Thursday, 7 March 2013

Book extract on the Masters

As an addendum to the previous post here is an extract from the book about the Masters. It also says a little about how the teachings were received with some comments on channelling.


‘Writing in 1889 in her book The Key To Theosophy Madame Blavatsky made the following by all accounts typically robust comments.

“Great are the desecrations to which the names of two of the masters have been subjected. There is hardly a medium who has not claimed to have seen them. Every bogus swindling Society, for commercial purposes, now claims to be guided and directed by ‘masters’, often supposed to be far higher than ours!”

It is unfortunately true that the idea of enlightened beings guiding humanity from above has been subjected to a good deal of desecration since it was first made public, with an abundance of channelled communications coming from a variety of exotic personages claiming spiritual eminence, and even a number of spiritual teachers in this world identified as Masters who plainly are not. It may be that some of the Masters are in physical bodies but they are not the teachers publicly working in this world, none of whom has yet reached that level of realisation. Nor are most channelled messages from the Masters, whatever may be claimed for them.

So who are the Masters then? They are spiritual beings who, having learnt the lessons of the material world and overcome duality and identification with the lower self, now exist in the transcendent realm. No doubt their ranks are filled with those who were the great mystics and saints of the past but to seek to associate them with this or that historical character misses the point as they have gone beyond ‘name and form’. For the same reason they cannot be regarded as Christians, Hindus or Buddhists or identified by any earthly appellation whatsoever.  When questioned as to their identity they simply say it is not important and that they are merely different aspects of the One Life. In fact, the word they most often used to speak of themselves was brothers. 

This may make them sound a little remote and impersonal, and yet, whilst it cannot be denied that there is an element about them that could be construed as such, in reality nothing is further from the truth. They are the embodiment of love, and, if they have realised their identity with the Absolute, that does not make them any the less individual. It is just that they have achieved a true sense of priorities. They are aware of the entirety of their being while we only know ourselves as our external form. It may surprise you to know that your mind is part of your outer self but such is the case.

The Masters communicated with me through Michael when he was in a state of trance, usually entered into at the end of a period of meditation.  I have always maintained that this was not a form of spiritualism, as commonly understood, or, since it is just a new word for the same thing, channelling. One reason for this assertion has to do with the nature of the spiritual source. The vast majority of channelled messages come from what are known in occultism as the psychic and mental planes, and they come from beings who exist in those worlds and who have not transcended duality. They may have more knowledge and metaphysical understanding than most of us still incarnate on this physical plane do but they have not attained Christ consciousness. They have not attained liberation which means liberation from form, from self, from duality. Confusingly some of them may believe they have and others may just claim they have so how do you tell the difference? The planes beyond the physical are home to a huge variety of souls with many levels of consciousness represented and the only means of determining that level is through the use of the spiritual intelligence or intuition. That is how you ‘try the spirits’. Common sense helps, of course, but it is not the infallible guide that the properly functioning intuition is. As a rule of thumb to be going on with, though, it can be assumed that, in virtually all cases, channelled communications are not from the Masters whatever the communicators might say about themselves. This is because the Masters work with the soul not the manifested personality and, except in rare cases, their contact is on the spiritual plane. That does not mean that those who do communicate through channelling have nothing worth listening to but it does mean that what they have to say should be treated with caution, and that discrimination should be exercised at all times. Always couple an open mind with a healthy scepticism and realise that a channelled message may well contain a mixture of truth, half truth and error. It’s up to you to sort out the wheat from the chaff.

Quite apart from the question of the source there is the problem that all channelling is coloured by the personality of the channeller. His or her ideas, beliefs, opinions and prejudices all affect, sometimes quite radically, the message. They may subtly shade it or they may completely distort it but they will certainly affect it to some degree. This was not the case with the communications through Michael as his body was used but not his mind. He was, the Masters told me, quite literally taken out of his body, which they occupied for the duration of the talk, and he did not influence that talk in any way. I realise that I can offer the reader no proof for this assertion but can only report what I was told and what, as a witness to the proceedings, seemed to me quite evident. I am also aware I may appear to be withholding from others what I demand for myself when I claim that I spoke to the Masters (or they spoke to me) but many other people who make similar claims are deluded or deceived. But I must speak the truth as I see it. To encounter the Masters is to love them and (quite foolishly, since they are far above such concerns) to wish to protect them from the many distortions and travesties carried out in their name. But much more importantly, for the sake of spiritual aspirants who might be put off the whole idea of spiritual Masters because of the nonsense the subject can attract, I would like to add my voice to those who would put that subject back on a more serious footing, one more in keeping with its essentially sacred character. I may not succeed in this but any deficiencies on that score are entirely mine and not the responsibility of those who spoke to me whose words, I hope, as I record them here have still enough authority to bear witness to their authenticity.’


7 comments:

  1. William, you write with an authority which can only come from the true teachings. Doubtless there are many out there who will have come across channeled information which you here dismiss fairly strongly. A simple comparison of the channeled information with your record and summaries of what you were taught,will reveal that the former is repetitive, vague and liable to take one no further in understanding or progression,even ignoring all those flights of fancy to other planets and galaxies.
    I wonder if you could expand a little on that tiny explosive charge which will shake many

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Thanks for commenting again, Paul. May I start off by saying that any slight authority my words might have comes solely from my instructors and my confidence in their authority. At the same time, I am very conscious how far short I fall in passing on their teachings. But we all do our best!

      I don’t dismiss all channelled information. In thirty odd years investigation of this field I’ve found some to be interesting and instructive too. However I have hardly ever come across any that bears the true stamp of enlightened spirituality as I experienced it in the person of the Masters or as I could imagine it by meditation on a figure such as Jesus or the Buddha. Even if the words tick all the right boxes, the feeling behind the words (the vibration shall we call it?) rarely carries sufficient spiritual weight. That could be because of the way it comes through but I believe that a genuine source will always transcend the limitations of its channel, which may not represent it perfectly but should still convey enough of its true nature to reveal it for what it is. For those who have eyes to see anyway.

      The world of channelling can be a real quagmire. If we believe it to be communication by discarnate spirits we must also be aware that the greater proportion will come from spirits relatively close to the earth plane and therefore relatively unenlightened. But what if this straightforward explanation, true in some cases, is not the only one? What if the psychic plane contains free-floating mental energies, thoughts without a co-ordinating centre that have somehow acquired a kind of half-life of their own, and it is these that the mediumistically inclined tune into and then translate in terms of their own thought patterns? That’s an argument I find persuasive.

      I have said that I don’t think that the Masters communicate through channelling or, if they do, it’s very rare. Having said that, I then have to ask myself, why not? It may be that there aren’t enough people to be able to act as pure channels for them (which is true) but more likely is the fact that the communication they wish to foster is at a soul level. You can tell I like this phrase because I’m going to repeat it! They teach spirituality, spiritually. They want us to come up to their level and to do that we have to make the effort. The problem with channelling is that it belongs to the phenomenal world and that is the world that the true spiritual seeker aims to transcend. Not reject or deny but transcend.

      Delete
  2. I refer to your statement, almost throwaway, that mind is part of the outer self. This will make those who have felt comfortable with the brain/mind definitions usually accepted in spiritual teachings twitch a little. Is there anything you could add to clarify this a little? My apologies for the hiatus which was caused by my attempting to edit my words only to find I was prevented from adding any others.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. I think this question deserves a post to itself as it's fairly fundamental, and I will try to do one shortly.

      Delete
    2. Thanks, William. I am sure there is something in the theory of the egregore.

      Delete
  3. Are the Masters who spoke to you the same as the Ascended Masters you read about in various places and on the internet? For instance, there are the Theosophical Masters Morya and Koot Hoomi and then other Masters, like St Germain, who are supposed to sponsor certain organisations and who communicate through them. Were these the ones who spoke to you?

    ReplyDelete
  4. As the Masters who spoke to me did not name themselves I can’t say if they were the same as the ones mentioned in Theosophy and more recently referred to as Ascended Masters though (to the extent these latter are genuine) they would certainly have been part of the same brotherhood. I insert that parenthesis because I am not convinced that the Ascended Masters of popular esotericism are real, not in the sense they are usually presented anyway. I don’t doubt there was something real at the beginning but the further a stream gets from its source the muddier it becomes, and to think of the Masters in terms of names, functions and personalities is to misconceive them. It is indisputable that there is now a substantial body of literature that emanates from astral impersonations of Masters. In fact I would say that most of what purports to come from Masters falls into this category though some of it could well contain teaching that goes beyond its source. I am sure that the true Masters seek to inspire through many outlets but by no means everything that is claimed to come from them does so.

    ReplyDelete