My gift to you this Christmas season is from Savitri Book 10, Cant 3 by Sri Aurobindo; a few selections on joy and love.

A secret air of pure felicity

Deep like a sapphire heaven our spirits breathe;

Our hearts and bodies feel its obscure call,

Our senses grope for it and touch and lose.

If this withdrew, the world would sink in the Void;

If this were not, nothing could move or live.

A hidden Bliss is at the root of things.

A mute Delight regards Time’s countless works;...

 

The All-Wonderful has packed heaven with his dreams,

He has made blank ancient Space his marvel- house;

He spilled his spirit into Matter’s signs:

His fires of grandeur burn in the great sun,

He glides through heaven shimmering in the moon;

He is beauty carolling in the fields of sound;

He chants the stanzas of the odes of Wind;

He is silence watching in the stars at night;

He wakes at dawn and calls from every bough,

Lies stunned in the stone and dreams in flower and tree....

 

A will to live persists, a joy to be.

There is a joy in all that meets the sense,

A joy in all experience of the soul,

A joy in evil and a joy in good,

A joy in virtue and a joy in sin:

Indifferent to the threat of karmic law,

Joy dares to grow upon forbidden soil,

Its sap runs through the plant and flowers of  Pain....

 

All our earth starts from mud and ends in sky,

And Love that was once an animal’s desire,

Then a sweet madness in the rapturous heart,

An ardent comradeship in the happy mind,

Becomes a wide spiritual yearning’s space.

A lonely soul passions for the Alone,

The heart that loved man thrills to the love of  God,

A body is his chamber and his shrine.

Then is our being rescued from separateness;

All is itself, all is new-felt in God:...

When unity is won, when strife is lost

And all is known and all is clasped by Love

Who would turn back to ignorance and pain?

—Bill Coffman, 2002

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I wish our national anthem were not the one about the bombs bursting in air, but the one about purple mountain majesties and amber waves of grain. It’s easier to sing and closer to the heart of what we really have to sing about. A land as broad and green as ours demands of us thanksgiving and a certain breadth of spirit. It invites us to invest our hearts most deeply in invulnerable majesties that can never be brought down in a stroke of anger. If we can agree on anything in difficult times, it must be that we have the resources to behave more generously than we do, and that we are brave enough to rise from the ashes of loss as better citizens of the world than we have ever been. We’ve inherited the grace of the Grand Canyon, the mystery of the Everglades, the fertility of an Iowa plain—we could crown this good with brotherhood. What a vast inheritance for our children that would be, if we were to become a nation humble before our rich birthright, whose graciousness makes us beloved.

        – Excerpted from “Small Wonder” by Barbara Kingsolver

 

—Jane Murray, 2002

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Finish every day and be done with it. You have done what you could. Some blunders and absurdities no doubt crept in; forget them as soon as you can. Tomorrow is a new day; begin it well and serenely and with too high a spirit to be cumbered with your old nonsense. This day is all that is good and fair. It is too dear, with its hopes and invitations, to waste a moment on the yesterdays.   

 

—Ralph Waldo Emerson

Happy Holidays to all

Dorothy Damon, 2002

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I found this meditation practice in a recent issue of Shambala Magazine. At first I thought it was too much for me. I didn’t want to open again to all the pain of September 11. A spark of doubt enters the mind when images of pain and fear are called up. What if we are engulfed by those feelings of sadness and grief?

But I persevered and discovered that even in the midst of the fear and the pain there is a quiet space, a turning point. Sadness does turn to love and compassion – if we don’t contract and pull away. The discipline of attention and equanimity in meditation comes to fruition here. We can stand the pain and we can just observe what arises. And love will arise from sadness.

Then if we stop and attend to each step of the meditation in turn, a process of transformation unfolds: love into devotion, devotion into prayers, prayers into a response from the Blessed One, from the eternal light.  The power of that light pacifies the fear and confusion.  But at each step we must pause and wait, refusing to turn away or to contract.  Opening a little space around the fear allows something else to emerge.  With patience and practice, the All-pervading peace descends, the promise is fulfilled.

The Light of All-Pervading Peace

One brick won’t build a house.  But brick by brick, a house will get built. So, one prayer or the prayers of one person will not change the world.  But if we pray or meditate, we will contribute to healing and rebuilding lives.

So we must get involved in contributing little by little by doing meditations and prayers.  That is what we can and must do.

Think about the terrible images, painful feelings, and frightening stories of September 11, and the suffering that has followed from it.  Let these shake up our bodies and wake up our minds with powerful feelings of sadness and pain.

Then let the power of sadness turn into strong thoughts of love and compassion, into the wish from the bottom of your heart to save all from their suffering  (without letting yourself feel hatred or anger toward the perpetrators).

Then let the power of that love emanate a strong energy of devotion to the Blessed One, the body of wisdom, love and power, who is embodiment all the enlightened ones and the true nature and pure quality of the universe as it is.

Then turn the power of your devotion into the energy of prayers, the all-pervading sound of calling from the bottom of your heart for healing blessings.

Then think that blessings of love and peace are emanating from the Blessed One in the form of beams of rainbow light, the light of peace and joy.  The blessing lights touch the bodies of all – those who have died, those who are suffering, and the whole universe.

Think that by the mere touch of the blessing light, all fear, confusion, and suffering are pacified, like darkness by sunlight.  All beings are transformed into bodies of blessing light.  All are filled with feelings of peace, joy and strength.

Finally, feel the all-pervading peace, and let your mind and the minds of all (especially those who are suffering) melt as one.  Rest in that feeling — the awareness of oneness in peace — over and over again.  The nature of everything is one, the awareness of the eternal peace.                                                                                                                  —n Tulka Thondup Rinpoche

I hope each one who reads this blessing will feel the touch of that  peace.

 —Jim Dalton, 2002

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As a source of inspiration for my contribution to this newsletter, I drew a card, at random, from my deck of ‘Magical Spell’ cards. The card I drew was entitled “Fertility”. It read,

 If this spell chose you, the Universe would love to help you start and nurture a new project, maybe even a new life. Take your time and perform this spell without fear-you’ll be harnessing the fertile powers of the Goddesses of the Universe, and they’ll adore helping you. After all, new life is their specialty.

I thought to myself, Fertility? But it’s wintertime, seems like a strange time for new beginnings…However, I decided to do some research on the web to see if I could find a relationship between fertility and winter. This is what I found,

Also known as: Yuletide, Alban Arthuan, Winter Solstice marks the longest night of the year…In the time of the ancient tribes this was a time of celebration, for it meant the turning point of winter and the eventual return of spring. Yule is the time when we honor the Goddess for giving birth to the sun once more…The waning (diminishing) sun is overtaken by the waxing (increasing) sun, thus the days become longer... Yule is a time when we do rituals and celebrate the increasing daylight, to renew, and to see the world through the eyes of a child. Spells done at Yule tend to raise our spirits, and bring harmony, peace, and joy. (Christina Aubin, 1996)

 

As I contemplated the notion of the goddess giving birth, I recalled a recent article I’d read by Vitvan on ‘Woman’s Place in the New Civilization’. Written during his Sacred Science years, Vitvan discusses the role of women as “a focalization of the fecundating force of the universe.” He elaborates,

There is a great cosmic night of rest in which there is no manifestation, in which there is nothing; Scripturally speaking, it is ‘darkness upon the face of the deep’ and the ‘world without form and void.’ Out of the great cosmic night there is an awakening; it is a cosmic awakening, and the first evidence of that awakening is the mother principle, a cosmic substance that emerges out of the cosmic night…All subsequent differentiation, individualization, focalization or what you please, is produced by the mother, the cosmic mother, the mother God, the mother principle.     —Vitvan

So, if I were to try to integrate the meanings I have extracted from these various sources I would say: as we enter the darkness of winter remember there is a cosmic mother, a great Goddess waiting to emerge. Out of this emergence one can manifest new projects, new life, new light.

To paraphrase Christina Aubin – May the wisdom of past experience begin to glimmer. May the experiences we yielded over the harvest season of times gone past begin to be reborn as wisdom, new light, to guide us further down the paths we have chosen.

Much love to all,

Nomi Martin, 2002

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ANOTHER CYCLE

With the coming chill

My thoughts slow

like sap in winter's trees

Old habits & memories fall away

like leaves turning from green to gold;

drifting slowly to the cold ground;

My energy will flow once more

as the leaves bud again in the spring.

In winter's icy embrace I'll contemplate

& assimilate what's gone before;

as the bare trees stand naked

awaiting spring's kiss of new growth.

Once more, I observe the yearly cycle

of birth and death

of death and re-birth.

May you too assimilate the lessons learned

this fall and become re-born in the spring.

 

—John B. Free, 2002

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Stacey, Kyle, Kaitlyn, and I (Michael) lost our home in Julian, California, due to a forest fire. We came to Home Farm (which is always home to me) with much encouragement from family and friends. It was heartening to be welcomed so warmly.

Stacey and the kids have never lived in a place that has four seasons and are excited at the prospect of watching the Wheel of the Year turn. We are all benefiting from the healthy and nurturing environment we have found here.

As we settle into our new home during the Holiday Season, I can think of no greater Thanks and no greater Holiday Gift than to be here again.

Many Holiday Greetings and Thanks,

Michael Satriono, 2002

Be Thankful

Be thankful that you don’t already have everything you  desire.
If you did, what would there be to look forward to?.

Be thankful for the difficult times.
During those times you grow.

Be thankful for your limitations
Because they give you opportunities for improvement.

Be thankful for each new challenge
Because it will build your strength and character.

Be thankful for your mistakes
They will teach you valuable lessons.

Be thankful when you're tired and weary
Because it means you've made a difference.

                        —Author unknown

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On July 30, 2002, my life changed. In a matter of hours all that I had worked for literally went up in smoke in a forest fire in California. As Mike and I sat at the evacuation center that night watching the amber glow of the fire in the canyon I had two thoughts; “Thank the Gods my kids are safe in Utah with my parents” and “Dang, my stuff burns with a lot of color.”

 

When you are placed in a position where you no longer have anything, no home, no truck, no items of the past, you begin to reassess what your life was really about. Was it about your vehicle, was it about your possessions, was it about where you lived.  I came to realize that it wasn’t. Everything of true value survived the fire. Mike and I were safe. My kids were safe. My dog and cat were safe. A small amount of our personal belongings survived. And we learned how many friends, both met and unmet, we really had.

So what am I grateful for at this time, this year? I am grateful to the Deity  for giving me a new adventure. I am grateful that I did not have a lot to pack on this journey. I am grateful that They sent me to a wonderful community that has opened their arms to us and treated us like family. I am grateful for an amazing place to raise my kids, a place to grow on my path, and a place to recover. And I am grateful to be doing this with an extraordinary, understanding and supportive partner. That is what I am grateful for.

 

Gratitude unlocks the fullness of life. It turns what we have into enough, and more. It turns denial into acceptance, chaos to order, confusion to clarity. It can turn a meal into a feast, a house into a home, a stranger into a friend. Gratitude makes sense of our past, brings peace for today, and creates a vision for tomorrow.

                          —Melody Beattie

 

Blessed Yule, Merry Christmas and

 A Joyous New Year,                   

       —Stacey Van Natta, 2002

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O Christmas Tree,

O Christmas Tree,

How much you have grown

Since the last time I saw you!

In the morning sky so blue!

O Christmas Tree,

O Christmas Tree,

How much you have grown!

 — Kaitlyn VanNatta, age13 ,2002

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Hey Everyone! I hope that you are all having a wonderful year. I can hardly believe that it’s almost a new year—2003—incredible! Well, I just wanted to share with y’all one of my favorite memories of Christmas at Home Farm. Even though I am almost 21 and am away at school for much of the year, for me it just isn’t Christmas until I am at home with my Home Farm family and until I have found the PERFECT  tree and then decorated it.

Every year since I can remember I always go out to find the perfect Christmas tree. Many different people have gone with me on this quest (those of you who have gone know that it truly is a quest and thanks for having gone with me!): it used to be my dad, then John Sheppard, then Dustin, and finally one of my closest high school friends, Sean, comes with me now. Each year we get ready to go out on the search by buying the tree tags, finding a truck, getting a saw, and then the search begins! I am one, possibly the most, of the pickiest people possible when it comes to finding the perfect tree. We usually end up hiking up and down many, many hills before finding a tree that passes muster. People will tell you that I like really big, really fat trees, which is true. People will also try to tell you that I purposely find the tree farthest away from the truck that also requires going up and down many hills. Now it isn’t on purpose that I do this, it is just that all the best trees are hidden away where determination is needed to find them. And I possess that determination! Once I finally find that perfect tree comes the fun of getting it back to the truck. There is invariably a sagebrush bush at the base that one of us needs to fight through to get at the tree bottom to start cutting it, then finding which way we want it to fall, and finally dragging it back to the truck. Even the ride back to the Farm can be full of adventure. (One time the tree flew out of the truck and went tumbling down the road!)

Once we get the tree home comes the fun of putting it up (much more complicated than one might thing—the silly things seem to have a habit of falling over...). The other part of this tradition is decorating the tree. My mom and I always have on our favorite Christmas music, with hot cocoa (or coffee), and taking out the ornaments is always a trip down memory lane. As many of our ornaments came from both sets of grandparents, there are many beautiful glass ornaments; there are also all the ones that I made throughout elementary school. This, to me, is the sign that Christmas is approaching. So, I want to wish you all the making of pleasant Christmas memories and spending the holiday season with those you love.

Merry Christmas to you all, and best wishes for the New Year!

—Love, Cassi Lydon, 2002

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In 1956 several of Vitvan’s grandchildren, my children, and children of other students living nearby were invited to come to class on the Sunday before Christmas so that Vitvan could tell them a true story about Christmas. Listening to the tape of that lecture, it is easy to realize that many words and concepts he presented were not understandable to the very young, but I suspect that the frequency got through to most of them. And the adults in attendance were delighted to hear Vitvan’s explanation of the Christmas legend. In sharing it with you here, I have elected to paraphrase and condense what he said rather than trying to edit it into a good, well-organized narrative, since it is quite apparent that Vitvan was having great difficulty finding words children could understand in order to tell the story.

In this country we are all familiar with the legend of Santa Claus. Good St. Nick, as he is also known, is said to come down the chimney bringing lots of gifts and good things to fill your Christmas stockings. But I am going to tell you how that idea got started...

I have to begin by telling you that there are two kinds of people that are born on earth. One is called humans, and the other angels.  If we lived in the orient, we would call the angels devas. But these angels are not the pretty creatures with wings flying about and playing harps like you see on your Christmas cards. Real angels, or devas, walk around in bodies just like yours and mine and they look just like humans. So it is just like we have two rivers running side by side, two streams of evolution. And when the devas cross over and become born as humans, the humans can’t understand them at all, because they think they ought to be reasonable and do everything mentally and reasonably, but they don’t at all. They do things the way they feel it. And if their parents are very wise, they will listen to their devas as they are growing up and find out what they want to do and help them accomplish it.

Here is how you can tell the difference between humans and angels. When devas are born they grow up to be artists. They love music, art, dancing, and all kinds of beautiful things. And they create all of the beauty that the rest of the people on earth enjoy. Humans like to think and be logical and reasonable. They can learn to be artists or musicians, of course, and they can develop perfect technique, but there isn’t any feeling in their playing. But when a deva plays an instrument, oh, it just stirs you, and you feel so good, and you get so happy. But they don’t think very much—and they don’t have to—they just know, feel-know. A human has to think and think, pro- and con- , and wear himself out thinking. But a deva, an angel, just feels things and is guided by the way he feels.

But sometimes it is very hard for the deva to cross over and be born in the human stream on earth. And here is why:  If you could see the earth like the angels see it, it would appear to be surrounded by a dark, murky cloud. This cloud is caused by the wars and troubles, everything mean and ugly and bad that emanates out and surrounds the earth. Devas need help to penetrate that cloud. But it is a great thing for them to be born in the human line, because they will grow faster. They will develop their Christ consciousness much faster if they can be incarnated on earth. The help they need generally comes from either Papa or Mama who is a deva who can send up their spiritual force to the top of their head like a shaft of light. Down that shaft of light a deva can come and be born.

A long time ago, 800 or 900 years before the birth of Christ, in a very wonderful country called Hellas (we call it Greece today) a very great, highly developed deva was born. His name was Orpheus. And Orpheus was able to take all of his forces up through the top of his head and send up a shaft of light that pierced the murky darkness. A great flock of devas came down that shaft of light and were born, and a few hundred years after they came down, their descendants developed many beautiful things—music, art, beauty, health and well being, and even teachings, doctrines and philosophies. So when a group of people get together that understand how to concentrate and bring all their forces up through the top of their heads, their forces will mingle and make a chimney—a shaft of light that penetrates the murky gloom around the earth. Then there are going to be a lot of devas born, because they will have the help they need to come in.

While this is a wonderful idea, as time passed it got lost. But a few wise people tried to preserve that idea, so they talked about St. Nick or Santa Claus and the chimney. We call this idea folklore. If you will study folklore, you will get behind the apparent story and you will discover that it is preserving something deep and fundamental. Back of folklore is reality. And this is the reality behind the idea of the chimney and Santa Claus. It is this idea that makes Christmas real. We might disregard the story as impossible and think that there isn’t any such thing as Santa Claus. Yes there is! And this is the truth behind it. We may not know, but we feel there is something in the spirit of Christmas. There is something real about it—and that is the reason. We all have this deep within us. The devas know it. The humans can’t think it. You have to feel it to know it. And in our consciousness as a whole race we have that deep within us. That is what gives us the spirit of Christmas, whether we understand it or not. And it is real; it is genuine; and it will last as long as we humans last on this earth. There is a spirit of Christmas, and Santa Claus is real.

— Vitvan

—Marj Coffman, 2002

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 This Christmas I would like to share with you a favorite passage from Rachel Naomi Remen's wonderful book “My Grandfather's Blessings.”  This passage quotes a prayer which had been cherished by her grandfather.

 Days pass and the years vanish and we walk sightless among miracles.  Lord, fill our eyes with seeing and our minds with knowing.  Let there be moments when your Presence, like lightning, illumines the darkness in which we walk.  Help us to see, wherever we gaze, that the bush burns, unconsumed.  And we, clay touched by God, will reach out for holiness and exclaim in wonder, "How filled with awe is this place and we did not know it.”

 

May the coming year bring to us all many moments in which we walk illumined by light and aware of the miracles which surround us every days.

—Susan Wetmore, 2002

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The Sobbing Breath

Control and manipulation of the breath has been used by spiritual and psychological practitioners for millennia. It can be used to tranquillize or suppress the emotions, or alternately, to drive hidden emotional complexes out into the open (as in body work like Reichian, or Rebirthing). Both techniques have a useful place.

In 1973, upon the advice of Dr. John Gozzi, I began 5 years of Reichian body/breath work with Dr. Israel Regardie. That kind of practice is centered around finding configurational-emotional dead-spots (shown as unfeeling parts of the musculature which are chronically rigid emotional suppression mechanisms, called Character Armoring) and breaking them down by deep-massage coupled with breathing to over-stimulate the armoring, until it gives up its defensiveness, and lets it all go. This results in a big release of old defensive patterns, and a free flow of energy all across the body, up and down, like a return to a childlike, even infant state. It is very warm and fuzzy.

Later, I spent another 5 years studying Taoism and its energetic practices of internal energy circulation (Chi Kung). Here, emotional complexes are not delved into, but are neutralized or transformed as they arise, “bad” energy being either discharged, or in advanced work, being transmuted into “good” energy (a good Taoist never throws away energy, but collects and saves it for higher work).

All of this has given me some insights into how to use breath in what Vitvan calls the Purificatory Process, wherein one deals with emotional/mental garbage that arises from the subconscious psyche, learning that the contents of the personality are not one’s true Self.  This sounds great on paper, but when you are in the throes of severe identification with your ideas and feelings, you against the world, it takes all your resources to not get swept up in the cyclones of energy.

When one is emotional, their breathing often becomes rigid and frozen, or shallow. They inbreathe in little spurts: they keep pumping themselves up, pushing the survival of their personality. The extreme would be like a panic attack, where one hyperventilates. If you inbreathe more than you outbreathe, you over-inflate yourself, which creates in internal pressure and stress. To relax, to get relief, you need to emphasize the outbreath.

People go to yoga classes to learn how to do the full breath (to breathe from the diaphragm), but this is usually still controlled by the cortex, ergo, controlled by the ego, our old friend and nemesis, who tries to use the breath to keep the charade going, to suppress pain, and, for heaven’s sake, not to let those deep fears arise. It may take a crisis to override the cortex.

Sometimes we are not aware enough to get ourselves the relief we need. But our Higher Self will work to get around our stressed-out over-defensiveness, our stiff holding patterns. It (we) creates disasters and defeats in our lives so that we are forced to let it all go. 

So…the Sobbing Breath….what do I mean? What is that? Have you ever noticed (ironically it seems) how refreshed and good you might feel, after crying your eyes out after having been beaten up by life and forced to have some old BS pried out of your “cold dead fingers?”  When life overpowers you and hammers your cortical controls down, deeper, older centers take over, and your shallow chest-breathing is taken over by deep down belly-shaking sobbing, spasms of relief.

When you are in utter defeat, and have given up to your sad fate (O woe is us!) you’ll notice some more ancient intelligence arises. When you cry out in gasping agony, the little monkey-boy cortex has been swept aside. The greater self, the ancient one, is in control, the one that has carried you up through the ages, long before the little think-tank between your ears got funded.

So how can we use the “Sobbing Breath” to help us out in our moments of emotional stress? It’s fairly easy to connect up to it. When you want to get out of some emotional mess, breathe out, sucking in your gut and forcing out all the air; then push some more out, and then push out even more, pulling in your belly (diaphragm), sucking back your stomach like you want it to reach your spine. Hold this VOID as long as you can, like when you were trying to hold your breath underwater and thought you could not go another second without bursting. Do this until the involuntary intelligence takes over, and you gasp in the air like a drowning man. You’ll see that the cortex and all its defense mechanisms have been rudely thrown out of the saddle, and your deepest most basic survival mind has come into control. Do this a few times and you’ll be surprised how quickly negative emotions are unhorsed.

Is there an “esoteric” side to this? Yes there is (thank you for asking!)  Normally we think of the outbreath as just the absence of air, a kind of non-entity, certainly not of equal existential importance to the inbreath. Our forms are like the Macy’s Day Parade balloons, needing to be constantly inflated by taking in prana through the inbreath. But that is only half the story. The outbreath is special in its own way: it is the counterforce of the unmanifest, what we call the Void, all that which is the unseen space between us all. While the inbreath builds our personality up, the outbreath dissolves us back into the Oneness.

When we use the word “Void” it seems to be an abstraction without referent, a metafizzical thingamabob. But in actuality, our very form arises from the Void, the unformed all-potential Mother Substance. Our form is a pattern brought into existence by the stirring-up action of the Power-to-be-Conscious, but the stuff of our beingness is that of the Mother, of the Void, that which existed prior to forms arising, the Formless. When sages call it “empty” they don’t mean it is imaginary, but that it is beyond mental imaging. Far from being imaginary, it is the stuff of space itself, the space “between” us, that space in which there appears to our senses to be no forms.

Have you had an uplifted experience at one time wherein all of the space around you seemed to be a tangible consciousness, and you knew yourself not to be alone at all, but to be held in a protective enveloping Mother’s arms which cradled your very existence? Then you know that this space between us is really substance (“that which stands beneath”).

One time I was fasting for three days (yoga amaroli) and was highly sensitized, and I was doing Chi Kung inner energy exercises. When I breathed in, I could feel it drawing up from the center of the earth filling my form; but when I breathed out, the breath seemed to empty out back into the earth, and simultaneously, another force poured into me from over my head, forcing out the inbreath. I was being breathed up and in from the earth, then down and in from the Void. I saw that “I” was breathing in on the inbreath, but on the outbreath “IT” was breathing into me. We, our existence, is part of a great circulation of Light moving between the Form-less and the Form-fill.

We exist as both simultaneously. A perfect mediation is an alternation between these two poles, or an awareness of both being formless Void and form-arising all at the same time, of being Big Self and little self.

—Jim Woolsey, 2002

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I am sometimes asked, usually by folks not in our School, if we consider ourselves Christians.  I answer by giving my distinction between those who believe that Christ died to “forgive” their sins and guarantee their salvation, and those of us who believe that an historical Christ came and showed us the way to live out our own ongoing, as did Buddha, Mohammed, Lao Tsu, et.,  all Masters. 

Recently I was mailing out a copy of  Vitvan's Bible Lessons and turned to Lesson 5, The Birth of the Christ— Luke 2:7-16, and decided to share this with our readers:

 This lesson is an introduction to the esoteric interpretations of the life of Jesus the Christ according to my vision of that life, which may seem to you a startling departure from the commonly accepted understanding... 

In this school we accept as a historical fact the teaching that Jesus the Christ lived upon the earth and walked among men and taught them.  But the importance of his life to us lies not in the historical fact of his existence, but in that he personifies and epitomizes our own potentiality.  If this were not true, it would not benefit us that such a teacher lived some nineteen hundred years ago (1930).  We might become emotional over it, but it would have no vital meaning for us. 

We are often questioned as to our teaching regarding the great Master.  Many individuals have said to me, 'When you teach the philosophy of life you compare yourself to Jesus the Christ.  Do you think we are the same?'  I answer, 'In essence we are exactly the same as Jesus the Christ, but the degree of our realization of that essence is different.'  In the man state we are working out step by step what the Master had already accomplished, for he had attained the universal state which united him with the Godhead of his being.  In that realization he could say, 'I and my Father are one,' and 'He that hath seen me hath seen the Father.'  We can say the same, but not out of realization.  The universal state is potential to our present realization; if it were actual we should be manifesting it now...

We look upon Jesus the Christ as our elder brother, the great Exemplar.  We look upon him as one who had completed his human evolution, had suffered all human experience, and then had turned back consciously and manifested his life in a body of flesh in order that he might reveal the successive steps we all must take to the final goal. 

May the peace of the Infinite Spirit, which passes all understanding, hold us and keep us in the love of the Christed Consciousness, while we are seemingly separated one from another.

—Val Taylor, 2002