God Perception

I borrowed the phrase "God perception" from Sri Yukteswar, because it seems to capture the ultimate simplicity of the process of union with God.  Perception is a matter of seeing, not going through complicated paths of reasoning.  It is not a strenuous exercise of the mind, but more a matter of relaxing the lower mind, its binding to the senses, and its skepticism so that a higher faculty may emerge.

Simplicity does not always imply ease, for how difficult it is for a man of excessive sense-tinged desires to live simply.  There is something built into an earthly mind that seeks to contort itself into complications to pursue its desires and ignore primordial laws.  Shortcuts from Divine Laws, seeming to be the easy way, in fact lead to the tangled way.  With apologies to Shakespeare, "O what a tangled web we weave, without a practice to perceive."

St. Paul may have been thinking of this complicating faculty of the lower mind when writing his second letter to the Corinthians (11:3)

But I am afraid that, as the serpent deceived Eve by his craftiness, your minds will be led astray from the simplicity and purity of devotion to Christ.

The word perception comes from the intensive "per", one meaning of which is thoroughly, and "capere", meaning to grasp or take hold of.  In English we have an expression to "get a handle" on an idea.  Alan Kay, a famous computer scientist, said

A change in perspective is worth 80 IQ points.

For example, consider a little game where two opponents take turns moving a number from a pool of 1 to 9 to his own separate pool.  The first player that has three of his numbers adding to 15 wins.  An arithmetic view looks a little complicated, but with a change in perspective it can be related to the familiar game of tic-tac-toe, where all possible ways of adding three numbers to 15 is very visual.

I highly admire aspects of Jewish thought - their classic writers are thorough interpreters of the Old Testament. But there is a side to some of its more materialistic ones that tries to understand revealed scriptures by exhaustive lists of how they apply in hundreds of varied and often confusing circumstances.  I commented on this to Jonathan, who said (approximately), "Yes, a few hair-splitters merely engaged in complications designed to obscure the spirit of the law while appearing to fulfilling the letter."

The Hebrew race gave us science, a tremendous source of good for the world.  Material science, though, is only a reflection of a greater spiritual science.  The philosopher Bertrand Russell said that in science, we seek to break things down into principles that are so simple that no one doubts them, and then use those same principles to prove things so astounding no one believes them.  So do simple Niscience truths have the power of the atom when they are split open from their bound state.

There will be a spiritual science, which Niscience is a part of, but the application of its principles does not demand complicated mathematics, and the even greater complications trying to use it outside the physics of very confined laboratory environments.

The Maha Chohan, in his telepathic directives to Ann Ree, said of Maya

Just as man's feelings begin to be nullified, his senses to be deadened, more and more will he fall into the intricate schemes in matter ...

Science but reflecteth the archetypes of the Higher Worlds, and hath not the heart of the living life within it.  Science is a temporal means through which men experience and experiment.

There is nothing wrong with experiment unless it is needlessly prolonged with a stubborn clouded view.  It is in the aftermath of experiment that we need to promote a relaxation of our stubbornness, and a calmness of mind - even if it has to be the calm that follows the storm of our emotions or the storm prompted by our wrong choice.  Carl Jung, who could be pretty hot headed, nevertheless was able to let the storm pass and then look back with calm insight.  He wrote of an incident when he was younger and his school teacher accused him of cheating:

My grief and rage threatened to get out of control. And then something happened that I had already observed in myself several times before: there was a sudden inner silence, as though a soundproof door had been closed on a noisy room. It was as if a mood of cool curiosity came over me, and I asked myself, "What is really going on here? All right, you are excited. Of course the teacher is an idiot who doesn't understand your nature-that is, doesn't understand it any more than you do. Therefore he is as mistrustful as you are. You distrust yourself and others, and that is why you side with those who are naive, simple, and easily seen through. One gets excited when one doesn't understand things.

And Yogananda wrote of a time early in his discipleship where he tried to meditate, but found himself unable to still his thoughts.  His guru intervened and tapped him in the area of the heart and gave him a stilling of the mind and the breath.  He wrote,

As often as I silenced the two natural tumults (mind and breath), I beheld the multitudinous waves of creation melt into one lucent sea, even as the waves of the ocean, their tempests subsiding, serenely dissolve into unity. 

A master bestows the divine experience of cosmic consciousness when his disciple, by meditation, has strengthened his mind to a degree where the vast vistas would not overwhelm him.

All of us must at times have experienced on a smaller scale the peace which comes from a trusting, simple naive openness to the Divine.  It is precisely this peace which lets our higher mind function and inform us.  St. Paul wrote of it:

the peace of God, which passeth all understanding, shall keep your hearts and minds through Christ Jesus.

I had an experience in my early teens where in a dream I was looking through the view finder of my camera, accompanied by my father, who in the dream had a kind and benevolent peace to him.  When I put my camera down he said that he thought my camera was a good one and had a similar manufacturer to his own.  He then led me past a cylindrical vortex of water, talking to me about dream interpretation.  He warned me not to go into the vortex, but I disobeyed and found time inside to be very, very slow - glacial in tempo.  I found it hard to free myself or move much, but my father reached through the wall of water and pulled me out.

Ann Ree interpreted the dream and said that my father was really the master.  Looking through the view finder of the camera was a Third Eye experience.  My father telling me that my camera had a good manufacturer, meant that I was a good perceiver.  (I presume now that if it had a similar manufacturer to the Master's it indicated my being on his Light Stream.)  The vortex, she said was my higher mind, but that I needed preparation to not be overwhelmed by an over intense and premature exploration of it - even as Yogananda mentioned that we would be overwhelmed by premature opening to the vast vistas of spirit).

Years later, I came upon this fine description of how the Masters' minds gaze into the world, from one of the Master's letter to A. P. Sinnett.  It was a bit of a vajra for my seemingly less than developed perception:

Quarrels and even discussions we leave to those who, unable to take in a situation at a glance  are thereby forced before making up their final decision to anything to analyze and weigh one by one, and over and over again every detail ... That which is regarded by most men as a "fact" to us may seem but a simple RESULT, an afterthought unworthy of our attention, generally attracted but to primary facts. Life esteemed Sahibs, when even indefinitely prolonged, is too short to burden our brains with flitting details - mere shadows.  When watching the progress of a storm we fix our gaze upon the producing Cause and leave the clouds to the whims of the breeze which shapes them.

We may not have the perception of the Masters, but we have the legacy of their instruction, which gives enough of a focus to lead us out of the labyrinth maya confusion.  It is simply a matter of, through calmness and humility, making a daily and with time hopefully a momentary application of the compact and essential truths they brought through Ann Ree.  I would like to close with some excerpts of Ann Ree's magnificent mantram, Simplify and Glorify:

In crisis falterings, call forth the simples of the spirit ... Peace is thine authority, no other giveth authority as peace giveth it.

Reciprocal Maintenance

We are all to an extent strangers in this earth, as is repeated in many books of the old testament and new testament. We journey with other exiles from paradise in a world where we are expected to be helpers to our fellow travelers. Indeed everything in the world is responsible in some way for something else. And this responsibility, called by Ann Ree "Reciprocal Maintenance" demands that every person and thing give of itself in some sacrificial way.

Ann Ree wrote,

We entered this earth to develop a certain kind of consciousness. As an eternity body, we are an offering to the Christ, through which He unites us with God.

There is no freedom of mind until one realizes that Reciprocal Maintenance supports all worlds and universes. Man creates through taking on the weight of Creation as willing creators with God.

There is no creation without renunciation ... When Intentional Suffering is accepted as a way of life, joy and creation begin. One steps beyond the Maya penalties for unknowing into the glorious transcendental knowing.

Other scriptures acknowledge this too. In Hinduism there is the idea of the Yajnas or the offering of materials or labor. When done ritually, an offering is put into a fire. Closely related to yajna is the Zoroastrian yasna, though the latter is associated with water, not fire. In Islam, one of the five pillars is alms to the poor. Whatever one thinks of the violent elements in Islam, hospitality is present and almost an obligation in the small villages in Islamic countries.

In daily life there are many sacrifices. Some of them involve suffering against our own will. Ann Ree called that alien suffering. But when we recognize our responsibility and sacrifice willingly and joyfully, we have entered into true intentional suffering, which is the key to our evolvement. Ann Ree described some sacrifices and insights that many mothers share,

When I nursed my child, sick and weak, I shared the suffering of my child and experienced Intentional Suffering. When my child was healed through prayer and supplication and mediation, I was in the midst of grace, which is the natural result and response in Intentional Suffering.

When I took on the financial burdens of those who had lost their way in moral ethic as to debts, I experienced Intentional Suffering, and thereby opened the vital grace of prospering …

In Reciprocal Maintenance, nothing is my possession; I may by grace have leased it or borrowed from my accumulation of grace. If I understand that possessions which I call “mine” belong to the universal reciprocal-maintenance account, I then shall be bestowed with all forms of prospering under the law of Reciprocal Maintenance, where I shall lack nothing …

I, having suffered all, am beyond that which seeks to force alien suffering upon me.

Whether we are aware of it or not, our own individual existence is maintained through the sacrifice of some thing or some person. For example, when we eat food, a plant or animal has sacrificed its life for us. In turn whatever resources that animal or plant uses is a sacrifice by some lower form of life - even by the minerals in the soil or water from the some stream.

From the Venerable One,

Each plant is a baptismal font holding up its branches, its leaves, its fruit, crying out to man, “Take of me. This is my life for you. And yet on the morrow I know my root shall be scarred and burnt by your thoughtlessness.” This is the lesson the plant giveth to man: the silent love, the silent knowing, the silent serving.

In the kingdoms above us are great beings whose total lives are for our sakes. They are not engrossed in their own evolvement, though they do evolve because of their loving service to us. Think of the sacrifice of their total labor for the lower worlds. It is the true bodhisattva vow that prevents them from working on their own behalf until every blade of grass, or thing below them, is enlightened.

One never knows when he will encounter an angel unaware working through a presumed lower person or creature. The parable of the good Samaritan is a moving example. The Samaritans and Judeans each forbade their members to interact with the other. But the one looked down upon by the Judeans, a Samaritan, was the one to help the beaten down man.

A certain man went down from Jerusalem to Jericho, and fell among thieves, which stripped him of his raiment, and wounded him, and departed, leaving him half dead.

And by chance there came down a certain priest that way: and when he saw him, he passed by on the other side.

And likewise a Levite, when he was at the place, came and looked on him, and passed by on the other side.

But a certain Samaritan, as he journeyed, came where he was: and when he saw him, he had compassion on him,

And went to him, and bound up his wounds, pouring in oil and wine, and set him on his own beast, and brought him to an inn, and took care of him.

Through reciprocal maintenance, high and low are united by a chain of obligation. The seventh Light Stream is the one that looks back on the other Light Streams as heir and uniter. Ritual is an earth performance but affects and unites the lowest plane with all upper planes, including the highest. It's lowest expression is black magic or the very opposite: inverted and selfish use of energies. The Master of the seventh Light Stream, Master R, was Noah in a past life, who metaphorically gathered all the creatures from lowest up to man into the Ark. Jesus, the Divine Mediator between low and high, was the one who said,

Even as ye have done it unto the least of these, my brethren, ye have done it unto me.

Another aspect to seven is the idea of the lost one or wanderer. The seventh of the Pleiades was the wanderer. She correlated to the exile of the Jews in Exodus. It is said that in our chain of solar systems, we are the lowest of the twelve. How unfortunate it would be for us if higher beings did not condescend to lift us. Jesus, who came from other eternity systems to lift ours, had words for a certain scribe:

Then a scribe came and said to Him, "Teacher, I will follow You wherever You go.”

Jesus said to him, "The foxes have holes and the birds of the air have nests, but the Son of Man has nowhere to lay His head."

In other words, we have no claim on any place or thing. We are all strangers in the earth. The only thing that is ours is the potentially limitless power to give, once we have overcome egotism, covetousness, and selfishness.

I'm sure we can all give examples of where we gave expecting nothing in return, and received an unasked for blessing. For many, it is the blessings in later life from children raised well. There are other forms of time tithes as well. I'll give an example from my experience perhaps more easy to relate to by the general population. Money ;) When I was out of work for two and a half years, my finances were drained. Once I got a fairly low paying job - it was about a third of what I make now, though it increased to about half - I didn't see a way to survive with a negative cash flow, so I fell behind on my tithe. After some time the ingratitude of such an act became too unbearable. I determined to not only tithe, but pay all the back tithes I missed, even if it was possible only slowly. Eventually I was able to do this in full. Once I had done this, I noticed not less money, but more. This, of course, was not my aim else I would probably have been saddled with still more lessons.

My mother was a sterling example of not counting the cost. She always tithed, and always gave a portion of what meager amount was left after providing for her children, to some cause. She seemed to have an innate knowing of sacrifice. Her blessings were more on the inner. She had many spiritual experiences.

I would like to close with this beautiful mantram by Ann Ree sealing in our knowing of our eternal quest through this world to find our spiritual home:

My soul is a lantern lit of God.

My soul it a seeker, seeking to make earth Heaven.

My soul is a voice waiting to speak of eternal things.

My soul is a household awaiting its master.

My soul is a threshold inviting the stranger.

My soul is a wanderer homesick for the eternals.

My soul is a door awaiting the key.

The Leaven of Gratitude

The Leaven of Gratitude

Jesus said,

The kingdom of heaven is like unto leaven, which a woman took, and hid in three measures of meal, till the whole was leavened.

The word leaven as a metaphor has come to mean something that pervades the whole of a thing and transforms it from raw form or causes it to rise, even as leaven does for a lump of dough to make it bread.

There are virtues that pervade all aspects of the spiritual life even as yeast does in bread. One of these is gratitude. Ann Ree wrote,

Gratitude is the answer to get out of the sealed tomb. Gratitude stimulates all the virtues.

With gratitude we remember the Giver of all and know that we intuit but haven’t yet opened their full value because we can’t see what the leavening action within them will produce in its fullness.

Without appreciation, we may have the whole world but still be unhappy. There is always a negative somewhere that commandeers our attention and negates the wonder of the portion of good that has risen.

Ann Ree wrote,

Gratitude is the beginning of ecstasy.

Every spiritual practice we have contains the seed of ecstasy. A mantram, if it is properly spoken, and not carelessly, contains hope, higher suggestion, and a great key to our soul's treasure house of wisdom. Meditation, if it is not a duty but a joy, unites us with the limitless treasures yet to be opened in the great Unconscious. Study of spiritual instruction, if done with receptivity and holy expectation, takes us beyond static concepts and habits. Our gratitude for each of these truly does stimulate each virtue contained in them.

The animal kingdom takes nothing for granted. As Ann Ree once said, a dog will lick the hand of its owner in gratitude, and will stoically tolerate its master's flaws once it has placed its fidelity in him. The dog reveals the virtue of gratitude in the animal kingdom, and often exceeds humans in its expression.

Yogananda said,

You can find a flaw in the greatest painting or work of music. Isn't it better to see the grandeur in it?

It is important to realize that everything in the world has a flaw. And this flaw is actually a key to our learning. Like the serpent in the garden of Eden, there is a little something to catch us in the midst of our inertia and cause us through the consequences of our indifference to toil in the fields of Maya's raw material. It is from raw material, like the unleavened bread, that we have to add spiritual yeast to produce our spiritual food. When, as Job, we begin to take things for granted, or as our just due, we attract the loss of possessions, family, honor, and health - which through indifference become static and dead.

But the trial involved in their loss is also something we should be grateful for. Job kept his praise of God in his trials and through mastery opened the greater realizations behind the blessings of possessions, family, honor, and health. He was rewarded with more than he had before because he then knew their value.

When Jesus started a saying with the words, "The Kingdom of heaven is like," He was giving a key to true values. The most moving one is about the pearl of great price:

Again the kingdom of heaven is like a merchant man seeking goodly pearls.

Who, when he had found one pearl of great price, went and sold all that he had, and bought it.

When we value spiritual things so much that we would sell all for them, we have gone into true gratitude. Neglect then becomes much less likely. But it is so easy, when immersed in Maya, to be pulled by passing fancies.

When Jesus healed the ten lepers, it took nine of them only moments to become complacent. One returned to thank Him and likely knew much more happiness than the others.

The structure of Niscience began when Jonathan, in gratitude to Ann Ree for her ministry to him and the world, offered all he had to her cause. He left everything and devoted all his waking moments to preserving her teachings. His family disowned him, and he released a successful real estate career and all financial certainty to follow her.

Today, gratitude for God or Country is something of an embarrassment to many. Cynics love to demote both. Thanksgiving day has become largely a social occasion. But a sincere gratitude has another benefit: it protects one from the lower cynical mind. Ann Ree wrote,

The Satanic works through the intellect ... If one lives in a state of gratitude all the time, this is his real protection. Gratitude insulates him from the dark.

In the educational system, the use of the intellect has lost its morality. Teachers having intellectual morality are looked upon as idealistic, impractical. Cunning-mind intellect dependency is prevalent in the Self Genesis Age.

I had a dream in my teens that I believe was a blessing and reminder for caution against intellectual pride. A voice said to me, "A Leo must always be grateful." Of course, pride is a Leo downfall, but gratitude acknowledges the true Sun shining on our existence - and that Sun is not the ego.

When we can move from gratitude for a few things to gratitude for all, the calling card of one blessing turns into a cornucopia of grace. St. Paul exhorted the Thessalonians with this part of his epistle to them:

In everything give thanks: for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus concerning you.

A true gratitude in one thing eventually makes us look at all else we have been given. When we can expand our gratitude to all - even our pains and struggles, we become spiritual kings. I close with these words of Ann Ree,

The seven days are given to man that he might bring the report of good to his king. Man must discern what part of the day belongs to the king and what part of the day belongs to man. When all days belong to the king, man becomes the king.

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.

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.

Marking and Tracing

The eternal questions are “Who am I?”, “Where have I come from”, and “Where am I going?”. These can be applied to some of the most immediate of our experiences: our own thoughts and emotions. Ann Ree said,

Niscience is based upon the Marking and Tracing techniques that enable one to experience his frame of consciousness within the Greater Archetypes. One who works within the Greater Archetypes becomes a “Nisciene” beyond nescience or unknowing.

She describes Marking and Tracing as follows,

The first stages of initiation are tracings. These are one’s chief negatives he must work with when he starts on the Path. Markings are divine signs and grace-reassurances experienced during illumination. When one receives a marking, he has attained a station in light through which he will serve as a pure and whole channel, that God may use him. One moves from marking to marking as he evolves in God-Realization.

The sanskrit word for “Mark” is lingam, which is also translated as “sign” or “inference”. (Interpretations of the lingam as a phallic symbol, said Ann Ree, are erroneous.) In one version of a Hindu myth involving their version of the Trinity, Brahma, Siva, and Vishnu, Vishnu and Brahma were arguing as to who was greatest. Siva appeared as a lingam from which emanated an infinite column of light, piercing the the three worlds. Whoever found the end of the column first would be declared the more powerful. Brahma went upwards trying to find the end, and Vishnu descended trying to find the other end. Neither was successful, though Brahma received a Ketaki flower, supposed to have fallen from the top, as a token.

These divine markings and tokens are thus shown to be from the Infinite.

The majority of us are pulled hither and yon by forces we little understand. Thoughts that we believe are our own are in many cases the result of collective forces from the emotional or astral world, survival reflexes from earlier genesis levels, habits etched in from repetition in past lives, or habits and reflexes inherited through the genes. Ann Ree went so far as to say that most thoughts of the average man are not his own.

To the extent that we even recognize what thoughts aren't our own, it is essential to distinguish between those coming from higher and lower sources. The higher thoughts that we eventually make our own can be identified by their long term consequences and whether they serve selfish or glamor ends.

When we are in a state of heated emotion, it is difficult to see things clearly. We attribute things to others that aren’t there. We fail to see ourselves reflected in others and they, likewise, are pulled into the same reactions. Ann Ree wrote,

Through the practice of Marking and Tracing with detachment, one can slow down the rajasic, heated thought-forms in his thinking. In the spilling out, Undersoul casts its unrest upward into the screen of the emotion and the mind. By standing back from this with a cool detachment, one can clear the Undersoul with total awareness. From this come humility, flexibility, and chastity.

Nescience, the opposite of Niscience or knowing, is where we are trapped in a habit-bound mechanistic state of the mind. Certain cultivated mechanical strengths of the mind are true necessary supports and can be very beneficial, but they are not always flexible enough to handle every situation. That twinkling quality that makes us living, creative beings comes from a higher “plus factor”. Without this, intellect mechanisms become as sounding brass or tinkling cymbals and it's initially impressive gains prove to be either of no lasting effect, or, followed too assiduously, they may actually enslave us, becoming our masters - as much of technology does today. “Time saving” devices, for example, leave many with even less time than they had before, for they save time only in order to pursue more perishables or engage in maintenance of the perishables they have hoarded.

The “plus factor” that takes us beyond repetition is ever before us waiting to be grasped. Ann Ree wrote,

There are voices uncountable in this earth seeking to sound into the mind and knowing of man. Men are dull and spiritually illiterate because they are inattentive to the Spirit side of their hierarchy natures. Millions in the earth today are no more than sentient vegetables, living to eat, to sleep. Above all, they desire to be safe. The teacher who asks such ones, “Safe, from what?” is met by bewilderment and hostility. No one in the world is totally secure from the Maya unpredictability forces unless he has knowledge of what these forces are saying.

We are assured by the great sages that many of the truly beneficial inventions and ideas that have come through the agency of finite minds were invisibly inspired by merciful higher sources. I would like to give some examples.

Thomas Paine, one of the authors of the Federalist Papers wrote,

There are two distinct classes of what are called thoughts: those that we produce in ourselves by reflection and the act of thinking and those that bolt into the mind of their own accord.

Several ideas in his pamphlets published during the American Revolution, he admitted, were in second category. Some believe that they were impressed onto him by higher beings responsible for the archetype of America.

Carl Jung wrote, “... there are things in the psyche which I do not produce, but which produce themselves and have their own life.” He spoke about an inner figure called Philemon, who personified an objective (non-subjective) part of his psyche. In conversations with Philemon, he observed clearly that Philemon spoke, not himself. Jung described one conversation,

He (Philemon) said that I treated thoughts as if I generated them myself, but in his view thoughts were like animals in the forest, or people in a room, or birds in the air, and added, ‘If you should see people in a room, you would not think that you made those people.’

I was introduced to Ann Ree’s writings at around age 10, met Ann Ree at 11, and received my grace name at 12. In my late teens I did not attend services or her classes. At that age I had not developed a sense of responsibility and also took the rare opportunity I had been given for granted, thinking that everything in my world would always be there. For all the reasons I should have availed myself of the rare privilege of her guiding presence, the one that actually pushed me to do so was a peculiar one. One day a few years later, a thought struck me like a thunderbolt: receiving my grace name was so important in my life that I must repay that gift by supporting her great mission in the world as best I could. I didn’t know much about grace names then, or the power of words and names, but after I once again sat at her feet, Ann Ree saw fit to assign me several talks on the manifesting power of the Word and Sound Current: “Logos and Articulation”, “The Invisible made Visible”, “Shadows of Things to Come”.

For a final example of markings, Alice Bailey’s “Telepathy and the Etheric Vehicle” the Tibetan has an account of the telepathy from Master Serapis, who

... sought to bring through some constructive idea for the helping of humanity ... one of [the] disciples on the inner planes, seized upon the suggestion and passed it on (or rather stepped it down) until it registered in the brain of Colonel House [in Woodrow Wilson's cabinet]. He, not recording the source (of which he was totally unaware), passed it on in turn to that sixth ray aspirant, called Woodrow Wilson.

The League of Nations was, alas, ahead of humanity’s readiness at the time and failed due to the weakness of its aspirants.

The phrasing that the intermediate disciple “stepped it down” is very interesting, as the stepping down of volume and power to tributary channels is part of we call in Niscience, mediation. We do not have the high revelatory degree of Ann Ree, but if we have been able to prove some portion of her teachings in our lives, it is our duty to pass it in the vernacular of our experience to others. We are channels of mediation in our daily lives and testimonies through character or action, though not always knowingly.

Elihu, who according to Ann Ree represented Job’s soul voice, said

But it is the spirit in man, the breath of the Almighty, that makes him understand.

Job 32:8

So how do we practice marking and tracing? For tracings, one way is to observe our thoughts and reactions to see where they come from - especially if we sense that we are off balance or that our mental reflexes are not adapted fully to the present and particular situations.

At other times we have a marking, a thought that “comes from the blue” and is very helpful. It may come with no prompting whatsoever, but it can come in a state of rest after we have exhausted ourselves trying to find an answer through our well-worn way of thinking. It is as if the calmness we experience after giving up our habitual ways of thinking - and perhaps also the releasing of our mental pride - allows a greater voice to be heard. Great souls are able to maintain this calmness, releasing ego claim and desiring, for greater and more continuous intervals than rest of us. They are alert to the voice of God speaking though all persons and all circumstances.

I love this quote of Jung,

... if some great idea takes hold of us from outside, we must understand that it takes hold of us only because something in us responds to it and goes out to meet it.  Richness of mind consists in mental receptivity, not in the accumulation of possessions.  What comes to us from outside, and, for that matter, everything that rises up from within, can only be made our own if we are capable of an inner amplitude equal to that of the incoming content.

Yogananda also wrote of the source of true thoughts,

Thoughts are universally and not individually rooted; a truth cannot be created, but only perceived. Any erroneous thought of man is a result of an imperfection, large or small, in his discernment. The goal of yoga science is to calm the mind, that without distortion it may hear the infallible counsel of the Inner Voice.

Marking and Tracing are for the purpose of sifting the true gems from ordinary stones in our thoughts. Making a setting for the gems, nicely called “amplification” by Jung, is how we make them our own and integrate the into our being.

Sacrifice

All lasting and indestructible things are purchased by sacrifice, industry, and faith in God.

- Ann Ree Colton

 A virtuous man’s sacrifice is acceptable; its memorial will not be forgotten.

- Ecclesiasticus 35:8

These are powerful statements and should give each person pause as he contemplates what spiritual gold he would extract from his life.

The truest gifts we give are those that we are willing to sacrifice for. These are the things that we value the most and these are the offerings that have the most love in them.

If life places us in situations that demand sacrifice it should not prompt resentment, but joy - provided the sacrifice is truly necessary for some good. Necessity is corrective grace in disguise, because we are spared unnecessary future suffering and are given an opportunity to move toward the divine rightness that we have been blind to.

I am thinking of the many sacrifices made by mothers in the world; sacrifices of time, career, opportunity. I am thinking of the sacrifices of fathers who work at jobs that aren’t fulfilling but which provide the necessities for their families. And of course I am thinking of the sacrifice of Jesus at His crucifixion.

All of these surely have their compensation and are well worth the cost. If one has a true sense of values the sacrifice is no sacrifice at all, for the gain in the world is so great and lasting. And God, who waits to see what we offer truly and sincerely without seeking reward itself, rewards us.

But when thou doest alms, let not thy left hand know what thy right hand doeth: That thine alms may be in secret: and thy Father which seeth in secret himself shall reward thee openly.

(Mat 6:3-4)

It may seem paradoxical that sacrifice is so tied to joy, but it only seems so if one is unwilling in sacrifice and focuses on what is lost. Such sacrifice is not true sacrifice, and conversely true sacrifice is not the sad sacrifice of regret. A spiritual joy can coexist with temporary sorrow. Seeing maya as temporary makes its struggles bearable - even joyfully bearable.

To come under a Most High Saint one must be obedient without deviation to his yoke of adversity. He must know sacrifice as a natural way of life; nor can he complain of his lack of any human thing. He must be so engrossed in the winged angels in the Christ Kingdom that, while suffering, he is in a continual state of grace. Therefore he sees sacrifice as not sacrifice. To these, the Most High Saints come with the oils of holiness - crowning and blessing forever.

The Jesus Story

After a few thousand lives, it gradually dawns on the initiate that the things most of the world seeks after are fleeting and produce no lasting happiness. A prescient conscience avoids the cycle of enchantment followed by disappointment as the monotony of this cycle is remembered. Regret fades as we are able to look to the future and trust in the good law of God.

Law, balance and justice are under the fourth light stream. The yoke side of the law leads to grace and is “light” as Jesus said,

Come unto me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn of me; for I am meek and lowly in heart: and ye shall find rest unto your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.

(Mat 11:28-30)

All great souls do not look back once they have glimpsed their destiny. The sacrifices to fulfill what is asked of them are as nothing compared to the delight of opening the treasures of their path. Jung spoke of the yoke in this way

Free will is the ability to do gladly that which I must do.

In Watch Your Dreams, Ann Ree says that the number four relates to “Karma, sacrifice, the builder, Cherubim”. And this image of the square in The Venerable One shows how the square of sacrifice produces the stones for the road ahead:

In great cities, disciples receive a testing as to the great symbol of the square, as of sacrifice, in which disciples – as beautiful stones – become the path for the walk of the many feet.

The great Builders of our world sealed into every block of form a latent energy. To free that energy is our millennial task. Nature will not wield up its riches until we learn to seek the things hidden behind the commonplace events heaved onto the shores of our destiny. They are the building blocks which will eventually house our soul.

As a counter pole to those seeking escape from our earthly schooling, the alchemists conceived of a spirit Mercurius, who as Jung put it, was

… a sapientia Dei (Wisdom of God), but one who presses downward into the depths of matter, and whose acquisition is a donum Spiritus Sancti (gift of the Holy Spirit). He is the spirit who knows the secrets of matter, and to possess him brings illumination …

Mysterium Coniunctionis

Without this sensing of our task in the earth school, we flounder in vacillation, always looking for that detour away from the line of our life -a short cut that is no short cut. I find these words of the Master to Ann Ree on the fourth vow, the vow of decision, to be particularly interesting:

“Decision” is thy fourth vow. When sacrifice hath become not sacrifice, the authority of instantaneous decision is given to thee. That which speaketh “now or never” is the soul’s timing freeing thee from karma.

Though Ann Ree had a few moments of false steps in the early and middle parts of her life, she always had a sense of destiny that corrected her steps and kept her going forward. That same thread is our Ariadne’s thread leading us out of the labyrinth of maya.

Cosmic Christ

Jesus, the Lord of Love and Son of Man, may be experienced in three manners: first, as the personal Jesus; second, as the traditional Jesus; third, as the cosmic Jesus.

The Jesus Story

Most people who have been taught in formal religions have experienced Jesus in the first two manners. Often He is someone to get them out of some undesirable situation or help a loved one. His earthly deeds are also inspiring to many who emulate his sacrificial giving. These are very good and part of the plan. But I grieve over the scant attention to the cosmic Jesus on the altars of the world.

Ann Ree writes of the cosmic Jesus,

Initiation into cosmic Jesus is a confrontation with the spiritual reality of man’s sublime and divine nature, and of God’s eternal plan for souls and worlds without end.
Through the cosmic-Jesus initiation, one attains the soul crown of illumination. To be initiated under the cosmic Jesus with cognition and consciousness is to be in a state of increasing illumination and revelation. To know Him with a supernal non-separateness is to thirst and desire to serve Him beyond all others.

The Jesus Story

To think on the cosmic Jesus means many things, but one of them is to go beyond reacting to our immediate concerns and troubles so that we can divine our destiny, purpose, and part in this earthly drama. When we place our earthly affairs into the context of our cosmic learning, we invite the informing principle. We begin to see many clues as to what buds of destiny within us have yet to be opened.

Through most of my blessed times with Ann Ree in Niscience, the way I defined myself was pretty limited. I was interested in only a few things. And, like most people my young age, relied a bit too much on reflections of myself off others. Naturally, God uses others as a mirror to us and to teach us through reflection, so this is not altogether bad. In fact, it is a necessary stage of life.

We might compare this limited way of evolving to fitting the pieces of a jig saw puzzle together without a picture of the final image as a guide. It is certainly possible to complete the puzzle this way, but the process is longer and full of more needless experimentation. Worse yet would be to have a false picture and follow it.
Ann Ree served as a spiritual guide. Her style with me and many others was to give hints at our latent abilities and weaknesses, but nothing that our limited consciousness would bend into old familiar shapes. She told us that the greater teachers speak to the higher unconscious of their students. I have returned again and again to the all-too-few times that I heard her blessed personal words to me. These have continued to open to me.

Applying the same technique with the seed truths that Jesus left us through those who recorded the scriptures can yield greater results and can be a cosmic guide to the grand puzzle we are a part of. They have seven levels of interpretation according to Ann Ree. But most commentaries have penetrated only the lower veils of interpretation. That His words have more to them than the ephemeral meanings of the age was hinted at when He said,

Heaven and earth shall pass away, but my words shall not pass away.

Another aspect of knowing the cosmic Jesus is awareness of His part in plan with the Great Ones who rule the earth’s destiny. These have been hinted at in the Bible, but have needed the commentary by the lesser and greater avatars who have come after Him.

Ann Ree writes of these Great Ones:

Jesus, the center of Mediation between man and God, knew God as no man of the earth has known Him. The Ancient of Days expanded eternity time into cosmos time for Jesus, that Jesus might accomplish His mission in a short period of three years. Melchisedec helped Him to alter the etheric currents of the earth. The Father sustained His restoring of the souls of men. The Christ animated His imaging thoughts. The Cherubim worked with Him to translate one energy into another, or to release the energy within the atoms of food, thereby giving yield and increase for the hungry thousands.

The Jesus Story

All of these mediative actions are also part of our evolvement: use of time, imaging, transubstantiation and use of substance. They can be used reverently to further our learning and serving in this life and prepare us for our future destiny, or they can be used selfishly or indulgently.

Through the human Jesus that incarnated as a babe, matured, and died, we see how He mastered the cosmic energies that God gave us in this earth. He voluntarily assumed human form with human weaknesses not because He had to, but so that He could demonstrate by example how we can rise above hungers, cruelties, and all of the contesting energies that can be harnessed to shape us.

In my white paper for this month, Ann Ree wrote,

By thoughts on cosmic force as a major motivator in each life and in the next life, he sees his sojourn on earth as a place to master cosmic force as a master mind-craftsman utilizing the complex intricacies of life. He sees that God is not a God of force, yet gives to man cosmic forces to master.

Dedication 119

We so unaware of these forces and think of everything personally that we sometimes react with feelings of “bad luck” or “I’m so terrible” rather than looking upon initiation as the raw material for channeling the forces we unknowingly fall victim to.

Jesus was unwavering in his meeting the discordant forces in the world. His strength can be ours if we enter into initiation without railing against the contesting forces.

One never retires from the spiritual life if he has moved with the holy acceptance of the contesting trials. As he matures in knowledge and years, he becomes a solace and a bulwark to those who crave to touch the holy proximity of an unwavering spiritual person.

Ann Ree Colton

Jesus was a master over the whole cosmos. I love this description of a vision of Jesus by Yogananda on December 27, 1943:

In spite of writing on my book, I went to meditate. I thought I would never come out of ecstasy. Our meditation day was eight hours long. Jesus came three times, once as a child in the crib of light, and as a young man, and twice as He looked before crucifixion. In His eyes trembled the command of the Universe.

While all of us have times when we have to put the microscope on particulars, it can be done with losing sight of the importance of our little lives in God’s grand plan. Ann Ree said that each person is as essential to His Plan as the mightiest star. Recognizing this is not a cause for ego inflation, but a cause for taking our responsibility seriously and giving our whole effort as if the whole world depended upon us.

For each thing mastered in this stage of our earthly sojourn, there await millions beyond that. The prophet Isaiah said,

For since the beginning of the world men have not heard, nor perceived by the ear, neither hath the eye seen, O God, beside thee, what he hath prepared for him that waiteth for him.

Isa 64:4

A Philosophical Attitude

This subject came during a recent time when I was very resentful of the cruelties I saw in the world: people attacking what is holy and good, the distortion of truth for selfish ends. It especially gets my goat when I see the many suffer because of the thoughtlessness of a few. Oftentimes evil men exploit the same freedoms we allow for the benefit of all. They represent the tares among the wheat. But there is a greater Justice that allows evil to temporarily exist in service to a greater cleansing to prepare for the good. Jesus explained this in His parable about the tares and the wheat,

But while men slept, his enemy came and sowed tares among the wheat, and went his way.
But when the blade was sprung up, and brought forth fruit, then appeared the tares also.
So the servants of the householder came and said unto him, Sir, didst not thou sow good seed in thy field? from whence then hath it tares?
He said unto them, An enemy hath done this. The servants said unto him, Wilt thou then that we go and gather them up?
But he said, Nay; lest while ye gather up the tares, ye root up also the wheat with them.
Let both grow together until the harvest: and in the time of harvest I will say to the reapers, Gather ye together first the tares, and bind them in bundles to burn them: but gather the wheat into my barn.

My Scorpio rising at times wants to take justice into my own hands and “force” people to see the truth or do what is right, or at least to get a bit of unholy “that ought to teach them” revenge. Our Scorpio, Jonathan, struggled with this too. Ann Ree received these words from one of the White Brothers for Jonathan,

You are in need of a more philosophical attitude, which will give you acceptance of things as they are - and more flexibility. Inasmuch as you are going to open wider portals concerning religion, you must open the vein of philosophy, that you may have an overlook into the human affairs of men.

Ann Ree also had a time of where she needed to learn acceptance and look past some immediate circumstances toward understanding why things are the way they are. In Prophet for the Archangels, she wrote,

One day when I was depressed and despondent due to my dying to the old way, the Mother of Jesus appeared to me in a vision. She was surrounded by a blue medallion, and gave off an inner light similar to the angels. In her left arm she held her Babe, and raised her right hand in a blessing, saying to me, “Fret not thyself because of evildoers.” After this blessing from Mary, I experienced a renewal, a rejuvenation, and accepted the new way before me.

Philosophy, despite its somewhat dusty reputation, is actually essential to working with poise in this world of conflict, contradictions, and frustrations. On the outside wall at the Foundation, Ann Ree had these words placed: Philosophy, Science, Religion, and the Creative Arts. We could call these the Niscience quadrivium, or meeting of four roads, in answer to the Renaissance Quadrivium of Arithmetic, Geometry, Astronomy, and Music, which was the foundation of universities at the time.
Gene Cosgrove, who Ann Ree described as an advanced and selfless teacher, wrote in his book The Science of the Initiates

In our time, the student possesses four avenues to truth - Religion, Philosophy, Art and Science. In the days when the institution of “The Mysteries” was still before the eyes of men, these four ways converged at the center and constituted a wholeness of experimental values.

In general use, we find phrases about being philosophical about misfortune and loss, or being philosophical about the general ignorance in the world. Indeed in all disappointments and disillusionments, is a lesson in a greater plan operating behind our short-sighted desires, if only we could open our eyes to it.
Many of the great Masters had lives as philosophers in Greece. Their teachings, though far in advance of the general state of humanity, were yet part of a time when philosophy breathed with our breath and pulsed with our blood. People were more powerless then, especially regarding nature, and had to make sense of fate and the bewildering contradictions in nature. Through Nature they had an intuition of a higher Rationale behind apparent senselessness.
Today we have to deal less with the storms of the natural world, but like Peter, more with the storms of the astral sea acting on our own human nature. To walk upon these waters, Ann Ree counsels us in her excellent article, “A True Philosopher”,

To become a true philosopher one should live with men through the human side of wisdom; he should learn to blend with the human side of action. The philosopher comes to understand the thought process of the savage and the thought process of the Great in Heaven. The philosopher caters to babes and he caters to giants.
He who becomes a philosopher has reached the time in which he stands tall in spirit and in earth. He stands not above men as knowing more, but he stands with men as knowing their thoughts, their feelings, and the result of their feelings. He constructively builds within himself the realization that that which lives in the small or that which lives in the great has its interpretation through soul-value alone.

Value is closely related to feeling, preference, desire. It motivates thought. We are motivated to think about the things that are of interest or fascination to us. Ann Ree said that at the root of every thought is a feeling and somewhat humorously compared it to the Biblical story in Genesis: Eve eats the apple, then Adam follows.

If I may compare feeling to the motor of a car and thought to the steering wheel, I think you’ll get the idea. Without a steering wheel a car is as likely to take us into a ditch as it is to a garden. But without the engine it doesn’t matter how we turn the steering wheel, we get nowhere.
In my white paper material for this month Ann Ree wrote,

Thought is intricately interrelated to emotion. Emotion sustains all thinking. Were it not for emotion, thought would become fixed, static, and dead.

A philosopher seeks to understand the totality of how we learn and ascertain truth, which means the intelligent combined use of feeling and thought. Continuing my car analogy, the car needs a third thing: an intelligent driver who operates both the gas pedal and the steering wheel. This would be the Christ Mind. Philosophers have united in varying degrees with the Christ, but it wasn’t until Jesus that the Christ centered itself in the core of the earth and became accessible to whoever will enter into spiritual disciplines.
Ann Ree continues in her excellent article,

The philosopher commands his instinctual nature and learns to value the intuitive arts ... The intuitive mind is superior to the critical mind ... In the instinctual nature, man feels without thinking.

A philosopher must penetrate the intuition of others and concern himself less with battling the contrary thoughts in men’s minds. The Tibetan, through Alice Bailey, was expounding on the way mediation works and quoted these lines from a poet,

I and my kind do not convince by argument, we convince by our presence.

Poems, as do dreams and myths, draw upon images that directly touch deeper layers of the psyche. This is quite different from a seeking to battle the contrary views of an intellect. Continuing with another aspect of philosophy, Ann Ree wrote,

Men of true philosophy gather not to enter into controversies or dissensions. The true philosopher consorts not with those who argue.

Jesus spoke of the true war for truth when He said,

Resist not evil.

He did not mean to let evil have its way. He was speaking of how you can work not so much by angry contrariness, but by having an overarching view of the conscience of evil men and a cognizance of the Good Law of God and His Plan.
I had a dream where I saw a red river flowing under a bridge. The red, I thought in the dream, was due to blood from a war. In the middle of the river was a little rock which caused some of the water to flow in the opposite direction. Ann Ree interpreted the dream and explained that I lived during a time of war which caused rivers of blood. The little rock was showing me that even a little peace and good can change the currents of evil.

Saint Paul also writes about how to battle evil,

Recompense to no man evil for evil. Provide things honest in the sight of all men. If it be possible, as much as lieth in you, live peaceably with all men. Dearly beloved, avenge not yourselves, but rather give place unto wrath: for it is written, Vengeance is mine; I will repay, saith the Lord.

Descent at Christmas and Ascent at Easter

Descent at Christmas and Ascent at Easter

I dedicate my talk to these words of Jesus

For I came down from heaven, not to do mine own will, but the will of him that sent me.

 And this is the Father's will which hath sent me, that of all which he hath given me I should lose nothing, but should raise it up again at the last day.

Christmas is a yin time where Jesus descended into this heavy earth in the spirit of sacrifice and compassion, to teach the unhearing, serve the unwilling, and heal the ungrateful. His incarnation was a downpouring from heaven.

Easter is a yang ascending time where we can reap, if we will, an ascent of consciousness into the Christ mind. It is where Jesus's passion becomes the passing.

These two actions, the ascending and descending are what we use incessantly. They are, as it were, the mother and father of our evolvement.

A mother weaves a body out of her own body and provides a vehicle for an incarnating soul. The Mother of the World knows the harshness of this world, which is her womb, and softens it's blows to the young in experience or evolvement. And we are all young and awkward in any new endeavor and will be as long as there are new things to learn (which, it seems, will be approximately forever.)

An ideal father teaches his child to face adversity as a necessity in this world. Our consciousness cannot be gained without resistance. Much as muscle does not develop without opposition, so does consciousness in this eternity system not come without the opposition of the physical world. This, we’re told, until we are earth karma free.

I had a repeating dream as a child where I was moving through space and did not appear to have a body. Large bits of matter began to appear and grow. It was accompanied by a feeling of fear and anxiety. At a dear child round table, which was always presided over by Jonathan, I shared this when Ann Ree talk to us about dreams. I must have been around age twelve. These kinds of dreams, I later came to learn, often accompany or precede puberty.

Ann Ree commented with a very intent look on her face, "you must have a body. Every thing needs a body." It was my first philosophical exposure to why we have to live on earth, even though heaven is so much better; why we even have such a dense physical world, and why there was a fall from Eden at all.

There was no act of love greater than that of Jesus to descend from heaven to this world, and walk towards His crucifixion. Ann Ree once said, "think of what it must have been like for Jesus to come from the glories of heaven to this dense world."

Even as He was stretched upon a cross suspended between life and death, heaven and earth, so on a smaller scale are we stretched between an earthly life, its infatuations and challenges, and our spiritual intuitions, longings and ideals.

In Ann Ree’s prose/poem “The Song of his Passion” she wrote,

In small portions or fragments men will remember; they will work and strive. They will recall the time of Golgotha; and they will know it is their own body pictured upon the cross; and they will know that they too shall arise, even as the Lord did arise.

Some physical struggle is self made and unnecessary. Other physical struggle is part of our cosmic schooling.

Alice Bailey wrote a very interesting passage on a downward energy that comes from surrounding galaxies and falls into our eternity system.

These descending energies ... as they descend, they produce stimulation. As they ascend, they produce transmutation and abstraction, and the one effect is as unalterable as the other ...

Upon this dual process of descent and ascension the whole cyclic panorama of manifestation rests ...

There is a negative downward movement, where we become more enmeshed in maya. But there is a positive downward movement, where spiritual ideas are stepped down to what we can comprehend, and where spiritual beings slow down their vibration and descend into the world. These are spiritual downpourings. In dreams, rain denotes a release of tension between heaven and earth. Sometimes we dream of lightning, which by its suddenness, denotes some very electric resolution of tension.

The first beatitude reads,

Blessed are the poor in spirit: for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.

Matthew 5:3

One of its deep meanings is that we are blessed when we descend into the physical world to engage in our schooling to produce a greater consciousness, and also lift our fellow human beings. In its highest expression this is the bodhisattva vow.

Every thing God gave us in this earth, from mineral, to plant, to animal, to man, from low to high, must be viewed with reverence and gratitude, but not as anything to possess - only as something on loan to us and a temporary prop, much like a text book for a course, or a notebook and pencil for writing a chapter in a book.

Jesus, even though coming down from heaven, and knowing that earth would pass away, had reverence for this earth. Ann Ree writes,

The childhood of Jesus reveals a love of the earth, the mountains, the vineyards, the trees, the waters, the flowers, the grains. His feet on the earth were not as others in the world. His spirit was master over the land, the air, the water, the fire.

So much of our unhappiness comes from attachment to things meant to be temporary. So much of what is thought of as happiness is excitement or elation about things that are meant to be supports. Spiritual downpourings bring stimulation and change, as Alice Bailey noted. At first, until assimilated and channeled, this can bring more titillation and excitement than spiritual works. Many have fallen after receiving a token of grace if they misuse it. Much as fertilizer makes both weeds and flowers grow, so does a spiritual downpouring contain a test that we discriminately choose the energies quickened. Ann Ree, in her Easter talk said,

Christ Spirit came into our being and made us restless, more restless than we had ever been. Out of complacency and a drugged sleep we came into restlessness,

We might call restlessness the low side of stimulation.

She then spoke of satisfaction versus contentment.

Contentment is a spiritual, divine attribute. But satisfaction is something coming out of complacency and procrastination. We cannot be satisfied when we once see the diamond chalice in our hearts. We thirst for God with a total and complete thirst.

With a perfect balance of the physical and spiritual, we fulfill our paths as karma yogis. St. Paul, speaking of the resurrection said,

It is sown a natural body; it is raised a spiritual body...

Howbeit that was not first which is spiritual, but that which is natural; and afterward that which is spiritual.

The first man is of the earth, earthy: the second man is the Lord from heaven.

As is the earthy, such are they also that are earthy: and as is the heavenly, such are they also that are heavenly.

And as we have borne the image of the earthy, we shall also bear the image of the heavenly.

I am the Door

The title is from these familiar words of Jesus,

I am the door: by me if any man enter in, he shall be saved, and shall go in and out, and find pasture.

John 10:9

My subject came from the following experience a few weeks ago.  I awoke in the middle of the night, and while trying to get back to sleep, was startled by three or four loud knocks on my bedroom door, which was ajar.

After reassuring myself that there was no intruder I naturally had to ponder what the significance was.  In Watch Your Dreams, there is no reference to a door knock, but there is one for door chimes:

Be prepared to meet the special guest, or the Christ.  In the negative, be prepared for a message of death.

I think I prefer the first meaning.  We'll see ...

A door is an apt symbolism for an entry or passage to another psychological living space.  If we dream of a door to an unknown room in our house, which is not too uncommon in dreams I have heard from others, it means to discover new levels of the mind.  Ann Ree mentions several virtues and practices as being a door to greater things.

Jesus said,

In my Father's house are many mansions: if it were not so, I would have told you. I go to prepare a place for you.

John 14:2

Imagine being in a mansion with many rooms and many doors to those rooms.  Now imagine a person never opening the doors, even out of curiosity.  Or imagine him entering another room half-heartedly, looking briefly, and returning to his familiar room.  As ridiculous as it sounds, that is, in fact, the way many of us are about life.  There are plenty of doors to new experiences, but we never make the effort to seriously explore them.  We keep the doors shut.

Yogananda wrote of the approach of his Master to the spiritual life and the physical life:

Master found no insuperable obstacle to the mergence of human and Divine.  No such barrier exists, I came to understand, save in man's spiritual unadventurousness.

Autobiography of a Yogi 121

I can only conclude that the narrow acceptance and application of spiritual truths in the world likewise come from a lack of spiritual adventurousness.  The majority of persons in the world stay in narrow orbits because of doubt and inertia.  Those who make their mark on the world are driven by some special quality that stems from a divine dissatisfaction with appearances.

Imagine being told a great treasure is behind one of the doors before us.  If we truly believed a treasure lies somewhere behind, we would enter each room and make a thorough search inside cabinet drawers, under piles of clothing, behind mirrors - in every conceivable and inconceivable place.

Our spiritual practices and our initiations on the path are the doors.  And grace is the treasure.  Ann Ree writes,

There is a door to the Path where stands the Lord, but he who is fantasized in the thickets of ignorance knows not this passage-way, neither can he find it.  His intoxication of self and self-desiring extends his time, or units of measure, and as a wastrel he wanders, seeing not the Path or the Door or the Way.

The treasures in life are often hidden in plain sight.  They are behind doors we see but leave shut.  Even though the prophets foretold of Jesus and how to prepare for Him, there were those who had a fixed idea of what the Messiah would be, what He would look like, and what He would say.

Is not this the carpenter's son? is not his mother called Mary? and his brethren, James, and Joses, and Simon, and Judas?

And his sisters, are they not all with us? Whence then hath this man all these things?

And they were offended in him. But Jesus said unto them, A prophet is not without honour, save in his own country, and in his own house.

Matthew 13:55-57

I recently visited a church so that I could be part of the group energy of other worshippers on Sunday.  While I was glad that there were seekers who had any belief at all, and glad to share in their devotion, I was also somewhat saddened by what a narrow box the church had put the greater teachings of Jesus in.  Jesus is knocking on the doors of churches, but many do not let Him fully in.

Some initiatory doors need a key to be opened.  This protects the spiritual aspirant from prematurely entering into trials he is not yet prepared for.  But the time comes when he is given a key.  In spite of prevailing spiritual apathies, I hope the time is at hand when the truths brought by Jesus will be opened in their entirety.

I close with these words of one of Ann Ree’s mantrams.

My soul is a household awaiting its master.  My soul is a threshold inviting the stranger … My soul is a door awaiting the key.

The Need, The Call, The Activity

These and, after the pause, the remaining four words, Love, Light, Word, Power, are from Ann Ree’s mantram, Mighty is the Love.  Being part of a perfectly worded mantram, I thought, they should have particularly deep meaning.  Indeed, they seem to form a trinity of initiation.

Some things we do are out of necessity.  They simply have to be done.  We find ourselves in circumstances where the consequences would be dire if we didn’t find a way to meet the Need.  The consequences may be the loss of health, possessions, or some other thing or person dear to us.  Sometimes a thing fighting against our wants is exactly what we need to shape our stubborn, resisting will into something more within God’s Will and Need.

There is also a call, the magnetic attracting principle.  Something saying, “Come to me.”  We are not dragged helplessly against our will, but find something inside that desires a good thing very strongly.

Finally, there is the child of these two: the activity.  The Need and the Call together produce most, if not all, of creation, which is the joyous reward of sweat, tears, and love.

Although the Need, in the sense of something inescapable like karma or fate, is often personified in mythology as feminine (for example, the Roman Necessitas or the Greek Ananke), I am talking about something more akin to Destiny and Purpose, hence the electric, prodding Father Principle.

I’ll start with one need we all have: to earn a livelihood.  On any day, regardless of whether we would love going into work, or whether we wouldn’t, it is an ever present need.  This also applies to a mother working in the home.  We have to establish constancy even when the tide of desire is low.  I don’t remember where I heard this, but the story was told that the Master would not appear to Ann Ree until she had cleaned the floor and met her physical responsibles of the day.

This can apply to our practices as well.  Some days meditation is a bliss experience, other days our mind is distracted by things of the world.  Regardless, we are taught that this is a spiritual need.  It is God’s need for us.  Really, we are taught to work not for pleasure principle rewards, but for accomplishing something good and useful in the world - a higher reward.  In one talk, Ann Ree talked about doing something each day she didn’t like - and then trying to like it.  In each struggle, evidently, there is a benefit so wonderful that we would be grateful for it if only we had the consciousness to see it.

Necessity is the yoke that binds us to our path of learning.  While inescapable it doesn’t have to be looked on as a burden.  Jesus said,

Come unto me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.

Take my yoke upon you, and learn of me; for I am meek and lowly in heart: and ye shall find rest unto your souls.

For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.

Matthew 11:28-30

All can be light when we have joy in our hearts.  Ann Ree wrote the following beautiful words in the Soul and the Ethic,

The soul is as a great sea with incoming and outgoing tides ...

One is inspired to do immortal things when he responds to the incoming soul tide.  He is renewed; his vision is illumined; he is stirred to create, to fulfill.

When the soul tide is low, one feels strangely desolate, forsaken; he often yields to delinquent ways.  When one is aware of the importance of the soul tides in his spiritual life, in selfless industry he utilizes the dry times, and thus prepares himself for the incoming tide of his soul.

Next, after the Need, we have the magnetic Call.  Even if we have a vocation that is a struggle, some speak of an avocation that is not a struggle against, but a struggless struggle of joy for the sake of something we love.  Vocation comes from the Latin Vocare, to call.  We speak of finding our calling.  While a calling can involve sweat and tears at times, behind it is always an inner desire.  We just want to do it.  We will pay any price to get it.  This beautiful parable of Jesus describes it absolutely perfectly:

Again, the kingdom of heaven is like unto a merchant man, seeking goodly pearls:

Who, when he had found one pearl of great price, went and sold all that he had, and bought it.

Matthew 13:45-46

In a dream, when we are in a store, Ann Ree says we are learning the value of things, what they cost, and eventually, when we have a true sense of values to sell all for the pearl of great price.

There is a particularly poetic dream that my mother had about a call.

My son was inside a (strange) building alone and calling me.  I ran first up one stairway and then another, not able to locate him.  He calls and calls.  I finally find him.

Ann Ree’s interpretation:

You are relating yourself to your son’s true soul correlating to you.

Jesus used the calling to attract His disciples.  Another example of a calling is that of the mystic Jacob Boehme.  He was working in his master's shoe-shop when he was approached by a stranger about the price of a certain pair of shoes. The stranger seemed poor and was dressed as a peasant, but he had a radiating glow about him and "great eyes which sparkled and seemed filled with divine light." The master of the shop was out and the boy trembled to name any price. The stranger pressed him for a price and Jacob named a very large amount. Surprisingly the man immediately paid him and took the shoes. When a short way down the street the stranger turned and cried, "Jacob, Jacob, come forth!" Frightened and astonished Jacob ran out of the store and to the stranger. The mysterious man took him by the right hand and prophesied: "Jacob, thou art little, but shalt be great, and become another Man, such a one as at whom the world shall wonder. Therefore be pious, fear God, and reverence His Word. Read diligently the Holy Scriptures, wherein you have Comfort and Instruction. For thou must endure Misery and Poverty, and suffer persecution, but be courageous and persevere, for God loves, and is gracious to thee."

The paths many of us found to Ann Ree seem very much to be from a call that our souls answered.

Finally, we come to the third element of our trinity, organized activity.  I’m told by many couples who have a child that the child becomes the organizing principle behind most, if not all, their activity.  Vacations are made when the child is free from school for the summer.  Shifts are traded when he is very young.  Moves often have to consider the child’s stable environment at school.  Savings are planned for his college.  Much as the Christ Mind becomes the intelligent organizer for our thoughts, so do Father Need and Mother Call produce a lasting understanding.  I think of the Joseph and Mary organizing their activities around Jesus, who brought the Christ Mind closer to men.  The third of any trinity is some aspect of the Christ Intelligent Activity.  There is no other need for initiation than to produce a certain kind of consciousness and creation.  Our lives then become purposeful and dedicated toward the fulfillment of a greater Plan.

If we are resisting and resenting our troubles, we are not stopping to ask, “What is God’s Need?  What is my true Calling?  What consciousness am I supposed to gain so that I can produce creation or dramatic activity testifying to the Good?”  Failing to learn sidelines us and is a great time waster.  How often have we heard Ann Ree telling us to step into our troubles?

Ann Ree wrote in The Third Music,

Gurus say, “Go into Nirvana and disappear.”  Jesus says, “Go into your troubles and lift the world.”

As Niscienes, knowing ones, we are given the priceless instruction to break open the genie of understanding hidden in the confining bottle of our resistances.  This is the Christ Way for us.