bluestar
18-02-2007, 03:32 AM
Humanity's problem and its potential
By Diane Harvey
Part I: The Problem
The relatively immediate future for any individual is easy enough to predict. We are here for a while, and then we are not. Yet the realms beyond the death of the physical body are capacious, life goes on abundantly, and what we think of as our personal death is the least of our worries. Our real problem is the future of our species in incarnation on this planet.
This dense physical existence where we find ourselves now contains vast hidden properties and purposes which are as yet unknown by the large majority of incarnating souls. Nothing is, in reality, merely as it appears. The surprises in store for the human race are far more profound than any which have come before. And it is a matter of utmost urgency that mankind become as conscious as possible of the extensive still-hidden prospects of reality on this level. Because in essence, what is elsewhere is also here. What we call levels, planes, or dimensions are frequencies corresponding to states and entire realms of consciousness. The only real barriers between areas of vibratory activity or dimensions are those of habituated livingness, or "stage of evolution."
Human beings are currently living, on the whole, on the bare outskirts of the inherent potentials of their own awareness. Those who are sufficiently awake are acutely and painfully aware of this. There are always a percentage of souls in incarnations who have arrived at a more conscious state than the societal norm, and who therefore live out those lives within the confines of certain painful spiritual predicaments. But what once often amounted to merely a personal problem to resolve, and a matter of individual adjustment, has now become a planetary emergency.
It is old news by now, that what we call life is a unified field, and that no particle of reality is separated either from life, or from any other particle. But although this information is available in many forms, the human race has not chosen to alter its emotions, thinking, or behavior accordingly in any significant manner. Knowing vaguely about there being something called "One Life" has changed nothing on any broad scale. But the cost of ignoring reality and refusing to creatively rethink and reorganize the way the human race behaves on this planet is increasing exponentially.
Those who press on ahead, exploring new subjective worlds, do so in the overall context of human spiritual and material progress as a whole. Individuals can only consciously undertake their own evolutionary development here more or less in concert with the slow general trend upward of the entire species. No matter how preciously important our individuality is to us, we can never lose sight of the fact that we remain parts of a whole, whose general condition, health and sanity, will determine the overall possibilities for each individual incarnation.
The majority of human beings on Earth are now undergoing a drastic forced devolution. Throughout human evolution, the personal opportunity to be selfish, cruel, and ignorant has always been available in any given incarnation. In the past, this was a matter of conscious and/or subconscious choice, and of making decisions based on the natural level of one's own awareness. We then experienced the laws of cause and effect through living with the results. This is the process of genuine learning, which eventually instills a deep sense of personal responsibility for one's own life. And out of the realizations of personal responsibility come the opportunities to enter into the higher and more actively creative powers latent within us. Whoever is now on the path of light has previously tasted the bitter fruits of dark choices, and for that very reason turned willingly back toward the light. But this crucial element of free will in living and learning is now being subverted at the very root.
The only purpose of evil, or ultimate unreality, is to provide necessary contrast to reality. The free will of a human being must exercise itself through making innumerable choices, living with the effects, and thereby growing in hard-won wisdom. This element of free will is embryonic in much of mankind as yet, and can easily be blunted, distorted, diverted and paralyzed. This happens in some degree to everyone, for that matter, over and over again. An important part of the evolutionary process so far has been for the individual to learn to withstand and circumvent the pressures of other human beings opposing his or her own evolutionary best interests. But until now, the intervals between incarnations have sufficed to assimilate such lessons, and we have reincarnated refreshed, eager to resume the struggle to manifest our spiritual selves in this difficult dimension.
Critical and relatively recent changes have dangerously altered the fundamental state of normal evolutionary affairs on this planet. The underlying meaning of this is so dark in intent, content, and extent that most people have not yet even begun to suspect how deeply their world is being transformed out from under them. The subversion of the evolutionary path of mankind is being delicately and incrementally, yet very rapidly, accomplished. A close study of the last fifty years will slowly reveal how this is being done, and how a fatally degraded world-view has been made superficially exciting and attractive as a preliminary to making it compulsive.
No deliberate and effective distortion of evolution, however powerful, can appear entirely out of nowhere. The latent potential for the forces of unreality, embodied in one form or another, continually arises on Earth, grasps the reins, and drives a significant portion of mankind into the ground. The kingdom of humanity has always provided the staging ground for a continuous battle between good and evil. These are the terms of our progress, individually and as a species, whether we know it or not and whether we like it or not. So far however, the many momentary triumphs of evil have always required the conscious or at least partially conscious cooperation of a number of participating human beings. Thus individuals have always lived through the natural consequences of their own natural choices. What we must understand, above all else, is that advances in direct technological manipulation of the human mechanism are now able to short- circuit even the more rudimentary processes of choice. Individual free will to decide between good and evil, darkness and light, is being cut out of the evolutionary loop altogether. Mankind is in grave danger of being re-engineered into a literal automaton with no meaningful individual choice whatsoever.
An individual has always been able to ignore the voice of his or her conscience: this is the greatest gift of the Creator to the human species. In the long process of evolution through the human kingdom, we have all, of our own free will, experienced trading the inner voice of truth for outward safety, comfort, and temporal power. By reaping the inevitably painful results of our self-serving choices, we are driven eventually to seek the reality of the spiritual life of our own free will. No coercion, shaming, forcing, browbeating, or imposition of any worldly authority of any kind can cause the human soul to genuinely seek the source of beauty, goodness and truth. Only joyfully returning the gift to the giver, out of one's own mature free will, is of any value either to the Creator or the creation. Creative cooperation with the natural and spiritual laws of the universe, through ripened and grateful understanding, is the ultimate destiny of humanity as a kingdom in nature. Such a destiny embodies the promise of multidimensional creativity, for freedom in the entire electromagnetic spectrum, and for a joy that far surpasses the human capacity for description.
Yet this destiny, the divine birthright of the human race, is being turned into its polar opposite of complete enslavement by the most powerfully equipped and united forces of pure evil which have ever existed on the face of the Earth. All beings evolve in one fundamental direction or the other, whether on the path of light or the path of darkness. Consciously evil entities also live and learn, and refine their techniques. Through its embodiments, evil discovers new ways of circumventing the inevitable dissolution of its temporary forms in time and space. And what the forces of darkness have socially engineered lately is a vast network of human beings willing to go down the black path toward the wholesale manipulation of mankind through coercive chemical, biological, and electromagnetic technology.
It is not only the conscience of individual persons at stake now, but the very underlying field of evolution itself: the actual normal daily-life consciousness of mankind. The distinct "still small voice" of conscience, the voice of the soul reaching through the mind, must traverse normal awareness in order to be heard at all. It is only "still and small" because the typical human mind is not as yet listening to it closely. When human awareness is fastened day and night to the drive for ego satisfactions, then nothing will be heard beyond this din. But as long as basic awareness is not seriously tampered with in primary physiological, emotional or mental levels, then individual free will remains undisturbed. In this condition, people are still perfectly free to choose their actions, feelings and thoughts, and experience the consequences.
Once the chemical, genetically engineered, and electromagnetic alteration of humanity becomes ubiquitous and compulsory, the basic normal consciousness of mankind will be lost. If this happens, there will be no avenue left for the conscience or soul to reach down and touch the human heart and mind at all. At that point, the spiritual evolution of mankind in incarnation on this planet will cease altogether. This point cannot be overstated: we live on the brink of an abyss into which our entire species may be precipitated if we do not awaken in sufficient numbers to prevent it. And those who console themselves with the thought that another planet must surely be waiting in the wings for our immediate reincarnational needs, might do well to consider the consequences if, in fact, this is not the case.
Part II: The Potential
"Human potential" is a simple enough phrase to utter, yet it is one of the most difficult of all truths to transmit. Spiritually transformed human beings throughout history have had to struggle with the limitations of earthly language in trying to communicate where they have been and what they have seen. Supra-normal experiences are not reducible to earthly speech, or transferable to others with earthbound minds. What is conveyed can only be an unsatisfactory description of higher worlds, and never the actual experience of being there. When it comes to the ultimately convincing proof of the secrets of human potential, each one of us must sooner or later personally undertake the journey.
All that comes down to us in the forms of the symbolic language of sacred scriptures, parables, and spiritual poetry is the result of sheer necessity. Those who have been fundamentally altered by radical spiritual experience are always driven by a powerful impulse to share the momentous fact: we are not what we seem to be. All who have undergone this voyage into the upper reaches of spiritual realization, and have tried to speak of it, have delivered the same message: Humanity, you must awaken from your sleep - you do not even know who you are.
The true potential of human beings is directly related to our spiritual origin and to who we already essentially are. The great mystics throughout the ages have all understood this and tried to tell us. Worldly authorities throughout human history, on the other hand, have carefully engineered life on this planet to prevent the majority from ever taking any such ideas seriously. As it is now, the truth of who we really are, is so far above and beyond our present awareness down here, that we do not as yet, in this heavy material dimension, even much resemble ourselves.
For the most part the human race is still living here in a dark dank basement, huddling around the guttering candle of suffocating egotism. Above the ceiling of deliberately lowered and misled human consciousness, a brilliantly illuminated and gracious spiritual architecture awaits our arrival. The potential destiny of the human race is far more glorious than we think. It is far more wonderful than most of us can even begin to imagine, because we have been carefully taught not to imagine it.
The eventual future of humanity is hinted at in the idea that mankind was created in the image of God. We have been created as faithful replicas of the originating spiritual power and wisdom that created the universe, the One behind all appearances of multiplicity. Another way to conceive of us is as fully equipped autonomous versions of this One. Each of us has been created as a discrete individual who is also mysteriously and intimately capable of actively participating in the material and spiritual reality of the entire Creation.
As such, we each contain the seed of infinite progression and expansion of consciousness. As such, we already are equipped with the higher bodies, faculties, and powers that correspond to the higher dimensions of the universe. We already contain all we will ever need to unfold into infinite realms of spiritual beauty, goodness, and truth. It is merely a matter of time and effort. Because it is the nature of human consciousness incarnated here in physical form, in the physical dimension, to awaken slowly through time and experience to what it already is in a higher state.
The entire physical plane universe itself, these billions and billions of galaxies, is merely the first rung of Jacob Ladder. Above us in frequency, and less dense in material, is the astral plane, which is a much larger and more populated dimension than the physical. The majority of people we erroneously suppose to be dead are living here, and vastly preferring it to life in the unpleasantly slow and heavy physical world. Above that, separated by a still higher frequency, a finer vibratory wavelength, and composed of even lighter materials, is the mental plane, which is the largest of all in extent. And beyond this are still other worlds, each more truly spiritual and more ineffably beautiful than the one before it. The universe is extravagantly and marvelously constructed, and we are looking up, when we look up at all, from very near the bottom, or densest levels of vibration. This is a two-edged sword of a fact. We can choose either to be made miserable by our present situation in relative spiritual obscurity, or we can rejoice in understanding that what is yet to come is infinitely better than what has been manifested here so far.
A spiritually conscious human being does not look out upon this particular world and see reality adequately reflected in the surroundings, but quite the opposite. This poor planet at present is basically run by a fairly small number of secretive sociopaths, inflicting stupefying cruelties on very large numbers of indifferent, indignant, harried, or unaware human souls. Nevertheless, despite this, a significant portion of mankind is sufficiently awake now to see the various types of imposed insanity masquerading as "normal" life. This creates a situation more hopeful than it is depressing. It is hopeful because that seed of divinity in us, once awakened, will not rest content until the spiritual truths we realize inwardly become externalized as the foundation of earthly life. Many of us have by now caught glimpses of our own past history, have ventured forth into higher dimensions, and have also seen forward into what is destined to come into being. We know something of how long we have been coming here, and why, and we know we will continue to return until humanity is spiritually and materially free. We understand that a single human lifetime is only a day in the long life of the human soul, and we make our plans accordingly.
Much that is taken for granted now, as "natural" human behavior, will be looked back on with sad astonishment and even outright disbelief at some point in the future. The seemingly eccentric idealists here and now who point out the sheer lunacy of current human civilization are merely registering the facts, commensurate with what we are capable of becoming. In the unimaginably long slow cycles of creation, we are nearing the end of a period of deep darkness on this planet. In terms of heaviness of vibration, there are worse densities, worse places, than Earth. Nevertheless, we on Earth are in a relatively very slow and dimly lit vibratory zone. In incarnation here, we are a spiritual species deeply immersed in matter. Most of us are still dreaming the nebulous dreams of an embryo, unaware of the coming birth, or of our inevitable future experiences on the path to maturity. Such is the depth of the hypnotic trance exerted over the souls of mankind by those whose only aim is to prevent human awakening at all costs. And such also is the very nature of the hypnotic spell of being in these bodies at all: the compellingly intricate and pleasurable miseries of flesh, bones, and nerves.
For what purpose then, these age-long entrancements of essentially pure spirits inside the carbon- based biodegradable suits of flesh? The answer is simple, however complex the ramifications in time and space. When dedicated spiritual beings willingly enter denser matter, the eventual result is the refinement and spiritualizing of the heavier material world they inhabit. We came down into this world originally, not as a punishment, but as a great sacrifice. We are, in essence, willing servants of the spiritualization process of the universe itself. The basic fact of human life is: "Ye are gods." We deliberately and consciously entered the darkness of this dimension, knowing that we would forget who we are and why we are here, and knowing that long ages would pass before we even dimly began to remember.
Consider then the fundamental nature of spiritual beings possessed of such courage and endurance as to undergo long eons of suffering and utter forgetfulness for the sake of laboriously refining the various substances of this as yet non-sacred realm. Every action of every physical, emotional and mental body of every human being since the creation of this species has been a part of this process. All that any human being has ever done or felt or thought has been subject to the Refiner's Fire, that sieve for life experience on Earth referred to as the Law of Cause and Effect. We can only live and learn here, and we gain the spiritual experience we need in order to remember who we are just as much, if not more, through the bitter experiences of so-called failures as by enjoying the fruits of so-called successes. Behind both these worldly and incomplete concepts, the spirit is living in a different perspective altogether, interested only in awakening and in serving the process of awakening in others.
All those whose message to us is that we are in reality powerful spiritual beings, regardless of all appearances to the contrary, are relaying the simple truth. Many beings have come and gone throughout human history bearing various forms of this message. Consider for example, as if for the first time, the momentous demonstration of innate human capacity we refer to as the Life, Death, and Resurrection of Christ. These spiritual events were not enacted for the sake of creating the idea of an impassable distance between His life and ours. The meaning to be conveyed directly to humanity was the exact opposite of unattainable difference. The point was and is and will be: THIS is our individual and collective destiny. This is what we already contain, what we can become, and who we really are, each in a unique way. We are an entire species of potential Christs.
But can we even face such a reality? Those who do not want humanity to understand itself have deeply hypnotized us into thinking of ourselves as powerless worms and a race of ineffectual slaves. We have been carefully programmed to shrink in dismay from understanding ourselves as potentially exalted beings here. We have been taught instead to focus on what we are not, and to think of these wayward bodies we inhabit as being who we really are.
This case of mistaken identity is summed up succinctly by St.Paul when he said: "I do that which I do not wish to do." Meaning these unruly bodies we are in have a life of their own. The point here is that the bodies we dwell in actually do have lives of their own: literally. The have sentiency and desire and they want what they want when they want it. And it is certainly true that as long as they run us around, we will never achieve much in the way of our own possibilities. The powerful spiritual nature of a human being can only come to the fore in this dimension when we inwardly become aware of the difference between our deeper Self and the lives of our bodies. There is no easy path here: it is a long drawn-out struggle of spirit, life after life, against the pull of the lives of the lower bodies.
Self-realization is not an object to be acquired, but a condition to be realized by means of methodically detaching from lesser states of identification. Very easy to say this, of course, but the moment we try to detach ourselves from the various clamors, we find out just how much power our bodies and egos are actually exerting. The path to freedom has been amply demonstrated and described: "Love one another as I have loved you." Deny yourselves, pick up your cross, and follow Me. But so far, on the whole, the human race has shown that it would really rather not do any such thing. Because the deeper meaning here is that human potential will only be realized through heroic acts of impersonal spiritual love and will, and through no other means whatsoever. Therefore even if we are willing to consider our spiritual potential abstractly, to be willing to manifest this is, for most of us, quite another story.
It is an interesting fact that Christ did not worship Himself, or His own level of consciousness. His own religion was not what we think of as Christianity. Instead, He invariably pointed beyond Himself, and asked us to follow Him back to the Father's House. He also enigmatically declared: "Greater things than I did, ye shall do." Yet has humanity ever actually believed this? Or do we think He must have been mistaken in such a prophecy? This was no mistake, no error in judgment, but a promise of the future attainments of mankind. The life of Christ then was an actualization of the sublime potential spiritual powers inherent in all human beings. To know the Creator directly, to control the entire world of nature as an agent of divine will, to know and act on the contents of human minds and hearts as an agent of divine love, and to be resurrected into a higher body of manifestation as an agent of divine power: this is the literal potential of multidimensional mankind.
But these innate wonders, our high future possibilities, will never be forced on us against our will. The Law of Cause and Effect supports the unfolding of our divine powers of beauty, goodness and truth, but we were not designed to be puppets, not even of the God within us. We will always be free here to choose relative darkness of heart and mind, and to deny our best selves. Potential does not mean absolute certainty of achievement. To become a species embodying a high spiritual destiny, the vast majority of human beings will first have to see this goal and then ardently desire to fulfill the requirements. So far, most of the human race has not awakened sufficiently to understand this even superficially, let alone develop the spiritual will to act on it.
Spiritual reality rests on the unalterable foundation of self-sacrifice and wise impersonal love. Yet relatively few of us have ever wished to become acquainted with any such version of ourselves. Most of us are afraid of sacrifice, and of renouncing our self-centeredness. Most of us wish to retain our crude attachments to material things, and to our negative emotions and our negative thinking. We are perhaps most of all attached to our own false self-image of smallness, powerlessness, and worthlessness. Yet sacrificing what we are now, including our delusions of powerlessness, for the sake of what we may become, is the exact price of our potential. Our potential is not a problem: our lack of desire to leave our stupefying existence in the basement of life is our problem. The conclusion then is that, as a species, astonishing as it seems, we have not yet suffered enough to turn inward to spiritual reality.
Therefore, up and down the scales of desire, fulfillment and satiation we run, chasing sensation, material well being, and the fulfillment of appetites. The inevitable result of fulfillment of an appetite is a feeling of emptiness and meaninglessness, and all such chases are doomed to end in disappointment. Attachment to ego-gratification amounts to ensuring repeated cycles of suffering, punctuated by just enough pleasure to keep the donkey chasing after the next carrot. This is the dramatic spectacle of human history: millions and millions of souls lost in dense matter, struggling against one another and competing for the temporary supremacy of their own lower natures.
We are entranced by the unwieldy stickiness of the very burdens we came here to willingly bear. These bodies, emotions, and thoughts: none of these are who we are. These powerfully hypnotizing and intoxicating substances, these bodies and their expressions, are only the raw materials we are here to work with. A time comes when the real person behind the scenes of materialization stands forth, and nothing is ever the same again. This realization of inexorable ongoing metamorphosis, when it comes, releases a joy so profound that nothing can ever entirely extinguish it again. From the beginning we have harbored within ourselves the seeds of a destiny so wondrous that our greatest difficulty is in believing even the least of it.
Yet nothing whatsoever of this glorious potential is hidden from any human being, and never has been. It simply takes time and evolution, down here in dense material levels, for the eyes of the soul to open, and for the spirit to recall its origin. There are no deliberate spiritual secrets kept from any of us. Nevertheless, long experience is required before we even begin to remember who we really are, why we came here, what we are doing, and where we are going. At every moment each of us knows as much as we have earned the right to know, as much as we can bear to know, and as much as we wish to know. So when it comes to the potential of multidimensional mankind, created in the image of God, each one of us must ask ourselves:
Who do we think we are, and what are we going to do about it?
By Diane Harvey
Part I: The Problem
The relatively immediate future for any individual is easy enough to predict. We are here for a while, and then we are not. Yet the realms beyond the death of the physical body are capacious, life goes on abundantly, and what we think of as our personal death is the least of our worries. Our real problem is the future of our species in incarnation on this planet.
This dense physical existence where we find ourselves now contains vast hidden properties and purposes which are as yet unknown by the large majority of incarnating souls. Nothing is, in reality, merely as it appears. The surprises in store for the human race are far more profound than any which have come before. And it is a matter of utmost urgency that mankind become as conscious as possible of the extensive still-hidden prospects of reality on this level. Because in essence, what is elsewhere is also here. What we call levels, planes, or dimensions are frequencies corresponding to states and entire realms of consciousness. The only real barriers between areas of vibratory activity or dimensions are those of habituated livingness, or "stage of evolution."
Human beings are currently living, on the whole, on the bare outskirts of the inherent potentials of their own awareness. Those who are sufficiently awake are acutely and painfully aware of this. There are always a percentage of souls in incarnations who have arrived at a more conscious state than the societal norm, and who therefore live out those lives within the confines of certain painful spiritual predicaments. But what once often amounted to merely a personal problem to resolve, and a matter of individual adjustment, has now become a planetary emergency.
It is old news by now, that what we call life is a unified field, and that no particle of reality is separated either from life, or from any other particle. But although this information is available in many forms, the human race has not chosen to alter its emotions, thinking, or behavior accordingly in any significant manner. Knowing vaguely about there being something called "One Life" has changed nothing on any broad scale. But the cost of ignoring reality and refusing to creatively rethink and reorganize the way the human race behaves on this planet is increasing exponentially.
Those who press on ahead, exploring new subjective worlds, do so in the overall context of human spiritual and material progress as a whole. Individuals can only consciously undertake their own evolutionary development here more or less in concert with the slow general trend upward of the entire species. No matter how preciously important our individuality is to us, we can never lose sight of the fact that we remain parts of a whole, whose general condition, health and sanity, will determine the overall possibilities for each individual incarnation.
The majority of human beings on Earth are now undergoing a drastic forced devolution. Throughout human evolution, the personal opportunity to be selfish, cruel, and ignorant has always been available in any given incarnation. In the past, this was a matter of conscious and/or subconscious choice, and of making decisions based on the natural level of one's own awareness. We then experienced the laws of cause and effect through living with the results. This is the process of genuine learning, which eventually instills a deep sense of personal responsibility for one's own life. And out of the realizations of personal responsibility come the opportunities to enter into the higher and more actively creative powers latent within us. Whoever is now on the path of light has previously tasted the bitter fruits of dark choices, and for that very reason turned willingly back toward the light. But this crucial element of free will in living and learning is now being subverted at the very root.
The only purpose of evil, or ultimate unreality, is to provide necessary contrast to reality. The free will of a human being must exercise itself through making innumerable choices, living with the effects, and thereby growing in hard-won wisdom. This element of free will is embryonic in much of mankind as yet, and can easily be blunted, distorted, diverted and paralyzed. This happens in some degree to everyone, for that matter, over and over again. An important part of the evolutionary process so far has been for the individual to learn to withstand and circumvent the pressures of other human beings opposing his or her own evolutionary best interests. But until now, the intervals between incarnations have sufficed to assimilate such lessons, and we have reincarnated refreshed, eager to resume the struggle to manifest our spiritual selves in this difficult dimension.
Critical and relatively recent changes have dangerously altered the fundamental state of normal evolutionary affairs on this planet. The underlying meaning of this is so dark in intent, content, and extent that most people have not yet even begun to suspect how deeply their world is being transformed out from under them. The subversion of the evolutionary path of mankind is being delicately and incrementally, yet very rapidly, accomplished. A close study of the last fifty years will slowly reveal how this is being done, and how a fatally degraded world-view has been made superficially exciting and attractive as a preliminary to making it compulsive.
No deliberate and effective distortion of evolution, however powerful, can appear entirely out of nowhere. The latent potential for the forces of unreality, embodied in one form or another, continually arises on Earth, grasps the reins, and drives a significant portion of mankind into the ground. The kingdom of humanity has always provided the staging ground for a continuous battle between good and evil. These are the terms of our progress, individually and as a species, whether we know it or not and whether we like it or not. So far however, the many momentary triumphs of evil have always required the conscious or at least partially conscious cooperation of a number of participating human beings. Thus individuals have always lived through the natural consequences of their own natural choices. What we must understand, above all else, is that advances in direct technological manipulation of the human mechanism are now able to short- circuit even the more rudimentary processes of choice. Individual free will to decide between good and evil, darkness and light, is being cut out of the evolutionary loop altogether. Mankind is in grave danger of being re-engineered into a literal automaton with no meaningful individual choice whatsoever.
An individual has always been able to ignore the voice of his or her conscience: this is the greatest gift of the Creator to the human species. In the long process of evolution through the human kingdom, we have all, of our own free will, experienced trading the inner voice of truth for outward safety, comfort, and temporal power. By reaping the inevitably painful results of our self-serving choices, we are driven eventually to seek the reality of the spiritual life of our own free will. No coercion, shaming, forcing, browbeating, or imposition of any worldly authority of any kind can cause the human soul to genuinely seek the source of beauty, goodness and truth. Only joyfully returning the gift to the giver, out of one's own mature free will, is of any value either to the Creator or the creation. Creative cooperation with the natural and spiritual laws of the universe, through ripened and grateful understanding, is the ultimate destiny of humanity as a kingdom in nature. Such a destiny embodies the promise of multidimensional creativity, for freedom in the entire electromagnetic spectrum, and for a joy that far surpasses the human capacity for description.
Yet this destiny, the divine birthright of the human race, is being turned into its polar opposite of complete enslavement by the most powerfully equipped and united forces of pure evil which have ever existed on the face of the Earth. All beings evolve in one fundamental direction or the other, whether on the path of light or the path of darkness. Consciously evil entities also live and learn, and refine their techniques. Through its embodiments, evil discovers new ways of circumventing the inevitable dissolution of its temporary forms in time and space. And what the forces of darkness have socially engineered lately is a vast network of human beings willing to go down the black path toward the wholesale manipulation of mankind through coercive chemical, biological, and electromagnetic technology.
It is not only the conscience of individual persons at stake now, but the very underlying field of evolution itself: the actual normal daily-life consciousness of mankind. The distinct "still small voice" of conscience, the voice of the soul reaching through the mind, must traverse normal awareness in order to be heard at all. It is only "still and small" because the typical human mind is not as yet listening to it closely. When human awareness is fastened day and night to the drive for ego satisfactions, then nothing will be heard beyond this din. But as long as basic awareness is not seriously tampered with in primary physiological, emotional or mental levels, then individual free will remains undisturbed. In this condition, people are still perfectly free to choose their actions, feelings and thoughts, and experience the consequences.
Once the chemical, genetically engineered, and electromagnetic alteration of humanity becomes ubiquitous and compulsory, the basic normal consciousness of mankind will be lost. If this happens, there will be no avenue left for the conscience or soul to reach down and touch the human heart and mind at all. At that point, the spiritual evolution of mankind in incarnation on this planet will cease altogether. This point cannot be overstated: we live on the brink of an abyss into which our entire species may be precipitated if we do not awaken in sufficient numbers to prevent it. And those who console themselves with the thought that another planet must surely be waiting in the wings for our immediate reincarnational needs, might do well to consider the consequences if, in fact, this is not the case.
Part II: The Potential
"Human potential" is a simple enough phrase to utter, yet it is one of the most difficult of all truths to transmit. Spiritually transformed human beings throughout history have had to struggle with the limitations of earthly language in trying to communicate where they have been and what they have seen. Supra-normal experiences are not reducible to earthly speech, or transferable to others with earthbound minds. What is conveyed can only be an unsatisfactory description of higher worlds, and never the actual experience of being there. When it comes to the ultimately convincing proof of the secrets of human potential, each one of us must sooner or later personally undertake the journey.
All that comes down to us in the forms of the symbolic language of sacred scriptures, parables, and spiritual poetry is the result of sheer necessity. Those who have been fundamentally altered by radical spiritual experience are always driven by a powerful impulse to share the momentous fact: we are not what we seem to be. All who have undergone this voyage into the upper reaches of spiritual realization, and have tried to speak of it, have delivered the same message: Humanity, you must awaken from your sleep - you do not even know who you are.
The true potential of human beings is directly related to our spiritual origin and to who we already essentially are. The great mystics throughout the ages have all understood this and tried to tell us. Worldly authorities throughout human history, on the other hand, have carefully engineered life on this planet to prevent the majority from ever taking any such ideas seriously. As it is now, the truth of who we really are, is so far above and beyond our present awareness down here, that we do not as yet, in this heavy material dimension, even much resemble ourselves.
For the most part the human race is still living here in a dark dank basement, huddling around the guttering candle of suffocating egotism. Above the ceiling of deliberately lowered and misled human consciousness, a brilliantly illuminated and gracious spiritual architecture awaits our arrival. The potential destiny of the human race is far more glorious than we think. It is far more wonderful than most of us can even begin to imagine, because we have been carefully taught not to imagine it.
The eventual future of humanity is hinted at in the idea that mankind was created in the image of God. We have been created as faithful replicas of the originating spiritual power and wisdom that created the universe, the One behind all appearances of multiplicity. Another way to conceive of us is as fully equipped autonomous versions of this One. Each of us has been created as a discrete individual who is also mysteriously and intimately capable of actively participating in the material and spiritual reality of the entire Creation.
As such, we each contain the seed of infinite progression and expansion of consciousness. As such, we already are equipped with the higher bodies, faculties, and powers that correspond to the higher dimensions of the universe. We already contain all we will ever need to unfold into infinite realms of spiritual beauty, goodness, and truth. It is merely a matter of time and effort. Because it is the nature of human consciousness incarnated here in physical form, in the physical dimension, to awaken slowly through time and experience to what it already is in a higher state.
The entire physical plane universe itself, these billions and billions of galaxies, is merely the first rung of Jacob Ladder. Above us in frequency, and less dense in material, is the astral plane, which is a much larger and more populated dimension than the physical. The majority of people we erroneously suppose to be dead are living here, and vastly preferring it to life in the unpleasantly slow and heavy physical world. Above that, separated by a still higher frequency, a finer vibratory wavelength, and composed of even lighter materials, is the mental plane, which is the largest of all in extent. And beyond this are still other worlds, each more truly spiritual and more ineffably beautiful than the one before it. The universe is extravagantly and marvelously constructed, and we are looking up, when we look up at all, from very near the bottom, or densest levels of vibration. This is a two-edged sword of a fact. We can choose either to be made miserable by our present situation in relative spiritual obscurity, or we can rejoice in understanding that what is yet to come is infinitely better than what has been manifested here so far.
A spiritually conscious human being does not look out upon this particular world and see reality adequately reflected in the surroundings, but quite the opposite. This poor planet at present is basically run by a fairly small number of secretive sociopaths, inflicting stupefying cruelties on very large numbers of indifferent, indignant, harried, or unaware human souls. Nevertheless, despite this, a significant portion of mankind is sufficiently awake now to see the various types of imposed insanity masquerading as "normal" life. This creates a situation more hopeful than it is depressing. It is hopeful because that seed of divinity in us, once awakened, will not rest content until the spiritual truths we realize inwardly become externalized as the foundation of earthly life. Many of us have by now caught glimpses of our own past history, have ventured forth into higher dimensions, and have also seen forward into what is destined to come into being. We know something of how long we have been coming here, and why, and we know we will continue to return until humanity is spiritually and materially free. We understand that a single human lifetime is only a day in the long life of the human soul, and we make our plans accordingly.
Much that is taken for granted now, as "natural" human behavior, will be looked back on with sad astonishment and even outright disbelief at some point in the future. The seemingly eccentric idealists here and now who point out the sheer lunacy of current human civilization are merely registering the facts, commensurate with what we are capable of becoming. In the unimaginably long slow cycles of creation, we are nearing the end of a period of deep darkness on this planet. In terms of heaviness of vibration, there are worse densities, worse places, than Earth. Nevertheless, we on Earth are in a relatively very slow and dimly lit vibratory zone. In incarnation here, we are a spiritual species deeply immersed in matter. Most of us are still dreaming the nebulous dreams of an embryo, unaware of the coming birth, or of our inevitable future experiences on the path to maturity. Such is the depth of the hypnotic trance exerted over the souls of mankind by those whose only aim is to prevent human awakening at all costs. And such also is the very nature of the hypnotic spell of being in these bodies at all: the compellingly intricate and pleasurable miseries of flesh, bones, and nerves.
For what purpose then, these age-long entrancements of essentially pure spirits inside the carbon- based biodegradable suits of flesh? The answer is simple, however complex the ramifications in time and space. When dedicated spiritual beings willingly enter denser matter, the eventual result is the refinement and spiritualizing of the heavier material world they inhabit. We came down into this world originally, not as a punishment, but as a great sacrifice. We are, in essence, willing servants of the spiritualization process of the universe itself. The basic fact of human life is: "Ye are gods." We deliberately and consciously entered the darkness of this dimension, knowing that we would forget who we are and why we are here, and knowing that long ages would pass before we even dimly began to remember.
Consider then the fundamental nature of spiritual beings possessed of such courage and endurance as to undergo long eons of suffering and utter forgetfulness for the sake of laboriously refining the various substances of this as yet non-sacred realm. Every action of every physical, emotional and mental body of every human being since the creation of this species has been a part of this process. All that any human being has ever done or felt or thought has been subject to the Refiner's Fire, that sieve for life experience on Earth referred to as the Law of Cause and Effect. We can only live and learn here, and we gain the spiritual experience we need in order to remember who we are just as much, if not more, through the bitter experiences of so-called failures as by enjoying the fruits of so-called successes. Behind both these worldly and incomplete concepts, the spirit is living in a different perspective altogether, interested only in awakening and in serving the process of awakening in others.
All those whose message to us is that we are in reality powerful spiritual beings, regardless of all appearances to the contrary, are relaying the simple truth. Many beings have come and gone throughout human history bearing various forms of this message. Consider for example, as if for the first time, the momentous demonstration of innate human capacity we refer to as the Life, Death, and Resurrection of Christ. These spiritual events were not enacted for the sake of creating the idea of an impassable distance between His life and ours. The meaning to be conveyed directly to humanity was the exact opposite of unattainable difference. The point was and is and will be: THIS is our individual and collective destiny. This is what we already contain, what we can become, and who we really are, each in a unique way. We are an entire species of potential Christs.
But can we even face such a reality? Those who do not want humanity to understand itself have deeply hypnotized us into thinking of ourselves as powerless worms and a race of ineffectual slaves. We have been carefully programmed to shrink in dismay from understanding ourselves as potentially exalted beings here. We have been taught instead to focus on what we are not, and to think of these wayward bodies we inhabit as being who we really are.
This case of mistaken identity is summed up succinctly by St.Paul when he said: "I do that which I do not wish to do." Meaning these unruly bodies we are in have a life of their own. The point here is that the bodies we dwell in actually do have lives of their own: literally. The have sentiency and desire and they want what they want when they want it. And it is certainly true that as long as they run us around, we will never achieve much in the way of our own possibilities. The powerful spiritual nature of a human being can only come to the fore in this dimension when we inwardly become aware of the difference between our deeper Self and the lives of our bodies. There is no easy path here: it is a long drawn-out struggle of spirit, life after life, against the pull of the lives of the lower bodies.
Self-realization is not an object to be acquired, but a condition to be realized by means of methodically detaching from lesser states of identification. Very easy to say this, of course, but the moment we try to detach ourselves from the various clamors, we find out just how much power our bodies and egos are actually exerting. The path to freedom has been amply demonstrated and described: "Love one another as I have loved you." Deny yourselves, pick up your cross, and follow Me. But so far, on the whole, the human race has shown that it would really rather not do any such thing. Because the deeper meaning here is that human potential will only be realized through heroic acts of impersonal spiritual love and will, and through no other means whatsoever. Therefore even if we are willing to consider our spiritual potential abstractly, to be willing to manifest this is, for most of us, quite another story.
It is an interesting fact that Christ did not worship Himself, or His own level of consciousness. His own religion was not what we think of as Christianity. Instead, He invariably pointed beyond Himself, and asked us to follow Him back to the Father's House. He also enigmatically declared: "Greater things than I did, ye shall do." Yet has humanity ever actually believed this? Or do we think He must have been mistaken in such a prophecy? This was no mistake, no error in judgment, but a promise of the future attainments of mankind. The life of Christ then was an actualization of the sublime potential spiritual powers inherent in all human beings. To know the Creator directly, to control the entire world of nature as an agent of divine will, to know and act on the contents of human minds and hearts as an agent of divine love, and to be resurrected into a higher body of manifestation as an agent of divine power: this is the literal potential of multidimensional mankind.
But these innate wonders, our high future possibilities, will never be forced on us against our will. The Law of Cause and Effect supports the unfolding of our divine powers of beauty, goodness and truth, but we were not designed to be puppets, not even of the God within us. We will always be free here to choose relative darkness of heart and mind, and to deny our best selves. Potential does not mean absolute certainty of achievement. To become a species embodying a high spiritual destiny, the vast majority of human beings will first have to see this goal and then ardently desire to fulfill the requirements. So far, most of the human race has not awakened sufficiently to understand this even superficially, let alone develop the spiritual will to act on it.
Spiritual reality rests on the unalterable foundation of self-sacrifice and wise impersonal love. Yet relatively few of us have ever wished to become acquainted with any such version of ourselves. Most of us are afraid of sacrifice, and of renouncing our self-centeredness. Most of us wish to retain our crude attachments to material things, and to our negative emotions and our negative thinking. We are perhaps most of all attached to our own false self-image of smallness, powerlessness, and worthlessness. Yet sacrificing what we are now, including our delusions of powerlessness, for the sake of what we may become, is the exact price of our potential. Our potential is not a problem: our lack of desire to leave our stupefying existence in the basement of life is our problem. The conclusion then is that, as a species, astonishing as it seems, we have not yet suffered enough to turn inward to spiritual reality.
Therefore, up and down the scales of desire, fulfillment and satiation we run, chasing sensation, material well being, and the fulfillment of appetites. The inevitable result of fulfillment of an appetite is a feeling of emptiness and meaninglessness, and all such chases are doomed to end in disappointment. Attachment to ego-gratification amounts to ensuring repeated cycles of suffering, punctuated by just enough pleasure to keep the donkey chasing after the next carrot. This is the dramatic spectacle of human history: millions and millions of souls lost in dense matter, struggling against one another and competing for the temporary supremacy of their own lower natures.
We are entranced by the unwieldy stickiness of the very burdens we came here to willingly bear. These bodies, emotions, and thoughts: none of these are who we are. These powerfully hypnotizing and intoxicating substances, these bodies and their expressions, are only the raw materials we are here to work with. A time comes when the real person behind the scenes of materialization stands forth, and nothing is ever the same again. This realization of inexorable ongoing metamorphosis, when it comes, releases a joy so profound that nothing can ever entirely extinguish it again. From the beginning we have harbored within ourselves the seeds of a destiny so wondrous that our greatest difficulty is in believing even the least of it.
Yet nothing whatsoever of this glorious potential is hidden from any human being, and never has been. It simply takes time and evolution, down here in dense material levels, for the eyes of the soul to open, and for the spirit to recall its origin. There are no deliberate spiritual secrets kept from any of us. Nevertheless, long experience is required before we even begin to remember who we really are, why we came here, what we are doing, and where we are going. At every moment each of us knows as much as we have earned the right to know, as much as we can bear to know, and as much as we wish to know. So when it comes to the potential of multidimensional mankind, created in the image of God, each one of us must ask ourselves:
Who do we think we are, and what are we going to do about it?