Ulises

Each religion has helped mankind. Paganism increased in man the light of beauty, the largeness and height of his life, his aim at a many-sided perfection; Christianity gave him some vision of divine love and charity; Buddhism has shown him a noble way to be wiser, gentler, purer, Judaism and Islam how to be religiously faithful in action and zealously devoted to God; Hinduism has opened to him the largest and profoundest spiritual possibilities. A great thing would be done if all these God-visions could embrace and cast themselves into each other; but intellectual dogma and cult egoism stand in the way. ~Sri Aurobindo(Essays in Philosophy and Yoga, p.211)

"consciousness might ultimately best be characterized as 'liminocentrically' structured - that is, structured like a series of chinese boxes, one within the other, with the innermost box indentical, paradoxically, to the outermost box." "If one is to believe what 'string theory' in physics has to say, extremely large distances in the physical world may be LITERALLY identical to (i.e. indistinguishable from) extremely small distances. Physical reality may thus exhibit a fractal identity at its extremities, and turn out to be a liminocentric structure." "Liminocentric structures also seem sometimes to manifest strange, paradoxical features - such as 'holographic' organization, in which the part appears to 'contain' the whole." ‎"The outer limit to this process is to bring 'everything' into attention, with nothing remaining in 'background awareness'. This would be commensurate to a realization of 'egolessness'..." In earlier articles we have also shown how liminocentricity is [1] utilized as an explanatory device in music theory; [2] used in Indian myth to help us 'pull ourselves up by our bootstraps', according to Mary Doniger O'Flaherty; [3] appears as a metaphor for 'God' in the work of Plotinus; and [4] operates as a principle of organization in the mandala in general, and in the figures of the Enneagram and Dzogchen mandalas in particular. We have also argued that participatory democracy is the form of SOCIAL organization that is closest to displaying a liminocentric structure." http://tap3x.net/EMBTI/j6structures.html

I was first taken back to the primordial beginning before creation and there experienced human evolution in the context of a larger cosmic agenda. Suddenly I was overwhelmed by the most extraordinary Love, a love unlike anything I had ever encountered before. It was a romantic love, cosmic in scope and intensity. As I stabilized under this amorous assault, I began to remember from deep within my story. An ancient love, a divine love of unbelievable proportions. I was a Cosmic Being being loved by another Cosmic Being. Though at one level I had never been separated from my Lover, at another level we had been separated for billions of years, and my return was rekindling our ancient love. The pieces were hard to catch. Creation seemed to be a reality that had come forth from the dynamic relation between two Cosmic Beings, which had themselves emerged from a more fundamental Primal Unity. One Being,who felt more like a He, had remained fully conscious outside of matter while the other had plunged Herself into the task of creating the material dimension, knowing in advance that She would lose Her self-awareness in this work and become unconscious of Her true reality for billions of years. She had voluntarily submitted to this long and painful exile in order to create the raw substance of physical life that would in time become transparent to divine intention as matter evolved into full self-awareness. This work now largely complete, the self-imposed exile was coming to an end, and the Lovers were being reunited at long last...." Dark Night, Early Dawn: Steps to A Deep Ecology of Mind, Christopher Bache

One of the pivotal discoveries that many people make in this work is the realization that these bliss-soaked, light-filled, God-intoxicated dimensions of being that initially appear to surround spacetime waiting for us to find them are relentlessly trying to penetrate spacetime. They are the matrix, the Cosmic Womb that has given birth to this realm, that holds it in existence moment by moment, and that is constantly working to saturate it in ever greater measure. When we first become conscious of these more refined realms, we may feel that we have been marooned in a harsh and barren world - cast out of the garden - but in time we discover that we are in fact emissaries and pioneers here. After the joy of reunion subsides, one sees more clearly that the task is not to escape but just the opposite, greater Presence. Our individual and collective goal is to draw the Divine Impulse ever more completely into physical incarnation. (...) To discover that the passion of God is to awaken ever more completely inside creation shatters all dualities and completely reframes the spiritual impulse. Where shall we "escape" to? Where can we be that God is not? The challenge is not to exchange earth for heaven, but to awaken more completely to the heaven that everywhere presses upon us. It may refresh us to feel the bliss of our deeper nature in the subtler planes of being, either in temporary ecstatic experiences or in the bardo recess between incarnations, but our true challenge is to transform our embodied existence in such a way that this bliss may become our continuous conscious experience. In this exercise, the conditions of spacetime are simply the weight upon the bar. Weight-lifters do not complain about the weight on the bar but use it to their advantage. Similarly, our task is to use the resistance of spacetime to accelerate the development of capacities that would emerge more slowly in the subtler planes of existence. Our challenge is to use this thick density that hides the truth of wholeness and interpenetration to become more conscious that we were before we incarnated (when we still inhabited those blissful planes), and in so doing serve both God's passion and our own evolution. "Dark Night, Early Dawn: Steps to a Deep Ecology of Mind", Christopher Bache

The Universe, Reincarnation, and the Transformation of Humanity: An Interview With Christopher Bache An Excerpt from Cosmic Conversations: Dialogues on the Nature of the Universe and the Search for Reality* Edited by Stephan Martin As an astronomer I'm used to thinking big, with big ideas about the universe and a big picture of our place in the cosmos, but my vision of the universe suddenly feels tiny once I start talking with Dr. Christopher Bache about what may really be going on. For more than three decades, Bache has investigated the nature of transpersonal reality on the largest scales and the relationship between the individual and that of the universal and the collective. Are we each separate individuals in a vast universe, or is there the universe itself a vast collective consciousness that weaves humanity and all of our experiences together into an inseparable whole? Does humanity have a cosmic role to play in the evolution of the cosmos? Philosophers and mystics have speculated on these ideas throughout history, but few have explored them on with the intensity, rigor, and insight as Bache. Dr. Christopher Bache has been professor of religious studies at Youngstown State University for more than three decades, where he teaches transpersonal studies, comparative spirituality, consciousness research, and Eastern religions. A pioneer in the study of consciousness, his first book, Lifecycles (Paragon House, 1990), is on reincarnation. His second, Dark Night, Early Dawn: Steps to a Deep Ecology of Mind (SUNY Press, 2000), focuses on the relationship of the individual to the collective from the perspective of non-ordinary states of consciousness. He is also an adjunct professor in the Philosophy, Cosmology, and Consciousness program at the California Institute of Integral Studies in San Francisco and was Director of Transformative Learning at the Institute of Noetic Sciences in Petaluma, California, for two years. The recipient of many awards for teaching, his latest book The Living Classroom (SUNY Press, 2008), explores the dynamics of collective consciousness in the classroom. Many of Dr. Bache's insights come from his personal experiences with sacred medicines throughout a 20-year period along with his current practice of Vajrayana Buddhism. His series of intensely transformative and evocative experiences are documented in his book Dark Night, Early Dawn, where he describes encounters with a spiritual reality that is remarkably similar to that described by the mystics of the world's spiritual traditions, as well as by other transpersonal psychologists such as Carl Jung, Ken Wilber, and Stanislav Grof. Stephan Martin: Could you share something that you've learned from your various experiences about the nature of the universe? Chris Bache: The primary thing I may have to offer this discussion is a perspective that comes from my work with psychedelics. Because it reflects my individual journey, it may be risky to extrapolate information from it for others, but I take comfort in the broad resonance between my experiences and the hundreds of experiences documented in Stan Grof's work. He opened the door and created the fundamental framework that I've built on. As I've grown older I've been able to look back on this 20-year period of engagement and get a better perspective on it. SM: What's coming through for you now as you look back on these experiences? CB: Well, for one thing, perhaps how stupid I was to push as far and as deep as I did, and how much I underestimated the depth of the journey and its cost. [laughs] However, I now appreciate better that each of our journeys into the center of life is a singular journey. At the center of the universe is an infinite consciousness with infinite potential so vast that no one can hold the whole of it. A million individual journeys into the center elicit a million different aspects of infinite consciousness. Anything I have to offer comes from intuitions that have been shaped by my experience of this domain, as well as the guidance that has been given to me along the way by the universe. SM: Can you say more about the guidance and the perspective that's developed for you based on these insights? CB: Where to start? One of the recurring themes for me has been the patterns of the soul's development. Imagine a spool of kite string that you're winding round and round. The soul-process of collecting and accumulating experience takes place over hundreds of thousands of years of evolution and reincarnation, and what's being wound around the spool toward the end is some of the most precious stuff in the universe -- human experience. It's very different, for example, than tree experience. As the soul winds more and more experience round itself, the system starts to glow until eventually it ignites. I think that's what the universe has been doing with us for millions of years, spinning us up on the inside, and now we're coming to critical mass. SM: Your work begins in some sense by pointing out that many individuals have experiences of an expanded reality, whether through dreams, synchronicities, or spiritual and mystical states, that don't easily fit into our culture's modern cosmological worldview. Based on this evidence, your work and the work of others in transpersonal psychology points to a vision of the universe that is much more comprehensive than that described by modern science, one infused with spiritual consciousness, expansive life, and universal intelligence. This sounds in many ways like the accounts of deepest reality described by the world's mystical traditions. Could you say something about this? CB: That's a good summary of the situation that we're in. I think that the great spiritual masters saw something that is fundamentally true about the universe. Physics in some ways is catching up with parts of their vision. Their fundamental vision is that the universe is alive, with the vast majority of it's aliveness not visible to our naked eye. Think about the recent finding in astronomy that 96 percent of the universe is invisible. We're essentially floating on an ocean of invisible light. Just as the mystics relate, we're finding that the universe is saturated with layers upon layers of intelligence, and it has plans and strategies which we're just starting to get glimmers of. The genius that surrounds and permeates us has been billions of years in the making, and maybe includes universes that existed before this one. We're just beginning to wake up to the complexity of it all. The universe is alive and it's spiritual as well as physical. It's exploding all around us, shattering us into bigger and bigger visions and understandings of ourselves. Because our core awareness is rooted in something that is beyond space and time, we can't really die. This part of us was never born -- it just becomes more complex over time. SM: The astrophysicist Bernard Haisch, who is also included in this book, has theorized that all physical phenomena arise out of the zero-point field, which is essentially a sea of light. CB: That corresponds with my experience. It's been my experience that in sustained inner work, the universe reveals itself in stages. As my work progressed through the years, deeper layers of the universe showed themselves. In the early stages, the experiences moved beyond the material world into the psychic and soul domain. Then the unfolding continued beyond soul reality into layers of archetypal reality and the deep structures of the subtle realms. Then it continued beyond this to the deity realms, the god realm, and deeper still to the domain of pure light. This light was then refined and purified at deepening levels until it became a field of pure Diamond Consciousness. Beyond all visible light there was a domain where light purified into an energy so refined that it became invisible. Pure invisible potentiality, what some call the Void. From this perspective, then, there are many layers of reality between the Void and the manifest physical world. That's the way it has appeared to me, at least. It's as if the archetypal realm is like a field of giant trees growing out of this ground of light and pure consciousness, with the tips of their leaves eventually reaching into time and space. SM: It sounds like this is the underlying field which is giving rise to space, time, and our everyday embodied experience. CB: I think so. It's exciting that physicists are pointing in this direction with concepts like the quantum field and the zero-point field, which they describe as having the qualities of light and nonlocality. If physics is describing something like this lying at the foundation of physical existence, it is coherent with the vision of reality that surfaces in deep transpersonal experiences. SM: It's interesting that the universe would use the same dynamics at all these various levels. For me, that's astonishing in itself! CB: That's when you begin to know you're looking at something really important, when you find it operating at multiple levels -- at the physical, mental, and spiritual levels. I think this same principle of repetition of design at multiple levels applies to the concept of reincarnation. Reincarnation is simply one instance of a larger pattern in nature -- nature recycling its learning. It builds on itself. The universe recycles everything, including human learning. It's incredibly efficient. You don't need to get too personal about it. What's exciting is that this continual compounding of experience is building up inside each of us. For this reason alone, I don't think we can stop an awareness of rebirth from eventually rising inside the people. The longer we accumulate life experience, sooner or later we will become aware of this compounding within us. And once people see it, it's going to become obvious that this is simply one more pattern of learning in a self-evolving, self-arising universe, part of evolution's thrust toward greater complexity. I think it's going to become an unstoppable idea in history. SM: It sounds like this is something that the universe wants us to know. The fact that these kinds of insights are arising all around us seems like part of the universe's self-revelation, it's desire to know itself in a deeper way, to use somewhat anthropic terminology. CB: Yes. The universe is pouring it's secrets into us every moment. What are we? We are the universe, and the larger universe is downloading as much information into us as we can take in. Every time we have a little deeper insight, it is giving us more information. We are the universe becoming aware of its larger self. I think that there is much joy in the spiritual domain that humanity is finally getting old enough that we can begin, just begin, to touch the edges of the intelligence that has been birthing us these many billions of years. I think there's tremendous joy, because even if we are just waking up, It knows fully what we are. The image that keeps coming to me is of God holding us as delicately as a mother holds her new baby. But God has to be careful not to touch us too directly, not to allow us to feel His/Her full love for us, because if we felt that great love, the energy would be so strong it would send the baby into paroxysms of pain. The fact is that we're just now getting strong enough to be able to withstand more contact with the Divine Mind without shattering. SM: It reminds me of the image that we talked about earlier with the cocoon of our essence being wrapped more and more with the kite string of human experience, so that we eventually become stronger and able to embrace more of this reality. CB: Yes, but how long does it take? This awareness is opening in so many people that I think we are coming to a moment in time where an earlier crop of soul consciousness is beginning to be harvested into something greater. You know, you plant something in the ground and you have to wait months for it to mature. Human experience has been planted in the universe, and the universe has waited 100,000, 200,000 years for it to sprout. Now there seems to be some kind of ripening taking place, some massive underground awakening. SM: I've heard some people say that more people are waking up these days than at any other point in history. CB: I agree. I think that there's a quickening or ascending energy rising from the depths so that we are collectively coming to a kind of psychic boiling point. As our collective unconscious comes to a boil, our entire political and social system is going to start to cook ferociously, and all that energy is going to churn each of us at very deep levels. Our collective unconscious is not going to be the quiet partner it has been in the past, but will be much more active and arousing. SM: It's going to turn up the heat, so to speak. CB: It's going to turn up the heat, throw us into collective labor, and send us into convulsions that will force us to throw off the past and create a new present. It's going to draw all of us together into a massive realignment, with an accelerated learning curve. It's going to be a near-extinction event, I fear, a massive interruption of life as we know it. Large nation-states and global economies may fragment in this process. I just don't see any other way. However, I deeply believe that out of this crisis something new and better will arise. We know we have great potential that can rise to great heights when under duress, and I deeply trust the intelligence and wisdom that's carried us 13.7 billion years to where we are today. So if we're coming into global crisis, we must be ready. We may feel stupid and clumsy in the face of all this, but there must be a large enough reservoir inside the human heart to allow us to become more than we were. SM: I hope there is, and your transcendent vision of the universe sounds like something people need right now, given the current world situation and the kind of guidance that many people are yearning for. CB: You know, a crisis is the worst time to start looking for a new philosophy. Ideally, you should have your philosophy in place before a crisis hits. It worries me that many people are going into this transformation standing on such weak theological ground. What do they have? Most of our churches are deeply alienated from their time in history. The knowledge of the natural world is our new religion. It's what we truly believe and trust in. It's where our greatest talent is focused and what our children go to college to learn. I don't think we're going back to the religions of the past, and I don't think we're going to give up science in going forward. What I suspect is going to happen is that we'll bring the deeper spirituality of the old religions forward, but in a post-religious form. We're on the verge of the birth of a new spirituality, which will include science while simultaneously opening more intimately to cosmic and divine genius. The depth of what is alive inside us will sooner or later overtake us. SM: It sounds like one of the elements of this coming transformation is a shift in authority, where people will no longer derive their knowledge of reality primarily from external sources such as science and religion, but will begin to investigate their own experience directly to see what is true. I wonder if you see this as part of this synthesis of science and religion that is coming? CB: Yes. And I think our experience is showing us that the inner universe is as "large" as the outer universe is. And this is coming as a big surprise to us; it wasn't supposed to be this way! We thought we could tuck our minds into an envelope the size of our brains, a mental envelope that contained the sum total of our physical senses. What we're finding experientially, however, is very different. Consciousness is vast. And whether it's discovered through meditating on a mountaintop, ingesting psychotropics, or having a near-death experience, in each case you find a vast reality within. I think a sophisticated version of the perennial philosophy will emerge in a new global form. There will also be an appreciation of the fact that the individual is a fractal being that resonates and vibrates within the larger collective. So as the collective goes through its turning point in history, each one of us goes through our own soul turning point as well. We take our underlying pivot from the larger universe, and our individual transformations simultaneously ripple out into the field of the universe. I feel very strongly that each of us is connected to specific people through the tissue of time and space. We may not know many of them, but we are connected by threads that run through the hearts and minds of specific persons. Through these specific beings, we are connected to the family of humanity as a whole. When we rise to the challenge of our individual lives, when we do what it is we are here to do, it sends a pulse of light and life along these filaments that nourishes everyone we are connected to and helps them achieve what they are being called to do. Likewise if we fail, it lowers our collective energy. We are truly and deeply all in this together. How the individual is embedded in the collective and how the collective is nourished by the work of the individual are some of my preoccupations. I'm interested in what happens when a collective system reaches a critical bifurcation point where it becomes nonlinear and more unstable and more subject to change. Systems theory and chaos theory tell us that at these critical points of stress and compression, systems become extremely susceptible to influence. Small influences can have large outcomes. If this is so, then in this time of global crisis, even a small number of people doing the right thing may crystallize a positive outcome for humanity. I believe that these "seed people," persons who have accomplished within themselves what the world is trying to accomplish collectively, are distributed throughout the entire system. The seeds of the future are already here among us, here in the younger generation, with some working to clear out old ideas from the past and others bringing in new ideas from the future. I personally feel myself to have been more involved with detoxifying and purifying the past than bringing in the future, but when I look around, I see many people who already have new ways of thinking within them, persons whose consciousness is not encumbered with the old patterns. For example, when did you start thinking like this, being interested in the relationship of the individual to the universe? SM: I think I've been pursuing the questions "What is the universe?" and "What is my role in it and my relationship to it?" for most of my life. These two questions I think drew me initially toward studying science, and later philosophy and consciousness studies, and they have been with me ever since in subtle and not so subtle ways. CB: Yes, and if you are asking these questions, then there are lots of other fractal forms of "you" asking them as well. And if you can answer them, then it will help all of us answer them. Your insights, whether expressed publicly, physically, or even psychically are shared instantaneously with everyone else who is asking these kinds of questions, like interconnected neurons in an enormous brain. SM: I like the image of neurons that you use, because if we're all elements in a larger global brain then it seems that not all of the neurons have to have to wake up individually for there to be a cascading change of awareness in the brain itself. CB: Yes, you only need to hit the critical mass to begin the cascade. SM: A related concept to what we've been discussing is the idea in your work of a universal field of consciousness that includes and yet transcends the physical universe. So the deeper nature of the universe is like that of a single integrated living organism, a field of experience that remembers, learns and grows from the experiences of many individuals over many lifetimes. Can you say more about your insights and perspective on this? CB: In so many ways and in so many different cultures throughout history, people have talked about the universe as being alive, as being a single great living organism. This becomes especially apparent in non-ordinary states of consciousness, where one sees that the universe is alive on more levels than we had previously imagined. But staying just with our scientific knowledge, our understanding of the universe has grown to the point that we can reconstruct the general sequence of events that produced us step by step through 13.7 billions years of evolution. If we study this chain of events carefully, sooner or later we are brought to our knees, struck dumb by the sheer intelligence and genius of the physical universe. Then we have to consider the genius of whatever it was that birthed the physical universe in that fireball of unimaginable creativity we call the Big Bang. I think our scientific knowledge has exploded so fast these past three centuries that it has left all our gods in the dust, every one of them, and they're still panting to catch up. Now we need an understanding of God that is at least as big as the universe that science is showing us. Historically, our concept of God has always been proportionate to our knowledge of the universe. We are now living intellectually in a universe many orders of magnitude larger and more complex than the universe we previously lived in. SM: So it seems like the two go together, so that with each revolution in knowledge, our images of both God and the universe shatter together. CB: Yes. We've reached a point where science is our culture's true religion. And just as we've reached this point -- being the most educated, most knowledgeable, most organized human beings ever to exist on the planet -- we're about to be put through a meat grinder! We're going to be put through an ordeal of such magnitude that it will change us forever. Once we pass through this ordeal, we will be different people from who we are now. We will find that we are living with a different standard of "common sense," a different level of compassion, and a different set of rules for life. People will overcome their surface political differences in the interest of mutual support and common survival. From this process a new human will emerge -- and much more quickly than we would have expected. I think the prototype of this emerging human is found in the great saints and geniuses of history. This new human will mark a new plateau of human evolution -- a radical discontinuity from the old. I think that many people are intuiting and feeling this shift from different perspectives and are using the language that's available to them to describe it. That's what I'm doing. I come out of religious studies and psychedelic research, and so I'm using that language to give voice to something that others are trying to express in other ways. All the components of what is emerging are within us now, and, surprisingly, I feel that most of the work that's needed for this transition is already done. The work has been done over countless millennia by the slow, patient process of evolutionary reincarnation, strengthening individuals and bringing us to where we are now. Bringing the system to critical mass is like a small bomb sitting on top of a big bomb. The big bomb is all the knowledge and experience and qualities of soul that have been gathered over time, and this is what's going to be pressurized by this critical time. The foundation for the radical change that is now upon us has been laid by all the experiences over hundreds of thousands of years that each one of us is carrying. It's exciting to me that many people today are having similar visions of something large coming. I personally feel the need to think and talk with other people about the nature of this future human. The more clearly we see what's coming, the easier it will be to understand the gravity of what we're dealing with right now. I believe what's coming is the most extraordinary form of human being, a human being that has qualities very different from those that dominate us now. It's like we're all homo erectus sitting around watching homo sapiens emerge -- it's that big an event. Nine months of gestation and one day of labor. The long gestation has already taken place, and this is the day of labor. We can't fully see what we're becoming. I was talking with Pete [Russell] the other day and he observed that everything is accelerating so fast that we can't plan even 10 or 20 years out at this point. It's truly an intense time. SM: And our inability to plan in such a rapidly transforming world is such a break with the rational mind that wants to predict the future in a linear way based on the past. CB: Absolutely. The ground comes out from under our feet and we go into a free-fall. In some ways -- and this is going to sound strange -- it's been healing to have all of this finally begin, because it's been crazy-making to have had the experience that it did happen -- to have touched that future time when it has already happened -- and then to come back and live the last 10 or 15 years leading up to this transition. Most of the world around you is saying that this is not going to happen, that it's not real, but deep down you know that it is real. It's not that I would wish this pain on anyone, but when people start to be aware that it's actually happening, it removes some of the dissonance for me. SM: I wonder if there's something about the collectivity of the suffering and the transformation that can help here as well, to see that we're not each going through this process alone as separate individuals. CB: I think we can really open up to that if we become sensitive enough to listen to the very back of our minds. If you listen very carefully, you can hear the suffering of all the world's poor inside you. They're all there because, really, there is only one mind. If the world starts to change, if we genuinely start to take care of the world's poor, putting them to bed every night with a full stomach, then we won't be hearing them suffering in the back of our minds every night. We'll have a different feeling as our baseline. When we truly begin to understand that we're all in this together, we'll begin to recognize that the quality of our lives and our individual well-being rests upon the quality of life around the planet. A new common sense will become the norm, in the same way that democracy became a new standard in the world after centuries of monarchy. A new way of thinking will come forward. SM: This inner transformation that's happening now is going to ignite a fire in our culture, and vice-versa. They affect each other and are interdependent. CB: Yes, we're going through the inner fire and the outer fire together -- they are two sides of the same fire. The next book I want to write is a fresh look at reincarnation, because the academic community is so far behind the curve on this point. I want to take the discussion of rebirth to the next level. Given the high caliber of the evidence that exists today for reincarnation, we need to ponder more deeply the implications of living in a universe that is perpetually gathering more and more experience to itself over time. It won't be long before we'll be able to step back and appreciate what's been accomplished through this historical crisis and what we've gained from it. I really do believe that once we begin to experience the new human that's coming forward, we will retroactively understand the significance of what we've been going through. Right now we don't have a clue, and it scares us. We may not see how all the pieces fit together yet, but we can all feel that we're on the edge of something big. When we can't ignore each other and we can't convert each other, we're going to be rammed together, and out of this convergence something profound will emerge. I like to remind my students that out of all the possible combinations their soul-stream might have brought forward from thousands of years of rebirth, they were chosen to be in the ringside seat at this critical time in history. It's quite an honor and quite a responsibility. SM: And our soul chose not only here and now in this time, but in these very circumstances. CB: Yes, everyone's soul did! In my journey work, the universe sometimes gave me mantras to work with, and one was: "Every being is perfect and deserves my complete respect." Each one us is a warrior. You don't get to enter time and space without making certain commitments. People may not remember doing so, it may be buried deep inside us, but just to be here is a remarkable accomplishment in itself and quite a privilege. And reincarnation keeps diversifying and drawing us out -- there's no box or packaging that we as humans can stay in. Interracial marriages, intergender relationships, interfaith partnerships -- the combinations are exploding. In the years since I've come back from these journeys, it gives me great peace to carry a larger vision of what's happening to us and where we're going. I sometimes get overwhelmed by all the suffering, as many of us do. I have to deal with dark days, knowing that this transformation is coming and the magnitude of what it will involve, but I find stability in the larger vision of what's being birthed through this suffering. To hold all of it in my heart, it helps to know its purpose. It truly does change a day of mere pain into a day of labor. Working with psychedelics has given me a certain perspective on the wave of transformation that's crashing down on us, but in the end, we'll all be tumbling through it together. As the wave rolls over us, it will be confusing and hard as hell. SM: It seems that even advance knowledge of the wave coming doesn't spare you from having to go through its crashing down any less. CB: Yes, and it is a time of great leaders and lots of them. We'll need millions of people stepping forward, and I believe that they're here. I don't know what will become of the vast reservoirs of hate that are burning like oil fires in different parts of the world. I don't know how we're going to handle the enormous mountains of injustice that divide the haves and the have-nots of the world. I don't know how we're going to bring about a fair and just economy. I can't imagine how we're going to do these things. What I keep coming back to is the visionary experience that I laid out in Dark Night, Early Dawn -- that just when we thought everything was lost, the storm passes and there are survivors. When we reconnect after the catastrophe, we find a new beginning dawning around us, reflecting new values that we forged within ourselves during the crisis. In that process we rise to a level of self-realization that's extraordinary. We let go of our past in a way that takes us into a new maturity. Our hearts hurt so much that they tear open, allowing us to see into time and across borders in a new way. There's a period of grace, repentance, and stepping into a new reality. From a deeper spiritual perspective, I think we're going to empty the bardo, clearing out the soul-baggage of our fragmented past. When this happens, there will be greater transparency between the world of spirit and the world of embodiment. The collective human minefield will become clearer, more coherent, and less fractured by the distortions of our history reverberating in the bardo-field. That was Robert Monroe's vision of a possible future in Far Journeys. When he went into a time about 1,500 years into the future, he saw a future without the bardo. I think that's a very powerful vision, because it represents a radical maturing of humanity. We won't need those levels of the bardo anymore because we won't be as limited as we were when we generated them. SM: It's like a shell that we sloughed off. CB: Yes. We'll finally integrate all the pieces of our lives. The universe is all energy, and the bardo is filled with the energy of living soul-fragments. We'll integrate that energy so that it's all within us now. It's a time of soul-retrieval, where we're pulling all this energy back into us. It's like a vast cloud precipitating big water drops, with people incarnating more and more of their history into themselves until eventually they become whole and clear. I really think this is the crash and burn century. How long will it take before we turn it around? Will it have bottomed out by the end of the twenty-first century? Will we have made the pivot? However long it takes, when we start to come out of it, we will be completely changed from what we were at the beginning of the descent. In that freefall of history, that's when the compression is going to hit. SM: And from a big-picture perspective all the time it takes to do this is just a flash in the pan. If the universe is anything, it's patient, so it will take as long as it needs to. Maybe this is an ongoing cosmic process so maybe it will happen again and again, ad infinitum... CB: Yes. The universe thinks in a time frame that boggles the imagination. A million years here and a million years there, that's ok. Have they got it yet? I'll be back in a few million years! [laughs] Maybe for this new being to come forward, it will take several contractions. We just don't know. I'm hoping for a quick resolution, for an intense, short labor, but you never know. None of us knows what it's going to be like when a whole planet goes into crisis. A storm or a war can throw us into crisis, but a whole planet going into crisis at the same time, all wired with the Internet and television? -- it's never happened before. It's a one-of-a-kind event, and so we should expect a one-of-a-kind outcome. If we embrace change, we will move through it more smoothly. If you know you're going into whitewater, you can prepare for it. Let life change you. I'm afraid where I live, people are buying guns. They're scared. The churches are still preaching a philosophy of theological self-isolation. Clearly we're not awakened yet. We're sleepy, in a daze, mesmerized by malls and television, thinking we can still hold on to the old order. SM: Can you talk about what's needed in our culture to support this transformation? CB: There is no one answer to that question. I think we each need to focus on the part that is ours to do. This is our collective task and how we will move through it. The part that interests me personally is exploring the possibilities that can come from the skillful integration of psychedelics into philosophy. I think this represents a turning point of great significance, a new way of doing philosophy -- by systematically reflecting on deliberately induced non-ordinary states of consciousness. We haven't done this before, not since the ancient Greeks. The vision that emerges from entering into this deeper communion with the universe looks at historical events from a deeper perspective, looks at time and space from a spiritual perspective. When all is said and done, what psychedelics is giving us, I think, is the opportunity to deepen our experience of the universe's experience of itself. To be able to actually experience how the universe experiences itself beyond us. Intellectually, we're seeing the universe and understanding it through mathematics and physics and the other sciences, but with these medicines we can actually experience how the universe experiences itself. Our capacity for doing this is expanding exponentially at the same time that our understanding of physics is expanding exponentially. To actually experience the genius of the universe, to feel its depth, scope, and richness, answers many questions, and these answers do not conflict with scientific knowledge. The resurgence of psychedelics is one more lightning bolt hitting us as the pace of change accelerates. There's no way that we can continue to keep this experience from the people. There are hard times ahead and there are great times ahead. Everybody wants their life to count for something as part of a larger order. The birth of a new humanity is as good a larger cause as any I've seen. That's an event I want to be a part of!

Magnificent latest book by Charles Eisenstein about a deep change in our relationship with money... "Obviously, if we are to make money into something sacred, nothing less than a wholesale revolution in money will suffice, a transformation of its essential nature. It is not merely our attitudes about money that must change, as some self-help gurus would have us believe; rather, we will create new kinds of money that embody and reinforce changed attitudes. Sacred Economics describes this new money and the new economy that will coalesce around it. It also explores the metamorphosis in human identity that is both a cause and a result of the transformation of money. The changed attitudes of which I speak go all the way to the core of what it is to be human: they include our understanding of the purpose of life, humanity's role on the planet, the relationship of the individual to the human and natural community; even what it is to be an individual, a self..." Sacred Economics: Money, Gift, and Society in the Age of Transition http://www.realitysandwich.com/sacred_economics_introduction

SEN-SA-TIO-NAL video! A profound insight into how activists can "Keep the Gods inside." My link

Hi everyone, A copy of DVD "Qigong for Self-Healing - Series I" (like new, viewed only once) is on sale, good price.

Thank you for your kind answer, Aron These days I don't really have much to say, just to share that the handful of possible certainties are collapsing one by one (and it feels a big relief). Brad Keeney shares an amazing moment of collapsing beliefs in his latest book "The Flying Drum"(highly recommended) These days there's a lot of crying... and from time to time (increasingly), a wonderful wild laughter... http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=do9nVERxrHw

Magic is Alive...enjoying like a merry trickster the fan-tas-tic latest book by the mojo doctor Brad Keeney... a delightful delivery of the strongest medicine: heart magic... http://www.dailyom.com/library/000/002/000002572.html http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ws5xZGS2fVQ&feature=related

some nostalgia this morning...listening to my inner adolescent

Beautiful! Hank Wesselman (and David Spangler and Llewellyn Vaughan-Lee) is speaking about "partnership" with the archetypal energy/es

I think Dennis McKenna makes a right frame : ecodelic medicines to correct our dissociation from Nature: "It's a communication between the sentience that resides in Nature and us..."

not at all, you might have been right

A similar experiential view about the soul from the kahunas... The Oversoul The Hawaiian word for the higher, immortal, spiritual aspect of the self is 'aumakua, a term that might be translated as "utterly trustworthy ancestral spirit." It could also be interpreted as "the spirit that hovers over me," revealing why so many perceive it as a benevolent winged being or guardian angel. It can also be considered as 'our ancestor' as the word 'makua' means parent, and 'au' means time... our parent in time. It is variously known in the West as the higher self, the god self, the angelic self, the overself, or simply as the oversoul. Occasionally, individuals who have a spontaneous mystical experience or lucid dream will find themselves in the presence of an immensely powerful and beneficent god-like being. The average person usually interprets this event, and attendant conversation, as a visit from a deity, a mythic spiritual hero, or even 'God,' and of course, we must always acknowledge the possibility that this may be so. But most often, the supra-human visitor and source of that uncommon dialogue is that person's own god-self, their oversoul. The kahunas understand that our oversoul is always in contact with us, throughout every moment of our life. The ease with which this connection may be achieved reveals that when we are embodied here on Earth, the spirit world is not in some faraway, remote location. The invisible realms are all around us, all the time, and our oversoul can be accessed right here, right now, once we know how. The kahuna perspective reveals that our oversoul is in constant attendance, carefully watching everything we do, listening with concern to every word and thought, monitoring every choice and decision, silently applauding when we succeed, silently feeling concern when we fail. It never interferes with our life, nor does it ever tell us what to do. This is because the power of individual choice and free will is always honored. Our oversoul contains within itself all the experiences garnered in our past lives, and thus it possesses all the knowledge of which we ever might have need during our lifetime. It communicates best with us through the medium of inspiration, sending us ideas and hunches, dreams and visions, revealing it to be the source of our intuition. Through providing its embodiment (us) with intuitive guidance, our personal oversoul serves as our primary spirit teacher. Often when we sit in silence in meditation, a feeling of tranquility may begin to pervade us, filling us with a sense of utter peace. We may notice that if we consider some problem at such moments, the answer to the dilemma usually appears in our mind. Our oversoul is the source of that feeling of tranquility as well as the origin of the information that arrives in our conscious awareness in response to need. This is why my great Hawaiian friend, the kahuna nui Hale Kealohalani Makua, was found of saying "You will never find a better teacher than yourself." From the kahuna perspective, the oversoul is also the ultimate source of who and what we are, serving as our personal creator. In this capacity, it is the immortal soul-aspect that resides always in the Upper Worlds, the one that divides itself, sending in an energetic hologram of its essence, a seed of light that takes up residence within our body at the beginning of each new life cycle. This essence contains and reflects the totality of the character that we have developed across countless lives. The divine breath (of life) that the Hawaiians call the Ha, is the vehicle through which this spiritual transfer occurs. When we are born, we receive our Ha with our first breath, and it remains with us throughout life until we release it with our last. It is the divine breath that conveys our immortal soul's seed into our new body at life's inception and then carries it back to its oversoul source at life's end-a reincarnational insight that is clearly reflected in the Judeo-Christian traditions that proclaim with authority that God breathes life into form. In Latin, the word for breath is the same as the word for spirit-- spiritus. In Hebrew, the word for spirit and breath is also the same-- ruach. For the kahuna, however, it is not some monotheistic, authoritarian, creator-god that breathes life into us, listens to our prayers, and sends occasional messengers to Earth who usually get treated badly. It is our own personal god-self--our oversoul, our 'aumakua-our own immortal spirit soul, who gives us our breath of life, and the messenger is us. Hank Wesselman http://www.sharedwisdom.com/article/hawaiian-perspectives-matrix-soul

thank you, dear; fortunately I could find a PDF somewhere else... ; )

Thank yoy, Otis, very kind of you! I find especially interesting his insights about the pitfalls of fundamentalist "ilusionism"/nihilism, increasingly prevalent in the so called "Neo-Advaita" scene...and his exciting view about the coming unfolding of art, music, ecology, medical research etc. as new forms of noetic midwifery...sounds beautiful!

GET RID OF THOSE STORIES "Your scientists and physicists are wrong. Your religions are misguided. Your new-age pundits are almost completely deluded. Your gurus, psychics and intuitives are openly full of self-inventing blather. And all of them want you to swallow and propagate their models — with good reason: they are directly interested in profiting from your participation in and activation of their myths. If you ignore them, they will perish. If you attend them, your capacity to experience and shape the flow of your own awareness and intelligence will be directly co-opted. So if you want to become intimate with reality, get rid of those stories, FIRST. All of them. Particularly the ones you’ve grown most fond of — and definitely those you feel you must defend. After you’ve been outside the cage they comprise, you will be able to return and decide for yourself if any of them had any value, and what it was. Until then? Set them down." ‎"The aspect of yourself you call ‘my mind’ is not your brain. It is a womb. And it is made to be penetrated not by human stories — but by the transentient flow of your own sources. And when this happens? Your mind becomes pregnant, and you become… savant...." http://www.organelle.org/organelle/skyBook/skyBook%28p%29.html

"...we are born with our aliveness, and we need to help that aliveness come together into a unity. And essentially we've kind of forgotten all of that in our culture. We put everything into words and ideas and concepts, and essentially ignore the wholeness of the individual. And that's what I want to bring back: The wholeness of the individual, and the fact that's essential, really, for our becoming fully mature. (...) I think aliveness is a beautiful mystery. People argue about there being life and being death, and there being aliveness and being matter. And I don't think there's a difference....I think the whole universe is alive, and we emanate out of the universe... (..) We haven't been able to track it down, we haven't been able to pin it down, conceptually, to define it...we try very hard, to define it, but in order to really investigate aliveness we somehow have to kill the integrity of aliveness, we have to cut inot an animal, or to cut into a cell, and so on...aliveness is this beautiful mystery, which is probably for me at the core of the existence of the universe..." Stephen Gallegos

Each religion has helped mankind. Paganism increased in man the light of beauty, the largeness and height of his life, his aim at a many-sided perfection; Christianity gave him some vision of divine love and charity; Buddhism has shown him a noble way to be wiser, gentler, purer, Judaism and Islam how to be religiously faithful in action and zealously devoted to God; Hinduism has opened to him the largest and profoundest spiritual possibilities. A great thing would be done if all these God-visions could embrace and cast themselves into each other; but intellectual dogma and cult egoism stand in the way. (Essays in Philosophy and Yoga, p.211) All fanaticism is false, because it is a contradiction of the very nature of God and of Truth. Truth cannot be shut up in a single book, Bible or Veda or Koran, or in a single religion. The Divine Being is eternal and universal and infinite and cannot be the sole property of the Mussulmans or of the Semitic religions only, – those that happened to be in a line from the Bible and to have Jewish or Arabian prophets for their founders. Hindus and Confucians and Taoists and all others have as much right to enter into relation with God and find the Truth in their own way. All religions have some truth in them, but none has the whole truth; all are created in time and finally decline and perish. Mahomed himself never pretended that the Koran was the last message of God and there would be no other. God and Truth outlast these religions and manifest themselves anew in whatever way or form the Divine Wisdom chooses. (On Himself, p.483.) Spirituality is much wider than any particular religion, and in the larger ideas of it that are now coming on us even the greatest religion becomes no more than a broad sect or branch of the one universal religion, by which we shall understand in the future man's seeking for the eternal, the divine, the greater self, the source of unity and his attempt to arrive at some equation, some increasing approximation of the values of human life with the eternal and the divine values. (The Renaissance in India , p.33.) Sri Aurobindo

I don't endorse this author, simply I've found this piece is superb... The Emerging Cosmos by Patrizia Norelli-Bachelet © "At present mankind is undergoing an evolutionary crisis in which is concealed a choice of its destiny." Sri Aurobindo The malaise of our civilisation is not an inchoate or unpredictable development. Rather, it is the logical, foreseeable result of thousands of years of partial and ineffective spiritual visions and incomplete philosophical systems. These have always been the driving force behind the evolution of higher mental forms. Therefore, if our civilisation stands at a critical juncture at present, it is not in the secular and scientific domain that we must search for the cause of the decay. We must discover what has been lacking in the dimension of existence that moulds the more external and material patterns which condition life on this planet. Once the root of the problem is located in its true area of causation, necessarily a change must be introduced in that sphere before the more external levels can be influenced. Thus if we can locate the root cause of the decay in that more essential domain, our task of bringing about a change in the individual and in society and of establishing a new world order on Earth is greatly facilitated. Indeed, the crux of the problem lies here: for thousands of years sages, saints, yogis, philosophers, and men and women of wisdom have described the purpose of birth on this planet as simply a passage to a reality beyond not only our planetary home but entirely out of the cosmic dimension. The course our civilisation has taken can therefore be directly connected to this factor. The influence a vision of this nature has wielded has been devastating--for it has carried the planet and its multiple societies to the brink of total annihilation. We may call this development a conspiracy of the spiritual elite which gradually influenced the whole tenure of life on Earth, spreading its tentacles of influence through religions and philosophical systems during the past several thousands of years, but now through scientific, political and socioeconomic systems. The latter can invariably trace their inspiration to some spiritual or philosophical source. For even our most material ideologies that apparently deny the higher realities of existence and focus entirely on the physical dimension, have done so by virtue of a reaction to those more metaphysical postulations. Many profound thinkers throughout the world have perceived that it is only a spiritual renaissance that can save our civilisation. Only if we attain a different consciousness, rooted in some higher seeing, can there be any real change, they feel. This may well be true, but what is not appreciated is that the present chaos is a direct outcome of our past mystic and spiritual perceptions. There are two aspects to this development. One is the course spirituality took in the West, which founded itself on a certain form of negation of life; and the other is the Eastern orientation, in its own way equally a denial of life. In the West, out of denial and suffering there developed a certain strength. Believers had been encouraged to accept suffering as a way to God and the means to attain a heaven beyond this life. Indeed, life on Earth came to be considered a prison and the fall of the soul. Salvation, through negation of life, could only come in a beyond, namely in some transcendent Heaven. The final outcome of this negation has been the materialistic philosophies and political ideologies which the West has given to the world. Presently there is a clear dichotomy on the planet, whereby western civilisation has aligned itself clearly and decisively with what has come to be called in spiritual circles the 'materialistic consciousness'. However, in the East we find a similar denial of life, also as an outcome of its spirituality. Interestingly, this negation took hold of the consciousness of eastern wisemen at about the same time that a similar denial caught hold of their western counterparts. About the end of the first millennium Indian spirituality veered fully toward a quest for otherworldliness: the philosophies of the day made the conclusive proclamation that all creation in matter was an 'illusion', a deceptive veil that seekers of Truth must tear through in order to reach the immutable, immobile, transcosmic and static Brahman; or a Self devoid of all relations in this material web of time and space. Thus at approximately the same period in history, the stamp of otherworldliness and denial of life and the planet's own truth of being and purpose as a home of an evolving species, became firm pillars of our civilisation. This conditioned everything. This denial coloured all our perceptions and gradually moulded every pattern we evolved for the regulation of our individual and collective life. And what we are faced with today is simply the ultimate display of that denial and negation of life. The human being has carried the formula of this negation to its fullest extremes: What was seen as the highest spiritual poise has been carried over to the material realm, or the stage upon which all the ideals and more ethereal concepts of humankind are played out; with the predictable result that now science has furnished the race with the ultimate powers for its own destruction. If the only purpose of life on this planet is to escape it somehow, never more to return, then we are wholly justified in seeking means to destroy this springboard base as the ultimate and conclusive 'solution'. It is important to see clearly that the root of this problem is directly connected to the religious dogmas and spiritual visions that have conditioned our living since time immemorial. Spirituality is not a static expression. It has evolved pari passu with the material evolution. In fact, there is only ONE evolution, one principle evolving through the myriad forms that constitute our world. This 'consciousness' has two facets, material and spiritual. But both respond to the same underlying energy and drive. Consequently, to posit the ultimate solution in either the spirituality we know today or in materialism, with its own brand of denial of life, is inadequate. Indeed, such attempts have consistently failed. Spirituality can only offer old solutions which were themselves largely the causes of the decay. Likewise, materialistic answers are prisoners of the same insufficiencies; and continuing as we are, they will drive us to a total destruction in order to play out the drama of denial of life that spirituality has constantly espoused in one form or another, under one disguise or another. To accurately assess the situation it is required that we examine the problem deeply, in an effort to reach the core of the matter and discover the fount from which both science and spirituality receive their driving force. Therefore, it is necessary to perceive what stands behind the play of forces; and to do so we must come to a more enlightened understanding of the evolutionary process itself. This will provide us with a more holistic assessment of the condition of the highest instrument nature makes use of for the purpose of the evolution of the species, in order to effect this upward march to ever better forms of consciousness and life: the mental human being. For this is the self-evident purpose of evolution. It is to bring forth evermore perfect forms in order to create more complex and sophisticated networks or patterns of structured energy that can express more harmonious states of consciousness-being. Our present stage is merely one step along the evolutionary way, albeit a decisive one. We have reached a major evolutionary turning point. There is a choice: Before us lies a totally new way of life and by consequence a new world order. For this, a finer, more refined instrument has to manifest. And this is the major focus of the present crisis. We are in the process of evolving a human instrument capable of sustaining the greater cosmic forces at play through life and matter on this planet, without experiencing destructive collapse of energies or succumbing to the old ways of escape through outdated solutions and methods the world has known until now. The human instrument as it is presently constituted pivots a void. At its centre lies a 'black hole' into which energies collapse, cave in, dissolve; resulting ultimately in decay and death. And out of this condition of the instrument ,through which the human consciousness perceives the reality beyond, came the projection of a world in chaos and collapse and hence the perception that salvation, of whatever order and under whatever guise, lay beyond this material universe and, above all, away from this woeful planet Earth. The demon of the drama was seen to be the senses, which wisemen understood to be the limiting factor which distorts a reality that somehow could be disconnected from the body and experienced separately, free from our physical organs of perception and hence disengaged from the world of material creation, out of which and within which these senses have evolved. Thus, ways were devised to liberate the seeker from the physical, sensual instrument, limited by its own apparently untransformable insufficiencies. To be more specific, such projections and perceptions of our condition are the logical outcomes of a species ill-poised, but for reasons quite different than those given in current religious, mystic and spiritual explanations. The human being has an off-centre pivot of his bodily instrument, which results in a distorted perception of our world; but which is, paradoxically, caused by the perception itself. Consequently, to alter that perception it is required that concurrently we shift this axis of being--in the species--and allow evolution to carry us to a new and higher destiny. The human instrument, an intrinsic part of the solar system and the universal harmony, is structured energy just as any other microcosmic or macrocosmic body. The human being has its 'axis' also, around which the individual frame is organised and because of which a separate entity can come into existence and sustain itself without dispersion, adding to this magnificent display of multiplicity within unity, which is the key feature of our material world. But because we are as yet merely a transitional species, albeit evolving to a higher form, the present 'axis' and its location within the body, which has come into being in accordance with certain evolutionary laws, encourages atavism as the single most important driving force of the species. Over the ages, wisemen, philosophers, seers, mystics, have sought through various means to alter this condition. In place of the inertia of atavism they have sought to install a higher purpose. But the inadequate condition of the instrument through which perception is made, provided only a partial understanding of the problem; and hence the techniques which were devised in order to help the human being to find release from this limiting function were in themselves inconclusive and did nothing to alter in any way conditions on the planet. Matters progressively worsened, until finally, seeing the gravity of the situation, all those who in some way have been concerned with this problem, came to a dramatic impasse. Finding that it was apparently impossible to change this evolutionary determinism, all spiritual and religious paths proffered methods of escape from the 'coils of this corruptible flesh' as the only way to salvation, and to seek dissolution of the consciousness in a transcendent Beyond or a nirvanic Void. Not only has this done nothing to change conditions on Earth, it has complicated the task of discovering the solution. And finally we find ourselves, as a species, facing possible annihilation. Let us demonstrate the subtle ways in which this notion of irredeemability has penetrated the thinking of even those philosophers whom one would expect to perceive the position differently, primarily because they are indefatigably engaged in the task of instructing men and women the world over on the ways to a better life. But a better life where? If it is here, on this planet, then the flaws that emerge in these teachings must be pointed out, which will serve to expose the fact that on the basis of just such erroneous visions the human condition is what it is and cannot hope to change. Rather, the condition becomes compounded. To illustrate, we may quote a statement of one of the most eminent thinkers of our times, the late J. Krishnamurti: 'Truth cannot be exact. What can be measured is not truth.' (Krishnamurti's Notebook, Harper & Row, 1976, p.24.) This declaration is sure to appeal to all those who have become disenchanted with life in the body and in the material universe of which measure is the salient feature, and who have subsequently posited the goal of their quests in some extra-cosmic heaven or transcendent Beyond. For, what is Krishnamurti really stating? It is simply this: the higher reality is not of this world, measurable in time and space, and any such attempt to find truth within this material (measurable) universe is futile. Hence this statement is a denial of life and fosters a totally divisive consciousness (certainly not the aim of his teaching efforts on the surface), whereby truth is OUTSIDE of time and space and hence beyond our world. God, the supreme Reality, or Truth is not, according to Krishnamurti, found in what is measurable. It is this sort of postulation that has carried us to the point of such a tremendous evolutionary crisis. And lamentably, it is men and women concerned preeminently with the spiritual well-being of humankind who have contributed most to this situation, either by encouraging the faithful to live rightly and morally--but only for the purpose of reaching 'heaven' after death; or else by subtly and more often unknowingly, as in the case of Krishnamurti, consolidating the perception of an untransformable, irredeemable material creation, into which the soul and spirit of the human being has fallen and out of which some form of escape must be found in order to know truth in its transcendent, pristine and uncontaminated purity. Krishnamurti, provides us with another example of the way in which this vision has permeated the intelligentsia, in quarters that one could not have anticipated. Of late two books have appeared with transcripts of his conversations with the physicist David Bohm. It is interesting to observe that Krishnamurti succeeds in carrying Bohm, a physicist and hence a person supremely trained in the art of Measure, into his vision of a featureless void, in which time is an illusion and there is no becoming. A portion of their conversation will suffice to illustrate the nature of the problem: JK: I am asking you as a physicist, is this universe based on time? DB: I would say no, but you see, the general way... JK: That is all I want. You say no! And can the brain, which has evolved in time ... ? DB: Well, has it evolved in time? Rather, it has become entangled in time. Because the brain is part of the universe, which we say is not based on time. JK: I agree. DB: Thought has entangled the brain in time. JK: All right. Can that entanglement be unraveled, freed, so that the universe is the mind? You follow? If the universe is not of time, can the mind, which has been entangled in time, unravel itself and so be the universe? And further on, Krishnamurti makes this revealing statement: '...to be free of becoming? That is the root of it. To end becoming...Of course, there is only complete security in nothingness!' (The Ending of Time, Harper & Row, 1985.) This clearly, is the perception that must change if at all a new species and a new world order can safely take their place upon the planet for which they are destined. This calls for a complete readjustment in the 'lens of our seeing', precisely our 'instrument of measure', whereby the Earth comes into focus not as some eternal, irredeemable Hell that a chastising Creator has condemned us to, but rather the planet that serves a noble purpose in the cosmic order. This purpose is to evolve continuously higher and better forms of life. At present the human being is in transition toward a new condition. The breakdown we witness about us, inclusive of the marvels of technology that the human mind has brought into being, is an indication of that new order that is arising. The axis of the human instrument is being encouraged to shift to a higher pivot, whereby the present atavism is no longer a rigid cross to which we are nailed as a race. Rather, the new species is liberated from this compelling drive and begins then a more conscious participation in this grand act of Becoming through which a new instrument is being wrought. But for this to occur, the orientation of our quest and its consequent goal, based on a truly new perception of the higher reality of existence, must shift. The direction must cease to be otherworldly, no matter how camouflaged this may be, as noted by the example furnished above. The answer lies here, on Earth, in the body--but transformed by the power of a new seeing. How is this achieved? The new axis is not metaphysical. It is a pivot that comes into being in accordance with precise evolutionary laws involving time. By working with time in a particular manner, it is possible to restructure the consciousness, and ultimately the physical being, around a higher pivot. This cannot be accomplished while religions and the old spirituality block the process by emphasis on a metaphysical experience that disengages the human being from any spiritually and materially meaningful contact with the physical world, and consequently absolves him from any responsibility therein. According to these now outdated ways, the purpose of life was to somehow find escape from it, to either expiate one's sins and reach heaven, or to work out a karma and thereby become freed from taking birth again on this woeful planet. In the midst of such a conditioning, it was not possible to alter the evolutionary pattern, insofar as the means to do so, in particular a conscious work with time, were denied their truth and the part they played to attain a higher reality. The new world is a world in which both the being and the becoming are harmonised in the vision. Therefore Sri Aurobindo describes the choice of destiny that faces mankind at this crisis point as an accepting and embracing precisely of the becoming, as the means to attain the ultimate apotheosis, an evolutionary leap to a totally new status: The significance of our existence here determines our destiny: that destiny is something that already exists in us as a necessity and a potentiality, the necessity of our being's secret and emergent reality, a truth of its potentialities that is being worked out; both, though not yet realised, are even now implied in what has been already manifested.If there is a Being that is becoming, a Reality of existence that is unrolling itself in Time, what that being, that reality secretly is is what we have to become, and so to become is our life's significance. (The Life Divine, Chapter 28.) While the old degenerates into chaos and begins its collapse, there is simultaneously a work in progress to evolve a new species. The process entails, however, a laying of correct foundations. That is, a new 'blueprint' is being evolved, the lines of which are drawn by time, the power of evolution for the gestation of any new form. The new 'blueprint' being established at present is a pattern of harmony. Indeed, its inspirer is the closest, most complete pattern of harmony that we can observe and of which we are an intrinsic part. It is the solar system--seen with a new eye and an entirely new and different instrument of perception and measurement. This blueprint of a new consciousness-being will provide the basis for a new world order. The outcome is a planetary society, inspired in its governance by the very harmonics of our System and in particular founded upon a vision that sees and accepts the Earth as the place where upon this progression is destined to occur. But foremost in this evolutionary leap is the question of the purpose of evolution; and by consequence the purpose of our planetary home within the scheme of the cosmic order. It is clear that while we continue to turn to the old spirituality for solutions to our present state of collapse, we are only compounding that collapse, insofar as all spirituality considers life in this cosmos to be a fall and posits salvation in some form of a Beyond, unevolving and static. The dramatic shift that is required is then the complete refocusing of the lens we are provided with for evolution on Earth, and the resultant consciousness that introduces an entirely new direction in our perceiving. We cease to deny life and material creation as channels for expression of the highest truth principle. Rather, we see these as instruments on Earth of what Sri Aurobindo has called, the 'life divine'. There is a tested method to establish this new blueprint. It utilises time as the creative power for this revolutionary activity. By a specific knowledge of the mechanics of our solar system and the relation of the planetary harmony to time, as experienced on Earth and in the human body, a shift is brought about in the consciousness-being of the individual practitioner, whereby a new pivot is established in the body, no longer prisoner of atavistic drives but responsive to a higher purpose. On that basis a truly new harmony establishes itself within the individual and his society. There is no longer a collapse of energies but rather a sort of mini-solar system manifests as a nuclear compound from where new influences emerge. Gradually these accumulate and extend and eventually draw into the orbit of the new System an increasingly wider sphere; until finally the entire planet becomes the home of this higher planetary society. What evolves is therefore neither a new spirituality nor a new science or material ideology. It is something beyond all these known methods but that miraculously harmonises and integrates all the expressions of mind, life, and matter in a splendid act of synthesis. The truth of our world is a magnificent manifoldness, expressing an exquisite diversity. But-this multiple diversity is upheld and sustained by a power of integration and arises in a field of oneness, --just as our solar system is an expression of a superb manifold harmony within an integrating oneness. This is an evolutionary process which respects the being as well as the becoming. Hence it does not seek to obliterate the cosmic harmony which is rooted in time and is the instrument for the Becoming. Rather, it evolves by the aid of those laws. Thus we can applaud Ilya Prigogine when he declares, 'I want to feel the evolution of things. I don't believe in transcending, but in being embedded in a reality that is temporal.' (OMNI, May, 1983.) The critical crossroad we have reached is mirrored in the expansion of this very solar system to the observing eye of humankind. During the past several hundred years we have seen the System increase by three planets. While over this same period, pari passu with this expansion, the consciousness of the species and the condition of our civilisation have also undergone singular alterations. An acceleration in the evolution of consciousness never before witnessed has set in during this period, particularly heightened in our century. But what is required now, that 'choice of destiny', as Sri Aurobindo has called it, is a conscious collaboration with this process. Prior to this critical juncture the human being was carried along on the crests of the evolutionary wave in an unconscious fashion. But now, with the birth of a new consciousness and species, poised differently, centred on the higher axis of being, the possibility arises that we may collaborate consciously, guided by the harmonics of the very cosmos we inhabit and stand in awe of: an applied cosmology, not another speculative theory. In the midst of the chaos we see about us a sublime cosmos emerges. Its life does not depend upon the old in the midst of which it stands. It emerges as the old crumbles, uncontaminated by the morose suggestions of purposelessness that vitiate the atmosphere of this dying world. It emerges because the conditions for it are determined by higher evolutionary laws, and is hence a thing inevitable in the history of our planet's time; even as the present mental being was an unavoidable and necessary circumstance, a step along the way but nothing more, and nobly played its role in the evolution of consciousness. The foundations of this new and higher species are solidly laid in the stratum that is indestructible. But not disengaged from material creation. Rather, these new foundations are rooted in matter and they form the basis for a new species and society.

more people are spontaneously awakening to the possibility that what we need now is a "paradigm of mutual care that can carry us across the threshold between worlds." ( a story of interbeingness that can evolve without becoming "stone tablets" crushing the mystery of our humanity into a prefab mold...again, I remember the message Mirra Alfassa - Sri Aurobindo's yogic partner - got in one of her latest mystical experiences ofthe descent of the Supramental Consciousness: "it's very important not make of this process another religion") Why the Age of the Guru is Over Charles Eisenstein Poised as we are at the transition between worlds, and traveling, many of us, back and forth between them, we need a way to enter the new one, learn to live in it, and be able to abide there. We need, in other words, a midwife. The birth metaphor is perhaps imperfect, since we are undergoing not a single, final expulsion, but a series of brief experiences of a more radiant world in which we have been unable to stay. How can we stay? How can we fully establish ourselves in a radically different way of thinking, relating, and being? Make no mistake: this revolution goes far beyond the acceptance of an idea. To know and embody as an experiential, lived, enacted reality the truth of interbeingness, to live in the spirit of the gift as appropriate to each relationship, to absolutely trust one's divinity and that of others, to know in every fiber of one's being, "I art Thou," and to navigate this knowledge with appropriate boundaries, constitutes a fundamental revolution in human beingness (...) Humanity collectively, and many of us individually, are at a threshold between worlds. The world we are entering is both a new world for us, and a long-forgotten realm. As we step into it, we can be each other's welcoming committee. We can do for each other what a guru does for a disciple: hold each other in the knowing of who we really are, and teach each other how to live there. Each of us, as we experience our own piece of the age of reunion, becomes a guide to a small part of that vast new territory. http://www.realitysandwich.com/across_threshold_0

We don't have idea of what we have lost...this is an eye-opener, heart-expanding account about one of the last First People: they did'nt have religion, scriptures, spiritual burocrats...not even shamans....but they were in complete alignment with the Mystery, they were friendly, joyful, gentle...we used to be this way, before the violence of belief systems/patriarchy... http://www.unk.edu/firstyear.aspx?id=13833