are simply different words describing the exact same ‘unified field’, essentially a quantum energy/force interface, no more and certainly no less, relating spirit and matter. Such a systemic or universal interface functions much like any software, connecting individuals (hardware or computer links) via conceptual languages to spiritual or monadic purpose. Similarly, the still rudimentary but inclusively programmed network interface for the world wide web links individuals via their computers not only with information but with each other in a reflected sense of oneness. Words like internet are not in older dictionaries but already endless related terms have been coined, like hypertext, digirati, internauts, interactive-programs, websites, netscapes, virtual-imaging, virtual-reality and, of course, cyber-almost everything. Named by American mathematician Norbert Wiener, the study of cybernetics (from the Greek kubernan: to govern) is the study of ‘control processes’, especially the mathematical analysis of the flow of information where computers are concerned.

TRAINING FOR ABSTRACTION

Alice A. Bailey (who created the Arcane School in 1923) wrote that Djwhal Khul, known by many as a Tibetan Master, had asked that "The sense of synthesis [an attribute of the higher Will] should be the goal of the training given to applicants in the New Age".³ We are already in humanity's next phase of growth in awareness, so developing this sense of synthesis should be our own goal at this point. 

Even the best sequentially-presented esoteric program is a bit of a double-edged sword, however, because on the one hand, a school such as the Arcane School speeds progress and helps unfold timely awareness as the soul (as is intended); but on the other, any sequential presentation acts as a subtle barrier to the timeless experience of the oneness of spiritual or universal Being. The distinctions between timely and timeless are not absolute, of course, they are mostly how or where we 'stand' to look at things.

At any age we can experience this curious dual perspective—two modes of viewing life and events which co-exist comfortably in awareness. Such experience of disparate perspectives stimulates and increases creativity. Understanding and living radically different points of view (such as time/eternity, consciousness/spirit, or meaning/significance) creates an adjusted perspective of hierarchical awareness (awareness of the hierarchical nature of life) which is not essentially a duality.

Liberation from the constraints of Time depends finally on how easily we accept the intimate nature of human intelligence—our inherent, inclusive, mental relationship with those other millions of individualities who etherically constitute the one soul, the true heart center where esotericists are concerned. There are many brains but only one Mind within which we share ‘individualized awareness’. In each of us intelligence tends to be exclusive in human expression, inclusive in hierarchical expression and synthetic in spiritual expression.  The ease with which we transcend our fragmented sense of individual consciousness dictates how effectively we work within the higher or universal mind. To counteract that naturally forceful, opposing sense of exclusivity (which constitutes the personal integrity of the strictly human mind), we practice inclusively living as if we are the soul. But we cannot experience spiritual oneness if, through habit, attachment, devotion, insecurity, or misunderstanding, we cling to aspiration for group, hierarchical or soul consciousness.

THE PROBLEM OF ASPIRATION

Just as skepticism forms a protective veil for the unready lower mind, aspiration provides a similar veil for discipleship consciousness. Aspiration effectively prevents attainment. Operating as a personality (or a personal unit of discipleship consciousness) makes it virtually impossible to accept existing spiritual maturity. So long as we aspire to anything we believe is still spiritually beyond us we stay effectively separated from our goal and we remain children in our faith. Whether seeking soul consciousness, hierarchical affiliation, acceptance by a master in some ashram, greater knowledge, wisdom, or shamballic experience—aspiration is difficult to give up. So rationalization sets in: perhaps we’re unready or don’t know how to proceed; or perhaps we just enjoy the excitement of the chase, our expectations of magical experience, or the never-ending search for arcane knowledge. Too many, however, are delayed by nothing more than rote thinking—sloppy, glorified or misleading spiritual expectations—indicating the most serious need for thinking ‘out of the box’.

Thanks (among other things) to work some years ago by Cern, a European group of scientists and physicists (and others), the world wide web sprang from the original military Internet of the United States Department of Defense. This global web or net makes an interesting working analogy for soul consciousness. If we were to take away the variety of interfacing software responsive to the communications purposes of its creators, all that computer hardware with its rudimentary digital intelligence would be little more than a terribly expensive calculator. As an element of the science of intercommunication based on telepathic sensitivity, perhaps it is of an imminent version of this budding global web that Alice Bailey might have spoken when she commented, 

"We are now one people. The heritage of any race lies open to another; the best thought of the centuries is available for all; and ancient techniques and modern methods must meet and interchange. Each will have to modify its mode of presentation (Eastern and Western) and each will have to make an effort to understand the underlying spirit which has produced a peculiar phraseology and imagery, but when these concessions are made, a structure of truth will be found to emerge which will embody the spirit of the New Age".⁴

In America, 1995 was the year internet became widely accepted and suddenly everyone wanted to be online and more closely connected by teleconferencing, cellular phones, beepers, network faxes and e-mail. PC’s (personal computers with software) transformed human life and soon NC’s (network computers without software) will transform the lives of families everywhere by putting all school children online. This will be a major financial goal for families in the next few years. From http:// (the Hypertext Transfer Protocol) we can reach from www.oneworld.org/ to museums in France, Japan or Egypt, from www.nytimes.com to local traffic updates, from universities to libraries, from bulletin boards to chat room interest groups, from cyber-cafes to global conferences anywhere in the world, people are learning, growing, and yes, finally, communicating with each other.

Like an old-time gold rush, all kinds of people are staking claims to popular attention by increasingly clever, sophisticated or entertaining home pages. Overuse, misuse and ugly cyber show-downs are inevitable as information is digitized and access becomes cheaper, for in five or six years everything will be online and there will be computers at every corner.

As with any new frontier whether cyberspace (or space itself) law and order inevitably follow. For some years now, online ethics and cyber laws have been publicly debated covering access and privacy issues from the initially inevitable cyber-smut to copyrighting digitized DNA patterns of medically useful animals which can pass on engineered human genes to their offspring. One hotly contested issue, for example, is whether medically useful human DNA patterns should remain the heritage of humanity as a whole or should be temporarily patented in order to motivate or stimulate critical private research. Francis Bacon first coined the phrase but global entrepreneurs quickly are learning that ‘knowledge is power’ far more valuable than land or goods. For a while, humanity may need protecting from itself.

It is possible that the precipitation of information triggered by this emerging/merging communications web was an early direct result of increased contact between human consciousness and the force of shamballic wholeness (stimulated by greater awareness of our planetary oneness) said to have occurred in year 2000. The new age, or new Information Age as it has come to be known, officially began online but esotericists need to grasp that as magical or spiritual as this developing web appears, this budding phenomenon is still only a ‘form’ produced by the creative lower mind. In contemplating this symbolic mechanism for revelation of oneness, recall that we ourselves have always had access to both information and to each other within a vast ascending hierarchy of abstraction. Because "it is now the privilege of the race to contact that ‘raincloud of knowable things’ to which the ancient seer Patanjali refers in his fourth book...",⁵ with a Möbius twist of time, let’s consider the possibility of energy effects in a less sequential form than usual.

Not all of us were in incarnation when what Alice A. Bailey called 'the first direct shamballic touch on human consciousness' in 1945 resulted in that dual explosion: the atomic bomb, and impetus for a United Nations. For this century, according to the Tibetan, the second of three direct impacts of Shamballa force on the dimensionally-challenged lower mind was in 1975 and the last impulse came in 2000. Each touch created less upheaval as humanity became accustomed to its expanding relationships. Although our logical, information-oriented mind cannot transcend itself, the physical effects of holistic, spiritual, shamballic energy appear to reverberate both forward and backward in time (affecting both our past and future), a phenomenon mathematically demonstrable in physics using a vibrating rubber band. Much like "the whisper which disturbs the waters of His Spatial life",⁶ it penetrates. Imagine a pebble of timelessness dropped into a pool of time at a specific spot—the ripple effect spreads in all directions, equally affecting past and future.

Such a past/future ripple in time (like a whisper in space) may also be noted as an intuitive perception/response to an event before its time, all advantages of the one mind. It doesn’t much matter how we prefer to look at it, our shared sense of destiny brings us now to this time, this place. Borrowing the symbol of the even-armed cross (the measure for the vertical life of the spirit and the horizontal life of relationship), we see ourselves vertically encompassing a timeless sense of the now and horizontally participating in humanity’s increasingly flexible sense of future and past. As shamballic force impresses mass consciousness in the year 2000, circumstances, systems, companies, ideas and people already will be in place to house the vision and help humanity prepare for enhanced comprehension as to the interrelated nature of the Life surrounding them: subhuman, human, and superhuman. Humanity is in for some interesting surprises.

Consider the effects of the shamballic contact of 1975. By early 1970, a rag-tag but cohesive world culture demonstrating ‘free love, peace-not-war and active mind expansion’ had emerged, shifting public focus from nationalism (patriotism) to a freer, planetary awareness. Inclusive ideas, differing points of view and new rhythms eclipsed stale attitudes, promoting better relations between people, companies, institutions, social classes, races, cultures and nations—all in the direction of closer global communications. An expression popular in those days was What shall we do about the Establishment? Nothing, in twenty years we’ll BE it.  And of course that came to be.  The sense of synthesis which we currently associate with the planetary perspective was stimulated in every area of public interest and business and peaking in 1975, the year of public contact, this particular intensification of perceived inclusiveness had played out entirely by 1980 where the general public was concerned. One remarkable decade, and we live and work in a world largely altered by a deeper awareness of each other and of our planet.

It’s happening again today and the span of planetary influence is 1995/2000/2005. This time, Oneness has/is/will impact the fertile lower human mind further revealing the collective nature of mind or our collective relationship or soul. Although this awareness has always been the privilege of the few, today the mass of Humanity will begin to see itself in a new light, in a planetary context. As time ceases to be a factor in planetary communications a growing sense of omnipresence (along with some cyberform of information recall or technological omniscience) will begin, unnoticed, to prevail. As we all know, greater Light always reveals new depths of dualism within the human mind. Like-minded people will be drawn to national, even global, online interest groups in support of every extremist ideal, good, bad, or merely distasteful. Increased potential for conflict will stimulate indignation and outrage, along with corruption, injustice, and even more glaring stupidity.

SEEING BETTER IN BRIGHTER LIGHT

Any increase in light first affects the young and already we are seeing signs of more racial antagonism, skinhead activity, urban gangs, domestic terrorism, and a general increase in violence. All of this signals increasing light in human thinking. And as bad as it is today in America, for example, the rate of serious crime by people 17 or younger is expected to double in ten years. We need to be more creative with our solutions to human problems, perhaps by understanding that 

"…just as the embryo in the womb recapitulates the various stages of animal unfoldment, so the human being, during the years of infancy, adolescence and youth up to the age of 35, recapitulates the various racial stages of consciousness. At 35 years old he should then affirm in himself the stage of the intelligent disciple. Much will be gained by a recognition of this recapitulatory process which—in the New Age which is upon us—will do much to control and to determine the processes of unfoldment to which the child and youth will be subjected by the wise educator".⁷

It’s time to get on board, no more doubts, no equivocation. If we are to take an active role in setting the tone for a better future, we need to understand in definite, clear, absolute terms the distinctions between soul and spirit, between meaning and significance. It’s time to register exactly ‘where’ we stand to view the life around us. How many of us today, having studied, meditated and served for years, linger patiently on the fringe of the most exciting, creative period of usefulness in human history, still using as if techniques, visualizing half-finished bridges and waiting. What are we waiting for? Are we indulging in feelings of unworthiness or unreadiness? Or are we unknowingly held back by inaccurate mystical notions about heart and soul, or flashy occult expectations about masters and initiations?

"The effect of an increasing soul contact has not simply been to dispel the mists of glamour, but it has also served to consolidate and to bring into effective use, the imagination with its overwhelmingly powerful creative faculty. This creative energy, when implemented by an illumined mind (with its thoughtform making ability), is then wielded by the disciple in order to make contacts higher than with the soul [italics mine, rl], and to bring into symbolic form that of which he becomes aware through the medium of a line of energy—the antahkarana—which he is steadily and scientifically creating. [‘Within the body of the planetary Logos humanity is slowly building that which they call the antahkarana; this is, in reality, the linking thread between the head center of Sanat Kumara and His heart center’.⁸  

Recall that Sanat Kumara is regarded by esotericists as the personality of our planetary Logos.  The spiritual Hierarchy (the spirit of enlightened relationship) of the planet is our planetary Heart Center, and Shamballa is the planetary Spirit.  And remember also, where the esotericist is concerned, the soul itself is the true heart center of any human being.]

"It might be said (equally symbolically) that at each initiation he tests the connecting bridge and discovers gradually the soundness of that which he has created under the inspiration of the Spiritual Triad and with the aid of the three aspects of his mind (the abstract mind, the soul or the Son of Mind, and the lower concrete mind), combined with the intelligent cooperation of his soul-infused personality. In the early stages of his invocative work, the instrument used is the creative imagination. This enables him at the very beginning to act as if he were capable of thus creating; then, when the as if imaginative consciousness is no longer useful, he becomes consciously aware of that which he has—with hope and spiritual expectancy—sought to create...".⁹

Further spiritual progress is unlikely unless we grasp in vivid, graphic terms that the qualities we equate with Life are confined exclusively to that interim, interfacing realm of Consciousness. Imaginatively relegate to Consciousness all color, heat, development, relationship, growth, aspiration, longing and progress, all sense of time, all sense of movement, and all that Alice Bailey calls ‘the world of Meaning’. What remains is spirit, life, synthesis, as we discover the eternal, timeless ‘world of Significance’. Form is not a spiritual principle, not even ‘spiritual’ forms such as soul or hierarchy.

All those infinite and wonderful forms of Quality which makes life worth living remain confined to finite realms where time and meaning hold sway. As One, we can step beyond consciousness to where Life IS.  At this point theory alone is insufficient for only experience of oneness catalyzes illumination or being. Fortunately for us all, this influence is increasing within humanity. 

The good news is that this mostly semiconscious abstract or monadic experience results in that disparate perspective which dynamically cultivates creativity. Today, we need greater mental registration not of relationship but of oneness.

GROWING UP FASTER

Earth’s future depends on the spiritual maturity of all of us, including those still struggling with the nature of consciousness and meaning, whether in incarnation or not. Our immediate effort is to work not merely as a group (based on relationship) but as One—not by unity (which is the old way) but through accepted synthesis. 

This group will be "...exterior in its activity and yet consciously alive to the interior values; they should be able to function upon the outer plane of appearances and at the same time be equally awake and active upon the inner plane of reality and of spiritual living".¹⁰  

In due course, we all achieve enlightenment whether we work at it or not for we exist within the monadic will of the one mind. It is crucial that we coolly appraise our spiritual assumptions, those things we ‘believe’, and consider what we can do to inspire ourselves to work as One.

"There is a magnificent truth about ourselves which can be discovered. Something about it can be shared, under appropriate circumstances. When an individual makes the discovery, it can change a life. When a growing network of people share the discovery, it can change history".¹¹