CHAPTER SIX

EXPLORING INNER SPACE

The major shifts in my perceptions have all occurred as a result of deep contemplation - an activity some call “meditation” and extol as an absolute prerequisite on the spiritual path. Yet, oddly enough, meditation is a big no-no amongst many Christian fundamentalists, who regard it as an invitation to spirit possession. They maintain that fervent faith and a tenacious belief in Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior are more than sufficient to assure them a place in the Christian heaven.

There isn’t much one can say to anybody who has opted to seal themselves within an impermeable belief system that will allow no new inputs or alternative viewpoints. Indeed, I recall quite clearly my own mindset – and that of my parents and church colleagues – in the days when I was proud of my bona fide as “a good Christian soldier.” 

Now it seems like a different lifetime ago. What amazes me still is the manner in which the cracks that began to appear in my fundamentalism slowly widened... until one day the entire structure imploded and I was left with... nothing!

It was a truly scary feeling, to be alone and adrift in a vast ocean of unbelief and unknowing, neither here nor there, uncomfortable with the past and uncertain of the future, with nobody to turn to except myself. My vision quest had brought me in contact with books on yoga and Zen Buddhism, all of which focused on meditative practice as the key to inner growth. I had nothing to lose at this juncture, so I gave meditation a go.

Allowing one’s haphazard thoughts to settle slowly like sediments to the bottom of a pool is easier attempted than achieved. The key is to befriend confusion itself. I forget which Zen master it was who advised his students to value patience – because it takes a bit of patience to do absolutely nothing and simply watch the murky waters of the mind begin to clear, as the metaphorical sediments finally touch bottom.

“Confusion is a good sign,” the master said. “It indicates that your mind is receiving new ideas which take a while to integrate. In time all becomes clear again.”

There was a great deal of mental murk to deal with when I first began to meditate. Many a time I decided to give it all up and learn to live with perpetual confusion. However, that didn’t sit well with my accountant’s training. If nothing else, clarity is paramount when dealing with balance sheets, financial ledgers, and performance charts. Since I fancied myself a good accountant with a firm grip on information technology, I knew that clarity was an attainable state. So I persevered in my practice. I found that doing it within a group was very helpful, as one is supported and sustained by the collective intent to experience stillness. After a while, the indescribable bliss one feels during those moments becomes the only incentive one needs to spend a few minutes each day quieting the mental chatter. 

Most people who have meditated for a few years find the practice as routinely refreshing as brushing one’s teeth. Not a big deal, but it’s certainly great to remove the gunk from one’s mouth. To be able to empty one’s mind – even for a few minutes – is an exceedingly energizing and self-rewarding procedure. You could say meditation refreshes the soul while clearing the mind and recharging the body.

Even more significantly, the practice of deep contemplation or meditation is a crucial step towards exploring the vast universes inhabiting Inner Space. The ancient Hermeticists had a credo: “As above, so below.” We would do well to add: “As within, so without.” 

Most of us spend the greater part of our lives engaged with the outer reality, which mystics call the phenomenal world, or samsara. Some, inspired by the movie, might opt to call it The Matrix. Terminologies change: what the Hindus called maya (illusion) thousands of years ago, we would today describe as holographic. 

When we begin to explore Inner Space, we shift from illusion to what some might term delusion... simply because it occurs only subjectively. However, if we remain unattached to these “delusions” they eventually become internal reference points, distinguishable landmarks of one’s mental terrain – and thus one begins to navigate with greater confidence the unexplored oceans of possibility within one’s being.

Experienced meditators often speak of encounters with “spirit guides” or “guardian angels” when their vision is turned inwards. It matters not whether these entities are “real” or “imaginary” – in Inner Space there are no boundaries between reality and the imagination. In fact, one gradually learns to trust one’s capacity to imagine – especially when one realizes that the Imagination is the womb of all ideas, and when they are born into the outer world, we say a potentiality is now actualized. 

Indeed, the freedom we experience in Inner Space can make us feel trapped in apparent limitations when we re-emerge into the Outer World. At times it feels like a hangover after a night of uninhibited festivity. However, it’s far more constructive to view it as an opportunity to realign our inner selves with our outward personalities. When our internal and external realities are in harmony and well-balanced, we are several steps closer to attaining self-mastery. And that is ultimately what every vision quest is about.

Meditation is NOT the goal, it’s essentially a very powerful tool with which we can tweak our mindsets and worldviews until they serve us, rather than the other way around. Whether one happens to be born in America, Malaysia, Australia, Iceland, Albania, Patagonia, or Zimbabwe, one arrives with a specific amount of baggage – the genetic, cultural and linguistic legacy of both parents. These programs (for that’s essentially what they are) are hard-wired into our brain circuitry, and they often develop into what we call preconceptions and prejudices; in effect, they become perceptual blind spots, functioning much like a series of filters and determining how we experience reality and what we express by way of our opinions.

It takes conscious effort to even become aware of our built-in assumptions and beliefs about life around us. Generally, we are so comfortable with our own programming it’s rare that we would decide to alter any of it – unless our lives begin to go “wrong” or we encounter powerful emotional or physiological shocks like painful bereavements, marital break ups, unexpected heart attacks, abrupt loss of income, or life-threatening “accidents.” 

So, for the vast majority of human beings, it’s enough to run our lives on factory default settings – that is, maintaining the beliefs we were born into and grew up with. Now, being “comfortably numb” may be how most of us adapt to a fearful, hostile, and unpredictable environment – but we’re actually trading in our infinitely creative, multidimensional selves for the false sense of security robotism and conformity impart to us.

The industrialization of the planet impinges negatively on all lifeforms: mechanization goes hand in glove with a mechanical perspective that imposes a static routine even on the mineral kingdom, on fields and forests, on the land itself - especially when organic products like precious stones, metal, wood, fruits and vegetables, poultry and livestock are treated like mere objects, and traded as commodities without regard for where they originate, why they exist, and how they are harvested.

Mainstream religions, political opinions, educational curricula, fashion trends, entertainment programs, entire lifestyles are manufactured for mass consumption and promoted in subtle and obvious ways. 

When Life is Strictly Business, Time is Money - which soon runs out, or is stolen from you, lack being the shadow side of greed. The individual sensitive to these hidden agendas begins to suspect that some sort of conspiracy indeed exists, and its main purpose is to ensure the smooth operation of the Machine, and keep the slaves happily oblivious of their unhappy enslavement. This planet – perhaps the entire holographic universe - has been hijacked and converted into a gigantic Energy Farm where lifeforce is generated – generation after generation - and harvested to keep the Big Con Game running ad infinitum. Such a realization is nothing short of frightening. It often triggers panic – and that’s why many of us scrupulously avoid getting too close to the edge where we might catch a glimpse of the existential abyss.

Inner Space is an abyss both awe-inspiring and terrifying. As the meditation process grants us access to these unknown zones of the subconscious, it feels as though one is a deep-sea diver exploring an underwater trench whose ultimate depth is anybody’s guess. But if we never allow ourselves to venture further within, acquiring a certain degree of fearlessness in the effort, we will forever be trapped in the shallows of an artificial, hollow existence. 

This pilgrimage of the soul to the Holy of Holies – the Absolute Reality, Source of All Being – is ultimately what transforms and transmutes us on our spiritual journey. It is a matter of direct experience, impossible to obtain from book knowledge, and reachable only via the road less traveled. As one becomes adept at aligning and harmonizing inner and outer, private and public realities, one automatically quits being a bible-thumper, and regains a taste for the primordial truth: beyond beliefs, beyond ideology, beyond philosophy and psychology. One reconnects with one’s Core Self and at last becomes authentic... real... regal. This is why all myths echo the metaphor of the king in exile who finally regains his throne. You’ll find it in Homer’s Odyssey, you’ll find it in the Arthurian legends, in J.R.R. Tolkien, even in Christian symbology - wherein the endgame is signaled by the return of the King of Kings to consecrate the marriage of Heaven and Earth, and reinstate the genetic blueprint of paradise and perfection. 

The Kingdom of Heaven is within you; and the “King of Kings” is your Christed Self, the omega point of your soul evolution, whereby the Big You (My Father) and the small you (and I) fuse and become eternally One. Think fractal and you rejoin the Family of Life.

The ultimate benefit of meditation is that it upgrades you from being just a Buddhist to becoming a Buddha... from being a close-minded Christian to becoming an openhearted Christ... and from being a mere Muslim to being completely at ease and at peace with All That Is and Isn’t. 

And what if you happen to be a freethinker? Well, your thoughts will definitely become a great deal freer with a little inner discipline.

CHAPTER SEVEN: MEANWHILE BACK IN OUTER SPACE

CHAPTER SEVEN

MEANWHILE BACK IN OUTER SPACE

The moment one crosses that egoic threshold from purely personal concerns to planetary or even pan-galactic ones, one is reborn into entirely new reality options.

Beliefs are protective cocoons, like the calcified membrane that forms a brittle shell around the growing embryos of oviparous creatures. When the lifeforce within the egg has formed itself into a bird, the shell must crack or the baby bird will die. That’s exactly how I felt when I realized I no longer qualified as an anthropocentrist, what more a Christian fundamentalist. 

I will always be inspired by the Christ as a symbol of our noblest aspirations, but rigid dogma dished out by professional priesthoods no longer holds any truth for me.

Most people today are prepared to entertain the possibility that Consciousness may indeed pervade the infinity of spaces between atomic nuclei, and that Life could well exist - in forms known as well as unknown and unrecognized - elsewhere than on planet Earth, in the seeming vastness of a Universe comprising countless galaxies.

Some have taken a step further and declared their belief that alien lifeforms are more fact than fiction. A large number are convinced that ETs are intimately linked with our evolution, if not our actual creation. 

A select handful even say they have had direct contact with ETs – voluntary or otherwise - and several claim outright that they are (i) earthly emissaries of certain ET contingents; (ii) they have been abducted repeatedly by ETs, usually the ones known as Zeta Reticulan Greys; (iii) they are themselves the result of hybridization experiments conducted by ETs; (iv) they have been recruited via the armed forces into covert sub-agencies linked with the NSA (National Security Agency), with codenames like MK-Ultra, MJ-12, MIB, and ACIO*, implanted with microchips, programmed through post-hypnotic suggestion to serve a totally secret agenda, and assigned to underground research facilities staffed by human and alien technicians, or transported to off-planet bases; or (v) all of the above. 

The very stuff of the enormously appealing TV series, X-Files! However, one need only visit a labyrinthine website at www.wingmakers.com to be confronted with the “Ancient Arrow” project – which qualifies as either one of the most brilliant and elaborate hoaxes in history – or irrefutable evidence of advanced intelligence showing us the way to a whole new mystical and scientific paradigm.

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*MK-Ultra = top-secret mind-control research program set up soon after the Korean War to develop and implement psy-ops techniques. Featured in the movie Conspiracy Theory starring Mel Gibson and Patrick Stewart.

MJ-12 = Majestic 12, the Pentagon’s version of the Roman Catholic Church’s infamous Opus Dei, staffed by ultrapatriots sworn to protect America’s status as the No. 1 superpower against all enemies real or imagined, terrestrial as well as extraterrestrial.

MIB = Men In Black, hardly a fictitious set-up and by no means quite as glamorous as the movies starring Tommy Lee Jones and Will Smith make it out to be. Active since the early 1950s but possibly defunct since the late 1990s.

ACIO = Advance Contact Intelligence Organization, the secret government’s clandestine R&D unit responsible for back-engineering acquired ET technology.

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To the uninitiated all this must sound like lunatic fringe nonsense. 

Personally I have no ET experiences that might corroborate any of the data I have encountered. However, the Harvard clinical psychiatrist, Dr John E. Mack, who interviewed 200 “abductees” and wrote a best-selling book about it, had this to say: “I would experience with these people when they would be reliving their experience, the most powerful vibration. I was in the presence of something awesome in its intensity. The experiencers themselves would give language to that. They would say something like ‘every cell in my body was vibrating!’ When you are in the presence of that, it passes your judging mind and you feel it in your whole being.”

More significantly, Mack’s views are echoed by a religious spokesperson. Vatican representative, Monsignor Corrado Balducci, is quoted by Mack as saying: “We in the church take this UFO Encounter Phenomena very seriously and the reason for that is, that there seem to be so many reliable witnesses. In the church, we have had centuries of having to evaluate miraculous reports by some kind of criteria and so they had to develop the notion of the ‘reliable witnesses.’”

However, the Harvard establishment did not take kindly to John E. Mack making public his private research. In 1994, soon after the publication of Abduction: Human Encounters with Aliens, the Dean of Harvard Medical School initiated a Kafkaesque peer review of Dr Mack’s methodology which dragged on for 14 months. It was the first time in Harvard’s history that a tenured professor had been subjected to such hostile academic inquisition. Prominent academics and researchers rallied to John E. Mack’s defence and the Dean eventually issued a statement reaffirming Mack’s academic freedom.

Mack’s second book on the subject - Passport to the Cosmos: Human Transformation and Alien Encounters - was published in 1999 and he went on the public lecture circuit. Those close to John E. Mack opine that he became a marked man when he began delving into the geopolitical implications of his ET investigations and actively campaigning against George W. Bush. During a 2004 lecture tour in London, Mack was hit by a drunken driver while returning late at night to his lodgings. Not everybody is satisfied it was a mere accident. His associates set up a website at http://johnemackinstitute.org to document Mack’s groundbreaking work.

David Icke - former sports reporter turned oracle of the far-out – has done copious research on the aristocratic bloodlines on this planet, and he is convinced they all carry a dominant reptilian strain! The gory details can be found in numerous books authored by Icke - The Robots’ Rebellion, And The Truth Shall Set You Free, The Biggest Secret, Children Of The Matrix and The Trigger, to name but a few – all of which describe a hidden hierarchy dating back to the colonizing of the Earth and the creation of the first humans as semi-intelligent slaves. Icke’s perspective on the secret cabals that constitute what is called the Illuminati is impeccably documented; but because truth is so much stranger than fiction, only a tiny minority will give independent researchers like Icke any credence whatsoever - a minority too tiny to threaten the established power structure and, therefore, his books are easily available off the shelf or via the internet (www.davidicke.com).

Besides, if one were to believe writers like David Icke, ordinary life would turn instantly into a nightmare of cosmic proportions – simply because we would have to reassess every single thing we’ve been told about our early history, down to the present-day political, economic, and military games being played out on the world stage. Or else, life would appear to us as one enormous cosmic joke – and we would be rolling on the ground with unstoppable laughter. 

Nonetheless, if one is truly determined to get to the bottom of things, one must be receptive to all available data and pass no hasty judgments on notions that, upon first hearing, seem way beyond the pale. What would your response be, for instance, if you came across conclusive evidence that “the world as we know it” isn’t even real – but is, in actuality, a computer-generated holographic construct designed to keep human souls recycling within a frequency lock, a sort of electromagnetic prison with invisible bars, so that their vital essence and experiential data can be harvested? Sounds like the essential plot of The Matrix, you say? Well, why do you think the film instantly became a cult classic? Simply because it strikes a resonant chord in our deep memory of Freedom before the so-called Fall, that’s why!

The Wachowski brothers (later sisters), who wrote and produced The Matrix series, based their work on the seminal writings of a certain Val Valerian, whose mind-bending Matrix books are sold only via his Leading Edge International Research site at www.trufax.org. Valerian’s incisive and profound ontological theses are impossible to encapsulate and suggest the work of a meta-intelligence calibrating way above the usual human range (it is becoming widely known that the majority of people operate at only a tenth of their brain potential, and even top scientists usually access no more than a third of their total brain capacity). 

And yet, such are the times - when information and disinformation have become the chief weapons of ideological warfare - that Val Valerian is rumored to be the nom de guerre of a former CIA agent named John Grace. But who can confirm if that imputation bears any truth? And even if it did, bear in mind that some of the smartest individuals are recruited early in life by covert intelligence agencies, only to regret their involvement at some later stage; which then leads to their turning into whistle-blowers, mavericks, and renegades.

All extradimensional data is “channeled” by individuals popularly referred to as “sensitives.” That is to say, their brains and neurological systems can access frequencies most others can’t. In ancient times, these individuals were revered as oracles, seers, and prophets. Today, the mainstream media portrays them as harmless cranks at best, or dangerously deluded charlatans. You’re unlikely, for instance, to ever see somebody like Anna Hayes (who now goes by the name A’za Deane, having served some time as Ashayana) on primetime television, although she may get invited on fringe shows like Jeff Rense and Art Bell’s radio programs, or Mitch Battros’s Earth Changes TV series. She might even occasionally have an article published on alternative info websites – but if you wish to access the mind-bogglingly complex data A’za Deane has transcribed into words, you might want to read her Voyagers books, subtitled Secrets of Amenti, visit her site at www.azuritepress.com, or experience her franchised Kathara workshops on “Keylontic Science.”

Who is Anna Hayes aka A’za Deane? She claims to be the earthly representative of the “Guardian Alliance” – a consortium of interstellar entities and intelligences who have the unenviable task of ensuring that humanity’s evolutionary destiny does not get thwarted. Hayes catalogs a befuddling plethora of ET contingents who do not have our best interests at heart – if, indeed, they possess anything remotely resembling a heart!

None of this is actually new information. Only the terminologies have been updated. In the classical Hindu scriptures, particularly the Mahabharata and the Ramayana, you’ll find numerous references to blue- or green-skinned gods and goddesses flying around in their vimanas – which would today be described as supersonic aircraft.

These writings are believed by scholars to date back to at least 400 BCE – but they may derive from even older records. In these chronicles of gods and goddesses, you will also find accounts of entire cities destroyed by what would today be identified as nuclear devices, with grisly descriptions of human populations and fauna dying from a pestilence bearing all the symptoms of acute radiation poisoning.

The word “astral” has its etymology in the Latin astrum, meaning “star.” It also denotes a metaphysical realm of infinite potentiality. Is there a significant difference between the words “astral” and “stellar”? 

The great psychologist C.G. Jung - who popularized the concept of Archetypes, Anima, and Animus - made a lifelong study of dreams and the collective unconscious. He was inclined to classify UFO phenomena as projections of the deep psyche, vivid hallucinations capable of impinging on our physical senses and thereby manifesting in the 3rd Dimension – not unlike the mystical visions of “wheels within wheels” and “chariots of fire” reported by old-time prophets like Enoch, Elijah, Ezekiel, Daniel; or Muhammad’s tour of the solar system with the angel Gabriel as guide; or more recent phenomena like the Portuguese children to whom the Blessed Virgin Mary appeared in 1917 and delivered three messages we now know as the Fatima Prophecies. 

In 1960 the third prophecy was supposed to have been revealed by Pope John XXIII, but an apocryphal report has it that he fainted while reading it – which prompted the Vatican to change its mind about disclosing the full contents of the message, releasing instead an abridged version!

But in the end it matters not whether an experience is subjective or objective or both – indeed, most quantum physicists agree that the notion of “objectivity” itself is probably the greatest illusion!

The Theosophical Society was established in Adyar, India, in 1875, by Helena Petrovna Blavatsky, and Henry Steel Olcott - an unlikely duo comprising a cigar-smoking Ukrainian divorcée and a distinguished American attorney, author, and philosopher. Blavatsky was a trance medium of exceptional prowess and was able to transcribe, with the help of Ascended Masters (Mahatmas) from the Trans Himalayan Brotherhood, copious data pertaining to the origins of sentient life in the Cosmos and the seeding of several races of humanity on Earth. Isis Unveiled, published in two volumes in 1877, was followed by The Secret Doctrine in 1888.

Although Blavatsky makes no specific reference to UFOs as such, it is clear that the Master Souls from whom she obtained the data are multidimensional entities unbound by human perceptions of linear time and Euclidean space. Her highly detailed works are chock-a-block with information about Root Races that have come and gone, giving the impression that the planet itself is a sort of nursery for biological forms – and that, as each Root Race attains maturity, it departs this nursery planet for further evolutionary adventures on other planets or other dimensional planes. 

In effect, species do not become extinct, they simply vanish into a different frequency location. Drawing inspiration from a theosophical tradition that reaches back in time to Pythagoras – and beyond to hierophantic figures like Hermes Trismegistus and the Egyptian god of scribes, Thoth, the Theosophical Society has survived more than a century of factionalism and infighting, and still maintains its world headquarters in Adyar, today a suburb of Chennai in Tamil Nadu, India.

In the mid-1950s another fringe phenomenon began to insert itself into our mundane reality: word began spreading around esoteric circles about a project called the Urantia Book, a 2,000-page tome allegedly channeled and transcribed by an anonymous group of clairvoyants, inspired by the Melchizedek Order, and published by the Urantia Book Fellowship [www.urantiabook.org]. Not many have actually SEEN the Urantia Book – but in 2003 a softcover, indexed edition was published in New York by Uversa Press (a subsidiary of the Urantia Book Fellowship). 

A cursory scan of the book’s weighty contents gives one the impression that the work complements, updates, elaborates and expands on the Mormon Bible. However, the Feminine Principle does not appear to feature prominently in the scheme of creation delineated within the densely-worded pages of the Urantia cosmomythology. 

Indeed, the Trinity alluded to - Father, Son, and Spirit – is more or less identical to that of the Roman Church, and the Mother is consigned to a purely supportive rôle as the embodiment of Matter (Mater, materiality).

One could say the Urantia Book merges mystical revelation with science fiction. Small study groups began springing up all over the world, specifically to read and discuss the data contained within the Urantia Book. Alien worlds humanly impossible to imagine are casually alluded to – and Urantia (aka Planet Earth) is categorized as an evolutionary backwater. Indeed, the subtly supercilious tone of the language gives one the impression that the entities who “dictated” the teachings view themselves as a species of prison wardens – albeit benign and cosmically conscious ones. Apart from that, the scale of evolutionary epochs described matches the unimaginably vast time-frames defined in Hindu cosmogony as yugas (a zodiacal age of more than 2,000 terrestrial years), kalpas (a precessional cycle of 26,000 years), and manvantaras (a galactic era of 432,000 years). 

Furthermore, the multitude of dimensional realities and worlds hinted at in the Urantia Book bring to mind the many lokas mentioned in Hindu and Tibetan Buddhist scriptures.

Another mysterious event in publishing history occurred in 1973 when J.J. Hurtak inaugurated “The Academy for Future Science” and published The Keys of Enoch, a 600-page testament of his initiation into the Subtle Realms by a Master Ophanim named Enoch, emissary of YHWH and his creator gods, the Elohim. A mysterious figure often named in connection with top secret investigations into ancient artefacts such as the Great Sphinx of Giza, or recently discovered undersea ruins that point to the historical reality of lost continents like Lemuria and Atlantis, Jim Hurtak utilizes a sonorous, quasi-biblical syntax to effectively conjure a sense of religious awe and evoke intimations of divine revelation. 

This unique, uncategorizable work alternates between a pastiche of the Old Testament and a rocket scientist’s handbook, with mystifying references to “magnetohydrodynamic changes” and “synchrotronic radiations.” In short, Hurtak’s work is a fascinating synthesis of mystical Judeo-Christianity and offbeat quantum mechanics.

In some respects, Hurtak’s career bears comparison with that of Lafayette Ron Hubbard - former U.S. Naval Intelligence operative, practising magician, pioneer researcher into mind-control techniques and cellular imprinting (Dianetics), and founder of the controversial Church of Scientology. L. Ron Hubbard was also a prolific science fiction writer, which may explain why Scientology comes so close to being a science fiction religion. Using his patented E-meter (a species of galvanometer), Hubbard trained his disciples to “audit” experiential “timetracks” in order to clear deeply embedded traumas lodged within the cells of the body. 

Numerous reports are recorded in the Scientology archives of individuals recalling violent deaths resulting from “battles in space” wherein their ships were blown up, and the next thing they knew was that their souls (or Thetans, in Scientological terminology) had taken human incarnation on planet Earth.

The promise of Scientology is that one can progress from “Preclear” to “Clear” and thence graduate through various levels to “Operating Thetan VIII” – at which point one would have enhanced one’s consciousness to what others might term the Oversoul or Mahatma Plane, from which perspective one is aware of being a deathless multidimensional entity experiencing different realities through different physical vehicles. Such training, of course, doesn’t come cheap and a few celebrities are rumored to have forked out tens of thousands for “Commodore” L. Ron’s advanced tech. 

Despite vigorous attempts by various governments to ban or suppress the Church of Scientology, the organization has endured and drawn some prominent names (Tom Cruise, John Travolta, Leonard Cohen, Chick Corea, Stanley Clarke, to name just a few) into its ranks.

More recently, a fellow named Bernard Perona and his girlfriend were visited by a pair of angels (one green, the other violet) during a particularly intense meditation – and soon after that, Perona switched majors in college (from mathematics and physics to fine arts and comparative religions), acquired the name Drunvalo Melchizedek, and in the early 1990s began conducting a 6-day “mystery school” seminar called the Flower of Life (or FOL). Between angel visitations, Drunvalo reports that he was contacted by a small, brown-skinned entity that later identified itself as Thoth, and who then took Drunvalo under his wings and downloaded vast amounts of data pertaining to the Univeral Mysteries. 

Now, all this might sound rather amusing and totally nutty, but the Flower of Life is actually a very intense crash course in activating one’s Merkaba - defined as “the ultra-high-velocity vehicle of multidimensional mobility, pranically-propelled, gyroscopic, counter-rotating, comprising electromagnetically charged fields of pure, open-hearted, Christic love.”

The Merkaba, in effect, is how Ascended Masters (or Jedi, if you prefer) supposedly project their holoforms anywhere they so desire, appearing and disappearing like UFOs – and, amazingly, we learn that a Merkaba in full spin (seen side on) looks exactly like everybody’s idea of a flying saucer!

One might think something as far-out as the FOL teachings would never take off – but the truth is, thousands have taken the workshop (now compressed to three days), religiously studied Drunvalo’s books, subscribe to his online magazine at www.spiritofmaat.com, or post arcane data on the FOL electronic bulletin at www.floweroflife.org.

Indeed, an apocryphal account has it that sometime in 1998, an enigmatic message appeared on the FOL bulletin which raised quite a ruckus amongst the diehard New Agers who surf these esoteric sites. Apparently, God made a digital appearance on the bulletin board, announcing his physical presence on Earth (it was just a brief visit, to test the waters, so to speak) and declaring that Divine Intervention had already occurred – and that there was really absolutely nothing to worry about, because, simply put, EVERYBODY is INNOCENT and the idea of SIN itself is a BIG LIE. 

In this instance God signed off as “Atmanu Ram Anu, Prime Creator Source, The House of Ram.” Was this the long-awaited sign that the Original Creator Gods were back? Or just another elaborate spiritual scam from the Land of Snake Oil Salesmen? What can one make of all this outrageous data? One is reminded of a line from Bob Dylan’s Ballad of a Thin Man, a classic paean to the proverbial man-in-the-street, which goes: “Something is happening here/But you don’t know what it is/Do you, Mister Jones?”

CHAPTER EIGHT: FROM ROME TO AMERICA

CHAPTER EIGHT

FROM ROME TO AMERICA

America is today considered by many the only global superpower in terms of economic and military might. What led a former British colony, with an independent history of some 200-plus years, to become “the most powerful nation on Earth” – even if some might view it as a “rogue” nation, feared and loathed by a staggering majority of human beings?

A quote from American Dream, Global Nightmare by Ziauddin Sardar and Merryl Wyn Davies (Icon Books, UK, 2004):

America’s efforts to rule the world and to see its own history as the destiny of all humanity are intrinsic to its mythology. Its lethal righteousness, its claim that its model of democracy is the only model, and the linking of democracy to free markets are all an integral part of its worldview. In other words, America has turned its mythology into pathology.

On planet Earth, the perception of POWER has long been confused with FORCE. All empires were founded at swordpoint, and ruled with an iron hand through sheer terror. Every empire has risen and fallen with the waxing and waning of the authority and might of a specific ruler or dynasty. Each empire has left a cultural and ideological legacy – first through the spread of a language, then through the spread of a religious belief system - and both of these factors inevitably influence the evolution of civilizations and cultures.

From Sumeria to Babylon, and from Phoenicia and Egypt to Greece and, subsequently, Rome – the pattern of earthly power is clearly traceable as it migrates to ever greener pastures, in search of natural resources, more equable climates, and room to expand. With the decline of Egypt, Persia and Greece, Rome became the new center of the imperial drive. But even as its military influence began to fade, Roman law and Latin as a language of the ruling elite became firmly entrenched in Europe and Britain.

A few centuries down the line, the Roman eagle – symbol of the predator from on high – migrated across the Atlantic where it became the American eagle; and the indomitable legions of Roman centurions gave way to the efficient and portable killing machine called the 101st Airborne Division of the U.S. Marine Corps. The degree of destructivity has grown by quantum leaps – from stone-hurling catapults, arrows and spears, to smart missiles armed with nuclear warheads, and a criminally insane arsenal of biological, chemical, electromagnetic, psychological – even climatological - weapons in less than twenty centuries.

The lunatic dream of world domination has destroyed billions of lives and our dreams of universal peace and harmony - and brought us to the very brink of ecosystemic collapse. Where does it originate, this mad impulse to rule over all instead of oneself? This gross misunderstanding of the meaning of Mastery – which is authentic only when it takes the form of Self-Mastery, but becomes a travesty when the “master” acquires vampiric power through enslaving less aggressive individuals and other lifeforms. Some erroneously believe it is an intrinsic part of “human nature” – but what we label “human nature” is really just a set of inculcated beliefs, prejudices, and legally sanctioned behaviors genetically and socio-culturally instilled in each new generation. 

In effect, what passes as “human nature” is simply a pre-programmed Operating System chromosomally installed in our biocomputers. As such, it is possible to customize, modify, or enable and disable specific functions once we learn the encoding language.

Whether you call it an aberration in the evolutionary impulse, or a defect in the genome of the species Homo sapiens, the impulse to dominate has certainly become a counter-survival program deeply embedded in the DNA of all territorial organisms.

We see it clearly manifest in primate behavior, wherein the mark of an “alpha male” is invariably the length of its fangs, and the capacity and ferocity of its will to subjugate others. And yet these very qualities are held up as the unmistakable signs of “leadership potential” and political power has long been in the hands of those most unfit to rule, their genetics being the most acutely distorted by this violent and aberrant implant.

We call it an “implant” because it certainly was never part of the original blueprint of existence. How do we know this to be so? Simply by entering into the primordial consciousness encoded in our DNA and accessible through our own neurology. From that quintessential perspective, it is impossible to conceive of ever creating any evolutionary program that would ultimately bring about such an intense degree of pain, suffering, and sheer abuse upon one’s own progeny. 

In other words, the original blueprint of existence is purely Edenic – the quest for ever more intimate and expansive degrees of self-knowledge is always predicated on the pleasure principle – never pain! Whatever interrupted and disrupted the original evolutionary program planted the seed of criminality and miscreation within the primordial genetic thread – which is in itself immortal and indestructible, though highly mutable and thus susceptible to unwholesome modification and mutation.

Those who have read Zecharia Sitchin’s interpretation of the Sumerian cuneiform tablets conclude that it was indeed the Nibiruan ETs (the Anunnaki or Nefilim) who introduced this “master-slave” dominant-submissive polarity into the nascent human psyche when they manufactured the “Adama” in their Earth-based genetic laboratory. Sitchin’s calculations locate the beginning of Homo sapiens at approximately 240,000 years ago. 

However, paleoanthropologists have found hominid remains dating back at least a couple million years. In effect, there is no immutable data available that allows us to draw any exact conclusions as regards the origins of the present human species.

Nevertheless, we may safely assume that many counter-survival behaviors were deliberately “hardwired” into our neural circuitry – mainly to prevent us from eventually figuring out how the 3D Matrix works and thereby short-circuiting the frequency fence that keeps our awareness hemmed in, and our bodies trapped within a prescribed set of limitations. Even the aging program is essentially just a built-in mechanism triggered by a preset endocrinal clock.

The concept of America itself is an ingenious marketing ploy packaged as an extreme form of “brand loyalty” wherein every child raised in the United States is methodically brainwashed into believing he or she lives in “the world’s greatest country.” This is why the typical American grows up totally insulated from any real understanding or knowledge of the world beyond the U.S.A. There is a huge gap between domestic propaganda about America being “the Land of the Free, and Home of the Brave” and America’s ignoble foreign policy - as implemented through covert CIA activities which destabilize and undermine independent local governments, while installing and propping up political stooges friendly to U.S. capital interests. This strategy of world domination through bribery and quiet coercion constitutes the thrust towards “globalization” – really an euphemism for economic and ideological colonization carried out through the clever manipulation of mass communications, thereby molding “public opinion” via the powerful tools of advertising and public relations.

Five hundred years ago, mastery of the high seas was the key to world domination. The British Empire was founded on the colorful maritime exploits of swash-buckling buccaneers who earned their knighthoods by plundering, pillaging, and planting flags in the ruling monarch’s name. By the second half of the 20th century, however, the key to world domination lay in mastery of the airwaves – control of the mass media, and thereby the power to manipulate perceptions on a global scale.

This is where America came into its own in the battle for the hearts and minds of the human population. Through the Hollywood Dream Factory and slickly produced TV entertainment packages, America rose to pre-eminence as the world’s biggest purveyor of canned information. Children in far-flung former British colonies grew up watching American-made movies and television programs, and were painlessly indoctrinated into accepting the American cultural idiom as their own. 

The U.S.A. advertised its own crass, consumeristic brand of “democracy” as the superior way of life – wherein citizens could vote every four years for Tweedledum (Republican) or Tweedledee (Democrat), while choosing from a bewildering array of TV stations and a dazzling kaleidoscope of detergents and shampoos.

The American Dream was sold to the whole world under the guise of globalization. America billed itself as the de facto leader of “the Free World” during the so-called Cold War years that marked the end of the Second World War and the beginning of the Third World War – a battle of belief systems, marketing strategies, and corporate propaganda waged by professional “spin doctors” on behalf of their clients, the über-elite Old Boys’ Network that owns 99% of the banks and mass media.

However, behind (and beyond) the Great American Marketing Machine – and way below the radar of public perception – lurks an insidious influence that has been called a variety of names, none of which comes anywhere close to describing the disease. Some conveniently label it Zionism, the Illuminati Conspiracy... or the Lucifer Effect, alluding to the allegory of how God’s most brilliant Archangel undertook the onerous task of establishing Free Will by leading a revolt in Heaven, thus creating a deep schism in the Universal Mind, splitting Energy itself into negative and positive poles.

This tragicomic dualism of the embattled and “divided self” generates perpetual conflict between our public and private personas, portrayed so memorably in Robert Louis Stevenson’s story of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde – or J.R.R. Tolkien’s Smeagol and Gollum. Indeed, it can be said that all drama emerges from the interplay of Light and Dark - from the animated shadows on the wall of Plato’s Cave to the buffalo-hide puppets of Javanese wayang kulit, Magic Lantern shows, and Dreamworks’ 3D digital imaging masterpieces.

When we are fast asleep, life is but a dream (alas, sometimes a hideous nightmare). In German, “dream” is rendered as Traum – just one letter short of Trauma. The tug-of-war between Good and Evil, Angel and Demon, Left and Right, Male and Female, Rich and Poor, Arab and Jew, ceases the moment we reconcile and reconnect our inner and outer selves – thereby redeeming and reinstating Lucifer as “The Light Bringer” to his Heavenly Throne - and rejoining the famous Siamese twins, Yin and Yang who, separated at birth, grew up erroneously believing themselves to be archrivals and sworn enemies.

CHAPTER NINE: RELIGION, SPIRITUALITY, AND TRUTH

CHAPTER NINE

RELIGION, SPIRITUALITY, AND TRUTH

The etymology of words reveals a great deal. Take religion, for example: in Latin ligare means to tie together, to bind or connect; and religare means to rejoin what was separated. Therefore, religion is what ties together, reunites or reconnects us... but with what? Our unknown origins? The mysterious source of our being? With our tribe? Certainly religion is what reconnects us with the Godhead, or Divine Nature.

Along the way, the word “religion” becomes defined as “obligation” – and the idea of tying together or reconnecting somehow devolves into being tied up, bound by God’s Laws, imprisoned by rigid rules. And thus the joy of an ultimate homecoming gets twisted into an ingrained and unquestioning obedience, a sheeplike submission to restrictions externally imposed by “expert authorities.”

So let us redeem religion by defining it as a means to realign with and rejoin our sovereign self, the nucleus of our cellular awareness. Call it God or Goddess, Prime Creator or Source, Great Spirit or All That Is... religion has no purpose other than to get us reconnected, in order that our soul can reintegrate with the Cosmic Oversoul.

Religion is a safe route from confusion to fusion.

Where does fundamentalism fit in with this definition of religion? The written word hasn’t been around very long: the oldest writings we know of are the Sumerian cuneiform tablets dating back a mere 6,000 years. Fundamentalists cling tenaciously to the literal truth of their scriptures. They worship the written word as divine memos from On High. That’s why it takes a book religion to produce a fundamentalist – and the three best-selling book religions are Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. I don’t know what form Jewish fundamentalism takes, but you can be sure that in its extreme manifestation, it’s not particularly friendly towards non-Jews - just as Christian and Muslim fundamentalists don’t admit “infidels” into their paradise, and certainly not into their hearts.

Reading and writing are mostly left-brain activities engaging a “logical” masculine bias. Thus, the worship of the written word is of necessity a linear approach to nonlinear reality: it perceives the divine as an Almighty Father and gives rise to a patriarchal, polarized social order that separates good from evil, light from dark, right from wrong, the sheep from the goats.

It’s easy to see how, in a pastoral community where illiteracy is the norm, the literate few can wield enormous influence over the many simply by monopolizing the interpretation and perpetuation of scriptures.

Now let’s take a look at what spirituality is all about. Spirit has been set apart from Matter as if the twain should never meet. Yet when we approach both Spirit and Matter from a scientific perspective, we find that the difference seems to be essentially vibrational: that is to say, Matter is what happens to Spirit when it slows itself down to a lesser frequency. Albert Einstein’s famous equation, E=MC2, suggests that mass and energy are interchangeable under certain conditions determined by velocity.

Another 20th century genius, R. Buckminster Fuller, postulated that 99.9% of the electromagnetic spectrum is metaphysical, that is, beyond the range of our sense organs and even our most sophisticated instruments. This means the physical world experienced through our senses and our scientific tools actually constitutes less than 0.1% of “reality.” However, it’s possible to evolve to the point where 100% of the reality spectrum becomes accessible – by becoming, literally, All That Is! In a holographic universe, the difference between what’s micro and what’s macro is merely a question of scale. The Master Jesus is quoted as saying: “My Father and I are One.” Was he implying that he had attained a fractal awareness of the Godhead, of the Totality of Being? As a Son of God, he was divine; and as a Son of Man, human. This fulfils Meister Eckhardt’s mystical dictum that God must become Man, so that Man can become God.

In other words, the separation between Spirit and Matter is only apparent. But we have people at both ends of the reality spectrum, each claiming their end is superior or more important - a bit like the long-running feud between the Little Enders and the Big Enders in Gulliver's Travels, wherein perpetual war is waged to decide which end of the egg should be regarded as the top!

To the scientific materialist, Matter is all that matters; while the mystic argues that Spirit permeates all space and time, and must therefore precede and prevail over Matter.

If Spirit and Matter are two sides of the proverbial coin, what does it mean to be a “spiritual” person? Superficially, one who shows less interest in material comforts could be described as “spiritual” – but does that indicate a more “correct” lifepath than someone who pays greater attention to materiality? If Spirit and Matter are indeed complementary, just like Yin and Yang, doesn’t it make sense for us to seek a dynamic equilibrium between these polarities. “X” marks the spot where Spirit and Matter intersect, where the horizontal meets the vertical, and what was once separate becomes whole... and holy!

The Christ, instead of being seen as Spirit crucified on the Cross of Matter, is said to be simply on axis, and thereby freed forever from all suffering, real or imaginary.

And as we uncrucify Jesus the Christ – who represents the Omega point of our evolutionary destiny – so, too, do we release ourselves from endless cycles of unnecessary grief and pain and guilt.

Pontius Pilate’s claim to fame, as recorded in the New Testament, is the rhetorical question he posed during the trial of Jesus: WHAT IS TRUTH? Indeed, how do we define truth? Is it not an everchanging circumstance, always mutable? For instance, on a rainy day, it’s true to describe the streets as wet. But when the sun shines again, this condition is no longer true. Is there anything that can pass as “immutable truth”? I honestly doubt it. Perhaps we’re better off just being HONEST, rather than perpetually seeking some sort of immutable truth. At least, with honesty, one can conclude that the truth means different things to different perceptions – and all perceptions are, to a certain degree, valid.

What we’re dealing with here is a problem of semantics. Concepts that were in vogue hundreds, or even thousands of years ago, have influenced the way we define words and apply them in our everyday language, which in turn determines how we interpret our sensory perceptions. The “rugged look” is viewed as “scruffy” by unsympathetic eyes. What’s “sexy” to one person comes across as “obscene” to another. So do we really want to commit genocide – and, ultimately, nuclear suicide - over a mere linguistic misunderstanding? Yet, that’s how bloody wars have erupted throughout history and, sadly, this continues to be the case.

All I’m saying is: IT DOESN’T HAVE TO BE!

Arthur C. Clarke, the visionary writer, once remarked that all human problems can be resolved with a little intelligence. I think it would do no harm to add a generous dash of love and genuine goodwill.