Vision
and Life
by MSI
(from the Introduction
to Second Thunder
-- Seeking the Black Ishayas)
Civilizations die when
they lose their founding visions. Why should anyone try to be great if
there is no potential to be great – in this world or the next? If the
visible is all there is, why not dedicate life to wealth or possessions?
What matter who is harmed in the process? Everyone involved will be dead
within a century anyway. Who cares what happens on this strange little
planet circling an average sun out of two hundred billion suns, lost
near this remote spiral arm of an average-sized galaxy out of a thousand
billion galaxies? Surely we are much too small to be significant in any
Cosmic sense. Is not life itself merely an aberration, an accident of
fate, an inevitable consequence of random gatherings of molecules in a
nearly infinite Universe?
Without the supporting
infrastructure of visionary Truth, the meaning of life collapses toward
the meaningless. Visions are not false, they are not fiction or fantasy.
True visions express the highest aspirations of our souls –
aspirations impossible to express in any other form. This kind of
understanding of vision is vital in today’s world. The invaluable
contribution of modern visionary word is to give form to the ideas that
no longer conveniently fit into our accepted patterns of belief.
Our reliance on scientific
dogma has divested us of our old world-views, profaned our gods, slain
our heroes, voided our magic and shrunken to pathetic size all the
larger-than-life men and women that freely walked the planet of our
ancestors. This has created a life for the average human that is often
boring, pointless, dull, frightening or extremely painful.
But every buried Truth
will in time grow again through the dark soil of doubt and fear. For
there are still (and always will be) true heroes on this planet, just as
there are still (and always will be) true gods as well as their Eternal
Source – the One that is the inner life of all the gods, the One that
is the root of the Hero’s strength, the Magician’s magic, the Healer’s
power to heal, the creative genius of the Artist, the supernal wisdom of
the enlightened. It does not matter if everyone (or even anyone)
remembers this fact. Reality is not democratic.
Who creates visions? No
one – visions are an expression of Truth, are therefore never
invented, not created in the usual sense of the word. The visionary
opens to the underlying continuum of Reality and formulates in language
what is discovered there. The spirit of the One enters into the
visionary (the visionary respires the breath of life known as
Inspiration); the result is a new expression born from the underlying
field of the never-changing archetype…
Humankind is vastly older
than our histories have recorded, vastly older than our archaeologists
or anthropologists have even begun to dream. Since the dawn of creation,
there have been individuals throughout the Universe who have been
capable of Self-knowledge. This is the only definition of humanity that
is consistent or meaningful. There never was a time when human beings
did not inhabit this Universe. Nor will there ever be a time when
Self-conscious races are absent from created space-time. The form of the
bodies, the specific details of anatomies, the size and shape and number
of heads or limbs – these are not important. The essential underlying
truth – that every human contains within his/her heart a spark of the
Divine Fire – is he only important fact.
We are gods in mortal
flesh, but by our choices and actions do not live so. There are no
boundaries in us but those we artificially create and maintain by our
beliefs in limitation and judgments of good and evil. This need no
longer be so! Not for even one more instant. Freedom is available for
anyone who seeks it, for we are the Myth-makers. We
are the Dreamers of dreams. The power of the mind can be forgotten or
denied, but its rich brilliance will remain, scintillating like a
perfect jewel, just beneath the murky waters of our denial and despair.
And the fortunate truth is
that any one – any child, any adult burdened by the cares of life, any
aged one, all but broken by the struggles of this harsh, cruel world –
any one at any time may suddenly without warning awaken to the
underlying Truth of life. And the really good news is that even one is
quite enough to transform the world. People are a great deal more like
popcorn than they have realized or yet begun to remember. When any one
slips through the illusory boundaries of limitation and fear, all will
follow.
This is an invitation to
share my vision.
Other worlds lie just
beneath the surface of our rational minds.
In one, infinite yet
unconscious forces interact mindlessly in chaotic patterns, creating and
destroying as if randomly, by accident.
In another, gods and
heroes struggle against manifest evil in the all but hopeless quest to
save their worlds from destruction.
In yet another, every
moment without exception unfolds in perfect harmony with the will of the
Creator-Of-All-That-Is.
The experience of
alternate universes is more often than not repressed in our modern age.
This is tragic, for repression leads to confusion, to distorted
perception, to fear.
There is nothing in life
to fear. Para, the Source Universe which has given rise to all others,
floats throughout Eternity as a radiant golden Sphere, bathed in the
infinite Light and unending love of the omnipotent One. That Universe is
perfect. Apple trees create only apples. Love creates only love.
Perfection creates only perfection. It is only identification with the
projected dream-worlds that leads to suffering.
Even then, it is
dream-suffering. Only our age-old yet moment-by-moment decision keeps us
bound to our individual dream-creations.
This can end at any
moment: Para surrounds, underlies and permeates every particle of the
dream worlds. Because this is true, anyone anywhere at any time can
experience the One Ascendant Reality. It can be found anywhere, but is
most easily discovered inside every heart. It is the essence of every
good thing: life, consciousness, joy, love.
The experience of Para
results in a state of consciousness named by various Earth traditions: salvation,
nirvana, enlightenment, infinite Awareness, satori, Cosmic
Consciousness, Eternal Freedom, praying without ceasing, the peace which
passes all understanding, Perpetual Ascendant Consciousness. The
name is supremely unimportant; the content of this experience is
everything.
Whatever we choose to call
it, no suffering of any kind is possible in this state. Life is lived in
permanent joy, in infinite love, in unbroken contact with the Source.
In an instant of frozen
time, no longer than the gap between two heartbeats, a being fully and
permanently in contact with the Source Universe shared his vision with
me. This was a free gift, a wordless joining of his infinite mind with
mine.
In the years that have
passed since that magical, suspended instant, I have only begun to
appreciate what this means to my life, to remember that which I long ago
knew fully well but then forgot. I am an Unbounded Being. Living in a
human body, I experience the Ascendant continually, twenty-four hours a
day. The Thunder books are an attempt to explain this state of
consciousness, to describe the Reality of the wonder of this experience.
Words are finite, limited
tools, most loved by longing minds. They will forever fall short of the
experience of Truth. Truth is lived and can be shared; the best words
can do is point the finger of understanding at it. Words can say,
"The Moon is there." They do not and cannot give the
experience of the Moon. At their best, they will inspire one to seek the
experience they describe.
Seeking the Black
Ishayas records a series of visions and experiences I had while
studying with the Ishayas in the Himalayas. The total elapsed time was
only several days, but the total vision time was of many years.
The experiences flowing
through me during this time were far removed in space and time from the
reality of this world. They were of a series of other lifetimes that
uncannily paralleled the outer occurrences among my friends,
particularly Edg and Sharon, at and around the Ishaya’s monastery.
During this period, I
fought a life and death struggle with my ego. It nearly mastered me on
four separate occasions – not coincidentally, after the instruction in
the Second Sphere Solar Technique, the Lunar Technique, the Earth
Technique and the Second Cognition. The visions inspired by learning
each of these techniques coincided exactly with changes in my personal
life that were intense and, in one case, as terrible as I could have
ever dreamed possible: the loss of Sharon.
If I had known from the
beginning how much I would give up to gain enlightenment would I have
continued on? Probably not. Only in hindsight do I see the beauty
inherent in my personal tragedy.
Everyone’s path is
different. The incredible ease with which some grow under the Ishayas’
care never ceases to amaze me. I look at my life and it seems I have
always chosen the hardest path – and yet I know there was no other
choice for me. And there are others who have suffered much more greatly.
Whatever it takes. That is
the only attitude that is real, the only attitude that works, the only
attitude that assists one to reach the goal. Whatever I have to do
in order to realize enlightenment, that I will do. This was the
viewpoint I adopted in the Himalayas, and the only one that could have
carried me through my trials to the end.
For those who seek
enlightenment, no other frame of mind can be substituted for this one.
No other frame of mind will succeed. One must be willing to give up everything
– every belief, every judgment, every attachment – then only can
there be progress. For it is exactly where one digs in one’s heels and
says, "So far and no farther," that the ego draws the
battleline.
It is not possessions, it
is attachments which cause trouble. What must be given up? Nothing. What
must one be willing to give up? Everything. When one is ready to be free
from everything, life begins in earnest. The dawning of True Light is
never far behind…
Each of us dreams our own
world – this means that each of us is ultimately responsible for our
own creation. And therefore, each of us can change any of the rules
governing our world at any time, resulting in a completely different
world-view and a completely different world. Full realization of this
simple fact is an acceptable definition of enlightenment. It is the
Ishayas’ hope that learning of the different levels of reality woven
into this work will assist others to rise more quickly to the
recognition of their primary authority in their own worlds. Then the
Healing of this Earth will be the sooner accomplished.
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