World of Love

 

John Paul Strain, Thought of the Great Spirit

NATIVE Americans showed their gratitude to Mother Nature whenever they hunted food, or took from Her material for clothing or shelter. At those times a simple, symbolic ritual of thanks was performed on the spot.

Animals, rocks, trees, and the Earth itself were all divine spirits.

It was an ethic driven by a spiritual recognition of Oneness, and something of that original spirit  survives in our own culture each year on Thanksgiving week — mixed, of course, with the inevitable commercialism.

(Listen to: Mother’s Song)

For our new cyclic shift, however, we urgently need a global spiritual worldview, based on the heart and soul wisdom of our elders.

And there are many signs that such a new shift— embodied in the work of a growing number of compassionate groups and individuals around the world — is taking shape along the original lines of Theosophical inspiration.

Institute of Noetic Sciences

In the Beginning

Ever the optimist and spiritual prophet, Blavatsky visioned the future as through a seer’s crystal. She knew something the satisfied science and religion in the Victorian Age hardly dared imagine.

A little over a year before her passing, she wrote the following lines in The Tidal Wave — which we found to be a fitting keynote to this week’s article:

“Verily the Spirit in man, so long hidden out of public sight, so carefully concealed and so far exiled from the arena of modern learning, has at last awakened.”

“We hear a sound arising,” she continued. ” Like a clear, definite, far-reaching note of promise, the voice of the great human Soul proclaims, in no longer timid tones, the rise and almost the resurrection of the human Spirit.

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“It is now awakening in the foremost representatives of thought and learning — it speaks in the lowest as in the highest, and stimulates them all to action. The renovated, life-giving Spirit in man is boldly freeing itself…”

Global Spirituality

At a time when women, like children, were expected to be seen and not heard, she traveled alone in forbidden Tibet. She was a spiritual genius and mother of the new age.

There is no doubt that her remarkable synthesis of western occultism and eastern traditions became a foundation for the New Age.

Her understanding and respect for eastern culture and religion, for Buddhism and Hinduism, has had a far reaching impact on the modern world.

Unity of Humanity and Nature

Ervin Laszlo, is a world-class philosopher of science, and the developer of Systems Philosophy–derived from General Systems Theory. He has taught at Yale and Princeton Universities.

The founder of the General Evolution Research group and head of the advisory committee to the United Nations University, he is currently director of the United Nations Institute for Training and Research.

“Nature is an immanent quality of this planet,” writes Laszlo on the World Shift Network website, “it is the intrinsic way Gaia expresses herself.

“Nature is not outside of us. We humans are inside of nature, and nature is inside of us. There is nothing else but nature wherever we look.”

“If we accept that something like spirit and soul resides in us and if it is true that we don’t consist of anything else than nature, then of course something like spirit and soul must reside in the tiniest bit and in the whole of nature too.”

The Great Spirit

Native Americans recognized in their Great Spirit not a anthropomorphic personal god, or separate theological Saviour — but instead an immanent collective wisdom and soul in everything. Like Theosophy, they understood “there is no such thing as either ‘dead’ or ‘blind’ matter, as there is no ‘Blind’ or ‘Unconscious’ Law.”

“Everything in the Universe, throughout all its kingdoms, is conscious,” wrote Blavatsky, “endowed with a consciousness of its own kind and on its own plane of perception.

“We men must remember that because we do not perceive any signs — which we can recognise — of consciousness, say, in stones, we have no right to say that no consciousness exists there.”

The Law Within

There is no place for materialism in the philosophy of Theosophy, Blavatsky wrote, because “occult philosophy never stops at surface appearances” — Recognizing as sacred the interrelationships of life, as did the early Americans. Blavatsky’s Masters affirmed that “Ingratitude is not among our vices.”

So believed the Founding Fathers of the United States. Repulsed by oppressions of King and Church, the Signers of the Declaration of Independence based their faith instead, in the words of Thomas Jefferson, on “the laws of nature and of nature’s God” — the leading idea in its first paragraph.

The Universe is worked and guided from within outwards.

As above so it is below, as in heaven so on earth. And man — the microcosm and miniature copy of the macrocosm — is the living witness to this Universal Law, and to the mode of its action.

Sulak Sivaraksa

Carter Phipps of EnlightenNext magazine asks Sulak Sivaraksa about the future of religion and spirituality. The contribution of Buddhism is seeking the truth, and challenge the suffering caused by “sacred violence.”

Sulak Sivaraksa is a world-renowned Thai Buddhist social activist.

Sulak is the author of Seeds of Peace: A Buddhist Vision for Renewing Society and Global Healing and is the founder of the International Network of Engaged Buddhists and is actively involved in the Buddhism and Social Welfare Project in South and Southeast Asia.

Amma Amritanandamyi Devi

We have written frequently about healing, and many the many forms it takes. In our explorations we examined the Global Consciousness Project, and individual Intention, Hands of Healing, and most recently it was the Eyes that are the windows of the Soul that Braco, in a field of healing energy, awakened in large groups of people.

“Love can exist without form, wrote H. P. Blavatsky, the accredited Mother of the New Age , “but no form can exist without love.”  [see Blessings]

Today, in the gift of Mother Amma’s loving global presence, we come to realize this truth:

Love is indeed the one true healer at the root of all other systems — without it neither good intentions, systems or individuals using them can succeed, or even exist in a spiritually meaningful way.

“Not Two”

Advaita it is such a simple word. It means “not two.” But within this simple conjunction is cradled the entirety of spirituality. It is the reminder that things are not diverse, as they seem, but One. “Man and Nature? Not two,” Kannadi writes:

“Creator and Creation? Not two. Inside and outside? Not two. God and devotee? Not two. Guru and disciple? Not two. Atman and jivatman? Not two. You and I? Not two.”

“It is this philosophy that informs all the service activities of Amma’s Ashram, for as Amma says in almost all Her satsangs: “When you accidentally poke yourself in the eye, do you punish your finger? No, you soothe both the finger and the eye because you know them both to be you.’”

Amma: “The Hugging Saint”

Amma was welcomed by devotees at the San Francisco airport upon her arrival in USA after her European Yatra. At the San Ramon Ashram in California, Amma held regular programs and a retreat, November 16-21, 2009.

“Ammachi”

Even though it is winter and very cold, the weather certainly did not stop people from all over the country to come and see Amma.

Very often people could not even fit inside the hall and had to be relocated in a second hall and some were looking through a window outside to catch a little glimpse of Amma.

Embracing the World

Olara A. Otunnu, former President of the UN Security Council and former Chairman of the UN Human Rights Commission speaks on his impression of Embracing the World’s disaster relief work in India.

“Embracing the World is a not-for-profit international collective of charities founded by renowned spiritual and humanitarian leader, Sri Mata Amritanandamayi Devi (Amma). Embracing the World exists to help alleviate the burden of the world’s poor through helping to meet each of their five basic needs – food, shelter, education, healthcare and livelihood – wherever and whenever possible.”

Read more: Embracing the World

Interview with Olara Otunnu on Amma’s work:

“Earth will be a heaven in the twenty-first century in comparison with what it is now!”

– H. P. Blavatsky’s closing words: The Key to Theosophy

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Quoted in the article: Kandinsky and Theosophy

(Theosophy Forward – Moving into the 21st Century)