Here we deal with an area that the New Age has unquestionably made its own, and profited considerably thereby: the existence of superphysical beings, but a brief glance at the history of religion, and indeed of folklore, shows us a long line of such beings in all cultures. Archangels, angels, principalities, seraphim and cherubim, right on down through pixies, gnomes, goblins, elves, devas, etc and, dare I say it, hobbits.
Personal
Guides
Here, we
enter the heart of the New Age. No self-respecting participant in the
spiritual market place is without his or her personal guides.
[At this
stage, I need to lay a card or two on the table. As far as I can see,
a good deal of what passes as New Age is either insufferably precious
(see Precious Moments) or blatantly profit-driven.
You cannot buy your way to spiritual experience any more than you can
do so by the exercise of any other form of power; nor, as far as my own
experience is representative of the Real Thing, is spiritual experience
a commodity which can be readily packaged for sale.]
As I have
already indicated, superphysical information can originate from the (good/evil)
lower astral and manasic levels as well as much higher up. I have, however,
never met anyone who identified their guides as anything but the higher
up variety.
So why do
they spend so much time contradicting each other?
Nostalgia
When we remember
here that it was not much more than 50 years ago that the last person
died in prison in England for practising as a medium and clairvoyant we
can be forgiven a little nostalgia. And, while we draw the line at stoning these people, one can begin to understand the impatience and frank scepticism that they must have at times generated.
Angels
The big question
we have to answer, as I see it, is this: "What need has an omnipresent,
omnipotent, omniscient God for messengers and agents?" Who does he think he is? Nero Wolfe?
Why would
He need helpers? How could anyone, however gifted, possibly "help"
an omnipotent, omnipresent, omniscient God? Bear in mind, also, that Buddhists find no need for the existence of a Deity, let alone messengers to serve him..
My personal
perception is that God is involved in the physical (lesser) creation only
to the extent that there are surrendered persons capable of experiencing
Him directly who are available to function as conduits for his energy. (Refer The Fall)
Given this
position it is conceivable that an intermediate group or groups, more
easily visible to "ordinary, unregenerate men" may be appropriate
to provide ongoing assistance, especially where consciousness is not developed
enough - or strong enough - to experience Him directly. I don't think
they will be commercial outfits.
Certainly
the biblical record speaks of angels.
British
Civil Service
However,
as I approach the question of masters, guides and hierarchy, I have to
confess to a large amount of gleeful cynicism. The whole concept of a
hierarchy of "masters" in echelons of seven, each responsible
for his piece of the action, is just so gloriously reminiscent of the
British Civil Service at the peak of its influence, and, what is more,
has its first descriptions during this period.
The arrival
of the New Age proper, with its marriage of "spirituality" and
crass materialism (God meant us all to be rich and loaded with BMWs, crystals
and cds full of flutes, chimes and bells...) has not helped much.
Nor has the
arrival in our upper skies of starships, whose occupants, from higher
civilisations than ours (?), beam down telepathically an endless series
of clichés while abducting normal, everyday people like you and me for
detailed examination and joy-rides. ( There is a strong school of thought (?) which has it that the differences between mankind and the lesser animals can be explained by sexual congress between these visitors and primitive humans at an earlier stage of our evolution.)
They would
not be the first or the last civilisation, though, to send out missionaries to convince
people that superior technology implies superior spirituality. (See Iraq
for recent examples; or the British Empire.)
More spiritually
equal than others
There is,
too, to be considered, the proposition that Native Americans when they
die do not seem to take part in the same death process as other human
beings. Their sole function between incarnations seems to be to act as
spiritual guides for New Age authors and teachers, lecturers, channellers,
workshop leaders and healers.
In the spirit
(?) of George Orwell, it seems that some races are spiritually more equal
than others.
I'm still
trying to understand how one's human racial identity gets to figure in
the between-life.
Seth and
the Rise of the Counsellor
The teachings
of dear old Seth via Jane Roberts - also available on video, I believe - open up the spiritual
world to an infinite number of realities and simultaneous incarnations
in which absolutely anything is possible, somewhere.
Perhaps that
is why we need guides....
It would
certainly seem to make social services and counselling by far the biggest
occupational bloc out there.
As with my
comments about the hierarchy reflecting the British Civil Service at its
height, so, too, do the highly elaborate counselling and "guide"
systems often described in the last twenty or thirty years reflect the huge expansion
of counselling and guidance in Western civilisation in the same period
of time.
I suspect
we might just possibly be projecting present social structures onto our
model of spiritual reality.
As you will
see presently, I do accept the notion of subtle beings. I do accept that
messages are received from dimensions beyond our own.
However...
However...
- I do not
believe the these beings as I experience them are on the whole supportive
of efforts by the physically alive to distract the dead from their death
passage. Nor do they support attempts by the dead to communicate with
those on earth. These seem to me fundamentally unhealthy activities.
- I do not
believe these beings subscribe to a marketing concept that requires them
to keep on channelling thousands of pages of doubtful spiritual clichés
through this years currently fashionable medium when much the
same information is already duplicated dozens of times over in any public
library or New Age book shop or video shop.
- I do not
think that God or his agents normally require starships in which
to travel. (And there does seem to be more than a little confusion about
the precise spiritual status of these visitors.)
- My understanding
of the death process does not include the preservation of racial identity,
even Native American, except that the essence of its influence is retained
in the causal body.
There seems
also to be no reason, either, why guides should be necessary to smooth
paths for us in daily life when such help as they are said to provide
is promised in the Bible through direct contact with God in listening
prayer - and, in my experience, delivered.
Once again,
as with the angels referred to earlier, it may be that guides accommodate
the needs of those whose present consciousness gives them no direct experience
of God, or very little. Or those who are oriented to/fixated on an "out
there" rather than an "in there" God. [Da Avad Wudhi asks
whether I have room in my conceptuary for a God who is both.]
Most teachings
about guides mention them as "mentors" with whom we discuss
the lessons of our past incarnation, and the nature of our next incarnation,
and they are said to help us prepare appropriately for it.
It seems
to me that there is nothing obvious in the nature of karma that seems
to require discussion. It is there and its imperatives direct the nature
of subsequent incarnations. End of story.
Pixies ?
I have had
a number of experiences of superphysical entities or beings, mostly in
the last twenty years. One of the most delightful was an encounter with
the pixies.
I was working
at the time from a rented house on a 10 acre farm right across the road
from several thousand acres of pine forest. During a bodywork session
soon after I arrived there to live, in through the open south-facing window came a
dancing swooping beam of sparkling light, about 15 - 18 inches in depth,
which moved round and round us as we were working.
I turned to my client
who was also seeing this and said, "What on earth is that?" "Pixies"
she answered, "elementals. They've come to check you out, see what
you're doing."
I spoke to a wise friend of mine a little later, one
not known to my client, and, before I had a chance to finish, she completed
the description for me and said, "Pixies!"
I encountered
them in the vege garden a few days later, and about a month or so down
the track, I woke early, around 5 a.m. needing to go to the loo. Then
I became aware that in the early dawn light, the house was full of them,
all dancing and sparkling. On my way back to bed I stopped and just sat
with them for what seemed like ages. It was a very, very warming experience.
From time
to time I am also aware of unpleasant, usually astral, "presences", or of astral
energy in the vicinity of people whose bodies I work on. Initially I worked
with this material using a "cleansing" process, but now I prefer
to simply "realise the presence" until, usually very soon, the
unpleasant energies dissipate.
Masters
Masters,
in theosophical terms, are those who have attained their fifth initiation.
They have no further personal need to reincarnate, though some of them
do, and return as teachers.
As far as
I can tell, and my reading is by no means exhaustive, Masters were first
identified as such in the teachings of the theosophy movement.
A number
of these Masters were identified and further described by Alice A. Bailey, specifically those
entrusted with oversight of major spiritual territory. Some recent teachings
have identified others. The Church Universal and Triumphant has made a
specialty of contact with these and other "Masters".
I have treated
these claims on the whole with a certain amount of reserve, until quite
recently.
What was
that?
While I was
working one day with a regular client on the table, she mentioned that
we had "visitors". This is a joking term we use for superphysical
entities, earth-bound souls, etc, that are sometimes encountered during
a session.
I prepared
quietly to reclaim my clinic, but no sooner was my attention focussed
than I became aware of something quite new - a presence of which the most
that I can say is that it seemed huge like about the size of half
a football field, like standing at the wharf beside an ocean liner. It seemed we were just touching the edge of it, ever
so gently. Our reaction was one of quiet awe.
All that
was necessary for me to do at this point was to sit back while some kind
of transformation appeared to take place in my client. When this was complete,
the presence withdrew.
Less than
a week later, I was working with another client at her home, and a similar
presence made itself felt to both of us. Although this one, too, was very
large, the "essence" of this presence seemed quite different
from the previous occasion. I asked my client if she knew what was going
on.
She said,
"Have you ever worked with Mother Mary before?"
"No,"
I said.
"Well,
I think you have now," was her reply.
It goes without saying that such "identification" would be hard to sustain in a court case. Nevertheless, over the
next month or so, a series of such presences arrived in my experience, some
several times. Some of these arrived while I was working with clients,
others while I was quiet, often while I was in bed. If I was working with
a client, in each case the experience was a shared one.
I find it
difficult to believe that anything I am about is important enough to warrant
personal, one-on-one, contact with such a series of apparently august
personages.
I eventually
decided that the Masters (if that is who they were) must
function in such a way that allows those who are sensitive to become aware
of them when it is appropriate.
In any case,
after about six weeks, the "visits" became less frequent, though
from time to time during a healing session the same sense of a vast presence
(or several) can be there.
Guides
I have been
told that I have four guides. I have had them described to me with some
consistency by persons who claim to be sensitive to phenomena of this
kind. (The descriptions do not correspond with my perception of what I
call the "masters".)
Where such
consistency exists, I am on the whole much more inclined to pay attention.
I have no
conscious awareness of my guides, or of any communication with them. I
certainly do have awareness of many other forms of superphysical beings,
entities, energies, and matter.
So, as far
as I am concerned, the jury is still out in the matter of guides.
I know personally
many persons whose integrity I believe is absolutely beyond question who
work in constant partnership with their guides.
But I would
also prefer it if guide activity was described a little less (no, a lot
less) preciously by many others who claim familiarity with them.
In short,
while everybody acknowledges that some alleged guides are of doubtful
value, Ive never met anyone who believes this about their own guides.
Their guides are purveyors of the truth in its most absolute and pure
form.
And such
a lot of contradiction.....
Direct Contact
I believe
that any teacher likely to be useful to you will for the most part teach
you from his own authority. Jesus was - and is - effective for just that reason.
And so was Joel Goldsmith.
I suspect that any Master
who wishes to reach you for any proper purpose will likely find his or
her way to you directly, and not by way of the lady who
charges you $90 a time. And probably not by hitching a ride on a passing
starship.
If you have
no conscious awareness or experience of Masters or Guides, that will not
prevent you from doing useful work, nor will it prevent you from hearing
the still small voice of inner awareness when it becomes necessary
if you stop, sit still now and again, and again, and listen.
-o0o-
Why do I insist on a Deity, when, at least for Buddhists, he might not be a necessary component of a mystical experience? For me the question is answered in 1 John, and in my own mystical experience. "God is love", or as Bonhoeffer later put it, "What love is, God is". Especially the first time there, and I emphasise that there were no drugs involved, either then or previously, that might have contributed to the experience, the only word I could give for the way I responded to the world around me, was love, love welling up and flowing outwards more powerfully than I had ever experienced. There had to be a "someone" involved in that experience.
Again, such an identification would likely not stand up in a court case, but I would not be the first by a long way to report such a response.