A Walk between Heaven and Earth
Over 50 years ago Father Paul spoke to his students about the “Last Days, and spoke of this time as a critical one; he said that the atomic bomb explosions had opened up the earth’s atmosphere in ways that sped its evolution and humanity was not ready spiritually. Many souls are here to assist the heavenly host in this time, as the old earth is infused with Divine Light. Many other schools are teaching this as well and we can see the demonstration of the enormous shift in Light and consciousness with our own eyes. Just like anything else, when light pours in, all things hidden are revealed and the darkness in humanity is getting a gigantic spotlight exposing it. Broadcasting the Light, Love and Life of the Son/Sun of God is a good thing! This is a slightly modified version of the Illumination exercise our Order practiced. Our much smaller group still does the exercise every Tuesday evening:
Christ Light Meditation
Visualize the light of Christ expanding from within, out through the entire body, to a distance of at least three feet from the skin. See and know that this light is driving out all inharmony and inadequacy. The purpose of this is to cleanse the three-fold man as well as the aura of all thought forms and habit patterns which might interfere in the work or be of harm to the individual brothers around us. LET GO AND LET GOD.
Visualize the light shining from you to all disciples of the Christ, and attempt to become at one with them. KNOW THAT THIS LIGHT REACHES ALL LIGHT WORKERS EXPLANATION: In so doing we are linked over a very real network which is set up through the light and energy of Christ permitting light to come to us, permitting help and light to flow more freely to all.
Visualize the light going to all members of the races, breaking the tendencies of our mass mind idea of separateness and self- interest, but more especially carrying out the will of God. KNOW THAT ALL ARE CHILDREN OF GOD.
NOW AS A GIFT TO THE PLANET YOU LIVE ON, FOR YOUR FINAL MEDIATION, DO THE FOLLOWING:
Visualize the entire planet surrounded by the white light of the Christ. See this light becoming more and more brilliant until there is nothing except Light, Love and Life from God the Father.
As you hold this thought, breathe in until the lungs are full. Then hold the breath with the thought and know that exactly this thought is taking place. As you breathe out, open your eyes (if you have them closed) and quietly sound the AUM.
Many blessings in our walk between Heaven and Earth,
Rev. Mary Anderson
Greetings Brothers and Sisters,
I was invited to write a bit about the El Camino de Santiago.
The Camino is one of the three major Christian pilgrimages: One is to Jerusalem, one to Rome and the Camino de Santiago de Compestella (The Way Of St. James)
As I understand it, St. James was sent to the Iberian Peninsula to bring the Gospel. What is now the village of Muxia, about 30 kilometers north of Fisterre, (which prior to Columbus arriving at the Americas, was considered “the end of the world”) It was considered to be the most western part of Europe.
It is believed that the Virgin Mary appeared to James, when he was standing on the shore in Muxia. James, having felt that he had failed at his mission on the Iberian Peninsula was assured by Mary that he had not failed but was successful. Mary then instructed him to return to Jerusalem, which he did. It is worth noting that it is believed that Mary spoke to James from a concrete boat that many believe sits on the rocks, on the coast in front of the Church called La Iglesia de Senora de Barca (The Church of the Lady Of The Boat) James was then beheaded by Herod and his remains were reportedly placed in a boat which arrived on the shore of what is now Padron, on Spanish shores. It is not clear whether other persons were with the remains or if they had just been set adrift. There are many legends as to how his remains ended up in what is now Santiago. One legend is that his remains were taken from the shore of Padron and carried to what is now Santiago and buried. It is believed that the remains were discovered by a shepherd in the 9th century where the Cathedral of Santiago is now located.
Since the 9th century pilgrims have been walking, many from their homes throughout eastern and western Europe to pay tribute to St. James. During 2018, 327,342 pilgrims had received their Compostellas ( certificates of completion) in Santiago during that year; 72 had completed it in wheel chairs, 50% were women. To receive one’s compostella, one must have walked at least 100 kilometers. Therefore the last 100 kilometers on the Frances is the busiest part of the Camino, as 50% roughly of the pilgrims arriving in Santiago started in Sarria, 115kilometers from Santiago. The most popular pilgrimage is the Frances, which most often begins in St. Jean pie de port, France and is 500 miles long or 800 kilometers. There are Camino’s from all parts of eastern and western Europe and all lead to Santiago.
The infrastructure on the Frances is very plentiful with accommodations and food. The most popular places to spend the night are albergues, which we normally think of as hostels. However, they are a bit different, most often a pilgrim meal in the evening is served, in which people from all over the world sit at table together. The quality of the sharing among pilgrims on the Camino is keenly attractive to many. Maybe it is the sharing of the experience, most often, leaving the luxuries and comforts of the world behind, fostering a remarkably high level of intimacy. The cost of a bed is anywhere from five to ten dollars. There are also many hotels and pensions most often available.
There are many books available on the Camino as well as movies and documentaries. A particularly popular movie was “The Way” with Martin Sheehan and Emilio Estevez. A movie that I would recommend is a documentary called “Six Ways to Santiago”. If any are interested in more information, please feel free to contact me.With Love to all my Brothers and Sisters, Joseph Handman
Tree of Life Lesson: Excerpt from SOUL II
,,,We have a material body; we have a spiritual body; we have a soul. We have come to see that even the blood, though visible to us in an objective sense, contains that which is not seen or perceived objectively. We come to understand the blood cells and the plasma of the blood — that which is easily seen and recognized by physicians, doctors and scientists — in the human blood of man. After all, it is only the medium for carrying throughout the system the real power and the real energy — the real force of the Christ; the light.
One great fact is quite evident, and that is the axiomatic reality. We can see the Self. That can be done. And we will notice, usually, that there is a soul for it is around the Self. We can understand it and we can learn to work with it only through its functions and its manifestations. We can see it. The functions and manifestations are so definite, so distinct, that we cannot make any mistake about its presence.
We can easily mark and define that function of the human existence which belongs to the soul exclusively as any other thing which we come in contact with in our spiritual endeavor and seeking. We can define those things which belong to the heart of man. Furthermore, these clear and unmistakable functions of the soul cannot be possibly belong to any other part of man’s existence. The soul and the Self — this is YOU.
In fact, as one great mystic once said, if we had never been told and had never even heard or read about the existence of the soul in man, our studies, experiments, and our working and our existence, our life and our living, with its multiple functions of the human body, would have forced us to create, or invent, a soul to account for what we had observed and in order to know that happened in the totality of function.
God, the Great Creator, created man out of the dust of the earth, breathed into his nostrils the breath of life as it is said in Genesis, and man became a living soul. We truly do take this statement literally…
There is a very close relationship between the breath and the psychic aura, between the breath and the psychic body of man, and the spiritual body and its charging.
This relationship is evident in the writings of the old mystics and philosophers. In fact, there is evidence of the soul and breath relationship in writings that remain practically from the dawn of civilization, back to the Zen Vesta, the languages of the Atlantians and the languages that followed it; the Sanskrit, and then Greek, Roman and many of the some fifty-odd tongues.
We find in the dictionaries of their languages that the word soul and breath were synonymous, using the same root. We find also that in the soul quality of being, they used the same words that they used for breath. But most of them made a distinction between spirit and soul.
This, we find, is just proof that the old thinkers knew the functions that the soul and breath maintained toward man’s existed manifestation. Some of the ancient Stoics held that the divine principle, or first cause, of the universe, itself, was from the breath of God which permeates all things. This breath manifested in the series of creative laws and matter as what we term spirit. It became the physical laws which science knows and studies.
In man, this breath, or logos, meaning law become soul, draws together that which man does, lives, breaths, thinks, prays, manifests, lets go and allows the Great Power to come through him which moves man in his spiritual senses.
In the soul around the Self is etched the experience of man from life to life, from era to era, age to age, as he goes down that long path; as he climbs the ladder; or as he goes up the bootstrap path through the center of all being….
If we recognize God as the Great Divine Power and Intelligence which animates the universe, we can readily see and understand how the soul is a part of the Intelligence and Power. God and the soul are divine because both represent the infinite and supreme, the everlasting, the evermoving, the records of all being, and the first Great Cause and Principle of all creation to the mystic. That is, this supreme is infinite; a part of the first Great Cause. It is Divine.
In no other sense do we mean this word. In no other sense is it applied. Therefore, we say that the soul of man is a part of the divinity. Why is it there? How did it come to be there? What is its part of the scheme of Creation? These questions are the next important parts. What purpose does the soul serve as a divine and immortal element residing temporarily with the human body. This is a question which should be profoundly followed up.
In looking at man’s existence from a purely materialistic standpoint of view, the soul, granting its existence in man, serves no purpose not already served by all of the physical functions and attributes of the material man. That is, of course, the very foundation of why the soul is there. Here is the infinite man in memory, although this is not from a material point of view…
Here again was called into existence the problem of the soul because something had to move from this life to another. Something had to, just had to, know and understand how this body worked so that its automatic systems would work readily, freely and in perfect rhythm. That rhythm, that perfection, came out of the divine essence within man’s soul — the divinity to make him simply an image of God and nothing more.
It also had its affect upon man’s morals or development. It has also failed to fulfill the unknown purposes designed by God if the soul were placed in man simply to give him an immortal attribute — something to live after and await a day of spiritual existence. This is not practical. The only purpose served by such an example of reason for the soul’s existence would be to foster the theological idea of the final judgment — the day when all the souls released from the earth from millions of years would come together to be judged and to suffer punishment or receive reward.
This theological idea has long since been shown to be illogical. It is not in keeping with nature, its laws and principles. Therefore, it couldn’t be of God. There is another reason for the existence of the soul.
We may consider the mystics, philosophers, and even Spinoza which said that he affirmed that when man is self-conscious, that is, when he is aware of his own existence, which soul makes possible, then man realizes himself; because the Self of man is the Self of God — a part of it — a great cell in the being, form and body of our Great Father.
We shall contemplate upon the reality of God and see what our consciousness of Him is when we exist in that consciousness in tune with Him. =======
Last year, a cousin wrote this: “Years ago, His Holiness Maharishi Mahesh Yogi predicted that the earth had to make what he called a “Great Leap” in evolution to continue. What he meant is that the earth was declining, as we have all witnessed. The forces of de-evolution were predominant.
Just as the environmentalists are saying now we all have to join together immediately to reverse climate change in order to survive, he saw years ago that it was even bigger than that. It isn’t just about carbon emissions. Everyone knows now that the human factor is important. A recent study found holes in the ionosphere from the bombing in World War II, contributing to global warming. WE ARE the Category 5 storms, the wildfires, the droughts, the floods, the gun violence, the dictators.
Maharishi taught about a “unified field of consciousness” of the earth that could be infused with greater coherence from human brain activity, as in meditation. If we put ourselves into the stream of evolutionary forces instead of the ones bringing chaos and destruction, then we are good stewards for the planet. If enough became good stewards, we could make the Great Leap to rising planetary consciousness instead of falling year by year.
2018 was the Year of the Great Leap. The planet is now rising in the forces of evolution, contrary to the picture on the news. We have a chance, thanks to the invisible event of planetary ascension. This miracle was what Maharishi worked for fifty years and was only completed recently because massive numbers of divine beings have come to heal the planet so it can move forward and be a haven once more for human evolution.
From Mother Ruth (writing about the founding of our Fillmore Aid Station for men and the first Raphael House, both in San Francisco):
The city’s Urban Planning Commission had set aside a portion of the Fillmore District for redevelopment. 910 Steiner was on the edge of that area, a picturesque part to be saved. But one block over, on Fillmore Street, the buildings were slated to be torn down. In the interim, before this final demolition around February, 1969, Father was able to rent one building, a former hotel at 937 Fillmore. This the order then used as an aid station for men, at a rental fee of just one dollar per year until the wreckers finally came. It was a great help for a few years, and certainly provided a vital service to the community. But for the Brothers it was a difficult and trying job.
The first floor had formerly been used as a bar known as “The Blue Mirror”, which had been vacant for the past two years and left with a heap of filth and rubbish to be cleared away. There were three floors to the building, located in the very heart of the district’s toughest area, where street gangs and drug dealers hung about on the corner. We were later told that there was a shooting range in a tunnel beneath the street, used for practice by some of the gangs. But with time, and the Brothers’ presence, the area began to clear somewhat.
Once cleaned and furnished, The Fillmore aid station for men was opened, with free meals for any who stopped by, and free lodging for up to three consecutive days for those needing a place to sleep. Lodgers were required to go out during the day, while the Brothers cooked simple meals and baked bread, or coped with the various problems, which were plentiful..A couple of rooms were set aside for clothing and other donations that came in, and one Christmas there was a room piled with a jumble of shoes, donated by a downtown store, and these had to be laboriously sorted out into pairs.
A few young people, as strangers coming into town looking for a place to stay, were directed there, and some of them stayed on to become Brothers. One room was set aside as a chapel, and a priest was installed to have charge of the house. Residents could attend morning communion or evening prayers with the Brothers if they chose, but were not pressured to do so….
Father put the HOOM newsletter in my charge… It became quite a responsibility, especially since what equipment we had (all in the basement office at 20) was rather crude, and I was no artist. Father told me that any selection reprinted from other publications should be preceded by, “They say …”, to distinguish it from what our viewpoint would be. In other words, it would be merely reporting worldly views, not teaching or using them creatively…
He purchased the cheapest paper he could find; for a time this came from a place on Gough Street, and came in various colors.
Diagonally across the street from that store, at 712 Gough Street, was the building we obtained for our first women’s aid station, and the name chosen for it was Raphael House, for St. Raphael, the angel of healing. This was in June of 1971. Father worked a priest on the project to get it planned and started. This was another building slated for demolition by the Redevelopment Agency. There was a carpet store on the ground floor, but we had full use of the upper floor.
There were a number of small rooms around a central court which was open to the sky. It could handle around 21 guests, but we sometimes took more, and there were a few Sisters living there to run the place. Much the same rules prevailed as at the Fillmore aid station for men – free meals to women or families with children, with a three-day limit to residence at any one time, unless circumstances warranted otherwise. This was to discourage those who might misuse the privilege. It was a much smaller and homier place than the one on Fillmore, but it also did some fine work. Because of its convenient location, not too far to walk from Civic Center, we offered to buy it from the City, but they would agree to sell only if we would tear it down and rebuild, which was financially out of the question. We were still using that place when Father passed on. As an added note, he felt we should not accept government money in our endeavors, as then they would want to partially run it.
Diwali, or Dipawali, is 
Falling on the 15th day of the 8th month according to the