The Inner Path To Christ 21

Pentecost

“And when the day of Pentecost was fully come, they were all with one accord in one place. And suddenly there came a sound from heaven as of a rushing mighty wind, and it filled all the house where they were sitting.

And there appeared unto them cloven tongues like as of fire, and it sat upon each of them. And they were all filled with the Holy Ghost, and began to speak with other tongues, as the Spirit gave them utterance.

And there were dwelling at Jerusalem Jews, devout men, out of every nation under heaven. Now when this was noised abroad, the multitude came together, and were confounded, because that every man heard them speak in his own language. And they were all amazed and marvelled, saying one to another, Behold, are not all these which speak Galilaeans? And how hear we every man in our own tongue, wherein we were born? Parthians, and Medes, and Elamites, and the dwellers in Mesopotamia, and in Judaea, and Cappadocia, in Pontus, and Asia, Phrygia, and Pamphylia, in Egypt, and in the parts of Libya about Cyrene, and strangers of Rome, Jews and proselytes, Cretes and Arabians, we do hear them speak in our tongues the wonderful works of God. And they were all amazed, and were in doubt, saying one to another, What meaneth this?”

It seems to me that we cannot receive the blessing and initiation of Pentecost if we have not passed through all the previous stages of discipleship and it is open to, and has happened not just to those ancient Christians, but to many in today’s world. Pentecost is not just an initiation but a giving of huge gifts.

Pentecostal Christianity speaks of gifts of the spirit. These are listed as the gift of: the Word of Wisdom; the Word of Knowledge; faith healing; the working of mira­cles; prophecy; the discerning of spirits; diverse kinds of tongues; and interpretation of tongues.

But in an odd way we are not given gifts spoken of such as the word of wisdom and faith healing; for in truth we already had these abilities at birth, but we have buried and forgotten these abilities we were born with; and at Pentecost they are uncovered from long years of blindness and difficulties,

Most of these are easily recognizable descriptions of faculties of the unconscious. The unconscious is constantly scanning information and considering the highest probable outcome – thus prophecy. Access to universal aspects of consciousness allow the gaining of insights which might also account for prophecy, wisdom and words of knowl­edge. Discerning of spirits means the ability to look into a human heart and see what is hidden there. Considering how much we can learn subliminally through body langu­age and verbal cues, this is another straightforward uncon­scious faculty. See Edgar Cayce

Speaking in tongues is a common way in which the unconscious expresses its feelings and insights. It is a level three expression in Van Rhijn/Caldwell’s levels of con­sciousness. When the ‘tongues’ are considered by us as symbolic expression they transform into meaningful words, just as dream symbols do. My experiments with such phenomena convincingly show the common link between these often-considered unrelated phenomena and LifeStream. See Glossolalia – Different Levels of Your Mind

But imagine a group of people all ‘opening’ as described in the chapter The prayer of the virgin soul – there were 120 gathered in a room, men and women being equals – “All these with one accord devoted themselves to surrender, together with the women and Mary the mother of Jesus, and with his brothers.” Considering present day Pentecos­talism and other forms of LifeStream, this large group would include people who would be shouting in tongues, others would be crying, moving their bodies, discerning spirits, and generally creating a bedlam of noise. Any newcomer to the group, not having had it explained what was being attempted – that each be open to the Spirit and be moved by it – might think the people were crazy or drunk.

Are you ready for that? If not, maybe it might help to practice –

Stand with eyes closed. Become aware of your breathing rhythm. Slowly deepen it but do not speed it up. If anything, make it slower and fuller. When you feel at ease with this add a sound to the outbreath. It is easiest to use the aaaaahhhh sound at first.

Keep this going until you feel the sound flowing out easily and reasonably smoothly. Then move the sound around by changing the volume. Make it soft, make it loud. Try the different volumes of your voice and the different levels of power.

Next try shifting the feeling quality. Make different sounds to see what variety of feelings you can discover or express. If you hit a satisfying sound, something you can enjoy, move it to express laughter, change it into sadness, thoughtfulness, anger, hurt – in fact try it in all sorts of pitches and feeling qualities.

When you have finished playing the instrument of your voice, relax quietly on the floor for a minute or so. This quiet period after the voice exercise is often very healing. It can produce very real internal peace.

But most of what has been written about Pentecost has been written from peoples understanding of life 2000 years ago. A great deal more has been learned about the mind, how the body works and the principles of nature. As a taster of this; in life and sleep we have two powerful actions working in us. The first is our waking experience based on having a body, its limitations, vulnerabilities and a particular gender. Our second is the power that gave us life and continues to express as spontaneous movement in dreams, in our breathing and heartbeat – our life. This I have given the description as the Life Will.

While we sleep our conscious self is largely or totally unconscious, and while we sleep and dream our voluntary muscles are paralysed – therefore another will, or motivating force moves our body. So, we have a Conscious Will, and what I will call a Life Will. The first one we have experience of as we can move our arm or speak in everyday activities; but the second will takes over when we sleep. See Sleep Paralysis

This Life will can move us to speak, to move our body, and in fact do things that we cannot do with our Conscious Will, all that while we sleep and dream. As Freud pointed out this inner will has full access to our memories. It can do so many other things that are described elsewhere – See Edgar Cayce and the Cosmic Mind; ESP in Dreams.

For simplicity I have called this experience, of what is actually waking lucid dreaming, ‘LifeStream’. It would take us too far out of looking at dreams to explore it, but it can be studied within these features: Waking Lucid Dreaming – LifeStream – People’s Experience of LifeStream – Life’s Little Secrets – Arm Circling Meditation

This Life Will or motivator has been active for millions of years and we see it working all the time in animals. We are partly split in half because we are often opposed to what our Life Will – our natural instincts – in us wants. So, the only way to express what is our best interests for us, is in dreams, when our conscious will is largely passive or we able by being passive and receptive to allow the Life Will to move us, speak through us, exercise us and generally expand our awareness and so grow as a person.

Life Will created your body and pre-existed you as a person you know today. It was working in you prior to your ability to speak or know in the way you do now. But of course, it has fantastic wisdom and skills, as can be seen in animals as instinctive knowledge. Such knowledge, that allows all life forms to do the amazing things they do, is not by our conscious thinking using words, but by a form if direct knowing and abilities learn from their peers. But when that is added to our own conscious awareness our ability to know is magnified enormously, as demonstrated by Edgar Cayce already mentioned

But we need to remember that having a personality with self-awareness is a very new thing and has only existed for a short time. Before that we were like animals that lived only in the Life Will – what we usually call instincts. So, the development of self-awareness was and is an immense step, and leaves us very vulnerable, and still does. Look around at the number of people who must take anti-depressants, or who have to use alcohol every day, or smoke or take other drugs – all means of facing the difficulty of meeting self-awareness.

That is the story of the Garden of Eden. At first, we were all living in an instinctive Life Will state, having no decisions to face and all directions automatically handled instinctively. But when we left our instinctive condition/the Garden of Eden, by having developed our own will, we felt naked and afraid – in the words of Genesis. See The Secret Bible 

And the Eternal One caused the spirits of mankind to withdraw their consciousness from activity and surrender to the process taking place in their beings. So, they lost themselves in the divine will while it acted upon them. And the divine activity in Adam – mankind – caused a separation of their unity with the one will to occur. Out of their united will it was made individual will. For the spirits of mankind had not been capable of personal or individual decision, but now the divine made this a part of their being. And the Adam knew this was now substance of his substance and part of his innermost nature. For out of mankind’s divine inclination toward self-expression, which made them a reflection of the divine forces that had created them, there had arisen their own individual will, with its power of expression.

Now the activity leading toward selfhood in the human spirits was so subtly a part of their nature, that unlike the other activities that had been expressed outwardly as the evolution of cellular life and animals, it was difficult to stand aside from it. The mineral, animal and vegetable forces had not involved mankind so strongly. They had been objectified easily. And the divine wisdom in mankind warned them of the consequence of this, saying, you must not centre your consciousness in matter, for by that you will die to your cosmic awareness and have only consciousness through physical senses.

But the forces of individuation, flowing into matter, seemed to say that if they allowed their being to enter into and experience physical life, how could they lose their eternal consciousness? Instead they would gain knowledge of the opposites, of the paradox that the gods knew. Then the desires for this fired their will, for many spirits wished to know life in physical realms; to experience fully the knowledge of time and space, of the incompleteness of being just male or female, of looking out through the senses of a physical body, and knowing the feel of winds and water, separation and aloneness. Thus, came about the fall of the angels, and many spirits fell into life within a physical body.

So, we are in a situation in which we have only a limited awareness instead of the amazing wider world of the instinctive life – the Life Will when allied with our personal awareness. We are in general very small creatures, and when we begin to meet the enormous world that we left in the Garden, and we meet it with human personality, it often frightens us because we are so unused to it. See Opening to Life

Many people as their awareness reaches beyond what they feel is their normal self feel scared. Such resistances cause us to create awful dreams and fears as a means of avoiding our own inner world and its wonders. We feel that we will be swallowed up and we will die. It is important to say that when we meet the experience of powerlessness through becoming aware of the hugeness of your Life, which we are usually unaware if, it feels like something alien or attacking, and it is a shock.

When we begin to meet the Hugeness that we are, we often react to it in our dreams or in waking with fear or panic. So, we dream of being attacked by aliens or frightening creatures; or being swallowed by a whale or something huge, a tsunami, or even possessed by evil entities. If we realise that they are things we have created through our own fear, we will pass on. But otherwise it will continue to haunt us as something that will get you; or you feel uncertain even lost in facing it! But it is only our small self-image, our ego that reacts because it feels powerless, even though in reality the Hugeness is part of our totality. It is the enormous potential you have within you, it is Life you are frightened of or have been ignoring. It often frightens us. We fear that our ego or personality as it is, will be lost, destroyed or overcome by the Hugeness. My experience is that nothing is ever lost, instead we are added to.

Why are so many so blind to their own hugeness? Perhaps because they have not looked at themselves closely, for are we not seeds? A single cell, which is a seed from which all life forms evolved from, doesn’t become old or die because it is immortal, for it keeps dividing and doesn’t die. In dividing it constantly creates copies of itself, but as it does so it gathers new experience, it changes what is copied, so becomes the ‘seed’ for multi-cellular organisms. We all started from the original one cell, and we, you and I, are the result of gathered experience. Can’t you remember your life stretching back to eternity?

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