Creating the New Earth Together

“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.

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

“Visionary Activism”

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

Rise and Shine

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

No Power On Earth Could have Touched Him

The Final Victory

Credits: Great Cosmic Story blog, David Barnes, Author

Until my next post,

Be love. Be loved.

Anthony

tpal70gmail.com

At The Crossover

Christ the Redeemer at Rio de Janeiro

“I am come that they may have life and have it more abundantly . . . that my joy might remain in you, and that your joy might be full.— Gospel of John

VICTORY OVER DEATH

While attending a memorial service for a departed friend recently, I sat down in one of the pews waiting for the service to begin. When I looked up toward the closed casket, my eyes were met by a large crucifix on the wall behind it with the graven image of the crucified Jesus. I felt a sudden pall of sadness; not for our departed friend and his family, but for our Lord and King whose crucifixion is still being celebrated by Christians two-thousand-plus years after his victory over death and his glorious resurrection.

I long for the day when Christians take down the crucifixes in their churches and elsewhere — ideally, do away with “Good Friday” altogether and only celebrate Jesus’s victory over death and His Resurrection from the tomb. It’s not that He didn’t make the best use of what was imposed upon Him by the world. He did ask His Heavenly Father to take that cup from Him in the Garden of Gethsemane, yet He yielded to His Father’s Will. He knew well what was ahead and yet embraced it fully and used it for a higher purpose: a victory over death and the opening of a portal to eternal life for all of mankind.

His victory is what I celebrate during Holy Week . . . and I invite all of my Christian readers and friends to celebrate with me. Let the joy that was His be fulfilled in our hearts and souls this day.

THE CRUCIFIX AS A CROSSOVER SYMBOL

The crucifix can be seen as a crossover symbol, with its vertical and horizontal aspects joining and crossing at the point of the Golden Mean, the Divine Proportion (1.618) — the vertical representing Heaven and the horizontal representing Earth. The Spirit of God descends from Heaven and touches the Earth. Angels descend from the Realms of Light and incarnate in earthen forms in order to extend that Spirit below the horizontal into the world; to serve the Creator on Earth and bring Heaven here. By extending your arms, like the statue of Christ the Redeemer in Rio de Janeiro demonstrates, you assume the posture of a cross, signifying that your body temple provides a crossover point between the invisible and visible realms — between Heaven and Earth.

This is the true meaning and significance of the Cross of Jesus. He came to Earth not to die but to demonstrate for us how to live in union with His Father and bring the experience of Heaven on Earth into our lives. Sadly, the world rejected Him and redacted His teachings to align with the traditional religious concepts held sacred in the human mind . . . then crucified His body on the cross at Golgotha, the “place of the skull.”

We are a death-oriented people. We worship death as a necessary evil; a way of escape from pain and hardship, as well as the way to enter Heaven. Truth is, HERE on earth is where the ultimate experience of life take place. Angels in the realms of Light long to have the experience of living on this beautiful planet where Mother God, the Queen of Heaven, creates a Paradise of Edenic beauty and bounty on Earth — Her Queendom. Where delicious fruits and crisp vegetation can be tasted and lifted up in flesh temples as loving tithes to Her Lord and King.

THE “PLACE OF THE SKULL”

It is said that Martin Luther threw an inkwell at the devil upon awakening one night, and that he was plagued by many demons. My mentor used to cite this incident and then would suggest that he must have smashed the inkwell against his own skull, making and bringing home the point that our demons are in our own heads and projected out there; that the crucifixion of the Christ Spirit is taking place in the skull of human beings where the self-active mind of man shuts out the Kingdom of God from being experienced, by the priesthood and by the faithful. Christians pray unceasingly “Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven” but they do not allow it to be done. They have their own wills to exercise and fulfill in their lives, individually and collectively.

Am I being too harsh or irreverent? I don’t think so. After all I include myself among those who once recited the Lord’s Prayer daily in seminary while studying to become a Catholic priest. I, too, believed that Jesus died for my sins and that we had to die in order to go to Heaven. How well I recall the many times I knelt at the foot of a large crucifix in the seminary chapel gazing up into the eyes of the image on the cross depicting the brutal crucifixion of Jesus and feeling a deep sadness while trying to get in touch with the anguish and pain He must have felt, abandoned by His world He came to save, with hands and feet nailed to a wooden cross. As I recall those formative days of that fourteen-year-old young man’s life — responding to a calling, a “vocation,” to serve the Lord as His priest — words come to mind the Master spoke to the weeping women of Jerusalem as he carried His cross up the “Via Dolorosa” in the “Holy City” of Jerusalem on the way to Golgotha:

“Daughters of Jerusalem, weep not for me, but weep for yourselves, and for your children. For, behold, the days are coming, in the which they shall say, Blessed are the barren, and the wombs that never bare, and the paps which never gave suck.

There’s so much prophecy encoded in that response to the weeping women. Those days have come for millions in war-torn countries such as Ukraine, and where earthquakes and torrential floods have displaced millions from their homes and devastated villages leaving mothers nothing to bring their children home to and raise a family; husbands and fathers gone off to fight their country’s battles and defend their homelands from enemy invaders; too many never to return home, dead or alive.

I feel in my gut that those days have arrived for the entire world and they will be apocalyptic for the human race and for all life on Earth — unless we turn away from our self-centered destructive ways and return to our LORD and KING of Heaven and Earth. This is His world, after all, as are we His body.

A passage from the Book of Malachi (3:7) in the Old Testament wants to be brought forward here:

“Ever since the time of your ancestors you have turned away from my decrees and have not kept them. Return to me, and I will return to you,” says the Lord Almighty.”

OUR CATACLYSMIC PAST

There have been six documented mass extinctions, the last one being at the end of the last ice age 12,800 years ago with the Younger Dryas meteor impact that melted the ice cap and caused an apocalyptic deluge that washed away entire advanced civilizations in North America and in parts of Europe and Asia, raising sea levels and sinking the great civilization on the island of Atlantis. Evidence of this massive rush of waters over land can be seen here in the scablands of Washington State and the region around the Great Lakes and the lakes themselves. We may well be headed for a seventh mass extinction.

I highly recommend Graham Hancock’s “Ancient Apocalypse” now streaming on Netflix. It’s a well documented series on our cataclysmic past, a topic well worth visiting at this time — as it seems humanity needs a sobering splash of cold water in the face in order to wake up to reality.

It could well happen again as conditions in the heavens are similar in the Winter Solstice of today as they were in the Summer Solstice 12,800 years ago when Earth wandered into the thick debris tail of the Taurid comet and got showered by a raining mass of meteors. The Zodiacal science of Mazzaroth is an exact science, and our absence from the crossover point of dominion over the whole earth has allowed our planet to be knocked off of its appointed orbit and start wobbling on its axis. Like the Children of Israel, we are wandering in the wilderness of the cosmos into dangerous areas where cataclysms have happened in times past. The Taurid comet observes a 26,000-year cycle, according to Graham Handcock’s documentary. That’s approximately the length of two precession cycles of the earth’s axis around the 12 Zodiac constellations, each cycle being 12,700 – 12,800 years.

I don’t mean to be a prophet of doom and gloom here. But, based on our cataclysmic past, we earthlings would do well to take heed — or as my parents would say “You better straighten up and fly right!”

I will close with those uplifting words from Psalm 24 immortalized in Handle’s Messiah:

“Lift up your heads, O ye gates; even lift them up, ye everlasting doors; and the King of glory shall come in. Who is this King of glory? The Lord of hosts, he is the King of glory. Selah.”

Happy Easter

Anthony

To my blog followers: Edits and error corrections that have been made to my post will not be made in your email notification. It’s always best to click on the post title and read from the blog itself rather than from your email. Here’s a link to the edited post: https://healingtones.org/2023/03/26/this-is-the-day/

Thank you.

“This is the day which the Lord hath made. Let us rejoice and be glad in it.”

* * *

Dedicated to the Restoration of Man

In Honor Of The LORD of the Sacred Seven Spirits and His Lady

“The LORD of Lords and KING of Kings is the absolute focalization of the Whole Holy World. Everything that has any proper place in that whole range is polarized in Him. All that is properly contained within the seven planes of being is focalized in Him. Every recognition of that which is lovely, beautiful, true, honest, pure, holy, sacred, is in its essence, when recognized in love response to Him, actually a recognition of Him. We are all members of His heavenly body that fills the Whole Holy World.”  — Uranda

* * *

THE STORY OF MAN’S SOJOURN ON EARTH — OUR sojourn as the Body of Humanity — is recorded in the sacred scriptures of the Holy Bible. It’s a story that has its beginnings in a Garden called Eden where everything was perfect and complete for life to flourish. We were created by a loving and generous Creator, male and female in His image and likeness, to share the magic of Creation with Him and exercise dominion over all the creatures we helped create and over all the earth. He blessed us and said to us, “Be fruitful and multiply, and replenish the earth.” (Multiply we did plentifully; replenish the earth we haven’t done so plentifully.)

But we were not satisfied with the way things were, and we sought to create a world on our own without our Creator . . . and we messed up royally, eventually finding ourselves out from the presence of the LORD God, and out of the Garden state, striving to survive in the lower outer planes of Creations where the Four Creative Forces of water, air, earth and fire are at work integrating and disintegrating the various forms in the fabric of creation. Without Man’s dominion over the earth, these creating forces were thrown into cataclysmic upheaval creating floods and collapsing the very foundations of continents. sinking them into the oceans along with millions of their inhabitants and all living species. We attribute these “punishing” events to an “angry and vengeful” God, but we did this to ourselves and to our Garden home among the stars.

The Bible is the story of a loving God’s patient and relentless efforts to restore Man to his honorable state as Co-Creator with Him . . . working with the cycles He had established and set in motion that bring the Creative Forces into harmonious alignment with clocklike timing and synchrony. He is forced to do so as He cannot interrupt their cyclical patterns that are governed by larger and grander cosmic forces and cycles. He has had to wait until cosmic conditions in the larger context of “wheels within wheels” were just right for initiating a pattern of renewal and restoration . . . and this is what the Story of Man as recorded in Sacred Scripture is all about.

THREE TESTAMENTS

There are three testaments in the Bible: the Old Testament, the New Testament, and I will include the testament of John’s Book of Revelation.

The Old Testament records the Creation of this world and of Mankind; Man’s fall from grace and departure from the Garden of Eden. It’s also the record of the initiation of the first cycle of restoration, which began with Abraham, a physical approach, and its subsequent failure with the story of the Israelites, God’s “Chosen People,” and the provision of the Law of Moses with the Ten Commandments . . . one of which is “Thou shalt not kill.” Uranda refers to this cycle as The First Sacred School.

Human sacrifice to appease an angry God was a prevailing practice at the time. The killing of another human being had been introduced into human consciousness when Cain killed his brother Abel — a metaphorical story of when material man, represented by Cain, suppressed and separated his outer human self from spiritual Man, his inner Self, represented by Abel.

The cycle of human sacrifice was broken by Abraham when an angel stayed his hand as he prepared to sacrifice his only son, Isaac. The pattern surfaced again in various cultures . . . and is even evoked in Christian doctrine as a rationale for the crucifixion of Jesus as an act of God sacrificing His only begotten son to atone for the sins of the world. Murderous behavior has remained in human consciousness and continues to this day on the battle fields of nations at war with one another over religious and political ideologies, greed and racial hatred, among others. We sacrifice our young men and women, many of whom are our firstborn, on such bloody battlefields to less than holy causes.

A BRIDGE TO THE MOTHERLAND OF LEMURIA

With the collapse and submergence of the Motherland of Lemuria millions of years ago, along with the submergence of the great civilization of Atlantis 12,800 years ago, a remnant of these island civilizations made their way to India and Madagascar and as far as Egypt in the East, many settling along the banks of the Dead Sea and in various other locations in Roman Judaea. These were known as the Essenes and they lived a spiritual life of voluntary poverty, daily immersion in the ancient scriptures and asceticism based on love and compassion. A Jewish sect, they dedicated their lives to scribing, preserving and teaching the secret knowledge of the ancient “mystery schools.”

Awareness of the Essenes became more public with the discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls, documents believed to be their library and which the Essenes hid in caves along the Dead Sea when their communities were being destroyed by the Romans. “These documents preserve multiple copies of parts of the Hebrew Bible untouched from possibly as early as 300 BCE until their discovery in 1946.” (Wikipedia) Many of the disciples of both John the Baptist and Jesus came from this Jewish sect, as did Jesus and John themselves, which essentially provided a bridge between the Old Testament of the First Sacred School and the New Testament.

The New Testament records the initiation of a second cycle of restoration, a more mental approach, initiated by the Lord of Lords incarnate in Jesus Christ, and the drawing together of a second nuclear body with the disciples for the purpose of continuing and hopefully completing the work of restoration. That cycle sadly failed as well with the execution of the disciples at the hands of the Romans, like their Master — all except John.

This was the Second Sacred School, which reduced Moses’s Ten Commandments into one Great Commandment based on love for the LORD our God with all, and a second like unto the it, love of one’s neighbor as oneself — the “keys” to entering the Kingdom of Heaven . . . with only one requirement to “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand.” In other words, turn around and return to our Creator, and our Creator will return to us — and with “good pleasure” give us the Kingdom. Not that He ever abandoned us, as many have complained. We simply lost consciousness of His Presence.

This is why the LORD of Love came to us: because there was beginning to be a return of a remnant of the “chosen people” of Israel — in representation of the body of mankind — who were returning to God in consciousness, anticipating His arrival as the Messiah. He came as a representative of the Father, the Creator of heaven and earth, and was rejected by the world . . . by all but a handful of disciples of which only one, John, stood with Him at the foot of the cross, along with His mother and a few women, among whom were his mother, Mary, and His close and intimate soulmate, Mary of Bethany, and Mary Magdalene, whom he had raised to the honorable status of “Apostle of apostles” for her deep-hearted love for Him and her depth of understanding of His teachings.

THE BELOVED DISCIPLE

John, the Beloved Disciple, was exiled to the Greek island of Patmos where he was given a vision of what would come to pass in the world in the next and final cycle in the restoration of Man. His testament is The Book of Revelation, aka the Apocalypse.

A Third Sacred School was initiated by Lloyd A. Meeker (1907-1954) who taught and wrote under his new and “given” name “Uranda,” which has its derivation in the Mother Land of Lemuria and means “Heaven on Earth.” Through his teachings and ministry, it became obvious that his incarnation was that of the Light Being that was incarnate in John of Revelation, the Spirit of Truth. His teachings, along with those of his successor Lord Martin Exeter (1909-1988), the Spirit of Life incarnate, are compiled in an eighteen volume set entitled THE THIRD SACRED SCHOOL.

TO EXPRESS THE SPIRIT OF GOD

This third and final cycle is an approach to restoration based on the expression of the triune Spirit of God — the Spirit of Love, the Spirit of Truth and the Spirit of Life — in and through Man, whose triune capacities of body, mind and heart provide the means for the expression of the triune Spirit of God on Earth. Uranda initiated this cycle with yet a third nuclear body which became known as Emissaries of Divine Light. The history of this body and its co-founders are recorded in THE VIBRATIONAL ARK,* authored by Grace Van Duzen, who served as Uranda’s personal secretary and as a dedicated scribe for both Uranda’s and Lord Exeter’s copious services.

A SHIFT IN THIS CYCLE OF RESTORATION

I will close this with an excerpt from a recent Temple of Light Service spoken by my friend and angelic colleague, David Barnes from British Columbia: (Click on this link to read the entire service.)

I think that all of us here on this Zoom call should be able to easily acknowledge that heaven is here—acknowledge that since that amazing period of time in the mid-1940s, in a very real way the process of the reunion of heaven and earth has been established in this world; and all of us are actually living and moving in an experience of heaven on earth. This has happened, and it is happening. And this has not happened in a body of people, however small a body of people, since before the fall. There has never been a Body of God sustained in heaven on earth since before the fall. The birth of the Spiritual Body brought forth by Uranda, and those who worked with him in its beginning formation, was accomplished, and we are a part of the beginning formation. This occurred not that long ago.

This is a massive project. I did some research last night. As of now, according to Uranda’s dates, it was around 28,000 years ago that the first point of the fall of man took place, near the beginning of a 25,800 year Fire cycle. And at the end of that 25,800 year cycle the Master Jesus incarnated, to initiate this particular phase of the restoration that we are in now. He came just after the beginning of a new 25,800 year Water cycle and a smaller 2,160 year Water cycle. He incarnated in order to allow the conception of this particular Christ Body formation that is now present—that Uranda came to help birth. This Christ Body is continuing to grow and develop, and as long as we provide the substance, and hold strong the vibrational hedge related to this ongoing formation, we have the experience of being in Heaven, being in the Garden, being in this Spiritual Body, in the world of the fallen condition but not of it. And this is not just a theory—it has happened. It is happening, and the world to come is here now for anyone who does what is required in their own life to experience that as being so. . . .

. . . . In this piece in which Uranda states that this is the time when Mother God must come into her own or man is lost, Uranda indicated that it is in this 2,160 year Air cycle that things become absolutely critical. And certain things need to be achieved in this 2,160 year age—this period that began around 1766, near the beginning of which Uranda then came into incarnation, and Martin. And we came as well. So this is just the beginning of things, obviously, when we think of what it would actually take to have this whole human nature scene cleaned up, this that has taken 28,000 years to get into this mess, to be completely cleared up. When we first considered these things we may have thought, well, this is going happen in forty years, and it will all be over. Well, certain things need to happen within certain definite time frames; but in the larger picture, in terms of the whole mop-up operation, it is within a longer period, and it’s going take several incarnations of angels, well trained to steward the process.

This awakening is occurring everywhere and all at once. Human consciousness is impregnated with the seeds of love and peace. The expression of the Spirit of God is released on Earth through men and women of integrity who have come to know their angelic nature. This is the Day which the Lord hath made. Let us all rejoice and be glad in it.

I welcome any thoughts you may wish to share and comments you may wish to make in the Comment feature. Until my next post,

Be love. Be loved.

Anthony

tpal70@gmail.com

*The vibrational ark depicts a place of safety in a corrupt and troubled world. It is a state of consciousness which transcends the manipulations of mind and emotion separate from the guidance and inspiration of God. Published January 1, 1996.

VATICAN CITY

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

* * *

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

ZEALOTRY PERSISTED

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

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

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

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

JESUS’S APPOINTED SUCCESSOR

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

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

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

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

THE KEYS TO THE KINGDOM OF HEAVEN

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Be love. Be loved.

Anthony

tpal70@gmail.com

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

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Solar Eclipse on a cloudy night

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

In His own words:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

A LIFE OF VICTORY

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

Be love. Be loved.

Anthony

tpal70gmail.com

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