The Seven Sages

Copyright © 2013 by Patricia Anne Dye.

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Contents

INTRODUCTION

THE COMMON GROUND

EARTH WHISPERER

LILA

SOLOMON

PHILOMEL

DATTATREYA

MARIANINA

HORUS

. . . The Seven Sages who have existed since the Beginning of Time . . .

Universal Legend

In the past we have had World Saviours—Sons of God who have enunciated a world message and brought an increase of light to the peoples. Now, in the fullness of time, and through the work of evolution, there is emerging a group who will perhaps bring salvation to the world, and who . . . will so stimulate and energise the thoughts and souls of men that the new age will be ushered in by an outpouring of the love, harmony and knowledge of God Himself . . .

What will be the effect of the mission of a group of world saviours, not as Christs, but as knowers of God in some degree, who supplement each other’s efforts, reinforce each other’s messages, and constitute an organism through which the . . . principle of spiritual life can make [its] presence felt in the world?

Alice A. Bailey

INTRODUCTION

Sometimes a fool, sometimes a sage, sometimes possessed of regal splendour; sometimes wandering, sometimes as motionless as a python, sometimes wearing a benignant expression; sometimes honoured, sometimes insulted, sometimes unknown—thus lives the man of realization, ever happy with supreme bliss. Just as an actor is always a man, whether he puts on the costume of his role or lays it aside, so is the perfect knower of the Imperishable always the Imperishable, and nothing else.

Shankaracharya

Life is a constant unfolding of our potential divinity, culminating in the god-man stage.

The three rungs of the ladder of evolution are animality, humanity, divinity . . . The average man and the saint have much in common. One could even assert that there is no difference between them, only the degree of manifestation. The potential Godhead has become manifest in the saint, whereas it remains a possibility in the average man . . . Living in human bodies, the [saints] exhibited human qualities as well, and through their own lives demonstatrated the future attainments of man.

Selvarajan Yesudian

In the Otherworld—the one that supports and substands This one—‘natural’ laws are much more expansive, clearer and simpler. What we dimly and occasionally grasp in rare moments of clarity in this world, we would take for granted in That one. In This world we live in a kind of permanent fog where important realities and connections are at best trivialised, mostly overlooked; at the worst, condemned. There is a lot of fabrication and fancy around matters of little consequence in This world such as fashion, food and sport; no-one challenges these glamours, as they are embedded firmly in herd belief and animal-comfort structures. As such they are embraced without question.

Ancient indigenous people from Mexico suggested that humans occupy two worlds; the tonal (based on reason and the five senses) and the nagual (based on silent knowledge). The two sides of the duality can be called the ‘self’ and the ‘otherself’. The entry point to the Otherworld is through the otherself. This involves tuning into higher resonances; most human consciousness occupies a very low and limited range, and is therefore presently incapable of apprehending other realities.

James Endredy

(adapted)

In the Otherworld, these distractions of the mind, so foundational to mundane existence, are viewed as unimportant and therefore warrant little attention. Consciousness is ‘traded’ on the understanding of the essential connectedness of all energies, whether they are expressed in angel or animal form. There is a firm grasp of Intelligent Design: the evolutionary intention that all energies are destined to finally Know their origins in the One Life. Separative existence as definitive is outside their ken.

The critical difference between the Otherworld and the common one is the degree of clarity around this One Fact. For the latter, this clarity is obfuscated by the dense fogs that hold the human mind in the continuous thrall of divisive and conflicting glamours. These do not exist in the Otherworld; here the massive suffering that illusion engenders is altogether absent.

The Otherworld is that range of resonances outside our five-sense ken and perception. (as a farflung composite of shifting energies it might be more correct to use the term ‘otherworlds’.) It contains:

The akashic field and records of human history;

Ancestral essences;

Angelic entities of varying resonances;

The Logoi or presiding energies of heavenly

So it was, when I was contemplating my choice of sages, along with the how of it, I left this dim and dusty world and soul-journeyed to the Other one. This is a simple matter of vibrational attunement. It is not so much a ‘journey’ as a kind of ‘jump’ into the refined and subtle resonances of the Otherworld. Saints and seers, past and present, who live, move and have their being here, provide the doorways through which one steps into it. One has only to ‘wallow’, imaginally speaking, in their bio-field for the change in resonance to occur.

Samyama is a Sanskrit word covering the kind of fulsome focus required for entering and merging with a particular ‘reality’. We apply it all the time in This world without knowing it. If we knew its power and outcomes, we would cease to occupy our minds with war, violence, grievance, revenge, money, illness and death, and turn to realities and resonances that shrink suffering to zero. At this very moment we could switch to a Better Place; it is simply a matter of awareness and choice.

bodies, including our own solar system;

Platonic ideals and forms;

Archetypal patterns - both helpful and harmful to planetary life;

Thoughts and prayers;

Animal spirits;

Nature beings;

Elemental guardians and builders;

Overlighting entities or solar angels; alternative (probable) realities; soul allies and agents.

The Kingdom of Heaven

The whole process begins with careful selection of one’s goal. This is chosen intuitively, in accord with one’s calling and destiny. Around this, there needs to be an astute organisation of the mind, not that small section of it relating to the brain, but the kind of consciousness, ‘championed’ by babies and the wise, that ‘thinks’ with the entire body. We need to engage this energy in its entirety, immersing it in the new vibration, in order to effect the necessary switch. This one fierce act of concentration yields the passport to the Otherworld and its entities, where the soul reigns supreme.

It is also the secret of alchemy.

Before explaining the niceties of sage-selection, it is important to understand how Otherworld information and directives are transmitted.

Samyama may be regarded as ‘perfectly concentrated meditation’.

Alice A. Bailey

(This state allows the meditator to focus the mind at will on either inner or outer realities, exert efficient control over the physical, mental and emotional dimensions, and to live as a Seer.)

Words are not always employed, as their connotations and usage have been so limited and debased by human intercourse. Soul-expression is therefore mostly in imagery, symbols and deep intuitions, occasionally music, as it was for Mozart, who ‘received’ great musical works in their entirety almost instantaneously. Dream states and hypnagogic reveries, where the world-conduits are shut down, welcome soul-speak. Many of these ‘visitations’ are flash-revelations, impacting so sharply and briefly on the inner eye, it would be easy to miss them altogether or dismiss them as figment.

They are, however, massive with information, packed with meaning and directive, so potent as to leave an indelible imprint on the mind-stuff.

And their watershed after-effects initiate new streams of knowingness, leading to dramatic paradigm shifts.

Saints too were potential sinners, redeemed through their own struggles and suffering. There was no sin unknown to St Francis of Assisi, but when he saw the impermanence of earthly joys, which merely increased his sorrows, he gave them up, and learned that in giving them up, he gained a long-sought-for freedom. Once somebody told him, You are so good. To which he promptly replied, If I act otherwise, I am so unhappy.

Selvarajan Yesudian

As far as the search for sages was concerned, there was little to be gained from a scrutinising of world heroes. Those who are at the forefront of world attention represent the self-serving values and belief systems of the herd, whose modi vivendi are for the most part diametrically opposed to those of the Otherworld. They are the business moguls, stars of war, sport and film, politicians. Shadow-dwellers, mostly, unacquainted with the lucid sagacity and inclusive compassion of soulways; they are simply the stunted symbols of ego-yearning.

I knew almost certainly that those I was seeking would be ‘invisible’ to the mundane eye. Some other means of selection had to be employed.

I began, as I often do when I need to consult the wisdoms of the Otherworld, with a firm connect to the appropriate resonances. In this instance, I ‘snuggled in’ to the energies of Lalla, Kashmiri poetess of the fourteenth century, whose Otherworld experiences and insights were dearest to my heart, nearest to my mind. Her poetry bears a haloed beauty, even in translation—the unmistakable radiance of the Otherworld.

‘Swimming’ as strongly as I could in Lalla’s energy field, I requested assistance in my search: Seven Sages, I emphasised, with Seeing Eyes, Inclusive Hearts, translated into powerful, selfless and Life-affirming Service.

If you want a kingdom and get it, you’ll have no peace.

If you give it away, still you won’t be content.

Only a soul free of desire can taste eternity.

Be living, yet dead! Then the knowing comes to live in you…

I seem to be here, but really, I’m walking in the jasmine garden.

Lalla (translated Coleman Barks)

Above all, relevant to the needs of the times.

Still, in spite of my most focussed effort, my plea felt limp, fireless and superficial. I dug for some kind of aspirational backup from my Inner Knowing faculty, that elusive, intuitive link to the Otherworld ground. This Knows precisely what it is seeking well before the idea or plan occurs to the conscious mind. It is necessary to engage this, so that genuine synchronicities can be forged.

There ensued that quivering interlude or period of gestation, while the energies of Earth and Heaven jockeyed into position for meaningful exchange. I waited in that alert but calm state of mind, thought suspended, with listening ear and an unquestioning expectation of desired outcome.

Enter the reverie: a circular, stained-glass skylight looking upwards towards the sun. In the circle, a seven-pointed star, so brilliantly multi-coloured my inner eye smarted. The centre of the star was a pulsing golden light that shone brighter than any heavenly body. It hurled such energy through the colours, they danced and shimmied like living fires.

All this in a second or two of world-time.

The living circle of colour dropped onto me like a cape. The sun-centre assumed a golden head-covering that continued to emit streamers of fire.

It was gone in another flash, leaving me pondering its relevance to my request.

Past studies had acquainted me with the subtle bio-energy system that sustains, informs and regulates the organs of the gross body.

According to the level from which we operate our consciousness, just like the facet of a crystal, we shall give out a different vibration to those around us and we shall show a different colour in our aura. So we find that the colours of the rainbow and our levels of awareness or consciousness are related.

Norah Hills

‘You Are a Rainbow’

Embedded in this systemn are the chakras. To the Othereye, these look like spinning wheels, their colours indicating their rate of spin.

Red, being slowest in vibratory terms, represents the physical, and so on through the subtle body, following rainbow hues up to the crown of the head where violet can be perceived by the clairvoyant eye.

My pondering suggested that each chakra or dimension of being had its own pure representative, an embodiment of its immaculate wisdoms. In other words, its sage. Seven chakras, seven sages…

So long as I tapped into that purity, my inner eye, ear and heart would be so energy-literate that a true sage would be easy to pick from the dust-storm of lesser energies. Purity had to be strictly maintained on my part, however; the gifted ring of coloured fire would need to adhere like a lorica, so that the beams sent forth by each colour would find proper correspondence in the subtle world. Such ‘cleanness’ of bio-field is almost impossible to maintain in the common world, except under the aegis of Grace, that mysterious and restorative Presence who shepherds our errings away from danger and steers our dim apprehensions towards the Light.

A ‘lorica’ or breastplate for the soul invoked special powers of the universe to keep the soul free of evil influences. It could include the energies of those with whom we resonate, powers of nature, spiritual allies, heroes, gods and ancestors.

Caitlin Matthews

It is this amazing Force too that works with the incisive nature of the soul to bring like together with like, shrugging off surface difficulties and differences so that the normal barriers of race, status, religion, language, age, gender, time, geography and distance seem not to exist.

A magical and speedy synchronicity occurred. From the outset of the search I felt as though I had been placed in a kind of blue-velvet time tunnel; without a minimum of planning and thought, I was propelled along the channel to each destination. This inner reality seemed much more real and reliable than the actual travel details of the various journeys that took me all over the world.

Even so, I dared not rely totally on miracle. I needed to feel the sure stab of recognition at each encounter before I could put the questions to my ‘candidate’.

I need not have worried. In each case there had been some kind of prescience about my coming. So prepared were they for my arrival, I often felt myself to be the focus of each interview. Their clear resonances reached out to greet me before a word was spoken.

Then there was a commanding sense of kyros about each meeting—the keen, intuitive mathematics of destiny satisfied.

While I was asked not to reveal names, as world interference could cause a serious threat or distraction to the lightwork they had been called to do here, there is much that can be told about the internal dynamics of the encounters without compromising their anonymity.

Our heroes have become more complex. No longer do they exhibit one or two outstanding characteristics; they are now whole mult-dimensional individuals… [They] have begun to bring together in themselves the polarities—East and West, feminine and masculine—

Uniquely privileged by my earlier vision, I was able, if not at first, to ‘read’ them eventually through Otherworld eyes. Their translucency was mind-shifting; I was instantly reminded of the brilliant circular stained glass skylight. The only difference was the way a background ‘sun’ illumined each aura. Every mansion of the soul or chakra radiated pure, intense colour, but one colour flared out more the others. I was reminded of Norah Hills’ claim that everybody favours one mansion above the others, and lives more by the edicts of that chakra than the others. This was ‘verified’ in each case by a strong ‘wash’ of the perceived colour through my bio-field.

to recognise the essential qualities of each, to take the best of both worlds and to provide us with a model which is truly universal.

Jan Lawson

Nothing external proclaimed their superior sagacity—no difference in dress, no power play, no ostentatious displays of wealth. To the world-eye, which is governed by five-sense reality, and blinkered by herd definitions of superiority—looks, power, money, erudition, success-trappings—they would appear involved to such an extent with the mundane concerns of their ethos as to be drab and uninteresting, virtually invisible.

Why do we not count a man as ill if his mind is dull and unexciting? Mystical vision should be as natural as excreting.

Colin Wilson

Behind this apparent ordinariness, however, lay their true stature and glory; they were ablaze with sanguinity and riotous colour. I was awestruck by their resonantal range: each expressed like a huge orchestra whose players were beyond number; they played the grand spectrum of earth-given and heaven-sent energy patterns, in an unceasing and carefree dance, as though nothing could be more natural. The Otherself and the world-self were dynamically merged.

Meaning is invisible, but the invisible is not contradictory of the visible; the visible itself has an invisible framework, and the invisible is the secret counterpart of the visible.

M. Merleau-Ponty

This, however, was devoid of the cacophonous notes, so clinging to the human condition: anger, hate, jealousy, pride; these were absent. The entire orchestra of the person played continuous and magnetic melody. Leaning out from an Otherworld window with the entire ensemble of the Otherworld at their disposal behind them, they nevertheless struck chords familiar to the astute human ear.

But all this would be passed over by the average worldling, who would see nothing more than another being much like himself and a lot less interesting.

Had s/he glanced ever so briefly into the eyes, however, s/he may have achieved instant enlightenment, been so alchemised that her/his leaden persona fled forever, and the potential for evil wasparalysed. Living fire cascaded through these soul-windows, a wild current of Otherworld glories poured through unceasingly; seekers would say afterwards that they had glimpsed Heaven. That one split-second glimpse would be enough to slough off clouds of woe and the desperate mind that supports it.

Beyond living and dreaming, there is something more important: Waking up.

Antonio Machado

Such startling magnificence can of course be off-putting, jarring to the twilight world-dweller. A sudden illumination of our darknesses can induce such terror and rage, the urge to extinguish it can be overwhelming. Many genuine sages and Great Teachers have met their end this way: Christ, Shams-i—Tabriz, Martin Luther King, Mahatma Gandhi, a host of unnamed martyrs. Too much light is not, as a rule, loved by the world.

If we can bear these extravagant ‘lasers’, however, a remarkable energy shift occurs spontaneously. There is a curious but blissful and bodily experience of being ‘melted’; the tough armouries, the stringy bonds of protection and the iron cages we install against a soul-battering world are miraculously dissolved.

We are left clear and childlike, leaning confidently into the light.

The densities of consciousness or vibration can be thought of as ‘dimensions’ we occupy. They can be arranged into an eight-fold ‘octave system’, analogous to the musical octave:

FIRST DENSITY:   The cycle of awareness

SECOND DENSITY:   Growth

THIRD DENSITY:   Self-awareness

FOURTH DENSITY:   Love or understanding

FIFTH DENSITY:   Light or wisadom

SIXTH DENSITY:   Light/love, love/light, or unity

   (compassionate wisdom)

SEVENTH DENSITY:   The level where one perceives the sacramental nature of all things.

On this scale, all sages would be at least sixth density, except for the seventh, who seemed to be off the scale altogether!

References & Recommended Reading

ELKINS, David N. (PhD). 1998. Beyond Religion. Quest, USA

ENDREDY, James. 2002. Earthwalks for Body and Spirit. Bear & Co., USA

HILLS, Norah (Ed.). 1979. You Are a Rainbow. Uni. of the Trees Press, USA

NEWHOUSE, Flower A. (S. Isaac, PhD, ed.) 1995. Angels of Nature. Quest, USA.

Chapter One

THE COMMON GROUND

The lives of all great saints and sages have one thing in common, and that is their love and infinite understanding towards their fellow man.

Selvarajan Yesudian

Extraordinarily holy people… whose profane eyes had been burned away by the brilliant white light. When they grew sacred eyes, and gained courage to look again, the Rainbow Serpent uncoiled and leaped into the sky.

Young fawn exhaled in longing. I would give my very life to see that.

Kathleen O’Neal Gear

& W. Michael Gear

No two meetings were the same, and yet they shared common features.

Each encounter caught me napping; regardless of careful preparation, I was too often slammed into an acute, often miserable, awareness of my own shortcomings. Like a canoeist on the verge of terrifying rapids, at the intitial encounter, I would have done almost anything to escape my destiny. Fortunately, this did not last long enough for me to succumb to pressure. The discomfort always dissipated, expanding, so long as I hung in there, to a sunny, all-is-well feeling, a just-so certainty in the validity of my venture, an almost childlike trust in the innate goodness of each sage and the significant outcome of my project.

Regarding genuine greatness:

The great yogis, saints and sages accomplished so much because they were not timid little toadies, but great big egos, plugged into the dynamic Ground and Goal of the Cosmos itself. Precisely because the ego,

I think now that each meeting involved an adjustment of resonances—mine, that is—so that our minds could meet correctly on the right level. This, perhaps, is why so many saints have been killed in the past; no one recognised the sloughing off of their own darkness as a necessary preamble to making friends with the light of our being as well as theirs. We therefore slaughtered what we mistakenly felt to be the author of our misery. Thus, we hold ourselves in patterns of pain which persist to this day. We ‘turn on the wheels’ of our misthinks, wounding ourselves compulsively on our ‘spokes of agony’.

the soul and the Self can all be present simultaneously, we can better understand the real meaning of ‘egolessness’, a notion that has caused an infinte amount of confusion. But egolessness does not mean the absence of a functional self (that’s a psychotic, not a sage); it means one is no longer identified with that self…

Ken Wilbur

I now understand the process. I have thrown away my ‘wheels of torment’, the lasting bliss of each encounter continues to nourish and inform.

All sages operated from a much larger frame of reference than the average worldling; they were far more concerned with giving and economising than they were with ‘getting and spending’. The world was very much with them, but in transpersonal terms of global unity.

Their ordinary surface, common sense lives, flowed on against a backdrop of breathtaking vision for the future of humanity. They lived outside the shadowed boxes where most humans live, dancing freely, exuberantly, tirelessly in the Light.

And yet, they defied clear-cut categorisation. Each presented a unique face and viewpoint; together they added up to a colourful garden of surreal and star-like beauty.

To remember the Otherworld in this world is to live in your true inheritance.

David Whyte

They had affinities with the shamans of old who were probably responsible for the first stirrings of awe and reverence in the human heart. This they did by putting into ‘digestible’ form—art, story, dance, rhythm, ritual—their extreme and ecstatic adventures in the Otherworld.

If, as Joseph Cambell points out, ‘the shaman is the person, male or female who… has had an overwhelming psychological experience that turns him totally inward’, forcing him into an

The so-called traumatic experience is not an accident, but the opportunity for which the child has been patiently waiting—had it not

initially frightening exploration of the unconscious, then most qualified. Most had had some kind of early-life ‘accident’ or circumstance which had torn him open to new and ravishing possibilities. And like the ancient shamans, they

occurred, it would have found another… in order to find a necessity and direction for its existence, in order that its life may become a serious matter.

W.H.Auden

had shared with their communities the Good News and healing prospects of enchanting worlds and realities beyond this one.

But now the community is the entire world. And the visions they express embrace the totality of Life.

The world groans under a surfeit of information. And yet, one important item is missing; the Essential Message of our potential glory is not getting through. We do not need any more hearsay about the Kingdom of Heaven. What we do need is the sun-soaked witness of those who have lived in It and know how to take us there singly and en masse. The sages could well turn out to be the world saviours our hearts have longed for.

The most holy form of theory is action.

Nikos Kazantakis

They were neither proactive or reactive—or perhaps they were both, and more. Action arose quite naturally out of what they were, in the same way that trees, flowers and animals know exactly how, when and where to bloom. They never agonised over what kind of result they might be producing,

The soul of each of us is given a unique daemon before we were born, and it has selected an image or pattern that we live on earth… However, we believe we come empty into this. The daemon remembers what is in your image and belongs to your pattern, and is therefore the carrier of your destiny.

James Hillman

so sure were they of their entelechy, their place in the bringing together of the world. They did not ‘seek answers, but lived the questions’.

But they were far from wishy-washy. A controlled fire may burn quietly in its hearthplace, but it is nevertheless fire and carries with it the qualities of the sun: life-sponsoring warmth, searing heat, blinding light.

Not one proclaimed himself as ‘anything out of the ordinary.’ When discussing vocation, each was careful in some way to place his status as human being ahead of all else.

I had the same delightful feeling many times that I felt when playing with children: that extraordinary feeling of being engaged with fresh, spontaneous, often zany, minds.

They wore the ‘faces they had before they were born’. It did not surprise me to find that they viewed the universe as a kind of cosmic joke, much like the ancient Indians who gave the name ‘Lila’ to what they saw as divine play all around them.

I offered to each sage the same set of seven questions. It did not surprise me that their responses were so different, and yet seemed to add up to a new and exciting global paradigm that could lift humanity into a Better Place.

Before offering my questions, I spent time with each sage, observing them, so that I might flesh out their soul-stances and better understand their responses to the questions. Even though I was with them for a brief time, the richness of each life could have filled a large book. I have had to be content with the most significant bio-details.

All sages baulked, to some extent, at the questions. The world was already labouring under a surfeit of words; the cacophony was deafening. People had stopped their ears out of sheer self-defence; they no longer listened to anything but the shallow and expedient information relating to their immediate comfort.

They made valid points.

When poets or metaphysicians talk about the subject matter of the Perennial Philosophy, it is generally at second hand. But in any age there have been some men and women who chose to fulfil the conditions upon

In the end they allowed me to carry out my mission, on the grounds that I stay always in step with my own soul-dictates, and true to theirs. This, in the good faith that a manuscript would result, so magnetic and light-drenched that the usual tendency of letters to ‘kill’ the spirit would be reversed in favour of the gift of life.

which alone, as a matter of brute empirical fact, such immediate knowledge can be had… To such first-hand exponents of the Perennial Philosophy those who knew them have given the name of ‘saint’ or ‘prophet, ‘sage’ or ‘enlightened one’ . . .

In India two classes of scripture are recognised; the Shruti or inspired writings which are their own authority, since they are the product of immediate insight into ultimate reality; and the Smriti which are based upon the Shruti and from them derive such authority as they have.

Aldous Huxley

‘The Perennial Philosophy’

In this glamour-contaminated world, where dividedness, both within and without, is more real to us than a sense of personal unity and global togetherness, the idea of a Common Ground has figment-status. Religion, which purports to bind us back to the One Source, has probably done more than any other institution to keep us away from It.

There is a Ground, common to all people and all things; this is the forgotten foundation stone of all religions and life itself.

The sages, many of whom had probably not heard of the perennial philosophy in fact, or bothered with it overmuch if they had, nevertheless lived it energetically. They did not seem to think overmuch; their ‘talk’ was intimately and economically connected to their ‘walk’.

Nor were they conspicuously humble; it was as though they were too busy happily riding the waves of now-being—sometimes up, sometimes down, and occasionally being dumped—to categorise experience into triumph and disaster, and how these vagaries might effect their status.

It was unnecessary, and would have been a revelation of my ignorance to put the question, "Who are you?" A work of art explains itself in its beauty, and these were artists of life. The One Radiance, flaring out differentially, was common to all. One does not usually ask questions of beauty, merely drinks it in hungrily, like a child at the breast.

Philosophia perennis—the ethic that places man’s final end in the knowledge of the immanent and transcendant Ground of all being—is immemorial and universal…

But I had a mission that involved questions; it was a matter of standing back a little, shifting perspective, squinting through the eyes of urgent world-need, as I perceived it. The responses I elicited spelled out their unique perspectives. But their common ground was the greater part of their being.

It has a place in every one of the higher religions…

The nature of this one Reality is such that it cannot be directly comprehended except by those who have chosen to fulfil certain conditions, making themselves loving, pure in heart and poor in spirit…

Aldous Huxley

‘The Perennial Philosophy’

If the Otherworld could be likened to a diamond of infinite facets, then the precious stone itself is an Inclusive Love or agape. This appreciation of a profound Love that holds the universe together was evidenced in the sages in their personal relationships and their Weltanschauungen (world views). It in no way impaired their sharpness of vision, but they had the uncanny knack of cutting through surface dross to the soul-music beneath it. They assumed mastery in the other, if only in potential, and addressed them ‘as if their day were here’.

The fact that they loved the world in no way blinded them to its dangerous ‘villainies’. While making the most of the opportunities for new growth offered by the current crisis, usually behind the scenes, they were sorrowfully aware of humankind’s

Regarding love:

The astrolabe of the mysteries of God is love.

Rumi

lemming-like scuttle towards extinction. This they wore lightly but convincingly.

Like unsmudged windows, light poured through them effortlessly. This registered as a direct and comfortable translucency; what I ‘saw’ in their

In the course of spiritual discipline, one gets a ‘love body’ endowed with ‘love eyes’ and ‘love ears’.

Sri Ramakrishna

sun-blest bio-fields corresponded exactly with what I got in terms of response and observation of their conduct. By contrast, much of human communication involves nervous navigation through ego minefields and the narrow straits of political correctness.

Almost any topic I cared to broach with the sages would have been met with a gracious return of some kind. But if I ever strayed towards

 . . . Agape, a higher and more disciplined love that can lift romance to greater expression. Through agape, eros can be transformed into a deeper and more lasting love.

Ken Wilbur

glamour or frivol, a warning bell rang clearly in my psyche; they had little truck with petty ego issues.

How, one might ask, did they become such elegant spirits in a world so contorted by its own shortcomings? This I cannot say, and I did not ask. There are, however, plenty of theories.

They could be old souls, perhaps evolved from stones and trees, graduated through many animal forms, then having occupied many human bodies.

Regarding service:

There is no one in the world who cannot arrive without difficulty at the most eminent perfection by fulfilling with love obscure and common duties.

J.P. Caussade

With this background, they would come into this life, replete with learnings from the past, where over aeons, they had sifted out real from unreal. In this life, they might be called ‘one-cloud saints’, early connections with their status having sloughed off the cloud of forgetfulness and rapidly brought them up to soul-speed.

They might be star-visitors from more evolved civilisations, who have been ‘heaven-sent’ to assist the birthing process of a New Earth. Though they move through the veils of density and forgetting common to all human life, they nevertheless reclaim their resonances and their mission.

Or they are perfected souls, avatars, who have elected to return to earth at this portentous time to assist earthsouls in their

When we become fully accomplished or enlightened, we can give ourselves completely to others. Then we are free and everything becomes service.

Tarthang Tulku

‘Kum Nye Relaxation’

struggle towards the light, thereby initiating upon the planet the dawning of a New Age of ‘permanence and beauty’.

It is said that the Otherworld is populated by a multitude of invisible entities, hierarchically arranged according to levels of consciousness and resonance. Some of these angelic beings are called to watch over and monitor earth affairs. It may be that these affairs have reached the point of such a dangerous urgency that embodiment has been felt necessary to swing the planet away from disaster.

Characteristics of the True Server:

1. S/he will be distinguished by the quality of harmlessness, and by an active refraining from those acts and that speech which might hurt or cause any misunderstanding…

They could have been rendered soul-full by the energy transfers of mysterious star-beings who patrol the skies in mysterious and hitherto unidentified spaceships, who abduct, interrogate and instruct sensitive earthlings for short periods of time, to understand better the human psyche.

Or they could just be ordinary mortals who, through the happenstance of moral shock or extreme stress,

2. A willingness to let others serve as seems best to them, knowing that the life flowing through the individual server must find its own channels and outlets…

3. Joyfulness. This takes the place of criticism (that dire creator of misery) and is the silence that sounds.

have struck soul-gold, stumbled on the precious pearl of Otherworld Knowledge and Being, tucked it away tenderly in their heart-closets, turning away forever from the lesser glories of earthlife.

It does not matter in the end; all had become, one way or another, ‘supply lines’ to a sustainable wisdom, ever present to the deeper needs of humanity, ever ready to meet them.

They were like snow crystals, expressing through a variety of forms, but with many qualities in common. Embodiment of Nature in all her moods and cadences, they were no different in feel from their surroundings. They lived in easy accord with rhythm and purpose, much as a plant pulses confidently towards the light, and knows without qualm or question what

Regarding wisdom:

Beyond living and dreaming, there is something more important: Waking up.

Antonio Machado

kind of flower or fruit it is destined to produce. As god-seed, they foresaw enlightened outcomes; as earthlings, they lived and grew in accord with Nature. They were in no hurry. Their angel and animal energies merged into a living dance. I was reminded many times of the lotus which has its roots in the mud, but blooms exquisitely and easily above it.

Wisdom is not hidden. She is everywhere, but she hides like a dove in a stone.

Alice Howell

Children were charmed by them. Not surprising, since they were open, free-spirited, playful, creative and spontaneous, as all unspoiled children are. An early undifferentiated innocence had entered the crucible of adult life and experience, and emerged with all its early trappings, intensified and honed by soul-literacy.

Like children, they were emotionally uncomplicated. Their many-hued feelings scudded across their faces like clouds across the sun; but they never let go of their deeper tethering to the radiant constants of the soul.

If most of humanity live in the basements of their own palaces,

The Perfect Way knows no difficulties, except that it refuses to make preference. Only when freed from hate and love does it reveal itself fully and without disguise.

The Third Patriarch of Zen

these enjoyed consummate ease and delight in the sunlit rooms of their entire castles.

Of this I was reasonably sure, as far as the first six were concerned. As for the seventh, he appeared to live in the sun itself.

References & Recommended Reading

HUXLEY, Aldous. 1946 (1st printing). The Perennial Philosophy. Chatto & Windus Ltd, Great Britain.

ISHERWOOD, Christopher (ed.). 1951 (3rd impression). Vedanta for the Western World. Allen & Unwin, Great Britain.

REDFIELD, James & MURPHY, Michael. 2002. God and the Evolving Universe. Bantam, Australia.

Chapter Two

EARTH WHISPERER

This blue planet, endlessly circling the sun, with its oceans, mountains, prairies, and deserts, is both my mother and my home . . . It is we, rather than the earth, who need to be healed.

David N. Elkins

Why simplicity?

We are running out of non-renewable resources . . . We need to deliberately conserve rather than wastefully squander . . .

We are polluting ourselves into oblivion with massive discharges of wastes from industrial pollution . . . Common sense suggests that we voluntarily simplify our material demands . . . to minimise environmental polluition.

We need to share the world’s resources more equitably so that the poor of the world are given adequate health care and quality of life. This will be best achieved by reducing the material wants of the more affluent nations.

As energy resources become scarcer, nations will compete more and more aggressively for water, oil, food.

Increased riches do not make for happiness, instead an emphasis on material gains crowds out spiritual richness. Simplifying one’s life gives opportunity for creating a balance between the material and the spiritual.

‘Inflationary psychology’ encourages a high-demand, live-for-today attitude which encourages people to go out and buy too soon and too much. Simplicity of living modifies inflationary pressures.

Duane Elgin ‘Voluntary Simplicity’ (adapted)

He was thickset and muscular, clad casually in jeans and nondescript shirt—someone you might dismiss in a crowd as closer to earth than heaven. It was only when I caught his eye, or rather, his eye caught me,

A Master is one who has had his [or her] higher principles awakened and lives in them; and ordinary men do not. From the scientific standpoint, that is all there is to it; from the philosophic viewpoint, we may say that… [s/he is] more at one with the Uinversal Life; and from the religious standpoint, we may say that a Master has [recognised] his oneness with the Boundless.

G. de Purucker

‘Occult Glossary’

that his true status became magnificently apparent.

Breaking naturally, almost casually, on my consciousness as genuine miracles do, I looked through the eye-veil to a rich Summerland of trees, rivers, verdant pastures, marbled skies.

All this in a matter of seconds. Then an unexpected lurch of mind threw me back on myself, as though some forgotten or overlooked aspect of my soul hit an urgent veil of longing it had to let me know about. For one frozen moment, I hung in a desolate awareness of lost connections with earth largesse, my utter thanklessness for it. Not now—I pushed it away; but I knew it would haunt me like a deeply dissatisfied ghost.

Welcome to my world, he said, and the Good Earth embraced me.

With effort, I externalised. His physical form seemed to dissolve and he became a vision of the earth clothed in breathtaking beauty, indistinguishable from the world around him. He seemed suddenly everywhere as though he wore his ‘skin-encapsulated’ ego like a loose, easily discarded mantle

Love is the power to feel through the feet into Earth and through the spine into Heaven, to mingle into motion the inner wheels, to awaken the sleeping serpent.

Dai Hughes

‘Sacred Loyalties’

There was something exuberantly Viking about him, as though adventure coloured his blood. Juicy, as though the Green Man sought him as refuge and apologist in aworld of diminishing green force.

If the earth had a voice, it would be his… he was an Earthwhisperer…

As the relationship settled, I found him to be at home in any register of conversation, from the most mundane exchange about the weather, the price of vegetables, the state of the plumbing—to the most complex concepts around the nature of Man and God.

Alone in the forest, you are aware that life is everywhere around you. This is as close to religious experience as I get.

Russell Mittermeier

His chosen career was in the earth sciences, mainly geology, but he had wide-ranging interests and