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.

Initiation

Easter 2008
Illumination is never without trial and initiation at some point.  Some people claim that we can grow through positive experiences and don't have to always learn through trial and error.  They talk of experiences of just knowing, of inspirations derived from others examples, or the darshan of merely seeing the guru.  This may well be so, though I wonder what past life initiations might have prepared such instantaneous changes.

Most new growth, where we initiate something unfamiliar or contrary to our present nature requires clearing out old stopgap patterns.  Erasing old samskaras so that we can fully internalize new truths is most often a wrenching experience.

In Light on the Path, which according to Madam Blavatsky came from the invisible inspiration of Master Hilarion, Mabel Collins likened a samskara to a weed hidden in the heart.  She wrote,

It lives fruitfully in the heart of the devoted disciple as well as in the heart of the man of desire.  Only the strong can kill it out.  The weak must wait for its growth, its fruition, its death.  And it is a plant that lives and increases throughout the ages.  It flowers when the man has accumulated unto himself innumerable existences.  He who will enter upon the path of power must tear this thing out of his heart.  And then the heart will bleed, and the whole life of the man seems to be utterly dissolved.  This ordeal must be endured; it may come at the first step of the perilous ladder which leads to the path of life: it may not come until the last.

There are key times when we are ready to endure and master initiatory trials.  Ann Ree writes in Dedication 61

Initiation is always the result of the soul's command.

If one is in a state of dying to the self, he is preparing for a rise through initiation when he determines to overcome.  The words “overcoming” and “initiation” are twin friends in the spiritual life.

The disciple may be initiated through sickness, heartbreak, loss, humiliation.  When he is aware that initiation is occurring, this produces a grace plus spiritual power.

Ann Ree called all Niscienes initiates.  We have chosen the hard way because our souls are prompting us to open greater knowing and understanding beyond the opinions of men and floating sentiments in the astral world that touch mass attitudes.

The hard way is not required of those who are not ready or those who are unwilling.  While it sometimes may seem that the unwilling are given, unasked, more than they can bear, Ann Ree assures us that this is never the case.  In every case, there is an inner agreement with the soul to be initiated; and in every case there is a way, often hidden to casual gaze, to meet and master that initiation - if only the initiate will have faith, keep hope, and stretch himself to grab the prize of overcoming.  Ann Ree writes,

Major initiations occur when there is ripeness in evolvement – when one is ready to meet his soul's need and step beyond the familiar orbit.

One can meet the challenger and the challenge better when he accepts the fact that he is being initiated – that he is required to die to old conditions and be born to the new.

Rather than railing against misfortune, one must accept it as the stormy rain before Spring blossom.  If we seek blame and escape, rather than learning, we can literally refuse an initiation by running away from its challenge in search of softer comforts.  But this misses the opportunity prepared for the initiate to ride the initiation to greater joys.  Ann Ree writes,

A challenge is an accompanying syndrome associated with all initiations.  There may be thousands of challenges in one major initiation.

One has the choice to refuse or accept a challenge.  His refusal to accept a challenge delays the spiritual results to be gained through initiation.

While it is sad when one fails an initiation, it is even sadder to not try at all and run from it.  The fact is that even failing an initiation can still teach us if we have tried to some degree and are willing to accept the humiliation of having to re-trace our steps.  In the next time of ripeness, with our memory of the consequences of failure, we can master the initiation more quickly than we could have the first time.  Thus, nothing is wasted in initiation.

When I was about 12 years old, Ann Ree interpreted a freshet I drew.  The freshet had five rectangular shapes.  She said, “You will be initiated by the five senses.”  This has proved to be all too true.  In battles between my higher desires and desires driven ultimately by the senses, I have made wrong choices.  Naturally, I made all kinds of rationalizations and came up with clever but dishonest reasons why I should have made these choices.  My failures have taught me to not be too harsh in judging others.

I think of our poor but dear Jonathan who failed his last great initiation.  It was a lost opportunity for all of us, and quite possibly a lost opportunity for a world that was in ripeness for Niscience.  But it was  not without lessons learned for many of us.  And who knows when the next cycle of readiness may be or how it may appear.  Maybe we are close to it right now and can't see it.

There is another kind of failure, too.  There is a failure according to the standards of the world, and quite possibly to our own standards, which is nevertheless a victory as judged by God.  As an example, I am thinking of Edgar Cayce, who with the exception of a brief period of prosperity, lived in near abject poverty.  His grand plans for a spiritual university, and a hospital with a staff who could administer the treatments he saw in trance, all crashed and burned.  Fair weather friends deserted him when he needed them most.  During a period of despair, he and his family drafted a question to be asked of the Source as to why they had failed and were now living so miserably.  The answer was startling.  The Source answered while Cayce was in trance, “You have succeeded beyond all measure.”  I don't know if they knew how that was so.  But the 10,000 readings survived, the thousands of people he helped did their work beyond the pale of history's record, and the truths he brought subtly permeated new age literature.

Jesus described this process of success through apparent failure in his parable of the seed.

Verily, verily, I say unto you, Except a kernel of wheat fall into the ground and die, it abideth alone: but if it die, it bringeth forth much fruit. (John 12:24)

Truths have to be ingested after evil contesting has spent its energy, much as Jesus's body and blood  diffused into the earth after His apparent defeat by death.  Our dear Ann Ree said,

A prophet must die to live.

Also, if evil is immediately cut short by Good, we would not see the former's sad fruits in contrast to the joyful fruits of goodness.  It is almost as if God is drawing a painting like Rembrandt's where the dark background makes the brightness in the foreground all the more stunning and beautiful.

David said this very poetically in Psalm 139:11-12

If I say, Surely the darkness shall cover me; even the night shall be light about me.

Yea, the darkness hideth not from thee; but the night shineth as the day: the darkness and the light are both alike to thee.

From a purely technical standpoint, contestings preserve quality and are accompanied by a durable strength as to what one has gained.

Ann Ree again writes,

From contesting trials, quality is preserved; the disciple is assured of continued integrity and ethic in his serving.  Through the contesting trials, the disciple's flexibilities enable him to receive, from time to time, a greater proportionment of spiritual helps.

There are classic stages of initiation.  After the enchantment of meeting a teacher, new friends, a new environment, a position of authority, honor or any wonderful thing, latent samskaras are given opportunity for expression.  Ann Ree writes,

Regardless of evolvement or of spiritual prominence, all must undergo the contesting trials accompanying the spiritual life.  The first contesting trials come from persons and conditions in the world.  They next come when one seeks to die to the intemperate habits despoiling the character and temperament ... The most profound contesting trials come when one has through covenant and consecration, dedicated to serve God and only God.  These trials are sent from the subtle or psychic planes and are automatically set into action when the disciple makes his covenant or vow to live a true spiritual life.

As a rule we all have noble aspirations adulterated with ancient desires and drives.  We both want and reject spiritual disciplines at the same time.  Initiation begins first by being purified.  The purifying trails are to determine the strength and use of one's will, for if one is to be an interpreter for Heaven his will must be a keen and undefiled scimitar for God.

When one has honed his will, others can lean on him in times of need.  Without the strength of purifying trials, we could not step into the chaos of another's challenges and not be infected by the same psychic conditions.  There a side of all persons that craves to be near someone who is strong in virtue willing and who has proven his strength in trials.

We were fortunate to have had a teacher like Ann Ree, who as a Will Initiate, could stand as a steadying influence when we were caught up in initiation.  It is sad that so many persons have forgotten the priceless Niscience instruction to the point that they don't even realize that they are being initiated.

I pray that those of us who have not lost our Niscience knowing may be victorious over our trials and therefore able to pass Niscience instruction on with some authority.

Despite failures here and there, those who have kept their Niscience knowing are truly new creatures.  I close with these words of St. Paul,

Therefore if any man be in Christ, he is a new creature: old things are passed away; behold, all things are become new.

Faith and Wholeness

I dedicate my talk to these words of Jesus to Thomas after he felt the nail holes of the resurrected Jesus and believed:

Then Jesus told him, "Because you have seen me, you have believed; blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed." John 20:29

Ann Ree said that Thomas is the prototype for the scientific seeker.  Scientific seekers follow the chain of cause and effect, step by step, and are less likely to be the victims of sentimental leaps into the fantasy desires which are so destructive and so common in the world today.  When not wedded to materiality, science becomes spiritual science.

Making a leap of another kind, though, is what we have to do sometimes to move into the greater truths beyond the pale of specialized knowledge.  A leap of faith is different than a leap tinged with the expectation of gaining without effort, a desire for lower pleasures, or motivated by glamor expectations.  Intuition can be honed into a reliable instrument if we are receptive to spiritual sources and can subjugate the claiming voices of the world and of the senses.

We all wish for a vision that is more than the certainty of what is a few steps in front of us, because that certainty is weakness and a false ease.  Ann Ree writes,

The moral strength in a person comes from absolute faith in God.  When the diadem of one’s soul-light has been quickened, this becomes a sanctuary finer than any cathedral in the world.

An honest spiritual seeker will follow his intuition, but also prove it to himself.  Ann Ree was called a stubborn receiver because she refused to be enticed by glamor interpretations of what she received.  A spiritual scientist and craftsman will lay the bricks for a road back across chasm over which he has leapt.  The road is a step by step path for the feet of those would follow his victory.  This is what our beloved Ann Ree did and we are the end beneficiaries of her labors.  That road may still be hard, but seekers who walk the path will be saved from a far more severe path through the astral chasms.

The main temptation and danger with a little bit of knowledge is that we become unaware of its limits or place too much importance on it to the exclusion of its place in the whole.  Without a sense of the Plan and the Ethic, we go astray with even the truest specialized knowledge.

One example of this that comes to mind is in medical science.  We are all the beneficiaries of medical science, so my criticism is tempered with full awareness of how much misery it has eased in the world and how many lives it has saved.  Doctors are finding that the organs of the body are interdependent, full of feedback loops and adaptations that respond to every intervention.  Sometimes a little bit of medical knowledge has proven to be dangerous in that treating a symptom creates problems worse than the supposed cure.  Or sometimes a treatment is beneficial for some patients, but harmful for other individuals with more complex issues.  A wise doctor knows his limits and asks that God lend His hand.

Perhaps the danger of partial knowledge is an aspect of the mystery described in Genesis:

And the LORD God planted a garden eastward in Eden; and there he put the man whom he had formed. And out of the ground made the LORD God to grow every tree that is pleasant to the sight, and good for food; the tree of life also in the midst of the garden, and the tree of knowledge of good and evil ... And the LORD God commanded the man, saying, Of every tree of the garden thou mayest freely eat: But of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, thou shalt not eat of it: for in the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die.  (Gen 2:8-17)

One might find a parallel where the tree of life represents our intuition and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil represents a step into duality, shape, form, variety, and particulars.  Eden may have been our origin, but Ann Ree seemed to think the fall was necessary to gain a few things through experience.  Maya may be temporary, but in our journey we make the circle from naive wholeness to a tangled jungle of materiality, to tremendous variety and creation, and finally back to our origins - but this time with Niscience or knowing.

The best path to understanding the whole is to go back to the Source, which is God.  The chief quality to use for this is faith, and the chief faculty is love.  Without love, knowledge becomes as sounding brass or tinkling cymbals.  With sure insight Saint Paul wrote,

Charity (caritas, love) never faileth: but whether there be prophecies, they shall fail; whether there be tongues, they shall cease; whether there be knowledge, it shall vanish away. For we know in part, and we prophesy in part. But when that which is perfect is come, then that which is in part shall be done away. (1Co 13:8-10)

That which is perfect is the eternal circle or egg out which spins the specialized cells or compartments of life.

The world today is under a heavy oppressive fog of materiality, atheism, cynicism, and skepticism.  Even religions are bowing to the materialistic mindset, psychologizing the miracles of the saints and of Jesus, boxing His words into narrow, believable, acceptable little compartments.

In the Greek myth of the Odyssey, Jason had to navigate between Scylla and Charybdis, two sea monsters on opposite sides of the strait of Messina.  Scylla had six heads, and Charybdis had a single gaping mouth that sucked in huge quantities of water and created whirlpools.  What an image for intellectual hubris and craving astral fantasy!

Opposite the Scylla of materialistic science and secularized religions, is the Charybdis of religions wedded to superstition and fetishes.  It seems for some there is nothing like a comforting fetish to keep them comfortable in the same enclosure year after year.

Niscience is a total wonder to me.  I am amazed at how spiritually bold it is, and yet how practical it is too, honoring our stations of responsibility in life.

Ann Ree saw that the archetype of Niscience was timed to the scientific age that men may blend the noble objective and impartial ideals of science with the anticipatory, intuitive, and forerunning knowledge to be gained from faith.

When she was receiving the archetype of Niscience, the world’s painful transition from the limiting aspects of materialistic science into a science of the soul was opened to her.

At Shadelands I spent many hours of research into the science of the soul ... 

I saw the religions of the world and their limitations.  I saw that men in the Western world were moving toward a psychological theme in their religions - a theme which would suffocate the mystical side of their faith ...

In these revelatory moments I was shown that the light of men’s souls is in danger of being obscured by the overwhelming agnostic and materialistic theme in the world.  The spiritual life is an enigma to the materialistic mind.  The materialistic person relies upon factual proof rather than spiritual cause ...

Religions stood as lambs being led to the slaughter; or like trees being slowly stripped of their bark.  The sap of the trees was flowing out of the wounds, and the roots of the trees were in danger of perishing.

I knew that religions had invited these challenges because they had failed to keep alive the holy spirit within the Gospels ...

I imagine that most true Niscienes are somewhat bewildered in these times, feeling that they have no real spiritual home.  Few formal traditional worships totally satisfy the longings of our souls, and few psychological or new age teachings seem shaped by actual spiritual experience grounded in first principles.

People with faith have a rudder and inner certainty even in the midst of initiation and outer uncertainty.  People without faith place their desire for security and certainty in numerous stopgap measures: it may be persons, religious dogmas, scientific dogma, institutions, jobs, money, etc.  Even Ann Ree went through a phase where outer comforts and certainties seemed necessary.  Writing of her human need for certain relationships, she said

Even though I would have humanly desired to sustain the relationships, such persons who put a stumbling block between me and my spiritual life were removed through uncontrollable circumstances.  This I have counted as grace.

Writing of her need for a spiritual home, she said of her visits to the Santa Barbara Mission:

In Santa Barbara, California, I often visited the Mission during the late afternoon mass.  I found a sanctity in the prayers of those who had surrendered themselves to their beliefs; however, I knew that I could never affiliate myself with crystallized formulas.  During this time there were occasions when I heard inwardly a chorus of voices saying, ‘Come back to the Church.  Come back to the church.’

Jesus moved unshrinkingly to His Destiny even though some would say His life was filled with material uncertainty and danger.  Few disciples were willing to risk giving up family, friends, possessions, or other fetishes and follow Him.

And a certain scribe came, and said unto him, Master, I will follow thee whithersoever thou goest. And Jesus saith unto him, The foxes have holes, and the birds of the air have nests; but the Son of man hath not where to lay his head. And another of his disciples said unto him, Lord, suffer me first to go and bury my father. But Jesus said unto him, Follow me; and let the dead bury their dead. (Mat 8:19-22)

Material certainty leads to spiritual uncertainty.  The spiritual path is not for those who wish outer safety.  We are likewise asked to bury our dead ways and find our way back to the tree of Life.  I close with these words of Jesus,

It is the spirit that quickeneth; the flesh profiteth nothing: the words that I speak unto you, they are spirit, and they are life. (Joh 6:63)