Copyright 2012 Rebecca Field. All rights reserved. No portion of this book may be reproduced mechanically, electronically, or by any other means, including photocopying, without written permission of the publisher. It is illegal to copy this book, post it to a website, or distribute it by any other means without permission from the publisher.
Love Your Life Publishing
St. Peters, MO 63346
www.loveyourlifepublishing.com
ISBN: 978-1-934509-65-4
Library of Congress Control Number: 2012947499
First Printing 2012
Editing by Naomi Rose
Author Photo by Robin Ruth
The author is grateful to the
Master Djwal Khul,
her master
teacher,
and his
amanuensis,
Alice A. Bailey,
who penned His
twenty-four volumes
used for the background of this work.
Dedication:
To the One of which/whom we are all a significant and important part,
the Hierarchy of Beings responsible for spiritual direction of humanity,
to the World Servers who are changing the face of the Earth for the better,
to my husband, Ken, for his constant spiritual support and wisdom
and to Naomi Rose for her encouragement and inspiration.
“He who realizes the sphere of space hidden in the cavern of his heart grasps all that may be desired and comes into contact with the Immensity.”
—Taittiriya Upanisad
“To have a conscious realization of that Immensity is the desire that satisfies all desires.”
—Michael Beckwith
“Someday, after we master the winds, the waves, the tides and gravity, we shall harness for God the energies of love, and for the second time in the history of the world, man will have discovered fire.”
–Pierre Teilhard de Chardin
In this book, Dr. Rebecca Field highlights an important feature of life as a human being, the possibility of positive change. Because of this, all of us as individuals can play a valuable part in shaping the world around us by applying our consciousness and knowledge in joyful cooperation with others to create a more satisfactory order.
However, to create a great spiritual rebirth, we need to employ both the head and the heart. The Buddha always emphasized a balance of wisdom and compassion, which implies a sound brain and a good heart working together. Placing a greater importance on the intellect and ignoring the heart can cause increased problems and suffering in the world. On the other hand, if we totally neglect our intellectual capacity or our ability to think, then there is little difference between humans and animals. So, the two must be developed in harmony.
If the technological advances, we have now achieved, are to have beneficial consequence, there must be an accompanying inner development, a sense of responsibility for this small planet and the fellow inhabitants with whom we share it. It is time we discovered our human potential and the positive role that we can play in making this earth, our habitat, a place fit to live in. I am sure this book will contribute to creating such awareness.
His Holiness The Dalai Lama of TIBET
Foreword by His Holiness the Dalai Lama
What is Cosmic Fire
A Note to the Reader
Introduction: The Cosmos Is Both Inside and Outside
The Perennial Philosophy
Part I: The Promise, the Urgency of the Time, and the Opportunity
Chapter 1: Cosmic Evolution
Chapter 2: The Cosmic Breath: The New Story of the Cosmos
That Includes You and Me
The Scientific View and the Spiritual View
Creativity Is a Constant
The Awakening Collective Soul
Each of Us Has a Special Place in the Evolution of Humanity, and Humanity Has a Special Place in Creation
Opening the Gate to Spiritual Energy
The Key Lies Within
Chapter 3: The Impending World Catastrophe: A Warning We Can Heed—and Transform
Transforming the Planetary Crisis
The Transformative Tide
The Masters and the Plan
A Magic Leap in Consciousness
The Great Opportunity Facing Us
Seed Ideas
Groups as Seedbeds for Evolutionary Ideas
World-Servers Who Want to Contribute
A Legacy of Building and Re-building Nations
Chapter 4: A Spiritual Reason for World Problems
The Split within the Individual
The Split between Mind and Lower Nature
The Split within the Emotions and the Analytical Mind
How Separativeness Touches Our Relation to the Larger World
Awakening the Will
Taking the Next Steps
Using Our Imagination
Creativity as a Primary Reason for the Existence of Human Life
The Unseen Causes of Current Chaos
Shamballa
The Masters (the Spiritual Hierarchy)
Humanity
Humanity’s Spiritual Direction
The Opportunity
A New Phase of Cosmic Evolution
Part II: The Spiritual Trend of Humanity
Chapter 5: Humanity’s Spiritual Direction
We Are Equipped to Make the Shift
Chapter 6: The Nature of Light
Light, Morality, and Manifestation
Chapter 7: The Lessons We Need to Be Learning to Move Forward
Reasons for the Current Unrest
We Need a Change in Attitude about Almost Everything
A New Kind of Race
The Shift to the Aquarian Age
The Radically Different Nature of the Aquarian Age
What We Can Look Forward To
The Message for Us
Oneness and Connectedness
What the Future Has in Store
The Will-to-Good
“Are We at Critical Mass, Yet?”
Chapter 8: Implementing the Will-to-Good
What the Hierarchy Is Seeking
Leaders and Followers of the Will-to-Good
The Will-to-Cooperate
The Will-to-Persist
The Will-to-Organize
How You Can Help
PART III: How Humanity Will Participate in the Coming Change
Chapter 9: The Promise of the World Being Born
A Financial System Based on Sharing
Glimpsing the Outlines of the Emerging System
Barter
Private Enterprise: Normalized and Controlled
Fair Distribution of Resources
Building a Sounder Economic System
The Principle of Sharing
Education Is the Solution
The Background of the Current Crisis: The Meeting of the Masters
What Really Matters: The Promise of the World Being Born
The Great Invocation
ENDNOTES
About the Author
In “cosmic fire,” there is a development of mind so that a fusion takes place within humankind, no differently than what happens in the cosmos or within an atom. When this happens, at this stage of development, heart and mind are not different. They are one, a perfect synthesis: mind/heart.
The time has come when we need to think in larger terms—on a cosmic level, as well as an earthly or personal level—and put our affairs and the current problems of the earth into a cosmic context. Only by doing this can we get the distance and objectivity needed to see and create our way into a positive future.
Mind/heart is an aspect of the soul, and indicates the quality of universality and inclusiveness. To understand this idea in human and cultural terms, think of Beethoven’s 9th Symphony, which was an expression of his soul. He was totally deaf when he composed the music. He could not hear a note as he watched the symphony conducted for the first time in Vienna in 1824. Yet it was possibly the greatest piece of music ever written, eventually becoming the European Anthem. Is there a piece of classical music that better expresses the meaning of cosmic fire than Beethoven’s 9th Symphony?
With this glorious music, Beethoven also opened a gate for light and love to penetrate and permeate the mindset of European nations and their peoples. It’s as if he unconsciously created a tunnel in human consciousness through which the light of intelligent love could pass, in order for the modern European Union to come into existence. The power of the music itself created a subtle means for Europeans to create a political and economic union and end the belligerence behind long-term and innumerable wars. The European Union represents consciousness, or heart/mind tuned to the world of thought and meaning, the galaxy of universality, and the cosmos of inclusiveness. It is the powerful synthesis of the One. This is just one example of how “cosmic fire” can enter into human consciousness and affairs, and make a difference in our evolution towards the One.
Truth is within ourselves; it takes no rise
From outward things, whate’er you may believe.
There is an inmost center in us all
Where truth abides in fullness
… and to know
Rather consists in opening out a way
Whence the imprisoned splendor may escape
Than in effecting entry for a light
Supposed to be without.
From Paracelsus
by Robert Browning
This is a book about evolutionary cosmology. But in case that sounds too distant from your own intimate life, too “out there,” let me assure you that it’s also about what’s “in here”—in your own mind, heart, and soul. Surely, in our accelerating times, you have noticed around you, and perhaps also in your own life, that something seems to be moving forward in human experience, at the same time that other things are clearly breaking down. If we only focus on the breakdowns, real though they are, we miss the inspiration and the impetus for working in concert with our own highest potentials. For make no mistake: we are being called to evolve in the direction of our truest being, our soul, our oneness. We are being called, though we may or may not realize it; and we are being helped to evolve through subtle spiritual forces that have been with humanity for a very long time, but are closer to us now than ever before.
This book is about the cosmos inside the heart—extraordinarily beautiful, but not like the one in the sky. The fire in your heart and soul for a more meaningful, beautiful, good, and true life—both individually and culturally, throughout the world—is not separate from the fire of the cosmos. It takes a different form, yet at the same time, humanity is—you are—essential to the fulfillment of our evolutionary promise.
This book is about the principle of wholeness. One of the most intriguing things about evolutionary cosmology is that life itself, in all its perfection and majesty, manifest and unmanifest, lies at the center of the cosmos. This book assumes that the cosmos is inside us as well as outside us. That’s what people in our overly materialistic society are so hungry for—this life, this livingness. Infinitely precious, it is sought after more even than air. It has a magnetic, numinous attraction for humanity. When we can fully trust in the omnipresence and the omniscience of divine spirit, it will pull us through this most extremely difficult time in the history of humanity. It will help us build towards critical mass. There are stirrings in humanity that are unmistakable.
If you are holding this book in your hand, you are one of the people who has been called to serve this higher evolution. You may already know everything in this book, or you may consciously know very little about it. But something within you has been impressed by the crucial need to move in a more sacred and positive direction, and it is my hope that this book will go a long way towards making that happen. Once people are inspired, they’ll move on their own and make the necessary changes, include the larger thoughts that would help them to change.
—Rebecca Field
Los Gatos, California
Many people look into the starry heavens at night and wonder, “What is the purpose of it all?” Is it just meaningless lights in the sky, some arbitrary mixture of elements a great distance away? Or is it an expression of something so sacred that we cannot put words to it? To my mind and imagination, the night sky is evidence of the presence of the holy. It is everywhere, and is laden with meaning in every dimension of our lives.
Only as the years passed did I realize that the cosmos is both inside and outside, that it is the presence of order and beauty. It is as much in your heart and my heart as it is in the vastness of space dotted at night with stars and planets. The outside is the easy part. It is the sheer magnificence of a starry night. It leads us to relate things we know and are familiar with in our everyday environment. It can be measured, its chemistry analyzed, its density considered. It can be navigated. Meaning can be gleaned from it. It is the celestial stuff that the starship YOU accelerated through.
After many years I came to understand—to know—that the Truth, Beauty, and Goodness that humankind seems always to pursue is really within. The insideness is what the human heart is made of and created for, and the mind easily navigates in all directions.
While all living things are connected in some wonderfully mysterious way, clearly the all-embracing outer space, with its galaxies and multiple universes, is no different from our inner space, where there is justice, proportion, and harmony. In fact, the outer space can serve as a guide to self-understanding. For instance, if life—with all its preciousness and all its myriad forms—is to continue, then harmony must rule. And from harmony springs the elegant beauty of natural forms.
Marcus Aurelius (121-180 C.E.) taught that ethical action must arise from our understanding of the cosmos. And so ethics brings us into a cross-over area where both the inner and outer cosmos meet, greet, impregnate, and nurture each other, and create something new for the evolutionary flow.
Each of us has a great part to play in the evolution of humanity. To do so, we must know who we truly are—the divine wellspring from which we come, and the qualities of mind, heart, and soul that we can develop. The cross-fertilization of the cosmos (the outer universe that we see at night) with the kosmos (the human ability to be sensitive and create order and beauty; to know who we are and to co-create) involves risk. Yet when we are willing to face the important questions about each kind of grand identity possible for each of us, we have the potential of gaining dignity, authenticity, and freedom.
Antonio Machado puts poetic light on our identity:
It doesn’t matter now if the golden wine
floats abundantly in your crystal cup,
or if the bitter juice clouds the pure glass….
You know the secret passageways
of the soul, the roads that dreams take,
and the calm evening
where they go to die….
There the good and silent spirits
of life are waiting for you,
and one day they will carry you
to a garden of eternal spring.
from Times Alone, Passages in the House and Other Poems
by Antonio Machado
“Evolutionary cosmology” is an all-inclusive term that simultaneously encompasses a magnificent cosmos full of galaxies, other universes, and our solar system. The photographs taken through the Hubbell Telescope have made it possible for us to discover the unimaginable beauty and grandeur that surround us. The quantum world that we are entering suggests that everything in known creation is a unified whole, and is connected. More than anything, cosmology is about relationships—all kinds of connections—and includes the forces and energies within every human. And if it is about our kinship with everything, it is also about synthesis, about Oneness, about spirit, and about love that pervades all things.
In our near-catastrophic time, evolutionary cosmology has a lot to teach us. It reminds us that we have utterly forgotten the higher, natural order that wants to prevail on the Earth—a higher order that is seen in nature. It is humanity’s task to remember the divine order and bring it into nature, or to co-create a higher third entity that includes both spirit and nature—and then to live by its higher rule. To pursue life without the awareness of the cosmic intelligence and love is to abandon our purpose on earth.
Our central calling is to take the most difficult risk imaginable for humans—to go beyond the ego and the haggard status quo that upholds economic, political, religious, and governmental edicts, which always dictate that we pay attention to their interests, and not to our own souls or to the music that wants to play in our hearts. It is so hard to do this because of the weight of the ego, which wants to be in control. It will not tolerate forays into the sacred, nor will it tolerate the awareness that we are part of a larger field of consciousness, created within the cosmos to manifest a higher Ground.
Thus it is the human task to reignite the fire of the cosmos and choose to remember the spiritual, the good, the true, and the beautiful. There is a terrible price to pay if we don’t: the material order of the world will collapse. Our great work as humans is to bring the sacred into balance with the material.
After all—they are one!
“If one is not oneself a sage or saint, the best thing one can do, in the field of metaphysics, is to study the works of those who were, and who, because they had modified their merely human mode of being, were capable of a more than merely human kind and amount of knowledge.”
—From the Introduction to The Perennial Philosophy, by Aldous Huxley
“The Perennial Philosophy is an attempt to present this Highest Common Factor of all theologies by assembling passages from the writings of those saints and prophets who have approached a direct spiritual knowledge of the Divine….”
—From the cover text, The Perennial Philosophy, 1946 British edition
*
For thousands of years, we have been heir to a tradition of the Ancient Wisdom. Expressed in legends, myths, mysteries, and archetypes with their captivating stories, puzzles, and labyrinths, this Ancient Wisdom has given rise to a philosophical system that turns out to be similar all over the world. Christianity has its roots in it, as do Islam and Judaism. Likewise, the Eastern religions can claim it as their foundation. Through it, all the great religious practices are linked.
concealed