The shattering of the old has become the drumbeat of daily life in this transitional time. Chaos spreads as tornadoes, fires and floods ravage cities and regions, while earthquakes and tsunamis disrupt the lifelines of entire nations. Violence explodes across continents as people struggle to overthrow repressive regimes. Poverty grows as the wealthy concentrate the world’s resources in their own hands. And everyone wonders what is really going on. Is it the end of the world we know, the end of an age, or a battle between forces of spiritual light and material darkness, as the wisdom teachings say?
The darkness of this time often seems unrelenting. Rumors fly on the Web of shadow governments conducting covert actions with secret powers. Retrograde forces threaten to turn back the clock on decades of human progress. And yet, at the same time, the Soul of humanity is clearly stirring. The light of the soul is breaking through after eons of immersion in matter. People at the evolutionary edge in every land are awakening to their higher Selves and to a higher reality, gradually constructing the inner scaffolding of a new age. Given that consciousness precedes form in the evolutionary order of things, it is certain that “newer and better chalices of life” will follow.
For now, we’re faced with straddling two realities and two dimensions of consciousness—one ebbing and one flowing. Our material reality appears ever more precarious, a notion unthinkable forty years ago when first observed by astronauts orbiting the globe. What struck them most about our planet, from their vantage point in outer space, was its fragility. Spinning in the darkness of space, Earth appeared as a small, blue, borderless orb with a peculiarly fragile quality. To those of us remaining on the planet’s surface at the time Earth seemed as solid as ever. But since then, especially from the start of the new millennium, we’ve witnessed a stunning, ongoing display of the infirmity of lands, rivers, oceans and species of life.
Interestingly, in that same timeframe we’ve been learning more about the true nature of matter. Science has proven that matter only appears to be solid, that in fact all is energy—a core principle of the wisdom teachings. We now know that atoms, once seen as the basic building blocks of matter, are subtle forms containing discrete clusters of energy. These energy clusters vibrate at different frequencies, which determine the density, and visibility, of a form. When energy spins at lower frequencies, forms are dense enough to be visible as objects. At higher frequencies energy is visible in the form of light waves. At even higher frequencies, there are forms too subtle for our physical eyes to register.
One form visible only to the rare individual with subtle vision is the etheric body—the body of energy that gives life to the human form and connects each of us to the one Life that pervades all forms on our planet. An even more subtle form belongs to the Soul, the consciousness within the human form. Called the causal body, this subtle container of the human soul is described in the ageless wisdom as an energy vortex that generates light.1 The more that soul consciousness evolves, the more light is generated.
In the coming era, it is predicted that we will develop increasingly greater spiritual light along with finer faculties of perception. Over time, as the Aquarian age unfolds, we will enter the age of the Soul. Our planetary civilization will be infused with the collective light of awakened human souls and the illuminating presence of the Kingdom of Souls. Such a world may seem beyond imagining—so radically different would it be from the present one. Yet even now the omnipresence of the word “soul”—in book and song titles, on websites, even in advertisements—suggests that this higher dimension of ourselves is penetrating popular awareness.
In these times of ebbing and flowing realities, it is the destruction of forms that has captured public attention. But there are growing signs that shatterings of the material world are also quickening the unfoldment of higher consciousness. Relentless images of destruction, while serving to erode our belief in the permanence and solidity of matter, are also leading many to search for what is true and real. Countless thousands of people are turning within to contact the light of the Soul, together manifesting the evolutionary purpose for these times: “to shift the focus of human awareness out of the form and the material aspect of living, into the consciousness of the Soul.”2
A steadily emerging aspect of soul awareness is the falling away of personality barriers and the discovery of essential human unity. Reflections from people in many countries, including poignant statements from Japan in the wake of last month’s devastation, reveal the way in which the crises of this transition time are fueling the wave of evolution. A Japanese woman wrote about experiencing “the truth of oneness” through the extraordinary generosity of strangers, adding, “Perhaps crisis can give birth to new evolution.”3 An American woman living in Japan wrote, “I can feel my heart opening wide. I realize from direct experience that there is indeed an enormous Cosmic evolutionary step occurring all over the world at this moment. This wave of birthing (worldwide) is hard, and yet magnificent.”4
The rising consciousness of the Soul is also shattering systems and structures that long suppressed basic human rights and freedoms. Uprisings in Tunisia and Egypt have dramatically demonstrated the power of the soul to break the stranglehold of deeply entrenched dictators. Tyrants who ruled with weapons of fear were toppled by people whose “only weapons are our dreams…of freedom and justice,” as protesters sang out in Cairo’s Liberation Square. A readiness to die for their cause, a declaration that the soul's liberation is more import than the ephemeral life of the form, remains the most potent weapon of freedom fighters.
For all who seek freedom the overthrow of external authority is paramount. The individual has to break free from the imposition of outer control—whether a regime or dogma, a parent or a partner—in order to stand free in the clear and unimpeded light of the Soul. And yet, while the drive for political freedom is another sign of the intensifying forces of Light, casting off external fetters is only a step on the path to spiritual liberation. It clears a major hurdle on the journey to higher consciousness but paradoxically, the removal of external constraints magnifies internal battle between light and darkness—between the soul and the impediments within the mask of its persona.
The contours of this inner battle were recently outlined, in political terms, by Filipino novelist Jose Dalisay. Having experienced the euphoria of overthrowing the Marcos regime 25 years ago, Dalisay offered a unique perspective on “the Arab spring.” In an interview with the BBC, reflecting on the many lessons he and others had learned, he said: “Freedom is in some ways far more difficult and complicated than dealing with a dictatorship….It’s not enough to remove just one person,” he observed, “the underlying system must be reformed.” When asked if he had advice to offer protesters in Tunisia and Egypt, he replied: “The road to freedom and reform has really just begun.”5
Likewise, for most of us, the road to inner freedom and reform has just begun. Travelling this road to the culmination of the next stage in consciousness will span the entire Aquarian age—the next two thousand years. It appears that during that time we'll be called to transform our own “underlying systems” by moving beyond the illusion of separateness belonging to the concrete world of matter and entering the soul’s realm of interconnectedness. As souls we’ll know that all is energy, that our planet is a living Being of energy—or spirit—dwelling within a greater Being of wisdom and love. The Kingdom of Souls, long invisible to us, will become increasingly manifest on Earth as we develop our divine potential to co-create, with the inner Guides of the Race, the spiritual civilization of the future.6
In the meantime natural disasters and political upheavals are loosening pillars of the old civilization built on the illusion of separation. Growing fissures in structures that once seemed impenetrable are allowing rays of spiritual light to filter through the cracks. The new world is already being born in us and through us, as our evolving consciousness penetrates the realm of everyday living with fleeting visions of the new humanity and the new world, impressed upon us by “custodians of the Plan” (dwelling on higher planes in bodies of light even more subtle than that of the human soul).
As this divine Mystery unfolds, a higher perspective comes to us, once again, from an astronaut. On January 13, 2011, a day of relentless devastation—from floods in Australia, Brazil, Sri Lanka, and the Philippines to violence in the streets of Tunisia and the Ivory Coast—a European astronaut on the International Space Shuttle was asked by a reporter if he had any “moral sense” about the earth from his vantage point in space. His response contained the seed of the Aquarian vision. “We need to think of humanity as living together, not separated by barriers into little countries,” he said. "We really are all together.”7
Nancy Seifer and Martin Vieweg
[April 24, 2011]
[1] The causal body contains light accumulated by the soul for lifetimes, as well as causes of karmic learning. For a deeper understanding of the causal body’s functions, see When the Soul Awakens, pp. 102-103.
[2] From The Externalization of the Hierarchy by Alice A. Bailey.
[3] Yuka Saionji on www.dailygood.org, March 11, 2011.
[4] Anne Thomas in a letter circulated by email March 14, 2011 and posted at www.odemagazine.com.
[5] BBC World News, Feb. 25, 2011
[6] This prophetic vision will be explored in a forthcoming article.
[7] BBC World News, Jan. 13, 2011
