Tuesday, December 23, 2014

One Without a Second

The phrase, “One without a second” (Ekam Advitiyam) is a refrain used in the Chandogya Upanishad’s lesson of a father to his son Svetaketu. In one characteristic verse, the father says,
Just as from a single lump of clay, dear boy, one would know about everything made from clay, the difference being a mere verbal distinction, a name, the reality is only `clay.'
But the form side of creation nevertheless has tremendous variety even if the root substance is one. That is the Yin principle. The Yang is the austere seed, but Yin is the flower which loves endless variety and coloration. No two snowflakes are exactly alike, no two faces, no two signatures, no two fingerprints, or no two trees. Ann Ree seemed to look at this side of the picture when she invoked the phrase, “One without a second,” as if to render it as, “There is no one like you in expression anywhere in the world.” She talked about the paradox in one of her talks,
So you have to realize that we are all very special and unique persons for we are all the same. That is why God is such an enigma to all of us.
That's why it makes us love Him so much, because He has so many changing faces. And they are right here imprinted and indented on our faces.
One reason it is important to ponder deeply this fundamental truth … is that each person has a very special part in God’s Eternal Plan. This means each person is precious to Him. I have had to bear that fact in mind as I contemplate the cruelties perpetrated by man against man. My lower mind entertains the idea of retribution for a cruel man, but I end up conceding that God allowed that person to learn from trial and error and that the victim is also part of his own karma, learning from previous errors. In apparent tragedy, God maintains perfect justice by joining the lessons of the evolved and the un-evolved when they meet in homogenizing times like the reincarnation tidal wave we are in.
There are no superior or inferior persons in the world, just differences in the timing of their unfoldment. We would not think an aged giant Sequoia was essentially different than a new Sequoia sapling. Both attain majestic height in their own timing and both with their unique place.
Ann Ree went so far as to say that God cannot unfold His plan without any of us. We are each as important to His plan as the mightiest star.

Another reason it is important to ponder the phrase “One without a second” is that we each have to realize our own unique destiny in God’s overall plan. When we make choices based on the wishes of our parents, or the collective expectations of society, or conforming with any temporary circumstance, we may be fighting against our very destiny and the unique role God is preparing us for.

When we make a mistake, we cannot think that we are no longer precious to God and no longer have His best wishes for us. Ann Ree wrote in Dedication #1
Each man has a hidden best - a best which he must call forth through dedication.
Carl Jung used the term Individuation to refer to the process of our becoming what we truly are. Rational thinking based on useful generalizations can fail when it comes to our unique destiny. For generalizations are based on averages which wash out uniqueness. He made the point that we may search a bed of stones for one with its average size of 2 inches and never find one that is exactly 2 inches. He said that he by necessity would reach a point where he had to make his treatment of his patients as varied as his patients. Scientific laws based on statistical truths may get us close to destiny, but they can never account for what an individual destiny truly is. Ann Ree continued Dedication #1 by adding,

When dedication begins its yeastlike action, no one can tell the results, not even that one who dedicates, nor can he know where his dedication will place him.

In a paradoxical way this uncertainty in certainty is comforting. It means that we can achieve a God-like Will that makes us more than mechanical creations. Jesus quoted the Hebrew scriptures when He said,
Is it not written in your law, “I said ye are Gods?”
So how can we reconcile our uniqueness with the essential unity of souls? Such, we are told, is the task of Soul Realization. I found the passage in Ann Ree’s biography, Prophet for the Archangels, intriguing which described the phase of her evolvement where she underwent a synthesis of what she called Light Streams. It recorded telepathic words that the Masters spoke to Ann Ree as one voice. That remarkable kind of telepathy must imply a unity of thought and intention quite unknown to most of humanity. Saint Paul described something similar when he referred to the Body of Christ, comparing the unanimity of the members of the physical body to the one body in Christ:
For as the body is one, and hath many members, and all the members of that one body, being many, are one body: so also is Christ. (1 Corinthians 12:12)
I remember being inspired by Ann Ree at an early age when I saw how she treated people who I thought were un-evolved with kindness. I felt ashamed of my feeling of aversion when I saw her loving face. Yogananda described a similar impartiality with Yukteswar:
Everyone found in Master an equal courtesy and kindness. To a man who has realized himself as a soul, not the body or the ego, the rest of humanity assumes a striking similarity of aspect. The impartiality of saints is rooted in wisdom.
As this is Christmas, I would like to relate our unique soul destiny to the image of a direct star. When she was at Wooded Place, Ann Ree had a vision of Jesus and a mighty star slightly above her. The star moved towards her with a singing, humming tone. She remarked that she had never before experienced such an intensity of light. Jesus said to her, “This is your own direct star. You have come under your own direct star.” Ann Ree commented,
When one makes alignment with his direct star, he no longer thinks of himself and the preservation of his body, or the preservation of human objects and possessions. From the time he unites with his direct star he is caught into God’s mighty momentum.
When Jesus came into the world a great star appeared to the Wise Men. Ann Ree said it was the star from the eternity system Jesus came from as a Messiah in that world. I’m sure this was a momentous event for our world wherein it became aligned with our destiny as an eternity system.
May each of you unite with the star of Bethlehem this Christmas and with your own direct star as ones without a second.

Sunday, June 8, 2014

The Acceptable Time

The title is taken from these words from Isaiah, prophesying the coming of Jesus.

Thus saith the LORD, In an acceptable time have I heard thee, and in a day of salvation have I helped thee: and I will preserve thee, and give thee for a covenant of the people, to establish the earth, to cause to inherit the desolate heritages;

There are certain times when the clock strikes and we are thrust into a totally new way. I would like to look not only at this phenomenon, but also what happens before.

Sometimes a watershed moment happens with absolute recognition and we yield to that dividing point in our life with a sure and joyful intuition, if not a total outward knowing. For many Niscienes, meeting Ann Ree was such a moment.

Many of us can relate to what the disciple Matthew experienced when his life came to the ripe moment when he met Jesus and united with his soul calling:

Matthew, on being called by Jesus, did not need conversion; he did not enter into any intellectual discourse with Him. He followed Jesus without question.

Upon meeting Jesus, Matthew recognized that his soul hour had struck.

At other pivotal times we are pulled out of old situations by a much needed, though painful, crisis into an aftermath of something unexpectedly wonderful and new. Jonathan had that experience when a crisis prompted him to seek out Ann Ree and totally redirect his life into its destined course. When he described the situation that led to his calling upon her, she shook her head slowly and said, “Karma.”

Though Divine Interventions seem to be “out of the blue” they must in reality have some kind of incubation or preparation. There must be a reason for the clock strike being at “the acceptable time” and not another.

God gave us free will because we can solidify our learning in no other way but by direct exposure to cause and effect. If everything is done for us, we are not human beings, but robots. But He doesn’t let us destroy ourselves or upset His Plan. There seem to be ebbs and tides between free will and the moments that say, “thus far and no farther.”

In one dream I checked out three books from a library. One was on a technique of reading, another on mathematics, and a third, whose topic I no longer remember, but which had a picture of children in flowing robes. Ann Ree interpreted the dream and said that these pertained to three lives. One was a memory of life as a child in Greece, and the one on mathematics related to research on the timing of karma, how much we work out, where, and when.

At a moment that the soul knows is perfect for our experience, we are exposed to good karma (called grace) or bad karma. A quickened soul is one who has shorter periods between key timings of grace or karma. Being quickened doesn’t mean we can’t or won’t err - only that we can are ready for and can bear lessons and use grace that are more frequently spaced.

The world as a whole was ready for our Saviour 2000 years ago. Ann Ree wrote,

Christ Jesus, the Son of Man, would thrust those who have readied themselves throughout the ages onto the forward points of the new manifestation. The time is indeed at hand when He who came in the “acceptable time” would reveal to man his birthright and the Plan under God.

Since His coming, the world has experienced rapid karma and rapid grace. An atom in our foreheads was quickened enabling us to learn more rapidly. Those not up to this quickened pace will be prepared for more slowly paced eternities. The symbol of Pisces, into whose age Jesus was born, is a fish swimming to the left and a fish swimming to the right. These are symbolic of the separating of the sheep from the goats.

At “acceptable times” we are presented with a tangled situation presenting a key puzzle which we must decisively solve or fall back. If we can work at untangling the knot, we free the lesson. There are karmic knots we have made and golden knots that God gives us as divine puzzle and golden opportunity. The untangling of either knot releases energy. A golden knot is called a stele by Ann Ree in her book, The King. She writes,

To unite with the king one must first unlock the stele or the engraven lock protecting the centered self. The stele is an unceasing, vibrating identity-tone which keeps intact the grace.

It is our duty as Niscienes to unlock the instruction we have been graced to receive from Ann Ree. Despite errors we have made, I have to hope that the time may still be at hand, to borrow a phrase from Revelation:

Blessed is he that readeth, and they that hear the words of this prophecy, and keep those things which are written therein: for the time is at hand.

He that is unjust, let him be unjust still: and he which is filthy, let him be filthy still: and he that is righteous, let him be righteous still: and he that is holy, let him be holy still.

There is a myth about the knot of Gordias. It was prophesied that who ever could untangle the knot would become king of Asia. Alexander the Great, it was said, came to Gordium and struggled to untie it. In a fit of frustration, he drew his sword and cut the knot. There are times when we must summon the will to cut through the karmic knots we have made by tangled thinking and see a simple solution to what seems difficult. The opportunity for the world to unite with the Niscience archetype, I believe, must be seized fairly soon and perhaps with something as drastic as a sword to the knot made by comfortable and complacent thinking.

It is my prayer that some in the current generation may discover the beauties of Niscience and carry it forward.