I dedicate my talk to these words of Jesus to Thomas after he felt the nail holes of the resurrected Jesus and believed:
Then Jesus told him, "Because you have seen me, you have believed; blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed." John 20:29
Ann Ree said that Thomas is the prototype for the scientific seeker. Scientific seekers follow the chain of cause and effect, step by step, and are less likely to be the victims of sentimental leaps into the fantasy desires which are so destructive and so common in the world today. When not wedded to materiality, science becomes spiritual science.
Making a leap of another kind, though, is what we have to do sometimes to move into the greater truths beyond the pale of specialized knowledge. A leap of faith is different than a leap tinged with the expectation of gaining without effort, a desire for lower pleasures, or motivated by glamor expectations. Intuition can be honed into a reliable instrument if we are receptive to spiritual sources and can subjugate the claiming voices of the world and of the senses.
We all wish for a vision that is more than the certainty of what is a few steps in front of us, because that certainty is weakness and a false ease. Ann Ree writes,
The moral strength in a person comes from absolute faith in God. When the diadem of one’s soul-light has been quickened, this becomes a sanctuary finer than any cathedral in the world.
An honest spiritual seeker will follow his intuition, but also prove it to himself. Ann Ree was called a stubborn receiver because she refused to be enticed by glamor interpretations of what she received. A spiritual scientist and craftsman will lay the bricks for a road back across chasm over which he has leapt. The road is a step by step path for the feet of those would follow his victory. This is what our beloved Ann Ree did and we are the end beneficiaries of her labors. That road may still be hard, but seekers who walk the path will be saved from a far more severe path through the astral chasms.
The main temptation and danger with a little bit of knowledge is that we become unaware of its limits or place too much importance on it to the exclusion of its place in the whole. Without a sense of the Plan and the Ethic, we go astray with even the truest specialized knowledge.
One example of this that comes to mind is in medical science. We are all the beneficiaries of medical science, so my criticism is tempered with full awareness of how much misery it has eased in the world and how many lives it has saved. Doctors are finding that the organs of the body are interdependent, full of feedback loops and adaptations that respond to every intervention. Sometimes a little bit of medical knowledge has proven to be dangerous in that treating a symptom creates problems worse than the supposed cure. Or sometimes a treatment is beneficial for some patients, but harmful for other individuals with more complex issues. A wise doctor knows his limits and asks that God lend His hand.
Perhaps the danger of partial knowledge is an aspect of the mystery described in Genesis:
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 knowledge of good and evil ... And the LORD God commanded the man, saying, Of every tree of the garden thou mayest freely eat: But of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, thou shalt not eat of it: for in the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die. (Gen 2:8-17)
One might find a parallel where the tree of life represents our intuition and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil represents a step into duality, shape, form, variety, and particulars. Eden may have been our origin, but Ann Ree seemed to think the fall was necessary to gain a few things through experience. Maya may be temporary, but in our journey we make the circle from naive wholeness to a tangled jungle of materiality, to tremendous variety and creation, and finally back to our origins - but this time with Niscience or knowing.
The best path to understanding the whole is to go back to the Source, which is God. The chief quality to use for this is faith, and the chief faculty is love. Without love, knowledge becomes as sounding brass or tinkling cymbals. With sure insight Saint Paul wrote,
Charity (caritas, love) never faileth: but whether there be prophecies, they shall fail; whether there be tongues, they shall cease; whether there be knowledge, it shall vanish away. For we know in part, and we prophesy in part. But when that which is perfect is come, then that which is in part shall be done away. (1Co 13:8-10)
That which is perfect is the eternal circle or egg out which spins the specialized cells or compartments of life.
The world today is under a heavy oppressive fog of materiality, atheism, cynicism, and skepticism. Even religions are bowing to the materialistic mindset, psychologizing the miracles of the saints and of Jesus, boxing His words into narrow, believable, acceptable little compartments.
In the Greek myth of the Odyssey, Jason had to navigate between Scylla and Charybdis, two sea monsters on opposite sides of the strait of Messina. Scylla had six heads, and Charybdis had a single gaping mouth that sucked in huge quantities of water and created whirlpools. What an image for intellectual hubris and craving astral fantasy!
Opposite the Scylla of materialistic science and secularized religions, is the Charybdis of religions wedded to superstition and fetishes. It seems for some there is nothing like a comforting fetish to keep them comfortable in the same enclosure year after year.
Niscience is a total wonder to me. I am amazed at how spiritually bold it is, and yet how practical it is too, honoring our stations of responsibility in life.
Ann Ree saw that the archetype of Niscience was timed to the scientific age that men may blend the noble objective and impartial ideals of science with the anticipatory, intuitive, and forerunning knowledge to be gained from faith.
When she was receiving the archetype of Niscience, the world’s painful transition from the limiting aspects of materialistic science into a science of the soul was opened to her.
At Shadelands I spent many hours of research into the science of the soul ...
I saw the religions of the world and their limitations. I saw that men in the Western world were moving toward a psychological theme in their religions - a theme which would suffocate the mystical side of their faith ...
In these revelatory moments I was shown that the light of men’s souls is in danger of being obscured by the overwhelming agnostic and materialistic theme in the world. The spiritual life is an enigma to the materialistic mind. The materialistic person relies upon factual proof rather than spiritual cause ...
Religions stood as lambs being led to the slaughter; or like trees being slowly stripped of their bark. The sap of the trees was flowing out of the wounds, and the roots of the trees were in danger of perishing.
I knew that religions had invited these challenges because they had failed to keep alive the holy spirit within the Gospels ...
I imagine that most true Niscienes are somewhat bewildered in these times, feeling that they have no real spiritual home. Few formal traditional worships totally satisfy the longings of our souls, and few psychological or new age teachings seem shaped by actual spiritual experience grounded in first principles.
People with faith have a rudder and inner certainty even in the midst of initiation and outer uncertainty. People without faith place their desire for security and certainty in numerous stopgap measures: it may be persons, religious dogmas, scientific dogma, institutions, jobs, money, etc. Even Ann Ree went through a phase where outer comforts and certainties seemed necessary. Writing of her human need for certain relationships, she said
Even though I would have humanly desired to sustain the relationships, such persons who put a stumbling block between me and my spiritual life were removed through uncontrollable circumstances. This I have counted as grace.
Writing of her need for a spiritual home, she said of her visits to the Santa Barbara Mission:
In Santa Barbara, California, I often visited the Mission during the late afternoon mass. I found a sanctity in the prayers of those who had surrendered themselves to their beliefs; however, I knew that I could never affiliate myself with crystallized formulas. During this time there were occasions when I heard inwardly a chorus of voices saying, ‘Come back to the Church. Come back to the church.’
Jesus moved unshrinkingly to His Destiny even though some would say His life was filled with material uncertainty and danger. Few disciples were willing to risk giving up family, friends, possessions, or other fetishes and follow Him.
And a certain scribe came, and said unto him, Master, I will follow thee whithersoever thou goest. And Jesus saith unto him, The foxes have holes, and the birds of the air have nests; but the Son of man hath not where to lay his head. And another of his disciples said unto him, Lord, suffer me first to go and bury my father. But Jesus said unto him, Follow me; and let the dead bury their dead. (Mat 8:19-22)
Material certainty leads to spiritual uncertainty. The spiritual path is not for those who wish outer safety. We are likewise asked to bury our dead ways and find our way back to the tree of Life. I close with these words of Jesus,
It is the spirit that quickeneth; the flesh profiteth nothing: the words that I speak unto you, they are spirit, and they are life. (Joh 6:63)
