CHILDREN OF THE FIFTH WORLD

A Guide to the Coming Changes in Human Consciousness

By P.M.H. Atwater

Published by Bear & Co
261 pages, paperback

Ms Atwater’s latest book comes at a time when people are feeling perplexed about the youth culture of today. Those born since the mid-1980s display distinct differences to previous generations. They are an enigma to many of us. Do they need to be “dealt with” or do they need to be embraced; nurtured? Are they special or just another generation of humanity? Where do they belong on the path of our enlightenment? This book may have the answers.

Ms Atwater is the perfect person to explain these children to the reader. She is the author of many books on near-death experiences and has researched exhaustively into these new children. Her previous books include Coming Back to Life, Future Memory, New Children and Near-Death Experiences, and Beyond the Indigo Children. All best sellers in their genre.

In this work Ms Atwater offers no less than an almanac of the current age and what we can expect of our human evolution in the future. It is a gigantic task, but she is able to draw threads together from alternative science and history, prophecy, and ancient texts. The reader is briefed on the hallmarks of the new children, and how to bring them to their full potential. This is truly a primer of current thinking on all manner of subjects that are factors in the development and behaviour of today’s and tomorrow’s children. In other words, these are things you need to know to parent, teach or mentor these children.

The first chapter is devoted to throwing out the labels that the new children have collected over the last two decades. Some of these are of Ms Atwater’s own making and she admits it while explaining how these labels do more harm than good. She continues by outlining the positive and negative traits of the new children. This forms the basis of what follows. New and more sensible names are coined for human generations from the late 19^th century to the generation being born right now.

In further chapters there is basic tuition on the Root Races, and how they correspond with what is happening to our children right now. Ms Atwater notes the power of recurring numbers such as Three and Seven, listing the many influences that they have in our lives.

There is ample evidence presented on how the new children’s attributes are being denied or de-railed by education, science, ‘Big Pharma’, media, government and a host of factors that seem to be arrayed against them.

I agree with Ms Atwater that knowledge is power and with the balanced information she provides, it should be possible to carve a way through the maze that is modern life. For every negative aspect she presents a positive aspect. It is important to do this because we are faced with enormous odds against the development of unique, creative and healthy children. The scope of the task can make a parent depressed or resigned. Here is the main strength of Ms Atwood’s work. Knowing all the information can make a difference to the choices you make as a young person or as a parent. It may not thrill you to know some of the things here, but consider yourself informed.

Human development is a rocky road at most times. We are in a time of transition which makes it rockier. Do we go natural or embrace technology? Perhaps a mixture of what is best from each? Spiritual development is even more vexed. In this book Ms Atwater will give the reader, young or old, much to consider, much to learn and outline decisions to be made for the future.

I recommend this book in the first instance for parents and teachers. Secondly for the new children to read for themselves when they are ready. Development of these children cannot simply be left to chance. To fully prepare themselves for life in the new millennia, they absolutely must be guided.

– Reviewed by Jennifer Hoskins in New Dawn 138

IMAGINING THE WORLD INTO EXISTENCE

An Ancient Egyptian Manual of Consciousness

By Normandi Ellis

Published by Bear & Co
368 pages, paperback

Egyptians believed people were born into the hands of God and that continued right action in accordance with divine truth and natural law kept one spiritually aligned with god.
– The Author

Imagining the World into Existence culminates thirty years of research into ancient Egypt by author Normandi Ellis who takes the reader through the consciousness of ancient Egypt via its sacred texts.

It’s been said there are really two ancient Egypts. One Egypt is the physical remnants – the pyramids, the sphinx, the tombs and artefacts. The other Egypt is the consciousness of the ancient Egyptians – and perhaps, the consciousness of humanity’s heritage.

Humanity’s ancestors in Egypt left us plenty of evidence to suggest they didn’t simply believe in the afterlife, their lives were significantly influenced by the knowledge of reincarnation and the eternity of the soul. It seems that the elite of Egyptian antiquity spent the better part of their lives training and preparing for the journey between worlds. From earliest Egyptian times, Thoth taught them the axiom that is as relevant today as then, “As above, So below.” It seems that in Egypt it was understood that they, as reflections of the heavens, were linked in an endless cycle of creation that passed back and forth between mirrored worlds.

Of course, we can’t paint all of ancient Egypt with the same consciousness brush. Differences are certain to have existed between the Pharaohs, temple priests and the common man who was forbidden to enter sacred sites. For instance, while the temple priests practiced their magic and worked towards the alchemical transmutation of the enlightened soul, the day-to-day population at large seems not to have had quite the same access to the texts inscribed on the temple walls. The Book of Two Ways, one of the texts Ms Ellis cites, however, is an example of the temple wisdom beginning to be brought to the masses.

“The Book of Two Ways, a major part of these Coffin Texts, tries for the first time to elucidate for the common man the way in which transformation from death to eternal life occurs and how the geography of the other world is arranged,” she notes.

Nevertheless, there were beliefs that were widely accepted by everyone, like the weighing of the heart against a feather upon entering the afterlife.

“In the Halls of Osiris in the neterworld, the heart of the deceased was placed on the scales of ma’at and weighed against the balance of her white feather,” writes Ellis. If one had lived a life of “harmony and balance in thought, word and deed,” then one’s heart would be lighter than the feather, thus allowing unencumbered access to the heavens.

“For Egyptians, the heart held all memory and thought. The seat of consciousness dwelled there. If the balance of ma’at was attained in life, then the soul passed through the gateway into the realm of the gods.”

One of the pivotal stories in Egyptian mythology, The Secret of Osiris Becoming Re, is a ritual of “turning death consciousness into life consciousness.” The ritual is one chapter from the Egyptian Book of the Dead, and apparently, “this is the first time in ancient history that the image of the ouroboros appears…”

The ouroboros, the circular image of the snake eating its own tail, symbolises an infinite cycle – perhaps the infinite cycle of transubstantiation between matter and energy, death and life, birth and re-birth. It seems the ancient Egyptians had a sophisticated understanding of this transubstantiation process, so much so that they were likely able to work with the energy through which this process occurs.

With this backdrop of the ancient Egyptians’ transcendental consciousness, Ms Ellis’ discussion of the ancients’ use of magic, or heka, is not just some mythological tale. She states, “If the magic hadn’t worked, physicians of the ancient world would have been out of business a long time ago. Instead, their work was lauded throughout the ancient world – in Greece and Rome, Syria and Babylon.”

Unfortunately, the magicians of old could not save this heritage from a force that literally swept through the ancient world, destroyed the records of humanity’s past and plunged us into a dark period that leaves us today simply guessing as to the depths of who we once were.

The wisdom and consciousness of ancient Egypt is something researchers can only piece together from fragmentary remains of ruins and texts – the parts that weren’t crushed by battles, the slow erosion of time, or the fires of ignorance.

“Nearly two thousand years have passed since the Greeks walked on Egyptian sands and worshipped in Egyptian temples. The ancient Egyptians and their wisdom seem but a dim memory, a magical realm of forgotten magic,” writes Ms Ellis.

Imagining the World Into Existence weaves with great detail a map of the consciousness of this magical realm from our past. And what’s particularly striking is how closely the consciousness of ancient Egypt resembles the evolving consciousness of today.

– Reviewed by Marc Star in New Dawn 138

2038

The Great Pyramid Timeline Prophecy

By John Van Auken

Published by A.R.E. Press
192 pages, paperback

It seems that we are currently swimming in the age of prophecy. While many heralded 2012 as the prophetic end times, perhaps closer to the truth is that we’ve crossed the threshold of a new beginning. This new beginning is perhaps not a cataclysmic event, but rather a gradual unfolding – a change dictated by the astronomical dance of celestial bodies through the cosmos.

If this is the case, then we are in the midst of a transition that might take decades to unfold. It seems the Maya were aware of this coming transition, as were the Hopi among, perhaps, other indigenous cultures. Could it be the ancient Egyptians knew about our current transition as well and built their own prophecy into the structure of the Great Pyramid?

This prophecy, known as the pyramid timeline, is said to trace the highs and lows of humanity’s journey during the past 6,000 years and, according to contemporary pyramidologists, ends in the year 2038, right in the midst of our transitory period.

Author John Van Auken places the pyramid timeline prophecy in context with the Mayan prophecy and the Great Year (the 26,000-year precession of the equinox):

“One degree of our Sun’s movement is 72 years, so dating a major change to the year 2012 and another to the year 2038 is virtually placing them within the same time. Among some of the Mayan Elders, the year 2012 is seen as the beginning of a transitional period that they believe will be in full movement by the year 2038…”

Mr Van Auken is considered an expert on ancient Egypt and he is a director at Edgar Cayce’s Association for Research and Enlightenment (A.R.E.). During trance-state readings, Mr Cayce, one of America’s best known and respected prophets, often spoke as the voice of Ra-Ta, a high priest of ancient Egypt. Mr Cayce was considered the reincarnation of Ra-Ta, and Mr Van Auken’s knowledge of Mr Cayce’s readings on ancient Egypt lends a perspective to this book that is certainly unique and unavailable elsewhere.

Mr Van Auken is not the creator of the pyramid timeline prophecy. Rather, he is rejuvenating an idea put forth in the 19th and 20th centuries, most notably by researcher David Davidson, in a book co-authored with H. Aldersmith entitled The Great Pyramid: Its Divine Message.

After the Rosetta Stone was cracked in the 19th century, pyramidologists tied together the layout of the Great Pyramid with the Egyptian Book of the Dead, maintaining convincingly the text was but one version of a journey that the pyramid told in stone. Although mainstream Egyptologists today consider all pyramids to be tombs, Mr Van Auken reasonably asserts that the facts do not support such an idea being assigned to the likes of the Great Pyramid. Rather, “the Great Pyramid with its many passageways, chambers, and unusual features may have been used to initiate incarnate souls into the other dimensions of life.”

The Egyptian Book of the Dead seems to serve multiple purposes. It is a road map for the recently deceased on the journey from the cycle of terrestrial reincarnation to a place in the heavens among the other star gods. The book’s chapters seem to correspond to tunnels and chambers within the Great Pyramid, suggesting the book and the pyramid were used together to, as Mr Van Auken states, initiate seekers “into the other dimensions of life.”

Knowing the Great Pyramid was not a tomb, 19th and 20th century pyramidologists used the discoveries found in the Egyptian Book of the Dead and the ‘pyramid inch’ (the unit of measure believed to be the ancient standard used in the construction of the pyramid) to test out a theory that the passageways and chambers of the Great Pyramid told the story of humanity’s journey on planet Earth.

2038: The Great Pyramid Timeline Prophecy is a tight and concise read. Mr Van Auken begins the book with an overview of the Great Pyramid and its anomalies before delving into the discovery of the timeline prophecy and its relation to the Egyptian Book of the Dead, as well as plenty of rich information about ancient Egyptian perspectives on existence.

Perhaps the most compelling part of the book is when Mr Van Auken introduces Mr Cayce, the reincarnation of Ra-Ta, into the story. That’s when the book veers down a road much less travelled with tales of Atlantis and a sophisticated spirituality.

Regardless of whether the pyramid timeline turns out to be fact or conjecture, it’s a piece of a much larger puzzle whereby science and metaphysics – separated now for so many generations – seem to be again reaching towards one another.

– Reviewed by Marc Star in New Dawn 138

HOW TO CREATE SACRED WATER

A Guide to Rituals and Practices

By Kathryn W. Ravenwood

Published by Bear & Co
206 pages, paperback

This book records the odyssey of water and of a person, the author, Kathryn Ravenwood. The two journeys are entwined with the personal, spiritual and global needs of water and our very survival as a planet. It can be the reader’s journey too.

It begins when Hurricane Floyd hit North Carolina in 1999, causing major damage to waterways with pollution from rotting animals and other matter. This may not seem to herald an exciting and inspiring book on the nature of water and spirit, but it does.

Kathryn Ravenwood is a shamanic guide and teacher of spiritual mysteries, specialising in ceremony and ritual based on a blend of Native American and ancient Egyptian traditions. She has not always been a ritualist or shaman, and this book follows her emergence as she developed the skills and intuition to be able to make a difference. Now she can teach others to do the same for the environment of which we are all a part.

The style is immediate and accessible and the tone is warm and encouraging. The chapters proceed on a linear time line with information about the nature of water and how it affects the environment. Ms Ravenwood intersperses this with details of her own journey. She is a believer in the concept of the earth as a living organism called Gaia. What we do as individuals or groups affects all. Overall, it is highly entertaining.

Every few chapters there is a guided imagery meditation on the concepts just addressed. These are simple, moving and inspiring. You can have someone read them for you as you meditate, or you can record it to play back when you are ready. I rather enjoy recording my own voice for these ‘journeys’, as it is familiar and comforting.

All the rituals described in this work are clear, simple and adaptable to your situation. The tools needed to build a water altar are easy to obtain. You don’t have to use strange or exotic objects for the altar, everything you need may actually be in your home. In next to no time you will be creating your own crystal homeopathic elixirs using a sacred water altar.

Along with the meditations and the biography comes much information about the state of the planet. It is not all roses. So many things combine to stress Gaia. There are greenhouse gases, fracking (shale oil mining), large scale industry, uncontrolled development, even the coffee and other foods and chemicals we consume can have unintended consequences for our water supply. The build up of many small things has a big effect.

All is not lost – yet. Ms Ravenwood follows in the footsteps of Professor Masaru Emoto in providing a simple and practical way to start healing the waters. Other healers and ritual masters familiar to New Dawn readers doing similar work are Normandi Ellis, Nikki Scully and Gloria Taylor Brown. I commend their works for budding shamans. You will find reviews of their books in back issues of New Dawn magazine.

Ms Ravenwood has given the reader three (or more) books in one volume. Firstly, she writes the genuine autobiography of a seeker who has become a renowned ceremonialist and shaman. Secondly, this is a handbook and reference manual for constructing a water altar and preparing healing elixirs for water. Finally, it is an inspiring book of meditation/guided imagery journeys. You can use those in the book or make your own. This is a special book that will not be leaving my shelf for some time.

Water is essential to life. For those in water-rich areas, it can be taken for granted. In water-poor places it is more valuable than the most precious mineral or gem. Yes, we all need clean, sparkling, unpolluted water. Here is a simple way to revitalise your local and wider waterways. It takes a big dollop of loving intent and some basic tools, easily obtained. Read the book for a list and for the method.

– Reviewed by Jennifer Hoskins in New Dawn 138

ASIA MYSTERIOSA

The Oracle of Astral Force as a Means of Communication with “the Little Lights of the Orient”

By Zam Bhotiva

Published by Polair Publishing
160 pages, paperback

As the story goes, in 1908, Mario Fille, a young man of French-Italian ancestry, met a hermit named Father Julian (Pater Giuliano) who was from a small town in the hills outside Rome. Julian gave the young man a set of old parchments he said contained the direct connection to an oracle but told him the process for obtaining answers from the oracle entailed a lengthy and complex working of the questions using both numbers and words.

It wasn’t until 1920 that Fille first attempted to use the oracle. He was delighted that it worked perfectly as he was told it would, although the answers appeared variously in Italian, German, or English.

Recalling something of this story from a book entitled Arktos by Joscelyn Godwin, I consulted my library and found that volume. Because Godwin so succinctly relates what happened next in the story, I quote him here from page 88 of Arktos:

“One of the first questions to ask such an oracle is ‘Who are you?’ Working with his friend and fellow-musician Cesare Accomani, Fille learned that this was called the ‘Oracle of Astral Energy’: that it was not a method of divination like some Kabbalistic oracles or the I Ching, but an actual channel of communication with the ‘Rosicrucian Initiatic Center of Mysterious Asia’, situated in the Himalayas and directed by the ‘Three Supreme Sages’ or the ‘Little Lights of the Orient’, who live in – Agartha. These at first included Father Julian, then, after his passing on 8 April 1930, purported to come from a ‘Chevalier Rose-Croix’ who was guessed to be a favourite of the neo-Theosophists, the ‘Master Racoczy’, sometime incarnated as Roger Bacon, Francis Bacon, and the Comte de Saint-German.

“Fille and Accomani settled in Paris, where the Oracle was demonstrated to a group of journalists and writers in the hope that they would publicise it. Some were favourably enough impressed to contribute to Accomani’s book about it: Asia Mysteriosa, published in 1929 under the pseudonym of ‘Zam Bhotiva’….”

This first English translation of the book contains the original contributions of three of those journalists/writers: a short Preface by Fernand Divoir followed by a brief essay each by Maurice Magre and Jean Marqués-Riviére. The text itself is preceded by a 29-page Introduction from Colum Hayward, who has done an admirable job editing the entire volume.

The original Appendix is entitled The Polaires, which is the name of the Paris group formed to deal with the communications received from the oracle. That Appendix lists the principal aims of the organisation, the most notable for me being “To combat egotism, the worst of sins, in order to overcome or at least modify it,” “To teach that the bitter struggle of life is necessary and that nothing good, nothing noble, is obtained easily,” and to learn “about life on other planets.”

The name “Polaires” is derived from the belief that Agartha, The Great White Lodge, was once located in Hyperborea at the North Pole (some say the South Pole) of the Earth, but moved to the Himalayas as a result of an ancient pole shift. It is thought that from Agartha issues the direction of spiritual activities on our planet.

Some other names purported to be members of, or later associated with, the Polaires “Brotherhood” include authors Rene Guénon, Julius Evola and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, British medium Grace Cooke, and the Nazi Otto Rahn.

While the Method was never to be disclosed, we find that numbers and symbols played a big part in operating the Oracle of Astral Force, especially the upward pointing triangle and, inside it, the numbers in descending order of 3, 33, and 333, or, by addition, 3, 6, and 9. Subsequently, two overlapped triangles, one pointing up and one down, became the Polaires’ signature symbol.

Let me conclude this review with four short quotes from the book that may strike a resonant chord in the reader, as they did in me: “The transformation of our existence depends entirely on ourselves….”

“Over all this philosophy there hovers a detachment from worldly things, so that the return to the Ineffable takes place without passing through the tortuous paths of future lives…”

“The worlds which must be travelled in countless existences are numberless, but what is certain is that no return is made to the same world.”

“Thus, throughout Asia, there exists an immense Fraternity; no earthly image can give any idea of this and no description can be applied to it.”

– Reviewed by Alan Glassman in New Dawn 138

THE CATHAR VIEW

The Mysterious Legacy of Montségur

Edited by Dave Patrick

Published by Polair Publishing
296 pages, paperback

If you’re at all interested in the history, beliefs, and legends of the Cathars and about the development of esoteric Christianity in general, this is definitely the book for you! Dave Patrick has assembled short essays from 25 different individuals that, taken as a whole, put together many pieces of the puzzle. This collection of articles is at once heart-warming and inspiring, mystical but shocking, and, above all, sobering.

Many of us have read the accounts of the horrible slaughter of the “bons hommes” and “bonnes femmes” during the Albigensian Crusade in the southern region of France more than 700 years ago.

But these contemporary stories of people’s searches, rediscoveries, past-life memories, and perspectives about the “heretic” Cathars of the Languedoc is not just a fascinating read; it sparks a new hope that those gentle folks’ demise was, if seen over time, actually a victory – a victory over the historic cruelty, idolatry, and corruption of the Catholic Church. As some of the writers say, it’s about the triumph of AMOR (love) over ROMA (the heavy-handed brutality of the Church).

We are reminded in some of the essays about the destruction of the entire city of Beziers in 1209 (where the papal legate is said to have told his soldiers, “Kill them all; God will know his own.”), the siege of the great walled city of Carcassonne, and the torture and immolation of thousands of people in hundreds of villages and towns whose only “crime” was that they were free thinkers and did not strictly follow the commands nor submit to the interdictions of the Pope.

The most infamous slaughter has to be the torching alive of over 200 of the “pure ones” who, holding hands and singing, descended from the last major Cathar outpost fortress atop Montségur on the morning of 16 March 1244, and climbed onto the flaming pyre set by the Pope’s and French King’s mercenaries at the foot of the mountain. It is said that the previous night a certain “treasure” secured by four of the faithful was lowered from the fortress wall, and that the bearers scattered out into the countryside with their valuable possessions.

There are numerous theories of what the “treasure” consisted. It has been sought after by many treasure hunters. Nothing has ever been found, and it is suggested by more than one of this book’s authors that it may have been a set of secret writings, such as a mysterious but often referenced “Book of Love.”

The Cathars were extremely devout Christians in the sense that they thought themselves to be the true successors of Jesus and his disciples, adhering to what they believed were the tenets of Jesus himself. Their holy books included, foremost, the Gospel of John, purported to be written by someone who was an actual witness to the life of Christ.

They followed a lineage of Gnostic thinkers who yearned for truth through actual experience – like the Hermeticists of Egypt, the Platonists of Greece, the Essenes and the Manicheans of the Middle East, and the Bogomils of the Balkans. They were contemporaries of the Troubadours and were often protected and financed by the Knights Templars.

The Cathars have been criticised because they were dualists: they believed God did not create the material world with all its suffering but that matter was the realm of a lesser god – a demiurge who contrasted and opposed good with evil. They claimed this lesser god was the Yahweh of the Old Testament, a jealous and vengeful god – a god whose “flawed creation came about through a misguided desire to ape the true Creator.” They read only the New Testament, and their “parfaits” or “perfecti” – those more advanced practitioners, both men and women who took a vow of celibacy – are said to have carried that book around with them.

As members of their communities, the Albingenses (another name for Cathars) engaged in simple but skilled vocations and possessed little material wealth. Many were vegetarians. However, they did not live lives of hermits or monks but interacted with society as a whole. Many with whom they came in contact converted to the Cathar Way, nobles and peasants alike.

They did not practice the usual sacraments of the Church, but, when an initiate was deemed ready, or on his or her deathbed, they performed a baptism of the Holy Spirit, a transmission of power, a laying-on-of-hands ceremony known as the “consolamentum” (meaning “with the sun in the mind”) – a purification ritual that permitted the recipient to conquer the fear of death. They were accomplished healers, trained in clairvoyance and telepathy, and they believed in reincarnation so that through successive struggles within a material body the soul could finally obtain liberation and not have to return to the earthly realm of the evil demiurge.

The contributors to this present book include some famous writers and some heretofore relatively unknown. The synchronistic ways in which Dave Patrick met them all and included their offerings is a story in itself that he relates at the end of the book. Rather than cite them individually, I would prefer here to give you a taste of what I consider the preciousness contained in this volume by quoting just a few of the many memorable words of the authors without attribution:

The Cathars “didn’t believe that Jesus was the son of God. They didn’t believe in the virgin birth. They didn’t believe he died on the cross. Jesus was a prophet, yes, and a teacher,…. Jesus didn’t come to free the people from their sin, but from their ignorance.”

It is said of Catharism: “It’s treasure and its secret was that store of spiritual wisdom which might indeed be called the complete Gospel of St. John, of which the existing gospel is but a fragment.”

“The message of the Cathars is that we are all part of soul groups incarnating together.” This gives “credence to a holographic universe, the paradox of the timelessness of time.”

“Cathar teachings remind us that spiritual thirst is universal. People today are finding that religion isn’t providing all the answers. We are no longer accepting secondhand information. Like the Cathars, we are seeking within.”

“When we go back to the source of the Hermetic Teachings in Egypt, we find that the Egyptian hieroglyph for Heart, Ib, is a vase…. In a way, the Cathars did possess the Grail.”

“…it is not we who have rediscovered the Cathars, but they who made ready our spiritual processes of today.”

“…destruction of the current egoic systems on the Earth must occur. Greed, power at all costs is unobtainable. That is why collapse in banking, media and justice systems is imminent if not already occurring.”

“The Cathar story is part of the story of man’s inhumanity to his fellow man throughout the whole of known history. It is the story of control of the masses, keeping them in a state of fear, not only for their lives but also for their immortal souls.”

“It’s hard for us in the twenty-first century to contemplate such barbaric acts as were perpetrated then, especially those that were in the cause of the Church – or is it? Have we learned anything at all in the intervening seven hundred years? In today’s so-called civilised and enlightened world, such cruelty still persists. In Guantanamo Bay, Iraq, Syria and many other parts of the globe atrocities occur daily, but somehow we seem to be able to distance ourselves from the horror…. Have we become so desensitised by the deluge of media information that we no longer pay much attention to the coverage of such events?”

“‘When the power of love overcomes the love of power, the world will know peace’. This is a message for the Church, institutionalised religion generally, governments, banks, corporations and other powerful institutions. Is anyone out there listening…?”

And, finally,

“There is no longer a sense of the sacred, for we are obsessed with glamour and triviality, cynicism, violence and the need for constant distraction. What kind of progress is this? What kind of culture? There is no suggestion here that we should return to a heresy but with discernment we should be able to see some of the wisdom in the philosophy of the Cathars.”

– Reviewed by Alan Glassman in New Dawn 138

THE GOSPEL OF JOHN IN THE LIGHT OF INDIAN MYSTICISM

By Ravi Ravindra

Published by Inner Traditions
272 pages, paperback

If you’re looking for an in-depth, metaphysical analysis of the New Testament’s Fourth Gospel, you won’t do any better than Canadian Physics and Comparative Religion Professor Ravi Ravindra’s The Gospel of John in the Light of Indian Mysticism.

Originally released back in 1990 as Yoga of the Christ, and again in 1998 as Christ the Yogi: a Hindu Reflection on the Gospel of John, the book shows Dr. Ravindra’s deep understanding of the mystical teachings encoded into the narrative of an arguably often misinterpreted document attributed to John the Apostle.

A long-time seeker, Ravindra emphasises in his interpretation of The Gospel According to St. John that he sees it as pointing in a direction that can aid one in the search for inner transformation. Viewed from this angle, the Gospel’s text takes on greatly expanded new and revelatory meaning.

Perhaps because of his background in traditions of the East, Dr. Ravindra is able to comfortably make comparisons to ideas in other sacred writings which illustrate the richness of the metaphoric and symbolic allusions that have come down to us over the centuries since this Gospel first came to light.

The reader who possesses even the slightest nature of spiritual inquiry will find this book tending to promote increased meaning and aim to his or her path. It furthers the practitioner’s awakening to a state of increased openness to that which can and might be transmitted from a higher consciousness. Along this line, Ravindra encourages us to “allow the Gospel to work its magic lifting us above ourselves.”

What becomes increasingly clear are the various levels of being within each of us. The book encourages one to rise above even religion itself to a new level of awareness by “letting the inner Christ grow in us.” The methods for doing this are given in each of the Gospel’s many stories and parables, and Dr. Ravindra explains them, one at a time, in order to offer a surprisingly simple but powerful teaching lesson from each with great care and deep understanding.

As I did, you will undoubtedly feel a certain calm uplifting from the very outset as he dissects the stories with a compassion for what he feels are their hidden but real meanings. To say that he has decoded the esoteric aspects of the Fourth Gospel is an understatement, indeed.

Instead of being a teacher of the multitudes, Jesus is looked at as more of an avatar of a particular ashram consisting of a very select band of pupils, even though he occasionally spoke to large audiences. He chose his particular disciples from the masses because he could see in them the ability to witness, experience, and live the truth directly. Ultimately, some disciples received a new name, indicating they had reached a new level of understanding and being.

What is emphasised is that the teacher needs the pupil as much as the pupil needs the teacher, but at different levels. Just as Christ formed a bridge between Heaven and earth, He prepared his disciples to be links themselves according to their own level of being. For instance, taking place at the wedding at Cana in Galilee, the familiar story of Jesus turning water into wine is said to be a symbolic story about “the transformation of being from the level of water, which was the level of John the Baptiser, to another level, that of the Spirit….”

Ravindra takes the seemingly ordinary word “temple,” as in the story of Jesus driving the money-changers out of the temple precinct, and explains it as having at least three levels of meaning of increasing subtlety:

“The first one is the external Temple in Jerusalem, built out of stone and wood, serving as the place of gathering and worship for the people. This is all that the multitude understands…. Then there is the body as the Temple of the Spirit. For any action to be taken in the world, even the Word has to acquire a body, even a mind…. It is the cleansing of a disciple’s own body and psyche that engages him, so that each one of them may become a fit vessel for the Spirit…. (Thirdly) When the natural self is in complete obedience to the spiritual self… one knows that after destruction of the bodily temple, the real self (certainly not the physical body)… will rise again in eternal life.”

Dr. Ravindra quotes from many other parts of the New Testament, not just the Gospel of John, to elucidate his points. He also quotes from other sacred writings. But the thrust of his reflections is that those who are interested in inner transformation, as Ravindra obviously is himself, must be prepared for a great internal struggle. They must, in effect, crucify themselves. That, he says, is the real initiatory experience.

But, “The teaching is not about physical death by crucifixion, lest anybody should be tempted to be literal-minded about this or any other portion of the Gospels. It is to do with struggling against one’s own natural self and self-willing and yoking (yoga = yoke) them to the way of the Spirit, as Jesus did himself. And let no one imagine that it is easy to die to oneself.”

So rich is the text of this book, one could read it many times over and gain new insight each time, as I, myself, have done and will continue to do. In fact, because groupings of verses of the Gospel are given subject titles, I find it easy to use this volume as a guidebook and reference, even as a workbook.

For instance, here are just a few of the many verse attributions: Intelligence Beyond Time; Preparation for Withstanding Truth; The Need for Inner Unity; The Struggle Between the Self and the Ego; The Fear and Temptation of Becoming King; Levels of Struggle; Conflict Between the Spirit and the World; Adultery: Mixing of Levels; Losing One’s Mind Rightly; Awake, O Sleeper, Arise from the Dead; Alien People Clutching Their Gods; Unless a Seed Dies It Bears No Fruit; Levels of Seeing; The Yoga of the Cross; Washing Off the Surface Self; Those Who Have Nothing Will Not Die; Leave the World in Order to Change It.

Needless to say, this particular one of Ravi Ravindra’s books (and he has written a number of others) is a favourite in my library.

– Reviewed by Alan Glassman in New Dawn 138

SUPERNATURAL

Writings on an Unknown History

By Richard Smoley

Published by Tarcher/Penguin
240 pages, paperback

Readers of New Dawn are certainly not strangers to the writing of Richard Smoley. He has been a steady contributor of articles to this magazine for a number of years. His latest book offers a collection of some of those articles as well as a few from other periodicals between the years 1997 and 2012. Altogether, this relatively short volume is composed of 16 separate chapters, each of which is a small gem of its own designed to be fast and enjoyable reading.

While I’m guessing the book’s title is a play on words of P.D. Ouspensky’s In Search of the Miraculous: Fragments of an Unknown Teaching, the chapters themselves offer us brief glimpses of a variety of subjects suitable for the novice of metaphysical studies as well as those who have specialised in that area for a long time. Considering myself to be a member of the latter category, I found many delightful and interesting titbits of information of which I had not been aware.

Perhaps what is most engaging about this book is that Smoley gives us insight into some of his own personal experiences in the realm of the supernatural, whether they be direct encounters or accounts related to him by others. With his usual skilful writing ability, he tempts us to go further into our own investigations of subjects like archaic wisdom, Nostradamus, prophecy, The Da Vinci Code, the 2012 phenomenon, Atlantis, Freemasonry, The Course in Miracles, the nature of prayer, and many other areas of study.

Smoley’s knowledge of Greek and Latin enlightens us with definitions with which we may not have been familiar, and add to our understanding of sometimes difficult subject matter. As early as in his Preface, for instance, he gives us the root of the word “esotericism” as coming from the Greek esoterikos, meaning “further in.” This resonated and added to my mundane definition of that word as merely “hidden.”

Whether he’s talking about such diverse ideas as the Kabbalah; Tarot; the Western magical tradition; widening our observing faculties and qualities of attention in the manner taught by G.I. Gurdjieff; C.G. Jung’s world of archetype and synchronicity; the predictions of Edgar Cayce; the astral realm; sacred literature; Priory of Sion; Mayan Calendar; Theosophy; the Rosicrucians; the Kahunas of Hawaii; Gnosticism; Hermeticism; psychic protection; and a host of other fascinating topics, Smoley presents them all in a thoroughly delightful and down-to-earth way.

The author’s thematic stream prods us to develop our own way of finding our true Self, our real “I,” if you will. While there are innumerable methods for this in the “esoteric tradition – the body of knowledge that underlies all the great spiritual traditions of humanity,” Smoley cautions that we cannot necessarily find this in ordinary religion which “involves a relationship with a personal deity.” Perhaps we can only find the useful and correct method for enlightenment in the sacred and secret technology of “real” magic prompted by meditation and directed imagination.

Of course, Smoley admits we are left with many more questions than answers as to the nature of other realms beyond our own that may, indeed, be generating and controlling factors in our day to day lives here on Earth. He reminds us, “We do not know. The evidence would seem to suggest as much. At any rate, I am convinced that we will not understand the rise and fall of civilisations, or history itself, until we do know.”

And, he reiterates, a small step in beginning to crack the barrier to that knowledge is to get in touch with what it is, both within us and outside of us, that “experiencing.” But, he cautions that, “…this is not ordinary ego, with its thoughts and desires and judgements. Why? Because we can step back and look at all these things within ourselves. If we can look even at internal events, what is doing the looking?”

In the final chapter of the book, entitled “The Dual Nature of Reality,” Smoley gives us the goal from the Samkhya, thought to be the oldest of all Indian philosophical systems. It can be, and perhaps should be, the ultimate goal for those of us who are involved in metaphysical pursuits.

He summarises that ancient teaching’s objective and intended result in this way: “The spiritual path, which is for a long time the process of detachment, is a means of gradually separating the ‘I’ from the world, that is, separating consciousness from the contents of its experience. At this point, supreme illumination takes place. The old world falls away, and a new one arises. Such is enlightenment.”

– Reviewed by Alan Glassman in New Dawn 137

CONFESSIONS OF A REBEL ANGEL

The Wisdom of the Watchers and the Destiny of Planet Earth

By Timothy Wyllie

Published by Bear & Co
464 pages, paperback

This remarkable book is the first volume in a series of confessions by an angel called Georgia. It is hard to describe the overall genre of the work. Of course, it is New Age, but depending on your beliefs it can present as different things.

It can be read as a history of life on earth from a spiritual and evolutionary perspective in tandem with the biography of one man – Timothy Wyllie. For sceptics, it can be a cleverly constructed metaphysical fiction. It can also be viewed as a parable, a fable, or as myth. I am hovering somewhere in between history and biography at present. I ask sceptical readers to suspend disbelief and enjoy the ride.

Timothy Wyllie is a multi-talented musician, writer and artist. He started specialising in the study of non-human intelligences following a near-death experience in the 1970s.

He has authored a number of books based on the spiritual knowledge gained from parts of the Urantia Book, a huge spiritual book that emerged in the 20^th century. It deals with God, Jesus, science, cosmology, religion, history and destiny. Georgia concentrates on Earth (Urantia) and its origins and destiny. It documents the angelic rebellion by Lucifer and Satan about 200,000 years ago, and its consequences for our planet. At the same time she charts the current life of her ‘charge’ from birth to the late 1960s.

As a dual biography this volume works well. The angel Georgia uses the mechanics of Mr Wyllie’s body and mind to manifest her story – with his permission. There is no direct input from him until the end of the Afterword. Their styles are completely different.

Each chapter has sections on the history of our universe, and Earth in particular, alternating with parts of Mr Wyllie’s biography from Georgia’s point of view. His life is documented from birth to about the late 1960s when he was with the ‘The Process’ in Yucatan. The Process was a quasi-spiritual movement active in the 1960s and 1970s.

Georgia explains the hierarchy of angelic beings. She is a Watcher, who records and observes. She cannot intervene directly in someone’s life. That is up to another order of angels entirely. All the information about angels, the cosmology of our universe and the existence of a Multiverse (of which Earth is a part, but currently quarantined due to the Lucifer Rebellion) is found in The Urantia Book. I have attempted to read that 2,097 page book and found it tough going. Mr Wyllie and Georgia have made the whole thing far more absorbing and understandable.

Overall the style is completely engaging. I could hardly put the book down once I started. I would term the writing mature and advanced. There is no padding and it seems very honest. Georgia writes from the perspective of having supported the Lucifer rebellion initially, but seeing and enduring the consequences made her change her mind. (Apparently angels can do that.)

The parallel nature of this narrative illustrates how the interrupted spiritual development of the peoples of this planet plays out in the lives of individual ‘reincarnates’ such as Mr Wyllie.

I found many of the questions that priests and philosophers have not been able to answer are explained completely. Suddenly the concepts of Root Races, Lemuria, Atlantis and the chasm between East and West fall into perspective. Georgia knows that the future of our planet is going to be wonderful. There are signs that Earth and its 36 companion quarantined worlds may soon rejoin the Multiverse and become fully aware in all ways. I can hardly wait!

I recommend this book to all who are interested in the history of our origins, not from what we are fed at school, but from a spiritual perspective. The whys and wheres are given, names are named and the reassurance given that we are not alone in the universe. Take it as fact or take it as fiction, this is a riveting read in every way. I am looking forward keenly to further volumes in this series.

– Reviewed by Jennifer Hoskins in New Dawn 137

SLAVE SPECIES OF THE GODS

The Secret History of the Anunnaki and Their Mission on Earth

By Michael Tellinger

Published by Bear & Co
576 pages, paperback

South African Michael Tellinger has written what, at least up until this time, is his magnum opus. It’s a republication of a book originally produced in 2005 in South Africa. This time it’s in larger font with slightly more line spacing and much easier to read. The only change I can see is that Chapter 17, a kind of glossary at the end of the original book, has been replaced by an index.

After reading the present book, I went back to look at my handwritten notes on the pages of the former volume. To my surprise I found that seven years ago I had interpreted much of the information as mostly myth and metaphor. This time, I took everything presented as much more literal. I guess it’s because, in the interim, I had actually met Zecharia Sitchin, read more of his work, and come to have a better understanding of it.

Tellinger bases his overriding thesis on Sitchin’s transcriptions, translations, and interpretations of the many ancient Sumerian cuneiform clay tablets said to be written by the master scribe Endubsar as dictated to him by Lord Enki (later identified as one of the Nefilim gods of the Old Testament) after the tragic events of Sodom and Gomorrah over 4,000 years ago.

As many of you will recall, the tablets tell an epic story how the Earth, its Moon, and the Asteroid Belt were formed from massive collisions to an older planet of our solar system called Tiamat as another far distant planet came close by. They talk of a civilisation of advanced beings that came to Earth some 443,000 years ago in search of gold they could transform into atmospheric powder to save that distant planet, named Nibiru, from losing its internal, life-giving heat.

As the tablets say, Nibiru crosses through our solar system in an orbit that’s almost 90 degrees to the plane of the other planets, as do many comets, and revolves around the Sun every 3,600 years. When it passes closer to the Sun than Earth, it needs a protective atmospheric layer of gold dust to keep its surface from getting overheated. When it’s way out beyond the other planets, it needs that gold dust to retain the internal heat it generates so its occupants don’t freeze.

While exploring our solar system hundreds of thousands of years ago, Nibiru’s inhabitants, called the Anunnaki or Nefilim, found Earth contained an abundance of gold. They proceeded to colonise Earth, mine the gold, and ship it back in spaceships to their planet via a way station on Mars which was operated by a branch of the Anunnaki called the Igigi (also called the Neteru or “watchers”).

As the operation grew, primarily in southern Africa, it became more difficult for the Anunnaki themselves to do the mining and processing, so they called upon three of their leaders – a scientist of their species named Enki (later to become the Egyptian Ptah); his very intelligent half-sister, Ninmah; and his son, the great architect/scientist Ningishzidda (later to become the Egyptian Thoth) – to clone a hybrid being by combining Anunnaki DNA with that of one of the more advanced apes on Earth.

After many failed attempts, they were successful, and the hybrid who was fashioned, a male called Adamu according to the texts (the first Adam of our Bible), had enough of the Anunnaki intelligence to obey their commands and to perform the tasks needed for gold mining. A female was also created (Eve of our Bible) so they could replicate, and, with more work, their offspring eventually became what we today know as homo sapiens sapiens.

The saga of the tablets continues to tell us of the other principal Anunnaki leaders – an intermarrying royal family of parents and grandparents, brothers and sisters, children and grandchildren – who all live extraordinarily long lives by Earth standards and have very high technological development. Among many others, we’re told two very important relatives of Enki were his vengeful brother Enlil (the supreme commander of planet Earth) and a warlike son named Marduk (later to become the Egyptian Ra/Amun). To the hybrid Earth species, these Anunnaki were like gods.

The tablets tell us, in almost dramatic fashion, the life stories – the interactions, the quarrels, the loves, the wars, the successes, and the failures – of the race of “gods” from Nibiru, and of their eventual return only a few thousand years ago to their own planet when its atmosphere gained the protection it needed.

The main thesis of Tellinger’s book is that humanity still retains much of the genetic qualities of its extraterrestrial makers. He looks closely at human nature, our cells and the genome itself, the brain and its functions, our animal behaviour, our obsession with gold and slavery, and our entire human history, including our warlike nature and our dependence upon religion. He investigates in great detail a number of holy books and spiritual traditions throughout time and in various parts of the globe. His undeniable conclusion is that the story told in the Sumerian tablets is the only logical explanation that has resulted in our current situation.

As with Laird Scranton, Robert Schoch, David Hatcher Childress, Joseph Farrell, Christopher Dunn, Ed Malkowski, Frank Joseph, and a host of other authors whose recent books have been reviewed by me and other reviewers in New Dawn, Tellinger shows how myths and legends from sacred texts and oral traditions as well as archaeological finds in Africa, China, the Middle East, the Americas, India, Central Asia, and Europe all echo the same basic story of Earth’s and Man’s creation. The similarities of details in the Hebrew and Christian Bibles, the Koran, the Rig Vedas, the Upanishads, Buddhist Scriptures, the Dead Sea Scrolls, Taoist teachings, the Egyptian Book of the Dead, the Enuma Elish, the Epic of Gilgamesh, and other sacred texts are simply uncanny.

For instance, we must ask a question about the tradition of an ancient feathered/flying serpent god in many cultures around the globe. Was that “god” in fact Enki, himself, whose emblem is shown in the tablets to be a serpent entwined upon a cross (representing the “crossing” planet Nibiru)? And, therefore, is the snake of Genesis in the Old Testament actually our creator and benevolent god and Yahweh actually his evil brother, Enlil? Has the story purposely been twisted?

Tellinger then asks several crucial questions: Have we been lied to all these years about our origins? Have our multitude of languages and religions kept the human race trapped in a cycle of isolation, dogma, guilt, and fear by separating us? Are our media, our economic, political, military, social and religious systems purposely designed to keep us under control? Are we still slaves, but now slaves to our jobs, our bosses, our mortgages, our credit cards, our car loans, and other such entrapments? If we were created as a slave species, are we still a slave species displaying all the characteristics of a slave species? Are we “controlled by a small group of people who basically determine what brands we consume, how we dress, what TV shows we watch, what we drive, what beer we drink, and where we go on holiday”?

With regard to those who control us, he asks: Could the almost identical pantheons of gods in so many different cultures really be only one set of “gods” and “goddesses” who are our masters but who are known at different times and in different places by different names? Could they, in fact, be the Anunnaki visitors from the planet Nibiru who were so technically advanced that they were worshipped as gods by the humans they created through genetic manipulation? Were they then incorporated over the years as the singular “God” and the numerous “prophets” of our bibles and sacred texts?

He further asks: After many thousands of years of man’s inhumanity to man, and as we uncover lost civilisations and ancient writings and, perhaps, begin to colonise other planets in our solar system, are we now starting to “wake up” from a sleep induced by our alien masters – a sleep of ignorance and forgetfulness? Is our genome reactivating itself, and are we finding the heretofore hidden functions of our so-called “junk” DNA? Are we really intended to live much longer lives free from most diseases to which we are now susceptible?

If, as Tellinger says, we are aliens on Earth because we were created as primitive workers by astronauts from another planet and modelled in their image some 200,000 years ago to perform a necessary task, we must then ask ourselves two more key questions: (1) Are the many UFO’s we seem to see in recent times the ships of the Anunnaki who are returning now to check on their creations? And, (2) Is that phenomena purposefully related to the fact that a king all those years ago appointed his scribe to capture so painstakingly in clay a story that is just now beginning to be told to us?

– Reviewed by Alan Glassman in New Dawn 137