William Meader - Buddha at the Gas Pump Interview

[Music] welcome to Buddha at the gas pump my name is Rick Archer Buddha at the gas pump is an ongoing series of interviews with spiritually awakening people I've done hundreds of them now and if this is new to you and you'd like to check out previous ones please go to that gap com be ATG AP and look at the past interviews menu this program is made possible by appreciative listeners and viewers so you know if you feel like it has benefited you or might be benefiting the world and would like to help support it there's a PayPal button on every page of that got that Capcom appreciate your support my guest today is William Meador William is an influential and respected teacher of esoteric philosophy he has established an international reputation for his gift as a communicator of this spiritual philosophy his extensive teaching program includes a diverse array of workshops and lectures devoted to nurturing a deeper understanding of the spiritual path both from an individual and global perspective William lives in Oregon and presents regularly workshops in the US Europe UK Canada Australia and New Zealand so welcome William thank you good to be here Rick yeah good to have you so you and I are probably roughly the same age before we were before we started the recording you mentioned he done quite a few different things on your spiritual path I mean how'd you get started on it to begin with well I guess really my beginning point was when I was about 16 years old I went to a funeral actually a funeral my grandfather's funeral and at that funeral had an interesting conversation with another family member who mentioned that I started asking about afterlife and that sort of thing and they recommended that I read a particular book and I did in that book there was mention of meditation but at 16 I didn't know what that was but I was real curious and so I decided to explore that right away and I found Transcendental Meditation TM and so I began to meditate at the age of sixteen and I was for many years I was quite diligent with the 20 minutes per day meditation 's and so that kind of was the beginning point Rick okay and then it then it took off from there yeah it was beginning for a lot of people and so just just to give us a quick sketch perhaps of you know some of the highlights of the various things that you've been through over it over all these decades sure sure well I in my early 20s I also I I got involved in something called the Church of religious science also called the science of mind which is part of the new thought movement and I was involved in that way of looking at things for quite some time a few years the philosophy behind that is you are the product of your thinking and in the in the middle of that I discovered the course of miracles which I'm sure you're familiar with and so I decided to dive into that as well and and study and meditate along that approach in the interim I did some yoga did a variety of Eastern read a lot of reading from an Eastern perspective and I ended up finding theosophy quite by accident I actually discovered the work of Alice Bailey and so much of my background today is really rooted in that discovery and that's actually the the foundation theosophy and the Bailey work that I come from as you went from thing to thing did you kind of feel like well this thing isn't really doing it for me or it sort of did it for a while and now it doesn't seem to be and I think I need to find something different or you know what were you moving from you know sense of we emotive a sense of dissatisfaction as you went from thing to thing or was it more a sense of alright much learned whatever this thing has to teach me and now I want to move on to the next chapter as one might do in going from grade to grade in school yeah well I suppose there's a little of that but it was really much more about I still look at things like the Course in Miracles for instance and think it's an incredibly valuable system and I have no doubt that there's more that it could teach me so it's not like oh I got it all from that and now I'm moving on it's just it's just when I make a move like that which again hasn't happened for many many years but when I have made a move like that it was more supplemental initially until I it wasn't like an one thing and begin another it was more of a overlap period and found myself more and more engaged in the new and less and less engaged in the old sure yeah I can relate and who was Alice Bailey Alice Bailey was a woman a British woman who lived earlier part of the 20th century and she was a woman that wrote for nearly 30 years and she took dictation from a Great Eastern master who is called the master drew all cool also in the nickname is that the Tibetan and so really that's the foundation of much of the work she's actually part of a stream that has to do with theosophy which was originally came to light you might say in the late 1800s with Helena Blavatsky the great Russian mystic and Alice Bailey became a kind of next step or next generation of understanding that profound body of work okay was she channeling this tibetan master or actually communicating with him in the flesh or what well it's kind of a yes yes to that it's it's it's channeling but not in the same way that you see it in popular culture today she was a called in a man you iNSYS she she took dictation from the tibetan and although it was telepathic it wasn't one of those situations where the belief that an X out of Incarnate being is speaking to me it has actually the Tibetan was in incarnation and they developed that capacity while he was in form he was like living in the Himalayas or something yeah yeah you know in Tibet did they ever meet in person the there's there's there's conflicting stories about that but I would say probably not but I can't say for sure okay just curious so you've written a rather extensive book what was the title of it again shine forth shine forth the souls magical destiny and there's a lot of knowledge in it and I want to ask first to start with how do you know what you present in that book is it because Alice Bailey said it is it because you yourself personally have experientially verified it some mixture of the two points or what I would say it's a mixture I mean obviously I have a lot of academic background in this work and that's been a rich experience but also a lot of meditative experience over the years and so as with any philosophy you have to figure out can I live it does it really work in the real life and and yet the esoteric philosophy is so vast so intricate so amazingly whole that you can you you every step of the way you validate more of it through your own experience so in a way everything is theoretical unless there's some validation experientially right but it it supports both my my mind as well as my intuitive sense and to me the greatest truths come when both the mind and the intuition are in agreement on something and clear and in hinduism that's called booty monastic consciousness booty is intuition - is right and so anything that I claim I know experientially is because it's booty Manasseh cailli realized within me yeah I think probably a lot of people can relate to that if you think about it I mean princess if we take the point of reincarnation some people that listen to this show don't think that that's really a thing that happens personally it makes a lot of sense to my mind and intuitively it feels right it makes a lot of sense so I think maybe I have a booty monastic orientation to that to that phenomenon you know and that just achieves that as a case in point or an example it's a great example yeah yeah and then there's also some some evidence of it I mean if you look at all the little kids who remember being a world war ii fighter pilot or something and can name the airplane and and exactly what you know what ship they were flying off of and all kinds of details you know and then it circuits corroborated right yeah well and there's there's esoteric philosophy clearly recognizes the truth of reincarnation and has a wide understanding of it it's rich it's wonderful and it and it does both intuitively and intellectually makes sense yeah yeah so you know you just alluded to the Tibetan master and in your book you also mentioned Christ a lot and I guess my question is is esoteric philosophy largely and eastern of Eastern origin you know Vedic or pre Vedic or whatever Tibetan or is there really no sort of east/west when it comes to this and that you know Christ and any of the great masters wouldn't really ascribe their knowledge to a particular geographic location sometimes I think you're right I think sometimes the east-west divide is actually more human contrivance than anything but esotericism is often viewed as kind of a Western idea but certain streams of us are much more Western in their language and their way than Eastern I the one of the reasons I like the Alice Bailey works so much is because although it is Western in many ways it's almost equally true that its Eastern so yeah I would call it Western Australia West Western philosophy or esotericism strongly colored by Eastern thought yeah and actually I always like to expand it out I particularly do this if I'm ever accosted by a religious fundamentalist I start talking astronomy you know and and can about how many earth-like planets there are in our galaxy and how many galaxies there are in the universe and all when you start contemplating that the whole east-west thing on this little speck of dust seems rather irrelevant it really does yeah so if you were stuck with me in an airport waiting to get on a plane and you had about five minutes and I were curious and we weren't assigned to adjacent seats and this was your only chance to talk to me what would you want to convey to me well I would it's I'm glad it's you because it would also be very contingent upon who it is yeah so assuming it's somebody that I'm in sensing is on the path as opposed to somebody not yet on the path which most of the people listening to this I would say are yeah so I guess but in five minutes I would say that look I think that one of the things that all of us have to realize is that internally there's two of us in there so to speak there's your day to day consciousness with a Jew which is your personality consciousness and then there's a higher wiser part of yourself a higher that we start to sense when we wake up and it's a higher prompting and it's both got an intuitive quality to it as well as a wisdom quality to it and that's coming into rapport with the more eternal part of you the soul itself and so that unrecognised that you as a human being are internally dual you have a higher consciousness and a lower consciousness and that higher consciousness is the thing you are more and more evolving toward and that requires that the lower consciousness become increasingly cooperative as an agent on support of the higher so so the personality the destiny of the personality the destiny of your day-to-day consciousness is to be the outer garment used by the soul to make an uplifting contribution to the betterment of something beyond yourself because the soul in each of us is governed by several laws but one of the laws is the so called law of service every soul when it's awakening through the personality every soul wants to express through that personality it wants to do it without the personality getting in the way and by the way that's the challenge and in so doing it wants to make an uplifting contribution to the betterment of something beyond its individuality and that service and and I would say as part of that five-minute discussion I would say that we are living in an incredibly transitional time as a humanity and that humanity itself is going through a crisis of transformation and that and an individual's capacity this person I speaking to that person's capacity to bring the best of them forward in service to the larger whole there is no time in my life anyway where the need for the best of each of us to come forward is is is now it is now given the magnitude of what's trying to happen in the collective of humanity so I would say something like that nice your mention of the collective automatically triggers a whole grab bag of questions in my mind that I want to get into you into with you but before we and we'll get to that somewhere in the course of our conversation hopefully at length and in depth but just want to ask you so what you've just said about the soul and the sort of the two two-part nature of our makeup would you say would it be fair to say that you know is it's due to the sort of the density of of the earth plane that we have this problem that you know perhaps before coming here everything is free and clear and and we're a lot wiser and have a broader perspective but then when we get into this density which reminds me of a line from that movie they're magic back to the future remember you are my density he meant to say destiny but when we get into this sort of dense dense field of the earth earthly life that we forget a lot and and the name of the game is to somehow remember it or reawaken to our full potential well yet living in such a sort of a dense world yeah I mean the in principle I would agree with all of that I would say that this it is said that the soul in each of us is archetypal II designed in fact there are seven types of souls but each soul has a fixed archetypal pattern within it throughout its history throughout its history but it's it it's the goal of evolution is for the soul to increasingly Express that archetype through the personality and so incarnation is actually viewed as a necessary for process to step-by-step transform the lower self so that it becomes effectively the expressing agency for that archetype you could you could you could we could look at it this way that what is spiritual evolution it's the it's the recognition of the potentiality of the soul gradually and incrementally actualizing itself through form when I say form I mean mental emotional and physical and when the fullness of the soul can be expressed through that outer triple garment mental emotion physical without Distortion at all times under any conditions that's enlightenment hmm that's unlikely do you feel like that there's an end game to this that there's sort of an enlightenment with a biggie that one eventually arrives at and that there's no further development possible or no regression from that development oh heavens no no not at all there's no and not realistically from our perspective I mean you know when I do presentations around the world I might talk about the Buddha and the Christ and I might look at and you know they're considered to be seventh-degree initiates and it's a whole story in itself but which we may get into and and and from our perspective that is enlightenment that's full enlightenment that's perfection and from our perspective that's true how about for their respective for their perspective they're just beginning a whole new regime they're aspirants they're beginners in a larger evolutionary regime which was what we call the regime of the solar logos we are evolving within a regime which is called the planetary logos the entity that it souls our whole planet there's our planet is a God in a way and and when we talk about the great masters like the Christ of the Buddha we're talking about beings that have reached the high point of evolution within our planetary system but our planet as you rightly point out is just a speck of dust within a larger system and this gets into the whole subject of high/low so ism which we touched on before you and I got online mm-hmm great all right I'm trying to there's so many gems along the way that we could we could go off on a tangent into any one of them and I would lose track of the sequential unfoldment of this but I want to that's definitely something I also want to come back to and those listening if you want to ask a question at some point go to the upcoming interviews page at Capcom and look at the bottom and you'll see if warm through which you can submit your question and if you hear something interesting that we've been talking about and we don't seem to be coming back to it feel free to remind us yeah this thing about the you know Buddha and the Christ being beginners at their level there's something in the Vedic cosmology about collars which they're supposed to be sixteen collars or levels of evolution and supposedly human beings occupy the 4th through the 8th so even the brightest of the bright were only at the 8th and then above that they're you know eight more levels to which they could rise but anyway yeah well there is it the you know different systems have different numbers of rungs of the ladder Charon and divide the pie in a different way but fundamentally it is hierarchical and it is it is a ladder that when you get to the end of the ladder you realize it's the begun at the bottom of another ladder yeah yeah yeah so to play devil's advocate on behalf of some people whom I actually don't agree with but who bring up points such as the ones I'm about to bring up I want to ask you a few questions you know one is that some people who are quite highly respected in the spiritual realm in one way or another don't even acknowledge the notion that there's some kind of a soul because they say that ultimately there's no one home there is no person there is no entity in there and therefore to them the notion of reincarnation is absurd the notion that and you know somebody like sam harris who is in a way devoted his life to spirituality but for him but he was also an avowed atheist would say that and i just listened to a recording of him the other day would say that when you die that's it lights out and all the talk of religions of there being something that happens after you die is just wishful thinking to avoid the sort of the horror of the termination of our existence so i don't know if you'd spend a lot of time talking to people who think that way but if you had to if you're stuck in the airport with one of those people what would you say well I would say that you know the the ant that question your that comment you're making is rooted in the most fundamental question which is this is consciousness the product of biology or does consciousness inform biology or is is consciousness primary and biology arises from it right and the Atheist will say biology is the source of consciousness many mystical traditions will say no consciousness is transcendent to biology and that biology is an outer instrument esotericism would say actually there's truth on both sides the truth on both sides is this when we talk about personality consciousness your day to day concrete thinking your emotional experiences the experiences that arise from the physical dimension of life through sensation and an outer activity that's that's what conditions personality consciousness as well as even genetic attributes when we look at this well it's what you had for lunch you know I'm here yeah how many I mean that then the 80s is absolutely correct because largely lower consciousness is indeed conditioned by the biology and these social conditioning esotericism would say that there's a there's a part of you that is transcendent to that and we call that soul and beyond the soul there's even another structure called the monad which is another subject okay but that soul is the sum total of acquired wisdom that you have garnered over countless incarnations and that instrument or that what we call the causal body the holder of that wisdom from life to life to life to life that piece is not conditioned by the physical incarnation its transcendent to it so one of the beauties of the esoteric philosophy it's not it's often not an either-or but both answer yeah any many things yeah and I think one of the there's a you've you've probably heard of nisargadatta maharaj that great sage from Mumbai but I'm one of his statements was that the ability to appreciate paradox and ambiguity is a sign of spiritual maturity that you can it doesn't have to be either or both and it can be both and there's a larger basket into which both things can fit yes and of course there's a simple analogy for what you just said which is like the radio I mean if if if you smash the radio with a hammer it's it can't play music anymore but doesn't mean that the electromagnetic field is not still there and that other radios can't can't detect the fluctuations in it and transmit music right right and if you're Tooting that radio and if it's tuned well perfect it's a perfect expression of the the transmission but if it's tuned a little off it's a little off and so it's like the whole sub the whole system is designed to transform the lower self so that it can become more well tuned that radio becomes tuned to the the souls electromagnetic field you might say yeah and one limitation to that metaphor is that you know a radio station doesn't send out individual packets of information destined to reach a particular radio it just try it just transmits and then any radio within its range can pick up that transmission whereas here we're saying that in addition to consciousness being of a ubiquitous field there are sort of individual expressions which we which you're referring to as the soul which go from life to life and evolve as they do so yeah except that it's here again it's a it's a both not an either/or because you're quite right in the case that we're talking about the causal body the soul is a very unique agency however there's also the greater life that your soul is just a cell within that greater life has a much vast signal you might say and much more encompassing the soul of humanity and for instance is a much vaster signal that would be more akin to a radio station you might say broadcasting to everybody every radio so you've probably heard the absurd argument that you know anatomist have have cut open bodies and have never found any soul in there and and so some people actually use that to deny that there is any such thing but and we could say that you've never found the Beatles by opening up a radio but [Laughter] but that leads to the question well what is the soul actually made of how you know it if it's going from life to life you know there's it implies that there's some little cluster of something that you know go that goes somewhere or stays somewhere once this body dies hangs out and then comes back into another one so you know what is the substance of it oh what a great question very good question okay so it's been long understood in ancient esotericism you're you have something called a causal body mm-hmm it's just as you have a physical body your emotional body of a mental body beyond that deeper than that there's this thing called the Cosmo bot a causal body and it is it's called the causal body because it's your body of causes and it's it's the container that is holding two things that week we in the end call soul consciousness it's holding the sum total of acquired wisdom over countless incarnations and it's holding a profound sense of lofty almost christ-like love and I when I use the word Christ and you brought the word up earlier I don't mean it in a Christian sense I mean the principle of love and wisdom and that that your soul is the Christ in you and that that causal body is holding that vibration now that causal body is what is moving from one incarnation to the next to the next to the next each incarnation that causal body is being enriched by the experiences of the previous incarnation and more stored wisdom is being stocked in to that causal body every incarnation so every incarnation you have more stored wisdom contained in that instrument now there's a it is considered substantial it's interesting that you bring that term up substantial in its matches it's it's found on the higher mental plane the causal body is found on the higher mental plane the abstract mental plane we are told I have however it's it's it's filled with christ-like love so one of the things to understand about the causal body and your soul consciousness is that it's both an agency of lofty love and higher mind a lot of contents people think that the soul is about love esotericism would say that's only half the part half of it the soul is both an agency of lofty love and wise mind in fact there's a whole mythology of how does that causal body form and it's there's a mythology about it called the coming of the solar angels but it's it's said to be substantial and in the sense that it's made up of higher mental living substance and in that sense it's substantial but it - in the long run is only temporary you will you will have you will utilize your causal body as a function of your evolution for thousands of incarnations but the day will come the day will come when all of the content of that causal body is now successfully able to express itself through the lower self on feeded without distortion and that's what I meant by enlightenment we call that the fourth initiation when when everything that the causal body can express through that lower garment has been achieved the purification has been achieved and also simultaneously that's when karma comes to an end and therefore reincarnation is no longer a necessity we could call that enlightenment and then at that point there's a letting go of the causal body and there's a whole kind of science in terms of how that happens depending upon the the Ray your soul is on the type of soul you are that too is another subject but yeah anyway so it's kind of a long answer to your question that it is substantial and it is made up of higher mental substance filled with christ-like love yeah so higher mental substance I'm familiar with the concept of their being of subtle matter if you want to call it matter and that of you know celestial or astral beings whose bodies are not comprised of physical matter and the earthly sense but but who nonetheless have bodies and which are comprised of more subtle substance of some kind and so perhaps what the soul is comprised of something along those lines also the thing you said about karma all being finished and burned up or resolved and not needing to reincarnate would it be possible to still reincarnate in order to serve some particular role or function yeah yeah so that's a two-part question yeah there's in this philosophy there's a whole section called the higher way of evolution and there's some intricacies to it that aren't important just understand that the day comes in some future incarnation for all of us when we finally reach the fourth that fourth initiation which means I no longer have personal karma itched into the vibrational quality of my causal body any longer I've worked it through and it's adjusted at all it doesn't mean that you don't have it doesn't mean that you don't have relationship to collective karma you in fact you you met it there this higher way of evolution that I'm mentioning there are said to be seven paths in ancient literature about this and one of them is called the path of our service or in Hinduism the East they might call it the way of the Bodhisattva okay but it's the same idea to stay until the last weary pilgrim comes home and that that so a choice can be made to deliberately incarnate to continue a piece of work on behalf of your deeper call but most don't actually most move on to another regime yeah and I would assume that the decision to do that is not governed by any kind of narrow individual consideration but it's really one is so in tune with the divine consciousness or cosmic awareness or whatever you want to tell it call it that at that point it's just like wherever the need is it's determined by some vast intelligence that's governing the universe and one just serves accordingly well you kind of yeah it's it's it's at least as its conveyed in this philosophy is that at that point it is said that the decision of which way to go is 100% free choice and then it's also said that it's predestined yeah so it's free choice and predestined and so there's another paradox it's part of the journey yeah which brings up another question you know these people who say that there is no actual individual soul or any such thing or any person in there also often say there's no free will and that you know we're governed by our genetics and our I don't know what karma or something and that it may appear that we have choice but we in fact don't and they even cite some of them in sight you know neural neurophysiological studies in which the impulse to do a thing is detected through instruments before one is even aware that one is about to do the thing you have any comment on that well okay so freewill versus what philosophy would call determinism again esotericism has what I think is a rich answer and the answer is both again you have let's put it this way I'm gonna use my hands I hope you can see me okay here again let's say up up represents widening fields of consciousness as you evolve okay so wherever wherever you are on the path it's the mean point of where your resting consciousness is deep within okay now you have you have relatively complete free will from whatever that place is downward through your system and life but you have no free will when it comes to your relationship to the greater life and your a cell within a larger entity back to hila zosyn which i know you're going to want to ask about but you and i are cells within a larger living system and that entity is evolving too and whatever it's doing we have no choice we are just constituent parts of its evolution in that case its predetermined its determinism it's you have no tree choice so again it's both yeah so to take a perhaps absurd example may be more of a illustration than an actual factual thing let's say you know a liver cell has a choice of what to do within its domain as a liver cell but it doesn't have any choice about whether you're going to go and play tennis or not that's just not within its realm of influence that's beautiful example exactly exactly and that's exactly what high low so ism is about and indeed this it would just be a good time you you wanted to talk about that with this idea I want to ask you one follow-up question about something you said and then let's get into that and you're talking about how one accumulates wisdom and knowledge and experiences one goes from life to life what if you screw up what if you're a mass murderer or rapist or you know some you've really done some bad things in this life can you regress or or actually are you just still you know progressing and learning life learning lessons the hard way great question well there might appear to be regression but not nearly to the extent that some sects of Hinduism would suggest you know the idea that you regress back to the animal kingdom sewed like the cow is grandma that's a teryn believe in any kind of trends like that's called oh there is a term for that I've forgotten it I'm sorry I forgot it no worries um oh the transmigration of the soul yeah yeah school yeah anyway the key is to understand that it would be nice if evolution were like this in kind of a slope upward for many lives but it isn't it's like this right it's a sine wave that's fluctuating but going for the sake of audio listener is a sine wave that's fluctuating but go trending upward over time yeah so when we look at an individual or we look at the collective of humanity and now in human history is a good time to consider that - that there are times when there's a downward motion through wrong choice through difficulty through crisis through a variety of things that leads to what we would look at is saying wow that looks regressive yeah but it's only when you when you look at that within a short view so much of the path has to do with pulling yourself back to see a larger picture and when you see a larger picture with an individual or society and you pull let's say you pull you're with the individual you pull yourself back to think of many lives or for society you think of centuries rather than the last five years okay what you see is that there are times when there is a downward turn and with the short vision the narrow vision it looks like it's all falling apart and but with the pull back vision you realize that yes it is a down your turn it is a downward turn but still within a larger upward trend yeah and that's the key to understand this and that's a that applies to an individual to a group to a nation to humanity as a whole yeah so yeah I think everybody gets that feel free to send in questions if you don't but um it's like if if there is if we look at the universe as a whole and kind of conclude that there's an evolutionary trajectory to it that word is always hard to say then you know asteroids might destroy inhabited planets or all kinds of nasty things might happen stars will explode and but there's actually in the big big picture in the universe is I view of it there's all these things are necessary for the continued evolution into more and more complex life forms which are more and more capable of expressing that divine intelligence that gave rise to the whole thing in the first place yeah I have a what's flashing in my mind right now Rick is Kyle Gibran and the Prophet maybe you've read that I'm sure many people have years ago and I paraphrase where he says something like to judge one by that they're their failures is to reckon the power of the ocean by the frailty of its foam that's good yeah sort of gets that the same idea I think yeah so there's a couple things we want to discuss here and i'm shy' think they're probably related i don't think i think there are two different things but correct me if i'm wrong one is high-lows oh ism which as I understand it is sort of the systems within systems within systems you know greater and greater like Russian dolls of larger and larger systems containing smaller systems and the other thing is the the nature of society and what's happening in it and to it and the significance as you were saying earlier of you know people who are on a spiritual path and they're the role they may be playing in today's world which you want to tackle first let's go with hi Lausanne first okay good so it's an interesting term and maybe for the sake of your audience let me just spell it out because people it's a new word for a lot of people it spelled hy l o z or z ism though is I'm sorry z oo is it yeah ism it's also called the highlands o istic principle and actually I believe it was Pythagoras that first presented it as a kind of philosophic doctrine but it's this idea that every unit of life is a cell within a vaster unit of life every unit of life is nested within a larger living entity that in itself is evolving so when I speak of how those O's and I often like to speak of it by giving kind of a metaphoric example and you kind of brought one up when you talked about the liver cell but if I look at a cell in my body let's say it's a cell in my hand from an esoteric point of view that cell is an entity it's alive it's an unit of consciousness infinitesimal without a doubt but it's a unit of consciousness from a biological point of view it is not only esoteric I mean a you know biologists would would probably agree with everything you just said I don't know about the consciousness part but definitely it's alive and it has you know it's extremely complex I mean I've heard the complexity of a cell compared to that of a Tokyo or modern city it's so complex but anyway continue yeah no you're quite right I mean it's the if you've ever studied cellular biology it is an amazing thing yeah and it's considered a life unit again it's consciousness is so remotely mine in Minsk that it's not surprising that people would find that it is that consciousness at all but we would say yes on a miniscule level and yet it's just a cell within a larger entity called me and you but you and I are just cells within a vaster entity as well and that entity is humanity as a whole and and we don't have to jump all the way to humanity do we I mean we could say we're cells within a community consciousness which actually has some kind of autonomous nature to it and and and then within a national consciousness which has some kind of autonomous nature to it and so on and then this is not just sort of metaphorical where we're saying that there's an actual being of some sort that is comprised of these smaller units that's right that's exactly right I just jumped up to humanity yeah you're right there are family and it's there are groups a nation a nation is an entity the United States Germany all the countries in the world are entities and they have a soul and they have a personality and they are struggling to transform they're lower in support of their higher just like you and me and the same is true with all of humanity and to met today humanity the soul of humanity is trying to express itself through the personality of humanity and a lot of tension is arising because of that that gets into your next question but taking it further just to give you perspective all of humanity collectively as an entity is a unit of consciousness within a vaster entity and that's the planetary logos now that's the being that installs the whole planet which is a God to us in a way and each kingdom of nature is just a layer of its consciousness evolving through form now and in an uniquely what's so interesting about the human Kingdom is we were told in ancient literature that the entire kingdom is the throat chakra to that entity I'd like to invite you everybody listening to think about that for a minute the sum total of all human consciousness on this planet is this vibration to that entity now of course that would beg the question what's the function of a throat Center because to really get at that question is to really understand what it means to be living as a human being what does it mean to evolve within the human Kingdom and it's the implication is that a throat chakra in each of us and collectively the throat chakra is the center of creative ideation it's through your throat chakra that the soul finds the capacity to bring forth is expressed wisdom on behalf of human betterment and that's the function of all of humanity as a part of the throat chakra of the planetary logos this is why my book is called shine forth the soul's magical destiny every human soul is destined to be a creative agent in support of spiritual upliftment why because every human soul is a constituent part of the throat chakra of the planetary logos and that entity by the way is evolving and that entity is said to be part of a chakra within a larger entity that's called the solar logos the Solar logos is the entity that insoles the whole solar system and our solar system is said to be one of seven in what is called the local group that is a massive life cosmic life called the one about whom not may be said I always laugh about that because I figure okay what's the point of going further but but the truth is that it does go further I'll take it one step further and this is jumping many levels if you look at the whole Milky Way galaxy the Milky Way is now believed to have I believe it's a hundred and fifty billion stars 150 billion stars in a spiral galaxy that entity is called a galactic logos and then now we know that there are millions of galaxies trillions so trillions of galaxies so the the magnitude of this is staggering and so I kind of jokingly say that when somebody has a meditation experience and they say to you I reached ultimate cosmic consciousness I only said hey turn and run turn and run not even the solar logos the entity that insoles the whole solar system of which we are just atoms of consciousness within in not even the solar logos can make that claim yeah so I and sometimes when you talk about how those O's and people feel it kind of makes you feel like a piece of dust in a hurricane but the truth is that you are also the hurricane because in the ultimate the other aspect of this that has to be stated and I should have stated this at the beginning is that hila zosyn also implies that in the ultimate ultimate ultimate sense there's only one thing one living principle one beingness some people call it God some people call it Brahma universal intelligence call it what you like and that that beingness is all there really is and so even though we in looking at Hylas azam in the way I'm sharing it with you it can make you feel like a piece of dust in a hurricane but never forget in another sense you are the hurricane yeah I don't find it discouraging or belittling or anything of that sort I find it inspiring and I think that and you know I don't resonate with these people who seem to be in a big fat hurry to kind of end their existence in some kind of an Enlightenment you know extermination event in which they you know they're not going to exist anymore and then I can reincarnate anymore and it's like you know I feel like whether we know it or not or like it or not we're all in it for the long haul and it's a marvelous adventure and it's satori it's like we're we're participating in this divine play and you know all the world's a stage and you know we all have our entrances and our exits and each man in this part plays in his time plays many parts to butcher a little bit of Shakespeare it's it's like wow what an adventure what fun what you know how interesting you know fascinating endless fascination yeah yeah it is it's it's marvelous and it's sold embracing it's so embracing of so many things but I will say that I've met many people who yours the people you're talking about I've met many of those people too many people believe that this is their last incarnation that somehow their last if they only knew what they were saying yeah I mean we think that for instance as I mentioned in this philosophy it's understood that the fourth initiation is where that could be made to be true but we anticipate that we think that in studying modern society we think the Dali Lama is right around the 4th degree we think that mother Teresa was right around the 4th degree so if you think that this is your last incarnation you're putting yourself right up there with the Buddha and even so I mean it was the Dali Lama all right and Mother Teresa and even if it were your last on this planet it doesn't mean the game's over you know course it's not a lot of times what people feel and I understand this because so you know my personality can feel this too sometimes it said Oh life is so difficult I've learned so many lessons surely I paid my dues I'm not coming back yeah I think it's annoying like that much you might feel that you know there's that saying life sucks then you die yeah well but but it's just the personality in its tension around the struggles of life that can lead us to think that surely I'm wrapping it up now because I've had to do so many adjustments yeah there's a question that came in from a guy named Ivan and I want to ask you that and then tag on to a question that pertains to what we've been talking about and Ivan's question does also he asks don't know where he's from but he says material planets carry spiritual energy eight planets in the solar system create a unique energetic pattern for each incarnation and personality when the soul graduates the earthly plane it moves to other solar systems can you comment on this and before you do I just want to tag on you know is part of the evolution of the soul to move from the human incarnations to actually incarnations of into these larger entities you referred to like you might become a you know the a being that occupies or governs the solar system or the galaxy or something but then one more bit to that question is that it seems like there's a sort of diminishment of souls as you go up because you know there are a lot more insects than there are animals and there are a lot more animals than there are people and there are a lot more people than there are solar systems and so on so there's sort of a weeding out process or maybe we all glom together into one super-soul and and in order to become a you know a galactic being well in the ultimate sense that is true because in the ultimate sense there's only one entity yeah I said it earlier so in the ultimate sense it's oneness but it you just I'm just trying to recapture your thinking of that I guess yeah when you when you when you work on yourself and develop yourself as you depart your you let's say that let's say you do achieve perfection relatively speaking you do go into a higher regime of evolution there's no question about it and I mentioned those seven paths well there's a whole understanding of those paths and one of the paths is called the path of the path of the planetary logos where eventually that being will move toward evolving itself to become in the distant billions of years perspective an actual planetary life so so you're moving into wider fields and this sometimes people have a lot of fear about the idea of absorption into larger because they think that they it's like a drop that's lost in the ocean and that you lose your who you are but you never lose your identity ever you lose your ego but you don't lose identity what's the difference well identity is the it's a principle it's just like the principle of love identity is the sense of isness whereas ego is the sense of it's it's a lot of associations to isness I am this I am that and it often is in contrast to others but but understand that your monad which is beyond the soul the monad is the true you your monad which is pure spirit the monad is a spark of life from the one flame that that monad is is the carrier of a variety of spiritual principles inherent in the fabric of creation and one of those principles is the principle of identity you will never lose your sense of anise but you will have absolutely no interest in it another way of looking at it more on a let me let me give you a contrast or an analogy that has to do with this sense of individuality and Ina's okay how to word this here's the analogy and I'm going to use a master to give you a sense of how individuality is experienced by a master [Music] by analogy individuality to a master is again by analogy equivalent to animal instinct in a human being let me say that again by analogy individuality to a hue to a master is is equivalent to animal instinct in a human being so what do I mean by that I mean that you and I as human beings one of the great functions of human evolution is to develop your individuality and your ego actually it's a good thing to develop it before you let it go okay and and this is what Abram Maslow was talking about in his humanistic approach it's true butBut animal instinct is still with us we evolved through the animal kingdom millions of years ago but it's still there I'm sure that you and I and your viewers you don't have to go too far in to find it I'm sure okay well imagine that same principle with a master they have their individuality they've got a history of it having evolved through the human Kingdom and it's etched into the fabric of their deepest consciousness but it's not it's not something they are preoccupied with or focused on at all and they can reach to it grab it use it as a function of service when needed but it is quite secondary yeah so perhaps one way of explaining it see if you agree is that you know whereas most people might consider their individuality to be the entirety of what they are a master or someone who is more spiritually developed might consider it to be a kind of a faculty or a feature or something contained within something much larger that they know themselves to be that's exactly right and that's why that's why so much of the path it's so interesting when you read some of the literature on this like let's use the Alice Bailey writings for just a minute the Tibetan in the Alice movie writings might say know where you stand the path okay well that's saying something about no know who you are and where you are in your evolution and then in the next paragraph you'll say take your eyes off yourself well so it's the paradox of being attentive to evolving and recognizing your authentic identity while simultaneously always knowing that you're just a cell within a larger living system so it's to be centralized and decentralized at the same time a friend of mine Timothy Conway sent me a quote this week which pertains to this I think he just read it he said what the Buddha meant by onatopp was not no self but not self he clearly repeatedly taught that the five aggregates of personhood body sensations perceptions some SCARA reactions and the personal consciousness banana are not are not who I am not myself he did not say that there are no persons and this is quite contrary to what so many misunderstanding Buddhists including many teachers and academics and neo invite ins teach today they interpret as no persons whatsoever which is a recipe for depersonalization syndrome that's true yeah no I agree with that I agree with that yeah you have you have a sense of isness that will always be with you it's just what you have a presence about in fact that's what the monad is called the monad is the thing beyond your soul mm-hmm it's and that's your true highest self you might say and that's not conscious to us there's a certain place on the path where you become conscious to us and that a master has gone way beyond there sold and is fully integrated as monad monad is a word that means the one they come to mono the one and you it's where let's put it this way and I'm going to use some Christian terminology here but the soul in you is the christ in you the monad in you is the God in you and and that monad is that monad is what actually is on the long journey it's it's called the eternal pilgrim and some of the ancient literature it's the Monad that that carried you through not just the human Kingdom but before that the animal kingdom and before that the plant kingdom and before that the mineral kingdom so and so so yeah it's a it's really the the main agency and the soul is just a category of consciousness used by the monad in its evolution as it works its way through the human Kingdom through the human Kingdom so so it's not like your soul it's not like you had that the same soul when you were a rock or a bug or a cabbage or whatever you know you were through all those things but the bone dad was still there but then once you entered into the human range of evolution then a soul somehow came into the picture so what you said what if when well yes and here's where we get into kind of nuances with language but what happens in in the human Kingdom every kingdom of nature is said to be a place that the monad develops further capacities of its itself and the human Kingdom has much to do with first discovering your identity to rise above animal instinct to understand your individuality beyond mere instinctual response and for much of the human Kingdom in the evolution of your life your many lives the goal is to develop that ego to develop that personality that becomes eventually what we call an integrated personality an integrated personality is when all three parts of the personality mental emotional and physical are integrated they work as a whole and many of the most powerful people in the world that are making decisions sadly at this time of life may have strong personality but no awakening to soul yet and and then what happens is late in the human journey there's something called the awakening for the first time that personality awakens to a higher prompting within and that's that's in this philosophy what we call the beginning of the path the beginning of the recognition of your own duality but prior to that journey that leads you eventually to discover your duality and then eventually transform that lower so that you enter into the human king of the next kingdom of nature prior to that the earlier kingdoms of nature when you were a monad working through those kingdoms you were developing other attributes like for instance in the animal kingdom you were developing instinctual tendencies of behavior I could go through a whole litany of things that are said to be developed by life as it evolves through those earlier kingdoms but it's in the human Kingdom where individuality is emphasized only toward the end do you decentralize and start letting go with your preoccupation of your individuality and start merging yourself back into the larger whole so could it be said that the monad that is at the core of your existence in some sense at one time didn't exist whatsoever and that your individual monad kind of sprouted or came into existence at a certain point and then began to go through this whole sequence of incarnations yeah it's so interesting you say that it is said that the the origins of the monad are lost in the midst of time but but I in my book I have a simple analogy for it if you look at imagine that the one life is a cloud the think of the monad as being a droplet of water that is so faint within that cloud that it doesn't have the gravity to to drop and and yet when it does have the gravity to drop that's when it enters it enters into the lower kingdoms of nature and works its way back through the kingdoms all the way back up to the cloud which is the real meaning behind the whole story and Christianity of the prodigal son the the the the out-breath into form into density the struggle to evolve to awaken and the lessons learn through the kingdoms only to eventually return to the father's home having benefited from that long journey over millions of years hmm it's said in the Vedic tradition that when the entire universe collapses down again that the universe is cyclical that all the souls currently then in existence actually kind of go into some kind of unmanifest state but continue to exist and re-emerge with the next big bang or the next expression of the universe at whatever level of evolution they had achieved in the previous one that's true that's that's right by the way I just you just reminded me there was something earlier that you mentioned that I wanted to say about this idea that when the earth is done what happens to it you you you alluded to it esotericism would say this that all the planets in our solar system are entities they're God's to us but in that larger system of the solar logos really the solar logos is the big boy on the block and it's incarnation is primary and that the planets in its context are actually chocolates so it is said in ancient lore that when our solar logos ends its incarnation and goes into a state in Hinduism they call it pralaya that it goes into abstraction that's what death is death is movement into pralaya that that there's an absorption that takes place in all the planets in our solar system will be absorbed back into that profound singularity but it's not a direct thing in other words there are said to be three planets in our solar system incredibly of all beings who are called the synthesis planets or the synthesizing planets they are Saturn Neptune and Uranus and certain the other planets are believed to be their life force and all the kingdoms of nature that part that life force will be drawn into one of the synthesizing planets the earth it is believed will synthesize into Saturn where as Venus will synthesize into Neptune and there's a whole discussion of understanding why that is and then the three become the one so it goes into a Trinity before absorbing back into the ultimate singularity of the solar logos yeah I think we could have a long conversation about that I mean my understanding of cosmology or astronomy is that when the Sun becomes a red giant it'll expand out far enough to pretty much subsume the earth I don't know about Mars and of course Mercury and Venus will just be toast but but but you know the planets beyond Mars and possibly even Mars won't won't be within the reach of that red giant star and I don't know I'm a little rusty on whether that our Sun will become a black hole or not I think maybe not but I don't know anyway well but just just to highlight that one point though is that I'm not talking about the end of the solar system in its physical nature okay remember that called the Solar logos is a being as well it has a soul it has the personality the physical Sun that you're talking about is the outer representative of the personality nature of the solar logos whereas the there's a there's a soul nature to it that's called the heart of the Sun and there's a magnetic nature which is called the central spiritual Sun so when I talk about this absorption I'm talking about the the consciousness the living nosov it yeah it absorbs back into singularity okay they're about four questions that have come in that are actually asking for elaboration on things we've talked about and here's one that is direct related to what we were just saying okay P from Mumbai asks Gurdjieff used to speak of how the moon was a living organism would you be able to comment on this and the influence our moon has and of course you've been saying that all the planets and the Sun itself are living organisms which might seem like a strange idea to people because biologically they couldn't be but what you're saying is that those physical entities whether the Sun or the moon or whatever are the sort of material representations or you know expressions of it that they have a spirit or an indwelling consciousness which is very alien in terms of thinking in terms of biological life but which is nonetheless real so so again this question was you would you be able to comment on this and on the influence our moon has okay without trying to contrast it with kerchiefs work because I actually don't know exactly how kerchief would have viewed this but in theosophy there's this long understanding that our earth our earth is a living entity as I mentioned right what we call the moon and this is going to surprise a lot of people what we call the moon is actually the carcass of our Earth's our planetary logos is last incarnation it's the it's the carcass of the past and it's it's the life that it had is actually the life that is now in viewing the whole earth and that there's a whole amazing mythology in ancient history about it's called a chain disaster and I won't go into that but I will say this is that therefore in esoteric astrology which is something an important part of this philosophy as well the moon in your chart is viewed as the symbol of the instinctual past which is why literally it is the past and it's very interesting because you know NASA set has brought some rocks back from the moon so we have moon rock there are some rocks on the moon that are said to be older than anything found on the earth hmm well the moon was said to have formed when you know something huge crashed into the earth and just you know broke off a great big chunk of it and you know which was completely cataclysmic for the earth but but anyway I mean the moon is actually vital in terms of the earth and what the influence it has on stabilizing the Earth's rotation and the tides and as a magnet for asteroids which would otherwise crash into the earth and jupiter serves that role also so but anyway we're getting I don't know where we're going with this well I will say this there that that idea of the moon being created by a cataclysmic collision esotericist would say no that's not that's not true if it's one of the big mysteries is why is our moon a full third of the size of the earth no other planet in the solar system has a proportional ratio even close to that yeah and there's the whole mythology about the heaviness of the moon in terms of what it symbolizes as the weight of the past as its we have to struggle to transform it this is why in esoteric astrology sometimes the moon is said to be the symbol of the prison of the soul when you get into this kind of stuff I go back to my my hypothesis mode which is that everything to me is an interesting hypothesis you know which some of which has more evidence than us some of which have more evidence than others I know I take I sort of give everything the benefit of the doubt but I also take everything with a grain of salt and the proportions vary so you know it's a really understand to really wrap my head around what you're saying would take a long conversation and I'd probably want to sit you and some other esoteric people down with three or four you know astronomers and hash it have no be an interesting conversation well and when I when I present it sometimes the groups ask me to do a whole presentation I have quite a few visual visual aids that can help me to explain it because it is actually quite a complex notion but anyway yeah okay so here's another sort of wrap up from things we've also discussed already discussed mark Peters from Santa Clara California asked who is it that progresses or evolves on the spiritual path is it the biological body mind the causal body or some other form of localized consciousness or all of these concurrently is consciousness itself evolving while awareness remains static it's a little bit of semantics here how we're going to define these terms but um see what you can do with that question well okay so in the big picture in the ultimate picture for a human being it's the monad that's evolving over the vastness of time in a more realistic way it's the causal body that's evolving you know it's interesting that sometimes people think that the soul is perfect but it's not perfect it's only perfect in one way it's perfect in its potentiality it's imperfect in its capacity to express that potentially potentiality through the personality without incumbent and that's the function of evolution so it's in a sort of realistic practical way understand that the soul itself the causal body is what is evolving over many lifetimes but the personality is evolving as a reflection of it over every lifetime as well hmm okay there was a section in your book in which you were talking about the necessity of preparing and strengthening and purifying the body to be a fit sort of receptacle or vehicle for the infusion of the divine energy or whatever you call it in your book and that without that preparation it could be pretty it could be you know catastrophic for you you'd burn out if that energy would have come flooding in prematurely and there's a question from Jean from Germany that's along these lines he or she asks how does the Kundalini fit into how does the Kundalini fit into the overall picture of the evolution of a human being is it mainly a clearing energy to prepare the body to house more of the soul's energy great question wow what a great question okay so Kundalini in the ultimate sense a true Kundalini experience in the full sense is another mark of evolutionary perfection because if you look at life it's it's got two forces there's the life of form and thence the life coming through you and Kundalini is when all parts within your form nature mental emotion physical have been so purified that those two expressions of of spirit can meet and join each other which still again out okay which two expressions it's right there's one expression of life that comes through form itself through mental emotional and physical form the life that animates your your cell in your hand for instance is a type of life it's sacred but that's not the same life that is trying to work through your monad and soul that's another stream of life you might say coming from top down and the other is coming from them up bottom up and if when the system which is you you're your incarnation when it's purified to the extent it needs to be those two electrically fully relate from high to low and that's equivalent to what we call the fourth or the fifth initiation so now having said that a lot of people and I've met many who have said they've had a Kundalini experience let's be clear on that yes you might have but you didn't have the full Kundalini because you'd have to be a master for that let me it is said that between your chakras they are said to be a third webs between the major chakras now three perfect hid purification meditation and the spiritual work you do slowly those webs are starting to become permeable and when a when a web happens to become permeable enough it can arc a kind of Kundalini from a lower portion to a higher portion it's a small arc it's important it's really important but it's but it feels like the whole thing from high to low triggered but it's actually a small hark that feels like it must have been the whole arc so I don't want to discredit could aleni because it's very important but just know the difference between a true full kundalini and a partial one that for us might seem like it's full okay good so let's see here there's another question maybe I'll ask this person but then I want to get into the whole idea of what's happening in the world and so on this is from Tristan from Manchester UK who asks a major theme in Alice Bailey's work is the idea of Seven Rays which you've referred to earlier which condition every aspect of creation including individual humans are you aware of which Ray's condition your soul and personality I guess he's asking you personally and what is the best way to determine which raised our various vehicles are on Wow great question I could spend days on that one but let me just give you my best on that in a short timeframe yes all things are said to be expressions of seven Ray's we can talk about the Rays from a national perspective we know the ray of the soul ray of this country we know that we know the soul ray of many countries but you you as a human being you are on a soul line ray your soul is on one of the Seven Rays and to know your your soul ray is to know the very meaning of purpose of your life itself in a spiritual sense not just in this life but over many many incarnations because your soul ray stays with you for many many incarnations but your personality array for the lower self the personality it changes from each incarnation so let us say that a person had a third ray soul in this incarnation they may choose a 7-3 personality to try to express through it the next incarnation it could be a fourth-rate personality and that alternating of different personality raised over the various incarnations is what contributes to the evolution of that causal body and its development like I say its imperfect is evolving as well in terms of my own soul ray it won't meet a lot unless you know that I'm a second Ray's soul with a 7-3 personality and I can get more technical I have a fifth ray mental body and a secondary emotional body too this is a big subject but I just will say this is that the way you find your soul ray which is really the root of much of the question I think it's kind of twofold one is to just learn as much as you can about the rays read about it study it and also study the distortions they're called the Glamour's of the ray sometimes we get a handle on what our rays are from their distortions even more quickly than we can when we sense their pure nature and so there's a wonderful body of information out there about the race so study it learn it and then look at yourself through that lens that's step one step two is to start to identify once you've got a sense of how to recognize rays which are the two or three that are strongest in you because you're going to recognize yourself in all of them really because they all play out on some level with some in some ways but some of them are much more relevant in the life so what are the two or three that are most important then ask yourself okay these seem to be the strongest so okay now where do I feel it do is it how I present myself maybe that's my person out of it is it how my mind tends to one a frame thought well maybe it's my mental body or is it something deeper more essential more more true to my core that not everybody's going to recognize unless they become close to me and get to know me really well that's that's a one way of really working on it another is that there's you know I for instance I think this is this I think this is somebody from the UK it is I often when I go to the UK I've there all the time every year I've done a number of seven ray workshops there where we spend the whole day try to do an assessment of a to try to get a realistic hypothesis of what your soul Ray's what your personality Ray's and what are the implications of that and I even have a three we do three questionnaires to try to help measure the Rays in you so there's there's sort of internal ways of trying to understand it by just understanding the Rays and looking at yourself and then there's some other methods that we try to use that can help in in another way in an assessment kind of way so yes so I have no idea what my ray is I've never even really heard of the concept until the past week when I started reading your book I don't I don't know what my Ania Graham Enneagram type is I can tell you very little about my astrology or Joe Tish chart and whenever I hear about any of these things it kind of goes in one ear and out the other so am i a hopeless loser I mean is there any it's like percent means I'm just I just don't gravitate to thinking about these things or you know worrying about them or figuring them out and I just kind of blithely go along and life is working out pretty well but I mean I'm missing something essential well I don't know I you know here again I'd have to say it yesterday no but in the big picture Rick it's just be the best you can be yeah be be as brick if your heart is ablaze dwith lofty love for human betterment if your mind is acute and is committed to shaping ideas that make a difference in the world in the big picture that's the simplest understanding of how to live your life spiritually but having said that remember your causal body is also an agency of higher mind and it's something that's trying to evolve so the esoteric philosophy is very much trying to help you develop that abstract mind because the more you can develop it the more you're in the neighborhood of the soul I would say it's developing without my well I knew the interesting I'm not a post on knowing what my Ray is I'd be I'd have to be happy to sit in on one of your workshops and learn all about it but I just haven't felt strongly drawn to any such thing and I guess I'm feeling like you know should people listening to this be worried about it if they also don't aren't really doing to it or no no no and look there's also Ray illogical attraction so for instance people with a lot of third ray are often attracted to the work of esoteric astrology people with a lot of seventh ray are often very attracted to the magical creative work so there's actually different facets of this philosophy that are catered to different array types I see so maybe what I've told you so far gives me it gives you a clue as to what my right type is I have a theory all right well let's hear it just for kicks I think you're living proof that there is an eighth ray what the heck does that mean I'm just joking oh okay yeah no I'd have to spend more time with you Rick today you and I met this is it we've never met before shared I'd have to IIIi would say this that I'm quite confident that you would have a lot of a fair amount of second ray in you okay and that would and what would that mean again that's that's called the ray of love and wisdom and people who are on the second rail line are more inclined to serve humanity through educational initiatives through bringing forth understanding and wisdom it's also it rules the second rail rules all education whether it's in a primitive Society or advanced society and it also is the Ray most associated with the healing profession probably the largest percentage of people I meet on my journey within my students around the world probably about 70% of them are second ray souls because you tend to be attracted according to like Ray type right they're attracted to this sort of thing sure yeah okay good let's talk about you know the picture of what's going on in the world today I'll get you started with something that I'm have been it's been on my radar for the last week or two I have a couple of two or three friends here in town who have kind of tuned in to the work of guy McPherson and if you don't know who he is he's a climatologist of some sort who feels that we have already passed about 60 something critical tipping points irreversible and that well within our truncated lifetimes the human all complex life on Earth will be wiped out by catastrophic global warming and that we might as well just make hay while the Sun shines and and enjoy what time we have left on this planet and these friends of mine are buying into this and some of them even gave a presentation in town the other night and you know if you actually look at the logic of what they're saying what guy McPherson is saying it can get kind of scary and it's a little hard to argue with that although he has is can you know his detractors and people who argue with him but there are you know even not only even climate but a number of other factors such as loose nukes and genetic engineering and many other things which could theoretically do us in or make life on Earth extremely unpleasant and my attitude is that there's this sort of sea change happening in consciousness and there's going to be kind of a Hail Mary pass which because of this rising consciousness that's that's evidenced by my show for instance where I'm finding all these amazing people to interview that will bring about solutions in ways that may as yet be unforeseen even technological ones that somehow the the upwelling of creativity that this rising consciousness will result in will will bring about solutions that will kind of save us in the nick of time but that's just a hope perhaps so it's not necessarily a done deal so anyway that'll get you started what do you think well I'm I'm sophistic in the short run optimistic in the long run okay and I'm much more focused on the question of human consciousness as it struggles at this time because everything we see in terms of climate in terms of starvation and in Africa all of the horrible things and difficult things we see in the world are just the out picturing of certain patterns of consciousness within our collective so my focus is on trying to understand that now one of the things that's so important to understand about human consciousness is that that all major transitions or big jumps in evolution all of them will have major crisis at the front door crisis is always a prelude to the next step in evolution and that holds true for both an individual and for the nation and all of humanity and there are a couple major trigger points that are underlying why this time is so much related to that because we're we're we as a collective humanity are in two different transitions at the same time neither of them are going to be subjects that you're terribly focused on because one is astrological and one Israel aaja cool yeah but the astrological one is we're moving from a Piscean era to an Aquarian era the REA illogical is that we're moving from a 6-3 urge to a seventh rare urge so talk about it from a astrological point of view understand that entrance into the Aquarian age is it's not like one Age ends and the next one begins there's a huge overlap and astrologers have different views of how big that overlap is most of the people that I associated with we put it around 200 years it is said that we will not enter the Age of Aquarius fully until the year 21 17 up until that point there's this over and we're at the midway point in that two hundred year period which is where that why the crisis is that its highest now what does that mean it means that in the collective consciousness there are two astrological forces that are pervasively conditioning the field of human consciousness rather than just one and that and they are so different Aquarius versus Pisces that that is causing a lot of the increased polarizations that you have attitudinally in politics in religion in the arts etc so that's one of the transitions that's a crisis point so people are aligning themselves with one or the other of these major influences and that and thus becoming so polarized right doesn't your fan and why there's such a pull toward the past is always has a stronger foothold initially than the future because the past has the historical advantage and that's why you're seeing so much rising up of darkness now that's one aspect of this the other Israel aaja chol we're moving from a sixth rage to a seventh rage now the sixth ray is called the ray of idealism and devotion and it's been an underlying condition to energy all along in fact the sixth ray rules all religions throughout the world every religion the soul of that religion the 6:3 its personality will be a different ring and and if you look at if you study world religions you find that at the core of all of them is a sense of a set of ideals and a devotion to devotion to a teacher a guru a text whatever it is and that that's the sixth phrase also also called the Ray of mysticism the seventh ray is called the Ray of practical mysticism we're moving from a mystical era that lasts a couple thousand years and entrance into the practice of practical mysticism it's the capacity to seventh rate the capacity to inwardly reach for the stars keep your feet on the ground think get real and organize outer structures in life in a way that the best of the human spirit can find more effective expression through them now these two energies are also overlapping at the same time and and that's also contributing to the crisis that crisis period in ancient occult ISM has a name it's called the period of the burning ground the period of the burning ground and humanity is in total is right now walking across the burning ground and one of the things to keep in my weight literally by the way there's 60 wildfires out west that are burning entire towns but continue I know I'm in Oregon in it I'm one of the states that's getting that and believe me it's sweltering hot right now in this room so it is believed that right now the soul of humanity is trying to infuse itself or you might say push more of itself into the personality of humanity and what happens when that occurs is that shadow issues within the collective personality of humanity rise up in defiance which is why for the last several years we've seen the worst of business we've seen the worst of government we've seen the worst of theology and if we're really honest with ourselves I think we could say we've seen the worst of ourselves too because if the soul of humanity can be recognized in our higher value system and as that higher value system tries to subtly impress upon human minds that it can sense it it will also create a negative reaction from the consciousness that emphasizes the past and it will rise up in opposition now that's why the crisis in the world today in a way it's a really really good thing you know as painful as it is because it's jarring loose shadow issues that have been there all along but have been more hidden but now they're forced to rise to the surface and we can't change anything unless we can see it and now we see it now this big transition is it's understood that the major theme is that humanity itself is approaching a great initiative possibly in this century it's called the first initiation and that's what's really trying to happen what's really trying to happen as humanity is trying to figure out how to be one really if we don't figure that out we're then your friends this fellow you're talking about is absolutely right we have no hope if we don't figure that out but there's a spiritual principle that is underpinning this need to find right relationship and that principle is called the principle of right relationship the principle of right relationship today is the time would we have to be asking ourselves what is the right relationship between nation and nation between men and women between a religion and another religion between a government and those at governs between humanity and its relationship to mother nature between humanity and how it understands resources and we're waking up subtly very subtly humanity is waking up to this sense of what constitutes right relationship and in that awakening comes an awareness of wrong relationship wrong relationship we having to do with Mother Nature money and and that wrong relationship is what stage is the burning ground so for instance right now I I don't know if my stats are exactly current that is there a couple years old but did you know that 30,000 people die per day per day from starvation or disease due to malnutrition I calculated that as one every six seconds so somebody just died there's another there's another 30,000 a day now while we have a surplus of food of I think it's three or four percent surplus of food that's wrong relationship and so the whole focus is to establish like for instance 50 years ago we didn't even think about the fact that there was an environmental crisis but the last few decades it's really picked up speed because more of the sense of right relationship is starting to crust on the shores of of progressive thinking people and that wakes us up to wrong relationship that's the burning ground but out of that burning ground comes the antidote and that is the rise of the environmental movement and that's true I'm just using environmentalism is just one example of this so this is a incredibly important transitional time that is steeped with crisis and darkness and oppositional energy and that's why I said at the beginning of our conversation that in that five minute conversation with the guy that you said I should talk with well this is the time to bring our very best forward cuz friends all of those you who are listening you and the best of you is needed more at this time in human history than at any other time in your life these next few years are going to be pivotal in terms of humanity's capacity to rise above its its tendencies to separate itself and become a more unified thinking group it is set in ancient esotericism that the greatest obstacle to humanity moving into its first initiation of real living oneness more is the so called heresy of separateness the heresy of separateness and that is just permeating the airwaves these days whether its separateness in terms of men and women whether its separateness in terms of building a wall whether its separateness in terms of preventing an immigration crisis from entering into Europe whatever it is there's just it's all over the place so this is your time friends this is the but this is your time and I think that probably for the next 3-4 may be actually I think until the year 2025 push for sure I think there's going to be this is just going to continue to get heated up okay just again to take the environmental thing as an example as you just did because it's an easy one but you could take it any number of other things as examples but it's it has there's a good argument to be made that the crisis in Syria the Civil War and the consequent refugee crisis is due to global warming because there was a serious drought and all the farmers moved into the cities they weren't properly supported there couldn't do anything and created all this unrest so there's evidence that you know certain ice shelves and Antarctica might slide into the ocean which could raise sea levels 10 feet or more quickly in a short amount of time which is going to create a migration crisis that's going to make Syria look like you know just a picnic and it's going to be and at the same time while that's happening huge droughts you know and fires and other environmental disasters which are you know going to make it very difficult for everyone on earth and yet we'll all that going on you know we have an administration which puts somebody like Scott Pruett in the Environmental Protection Agency you know he's since left but the guy who took over for him is cut from the same mold you know who deny that global warming is even a problem and are doing what they can to you know serve the oil industry so you know people who sort of think along the lines more progressively look at something like that can easily become furious or just couraged and you know feel like we're all doomed oh there's no hope so in what sense would you say that the current state of affairs is an opportunity is it that it polarizes or magnetizes everybody to sort of like focus and do something rather than be complacent or is and is there some kind of esoteric explanation for the way things are unfolding and the current dominance of a regressive mindset in politics lots of lots of questions within one question yeah just let me say that that the the rise of this darkness which is emphasizing separateness is perfectly predictable it's perfectly predictable because as I say often darkness is the prelude to greater light now having said that I think that if you look at human history you find that Humanity is as a species we are remarkably resilient and that I think that we we as a species have the capacity to adapt to a wide variety of differing circumstances it's one of the great gifts of human beings is our capacity to be adaptable to a changing environment so but but I'm also cognizant of the fact that if you look at the great cycles of it human evolution and the rise and fall of civilizations there's always been these periods of profound gloom and naysayers who believe that this is the end but it but but humanity the spirit of humanity rises to the occasion and finds the solution to the next step I believe in the soul of humanity I believe that we will come out of this correctly because history and precedents prove it to me so that's a good answer and also would you say and this is something I've often thought and said that you know there are a lot of things which are well entrenched economic and political institutions that really wouldn't fit in in a more enlightened world and somehow rather they have got to be dismantled and chances are they're not going to do so willingly so perhaps we're building up to a kind of a crisis situation in which they collapse unwillingly or you know who knows maybe those running them all sudden have a change of heart and the oil companies decide to just forget about oil and totally embrace alternative energy or set to take an example oh I see I see yeah well you threw me off a little bit when you mentioned social institutions because they'd have to know the institutions many of the major institutions it's not about the collapse it's about the transformation every institution whether its politics government education the arts science religion all of these are just categories of human consciousness that are actually rain defined I might add that evolved through the vastness of time and it's those those ray qualities are going to be continually with us and structure patterns of societal organizations and structures for us but they have to adapt as humanity is moving forward in its next step so to me the major institutions now if you're talking about if you look at the oil industry as an institution then I'd say to you yeah that's got to collapse and something has to come in to its place but if you're looking at the institution of let's say government or the arts or science those are some not going away they're just they're continually evolving and they have a higher nature and a lower nature just like you and I yeah and even the oil industry could put its resources into you know alternative energy and more sustainable for instance the the country of Dubai is establishing huge solar arrays and they're sitting on a lot of oil and natural gas which they could use to produce electricity but it's actually gotten cheaper for them to use solar power to do so and for some reason they have the freedom to do so maybe because it's more of a totalitarian situation and people aren't clinging to their old ways of doing things but they're just surging ahead in terms of changing their whole you know way of producing energy so there's no reason that that that couldn't be done heat in other countries but very often you know people hold on to the old ways of doing things even though they're not working because they have personal vested interest in doing so I agree I agree yeah Bennet so so countries like that become shining stars of examples for us to really look at and say what can we do to K to mimic some of that and move in the right direction yeah it's of course these big countries these big countries like the United States are it's like a huge ocean liner to try to get it to move to into a new direction it's tough for a little country you know I teach in New Zealand for instance it's one of my major places I work and I'm always amazed at how progressive New Zealand is and in so many ways and and and yet they have the advantage of being a small country that can make changes that is much more difficult for we in the United States to make and yet we should yeah as they're right do you you know we're talking about countries embodying a soul having a soul or collective consciousness that's a being in its own right and obviously over the eons of time or over at least recorded history civilizations have risen and fallen and some which seemed great and invincible no longer exist I mean do you have any insights as to you know the fate of let's say the United States or Western civilization in general is it in in decline and or will it research and it'll continue to to shine in the in the in the short picture it's in decline in the big picture it's it's day is coming mm-hmm and I say that because in the big picture the United Nations is the hope of the future in many ways it's a fourth-rate institution that's in its infancy it's believed in ancient esotericism that the united nations as it continues to grow will become far more influential as a governing body that supports the oneness of humanity but does it by honoring the diversity of culture and civilization and yet because the United Nations is still in its infancy it's making a lot of mistakes as any infant one but the day will come when that that institution will play a much stronger role in the shaping of our collective lives and and it all hinges upon to what extent can we generally see ourselves in the other to what extent can we see ourselves in the person that attitudinally we might think is holding a whole different view and it's also to the extent that we can own our own shadow our own issues so so I'm actually optimistic in the long run because it's all moving toward a one-world if we don't get that as I said if we don't solve that or we are probably doomed in a way but it's the one humanity but it's oneness realized through diversity it's not oneness through sameness its oneness through different nests and and that's the core to the future and so that this work that I do in trying to share this philosophy with people around the world is to provide a philosophic container that supports that because that's what's most important so I have about eight pages of notes here consisting largely of you know the main points from your book and and and all which obviously we're not going to get to but in our remaining time what is it what would you like to touch upon that we may have skipped over in this interview for instance do you that whole idea of there's the seven initiations I think there were seven is that something important that you'd like to people to hear about or is there anything else that I haven't thought to ask you that you would like to throw in here sure well okay let's talk a little bit about new creation and initiation is just a it there are whether our seven full but we talked about five and three major for human beings and and initiations represent milestones of evolution within our individual consciousness so the first initiation has a lot to do with two things the first initiation has to do with the soul of the hurt that human being having enough influence in the life that the heart Y opens wide and that you'd begin to feel the oneness of humanity it's not just theorizing the oneness of humanity it is with your heart feel the underlying unit of field of all people this is the first initiation yes but it's also the initiation where the Soul neat will will has proven that it can take dominion over the appetites of the physical body it and and no longer does the physical body have undue sway in the shaping of actions it doesn't mean that a first degree initiate is somebody that doesn't eat or doesn't have a sexual life but what it does mean is that there that that there there's a part of them that can retain the sense of being the observer and being the master of the instrument rather than the instrument mastering them mm-hmm the second initiative a thing that's a prerequisite or a qualification for the first initiation prerequisite you have to demonstrate that consciousness before that initiation is actually taken okay and before you go into the second one who or what initiates you well great question remember I said that you are on a soul line you have seven types of souls well see your soul is part of an ashram but when we use the word ashram we often think about India but that's not where the ashram is it's a good place for spiritual experience but that's not where the ash as the ashram is deep inside you it's the place from which your causal body your soul issues forth and there are said to be seven great interactions according to the seven types of souls and each has a piece of work to do on behalf of humanity's upliftment and your purpose your soul's purpose is to be an agent on behalf of the intention of that ashram now why I say that is because there are they're said to be a master of the ashram as well as the Christ and they are said to be that these Masters are said to be the officiants that actually take you you as a soul not you as a personality you as a soul through a process of initiation they happen rarely like for instance it takes thousands of lives to finally get to the first initiation and many people that are seriously on the path our first degree initiatives we believe but to get to the second initiation might take another four or five lines and the second initiation has to do with now the soul is demand Eman strating mastery over the emotional dimension of life the emotional part of the personality in it's called the baptismal initiation it's depicted for us symbolically in the life of Jesus in the story of the walking on water did Jesus really walk on water I don't know for sure I suspect he probably did but that's not important because it's really speaking of you and I it's about learning how to hold ourselves above our watery nature our emotional body and use your emotion and not be used by emotion that particular initiation it's a very difficult initiation and there's a lot I could say about it but at least that gives you a taste of it so before you go on to the third another clarification question are you saying that there is are some kind of higher beings like ascended masters or something who kind of watch over humanity and initiate people when they're ready to be initiated yes these are the sort of heads of these autumn's kind of thing that's right and so and so you're the ashram from you might say you're being initiated more into that ashram the first and second initiation you're said to be they're said to be the ashrams on the threshold the sorry the initiations on the threshold the third initiation is where you make your first more inwardly direct entrance into the ashram deep inside the third initiation is called the Transfiguration and it's where the now the mental body of the personality is becoming more mastered you the third the personality has three parts to trick there's a mental emotional and physical and these first initiations represent mastery over those three instruments the city the Transfiguration is a symbol for us also you find that in the Christian teaching in the story of the Transfiguration of Jesus on the Mount you know there's a whole story about how Jesus takes three disciples to the top of a mountain I think it was Peter James and John as I recall and I'll give you an edited version of it essentially while they're at the top of the mountain these three Jesus becomes this kind of glowing ball of light and these three disciples are so taken by this that they fall on their face in reverence to this prostate themselves in that way and then a then a booming voice from the heavens speaks and says to those disciples this is my son of whom I am well-pleased follow him and then they look up and Jesus is back to normal that's sort of the edited version of it but you get the feel of it well that's actually a metaphor for the third initiation because you see those three disciples are said to symbolize the three parts of the personality Peter for instance was called the rock of the church that's the physical body James and some literature is that called the deceiver that's the emotional body and John is correlates to the mental body and when and and when you as a person as a soul come to the third initiation remember I said earlier that in a way the soul is the Christ in you when you it's your threefold personality now yielding to the radiance of your own higher nature that's the Transfiguration many of the stories in the Bible as well as the bhagavad-gita are metaphors that speak of an inner process for each of us and that's what the third initiations really about I could I could spend hours on this I have a whole weekend workshop on this sure yeah it gives you a taste anyway yeah okay are you gonna go through all seven or what oh well I'll tell you what I'll go through five I can't go through five so the fourth initiation is called the crucifixion this is where I told you I think that the Dalai Lama is good evidence that the Dalai Lama is about there also Mother Teresa whereas examples of third degree initiatives with people like Abraham Lincoln we think people that study biographies we've done a lot of work on this Nelson Mandela Mahatma Gandhi these would be third degree initiatives probably but the fourth initiation is called the crucifixion because it's when all karma has been removed you've adjusted all karma the causal body is now able to express itself fully through the personality and and you're waking up to the for the first time you're really waking up to the Monad for the first time I mean actually you have a glimpse of it at the third initiation but at the full as you approach the fourth initiation inwardly you're sensing the Monad in a very conscious way and it's said to be so terrifying it's so powerful it's like an atomic bomb an inch from your nose now what happens is and you inwardly sense it and it's there what happens is just as you approach the fourth initiation that light of the Monette clicks off and you have this deep sense that you're you must now destroy the causal body the very thing that you had thought was going to be your home of eternity because you now realize that now your own causal body is going to get in the way of the next step and that's what's crucified it's your causal body which is again your Christ's body is crucified and the light going off is to make sure that there's no crutch that you lean on as you go through that fourth initiation this is the story of Jesus on the cross when he said father father why have the all forsaken me let's translate that Monad mo dad why have now forsaken me so the fourth initiation is very very intense difficult but liberating at the same time and by the way there's also a huge joy on each step and the fifth initiation it's called well in India they called it the the revelation in the East they call it the resurrection in the West but essentially you're a full master and you begin to have you said you've been you begin to develop your own ashram you're actually developing your own ashram even now in a way you you've got people you for instance I'm sure have many people around you that are very spiritual who see you as a kind of person that is a leading guiding voice for them those people in a way in many incarnations down the road they could indeed become part of the ashram that you eventually will lead when you become a 50-page well let's just hope I don't screw up like so many of the Guru's have goes to their heads goes to goes to their groins and you know they end up falling on their faces but um you know so all over the place that's very common and so you have to self-monitor all the way and so of the fifth and sixth or rather the 6th and 7th initiation sort of posthuman you don't even do them when in human bodies oh well you you do the first floor you have to take them while in physical incarnation after that you don't have to be in physical incarnation I hesitate to go into the sixth and seventh because it's a whole different regime and it would take us quite a bit of time to really shape what that's really about it's exciting and fascinating but I'm afraid you'd have to give me another 10 or 15 minutes to really do that justice I can do 10 or 15 if you feel like it kind of PT Barnum's that always leave them wanting more but if you want to get into it we can I can do that a little bit well okay so let's just say let me just do the sixth initiation not the seventh because the sit the the the the seventh it's just a whole different thing that I would have to show you graphics and so forth six islets the sixth is called the decision brick the decision and many of the greatest masters that oversee these seven ashrams are said to be six degree initiative called the chohan's maybe you recognize that term in Hinduism the charms now a six degree initiative is somebody but it says this decision what's the decision the decision is the decision of which of the higher ways of evolution that you will follow remember I mentioned that earlier yeah and that's the decision and that that there are a percentage of them that will stay and choose the path of earth service but a larger percentage of them choose other paths anyway do they serve on other in other places okay not not at that point but eventually they will when they actually start leaving the earth system hmm but if the sixth initiation the decision is made it is said to be registered within the ashram and it's not clear in my mind anyway it's not clear when that actual movement starts to take place moving into that new path so for instance we're told we're told that the Buddha is on the what is called the path to Sirius the star system series which is around the world has been such a revered system esotericism would say yeah it's a very live it's amazing that Sirius system is incredibly amazing as a superior system we are told you know even ancient Egyptians understood something powerful about Sirius it's Isis in Egyptian mythology and then and the Buddha is on the path to Sirius and interestingly the Buddha is said to give us he returns to visit us once a year for eight minutes at the time of the waste sack full moon in Taurus there's a and there's a whole I don't know if have you ever heard of the way sac festival no do you know about them do a word search on a way sac w e sa k way setting thousands of people around the world I have led many of these we do a whole ritual during the eight minute period that the two that we are given to understand the Buddha erotic comes to the Himalayas and unites with the Christ and a whole ceremony is takes place in the valley and high in the Himalayas called the way sac Valley that eight-minute visitation is a great blessing to humanity and it's four minutes before the exact moment at the moment of the Taurus full moon and forth after and so and how that works I don't know but we're given to understand that the Buddha is on that path and yet for some reason he is able to kind of bless us for eight minutes here it's a lovely lovely experience and a beautiful water ritual that is brought into the into the whole ceremony orgeous interesting well to my way of thinking and feeling and I've said this in practically every interview you know the path of evolution is vast and you know it's much more vast than people generally realize and you know and it's nice to have you flesh it out a lot as you've been doing partly as a sort of a counterpoint to those who say oh I only have to do is realize that you're already enlightened and you're done you know there are people who actually talk that way locked horns with a few of them but um in any case I think this this has been a nice vision of possibilities I mean it pretty expands my horizons and you know reinforces but also just enhances you know the perspective that you know this what is into mango a little bit more Shakespeare this more more on have more in heaven and earth Horatio than is dreamt of in your philosophy yeah I mean it's it's easy to there's a kind of human tendency to sort of wrap it all to want to wrap it all up and tie it with a neat little bow but and to be cocksure of one's one's understanding and an opinion of things but to me it's it's nice to maintain I think Einstein said this that you know maintain an attitude of the mysterious and wonder and you know realizing that there probably is vastly much more going on in this world then then we realize and we're kind of always going to be on the path of fathoming it more and more deeply that's exactly it that's exactly it and and so the more you know the more you realized that how little you know yeah exactly yeah and and that's actually encouraging and inspiring rather than the opposite it makes you humble absolutely absolutely yeah great all righty well thank you William really enjoyed you yeah never did get to my eight pages of notes but it doesn't matter yeah so let me make a few quick little wrap-up points I've been speaking with William meter oh he'll have a page on bath capcom with link a link to his book to his website and so on so you can pursue that if you like and you know find out more about what he's up to there's also a page on that gap over in the resources section or something where it's like this geographical index where if you type in the location where you live or where you're going to be it'll show you activities and talks that teachers in that area are going to be giving and it radiates out geographically so if you type in San Francisco it'll radiate out farther and farther you'll get down to San Jose and Santa Cruz and when you know Los Angeles it just shows you things listed in that way and so it will give Windham information about that and he can enter in his events and in any case thank you for listening or watching next week I'll be speaking with a fellow named Paul Levy who for some reason has a glowing recommendation from the musician sting but is all about quantum physics and consciousness apparently I'm about to crack open his book and start reading it each week is like a like Christmas for me I get to open a new present you know and you've been a delightful present William I've really enjoyed getting to know you and having this conversation with you thank you it's been good to have it really enjoyed it as well thank you very much Rick and I continue to do this work you're doing fabulous work on behalf of humanities betterment and so thank you as are you and thank you for that all right and thanks again to those who've been listening or watching and hope to see you next time [Music]

Channel: BuddhaAtTheGasPump

Views: 43,110

Rating: 4.7029705 out of 5

Keywords: buddha at the gas pump, spiritual development, alice bailey, esoteric philosophy, TM, 'Course in Miracles', 'Alice Bailey', esoterism, soul, ‘causal body’, hylozoism, ‘soul rays’, monad, individuality, ego

Id: AnWW6LWDDLg

Length: 131min 46sec (7906 seconds)

Published: Sun Jul 29 2018