The Book

Press Release for Meeting the Masters

Some visitors here will already be familiar with the book of which this blog is an extension. For those who are not this post aims to explain a few of the ideas behind it.

The Masters in the title are spiritual beings who are not to be confused with any earthly teachers on the one hand or normal channelled entities on the other. In a future post I may elaborate a bit on that but here I will just state it as a fact. They are members of the company of saints who have fully realised their identity with their divine source. This does not make them any less individual but it does mean that they are no longer limited to their individual selves. One might think of them as souls able to gaze unblinkingly at the spiritual sun because the scales of worldly attachment and desire have fallen from their eyes. In conventional religious parlance, they are one with God.

The Masters are the true spiritual teachers of humanity but they rarely make an appearance at the front of the stage, leaving that to others of less complete realisation. One could speculate that this is because the law, as it currently stands, requires that, in order to benefit from their instruction, we must go towards them before they can come to us. We must make the first move and we must meet them on their terms which means, in effect, lifting ourselves up as near as we can to their level. This requires ardent aspiration, purity of motive and a certain degree of intuitive awareness. Any resultant meeting may only be registered in the heart, that is to say, not consciously known as an external or even internal experience, but the heart is the ground of our existence and its opening up and eventual flowering is the goal of all spiritual endeavour.

Occasionally, however, the Masters do make a more direct approach and this book is the record of one such. It describes the contact made by the Masters with a young man of 22, and the spiritual instruction that grew out of that. The contact was made through the medium of an older man who had spent a lifetime searching, some of it as a Benedictine monk and some in a Hindu ashram, but, finding neither approach really sufficient to answer his spiritual needs, he was always ready to move on. It may be that it is this dissatisfaction with outer spiritual paths that indicates a readiness to be approached by the Masters themselves. I don't doubt that any spiritual path sincerely and faithfully followed will take one some way towards the goal but I would contend that all religions are in a sadly diminished state these days due to the distance they are from their source. They still contain much of great value but are less able to quench the serious seeker's thirst than they were in their prime. Everything contains within itself the seeds of its own dissolution, and it can hardly be denied that all religions now show evidence of decline and decay. A religion is made up of an inner spirit and an outer body. When the spirit withdraws, the body may still remain for a longer or shorter spell but the animating spark has gone and so its power to feed and inspire the soul gradually withers away. As for the contemporary alternatives that have sprung up to replace the traditional religions, few of them appear to have their roots in the divine, being mostly formed from human experience and understanding rather than true revelation. I don't discount them because they serve a need but I don't see any of them as divinely inspired in the way that the great religions undoubtedly were, and so any help they might be able to give is limited. It is my hope that the book and this blog may appeal to others who feel the same way, who look for truth but cannot find it adequately represented in this world. That is not to say that either book or blog is inspired. They are both the work of a flawed, imperfect human being. But I truly believe that they might serve as an opening through which some readers might make their own contact with the Masters. Not necessarily an outer contact but, as I said above, a contact in the heart. And that contact once made can only deepen your connection to God or your own true self, however you might like to think of it. This is because a human being who has realised God to all intents and purposes is God. Don't misunderstand me. Such a person has not become the Creator of heaven and earth but he is one with the source of life and so it is not he who lives but God who lives in him.

The press release reproduced above says a bit more about the book and its author. The main part of the book consists of talks from the Masters to their far from perfect pupil, followed by reflections and comments on the Masters' words. By describing myself in that fashion I mean only to say that this is a practical book, a spiritual textbook, you might say. It is not a philosophical treatise, though I hope it contains elements of that, and it is not a personal history though it certainly contains elements of that. It is a record of spiritual teaching coming from a high source and, as such, it contains lessons for us all, lessons I might add that I am still in the process of learning myself.

Future posts will contain short excerpts from the book and also meditations on some of the Masters' words.