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.