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Vitvan - An American Master
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Vitvan: An American Master 

by Richard Satriano 

To Anita 

who held the Field and knows that 

"...by grace are ye save through 

faith...it is a gift of God." 

It is not my intention to be Vitvan's biographer. He himself dismissed all such proposals. "My life is in my work," he declared. "Know my work and you know me." He was right, of course. The man is plainly visible in his work. His character and the profundity of his insight are demonstrated on every page. 

But my own deep sense of gratitude to the man and his accomplishments insists I write this slender volume. It is a prologue, only, to that greater biography that a grateful world will one day write. 

Richard Satriano 

May 31, 1975 

FORWARD 

This book by Richard Satriano presents a sincere and vivid picture of a really genuine Gnostic teacher who has lectured all over this country and written extensively. Paradoxically, Vitvan is little known to the vast mass of contemporary occult readers. Many factors are probably responsible for this anomalous situation. First, some of his writings were privately published. Generally speaking, this does not assure them of an immediate wide distribution. It takes many years for them to percolate down to the general public. 

Another factor, perhaps more significant, is that he was firm disciplinarian in spiritual and psychological matters. This would not endear him to those he customarily referred to as "meta-fizzlers." One of the most outstanding of his achievements was the coupling of general semantics with the age-old Gnosis. Few other teachers have attempted this--see some of the letters, for example, in Magick Without Tears by Aleister Crowley, or Insights for the Age of Aquarius by Gina Cerminara--but not one of them has been half as successful in this as has Vitvan. It may well be that 

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this alone will gain him and his teaching about the Light-energy world we live in true immortality. 

"Few mystics or occult teachers have taken general semantics to their bosoms. Most of them, I fancy, know nothing about the subject. A few hold it in disdain, perhaps out of fear. With considerable pleasure, I urge every student to read The Problem of Good and Evil or The Christos by Vitvan (School of the Natural Order, Baker, Nevada). Both of these books attempts to correlate the ancient wisdom both of the East and the West with the techniques of Count Korzybski who developed general semantics. Reading this literature should considerably broaden the mental and spiritual horizons of the sincere and serious student. It will also help him keep a level head where the occult jungle is concerned, so that he will not fall prey to the vast mass of fantasy and hysteria which has sadly infiltrated this field." 

The above paragraph was originally written several years ago. It was included in an introduction to a new edition of an old book of mine. What was written then still strikes me as being valid today--even more so, when the whole field of occultism and mysticism, and all that may be included in these terms, is expanding beyond belief. 

I have known of the writing of Vitvan for at least a score of years. Those who first introduced me to his work gave me tantalizing little tidbits of personal data which assuredly did help in making 

X 

him come alive as a human being. This excellent introduction by Richard Satriano is most illuminating and informative where the fundamental biographical events of his life are concerned. Many of the facts described herein I was not familiar with at all. To mention one example: I experienced a great sense of pleasure in discovering a few details of his relationship with Mozumdar, his teacher. There are references here and there in Vitvan's writings about this teacher, but nothing quite so explicit and detailed as those written about by Satriano. 

All in all, this slender volume by Satriano should prove invaluable in introducing the general reader to Vitvan. It is a well-written, thought-provoking and inspiring little book, presenting a warm and at times a profoundly moving appreciation of a great Teacher. The author has drawn heavily on Vitvan's own words. Satriano hopes thus we will the better appreciate Vitvan's spiritual experiences from which he abstracted his present-day Gnosis. It is most reminiscent of what Mme. Blavatsky wrote decades ago in The Secret Doctrine that the latter is "the accumulated Wisdom of the Ages... It is useless to say that the system in question is no fancy of one or several isolated individuals. That it is the uninterrupted record covering thousands of generations of Seers whose respective experiences were made to test and verify the traditions passed orally by one early race to another ... No vision of one adept was accepted till it was checked and 

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confirmed by the visions--so obtained as to stand as independent evidence--of other adepts, and by centuries of experiences." 

Vitvan went through the same processes, and checked and verified all the ancient findings. His modern presentation of the ancient teaching, however, is couched in the language of the 20th century--the century when the sciences triumphed to make fantastic excursions into space. The "inner space" which they have neglected became his special province. And all that he wrote and taught over the long years was in elaboration of this, the structure-function-order of the Eternal Wisdom. 

Many years ago I used the phrase, "the days of the giants are over." Indeed they are. Vitvan was one of those remarkable giant-men who appear so rarely in world history and of whom there are so few that they become in due course of time milestones along the trail of our evolutionary struggles. Credit is due to Richard Satriano in Vitvan: An American Master to have so clearly depicted and painted a full-size picture of what a giant thought and felt and did. No one previously has quite accomplished what Vitvan did. Most teachers have been partitive: expounding this or that phase of the ancient wisdom. Vitvan attempted to present an over-all view of the Gnosis couched in current scientific and philosophical language. He makes demands on his readers. His work does not permit a cursory overview from cover to cover. 

XII 

He stands relatively alone. He was a gigantic figure in a desert inhabited only be a mere handful of human Joshua trees whose arms are uplifted to the Infinite and Eternal. 

Israel Regardie 

Studio City, California 

27 September 1976 

XIII 

PREFACE 

White Pine County borders 8,904 square miles in the North, Northeast corner of Nevada. The population is 1.5 persons per square mile. At the southern-most tip of the county, near the boundary between Nevada and Utah, is the township of Baker: population 43. 

Six miles west of Baker is a quiet, isolated farm, distinguished only be a weathered sign hanging at the gate: 

Home Farm 

School of the Natural Order 

Past the farmhouse and beyond the scrubby orchard a rough trail intercepts the road and climbs a sagebrush hill. On the further side of a barren knoll, out of sight of the farm, the trail ends at a small private cemetery. No grass grows here. Only the natural foliage of cactus and sagebrush. The cemetery is chain fenced against marauding wolves and coyotes. The hills slope down to the Snake Valley below. Above, Mounts Wheeler and Moriah silhouette the sky. 

XV 

In this quiet earth a partial few reside. They lie companion to one whose marker reads: 

VITVAN 

RALPH MORIARITY deBIT 

December 25th 1883 -- June 29th 1964 

Unnoted as a setting star he passed 

And sect and party scarcely knew 

When from their midst a sage and seer withdrew 

To fitter audience where the great live on 

In God's republic of the heart and mind. 

Who was this Man? 

In the dissolving pattern of this age it is the burden of our time to endure on all sides a plethora of Mahatmas, Maharijis, Swamis, Gurus, holy men and mendicants. They are either little men of cloistered minds and mystic moods, bewildered by their own conceit, or, more despicable, callous and calculating hucksters, offering truths two for a half-crown. But in either case they prey upon a perennial crop of groping faddists and earnest truth seekers alike, enriching themselves and detrimentally affecting all. 

With Masters on every street corner and enlightenment available at your choice of financing, is it any surprise that men of sober mind ask, "Is 

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there some obtainable 'Truth' that lies beyond the commonplace?" A separate reality, ultimately discoverable by finite mind, that can shape the course of consciousness and alter our perception of the universe and man's place in it? Or is the pursuit of wisdom and the attendant cognition so convincingly promised merely a cruel ruse devised to ease life's burden and absolve the pain of personal frustration and nothing more? The answer is--Truth does exist. But it is not what men take it to be; nor is it so easily obtainable. 

Most petitioners after Truth prefer that the doctrines of salvation be preached in an agreeable manner consistent with their own conceptions and satisfying to their personal inclinations. And above all, it must be accessible after a brief period of contemplation before breakfast and at bedtime. 

Strangely enough, the meticulous and rigorous disciplines recorded by spiritual aspirants in all periods of history remain for the most part ignored. 

The Zen proposition... 

"Tao has nothing to do with discipline. If you 

say that it is attained by discipline, when you 

finish the discipline you lose the Tao. To say 

there is no discipline is to be the same as 

ordinary people." 

...has become a kind of battle cry of indolence. 

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The error is a matter of focus. The first premise becomes the single object of attention. The second component of the proposition, which is what it is really all about, is totally ignored. 

And so it goes. As God-seeking reaches the proportions of a national pastime, all barriers come tumbling down. We are exhorted to eliminate the obstacles to our attainment; particularly the idea that wisdom and insight are not immediately within arm's reach. 

We are cautioned against "the distance of excessive reverence" and consequently we are moved to the presumption of embarrassing familiarity. 

"Be still and know that I am God" is interpreted by shallow and boisterous minds to mean, "Close your eyes and call Me at any of the following numbers: "Om mani pade Om,' 'Om tat sat Om,' 'Nam-myoho-renge-kyo,' or 'Hare Krishna, Hare Krishna, Hare, Hare, Hare Krishna.'" 

Can any reasonable intelligence accept such superficiality as the mandate for wisdom? The idea is preposterous. Only those equipped for acute perception will penetrate below the surface of the world of physical phenomena and grasp the forces at work there. They alone will dispel the bewildering complexities that lie in effect to cause; pierce the objective self-conscious state and view reality on its primal ground. 

To follow such a path demands more than 

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mantram and trance. Two prerequisites are mandatory: a thorough foundation in the precepts of the Cosmic Idea and a methodology to effect a conscious participation in it. 

Neither requirement is an end in itself. The practitioner must be heedful lest the way become the obstacle. An intellectual comprehension of the cosmology alone, without active participation in the systematic practices, is the road map without the journey--useful only as a way to collect preaching material. The practice of one phase or another of the methodology without a comprehensive understanding of the structure, function, order of the cosmic process is activity without direction: a curious procedure designed to capture the ineffable by performing the mundane. 

It is time that we understood. 

We stand in the shadows of a pre-dawn. The Piscean Age is in the descendency of eclipse. We are emerging into the first light of a New Day. The Age of Aquarius. In the evolutionary mechanism of man's on-going process it is possible now, as at no previous time, that those spiritual heights, historically the gift of a special few, are within reach of the vast majority of mankind. 

The new Cycle is upon us. There is a quickening in the race psyche of mankind. We are awakening to a new force in the content of our consciousness. The helical sweep of the evolutionary process is beginning a new round. It requires as 

XIX 

representation a reformation of the Wisdom Teachings (Gnosis)--a new presentation and a new methodology for individual development. Mind perception in symbolic form--metaphysics, meditation and mantra--fail utterly as a means of knowing without a clear understanding of the formulative forces functioning within us and a practical system for consciously redirecting them. 

But to whom or to what do we look for this knowledge? How do we make our way from the small private world of our personal spiritual inclinations to that greater common world of Light? The truth is, we are never without the grace and guidance of the "Watchers on the Heights"--those elder brothers who serve the Archetypal Gods and stand in man's behalf. They are with us now as they have always been--truly illumined ones who walk among us and teach the Ancient Gnosis, share their wisdom and direct the destiny of man. They are here, can we but recognize them and take the measure of their worth. 

But if we are to differentiate between these real ones and false prophets, we must learn the first discipline of spiritual pursuit: discrimination. Intellectual keenness is the key to philosophical discernment. To thread the hapless maze of false ideas and conjured vagaries and emerge unscathed demands more than emotional response. Fleeting moments of euphoria and mystical flights of fancy offer at best temporary respite from travail. But reality lies 

XX 

along a different path. 

If one can dismiss half-philosophies and pseudo-philosophy, then the way is open for true philosophy. Here one begins the search on his own basic level, taking nothing for granted, making no assumptions and accepting no dogmas. He proceeds solely by the use of reason--the acutest and sharpest reasoning ever practiced by man. The aspirant must apply himself to understanding the palingenetic process into which he is inextricably woven. He must pursue and encourage that dynamic urge within himself to become conscious of the very power with which he is conscious. He must rediscover those age-old methods that enable one to control and direct the underlying causative forces of his being, that he may order their integration to his own higher purpose. And at every turn he must subject his progress to the scrutiny of a discerning mind, weighing his discoveries to determine the real from the counterfeit, the experienced from the imagined. 

Sri Ramakrishna, Bengal's much-revered yogi saint of a century ago, exhorted his devotees: "Test, test, test. Accept nothing from me that will not bear your testing." Vivekananda, Aurobindo Ghose, Walter Russell, Keyserling and Krishnamurti, among others, have echoed the same insistence. The genuine teacher has no reluctance to submitting either his life or his words to careful examination. He knows that nothing issuing from 

XXI 

him is of him. He is not Light's source but its conduit. He has not invented truth, simply rediscovered it. His obligation is to serve the emerging awareness of mankind. He is not concerned about refutation. His message is beyond time and vicissitude. 

Ralph M. deBit was one such teacher. The outpouring of his spiritual genius spanned nearly five decades. The productivity of his life was prodigious. He taught and wrote for 47 years. When he died in 1964 he left his legacy to the "Dawn of a New Day" one of the most comprehensive philosophical integrations of the Wisdom Teachings ever to be bestowed upon mankind. From his highly perceptive consciousness he channeled forth an extraordinary curriculum. The range and definitiveness of his work is an astonishing restatement, in contemporary terms, of the perennial tradition of the Inner Order, a presentation complete in its description; not the usual guarded and token offering, but a full statement of that ancient knowledge. The measure and merit of his work will, one day soon, be recognized in company with the great philosophical works of this or any Age. 

The significance of his achievement is immeasurable. And yet this man was scarcely known in his lifetime. Only now, ten years after his death, is his work finally emerging to take its place along the literature of Truth. 

Who, indeed, was this man? 

XXII 

CHAPTER ONE 

Ralph Moriarity deBit, the man who would be called Vitvan, was born in a second story bedroom at his parents' home in Council Grove, Kansas, on Christmas morning, 1883. He was the third child and the second son born to Katie and William Ralph deBit. In the next four years he would be followed by two sisters. 

William deBit was descended from the French Huguenots. The first deBits to leave France left Paris in 1770. They migrated to Normandy and from there to America in 1804. Ralph's mother was the former Katherine Moriarity. Her parents had immigrated from Northern Ireland in the early 1800's. Kate was born in Kansas in 1860. 

William worked for the Union Pacific Railroad. Kate was housewife and mother. The family was devout Methodist. The Bible was a family text; the children were schooled in it nightly. DeBit would proudly say throughout his life, "I learned the Bible at my mother's knee." His devotion to the Good Book never left him. 

He said that he often played preacher for his brother and sisters and would extemporize lengthy 

1 

sermons, replete with Bible readings. His audience would remain attentive until the novelty of his performance wore off. So on occasion it was necessary to exercise a more rigid control by sitting on at least one member of the small congregation to assure a finished recitation. 

He was an energetic and active boy. He was skillful with tools, a competent carpenter and builder. He was fascinated by growing things and kept the summer garden. He was a crack shot and a good rider, but there was a meditative side to him. He spent long hours in solitary wanderings around the countryside. 

He said later, "I used to wander a great deal when I was a boy, talking to God. I presumed a close, first-name relationship with the Deity and I used every opportunity to talk openly with Him, sharing the thoughts that were important to me at the time, and commenting on the state of creation--pro and con--as I interpreted it." 

Church was an important family function and young Ralph enjoyed participation. However, in his twelfth year he precipitated a family crisis by announcing that he wished to be baptized in the Baptist Church "over across the tracks." He met with firm resistance from the family, particularly his mother. Eventually the difficulty was resolved and he was baptized at the Galilee Baptist Church of Council Grove, Kansas, in 1896. 

He recalled of the matter later, "I felt that 

2 

the ritual of baptism was of primary importance to a good Christian. I concluded that no one performed the rite quite as conscientiously as the Baptists--they didn't just sprinkle you, they totally immersed you, and that was for me. I emoted a great deal and stubbornly insisted on having my own way. It created quite a fuss but my father finally convinced Mother that even Baptists go to heaven. The deed was done, but Mother was ever afterwards uncertain about my standing in God's eyes." 

Following the baptism Ralph was certain that the results of the ceremony and his basic knowledge of the Bible now entitled him to teach a regular Sunday school class. He approached the church fathers requesting that he be assigned to teach Sunday school. They moved against the application on the grounds of his twelve years and the fact that there was no room available at the church for an additional class. The following Sunday Ralph gathered his brother and sisters and eight neighbor children together in the barn and began his own class. 

It is said that two carriages filled with church deacons and elders descended on him posthaste and demanded that he discontinue the sacrilege of preaching God's word in a barn. The young man countered that he saw precedence in the Savior's birthplace and that he would continue to hold his classes until more appropriate quarters 

3 

were provided him. In a month an additional room was built on the church and Ralph began to teach under proper guidance. 

4 

CHAPTER TWO 

When deBit was 18 his father died from blood poisoning. The two elder children were married now and Ralph felt it was his responsibility to care for his mother and two younger sisters. Good jobs were scarce in Council Grove but he had read that in the booming lumber camps of the Northwest work was plentiful. Besides, it was said that the National Forest Service was recruiting men to serve as Forest Rangers in the great timber reserves of Idaho and Montana. He reasoned that if he could apply at the Services Training School in Bayview, Idaho, he might have a good chance of being taken on. In the meantime he would work in the lumber camps, learn the territory, and if he were rejected he could still earn a livelihood. He proposed that his mother sell their home and move to Spokane. Bayview was close to the Washington state line, only a short distance from Spokane. 

His mother agreed, and with a few dollars in his pocket and a pack on his back, Ralph left home in April of 1901. His mother and sisters would follow by train a year later. Walking and riding the rails, it took young deBit several months to arrive 

5 

at his destination. 

He found a job in a lumber camp near Wallace, Idaho, and at the first opportunity made the trip to Bayview and applied to the Forestry Training School. He was to wait nearly two years for his appointment, during which time he established himself as an honest, hard-working young man of sound principle and able to accept authority in the presence of men much older than himself. 

Eventually he started his own business, cutting and stripping fence posts to sell to the homesteaders in the area. 

He was accepted for training at Bayview in 1904. During his stay there he met a pretty young girl named Jessica Maybelle Needum. Upon graduation he was assigned to establish a Ranger's cabin in Avery, Idaho. He asked Jessica to come with him as his wife.1 

They were married in the late summer of 1905 at Bayview, going to Avery at once. Ralph build their cabin before the first snow fell. In the next four years he fathered three children and lost the eldest to diphtheria. 

The territory he had been assigned covered 40 square miles in the Bitter Roots Mountains. The 

___________________ 

1. Vitvan would marry again and have two families: two 

surviving children by Jessica and two children by Isona 

Brown deBit. His marriage to the beloved Connia Lowe 

deBit in 1930 lasted until her death Thanksgiving Day, 

1963. 

6 

near-impossible task of patrolling the vast area necessitated being on the trail, riding horseback, for three and four weeks at a time, with only a week or so at home between trips. 

It was a full and adventurous life, and his responsibilities were numerous. Besides maintaining vigilance over the vast land tract under his jurisdiction he was expected to organize and direct search parties for men lost in the wilderness, transport injured lumbermen and miners to the rail head and protect and conserve wild life in the area. Secondarily, he served as Sheriff for the many shack-towns that ringed the lumber camps. 

During the dry season, when fire was a constant threat, deBit had to spend weeks at a fire lookout two days and one night's ride from the cabin at Avery. He would make the trip with his horse and one pack mule loaded with food and supplies for a week. Four days later Jessica, with the children, would ride out with a similarly-laden mule and follow his trail. There was a prearranged spot two days out where her trail dust was visible from the tower. She would camp there and he would ride down to meet her. The young lovers would spend a night under the stars, then deBit would back-track with the new supplies and Jessica would return to Avery. They would continue their exchange until the rains came and he could return home. 

On several occasions deBit had to deal with 

7 

illegal timber strippers. He commented: 

"I had a protective belligerence about the forest. I was so much among the trees and growing things that I felt a strong kinship with them. There were several incidents with lumbermen who did not share my views and, besides, flagrantly broke the law to line their own pockets. My exceptional ability with a revolver and rifle helped to discourage these practices. However, I don't recall any lasting injuries to any of the parties involved." 

In August of 1910 a calamitous forest fire swept the timber reserves of Northwest Idaho and Montana. A dramatic account of the fire is given in the December 10th issue of Everybody's Magazine under the title, "A World Afire--Heroes of the Burning Northwestern Forests." There is an accompanying photograph of a stern young man in ranger garb with a revolver strapped to his waist. The caption reads, "Many fire fighters, miners and settlers are alive today through the prompt action of R. M. deBit, who had charge of 800 men." 

Further in the article the story continues, "Ranger R. M. deBit, in charge of the forestry station at Avery, Idaho, sent messengers into the threatened territory before the fire broke, ordering everybody out. Those in his district who heeded the warning were saved, reaching the railroad in time to be taken on board the relief trains. One gang of fire fighters on the north fork of the St. Joe River ignored deBit's order to get out and most 

8 

of the men were lost. It was at the request of deBit, also, that the Chicago, Milwaukee and Puget Sound Railway ran special trains from Avery to St. Joe, carrying out the inhabitants and picking up refugees along the line. But for those relief trains hundreds must have perished along the St. Joe River." 

DeBit wrote, "Never had I seen such force and power as that calamitous fire. The incinerating heat waves that were generated in the vortex of the flames would often lash out in an inexplicable fashion. Many times I saw men a hundred yards further from the fire than I stood turned to ash by these capricious tongues of cremating heat. 

"Many fire fighters returned to their homes to find their entire families wiped out. Thankfully, my wife and children were my first thoughts and I was near enough to provide for their safety. I gathered them up, together with the old lady who was the local postmistress, and loaded them into a boxcar that was parked on a rail siding. I coupled it to a handcar and pushed down the track two miles to a tunnel that was no longer in use. I parked the boxcar midway in the tunnel and told them all to remain until someone came for them. I kissed them goodbye and left to fight the fire. 

"They had to remain in the tunnel six days. Many times the smoke threatened to overcome them, but they survived. They would have had little chance outside. In that particular area only 

9 

one out of every hundred lived through the fire." 

In December following the fire deBit applied for a leave of absence and took his family to Spokane to visit his mother and sisters. He never returned to the Bitter Roots. 

10 

11 

CHAPTER THREE 

Those are the brief facts of deBit's early years in Kansas and Idaho. But there was a concurrent story. The impulse that had directed him to the forests of Idaho was of deeper significance than appeared on the surface. He was being moved by forces of which he was only partially aware. 

"It seemed," he recalled, "that my footsteps were guided to this place--to the aloneness of the trail, to the close rapport with nature, to all that transpired in my days. But to what end I did not know." 

For extended weeks he lived alone in the deep forests. Besides the horse he rode, his only companion on the trail was the Bible he carried. He read it diligently and pored over its content but he found no answers for the vague questions that stirred him. 

"I was certain that the something that I sought to know," he wrote, "that indeed my very soul demanded I know, was recorded here in this work. But I could not read it out; I could only feel its presence." 

13 

One day this man would decipher the truths hidden in the allegories of Scripture. But for the present his fundamentalist background dictated that he rest his faith in the revealed Word as written. 

In those years, as he merged imperceptibly to attunement with his natural surroundings, subtle change began to take place within the man. 

"It seemed that a kind of remembering from a past beyond recall was integrating into my conscious mind. I could find no reference to anything I had previously known or read for the knowledge I was thus obtaining." 

As the recapitulation of his former evolvement was being summoned from the depth of his unconscious, he was ever extending his awareness toward Mind level perception. In speaking of one such incident he says: 

"I had some difficulties along the trail that day that I knew would slow me down considerably on my appointed schedule. That night at campsite I was gazing into the fire and mulling in my mind how long it would now take me to complete my swing. Time and distance were my considerations. Without intending to do so I seemed to focus on the concept of time. 

"Suddenly I was no longer at fireside. I was standing bodiless at a juncture where all past and all future merged into an eternal Now. I was made cognizant of the mechanism within the conscious- 

14 

ness of man that spatially positions and sequentially orders all images and events received by the senses--thus determining the concept of time and space. But in the dimension I was experiencing, time had vanished into eternity. Eternity, though, was not endless time. It was the absence of time. The Biblical phrase came to mind, 'Time, time shall be no more.' 

"Then I was back again, seated on the ground, staring at the campfire." 

One can but marvel at the man's Yankee heritage of imperturbable self-confidence. He was undergoing an awesome orientation to new levels of perception and awareness. He had no teacher, nor even any reliable books to explain his experiences. His background provided no references. The sweeping changes in his psychological functioning might well have caused a lesser man to doubt their sanity. But his stubborn practicality allowed him to accept all such phenomena as natural and providential to his development. 

"I believed," he said, "that God alone was my mentor. When I could not understand the nature of things experienced, I prayed in simple faith: 'The Lord is my shepherd...'" 

He often experimented with the extensional faculties he was newly discovering. One such instance is described in his superb work The Christos: 

"On the trails in the evening I would oft- 

15 

times select a young evergreen or other tree and sit down a short distance from it. I would withhold thoughts from forming a concept--that is, thing, object, green, tree, etc.--and I would also restrain thoughts from wandering off into other remembrances. After a few months of this practice, flickers of what looked like flame began to appear here and there, in and out of the tree. As time passed, with more opportunities to practice, these flickers of flame became more steady, until they enveloped the whole tree. As this envelopment proceeded, I lost the ability to see an object--that is, what we call a tree--and I knew with intuitive certainty that I was seeing the real. I learned in time to transfer this seeing at will from the objective level to the real in regard to any 'thing' or 'object.' I could only assume that for reasons unknown to myself I was able to function in two worlds. I accepted the fact with gratitude." 

Then, as footnote to the straying power of his self-certainty, he adds, "Not until years later did I realize I was able to see the One world in two distinct ways: as it appears in Light's structure and as it is crystallized into pictures of things and objects that we see and experience. This is the phenomenal world having no existence outside of our own mental formulation." 

This occurrence of seeing the archetypal structures of objects--i.e., the dynamic energy pat- 

16 

terns of Light that describe objective reality and from which we perceive our phenomenal world--has been witnessed by seer and initiate alike, from Moses and the burning bush to Carlos Castaneda and his experience of 'stopping the world' and 'seeing.'2 The faculty to perceive on this level is a natural development in self-unfoldment. But the how's and why's of it are seldom explained by the authors who write accounts of it. One will find, however, a detailed description of the phenomena and a precise methodology to attain it in Vitvan's The Christos. 

And years later, when he spoke of the great fire that was to be the prelude to his leaving the Northwest, deBit further attested to paranormal faculties awakening in himself: 

"I left home before sunrise. I saddled my horse and rode north along the trail I had set as my regular route. When I reached the first rise I looked across to the far range and saw that the horizon was ablaze. I watched in horror, my mind trying to work out the direction of the fire and what lay in its path. Then I turned and rode back to the Forestry Station as quickly as possible. 

"When I arrived I sent all available riders out to the threatened territories. I made a call for help to the railhead and then saw to the safety of my 

___________________ 

2. Carlos Castaneda's Journey to Ixtlan, chapter 19, Stopping the World. 

17 

family. Afterwards I rode back to the spot from which I had first seen the fire to check its course. Searching the area, to my utter amazement, I saw nothing. There was no fire. 

"Stunned, I blinked several times and looked long at the quiet horizon. Then I headed back to the fire station with haste to rectify my mistake. The place was deserted. Everyone had ridden out, per my earlier instructions. 

"I deliberated on riding after them but decided instead to contact the railhead and turn back the relief train. I was too late. It had already been dispatched. 

"I was so overcome with the magnitude of my folly that it was several hours before I remembered that I had left my family in an abandoned tunnel down the line. I was just preparing to retrieve them when a man rode in on a lathered horse shouting, 'Fire, fire! The forest is burning!' 

"I rode out in the direction he had specified and returned to the very spot I had been twice before on that day. The forest was burning. The flames leaped and roared over the trees, exactly as I had seen in the early morning. 

"Days later, when the fire had run its course, I knelt down and thanked Providence that I had been granted to see the conflagration hours before it became a reality. Many lives were saved by the warning." 

In the first week of October following the 

18 

fire, deBit embarked on a trip into the Bitter Roots. Snow had fallen earlier but now the ground was clear. The weather was bright and warm for that time of year and he thought to make one final swing into the territory before the heavy snows closed the trails. One evening he was camped near a small stream a day's ride from the Ranger Station. The sun was in its last twilight and he had gone down to the water to rinse his mess gear. Suddenly he heard his name called. 

He looked around and shouted, "Hello! Over here! Hello!" 

His heart skipped in anticipation of some unexpected company. He loved the aloneness of the wilderness, but on those rare occasions when someone wandered into camp from the trail he enjoyed the companionship. 

There was no answer to his greeting and he called again, "Hello, there! Over here!" 

There was silence. 

In a moment, however, his name was called a second time. Thinking whoever it was might be standing on the far side of the campfire and therefore not visible from where he crouched, he gathered up his equipment and returned to the campsite. There was no one there. 

Curiously, he made a circle of the area and searched the woods around. He called out periodically but there was no answer, nor could he find a sign of anyone. He returned to the fire, puzzled. 

19 

He sat up later than usual that night, but finally, when the embers of his fire were dying, he prepared for bed. Just as he put his head down his name was called a third time. 

Grabbing his rifle he leaped to his feet and called out, "Come out, damn you, whoever you are. Come out!" 

All was silence. 

Then the voice spoke again. "It is for you to come out, my son. Come out of the woods to the city. Come out and begin your work." 

The young ranger stood frozen for a moment. Then he rekindled the fire, took his flashlight and rifle and began to search the woods around his camp. He found no one. 

Finally he lay down in his blankets, but he did not sleep. He headed home the following day, perplexed and distracted. 

In the weeks that followed he took every opportunity to sit alone in the forest, contemplating the strange event. The voice that had called him had been real, clearly audible to his hearing. But his meditations revealed nothing further, nor did he hear the voice again. He spent much of his time deliberating what he must do. 

He said later, "The words that came most frequently to my mind were 'Thy Will be done,' and I struggled to accept the admonition. 

"But by mid-November I had made no decision. The power and intensity of the command 

20 

given me was still very vivid in my mind, but winter was fast approaching and it was very difficult getting in and out of that part of the country when the heavy snows fell. I could not leave my wife and children behind, yet to abandon one's cabin, horses and pack mules without supervision for any extended time was just plain bad business. My practical objections to the move were taking precedence over the voice in the forest. 

"Then an odd thing occurred. There was an old itinerant preacher by the name of Parson Ned. No one knew his last name. He had wandered the Bitter Roots for many, many years. Every few months or so he would arrive at Avery and conduct open meetings a couple nights running. Usually he held the service on a slope above our cabin where fallen logs and stumps could be used for seating. We had no church. 

"I didn't know the Parson well. I was away so often that his visits seldom coincided with my trips home. He had come to Avery the night before but I had had some sheriffing to do and had not gotten to the service. This night I went. There was nothing special about the meeting but I always liked to hear the gospel preached and I enjoyed it. We were breaking up to go home when he called to me. 

"'Ralph deBit,' he said, 'you hold on there.' 

"I told Jessica to go ahead and I walked over to him. He glared at me a moment and then said, 

21 

'I'm going away, deBit. You won't see the likes of me again.' 

"It did not concern me but out of courtesy I asked, 'Where are you going, Ned?' 

"'Where the woodbine twineth,' he replied. 'But that's not the point, Ralph. The point is, when are you going to be about your Father's business?' 

"I was so taken back by the question that I could only stare at the man. He held me in his gaze. Suddenly I was being rocked by some force pulsating in and around me. I had never felt anything like it before. He continued to stare at me for a moment, then turned and walked away. No one ever saw the Parson again after he left Avery that night. The sensation he had engendered in me remained for several hours. 

"I decided that night to leave for Spokane. The following morning I requested a leave of absence. A week later we left the Bitter Roots.'" 

22 

CHAPTER FOUR 

When deBit arrived in Spokane he had no plan of procedure. He simply set about methodically walking the city streets. He did not know for whom or for what he was looking, but it seemed reasonable that the larger the area he covered the more likely he was to encounter whatever it might be. In a week's time the high certainty with which he had begun the search was greatly abated. Now he wandered disconsolately, dejected at the folly that kept him here, but daily putting off the inevitable trip home. 

One evening his eye was caught by an advertisement in the Spokane paper. It read: 

THE BHAGAVAD GITA 

Lectures by A. K. Mozumdar 

Saturday afternoons and evenings 

the Month of January 

2:00 p.m. and 8:00 p.m. 

By Donation 

"When I was quite young," deBit said, "I 

23 

read a sketch of Emerson in which he said that the Bhagavad Gita was his constant companion. I had not read the book so I decided to attend the lecture. It would be an informative evening and perhaps take my mind off many doubts that assailed me." 

When he arrived at the auditorium he found it to be a store front converted into a makeshift hall, with folding chairs and a small wooden speaker's platform. When coats had been arranged and the general murmur subsided, the speaker moved to the podium. He was a small, dark man, appearing to be in his early thirties. He was exceptionally handsome and dressed conservatively in a European suit and tie. He carried a small leather-bound book in one hand and a thin wooden cane in the other. He began to speak in halting, broken English with the high lilt of the East Indian. He used the cane as a pointer to a chart he had arranged. 

He had spoken only a few words when he paused in mid-sentence and raised his head to stare in Ralph deBit's direction. For a long moment he stood silent, moving his head ever so slightly to one side and then the other, as though listening to a far away sound. Suddenly he leaped from the podium, cane in hand, and raced down the aisle. He stopped in front of deBit and gave him a resounding rap on the shins with his cane, shouting, "Where have you been? What has kept you? I have been waiting for you." 

24 

Remembering the incident, Vitvan always laughed, saying, "When I saw that little Hindu vault into the aisle and come running towards me I was certain he was a madman. I was preparing in my mind how I would deal with him. He pulled up just short of where I was sitting. He hit me hard on the shins with his can and shouted at me. 

"Before I could respond the most extraordinary thing happened. He smiled at me with great warmth and affection and laid the open palm of his hand over the lapel of my coat. My surroundings blurred and everyone and everything disappeared; I stood again in that dimension of timelessness that I had experienced on one other occasion. 

"Then, in a moment I was sitting again where I had been, with everything intact. I looked up at him and was caught again in that odd vibration I had felt from the old parson. Mozumdar was smiling still and looking deep into my eyes. 'Now you recognize me,' he said. 

"He turned to the stunned audience and said calmly, 'People, you must go home now. I will talk here again another time.' Then he took me by the arm and we walked out of the building and down the street." 

The awakening one had found his Master. 

25 

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27 

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CHAPTER FIVE 

A.K. Mozumdar had come to the United States at the mandate of his own teacher, the Master Arumda. He had been told that his excessive emotional tie to Mother India had drawn him to incarnation there, but that his real dharma was to serve the 'Great Plan' in America. 

"The light of the ancient Vedas," Arumda told Mozumdar, "the teachings of the Egyptians and the Gnostic Wisdom of the Greeks will blend there in America, even as men of all nationalities will weld together in a great commonwealth. Old principles, as they will be revealed, will be given new names. A reformation of the Ancient Teachings will issue forth and the true destiny of America will emerge to illumine the universal fraternity of man.3 Go to that blessed land and serve the 

___________________ 

3. Many fine works have been written describing the intended destiny of the Western Hemisphere. There are some who maintain that plans for the colonization of the Americas were formulated in Mecca, Delhi, Alexandria and Lhasa, long before most European statesmen were aware of the great utopian undertaking. Vitvan's highly inspirational work, Our Government, is a strong statement for the existence of the "colonization 

29 

work. Even now, one awaits you whom you must take through to the greater vision." 

When Mozumdar arrived in the United States he immediately set about finding the 'waiting one' described by Arumda. He located and identified deBit long before they met in physical presence. He told deBit, "I found you very soon. But it was two years before I could bring you out of your forests." 

Vitvan fully elaborates on this ability to function on inner levels in his essay on The Seven Initiations. He begins his introduction to the subject, writing: 

"It is next to impossible to convince anyone in total identification with the objectified world (the physical body, the configuration, the 'this is me' consciousness), that the psychic level exists. Attempting to describe the psychic level to someone who is without the understanding of the Triune Man (the autonomous field, the psychic nature and the configurated form) and who has not developed the faculties to transfer identity to the 

___________________ 

scheme" and the premise that, "In 1776 there was born a new culture--a new form of government based on the dignity and inviolable integrity of the individual. The very Constitution of that government was derived from the Gnosis, directed by the hierarchy and instrumented by high degree Initiates within the secret societies of the Rosecrucian and Masonic orders of colonial America. It is not difficult to verify the fact 

30 

various levels is like trying to describe color to a man born blind. 

"But the psychic world (sometimes called the astral plane) does exist. Along the way in the individualizing process a developing one will learn transference of identity from the configurational world to the psychic level at his own determination. In time he can function in that dimension with complete ease--moving where and when he will, unobstructed by the barricades and restrictions indigenous to the physical plane. Those who have developed that ability are called 'walkers of the sky.'" 

Mozumdar and deBit remained together as teacher and student for nearly seven years. It was an extraordinary relationship by any standards, but in the era in which it happened it was unprecedented. 

In the year 1910 India and the United States were little more than enigmatic names to one another. Cultural exchange was unheard of. What knowledge existed of one country to the other, existed in the special studies of the academician. 

___________________ 

that the inspiration for this 'Brave New World' predates its 'discovery' by several centuries. 

For further reference, see Manly Palmer Hall's America's Assignment with Destiny and his Masonic, Hermetic, Qabbalistic, Rosecrucian Symbolic Philosophy; Jennings C. Wise's The Mystery of Columbus; Grace A. Fendler's New Truths about Columbus. 

31 

Perhaps a handful of scholars on either continent were familiar with the philosophical traditions of their counterparts. And these two men were almost stereotypes of their native origins. 

Mozumdar was born in India's highest caste. He was educated to that position. When he was eight years old he became the disciple of a renowned Guru and remained a devotee for 25 years. Ralph deBit was a product of middle America and the frontier West. He had a high school education. His religious training was the King James Testament and Sunday School classes at the Methodist Church. 

The overwhelming contrasts between the two would seem to be irresolvable. But they held no such significance to the eager disciple. 

"I taught Mozumdar to speak and write a more intelligible English and he taught me to cook with curry. We resolved our differences and got down to the business at hand," he said. 

It was an intense and difficult apprenticeship for the young American. The Western Mind is acquisitive. It must reason on facts. Its intellectual bias demands why's and wherefore's before it can get seriously concerned. It cannot conceptualize except in clearly defined terms. It insists that learning material presented to it be carefully described and sharply delineated. 

This was not Mozumdar's method. He followed the traditional Oriental approach. Such 

32 

teachers believe that truth learned from another is of no value. The only truth worthy of having is that which one discovers for himself. The student is more or less thrown on his own resources. He is put face to face with certain facts that have always appeared to him as most obvious--so obvious, in fact, that he has never given them any serious consideration. Now he is asked to examine whether these facts which he has previously accepted as representing reality are, indeed, truly real. He is directed to empty his mind of all prior opinions, judgments, values, etc., which have been mechanically accepted up to this point without question, and to re-examine the source from whence all of our information is obtained: the senses. 

The Master is rarely generous in offering any detailed explanation for the directives he imposes. He suggests to the enquirer various subjects for reflection, but it is for the seeker to make what he can of them. 

"One day," Vitvan wrote in his instructions on The First Crossing, "Mozumdar said to me, 'Put your hand on the wall.' 

"I did so and he said, 'What are you touching?' 

"I replied, 'The wall.' 

"He said, 'No, you are touching the state of your own consciousness.' 

"When I said that I did not understand, he answered, 'Meditate until you know it is so.' 

33 

"I did as I was bid. I pondered and meditated on it. But it was many years before I could put my hand on what is called a wall and stand in the conscious perception and realization that I was touching my own state of consciousness." 

He continues, "And so it was with many points that I questioned. Mozumdar refused direct answers. Sometimes in desperation I wanted to choke an explanation out of him. But he was not to be moved. His response was always the same. 

"'Meditate--direct your forces--learn to know without thinking.' 

"I made up my mind at the time that if I ever got it I would describe the process in detail--explain it in every possible way. No one would ever have to beg me for answers. I would leave nothing unsaid." 

Vitvan would fulfill that promise throughout a lifetime of teaching and writing. 

The incident of the wall is touched on again in Vitvan's book Studies in Psycho-Therapy. Here he is commenting on the difference between Oriental and Occidental teaching: 

"It is not a simple thing to reorient one's thinking, to risk the challenge of uprooting the known and comfortable facts of one's existence and begin to see in all things commonplace and familiar great mysteries that are the birth of wonder. But such is the nature of emerging and expanding consciousness that when this juncture is 

34 

is reached in the 'ongoing process' the developing one has little choice or consideration as to proceeding. 

"It has been said that the Limitless Light can be defined in a single word, 'pressure.' The Absolute--or God, if you wish--is pressure. Its out-flowing extends through every channel of existence. Its force is irresistible. Nothing can stay its hand or stem its course. When awareness begins to awaken in man it is the advent of that pressure within his individualized consciousness. It would seem reasonable, then, that at this point in his self-development every aid and convenience should be offered him to prepare and facilitate the journey ahead. 

"I am well aware that the Oriental teacher has good and profound reasons for distrusting the mentalizations that may result from a purely intellectual understanding of the Cosmic Process, but I am of the opinion that a balance can be effected between presentation and participation. It seems to me mandatory to have right guidelines and accurate directions. To become so wary in the knowledge that 'the road map is not the journey' as to withhold the road map altogether is at once inconsistent and capricious. 

"In telling me that by touching the wall I was in reality experiencing nothing more nor less than my own state of consciousness, Mozumdar was attempting to direct my awareness to the phenomenon by which we externalize sensation into concepts of things and objects 'out there' as sub- 

35 

stantial reality. But my, oh, my, what a meager directive that was. I was left completely baffled and perplexed. He had given me only the vaguest clue to unravel the mystery he had proposed. It was to take several years before I was able to extend my awareness to the point that I could consciously experience the phenomenon he had spoken about. 

"I believe in telling just where the bear sat in the buckwheat. And I strongly contend that manufactured mystery and a reluctance to explanation are handicaps to understanding. I feel certain that had I been presented with a careful description of the mechanism by which consciousness operates, my meditations would have been more fruitful and my own certification of the process not so long delayed. 

"After all, these ideas are fundamental to the Wisdom Teachings and totally accepted by the modern scientific community. Granted that an intellectual explanation of the hypothesis will not on its own trigger the awareness that transfers mental concept to full realization, nor can it flush out the vast implications therein; but that is not sufficient reason to withhold its presentation. Thoughts and ideas must be taken to the vantage ground of contemplation. It is there that they may eventuate in perceptive awareness. 

"I have dealt with this subject extensively in The Christos, Fundamentals of the School of the 

36 

Natural Order, and other works. And I can also recommend two outstanding publications, The Hidden Teachings Beyond Yoga by Dr. Paul Brunton and The Conquest of Illusion by Van de Leeuw. Both books contain a full and definitive account of the instrumentality by which consciousness creates and projects objective reality. For the conscientious student who wishes to fortify his inquiry with all the ramifications of this phenomenon and the scientific verifications that substantiate it, these publications are well worth pursuing. But for our purposes here I will abbreviate my description by restricting scientific reference and avoiding all metaphysical flapdoodle so often connected with the subject. 

"This is a light-wave-frequency universe. Light and light alone is the essence of all that is. The nature of light enables it to infold into energy and that energy to infold into structural patterns, or configurational forms, which we label 'matter' and 'living organisms.' Actually, both are 'Living Matter.' The difference between the two designations is only relative to the degree of consciousness functioning therein. But no matter, the configurated structures, whether appearing as mineral, plant, animal or man, cannot be described as phenomenal. Which is to say, they cannot be considered as static 'things,' 'objects,' etc. They are dynamic energy systems in process. Modern physicists have demonstrated that even the atom, once 

37 

considered the cornerstone of material substance, is itself composed of submicroscopic vortices of energy--a tiny contained universe of light-wave frequencies. And so ad infinitum. 

"Our only knowledge of the light-energy universe in which we participate is through the medium of our senses. But the senses, and indeed the whole structure of the neural system in which they inhere, are not sufficiently flexible to register the actions and reactions in continuum of the separate stimuli of wave frequencies that impinge upon them. It is analogous to the firing of a machine pistol. The projectiles follow each other at spaced intervals. But the rapidity of their course would make it appear that they reach the target at the same moment. Thus it is that the multitudinous impulses transmitted to the sense receptors from the energy universe around us are not received separately. The limited functioning of the reflex arcs in sense registration bunches the stimuli together and delivers them as integrated impulses to the brain. 

"It is at this point that the Power-to-be-Conscious, acting upon the gestalted impulses received by the brain, conceptualizes them into pictures, images, etc. That is, into mental experience. Out of percept and recept, concept is born. In this instant we become sentient. Singularly or in combination, we see, hear, smell, touch or taste that which seems and appears to be outside ourselves. 

38 

"But here is the crux of the matter. The pictures, images, etc., only 'seem and appear' to be outside. They have been received as light-wave frequencies and conceptualized from sensations within the body instrument. But sensations do not extrude beyond the periphery of the body! 

"This is what Mozumdar was trying to get over to me. My hand touching the wall gave rise to a sense of resistance from the wall's surface. But I was not feeling the wall. I was only feeling that part of my skin which was in contact with the wall. That sensation, relayed up the spinal cord to the brain, constituted the only notion the brain could have of the 'object' wall. In other words, what seemed to be an encounter with an exterior reality began as sense impressions within the body and was concluded as a mental experience within my own consciousness. 

"Such experience is the only tangible knowledge we ever have of the panoramic external world. What we are aware of as picture, image, etc., are only representations of 'things and objects' out there. We can never come into direct contact with these so-called 'things and objects' themselves. We can only be aware of our awareness of them. Hence the 'outside' objective world is evoked by sensation and the activity of consciousness, and has no existence otherwise! Mozumdar was right--touching the wall, I touched nothing other than the state of my own consciousness. 

39 

"'Well and good,' the reader may say, but the question that must immediately follow is, 'By what extraordinary agency do we project an internal experience of sensation and consciousness outside the body as objective reality?' The answer is a complicated one. And although I do not wish to hedge the question, I have answered it in detail in other works.4 

"Let is suffice here to say that a clue to this enigma may be found in the common psychological disturbances of hypnotic suggestion, hallucination and dream pictures. Under these conditions a mental experience can appear as an objective reality, the key to the phenomenon being that whatever dominates the mind dictates what it perceives. And depending upon the intensity of the dictate, it is perceived either inwardly as thought and idea or outwardly as pictures and images appearing substantive. 

"But do not conclude that the phenomenal world is an individual delusion. On the contrary, the world experience is common to all of us and perceived by all in roughly an identical manner. It is a shared experience because the Idea of the world is determined for us by the archetypal patterns within the light-wave frequencies of the Universal Consciousness. Universal Consciousness is the root of the material universe, and in fact calls 

___________________ 

4. Vitvan's Cosmology and The Christos. 

40 

the material universe into being that it may function in the vital act of participation through the multiplicity of its individualized states. We are integrated into the divine assembly of the Universal One. 'In Him we live and move and have our being.'" 

41 

CHAPTER SIX 

Mozumdar and deBit soon formed a working routine for themselves. Mozumdar received a small pension from his teacher in India but it had been barely enough to sustain him while he awaited the arrival of his disciple. He had tried to supplement the allowance by lecturing, but his poor command of the English language greatly restricted audience attendance. So deBit worked diligently to improve Mozumdar's usage of English, both spoken and written. 

By persisting together, Mozumdar became comfortable in his adopted language and he was soon able to establish a fairly regular schedule of lectures. Together they wrote and printed several books, which they offered for sale to their audiences. In time deBit also lectured. Their combined efforts provided a nominal income. But they lived on a frugal budget with barely more than the necessities to do with. 

As deBit schooled Mozumdar he became increasingly aware of the limitations of his own education. Consequently he scheduled several evenings a week for night school courses as they were avail- 

43 

able, eagerly signing up for a wide variety of subjects almost without regard or preference for the courses offered. But with all their activities, the main thrust of their time and energies was the time-honored one-to-one relationship of student and Master. 

"In those years," Vitvan wrote, "I experienced a dichotomy of time. On the one hand, every minute of every day was completely filled and the weeks and months and years whirled by. On the other hand, it seemed that time crawled interminably as I struggled to achieve those rare moments when some particular awareness would open up to me." 

As the years passed, the natural results of his studies and disciplines--the time given to breathing exercises, controlled diet and centered meditation--began to eventuate in a new state of awareness, and in the emergence of supernormal endowments intrinsic to that state of expanded consciousness. 

He spoke of these things in later years. "It was an interested period for me. I could see the aura around each person I encountered, just as clearly as I could see their bodies. I could see the auras around plants, trees, and even dogs and cats roaming the streets. And as soon as the aura appeared I could also smell and hear it as well. 

"Another odd thing that occurred was the great difficulty I had holding onto the physical 

44 

features or form of any person I was talking to directly. Their image would fade in and out and the face or form of a former incarnation would come in. I would become so involved in looking at the new face that I couldn't pay attention to what the person was talking about. There was a constant conflict between the objective manifold of amenities and values and the inner operation of my psychic sight and hearing and smelling. 

"None of this, however, pleased my teacher. 

"'Do you think that is development?' he would say. And then, using the sternest declamation of American profanity he had learned: 

"'It is all bullshit. There is nothing in that but illusion and bullshit. There is no development in that; none at all. Hidden under every flower that grows in the psychic world, a serpent lies coiled. To enjoy picking the flowers without getting struck by the serpent requires a high degree of development and discrimination. It is not for you now. One day when you are centered, access to that world will be a tool in your hands. But right now it is bullshit!' 

"He put force into what he was saying. Slowly that world began to be eclipsed, and as it did I was able to get reoriented." 

He was also now fully cognizant of the implications of the instruction Mozumdar had given him. 

"It had taken five intense and difficult years, 

45 

but now at least I comprehended what had been happening to me. Mozumdar had given me the methodology to build a whole new organism within the structure of my being--a new faculty within myself with which I could learn to function on Mind level--toward the eventuation of becoming conscious of my own true Individualized Self in Light's Regions. 

"I had been schooled in those practices that enable one to recognize, direct and center the energy forces with which we function, and by consciously directing those forces from relatively 'lower' to 'higher' centers or chakras, eventually polarize them at the conarial center, thus enabling that energy to complete its higher activities, necessary to the descent of the Christos power (in Vedic Scripture, the rising of the Shakti or Kundalini."5 

___________________ 

5. It is often puzzling to a reader when one school (Chinese, Tibetan or East Indian) refers to this experience of spiritual culmination as the "rising of the Kundalini" or "rising of the serpent" while the other school (Hermetic or Grecian) refers to the "descent of the Christos power." The process is the same, but like the phenomenon of lightning, the lead stroke is from cloud to ground followed by the main stroke which is from ground to cloud. The current in man that produces the contact with Light's Regions follows the same pattern and takes its designations from whichever path is described--ascending or descending. 

46 

Vitvan writes of this stage in his development: 

"I knew all that had been before. Not what 'I' had been before, because there is no such thing as reincarnation on the 'I' level. That is, no one as he is now conscious of himself as a personality, reincarnates. The Power-to-be-conscious, like a deciduous tree, puts forth fruit. The fruit that is created grows and individualizes as a personality and evolves and expands in conscious awareness as it is able. The fruit withers and dies and the process is repeated, but the tree (the Power-to-be-conscious) is the immortal one in continuum; personality is new at each issuance. 

"At any rate, I was aware of all that had been, and I knew the extension point of my own development. I was an Initiate and a postulant to the Third Degree. The joy of my remembering enraptured my being and I longed to serve again in the ancient tradition of the Sannyasin and further my exploration along the Path." 

47 

CHAPTER SEVEN 

Then, on a spring day in the seventh year of his discipleship, the efforts of student and Master came to culmination. A most detailed description of the awakening of the Christos power is given in Vitvan's book The Christos. And in other works he further elaborates on it. But in personal conversation he would say: 

"I liken it to lightening. The lightening strikes and it quite literally shakes you like an earthquake. You feel your ego in the grip of gigantic and titanic forces, of which, with all of your understanding, you have never really had any conception, nor are you in any wise prepared to handle. This is the cosmic process operating within your own being. It is not something that has been 'put on you,' it comes from within yourself. 

"It comes with a baptism of fire, for it is analogous to fire. In elementary school physics it would be described as a completed arc. It is caused by the response of a relatively lower octave of wave and frequency to much higher and more intense wave-frequencies. The latent power in the sacral pole of the axis or field is awakened, acti- 

49 

vated and released. It leaps to the positive pole in the conarial center. A circuit is completed and the individualized autonomous field is made incandescent, ablaze with Light."6 

Ralph deBit lay in a delirium and coma for two weeks. Mozumdar remained at his bedside constantly, administering as he could, but he was greatly concerned. He was totally unfamiliar with this kind of reaction. When deBit regained consciousness it took several weeks before he was up and about. 

"I did not fully recover my health for many months," he said. "And strange and unique physiological changes continued to manifest themselves for the next three or four years." 

Mozumdar had fulfilled his obligation to Arumda. The apprenticeship was over. 

Mozumdar named his disciple Vitvan, meaning "one who knows." He was deeply touched by deBit's attainment and wept with tears of joy. 

But he said, "You are the first I have taken through, and you will also be the last. Your life was endangered. I do not believe that Occidental man is sufficiently evolved for this experience. He is not prepared. It is too dangerous." 

___________________ 

6. For another contemporary description of this phenomenon, read Gopi Krishna's KUNDALINI, The Evolutionary Energy in Man, and his The Biological Basis of Religion and Genius. 

50 

Remembering the conversation, Vitvan would laugh until his eyes filled with tears. 

"You must understand how deeply I loved that man and with what respect I held him. Well, I was presumptuous but I could not restrain myself. I answered him with his own favorite epithet. 

"'Bullshit,' I said. 'That is bullshit. If I have proven difficult, I accept the responsibility. But I believe the system is also at fault. This is not the Orient. I believe that the teaching must be adapted to the race psyche of Western man. There must be a new curriculum and a new methodology to fit his particular needs. Your own teacher said as much. I intend to dedicate my life to that end.' 

"Mozumdar listened in stern silence, cocking his head to one side and then the other, as he was wont to do. When I finished he remained quiet for a moment. Then his face broke into a pleased and loving smile. 

"He put his hand to mine and said, 'Well then, Vitvan, you have found your destiny.' 

"In the next instant I was on my knees beside him, emotionally pouring out my thanks to this wonderful man. In the morning I packed my few belongings and we bid goodbye." 

51 

CHAPTER EIGHT 

Vitvan was 34 years old when he left Mozumdar. He was fully aware of the significance of his achievement but he was not misled by his accomplishment. 

"Once the power in the sacral center is awakened (Kundalini)," he writes in his The Natural Order Process: Basic Teachings of the School of the Natural Order, "it rises immediately to the crown center at the top of the head and, uniting with the force of the pituitary center, develops that greater faculty known as perceptive insight or intuitive perception. While this is much to be desired, it is only the beginning. One starts to function on Mind level, but that is the lowest of Light's Regions. There is more--ever more. 

"One time I asked my teacher, 'Have you known anyone or heard of anyone who has reached the ultimate state?' 

"He told me that the highest ones in development, those in orientation to the highest wave-frequency levels that his own teacher, Arumda, had ever contacted had said that they did not know the ultimate heights. 'It goes beyond anything they 

53 

could register or even contact; it is illimitable.' 

"My own consciousness was now integrated to the causal level of Noetic Mind, but I was newly born to this awareness. My task was to serve as teacher to any others who might also aspire to that Light. And by so doing, center myself in this state of consciousness and continue my own development." 

For the next thirty years Vitvan traveled throughout the United States, Canada and Cuba, teaching and writing a curriculum to explain the understanding he had achieved. 

"Depending," he wrote, "on how you want your applesauce served, I refer to those three decades in Vedic terms as my 'Sannyasin Period' or, more American style, as my years as an itinerant preacher. Whatever label appeals, I wandered here and there and back again teaching wherever I could find an audience and taking upon myself those rare few who were ready to dedicate themselves to the Ancient Wisdom." 

Vitvan's first destination when he left Mozumdar was New York City. 

"I decided," he wrote, "that it would be in my best interest to put the continent between me and my teacher. To remain close to him would be a constant temptation. After seven long years of being outside the dimension of his insights, I now shared that common ground of enlightenment. It was a special kind of fraternity. And it was strong 

54 

inducement to remain near him, rejoicing in our brotherhood. But if I were to serve my own dharma I must do it alone. I boarded the train, sorrowful at our parting, but thrilled with the expectation of things to come." 

55 

CHAPTER NINE 

In New York Vitvan took lodging in Greenwich Village. 

"The year was 1918. The United States was enmeshed in the grim business of World War I. I soon had a full schedule. I lectured almost nightly and I had two small classes. During the days I volunteered part of my time to the Red Cross. I rolled bandages, loaded boxes for shipment overseas, and on occasion drove an ambulance transporting the wounded from incoming ships. I was also actively involved in healing practice. 

"On one occasion, two reporters from New York newspapers were sent to interview me. They sat through an evening lecture and afterwards they came to my rooms to talk. The three of us had a delightful time and enjoyed our conversation until the early hours of morning. They were both intelligent young men and they asked me sensible and pertinent questions. We talked about the etiology of healing and about my lecture that evening. 

"I had spoken on the discipline of Auming. I had explained several techniques, including the 'back Aum.' This particular Aum is done by retain- 

57 

ing several deep breaths, then contracting the diaphragm, forcing the air toward the back. The air is expelled in short bursts, sometimes accompanied by striking the lower back. The idea is to hit the vocal chords with hammer-like jolts of air, producing a high-pitched and intense sound. Because the air is 'stored' at the back, the area from which a dog controls his barking, it is sometimes called the 'dog Aum.' 

"I explained the purpose and intent of the back Aum and then we got into a lively discussion of healing techniques. Their interest seemed genuine and I was inspired to a full elaboration of configurational man and the creating process in which he participates. I emphasized the structure, function and order of the individualized autonomous field and explained that the configuration (body) is a representation of the state of conscious awareness within the field. Therefore, the identities to which it is polarized are determinative to its function or malfunction. 

"When they left I felt a sense of real accomplishment. I had been in New York less than three months and already I had found a channel to disseminate some of the fundamental principles of the Gnosis to several million people! 

"The next morning I scanned the newspapers for an account of my proselytizing. One article was entitled, 'Mystery Man of Greenwich Village Heals with Strange Power.' It was fabrication 

58 

of outrageous proportions, complete with hocus-pocus incantations, magic potions, etc.--absolute absurdity. The second interview was headlined, 'Philosopher Teaches Bow-Wow.' Need I say more? That was almost fifty years ago and I have shunned journalistic interviews ever since. 

"However, I was grateful for one aspect of the evening. It allowed me to get the right perspective on my work as a healer. One of the young men had asked me a series of questions that I had not answered to my own satisfaction. 

"'By what right do you heal others?' he had asked. 'And if, as you maintain, all illness is a kind of psychosomatic manifestation, what good does it do to heal the effect and leave the cause unremedied? And what is to prevent the illness from returning?' 

"I took those questions to heart and pursued them in my meditations. The answers I received were disquieting. I had no right to heal anyone unless specifically asked to do so. And then, only if I could bring the person in need to a full understanding of the underlying cause within the psychic nature from whence the discord emanated. Otherwise cure was temporary, even if it persisted for a lifetime. 

"I felt chastised and chagrined, because I remembered Mozumdar saying that Initiates newly awakened to Mind level are born there as children are born on the configurational plane. They must 

59 

learn to master that state, even as the child must master the objective world to become functional there. It is particularly difficult for the newly awakened one to discipline himself in the judicial use of the power now available to him. The mind lacks mature discrimination. Judgment is clouded by sentiment. Compassion rushes in where wisdom would refrain.7 Mozumdar had likened the artless use of the powers to babies newly discovering their toes. 

"'What marvelous playthings! How extraordinary to see them work! But eventually the foot ends up in the mouth.' 

"Since that time I have never used the healing technique unless the recipient was willing and capable of fulfilling the requirement of understanding. The single exception, of course, being children who cannot be expected to grasp such things." 

Vitvan remained in New York for almost four years. He headquartered in Greenwich Village and established a lecture itinerary up and down the 

___________________ 

7. Two novels, The Last Temptation of Christ by Nikos Kazantzakis and Zanoni by Edward Bulwer-Lytton, exaggerate through the medium of fiction the awful results that might occur if super-normal powers were motivated by sentiment or personal attachment. In the 25th chapter of The Last Temptation of Christ Kazantzakis relates the raising of Lazarus from the dead. Jesus, empowered beyond his capacity to discriminate, is moved by the lamentations of Martha and Mary to 

60 

East Coast, carrying him as far south as Florida and into the neighboring southern states. 

In the early spring of 1920, after a series of lectures in Charlottesville, North Carolina, Vitvan elected to take a two week sabbatical to finish a book he was working on. A student he had met there owned a cabin a few miles outside of Boone, North Carolina. Vitvan gratefully accepted use of it and was driven down. Some few days after his arrival he experienced the Third Initiation and was brought into awareness of the Seven Rays of Development.8 He was taken out of body and into the company of the Elder Ones of the Inner Order. 

He wrote of the event later, saying, "The name of the mountain on which the cabin was built was called Grandfather Mountain. It was appropriately named, for on that particular night I was in the presence of several grandfathers of the whole human race. 

"I was given to see the Seven Rays and allowed to select which Ray I would serve upon. The compassion I felt as I viewed mankind's aeoni- 

___________________ 

8. See Vitvan's essay on Seven Rays of Development. 

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an past and was made cognizant of his great struggle on the palingenetic cycle of emerging consciousness, overwhelmed me. I chose then to serve mankind's attainment, although to do so is to accept continuous and recurrent incarnation. When that choice is made it is final--one is bound to his decision. No other path would ever be open to me. 

"Many years have passed since that night and I can honestly say that I have never regretted my decision. However, were I to be allowed the same choice now, I might choose differently." 

Toward the end of the year 1921, Vitvan decided to return to California. 

"My decision," he writes with good humor, "was prompted more by consideration for climate than any other reason. At least there, several could gather together in His name all year long and the elements would not conspire against it." 

A few months before he was to leave he attended a formal dinner in New York. His comments in regard to attainment and further speculation on America's destiny provide thoughtful reading: 

"I had been in New York City about four years. I had some standing as a teacher and consequently quite a large circle of acquaintances. One morning I received in the mail a formal invitation to attend a rather swank get-together in honor of an important Zen Buddhist teacher--the kind of function I have since learned to avoid with consid- 

62 

erable expertise. However, at the time my exuberance was almost unmanageable. I rushed out to meet teachers whenever I had the opportunity. I rarely encountered authentic ones, but on those occasions that it happened, I felt more than compensated for my efforts. It was the usual gathering: sincere students, dilettantes and perennial curiosity seekers. 

"The guest of honor, however, was a lovely man: spontaneously intelligent and very simply profound. One whom Zen would call a 'Wisely Foolish One.' I responded immediately to the high level of his attainment, hidden so carefully beneath the veneer of his personableness. I wanted very much to speak with him. Finally there came a moment when he stood alone and I approached him. He recognized me as a brother and we spoke without restraint. I asked him how long he had been in this country. 

"He replied, 'Seventeen years.' 

"I asked eagerly, 'How many have you found?' (Meaning, of course, how many have you taken through to the higher consciousness of the Christos power.) 

"His face beamed with delight. He held up one finger and smiled broadly. 'I have found one,' he said. 'I have found one, sir!' 

"His pleasure was so evident that I dared not comment. I only nodded my head and smiled. But I was thunderstruck! 

63 

"'One,' I thought. 'He has been here 17 years and he has only found one. Great Nellie! What has been the trouble with him? Why, in 17 years I will see thousands to attainment!' 

"I laugh now, but at the time that is exactly what I thought. Well, I have been a teacher now for almost 40 years and do you know how many I have found? Six. Yes, six. And I am so grateful that I could jump up and down and shout my gratitude to the heavens. But in between jumping up and down I can only ask Life and that dear old Buddhist to forgive the presumption of a foolish young man. He is older now and wiser. 

"And I will tell you something further. In the entire history of our beloved country from its founding until the present date (1950), there have been 75 at most who have experienced this highest realization. Does that astound you? Does it substantiate what you have always guessed about the spiritual backwardness of your country? Don't be foolish. Man is young. Few have found their way through the corridor of conceit to enlightenment, anywhere, anytime. But the number who have attained to that Universal Consciousness, or Christ consciousness, or Kundalini consciousness, or whatever, here in this country is equal to any number who have reached a like attainment during the same period of time any place else in the world. 

64 

"It has been a slow, slow business, this evolution of consciousness. It is only now, as the Piscean Age draws to its close and the cyclic forces determinative to the Dawn of a New Age are galvanized into activity, that we will begin to see in the next quarter of a century great numbers hastened to a new birth on the higher levels of consciousness. In this country it will herald the beginning of a golden age. America will be recognized for her spiritual achievements and confirmed as the New India." 

65 

CHAPTER TEN 

Vitvan returned to California and established himself in Los Angeles. In 1923 he incorporated his teachings as a non-profit organization called The School of the Sacred Science. The school was loosely structured. Vitvan held classes on a fairly regular basis but he traveled extensively during the winter months. In the summers he rented facilities in the country and held seminars for interested students contacted on his lecture tours. He founded a monthly publication, The Sacred Science Magazine. And he wrote and published several books under the school's aegis, including The Textbook of the Sacred Science, Universal Will, Healing Technic and The Lord's Prayer. 

In 1925, while lecturing in Colorado, he found what he thought would be "the perfect location for a school and ashram." By now a small and more or less permanent group had formed around the teachings. Vitvan purchased 320 acres of land in Bailey, Colorado. He and his students spent the better part of two years building an ashram and school there. Po-Ahtun, as it was called, became the permanent headquarters for the 

67 

school until 1942. 

The pattern for the school had already been established by Vitvan. He lectured during the winter months, returning periodically to check on activities among the permanent residents at the school. In the summer full-fledged seminars were organized from a larger number of students recruited on the winter lecture tours. 

In spite of the harsh winters and the absence of luxuries, the small group survived the depression years in good order and prospered in their learning. Vitvan held his students in high esteem. He provided an environment relatively free from outside pressures and diligently devoted himself to their instruction. The days at Po-Ahtun are remembered as a highlight of joy and attainment. 

But as the years passed, Vitvan's satisfaction with his students and the school was being offset by a growing dissatisfaction with the form and content of his instruction. 

"I was experiencing an inner dissent against my very own methods of writing and teaching. I had bravely declared to Mozumdar that I would pioneer a new approach to the Ancient Gnosis, formulate a restatement, devise a new methodology suited to Western Man. Instead, I wrote and taught in the time-worn vernacular, couching the truths I knew in mystical terminology and perpetuating the charade of occultism and metaphysics. Of course I knew better, but I could not seem to find 

68 

69 

a specific language descriptive of the awareness I had and one that I could correlate to contemporary reference. 

"Mysticism belonged to a past cycle. It had begun to eclipse at the close of the Periclean Age. It is an uncertain path at best: an unstable approach to knowing. Its appeal is to emotional experience, not to the highest criteria of truth. Elevated states of consciousness can be contacted mystically, emotionally, with feeling, love, etc., but they are extremely difficult to stabilize. Up today and down tomorrow. Mysticism, in fact, can be quite dangerous. There is simply no force that can be brought to bear on gains made. 

"The Higher Ones had allowed the mystical approach to subside and move toward obscurism. A new cycle was brought in to focus consciousness on objectified phenomenal appearance. Under this direction lower Manas or mind developed the faculties of reason and analysis. When these rational skills are fully evolved they serve as tools with which man can synthesize the findings of his cortical investigation. They can also act as stabilizers to the emotional response engendered by the quickening force of emerging consciousness. 

"Thus justification by reason becomes a fortification against the 'flown-away virtue' of mystical sensation and feeling. And in time mankind will come to use these newly developed faculties of mind for the true purpose for which they 

71 

were intended: to substantiate the next step in our evolutionary expansion and development. 

"I operated in full knowledge of all of this but I continued in spite of myself to orient my writing and teaching to a mystical point of view. It was a strange dilemma. The very terms 'metaphysics' and 'occult' had become distasteful to me, but I continued to sprinkle them over everything. 

"Occult, of course, means hidden or secret. In terms of the Gnosis there is no such thing. Even the Good Book says, 'For there is nothing hidden which shall not be manifested, neither was anything kept secret.' To be sure, in ancient times symbolism was a secret language, but it was used by reason of the fact that the consciousness of the students of the Wisdom Teachings had not evolved, racially speaking, to the state where they could grasp abstract ideas and meaning. The consciousness of objective identification was so powerful that they had to have something to correspond to their objective state, which was represented by symbols--something they could see and touch. 

"Today we should be able to dispense with symbols because it is possible to clearly describe meaning. This would be a tremendous advantage, not only in individual development but in the advance of the race consciousness as a whole. We needn't have to resort to symbols as representation. Because of the extension of intelligence today (primitive as it is relative to what is yet to know) 

72 

we could talk about the structure-function-order of the Eternal Wisdom and penetrate into perception without using symbols, which in effect obscure meaning, causing it to be 'hidden.' 

"I clearly perceived this and I knew from my seven years with Mozumdar that there is no such thing as a 'secret teaching.' If there are secrets they do not depend on the Master but on the disciple. The Master can open the door but it is for the disciple to perceive what lies beyond. The only secrets that exist exist for individuals with dull minds, because 'seeing, they see not, and hearing they hear not, neither do they understand.' So where and what is the occult? 

"By the same token, metaphysics is a meaningless word. 'Meta' signifies something beyond, transcending, higher, other than. In general usage in the race consciousness of the past cycle, metaphysical teachings and doctrines, as well as religions, carry an inference that they are 'other worldly,' an intellectual refinement of the old penitential preachers' exhortations of my youth: 'This world is not my home,' a denotation that somewhere beyond this world is Reality. 

"Now the very idea that this world is an illusion, that there is no truth, reality or substance in matter, should, I believed, be firmly contradicted and counteracted without equivocation, on the grounds that this attitude contravenes the empirically established facts, leads to psychological 

73 

inconsistencies which create inner conflicts, engenders disorders in the psyche, induces an attempt to function in opposition to the natural structure of the nervous system, creates an unbalanced state and results in a series of psychosomatic maladjustments, to say the least. On top of which, it just ain't so! This world, universe, creating process, etc., is a dynamic energy system, and when it is clearly and properly perceived, represents Reality--and there is no 'other than,' beyond, behind, or hiding in the wings. 

"Now isn't that clear? ... And I knew that. But at the time I could not for the life of me find a nomenclature outside of the traditional mystical language with which to address myself." 

In his desire to find a proper framework for describing what he was later to call "the ongoing process," Vitvan determinedly extended his own education. 

"I registered for any course pertinent to me, especially those in science, and I greatly increased my reading. I was dedicated to finding a way to describe the Ancient Gnosis in contemporary terms. 

"I had read that whole new systems of mathematics had been formulated by theorists to give proper delineation to new concepts. Well, I was not so ambitious as to attempt a new language, but I could not accept the oft-heard criticism that the English idiom lacked the subtleties of construction 

74 

necessary to the expression of abstract ideas. 

"It seemed to me to be a matter of the right approach--of finding a new architecture to build upon. What I was really looking for was some kind of fulcrum to move the weight of words, with easy balance, from obstacle to catalyst and clear the path to knowing." 

Vitvan was to pursue that quest for almost ten years. Then in the summer of 1937 one of Vitvan's sons visited him while on a semester break from his university studies. Vitvan always enjoyed the companionship of his children. They were all eager and intelligent youngsters and the stimulation and camaraderie they afforded Vitvan always buoyed him whenever they came. 

The young man was in his second year at college. As with all previous visits, it was great fun to try to confound Father with some new idea or intellectual gambit. This time it was a book. 

"Here," he said, "Here's something I'll bet you haven't read--something that's going to be a brand new experience for you." 

He thrust the volume into his father's hand. The book was Science and Sanity--An Introduction to Non-Aristotelian Systems and General Semantics, by Count Alfred Korzybski. Vitvan began casually to thumb through the book. But as his eyes scanned the material he began to read with interest. Soon he was deeply absorbed. 

The boy protested, "I didn't mean that you 

75 

must read it now, Father." 

But Vitvan was totally immersed in his reading. 

That evening he did not come to supper and the light in his room burned through the night. Late the following afternoon he finished the book. He could not contain his excitement. 

"I've found it!" he said. "Here is the key. This man has shown me the way. It is possible now, with this system, to correlate the Ancient Gnosis with modern scientific findings; to formulate a new articulation suitable to present the Wisdom Teachings on a level comparable to our present state of development." 

In the next three months Vitvan diligently studied Korzybski's book. Finally he wrote to the publishing house for permission to correspond with Korzybski himself. He soon established a regular exchange of letters with Korzybski and eventually determined to go to Chicago and take a course in General Semantics that Korzybski was teaching at the University of Chicago. He made the trip to Chicago in the Fall of 1938. Vitvan was then 55 years old. 

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CHAPTER ELEVEN 

Science and Sanity had been published in 1933. The origin of the work was a new functional description of man formulated by Korzybski and presented in an earlier work, Manhood of Humanity, in 1921. Manhood of Humanity was a careful analysis of uniquely human potentialities--among them the singular ability of humans to pass on to succeeding generations all that came before, enabling each new generation to being where the former left off. Korzybski called the characteristic "time binding." Using "time binding" as a premise and combining additional theories concerning the relationship between symbols (including words and human behavior) he refined his work in further papers in 1924, 1925 and 1926. 

Science and Sanity was the culmination of his efforts. It was both a criticism of the present structure and usages of human society, due in part to its failure to keep pace with the advance of knowledge in the physical and biological sciences, and an attempt to produce in methodological outline a practical theory of values with extensional techniques for education and self-guidance, aimed 

77 

at focusing the reader's attention on the importance of what Korzybski called the "consciousness of abstracting"--that is, a full awareness that the object is not the event or the submicroscopic process, the symbol or label is not the object, and that an inference is not a description. 

He thus provided a technique by which the vicious consequences of erroneous verbal habits and the resultant dangerous identifications they establish could be eliminated, developing in their stead a methodology to break down the awful sense of separateness or "non-allness" that so permeates human thinking, and creating new symbols that would be more meaningful and pertinent to referents in life facts. 

It is impossible to estimate the significance of Science and Sanity on Vitvan, or the impact of his subsequent instruction by Korzybski. The theory of non-Aristotelian systems and General Semantics gave Vitvan the key he had so long sought. He found the crucial missing link for the presentation of the Wisdom Teachings in a modern variant. It was eventually to provide him with a new dimension of expression to accurately describe the step-by-step infolding and unfolding of the palingenetic process. Here was a definitive language of contemporary referents with which to condition new thought patterns in a student's mind; to enable him to describe the ancient cosmology free of old reifications and non-referent concepts; and 

78 

to be at last with what Vitvan disgustedly referred to as "meta-fizzling." 

The nature of the work ahead was apparent to Vitvan. 

"I knew that eventually I would have to rebuild the entire structure of my teachings. And I recognized also that this would be most difficult on the many students already attached to the work, as well as the new ones coming in. I realized that I could no longer afford to drop suggestions; no longer leave it to their intuition to bring them through. I would have to be responsible for reconditioning their thinking. I wondered if I could be stern enough to handle the task." 

Apparently Korzybski sensed the problem. In their first interview he dramatically brought the point home. When Korzybski arrived at the office where Vitvan awaited him he took one look at Vitvan, seized him by the shoulders and pulled him to his feet. Then he ran him head first into the wall. 

When Vitvan had sufficiently recovered to speak he said, "What in the name of God was that all about?" 

"God is a word without a referent, sir," said Korzybski. "I bumped your head because you are soft. Sentiment is repugnant in you. The job you must do can only be done if you get hard. You must get hard." 

Vitvan said later, "He knew where and how I 

79 

had been functioning. The heart center was my direct contact with anyone I taught. He knew that I had to get tough if I was going to make the next steps up available to my students. He used example most effectively." 

In subsequent interviews the men developed a strong rapport. Korzybski was an admirer of Gerald Massey's extraordinary works, as was Vitvan.9 He felt strongly that, with Massey, he labored for a time in the future. 

"You know," he told Vitvan, "Massey said once, 'Not now, but only after many years will the merit of these works be known.' I feel the same is true of my General Semantics." 

Vitvan argued that Korzybski's name had already become famous among the intellectuals of the time. But Korzybski was adamant. 

"No, no. What is happening is a vogue. A short vogue. My works will grow obscure and lie unread for a season. But one day they will emerge again and their full impact will be felt." 

On one occasion Vitvan chided Korzybski for not carrying his work further in its implications and for using Aristotelian terms in his non-Aristotelian methodology. Korzybski pounded on the desk: 

___________________ 

9. See Gerald Massey's A Book of the Beginnings; The Natural Genesis; Ancient Egypt: Light of the World; and Gerald Massey's Lectures. 

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"I have to hold this within the accepted academic circles. If I opened the door you suggest--and make no mistake, I could open it--I would be repudiated. They would call me an occultist or a metaphysician. I would be done for. And so would my theories. 

"This way I can get it into the academic world. The implications for further investigation are inherent in the work, but others like yourself will take it on from here. But I promise you, you will have to work outside of academic circles for many, many years to come." 

At the seminar's conclusion Vitvan bade goodbye to Korzybski, whom he was ever afterward to refer to as Blessed Count Alfred, and returned to Po-Ahtun. 

He did not immediately convey the shape of his thinking to those around him. He felt he needed time in isolation to adjust his thoughts. He packed deep into the mountains and spent the better part of two weeks in a remote cabin in the Upper Range. 

When he returned to the Ashram he wrote in his journal, "I am refreshed now and revitalized. There in the High Country I was able to let all that had gone before drop away. I remained polarized to the highest state of consciousness that I was capable of reaching. I remained for that period in constant attendance to the Higher Ones who direct the destiny of man. 

81 

"Standing in that perception I viewed the pattern of the New Cycle now dawning and realized that in this transition period between two great Ages, the compelling urge of mankind's expanding consciousness would operate in a greater number of persons than ever before in the history of our particular race psyche. Those who are seekers now (1939) are few in number, but in thirty years time there will be an explosion in the race. Hundred of thousands will begin the transition to a new and entirely different manifold of values that will characterize the New Cycle pattern. 

"In this new manifold of values pursuit of pleasure, profit, acquisition of property, evanescent chimeras, etc., will have little place. On the other hand, one's intrinsic worth, his alignment with the natural order, his degree of Self-awareness, his recognition and acceptance in and by the Higher Order, his degree of development, his status 'on the Path of attainment,' etc., will constitute the criteria from which his and the new values will be derived. 

"Great numbers of mankind will stand on the brink of that transition state in the years ahead. And they will need strong guidelines to facilitate their orientation to this new consciousness. The Ancient Ones called this transition the First Crossing. It represents the first step in the infolding process: a crossing over from consciousness identified in and under the limitations of sense 

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and the manifold of values derived therefrom, to a higher awareness of identity with the individual Power-to-be-conscious as an epitomization and representation of the cosmic process as a whole. 

"To make the First Crossing one must have instruction from a knowledgeable source and every assistance. The generally held opinions and expectations about this transition are entirely different from a priori experience of it. 

"It is apparent that this is the task at hand: that I prepare a reformation of the teachings to meet the needs of those to come. And that it be done with the new tools provided by my association with Blessed Count Alfred, devised to represent the Gnosis for the coming ones at the present level of their development. For they will be the forerunners to the New Age." 

Vitvan did not actually begin this work for many years. 

"The Idea was born," he said, "on Mind level, but I had to wait with serene patience until the period of germination eventuated in the birth of concept on the objective plane." 

He did, however, being a new outline in his personal instruction to the residents at the Ashram. Some of his students could not make the adjustment to the new demands that required so much in personal effort. They had spent years reflecting in their Teacher's personal attainment, content to draw from the "Darshan" of his presence. They 

83 

viewed the explicit nature of the new instruction as "mentalizing" and Vitvan's insistence upon direct functional participation as "regimentation," and many drifted away. 

Vitvan continued to lecture around the country as before, carefully constructing a new format for his presentation. But he did not formulate his teaching into writing. His audiences were less receptive than before, but he was not dismayed. 

"I felt a little like a peddler who had somehow or other gotten hold of next year's fashions. While I greatly delighted in the cut of the new raiment, the clientele was less enthusiastic. They patiently and respectfully examined the goods but only wanted what they were used to, and nothing else. I knew, of course, the time was not yet at hand, so I simply held them in the radiance of love and they responded and absorbed it whether they were consciously aware of it or not." 

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CHAPTER TWELVE 

At the end of the year Vitvan took time off to journey to upper New York State to meet with Paul Richard. Richard was a French poet. He had many years earlier traveled throughout the world seeking a spiritual Teacher. Not finding the one he sought, he was on his return to France when he met Rabindranath Tagore in Japan. 

Tagore said, "I can refer you to my Teacher, but I do not know that he will accept you. I will write on your behalf and we will see." 

Tagore wrote to his Teacher, Aurobindo Ghose, whose Ashram was in Pondicherry, French India. In due time an affirmative answer was received and Richard returned to India to become a chela to Aurobindo. In the years following, Richard devoted himself to studying with the Master and helped Aurobindo publish his works and establish a magazine called Arya. 

Vitvan prized highly a collection of all issues of the magazine and he felt personally drawn to Aurobindo, as he was to Count Hermann A. Keyserling of Germany. 

He said, "On higher levels I have long been 

85 

aware that Aurobindo and Keyserling and myself are channels for the restatement of the Ancient Gnosis as a synthesis best described as 'Qualified Monism.'10 

"It had been my intention for many years to one day visit with these men. But now, as the approach of war seemed inevitable and would soon make all such travel impossible, I determined to pay a visit to Mr. Richard, who had been so close to Aurobindo." 

Vitvan enjoyed his time with Richard and stayed longer than he intended. 

"Paul Richard," he often said, "was one of the few men with whom I could communicate on the highest levels. His perception was of an extraordinary order. He had the remarkable abilities, the wonderful devotion and the enduring fortitude that mark those who devote their lives to the improvement of mankind. 

"I so thoroughly enjoyed being with him that I overstayed my intended time and had to hurry off to New York City for an appointment with a group of psychic investigators who had written earlier to the Po-Ahtun requesting me to attend them." 

Of his encounter with the psychics in New York he said later: 

___________________ 

10. See Vitvan's Discipline in the Natural Order, Chapter II. 

86 

"Leaving Paul Richard and proceeding to New York City was a quick descent from the sublime to the ridiculous. The group in Manhattan was a sincere lot and quite advanced in their abilities at telekinesis. Almost to a man they were able to effect such phenomena as bending light metals, stopping watches and moving small articles with psychic force. But they were highly secretive and totally devoted to the single intention of perfecting these little powers of the psychic nature. I had so shortly left one whose whole involvement in life was dedicated to the highest principles of attainment that the contrast caused me much merriment. 

"On a particular evening the group with combined effort was able to lift a full sized piano to ceiling height. Everyone was elated. But I could not help but reflect how much more impressive was a man like Richard who could elicit in others the capability of lifting their inner forces to the 'Christos' level. 

"I am afraid I was a disappointment to the group. I offered them very little. They believed solidly that the phenomenon they effected was achieved by directing some kind of mental force. In reality, of course, they were using mind to direct psychic forces latent in higher centers. Consequently, they labored to the point of exhaustion to exercise the slight control they had. None among them showed any interest in pursuing the higher implications of their achievements, so I was not 

87 

motivated to show them the easy way to the same ends. 

"It was a prime example of people caught in the excitement of developing the little powers and being blinded to what could be accomplished if they would abandon petty sorcery and get on with the real task at hand. 

"I remembered once when I was with Mozumdar we went to see a man who traveled the world exhibiting his ability to ignite tiny bundles of kindling, paper and cardboard by focusing psychic power. He was able to cause instant combustion in these materials. At the climax of his act he stood several feet away from a volunteer and lighted a cigaret in the helper's mouth. I was very impressed at the time. 

"I said to Mozumdar, 'Now there is a practical gift of power that is worth much.' 

"'I will tell you what it is worth,' Mozumdar said with forceful disdain. 'It is worth less,' he said, 'than the cost of a dollar cigaret lighter.' 

"Obviously he was right." 

For the next seven years Vitvan taught and lectured, waiting, as he put it, "for the commission to begin my new work." This from a man who had criss-crossed the country for thirty years giving every minute to the teachings. 

Then in May of 1945, while lecturing in Oklahoma City, that moment came. He wrote: 

"It was a lovely spring evening, cool for that 

88 

time of year, with a light breeze blowing. I had finished talking about nine-thirty and returned home with my hosts. Their house was south of the city and offered a lovely view of the town's lights on one side and the open prairie on the other. 

"We had a short meditation that evening and then my friends went to bed and I sat down at my desk to work on my correspondence. It was nearly midnight when I went to bed. Shortly before dawn I was awakened most unceremoniously. Quite literally, I was knocked out of bed by the force that filled the room. I was called to follow. 

"I slipped on my robe and walked through the house into the backyard. The patio was bathed in moonlight but it was dull and pale beside the luminosity that surrounded me. I stood transfixed in that blinding light. My consciousness soared. Then most clearly my work was described to me and the final years of my dharma were revealed." 

At the week's end Vitvan gathered to Colorado and Po-Ahtun. He gathered the close ones around him and announced that he had been told to rewrite all that he had done previously. He would extend the work and delineate as nearly as possible the full content of his realization. He was to compose a teaching to encompass the great cosmology as he could perceive it and to prepare a meticulous methodology suitable to the psyche of Western man. 

He declared that prior works were to be 

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relegated to the incinerator--going so far as purchasing any copies of his books and essays currently available at bookstores throughout the country and seeing to their destruction. (Needless to say, some of the faithful thought the edict too severe and secretly saved a few copies of the work.) He also announced that the beautiful Ashram of Po-Ahtun was to be sold and that new headquarters would be established in California until the new work was finished. Vitvan was now 62. 

For many, leaving the Ashram was heartbreaking. One dear and close disciple remarked: 

"Giving up the Po-Ahtun was the most difficult thing I endured. It was the most beautiful setting I had ever known and the years there were a treasure of rich and vital memories. Never again would I allow such attachment." 

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CHAPTER THIRTEEN 

In the late spring of 1946 Vitvan left Denver by train and journeyed to San Diego. After several temporary headquarters, the group bought ten acres of land in the mountains above Twin Oaks Valley, north of San Marcos, California. 

Vitvan named the retreat Eschatologia, for he believed that this, indeed, would be the 'final' place. He re-incorporated the teachings under the title School of the Natural Order. 

"We do this," he told the group, "because the outcome of the work must eventuate in a School--a place of learning--not confined to a single locale, but ever extending to reach the minds of men." 

Now began a period in this extraordinary man's life that derives its precedent from the unique history of all Masters of the Wisdom. He was quite literally able to step out of all identification with the personality that was Vitvan, leaving the instrumentation of mind and body to the direction of the Higher Orders in Light's regions. He became a pure channel for the sweeping awareness and perception that he had attained. 

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During this period he often wrote and spoke of Vitvan in the third person. He was able now to bring through the many profound insights granted to him in a lifetime of experiencing on the upper levels of consciousness. The creative process that began to function through the man staggers the imagination. He was, in the next ten years, to be consumed by a prodigious outflowing of productivity. 

His major quartet of books, The Natural Order Process: The Basic Teachings of the School of the Natural Order, Cosmology, The Christos and Six Days of the Creating Process, are in themselves a monumental accomplishment. They constitute the foundation for the entire structure of the Gnosis--the Wisdom of the Ages as known and taught from the beginning of man's emergence into individualized consciousness. 

Painstakingly and with meticulous concern for the beginning seeker, Vitvan describes in the first two volumes the overview of the palingenetic process and the cosmos that engenders and sustains it. He carefully marks a path for the pursuer and recounts the first efforts to be made by exercise and discipline to integrate the consciousness into active participation with the process. 

In The Christos, a profound work, Vitvan delineates the great mystery of the ever-becoming Christos as a process of attainment, not an historical event. It is the story of mankind's emerging and 

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expanding consciousness: the true sacrament hidden in the symbols and myths that were the language of the Initiates. As he has done in the first two works, he correlates this understanding with modern scientific advancements in studies of light-energy and unified field physics. 

The culmination of the quartet is Six Days of the Creating Process. This is the great arch that bestrides the three foundation pieces and rests as the dome of our intellectual understanding of the Ancient Wisdom. 

Beginning with Light and following the metamorphosing process: Light to energy to teloplasm, ectoplasm, protoplasm, cytoplasm, colloids, crystalloids and living matter, Vitvan traces the motion of creation as symbolized by "days" in the First Book of Genesis and relates the corresponding evolvement in atomic structures as described and represented in the periodic table. 

He then traces the Second Creation, that mysterious restatement that appears without introduction or explanation in Genesis II, verses 4 through 6. In empirical terminology he describes the 'nominal' creation of the earlier story as a manifestation of the Logos or Word expressed in terms of Light and its seven refractions or powers. Here Being is of the universal and timeless order, expressing itself in wholeness. 

Now the process requires, for completion, the other order of manifestation--the order of limi- 

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tation in time, space and differentiation--so as to supply analysis to its synthesis and give multiplicity to its unity. Thus the Second Creation. 

And finally Vitvan describes the returning process as it occurs both in microcosm and macrocosm. The unfolding of differentiation into unity--living matter into energy, energy into Light. 

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CHAPTER FOURTEEN 

With the 'quartet' finished he now began a systematic proliferation of his works, amplifying, extending and clarifying their intent and purpose. He carefully elaborated the major themes contained in the foundation works. He was driven to make certain that all that could be said concerning the process he was describing would be said as clearly and descriptively as possible. 

"I chose to leave no stone unturned," he said, "lest it become a stumbling block to those who will come after me." 

In so doing he would eventually, with books and essays, complete thirty additional works.11 

He wrote with a spontaneous outpouring, mostly in longhand. But on occasion the prolific stream required two secretaries working simultaneously. The power source from which he functioned engendered a capacity for work that was stupefying to behold. 

During the week he rose at dawn for medita- 

___________________ 

11. For complete list of the writings of Vitvan, see Appendix. 

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tion and then worked throughout the day at his writing table, breaking only long enough for meals and continuing long after sunset. On Saturday he secluded himself and spent the entire day in meditation. Sunday's he lectured in the small schoolhouse built on the grounds. Sunday afternoon he made himself available for personal instruction and conferences. 

Attendance usually varied on Sundays between forty and eighty persons. Many drove hundreds of miles to hear him speak and bask in the radiance of his presence. Notables, including Ananda Coomaraswamy, Gustav Stromberg and Dr. Evans-Wentz, came to listen and to spend the afternoon in discussion and exchange. 

It was as though the light that had so long permeated his being now shone at its greatest intensity, transforming its essence into the instructions he wrote, the words he spoke and the force he emanated. 

He often had difficulty shielding the force of that power from those around him. 

"From time to time," he said, "I would get carried away by what I was experiencing while talking to the group, and the forces would transmit to those listening in higher frequency than was desired. Occasionally the effect was most amusing. 

"On one particular Sunday morning I was trying to describe how objects and things appear to one after he has experienced the rising of the 

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Kundalini to the conarial center. I tried to picture for them the auric effect of Light's emanation. It is not an illusion but rather an extension of normal sight as experienced in that elevated state of consciousness. 

"One is able to see a beatific glow radiating above and around all objects and things. It appears like a shimmering, silvery aura and turns the mundane world into a fairyland. I stood in this perception, even as I was describing it. Unfortunately, I let my guard down and gathered all present up to that level of perception with me. 

"Well, I set them down as soon as I realized from the looks on their faces that they were experiencing something far beyond their present state. But afterwards the experience lingered with them and some were reluctant to leave the Field and they extended their stay with us. I chuckled, knowing how sweet the nectar of Light is and how the bees buzz once they have found it." 

The pace and the activities continued as weeks extended into months and months extended into years. There was no let-up in Vitvan's vitality or in his productivity. There were his finest years of achievement. And then, almost ten years from the day he had begun, he pronounced the work finished. 

"The Old Farmer," he said joyously, "has threshed the wheat. The seeds are ready for the planting." 

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It was a time of rejoicing for Vitvan. The high directive under which he had labored for a decade was finished. The work was complete. But as though on cue, Nature's forces moved to set the stage for the final chapter. Once again a great fire was to change the course of Vitvan's life. 

A United States Navy plane, based in San Diego, crashed on night in the high mountains 20 miles north of Eschatologia. By morning the resultant fire was racing in the direction of the Retreat, destroying everything in its path. Fire fighters moved in to combat the conflagration but nothing could contain it. By the second day it had reached Eschatologia. The tiny Ashram was surrounded on three sides by flame. 

Garden hoses had been out since early morning. Crews of students alternately sprayed the buildings and soaked the rooftops. There had been no time to evacuate. The flames now were only yards from the main house and encroaching on the school and library. The Ashram seemed doomed. 

At that moment Vitvan signaled those around him to cease their activities and stand in silence. He walked calmly down the path that led to the flower garden in front of the school. He stopped there and stood quietly with arms at his side. Seconds passed and then, with howling intensity, the wind shifted. The flames hesitated, then swept away from the Ashram, burning their way down the mountain. Eschatologia stood intact. 

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Some of the buildings were scorched and all were blackened with ash, but not one had burned. 

Some wept; others stared in numbed despair at the devastation around them. The forest was destroyed. The water shed that had held the lush vegetation was ruined. The land was scarred and barren. 

Vitvan watched as the fire roared up the canyon. They waited. Finally he strode out. He walked with casual unconcern, strolling as he had so many times before, around the perimeter of the Ashram. From time to time he knelt and brushed away the silt and ash from some young plant or greening sprig. He seemed undismayed by the desolation. It was several minutes before he returned to where they were gathered. 

"I have said goodbye to Eschatologia," he said. Then, indicating where the fire had swept, he continued: 

"The Great Mother has told us it is time now to sack the grain that is the fruit of our labor and find another place to do our planting. We will go where only the strong and stalwart can seek us out. And we will wait and watch for the crop to grow." 

He turned, and without looking back, left the mountain and the Ashram behind him. 

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CHAPTER FIFTEEN 

The School found temporary quarters in San Marcos. Work began: packing and moving the remaining goods from the Retreat into storage. Vitvan continued his daily activities as usual, unperturbed by the change in locale. Some around him were amazed at his continuing enthusiasm and sense of joyous well-being after the loss of Eschatologia. 

He told them, "Read your Good Book. It says, 'Not a sparrow will fall without your Father's will.' There are no accidents in life. All events are ordered and are but the working out on the objective plane of those greater patterns conceived in the archetypal world. It is the limitation of our own consciousness that we cannot understand their direction or accept their necessity." 

One morning a student sought Vitvan out. Some years earlier she had purchased land above the Snake Valley near Baker, Nevada. She came to persuade him to drive out to that area with the thought that the School might relocate there. Vitvan's first reaction was to say that he was "too old to pioneer again." But eventually he agreed to 

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make the trip to "reconnoiter and feel the pulse of the land." 

In June of 1957 he and a handful of students drove to Nevada. They set up camp in Humboldt National Park. They had barely staked their tents when it began to snow and they huddled through one of the worst summer blizzards recorded there. Vitvan wrote of the incident, saying: 

"I suppose at 73 I should have evidenced more concern over our plight. But the food was good, the company excellent and I knew from years of observation that eventually the sun would shine again. Besides which, any old yogi worth his salt can control the effect of the elements on his physiological being." 

The storm was weathered and the group camped out through the summer. Vitvan occupied his time studying the history of the land, perusing records available to him at the county seat in Ely, 67 miles northwest of Baker. He familiarized himself with what acreage was available for purchase and in his words, "generally acclimated myself to the Field and those around me who would be my neighbors." 

At the end of August he announced: 

"We will pioneer again. And considering my years I think it safe to say--for the last time." 

The land they purchased was to demand much of all of them. 

Snake Valley had once been a paradise of blowing grass, churning springs and a great natural reservoir. Wagon trains had wound their way through this valley and many settlers who stopped to camp had stayed on to claim the land. They knew that no territory ahead would likely match the superlative beauty and resources of this fertile valley. 

But in the last 50 years over-grazing had changed the land. The reservoir was gone. The grasses had disappeared. The land was arid and unproductive. Topsoil was thin and hard caliche underneath was a barrier to cultivation. 

The School had purchased the old John Fielding property. It covered 360 acres. The buildings that remained upright were dilapidated and crumbling. Fences were down, the orchard was overgrown, deer and rabbits had stripped the garden. There was no inside plumbing and no electricity. But to Vitvan the challenge of the place was exalting. On the day they took possession of the property he told them: 

"Now we begin. You may look around you and tell me that you see broken-down buildings, a withered orchard, parched fields and a barren garden. If this is what you see, then raise your consciousness and see with my eyes. I can only see the Mother--the Great World Mother. She is asking us to hold out our hands to her, to sow her earth, to channel her springs, to prune her fruit trees, to direct the strength of our limbs to building. She 

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will share in every task. Her love for us is boundless. She calls to us to thrill with her to the pulsation of the eternal genetrix." 

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CHAPTER SIXTEEN 

The task was begun. Two prefab cabins were raised; a trailer house was brought in from San Diego. A tool shed and workshop was erected. Tools and heavy equipment were purchased. For the next few years hardship and hard work were the rule. The old buildings came down and new ones rose in their places. Fences were mended; rocks were cleared from the ground. Alfalfa turned the fields green, grass was planted and gardens bloomed. 

Vitvan worked with the vitality of a man half his age. He shared the chores, taught his students and gave unstintingly of himself to a constant stream of visitors. 

When the main house was finally completed the large dining room was utilized as a classroom and lecture hall, along with its regular functions. Eventually the perennial schoolhouse was built and class work and Sunday talks were reinstated there. 

Vitvan always spoke without notes or references. The context of his ideas flowed spontaneously from the high level of consciousness functioning in and through him. But Vitvan no longer 

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transcribed his instruction. 

"I consider the hours already spent hunched over a writing pad to qualify me for retirement," he said. 

However, it was thought that the inestimable value of the 'family talks.' and Sunday lectures must somehow be preserved. It took a great deal of persuasion, but Vitvan finally agreed to being "plugged in like some kind of damned automated toaster" and all of the subsequent sessions were tape recorded. His living words--over 100 hours of recording--remain with us: a priceless addition to his library of work. 

Time passed and the living became easier. There were daily chores, teaching continued and every Sunday brought visitors, but most of the building and reclaiming was finished. 

Vitvan enjoyed these years. He loved the land. It held a constant fascination for him. He could walk for hours over the hills without tiring. Each rock he picked up or wildflower he stooped to touch was a new and thrilling experience. He wrote to a friend: 

"I was not certain how I would adjust to my new environment after so many years in the effortless climate of California. But I guess I am a country body at heart. I like the change of seasons. I delight in the great expanse of space around me. From the front porch I can look down across the valley and see for fifty miles, and then I can turn 

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my head and look up to the majestic peaks of Mt. Wheeler and companions. There are growing things of every variety and animals of many species. It makes me remember a benediction my mother taught me: 'Blessed is the Lord for He is bountiful.'" 

Of course there were other dimensions to Home Farm particular to himself. 

"I wish everyone here," he wrote, "could experience Home Farm as I am able to experience it. There are so many worlds to know if one can get loose to know them. It's a matter of breaking identification with the configurational self--the 'I am the body' idea. Under hypnosis it is a simple procedure to draw an imaginary circle around a subject and suggest to him that a force field has been set up that he cannot penetrate. The poor fellow will struggle to the point of exhaustion trying to break through it. 

"Much in the same manner is consciousness identified with the 'body' idea. It thinks it is captured within. In reality quite the opposite is true. The configuration or body is within consciousness, not the other way around. Needless to say, our identification with the physical vehicle has been focused for millenniums and the idea is extremely difficult to disconnect. But once it is broken the limitations that are restrictive on the objectified level--that is, the dimensions of time, space, etc.--are overcome. There are myriad worlds to explore 

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here." 

The routine of Vitvan's life did not alter, but with the passing years the thrust of his dharma was diminishing. He took time now for rest and reflection. His writings were available to anyone who knew him or had heard of the work, but no effort was made to publish. The time had not yet come. 

One summer evening as he sat with the others under a shade tree on the lawn he said: 

"The day is approaching when the many will seek what the few have found. When that time comes, make the work available. Take it out from here and see to its dissemination. Home Farm must remain as the hub of the wheel but spokes must be extended in every direction." 

Then he paused and let his gaze wander out over the valley below. He continued: 

"I will not live to see it ha