into outward manifestation, that first declension in Valentin Tomberg’s spectrum of energy, where consciousness “condenses” into “psychic force” and begins to move as an actual energy stream, creating, animating, and shaping the created order. On traditional metaphysical maps it corresponds to what is known in the East as the “causal” and in the West as the “logoic.” By whatever name, it is primordial substantiality, the highest and most powerful expression of the pure creative eros that brings all things into being. It is the world that quivers into life when Teilhard writes, “The physical structure of the universe is love,” or when he remarks, equally astoundingly, “Love is nothing more than the impressure, left in the heart of the creature, of the physical convergence of the universe.” Eros as logoic force, pure generativity, the blue of the flame in the heart of the monad. For J. G. Bennett, this is the demiurgic world from which the entire created order emerges. In the Gospel of John, this is “the Word.”. . . The big bang is here; this is where our universe story begins. And while opinions may vary on this point, my own take is that it is the highest realm that can be directly touched and borne while still in human form. It is beyond personal; it is itself the great intertidal zone between the unmanifest and the primordial manifest. I would call it the true logoic realm: pure spirit, pure causality, pure eros moving untempered by any sort of human mediation like the wild, roving spirit font it can only be.

This world corresponds with la on the Ray of Creation, or lactera — the Milky Way, our galaxy; the place where it is all unfolding for us.

World 12

World 12 is the Christie. I know this ascription may surprise some of you who are used to seeing “Christ Consciousness” positioned higher, as one of the nondual realms at the very top of the Great Chain of Being. I do not believe this is so. Even World 6, to my way of thinking, is already situated solidly within the causal or logoic bandwidth (not in the true nondual, which from a cosmological perspective denotes the unmanifest realms).

We have just seen above that World 6 bridges the gap between the manifest and unmanifest, and as its processionary offspring, World 12 would necessarily be subsumed within its overarching causality. Moreover, I concur with the ever-cage-rattling Bernadette Roberts in her insistence that “logos” and “Christ” are not the same, but rather, Christie is the “middle ground” (or mandorla, to give it its plane geometry name) that emerges in the overlapping zone between the human Jesus and the fiery divine logos — between Worlds 24 and 6, if you want to put it that way. And that is a very good way to picture World 12. It is the world of fully incarnate and embodied love, the fullest of what bodhisattva consciousness can look like in form. It is the endpoint of the personal realms. And it is the world, I believe, in which we must locate what Teilhard envisions as the Omega Point, where all things are summed up in Christ — because this is the last world in which such a summation has any relevance. Beyond, all is summed up in logos. It is the consummatum est of a particularly rich and luminous outspeaking of the word love, emerging from the fires of eros to its transfigured fullness as agape.

This world corresponds to sol on the Ray of Creation, or the sun — the center of our solar system. From here emerges warmth, light, and cosmic ordering.

World 24

World 24 is the “Kingdom of Heaven” as Jesus put it and supremely the home range of the imaginal. It is the world of presence, where the outer forms of physical materiality are illuminated from within by the light that pours from world 12 and above, and where human consciousness — awake, three-centered, and having passed that first conscious shock point (which it supremely tends and mediates) — fully inhabits this physical world, takes instructions reliably from the higher realms, and participates fully in the required cosmic exchange. This is the world of conscious man or woman — “man number four” in Gurdjieffian terminology — who lives awake and willing right there at the junction point where the “the two seas meet,” infusing the staleness of the lower worlds with the vivifying energy of his or her authentic presence.

This world corresponds to fa on the Ray of Creation, or fatum –– our immediate solar system.

World 48

This is the “world” as we know it and transmit it through the best of human culture. It is the world of philosophy, ethics, and religion; the world of intellectual striving and cleverness and of industry, curiosity, science, technology, and the arts — in other words, the first fruits of civilization as best we know them. It is the world of high rationality. The world of high egoic functioning and self-reflective consciousness. The world that Teilhard mostly had in mind when he described the “noosphere.” But for all its giftedness, it still falls just below that first conscious shock line; hence, it is still, in Gurdjieffian terms, preconscious and “asleep.” It is Prospero’s castle, entrancing and seductive, but ultimately a mirage.

This world corresponds to mi on the Ray of Creation, or the mixtus orbis. At its best, it symbolizes the fullest flourishing of the biosphere, the “Eden” of the Ray of Creation.

World 96

The thickening deepens. World 96 is the “formatory” world, as Gurdjieff calls it, where everything operates on autopilot, in cliches and thought-bites: stale, conditioned, habitual. There’s not even any real thinking that goes on here, as there is in World 48; it’s all recycled opinions and stereotypes. In Gurdjieffian terms, this is the world of personality, the world of “not-I”; of all that is artificially acquired and that obscures our real essence. It is monochrome, repetitive, and boring — uncreative, stony, and inanimate; the lowest world in which human consciousness can even barely hold its shape.

This world corresponds to re on the Ray of Creation, or regina caeli — the moon; pure geosphere, not yet able to support organic life; the youngest and most unstable element in the chain.

World 192

World 192 represents the hell realms. It is the world of the deeply disordered, anguished, and psychotic, the spawning ground of evil and the demonic, where consciousness has lost all spaciousness and congeals toward an unbearable density. The “bardo realms”— craving, wrath, pride, envy, and desire; obsession fixated to a deadly bullseye-turned-wormhole. Here self-reflective consciousness turns on itself like a rabid dog biting its master. This is the final outpost before consciousness collapses into outer darkness — or simply goes comatose. Cosmically, it is the collective pain body of humanity and of the planet itself.

This world does not correspond to any point on the Ray of Creation, but I envision it as the endpoint — the bottom do — at which the entire octave has run its course and simply implodes.

Bourgeault, EYE OF THE HEART

Composite Map of the Worlds

(Click on the image to enlarge)

This last phase in the Ray of Creation, the “endpoint” and “bottom do,” may be thought of as the “creative void” awaiting the movement of the Spirit of God and the creative Word, “Let there be light” – the dust of the earth to which all forms return – the end-phase where the “former things” pass away into oblivion, the elements that comprised the forms once again available to participate in further creation.

In THE TRIUNE RAY, Uranda writes:

Creation is eternal. It never ends. It never began. It is, and was, and will be, eternally. Thus is the law of eternal progress made possible. The eternal progress of the positive center, God, which includes the Divine Being within each individual, is not a progress of Inner Soul development, but ever a progress in further creative activity, i.e., continual creation. The eternal progress of the negative body of creation, which is form physically manifest, is the response to creative action which draws form into oneness with creative expression so that it is transmuted from responsive form into the active expression of the positive center.

As rapidly as that which is now the form of negative response is absorbed into the positive center through transformation — is changed into a new heaven and a new earth, so that “the former things are passed away”— it, being one in God expression, takes part in further creation.

The Christ radiance of God Being goes forth and creates, and that which is created is drawn to, and absorbed into, the Christ radiance so that it may take part in further creative action.

Radiation, response, attraction, union, unified expression, which is radiation — thus is the creative cycle completed.

[To the wayfarer:] Seeking the Light, thou shalt surely find it when thou shalt look within thyself and let that Light which is within thee flow freely through thee in every thought, word and deed. Thus shall thy whole being be dedicated to the radiation of the Triune Ray, which is the Light, Love and Life of the Christ expression from thy Father within thee.

THE HEAVENS DO INDEED DECLARE THE GLORY OF GOD

The glory of God must first be revealed and declared by Man restored before we set about creating a new and glorious world. And only by the Word of God spoken by Man can the Ray of Creation, the Triune Ray, manifest a world that declares the glory of God. Let it be by the Word of God spoken by Man restored.

With love in our hearts we can restore and rebuild our world. Just behold how love built and maintains the Universe of galaxies, suns, planets and their moons. Listen to the music of the spheres resounding in the heavens. You can hear it on a clear and quiet night under the canopy of stars far away from the city lights.

I welcome your thoughts, insights and inspirations. Share them in the comment feature, or send them by email. Until my next post,

Be love. Be loved.

Anthony

tpal70@gmail.com

Category:

Uncategorized

1 Comment

Gurdjieff’s Ray of Creation: A Cosmic Symphony

April 26, 2023

“In my Father’s house are many mansions.”

* * *

BEFORE getting into the main topic of this post, I would like to share a comment on my previous post by my poet friend, Don Hynes, along with his songful poem of blessing:

“This is a beautiful post. The historical scheme may be questioned but the vibration is perfect. In this air cycle of awakening our purpose is to accelerate human conscious-ness that it may rise with the ascending vibration of the Sun enveloping the Earth. Of course the specific consciousness is my own, the individual always, but also to befriend each other in this task, those seen and unseen, known and unknown, that all may rise in this new day. If you will allow, I’ll close with a few poetic words that might add to your masterwork:

“We are an old people,
the stories say among the first,
who walked the land
when fresh with the Creator’s touch.
Though scarred with years of trouble
we still sing the blessing songs,
greeting the Sun each day
with the thankfulness it deserves.
And so I sing for you this morning
a song of your belonging,
child of a distant Light
and ancient Mother,
may you walk in beauty
all your days, and if forgotten
may this song remind you.“

* * *

THANK YOU DON. We are indeed “an old people” . . . and we live on an old planet in an even older universe. How old nobody can really know, though scientific estimates have been made. What is time anyway? Everything happens in this eternal now. There is, however, great but simple method to the ongoing unfolding evolution of the universe as it moves forward through cycles of chaos-to-order and dissonance-to-consonance.

As George Gurdjieff reminds us in his Law of Seven (also called the Law of Octaves) — which I explored in my previous post — “nothing continues forever.” Creation unfolds within an energetic and musical continuum. Or as Russell Walter postulates, “Everything that is, is of everything else that is. Nothing is of itself alone. All created things are indissolubly united”. . . and sing together the “Music of the Spheres,” as George Gurdjieff demonstrates in his “Ray of Creation.” And there’s no one more articulate and comprehensive in unpacking Gurdjieff ‘s complex and profound vision of “worlds within worlds” than Episcopal prelate and author, Cynthia Bourgeault. So I will share excerpts from her book THE EYE OF THE HEART in bringing you Gurdjieff’s cosmogony in the context of her life’s journey in search and discovery of the “Imaginal Realm”. . . and its location and function within the Ray of Creation. This first excerpt if from chapter two “Worlds Within Worlds.”

The Ray of Creation

Gurdjieff actually makes use of two cosmic maps, and to situate the imaginal sphere of operations within his teaching, you have to overlay them.

The first, and probably more widely known of these (because of its close tie-in with the enneagram and the Law of Seven), is his Ray of Creation, which, as I have mentioned already, is the Gurdjieffian version of the Great Chain of Being. In most respects this follows the standard processionary model of traditional [religious] sophia perennis metaphysics, with progressively denser and colder kingdoms emerging out of that initial fiery explosion of the divine will-to-form that sets the whole thing in motion. The counter-entropic trajectory is not at first clearly visible.

What is immediately interesting about this map, however, is that the entire ray is located within the physical universe — although of course, the word physical here must be expanded to the widest and wildest reaches of our cosmological imagination. Gurdjieff’s “Megalocosmos,” the vast celestial canvas on which his map is drawn, stretches even beyond the fourteen billion years of our present “universe story,” reaching back into that implicitly endless matrix from which big bangs emerge like virtual particles. It is on the grandest possible cosmic scale that his vision plays out.

So too, the realms on this ray are not named by spiritual or theological names, as is typical of sophia perennis metaphysics. You will not find here logoic realms, angelic realms, heaven and hell realms — or for that matter, imaginal realms. Instead, you will find actual inter-planetary locations, named in an order that some of you may find strangely familiar: dominus (Holy Absolute), siderum (all galaxies), lactera (Milky Way, our galaxy), sol (our sun),fatum (fate, our own solar system or sphere of planetary influence), mixtus orbis (“mixed realm,” our planet earth), regina coeli (queen of the heavens, the
moon) — or do, si, la, sol, fa, mi, re, do. (bold emphasis added)

Wait a minute! Isn’t that our modern Western musical scale?

Indeed, it is. And this is where the second fascinating feature of the Ray of Creation comes in. According to Gurdjieff, our modern major scale actually preserves in the names of its notes and the arrangement of its intervals a vestigial memory of an ancient esoteric teaching about the “cosmic solfeggio,” not only in the way in which the created order originally came into existence but also in the way in which energy is continuously transmitted and replenished along the Ray of Creation. That knowledge is still there, hidden in plain sight in the musical scale, to be dug out by those so inclined; its articulation dovetails precisely with what in the Gurdjieff work is known as the Law of Seven, the Law of World Maintenance.

This is not the place to get sidetracked into a lengthy discussion of the Law of Seven. . . . But from the point of view of imaginal exchange, it does yield up one very interesting piece of data, again a stable feature of the Law of Seven. If you look at the schematic that follows, you notice those two lines cutting across the map, between do and si near the top and between fa and mi closer to the bottom. These correspond to the “hesitation” points on the ray — half steps on the musical scale — where a new infusion of energy, or a different kind of energy, must be introduced in order to keep the whole ray flowing on trajectory. Otherwise the whole thing will veer off track or be halted at a threshold it cannot cross. In Gurdjieffian terminologies, these are the “shock” points, the places where the entire progression is the most vulnerable but, equally, the most permeable.

GURDJIEFF’S RAY OF CREATION

In the case of the higher (do-si) shock point, that bridging energy is provided by the will of the Holy Absolute, still close enough to ground zero to easily span the descending gap. In the latter case, as we will see shortly, the shock point falls right between fa, the traditional endpoint of the so-called subtle realms, and mi, the beginning of those “dense material realms.” And this is exactly the place where traditional metaphysics and I locate the imaginal realm. In other words, the mi-fa shock point falls right in the middle of the imaginal intertidal zone. In and of itself, if you ponder it deeply, this realization will tell you most everything you need to know about the primary cosmic function of the imaginal realm and our specific human contribution to this sphere of operations. But since these ideas may be very new to some of you not previously familiar with Gurdjieffian metaphysics, rest assured that I will circle back in chapter 3 and unpack them much
more systematically.

I like this first map because it is real. Not only does it accord with a more contemporary understanding of the relationship between matter and energy, it also situates the whole unfolding here (admittedly a huge and vast “here”) rather than in some mirage-like “spiritual” realm that floats “above” our visible solar system like a huge celestial theme park. It calls us to order, to a path of transformation that does not lead us away from materiality but straight into it and through it. Particularly when we enter those two lowest realms, mi and re, we are talking about our actual earth and our actual moon, and we are discussing planetary evolution along lines strikingly parallel to Teilhard de Chardin’s. Nor will Gurdjieff let us off the hook here. For him, the major vehicle mediating that mi-fa shock is the biosphere — yes, organic life on earth! — and its ultimate recipient is the moon, not our eternal souls. And yes, our conscious attention and willing participation will certainly make a huge difference in how our contribution is mediated and in which realm it is received. But willingly or unwillingly the tribute is exacted, and it is paid in the coin of this realm, in flesh and blood. Our inner work exists within the Megalocosmos and for the sake of the Megalo-cosmos, not the other way around; it is important never to forget this.

MIXED REALM

Our own Earth realm has long been known on the cosmological maps as mixtus orbis, the “mixed realm.” While the full explanation for this designation is complex, something does seem to get mixed and mingled here. We humans are curiously bilingual; we speak the language of this world with all its charms and nuances, but we also strain toward that invisible other that seems to hover right beyond us in those dazzling glimpses and visions: that intuition of “another intensity,” in the words of T. S. Eliot, to which we know we also belong. That invisible but always interpenetrating other is the imaginal realm.”

The earlier metaphysical roadmaps, as mentioned, tended to draw a sharp dividing line between matter and spirit, with the result that the imaginal, hovering just on the horizon of our mixtus orbis, often appeared to be a world in itself, with no obvious commerce with our own. As the last outpost of the “spiritual” realms, how and why would it bridge the divide into the material realms? In the previous chapter I tried to recast this traditional metaphysical habit in terms of the more contemporary under-standing that there is in fact no such “divide” but rather a single continuum of energy manifesting in various degrees of subtlety or coarseness. Transposing the metaphysical map from its original Platonic milieu to this more Einsteinian one in fact takes us far beyond traditional esoteric understandings of the imaginal, which focused on the personal and elusive nature of this realm, into a new appreciation of its collective and evolutionary importance.

It was Gurdjieff who really got the ball rolling here by adding in the key puzzle piece (undetectable through the lens of traditional sophia perennis metaphysics), which he called “reciprocal feeding.” He proposed that along the entire Ray of Creation (his equivalent term for the Great Chain of Being), there is a continuous, active exchange proceeding in both directions — not only from higher realms to lower but also from lower to higher — in order to maintain the entire ray in a state of dynamic equilibrium according to a cosmic principle to which he gives the rather unwieldy name “Trogoautoegocrat.”

Mouthful though the term may be, the idea itself is a remarkably prescient attempt to view the entire created order as what we would nowadays call a “self-specifying system,” a whole greater than the sum of its parts, whose chief metaphysical feature is no longer involution — the gradual loss of energy as the lower end of the chain plunges steadily toward entropy — but rather an elaborate homeostasis that preserves (and even increases) the energy of the total system as each realm makes its required contri-bution to the whole.

Gurdjieff referred to this system as “reciprocal feeding” for good reason: the exchange he has in mind involves the actual transformation of cosmic substances based models—more like digestion than the simple information-sharing favored in contemporary consciousness . . . .

But the idea itself is fairly straightforward and so flagrantly timely for a planet careening toward ecological catastrophe that I believe it’s simply no longer conscionable to allow it to be held captive in a maze of Gurdjieffian Fourth Way esoterica. More to our immediate concern here, this broader vision of what amounts to a vast intergalactic bootstrapping is utterly essential if we hope to have some true feeling for what the imaginal realm is all about, beyond just some allusive bandwidth of inner guidance and bedazzling intensity. If exchange is indeed the principal business of this realm, we must picture this exchange from the outset as a two-way street. (All bold emphasis added)

WHERE IS ALL THIS LEADING?

That’s a very appropriate question to ask at this point in the series.  My destination, after laying the groundwork, is the creating ground of the “Imaginal Realm” and the “reciprocal feeding” that takes place in the “exchange between the realms.”  This is the realm where we’re destined to ascend in consciousness, where the two realms meet — and from whence we, as a “conscious circle of humanity,” co-create and recreate the “mixed realm” of the New Earth . . . and our moon, which is included in Gurdjieff’s Ray of Creation. Our fascination with going to the moon is significant at this time . . . but are we in position, mentally and spiritually, to take on the re-creation of our moon while our Home planet goes neglected and raped for her resources? I think not. We would treat Her Majesty no differently. But then, maybe not!

I do hope you enjoy flowing with Cynthia’s stream of consciousness as much as I do. I will share more in my next post, “Worlds Within Worlds.” As always, I welcome your thoughts, insights and inspirations. Until next time,

Be love. Be loved.

Anthony

tpal70@gmail.com.

Category:

7 Vibrations in Nature, Books on spirituality, Collective Mind, Conscious Evolution, Cosmic Consciousness, Creation, Current cosmic event, Cycles of Restoration, Cynthia Bourgeault, Divine Design, Divine Matrix, Giving and Receiving, Healing Tones Blog, Music of the Spheres, New Earth, Planet Earth, Solar System, The Imaginal Realm, Transformation, Visioning

1 Comment

Tagged with:

Love, the Activating Force on the New Frontier

April 21, 2023

Light Divine, the Great Creator of the Universe

“In all living nature (and maybe even in that which we regard as dead) love is a force inciting creative activity in the most varied directions.” —P.D. Ouspensky

“We are definitely on a ‘new’ frontier!”exclaims poet and author Don Hynes in response to my previous post “Visionary Activism.” And so we are. That frontier is the vibrational gateway to the “Whole Holy World,” as contemporary prophet and visionary Lloyd A. Meeker (Uranda) describes the Inner and Outer Realms of Universal Realty—which includes the inner heavenly realms of Creator Beings and the outer earthly realms of Creation, where lords and angels incarnate to exercise dominion and steward the Creative Process.

We are currently moving through the second quarter of the 12th Creative Day, an Air cycle, the second of the Four Creative Forces of Water, Air, Earth and Fire, and rising up to the next octave in the score of the Music of the Spheres, which is an Earth cycle (1 Day = 25,872 yrs). So, something is coming to bear in the planet itself of renewal and upgrading to a higher vibratory frequency, which includes the earth of our physical bodies as well. How harmoniously we transition with the Earth is largely dependent upon the degree to which a critical mass of Humanity is restored to true harmonization with the Cosmic Plan of Restoration in this Air cycle — air signifying spirit. Our harmonization with the Spirit of God is critical to our evolution to a higher vibratory frequency and subsequent ascension out of the darkness of the olden days and into the Light of the New Day dawning. (Click on the image below to enlarge)

CREATION BY THE WORD

The “Spirit of God”— the One Tone of Love — was all there was before the heaven and the earth were created, in that order, along with all else that followed. “And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters; and God said, Let there be light.” The Word, a Vibration, moved out into the formless “void” that would soon be filled with the earth and all of its vegetation and living creatures: the birds of the air and fish of sea and creeping, crawling critters . . . and Man, male and female, made in God’s image and likeness. And with that light of the Word of God, and the assistance of Man’s manifesting capacity of Consciousness, We manifested this Solar Entity as a dwelling place in the darkness of the deep of space, a Home among the stars of the Milky Way Galaxy for God and Man to dwell together as One, in peace and harmony.

The Vibration of the One Tone set into motion a vast multitude of overtone and undertones that composed the “Music of the Spheres” and the Matrix for Creation — “when the morning stars sang together, and all the sons of God shouted for joy.” We shout for joy once again as we hear and listen to the morning stars singing their celestial music together, joining our voices in the refrain: “Glory to God in the Highest and peace on earth to all people everywhere.”

This, my dear and faithful readers, is the New Frontier upon which we have embarked and are being required to embrace fully . . . new, that is, to us, and only by reason of its absence from our conscious awareness all these thousands of years (28,183 to be exact) . . . and we’ve only begun awakening to the vastness of our cosmic environment and context in the last 400 years since Galileo gave us the telescope. Now we can peer deeply out into the Universe of stars and galaxies, nebulae and black holes with powerful telescopes and roving satellites launched into outer space . . . even as the veil between the realms thins and opens a sacred space for beings in both heaven and earth to commune and communicate with one another. That space is the “Imaginal Realm” that Cynthia Boureault explores in The Eye of the Heart.

COMMUNICATION BETWEEN THE REALMS

Coming back to my poet friend Don Hynes and his comment on a post by Will Wilkinson on Visionary Activism, referencing his commentary on how he responded to a seemingly random thought about his deceased mother, Don wrote:

I’m interested in the origin of the “thought” of your mother. Could that “thought” be a “communication” with “higher” intelligence, that “voice” a direct link to a “guidance” within and without? Rather than a “random” thought, an intentional prod toward a depth of feeling contained in the synapses of memory? A “feeling” as you put it, that urges toward compassion. Perhaps we have partners in “activation” that we might access when we consciously open up the lines of communication and link our incarnate Self to Source. Might our minds be the access tool for this connection, our hearts be the instrument upon which “We” play, and this “activation” as you term it, be the next frontier in conscious evolution?

I am reminded of words I wrote in the foreword of SACRED ANATOMY three decades ago:

What if we sang songs of praise and thanksgiving to the Creator all day long in harmony with our fellow angels in the invisible Realms of Light, whom we could hear and see, and the “lost chord” would once again resound in heaven on earth?

What if we actually knew each other as angels and called each other by our tonal, angelic names and that we loved one another so much that we could do no harm but only blessing toward one another? What if we knew only oneness and isolation were not even possible?

I believe that we experienced these things at one time in a garden state and that we are destined to return to this state collectively. I believe that the kingdom of heaven is truly at hand, not only within us but all around us, and that we have the equipment in our sacred human anatomy and physiology to see it and enter into it to bring heaven into our experience on earth now. I believe that ascension is not only possible for us but is already in process and will shortly begin manifesting as a natural part of our life cycle here on earth. This I know: the Way of ascension is available to us now.

That technology originates from a level or three above the earthly level of our anatomy and physiology. Let me introduce you to the vast scope of this new frontier as mapped out by George Gurdjieff in what he called “The Law of Three” and “The Law of Seven.”

“The “Law of Seven” is described by Gurdjieff as the first fundamental cosmic law. This law is used to explain process. The basic principle of the law of seven explains why nothing in nature and in life constantly occurs in a straight line, that is to say that there are always ups and downs in life which occur lawfully.”

LAW OF SEVEN

Everything in the universe is created and sustained by vibrations — energy enlivening matter produces vibrations. Thoughts and feelings are vibrations, the wind rustling in the leaves is vibration, light reaching us from the sun and the stars is vibration. The whole of our life is vibration, everything that we perceive through our senses and everything we think feel and do.

Music is vibration – the emotional vibrations of a violinist’s inspiration, transmitted through the bow that enlivens the strings to vibrate and move an audience to tears, all this is vibration at every step. Understanding vibration is one way to grasp the essential unity that gives meaning to life.

The Law of Three determines the character and nature of a vibration and the Law of Seven determines how vibrations develop, interact and change. An octave is a repetitive motion. A succession of waves may be building up or dying away — forming an ascending or a descending octave. Each wave is similar but different to the one before and the one after.

The Law of Seven also shows the points in the scale [Do-Re-Mi-Fa-Sol-La-Si-Do] where the rate of increase or decrease of frequency of any vibration slows down. Between Mi-Fa and Si-Do are ‘intervals,’ where a different, extra energy is required to maintain the original impetus. These ‘intervals’ are responsible for the frequent unpredictability of human aims and endeavours.

Different processes, according to the Law of Three, determine which intervals will be filled naturally, so that the progress continues uninterrupted to completion, and also reveal those that require an extra force to be given, without which the progress of the octave will halt or change direction.

We are most conscious of our failures when dealing with new situations, where often ‘things don’t work out’. But lots of things in human society do work out, at least usually. Houses, ships, cars get built; food gets produced and marketed; money gets earned and spent; laws get passed; babies get born. Many other things, new plans and initiatives, just peter out and fade away from lack of the right energy or turn into something quite different from the original conception. Understanding the law of seven is the key to learning how to finish what we start and what to expect along the way.

Depending on whether the octave is ascending or descending and knowing the time scale that applies to any particular example, the intervals can be expected and seen quite clearly. Waiting to cross a busy road it may seem that the stream of traffic will never ease up. Knowing that an ‘interval’ will always occur can avoid much impatience or even a nasty accident.

An ascending octave is like going uphill; it needs effort at every step. Descending octaves are like going downhill; the process is more automatic and goes on by itself after the first step is taken . . . .

The physical world is interpenetrated by the subtle world and the subtle world by the causal world as inner octaves of vibration. . . .

Ouspensky Today (https://www.ouspenskytoday.org/wp/about-teaching-today/the-law-of-seven/)

If you get the impression that the new frontier has something to do with music, then you’re spot on. It is about music — the “Musica Universalis” or Music of the Spheres — inaudible but deeply impactful to our lives on planet Earth . . . as well as to our audible music, as we shall see. “This celestial music is everywhere and nowhere; it is the music of movement between the planets, the members of our solar system”. . . and between suns, solar systems and all heavenly bodies, and between partners in activation on this new frontier. It’s the music of love.

“LOVE NEVER FAILETH”

Man has been mostly in a descending octave ever since his first step out of the Garden. Failure has been too prevalent in past cycles of restoration all down through the ages, symptomatic of a lack of love of God and of neighbor in the lives of human beings. Love never fails, as Paul wrote in his epistle to the Corinthians:

Love suffereth long, and is kind; love envieth not; love vaunteth not itself, is not puffed up, Doth not behave itself unseemly, seeketh not her own, is not easily provoked, thinketh no evil; Rejoiceth not in iniquity, but rejoiceth in the truth; Beareth all things, believeth all things, hopeth all things, endureth all things. Love never faileth.

The ascending cycle we are currently experiencing, initiated by the Lord of Love himself two-thousand years ago, shall not fail. As stewards of the ongoing cycles of evolution and restoration, much of our work lies in providing the impetus through our “Love casting” — upward as a tithe to the One and outward in blessing to our world — that will move the ascending process forward and upward across the Si/Do bridge interval and on up to the next octave. This takes a certain amount of conscious effort to act deliberately.

Creative vibrations, emanating in the Tone of the Word, ascend and descend along the path of the scale of musical tones moving energy — all of which provides us with a segue to the next level of consideration: Gurdjieff’s “Ray of Creation.” For this I will bring in Cynthia Bourgeault as a guide through “worlds within worlds.” I welcome your thoughts and insights. Until my next post,

Be love. Be loved.

Anthony

tpal70@gmail.com

Category:

Activism, Music of the Spheres, Visioning

2 Comments

“Visionary Activism”

April 10, 2023

Horsehead Nebula

“Where there is no vision, the people perish.“

I TRAFFIC WITH VISIONARIES — and there seem to be many in these historic days of awakening who are serving up a banquet of food for serious thought, much of it conveying nourishing energy for ascension of consciousness out of the dark and depressing mode of modern-day madness and fear-driven despair that’s imprisoning the spirits of human beings the world over and into the light of a New Day dawning.

One of these visionaries is my longtime friend and colleague energy healer and lightworker Will T. Wilkinson, currently living in Hawaii, author of NOW OR NEVER — A time-traveler’s guide to personal and global transformation; and co-author with Master Charles Cannon of AWAKENING from the AMERICAN DREAM: From Crisis to Consciousness. Andrew Harvey, author of The Hope: A Guide to Sacred Activism, writes in the foreword of Will’s book, “Now or Never reveals how to balance authentic mystical experience with radical, urgent, wise action in the world.” This is the theme I wish to explore in this blog series.

In a recent posting, Will offers insight into the controversial and problematic technology of Artificial Intelligence (A.I.). I encourage you to read his previous post of April 2nd The Activation Intervention for an introduction to this one.

A.I. vs N.I — We are visionary activists and it’s now or never time on planet earth. (April 9, 2023)

Many of you who watched the video I linked last week on Artificial Intelligence (A.I.) have reported in. “Wow. OMG. I didn’t know. We’re screwed. What’s going to happen? Etc.” Here’s the link again for those who’d like to catch up. And, the audio for listeners. Big thanks to my contributors, so grateful my writing has value to you. Spread the word!

The key takeaways for me from the video are:

  1. The creators of A.I. don’t understand how it really works, especially how it learns and programs itself.)
  2. Safety protocols are not in place so we can’t know what A.I. might do as it continues to exponentially x exponentially increase its intelligence.
  3. There’s no way to know for sure if the answers that A.I. gives us are just information gathered from available data or developed by A.I. according to what it determines that we want to know. In this latter case, that would indicate conscious manipulation.
  4. “Who might be in there?” is a question some A.I. engineers are asking, raising the wild possibility of a resident intelligence pre-existing in the technology, in which case we are discovering rather than inventing. The Big Question then changes from “When might A.I. become sentient?” to “When do we realize that A.I. is sentient?” What a thought.

Meanwhile, life.

What’s to be done about something we can’t do anything about, something that can very easily take over control of every system in civilization everywhere on earth in the same instant? Well, for starters, how about replacing that question with a vision? As one of my mentors loved to say in moments like this: “The truth is true and all is well, unconquerable life prevails.” A.I. stands for Artificial Intelligence, which is what it is. The reality that predates A.I. is, of course, life, which we might call Natural Intelligence or N.I. And guess which one is and will always be superior?

Think nature. Think your beating heart, the regulated procession of sun and moon and planets and stars, choreographed perfectly in every moment by something I call N.I. If we’re witnessing a competition or even an impending war, A.I. doesn’t stand a chance. Because it’s not plugged in to source.

But, the grim reality is that we, the human race, could end up as collateral damage. I believe with all my heart that what determines that is just how plugged in we are? And how many of us are transmitting Life / Love in every moment of our lives. This can’t be a new age concept anymore… it needs to become our urgent priority, making every minute count.

I received a stellar comment from an old friend that opens a magical doorway of understanding for us relative to just who “we” might be. Don wrote in response to last week’s essay on visionary activism, raising an intriguing possibility. It’s highly relevant as we consider how focusing our energy can meet the threats of the moment. Referencing my commentary on how I responded to a seemingly random thought about my deceased mother, Don wrote:

I’m interested in the origin of the “thought” of your mother. Could that “thought” be a “communication” with “higher” intelligence, that “voice” a direct link to a “guidance” within and without? Rather than a “random” thought, an intentional prod toward a depth of feeling contained in the synapses of memory? A “feeling” as you put it, that urges toward compassion. Perhaps we have partners in “activation” that we might access when we consciously open up the lines of communication and link our incarnate Self to Source. Might our minds be the access tool for this connection, our hearts be the instrument upon which “We” play, and this “activation” as you term it, be the next frontier in conscious evolution?

I zoomed this morning with a dear friend who just “lost” her partner. He was one of my best friends and we’ll celebrate his life in a ceremony next month. She told me that he visited her, about three weeks after his death. He communicated in the strongest terms that he was more present than he has ever been, that he’s just been absorbed back into the trees, the sea, the birdsong, and the wind. I feel that, I feel him with me. So, our wonderful opportunity at his celebration is not to let him go but to let him be, and to welcome him to be with us as he chooses.

Does this apply to everyone all the time? What if that line between life and death is not as absolute as we’ve believed? Yes, the body is de-activated. But is that the end for the person? Do they live on in another dimension and could they continue interacting with us? Many would say “Yes!” based on dramatic personal experience, including me. I would also add that we’re all visiting each other all the time, whether we’re still in our bodies or not. Can we share love in those moments? Is this our contribution, an amplification of N.I., broadcasting to sustain stability in our world?

Perhaps this is our real community, a tribal assembly in consciousness that is constantly dancing together around the campfire of the moment.

The blessings and threats of A.I. are real. We can’t know how it will develop, for our benefit or our destruction. But we are not powerless. We are visionary activists and it’s now or never, here on this planet we call home.

INTELLIGENCE AND CONSCIOUSNESS

Chris Waldberger, South African writer, teacher and student of literature and philosophy, weighs in on the “illusion” of AI:

But contra the sentiments expressed by Musk et al, even in a hipster publication, I managed to express an opinion that because consciousness is immaterial, some kind of humanoid computer can never be built. This would be true even if an ‘organic’ machine mimicking a brain were to be possible. And obviously a mechanical, metal machine could not even get close. I referred to atheist philosopher of mind Thomas Nagel in this regard, who had famously abandoned materialist Darwinism as he concluded the mind was not reducible to the brain and was thus not a product of blind and random mutations.

Much of this illusion of AI comes to us from the fallacious ‘mind body’ problem, begun by Descartes. But the truth is there is simply no reason to imagine your body as a kind of machine with a ghost pilot lodged within. ‘We’ do not live in a fleshly cabinet. We are beings in the world and our souls are, as per Aristotle, the forms of our bodies. This is why Christianity has always taught the necessary resurrection of the body if we are to live eternally.

Additionally, we know now that our guts are a kind of second brain, and that nerves will register electrical activity before the brain apparently sends a signal.

This all means that to build a human mind, you first need to build a human being. Therefore you cannot build a mind, because you cannot build a human being.

INTELLIGENCE or COMPUTATION?

This begs the question “What is intelligence?” Webster’s second definition is “Superior mental powers.” It’s an intangible capacity of Mind to process thoughts; a function not an entity or “thing” that can be made. It’s a verb not a noun. There is only one Mind shared by all living beings, including human beings, as all things are One. “There are no two things,” to borrow a phrase from the writings of Walter Russell.

One of the tenants of Chiropractic Philosophy differentiates between “Universal Intelligence” and “Innate Intelligence,” the first being Divine Intelligence governing Creation throughout the Universe, and the latter being that aspect of Universal Intelligence with which we are born that governs the many functions of our physical bodies. Both need a means for manifesting creation and governance. Consciousness is that vibrational plasma by means of which Divine Intelligence transmits creative design and control into the various realms of manifestation. Another name for this vibrational substance is pheumaplasm, or spirit substance.

Another word for consciousness is heaven. There is a heaven, a layer of consciousness, for every level and realm of Creation. The substance of consciousness is vibrational or spiritual in nature, created by Universal Intelligence. Another name for Universal Intelligence is God, who is Spirit, life itself. Since man cannot create life, nor give life to forms, man certainly cannot create Intelligence. Man can only generate electrical current to move in and throughout forms, such as computers. But electricity is not life, no matter how well it mimics life. It’s artificial; humanly contrived. Its ability to be so directed in gathering information (data) from memory storage in silicon chips and then to create computations and narratives is not intelligence. It’s pure and simple electrically controlled and directed computation.

“THE CONSCIOUS CIRCLE OF HUMANITY”

I do resonate with Will’s perspective with regard to artificial intelligence compared to natural intelligence. There simply is no basis for comparison. A.I. cannot exist without N.I. in the human beings who developed it. Will’s vision of “real community” is worth exploring further.

Switching gears a bit to bring into this consideration one of my favorite authors and visionary herself, Cynthia Bourgeault: this excerpt from chapter eight of her beautiful and insightful book EYE OF THE HEART: A Spiritual Journey into the Imaginal Realm, sets the tone for this series.

“There’s an old piece of Hasidic folklore that claims that our world at any point in time is held in its planetary orbit by thirty-six conscious human beings. They don’t know each other, and they don’t even know if they’re among the thirty-six. But the quality of their work, rising like incense into the earth’s atmosphere, creates around our fragile planet a sturdy bandwidth of protection, blessing, and guidance.” 

This comprises the gist of George Gurdjieff’s notion of what he called a “conscious circle of humanity.” Cynthia elucidates Gurdjieff’s notion:

Essentially, the conscious circle is an intense zone of imaginal interchange in which advanced beings on both sides of the form/formless divide—i.e., some still in their physical bodies, others no longer so—join hands across the realms for a mutual exchange of wisdom, tempering, blessing, protection, and occasional course correction.

I will explore this “imaginal interchange” further in this series with Cynthia Bourgeault’s insightful vision and guidance. So, if this topic interests you, stay tuned. Until my next post,

Be love.  Be loved

Anthony

tpal70@gmail.com

Category:

A.I., Activism, Artificial Intelligence, Cynthia Bourgeault, Dr. Palombo's blog, Healing Tones Blog, Real Community, Visioning

3 Comments

Tagged with:

Rise and Shine

April 9, 2023

Rise up, my love, my fair one, and come away. For, lo, the winter is past, the rain is over and gone; the flowers appear on the earth; the time of the singing of birds is come, and the voice of the turtle is heard in our land. —Song of Solomon

On this Easter morning I invite you to share Uranda’s Easter message:

I Have Finished the Work

I Come To Thee

Uranda, April 8, 1950

It is a joy unspeakable and full of glory to see you, according to your responses and according to the degrees of your letting go, coming under the Law of the Kingdom, that I may receive you Home in the Kingdom in the Name of my LORD. That self which has been crucified in you and which has been placed in the tomb shall surely, according to the faithfulness of your Polarity, come forth in the Resurrection and the Life, not the old self that it was, for the former things are passing away, and in the Name of my LORD and KING all things are being made new.

You are not now what you were, nor are you yet that which you shall be, for entering into the Kingdom you shall move from Glory unto Glory in the outworking of the cycles of Being which are ordained by the Creator; and you begin to know that the Creator is not far away but is at hand in the Kingdom that is at hand, and you are privileged to share in the wonder of His Creative Work whereby all things are made new. . . .

You can read the rest of Uranda’s Easter message in full by clicking on the link below.

 May your Easter morning and day be filled with joy and uplifting gratitude for the New Day. Until my next post,

Be love . . . be loved

Anthony

tpal70@gmail.com

Credits: Great Cosmic Story, David Barnes editor: HTTPS://GREATCOSMICSTORY.BLOGSPOT.COM/2023/04/I-HAVE-FINISHED-WORK.HTML 

Uranda’s Easter morning service: EASTER DAY IN THE KINGDOM OF THE PRINCE OF PEACE https://greatcosmicstory.blogspot.com/2023/04/easter-day-in-kingdom-of-prince-of-peace.html

Category:

Easter, Healing Tones Blog, Kingdom of Heaven, Resurrection, Uranda

1 Comment

Tagged with:

What Really Happened in Gethsemane Garden?

April 7, 2023

No Power On Earth Could have Touched Him

The Final Victory

“He who had moved among men before

and disappeared at will prior to that time—

do you not think that, if His disciples had been holding steady,

He could have disappeared in any moment He had chosen?”

—Uranda, January 27, 1952

URANDA: On this beautiful day, which gives promise of a springtime not too far away, let us meditate for a moment upon some of the principles that our Master revealed in relationship to this phase of our own progress along the way. The Master said, “I have finished the work which thou gavest me to do,” and that work which the Father gave was finished before that experience that was made necessary to our LORD by human imposition in the trial and the crucifixion. The work the Father gave Him to do was completed before that trial and before the crucifixion, for we have the Word from His own lips: “I have finished the work which thou gavest me to do.” Why, then, was it necessary for Him to experience the mockery, the indignities of that trial, and the sufferings of the crucifixion? It was because man imposed those things upon our LORD. They were imposed by man’s rejection of the divine pattern. 

The ill things that nullify the expression of the beautiful pattern of God’s design on earth are never God’s will. They are imposed by man’s rejection of that which God offers. The shame and the suffering, the indignities, are never the result of the divine pattern or of God’s will. They are the result of man’s denial and betrayal of his responsibilities, and they are imposed by that which man himself does. Very often those who consider themselves Christians, or who long to move along the spiritual path, are inclined to think: “If I had lived, if I had only had the privilege of living at that time when our Master Himself walked on earth, I would not have been among those who were scattered so quickly from that vast throng who were shouting, ‘Hosanna to the king.’ I would not have been like Peter, denying, or like Judas, betraying, nor like the others who followed afar off, for I would have appreciated my privilege and opportunity. And, cost what it might, I would have been among those who stood at the foot of the cross.” So many have felt that way—perhaps they would not express it in so many words. 

Yet today, in this hour and in all the hours to come, we have the same privilege of remaining true, the same privilege of standing at the foot of the cross, the same privilege of proving the reality of our love and our trust. The passage of the centuries has not denied us any privilege that we might have had then, with the one exception of seeing the physical form through which our LORD was manifest. And He said of those who lived then, that for their sakes it was expedient that He should go away; and if it was expedient for them, there is nothing taken from us, because we do not have the privilege, as our minds might think of it, of seeing Him in physical form. It is expedient for us that He so arranged the divine pattern. 

So, let us examine something of what happened and see if we can gain a deeper conviction of that which is necessary to ourselves, that we may come to a recognition that it is not what we feel out of the subconscious heart or mind, it is not what we feel externally, that is properly the directing force in our lives. It is what we see and recognize and realize with the conscious mind to be the truth of the matter, for the mind which is allowing the spirit of God to work in it is stronger than any feeling that can come surging up from the subconscious. It is stronger than any idea that may be buried somewhere in the subterranean phases of the mind. It is stronger than any current of feeling that may be imposed from the outside. 

What you feel is beside the point. As long as the conscious mind continues to yield to the impulses that come from a distorted subconscious mind or heart, as long as it yields to the currents of feeling or action from without, it is saying, “I am not a guardian angel. I am not fortified by the spirit of God. I am a weak thing and I must of needs acknowledge the extent of my weakness and say that God cannot serve me because I am subject to all of these ill things.” He who says that betrays our LORD, as surely as Judas betrayed Him. He denies, as surely as Peter did, and he is not even following afar off. He is scattered into the darkness, hiding in the alleyways, lest someone see and say, “Are you not one of those who followed Him?” 

Let us see what happened at the time of our Master. He had finished the work that God gave Him to do, but certain things were imposed upon Him. In either case, He was going away, as far as His physical form was concerned. But do you think He could cause His body to be changed more easily after all this humiliating experience than otherwise? He could have ascended without the suffering, the crucifixion and those days in the tomb. Man imposed that upon Him and made it necessary. Sometimes people ask a question and say, “But did not the prophets say He would have to die? Does not the Bible say there could be no salvation except as His blood was shed, etc.?” I grant you that after this experience was all over, certain ones developed some ideas with respect to it. And in the pattern of prophecy in the Old Testament you will find those things which recognized not only the possibility but the probability of the manner in which man would function. But because it worked out the way it did, the human interpretation has been on the basis of one idea only; and there has been a complete failure to recognize the fact that an alternate path, the ideal path, was foretold just as surely, as definitely, if man would have allowed it to have meaning. 

That which was of God’s design was revealed by the prophets much more abundantly than those comparatively obscure texts that recognized the probability of what man would do. Because man did fail, the texts that relate to that possibility are picked out and held up as what was prophesied. And it is not so at all, because God’s provision of the pathway did not require that Jesus should die. It was human beings that condemned our LORD to the indignities of the trial, so-called, and to the sufferings of the cross. God did not require it. From God’s standpoint, it was not necessary, and I can take the book cover to cover and show you how the pattern was revealed there. Let us examine it. 

The idea of the shedding of the blood, from the standpoint of the spear in the side and the nails in His hands and feet, is supposed to have had some particularly efficacious result—that God, being a hardhearted something-or-other, would not accept the salvation of a single man, woman, or child unless His own Son should physically bleed. Anyone who stops to consider that which is revealed of God in the Bible will recognize that that is so completely out of character that there is no reasonable excuse for any person believing it. It is completely out of character. The blood is the symbol of life. He had shed His blood, in the true sense, before He ever reached the agonies of Gethsemane or the sufferings of the cross. He had shed His life upon the earth. He had shed the currents of His life in the revelation of Deity. He had revealed the principles of life. He had given His life to the revelation of the things of God, and He Himself said before any of these things took place, “I have finished the work which thou gavest me to do.” There was a recognition that certain things were yet to be faced because of what man had imposed upon Him, but it was not the divine plan or purpose or necessary from the standpoint of God, as if He were a bloodthirsty being who demanded that blood be shed. No. That is not the character of God. It was not the plan or purpose of God. And the only reason why our Master accepted that outworking was because man imposed it upon Him. 

Who imposed it upon Him particularly? Who among men? Herod or Pilate or the power of the Caesars? Oh, no. Who imposed it upon Him? His disciples were the ones who imposed that upon Him. It is true. They simply accepted the focalization of the world in the hour of stress, rather than remaining true to their focalization in Him. But consider if the hour of crisis had come and all twelve of the disciples had remained steady. There are those who say Judas, poor creature, was predestined to do it; someone had to do it in order for God’s plan to be fulfilled. Someone on earth had to be a traitor and betray our LORD! Oh, no. God is out of character the moment anyone begins to conceive such an idea. God never predestined anyone to be a traitor or to betray the things of God, let alone the Son of God! Judas did not have to betray Him. It was not necessary; it was not a part of the divine plan. It was a part of human failure. 

Consider. If it had worked out according to that which God had made available to them, if according to God’s true plan there had been a following through—of course the Master knew, particularly toward the last, that they were not going to hold when the crisis came; but, even so—suppose Judas had not betrayed Him, suppose Peter had not been of that type who would deny Him, suppose twelve men had stood faithful and true to their LORD on earth—twelve men, not one wavering, not one breaking in the face of the crisis—then His Body on earth, the body of these twelve men who were supposed to be the key men of the Christ Body which should fill the earth, holding steady, would have allowed Him to carry out God’s plan. Not from the standpoint of continued work on earth in the sense of His doing it, but His doing it through the members of His Body—the very principles He had outlined to them such a few hours before, the principles and Laws that He had expounded to them over and over again through the three and a half years of His ministry with them. But if that Body, the focalization of the Body in twelve men, would have held the pattern, hundreds and thousands who had received blessings at His hand, who had cried “Hosanna to our king,” would have stood if the twelve disciples had stood. And there would have been a Body on earth. 

He who had moved among men before and disappeared at will prior to that time—do you not think that, if His disciples had been holding steady, He could have disappeared in any moment He had chosen? Could humanity have heaped the indignities of the cross or mockery of the trial upon Him? No. Why did He accept that imposition? The Body that He had been building through the years of ministry died, scattered first—the scattering of the disciples. When they broke, when they slept in Gethsemane instead of watching with Him one little hour, when they slept, when He came to face the final pattern, of course the LORD would not have suffered as He did—even in Gethsemane—had this pattern been holding properly. Because already Judas had gone out to betray, His body had started to decay and die, the body of His disciples. That body of the disciples was scattered, brought to the point of death before His physical body as a man was brought to the point of the crucifixion.

If that body of twelve disciples had remained steady and true, no power on earth could have touched Him, because then the victory would have been assured without His going through what He did. The same truths would have been revealed in the outworking of the cycles of time, but there would have been a Body established—twelve key points, with others rallying around vibrationally. And if they had sought to touch Him, whether He would have used spiritual power to prevent it or whether He would have disappeared is beside the point. That would have been for Him to choose and it is not for me to speculate upon, but they could not have touched Him. That we know. If the body He had built, or undertaken to build—the Body of many members—had held true, His physical body would not have had to be on the cross. But on the cross of spiritual creative activity, the crossing between heaven and earth, there would have been a revelation of divine power that would have carried through effectively and saved man centuries of suffering, sorrow, misery and death. The Body would have been complete and this world would have been restored already. 

It is not until after this plan had failed to carry through that we have the prophetic portrayal, for instance in Revelation, of that which should yet be done. Because in Isaiah, and many other places, there is mention made: “Behold, I create new heavens and a new earth: and the former things shall not be remembered, nor come into mind.” That is part of the prophecy of what was divinely ordained for the time when Jesus Christ should come on earth, that which could have been, but man prevented it. Man spoiled the pattern of God, so there was a divine reorganization and a re-projection of the same goal under a new pattern. Not all was lost, it is true. Our Master had finished the work. He had revealed Deity, established the truth on earth, set the pattern. And somewhere there would be those who would follow through, those who would not be so quick to betray for thirty pieces of silver or their own human desires. 

I wonder how many of you know why Judas betrayed, what the working of his mind was. . . .

Click on this link for the rest of the story.

Credits: Great Cosmic Story blog, David Barnes, Author

I welcome your thoughts and responses to this service by Uranda above. Until my next post,

Happy Easter

Anthony

tpal70gmail.com

Category:

Crucifixion of Jesus, Eastet, Gethsemane, Good Friday, Holy Week, Jesus's Agony, Judas, Resurrection, Uranda

3 Comments

Tagged with:

Tag Cloud