Quest Magazine

Printed in the Summer 2016  issue of Quest magazine.
Citation: Amao, Albert, "Kabbalistic Methods of Treatment" Quest 104.3 (Summer 2016): pg. 124-127

By Albert Amao, Ph.D.

One system of healing without medicine comes from the Kabbalah, an esoteric tradition originally found in Judaism. Paul Foster Case (1884–1954) was the founder of the Builders of the Adytum (BOTA), an American offshoot of the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, a late nineteenth-century occult order whose members included S.L. MacGregor Mathers, Aleister Crowley, and William Butler Yeats. Case wrote extensively on Kabbalah, esoteric Tarot, alchemy, and Rosicrucianism.

Case delineated a system of healing through sound, color, and meditation on the Tarot keys. The principle behind this system is that sound and color are vibrations, each operating at different rates; thus each color and sound is associated with different parts of the body according to their astrological correspondences. Once the part of the body is identified, one meditates on the corresponding Tarot key utilizing the associated sound and color.

Unfortunately, very little information can be disclosed about this method because these teachings are restricted to BOTA affiliates, who are bound by oath not to reveal them publicly. (People who want information about BOTA’s teachings should visit its website, www.bota.org.) Indeed Case is not well-known because most of his writings are imparted solely by correspondence lessons to BOTA members.

Israel Regardie (1907–85) was the leader of the American revival of the Golden Dawn. Despite the opposition of members, Regardie was not reluctant to publish the rituals and writings of this order, which had been entrusted to him under severe oaths of secrecy, under the title The Golden Dawn. Regardie also wrote extensively on the early pioneers of the New Thought movement and was knowledgeable about mind healing and suggestive therapies, as we can see from his book The Romance of Metaphysics, published in 1946.

In 1932 Regardie, who was a psychotherapist, published The Art of True Healing, which is part of his book Foundations of Practical Magic, based on the teachings of the Golden Dawn. The kind of therapeutic treatment he describes can be seen as a form of energy medicine.

This method is based on the Kabbalistic Tree of the sefirot (stages of emanation of the life power or Cosmic Consciousness; singular sefirah), also known as the Tree of Life. The technique makes use of rhythmic breathing, meditation, and visualization of the sefirot of the Middle Pillar of the Tree. The Middle Pillar corresponds to the spinal column, where the seven chakras, or psychic energy centers, are supposedly located. Meditation on and visualization of the chakras activate the flow of the universal life force through these psychic centers. This in turn releases negative emotions trapped in the body. This technique also utilizes the visualization of color and the use of sound to stimulate the energy centers of the body, and, finally, includes prayer and the use of religious mantras. Regardie describes the principle behind his method:

Within every man and woman is a force which directs and controls the entire course of life. Properly used, it can heal every affliction and ailment to which mankind is heir. Every single religion affirms this fact. All forms of mental or spiritual healing, no matter under what name they travel, promise the same thing. Even psychoanalysis employs this power, though indirectly, using the now popular word libido. (Regardie, 1; italics Regardie’s) 

This is a departure from the concept of healing that Regardie portrayed in The Romance of Metaphysics. At that time he flirted intellectually with New Thought and believed that illness arose from a negative frame of mind. Now sickness was seen as arising from the depletion and incorrect use of the life force energy. Regardie said that a lack of proper breathing and a failure to understand the fact that we are surrounded by the life force is the reason we become ill. Nevertheless, this theory can be seen as complementary to New Thought, since we direct this life force by means of our thoughts and emotions. Regardie further states:

In the ambient atmosphere surrounding us and pervading the structure of each minute body-cell is a spiritual force. This force is omnipresent and infinite. It is present in the most infinitesimal object as it is in the most proportion-staggering nebula or island universe. It is this force which is life itself. (Regardie, 1)

The root of this concept is found in the Hindu school of philosophy known as Vedanta, with which Regardie was well acquainted. Vedanta holds that there is one indestructible substance pervading the whole universe, from the remotest star to the most minuscule atomic particle. Regardie equates this universal life force, known in the yogic philosophy as prana, with God. “This Spiritual force constitutes man’s higher self; it is his link with God in man. Every cell in the body should be soaked with its universal energy.” Disease, Regardie concluded, is fundamentally due to a depletion of the life force.

The Kabbalistic Tree of Life. Each circle represents one of the sefirot or principles. The five sefirot on the Middle Pillar are connected (from the top) to the crown chakra; the throat chakra; the chakra at the solar plexus; the chakra at the genitals; and the chakra at the feet. The side columns represent the polarity of positive (white) and negative (black). The Hebrew letters bet (left) and yod (right) stand for the names of the two pillars in front of Solomon’s Temple, Boaz and Jachin (1 Kings 7:21).

According to Regardie, the ordinary individual puts up so much resistance to the free flow of this universal energy in his body that he becomes tired and ill. Regardie contends that man has “surrounded himself with a crystallized shell of prejudices and ill-conceived fantasies,” which act as a shield preventing the free flow of the life force. Therefore, man should practice honest self-examination of his value system. Regardie also recommends conscious relaxation as a preliminary step, then loosening up the neuromuscular tensions of the body to the degree that all the cells and muscles are brought within the scope of awareness.

Regardie lays out two basic principles for well-being. First, we should consciously realize that we live in this vast spiritual reservoir of life force energy. Second, we should employ regulated or rhythmic breathing, similar to the breathing exercises of yoga, in order to vitalize the body.

These ideas accord with Hermetic and yogic philosophies, which hold that the entire universe is a living organism and moves according to an immutable of law of rhythm and cycle. Therefore rhythmic breathing keeps our bodies in a healthy condition. In every breath, we inhale prana, the life force that vitalizes the body and mind. Regardie argues that an inability to grasp this principle is the reason for the failure of many mental and spiritual healing systems.

Regardie further recommends meditation on the psychospiritual centers that are located along the spinal cord. These centers of energy are known in yogic philosophy as chakras and in the Kabbalah as the sefirot of the Middle Pillar (which is associated with the spinal column). They are vortices of energy through which the life force flows. Although the yogic philosophy says there are seven of these centers, Regardie uses only five.

Regardie recommends concentrating the mind on these centers. Then one should intone and vibrate the names of God associated with them in the Kabbalah: Eheieh, Jehovah Elohim, Jehovan Elohim va-Daas, Shaddai El Chai, and Adonai ha-Aretz (going from top to down). “Finally, each centre is to be visualised as having a particular colour and shape. Slowly they become stimulated into functioning each according to its own nature, pouring forth a stream of highly spiritualized energy and power into the body and mind” (Regardie, 4). At this point the individual can direct the resulting spiritual power to heal various ailments and diseases of both a psychological and a physical nature.

This energy can also be transmitted by the laying on of hands. Thus Regardie, like Franz Anton Mesmer, founder of mesmerism, believes in the transmission of energy from one person to another. Moreover, Regardie believes that healing energy can be sent telepathically to another person who is miles away. This is known as absent treatment or distant healing.

Like Case, who said that the subconscious is the propulsive factor in the individual, Regardie argues that this method of healing can cure even psychogenic eruptions, because the “currents of force arise from the deepest strata of the unconscious, where these psychoneuroses have their origin and where the [sic] lock up the nervous energy, preventing spontaneous and free expression of the psyche,” thus impeding health (Regardie, 8). Unlike Christian Science, which prohibits its members from receiving medical assistance, Regardie does not exclude the use of a physician:

Where organic disease is the problem to be attacked, the procedure to be followed is slightly different. (One should still be under the care of a competent physician). In this instance a considerably stronger current of force is required such as will dissolve the lesion and be sufficient to set in motion those systemic and metabolic activities to construct new tissue and cellular structure. To fulfill these conditions in an ideal sense a second person may be requisite so that his vitality added to that of the sufferer may overcome the condition. (Regardie, 8)

As with any kind of healing, conventional or unconventional, the participation of the individual is extremely important. For a successful treatment with this method, the patient has to be totally receptive and must maintain an attitude of acceptance toward the incoming force.

Regardie recommends prayer or contemplation as the final step of his healing method, because they also activate these psychospiritual centers. Indeed, most genuine esoteric schools and religious organizations strongly advocate meditation and prayer as means of attaining a higher state of mind as well as of stimulating emotional fervor toward the awakening of the spiritual centers. From time immemorial, mystics have given such injunctions as “Inflame thyself in praying.” Ceremonial rituals can also be used to awaken the inner mechanism of healing.

Regardie contends that his system of treatment can be used not only for healing but also for solving a variety of problems in life, such as enhancing human potential, eliminating negative aspects of our personalities, improving relationships, and resolving marital difficulties.

SOURCE MATERIAL

Israel Regardie, The Art of True Healing, in Regardie, Foundations of Practical Magic (Wellingborough, Northamptonshire, U.K.: Aquarian Press, 1979); www.hermetics.org/pdf/TheArtofTrueHealing.pdf; accessed March 14, 2016.

Albert Amao, Ph.D., is a clinical hypnotherapist and holistic counselor. His books include Beyond Conventional Wisdom and The Dawning of the Age of Aquarius. This article is adapted from his book Healing without Medicine: From Pioneers to Modern Practice (Quest Books, 2014). Reprinted with permission.

Printed in the Summer 2016  issue of Quest magazine.
Citation: Boyd, Tim, "President’s Diary" Quest 104.3 (Summer 2016): pg. 130-131

Shortly after the close of our convention at Adyar in January, it was off to Australia for their annual convention. The site for the event rotates

Tim and Lily Boyd with Linda Oliveira (left), president of the Australian Section

among the various centers in the country. This year it was in Perth, on the far west side of the continent. This was my first time in Australia, and it gave me some perspective on the size of the country when I met so many Australians who, like me, were coming to Perth for the first time. I sometimes forget that Australia is not just a country, but a continent.

The Australian Section is one of the more active and organized sections in the TS world. The theme for this year’s gathering was “Today’s World Problems: Insights from the Wisdom Tradition” and was held on the beautiful campus of the University of Western Australia, right on the Swan River. During our time there, the members from the host branch in Perth brought the whole group out for a tour of the city that ended with tea at their building.

From Australia it was back to the U.S. for a total of eight days before leaving for a much-anticipated visit to Brazil. For the past several years in February, at the time of the massive national celebration of Carnaval, a group of Brazilian Young Theosophists (YTs) have held a multiday get-together at the Instituto Teosófica outside of Brasília. At last year’s meeting of the TS General Council I made the point that whenever I visit a national section I would like to have a separate meeting with young members only. In Italy, Finland, the Netherlands, India, and Singapore we had such meetings. When the Brazilian YTs heard this, they did two things: first, they invited me to attend their annual gathering; second, they made it an international YT meeting. Members from around the world were invited. Because the cost of international travel for young members can be prohibitive, we asked our national sections to help when possible. The result was a group of 75 YTs, predominantly from Brazil, but also coming from Italy, the Netherlands, England, Mexico, Spain, and Argentina.

As you might expect, it was a high-energy program that spanned day and night. One of the beauties of the meeting was that every aspect of it was planned and executed by the young members—everything from the daily schedule to picking up participants at the airport. Because it is not every day that the international president visits Brazil, a number of “older” members wanted to attend the program. This created a minor problem. The YTs were not trying to discriminate against us old ones, but everyone knew that open enrollment would change the character and intent of the meeting. A solution was found by scheduling me to speak on a couple of evenings at the branch in Brasília.

The meeting was a huge success. In addition to talks and panels, there was music, campfires, tree planting, and swimming in some of the more than thirty waterfalls that dot the land of the Instituto. Friendships were formed that will last into the future. The group decided that they will do it again next year. Get ready.

From Brasília it was on to Rio de Janeiro. With its setting of mountains, ocean, and beaches, it is arguably one of the most beautiful cities on earth. During our brief visit we kept a busy schedule with public and members’ meetings at the local branch, a radio interview with TS member and radio personality Fernando Mansur, and meetings with local members.

Tim and Lily Boyd (at center)at a public talk in São Paulo

Next on the tour was São Paulo—a huge city of 20 million people and Brazil’s economic hub. The TS has a little oasis at its Pitagoras (Pythagoras) Theosophical Institute in the downtown area. It is a lovely site, with multiple meeting areas, office, and a courtyard garden. On the evening we arrived I gave a talk to around 100 members from the area. Immediately following the talk, we got into the car to travel to the Raja Center outside of the city. Just to give you some idea about the scale of a city of 20 million people: it took almost two hours just to get out of the city.

The next three days were spent at the Raja Center in the countryside on the outskirts of town. The center is named for past TS international president and author C. Jinarajadasa (Brother Raja), who felt that he had a special past-life connection with Brazil. The center is a gated compound of several acres with a meeting hall, library, dining area, and dormitories. About fifty members attended the program on the TS’s Three Objects. While there, I was told that I am the chair of its board of directors. The things you learn when you travel . . .

We arrived back in the U.S. in time for our TSA board of directors’ meeting. Twice a year, in February and July, the board meets for three and a half days to go over the TSA’s business and to plan for the future. Immediately following the close of the TSA board meeting, the Theosophical Order of Service (TOS) board meeting begins. Our TOS-USA president, Nancy Secrest, currently also wears the hat of TOS international secretary. She is a busy lady these days.

At the end of February I attended an art exhibit in Chicago at the Stony Island Art Bank (reviewed in Quest, spring 2016). The show was titled “Intention to Know: The Thought Forms of Annie Besant.” The curator for the show was Carolyn Christov-Bakargiev—the same person who put together last year’s Istanbul Biennial show, “SaltWater,” which also gave prime consideration to the Thought Forms paintings.

In March it was off to Mexico and Argentina. In Mexico I participated in the first North American meeting of the Inter-American Federation. It was held in the small city of Cholula. The city rests in the shadow of the active volcano Popocatépetl. Members came from a number of countries—Mexico, Costa Rica, Brazil, Honduras, Puerto Rico, the U.S., and a couple more that I am forgetting. It was a high-energy meeting, whose theme was “Applying the Principles of the Ageless Wisdom.”

Next stop: Buenos Aires, Argentina—for one day. In Buenos Aires we had not scheduled an official meeting. The local members got together at the building the TS owns just outside of downtown. I had a chance to talk informally with the members. It was an active conversation with plenty of give-and-take. It was also good to see again the group of members who had come to Adyar for this year’s convention.

The next morning we were on the plane, the one flight a day that comes and goes to San Rafael. Back in the 1970s there was a movement in the TS in Argentina to build a Theosophical center—a community. There was a strong group in San Rafael which found and acquired a several acre plot of land in 1980. San Rafael is in a semiarid location, and at the time the property was purchased there was a grand total of three trees on the land. Today there are hundreds. TS member and civil engineer Juan Carlos Palmeri helped design a plan of construction that included five long buildings in the pattern of a star. To date four have been constructed, which include two dormitories, a meeting hall and quiet space, and a building for dining.

The occasion for our visit was the third annual Luso-Hispanic (Portuguese-Hispanic) meeting. About seventy-five members from countries all over Latin America attended. Actually, I had participated in the first one at the Instituto in Brasília in 2013. The visit began with an interview for the local TV station, then an evening public talk at the local university. The next few days involved meetings of all types—lectures, meetings with heads of sections, one on one meetings, and, of course, some sightseeing.

Back in the U.S., the kids from the Prairie School of DuPage did a follow-up presentation on the health of Perkins Pond on the Olcott property. For those of you who are reading this diary for the first time, or who have a short memory, the Prairie School is an alternative schooling project that began in 2011. When I first came in as TSA president, members of the fledgling school approached me about possibly setting up shop with us. Their nature-based system, the core values of the school, and their educational rigor made the choice something of a no-brainer. Both teachers and kids love and know every inch of our forty-two acre campus. Since coming to Olcott, they had observed that the health of our Perkins Pond was not ideal and had set up a project to test the waters and study it. Last year they gave a presentation setting out some suggestions for remediation. This year they came back with a conclusive follow-up study. Before, they had identified several possible causes for the decline in the pond’s health. This time their year-long study narrowed it down to one cause—geese. It turns out that the lovely and very scenic presence of Canada geese is altering the chemical balance of the pond because of “goose poop.” The solution? Plant tall grasses and other nitrogen-fixing plants around the pond. Geese are wary of tall plants, where they cannot see possible predators like coyotes hiding.

We’ll keep you posted.

Tim Boyd

Printed in the Summer 2016  issue of Quest magazine.
Citation: Smoley, Richard, "From the Editor's Desk" Quest 104.3 (Summer 2016): pg. 90-91

Maybe, as the New Thought people claim, all healing is mind healing. Even setting that aside, the main health problem in the U.S. today is probably that of mental health. You can go to the Internet and look up the astonishing statistics on anxiety and depression, causes of suffering for tens of millions of people. When you realize that in many cases, crime, drug abuse, and homelessness are also mental health problems, the picture looks even grimmer.

So what is causing this pandemic?

I doubt that there is one single answer. But one thing occurs to me that is often overlooked.

You’ve heard of the placebo effect: you take some totally innocuous substance, you’re told it will heal you, and you get better. If this works (and a lot of evidence says it does), the opposite should also be true. You take some totally innocuous substance, you’re told it will harm you, and it does.

This is known as the nocebo effect. For more about it, read Be Careful What You Pray For . . . You Just Might Get It, by Larry Dossey, M.D. Dossey had originally entitled the book Toxic Prayer, but this made the publisher too squeamish and had to be renamed.

The point is that if thoughts are things, they can work for ill as well as for good. What, then, are we to make of the constant suggestions that everything is bad for you?

These days diet soda seems to be a favorite culprit. On my Facebook feed recently, someone mentioned that he was drinking a diet soda. Someone else, “You gotta give that up, man. That stuff is a killer.”

No doubt there is some truth to these claims, although at the age of nearly sixty, I doubt that I will suffer terribly many health effects from the three or four cans of the stuff I drink per week. Rather it’s the cumulative effect of such messages that I have in mind. I suspect that this relentless assault of them goes far toward creating a milieu of anxiety.

I focus on health here because these are the most paradoxical messages, telling you that you need to think positively while telling you at the same time that everything is killing you at every step. But of course I could make the same point about conflicting messages of all kinds—about politics, social issues, economics, the environment, and the rest.

Practically all of these messages seem to be based on this premise: if you don’t create panic and hysteria about this problem, nobody will do anything. The system must be changed, they say. No doubt. But if it is changed by people who are suffering from the very disorders that the system causes, the outcome will be no better and probably worse. The worst state of mind for taking effective action is one of panic and hysteria.

This mood, which lies almost everywhere in the background of public discourse, is bound to cause anxiety and depression in many people. I doubt that this is the only cause of mental illness, but I believe it is part of the picture.

Thus we return to an issue that has occupied me a great deal lately. How do I maintain my inner balance in the face of an imbalanced world?

One commonly mentioned solution is to go on a media fast. Avoid the TV shows and magazines and websites that are barraging you with negative information. I certainly think that’s a good idea. I myself find TV news particularly poisonous. So I don’t watch it. At the health club I choose the treadmill that’s farthest from the screens tuned to news networks.

Of course, this tactic is not completely feasible in an age when you find electronic media flashing at you in doctors’ waiting rooms, elevators, and even at the gas pump. Besides, if you take it too far, it could have the opposite effect: making you more susceptible to—and upset by—these messages at times when you can’t avoid them.

One helpful approach is countersuggestion. When you find yourself confronted by some image or idea that makes you fearful, counter it with some affirmation like “I deny the power of this to hurt me.” Or this one, from A Course in Miracles: “I am not the victim of the world I see.” If you start working with this, you will soon find affirmations that work especially well for you, and these are the ones to use.

Still another practice is one that could, somewhat vaguely, be called centering yourself. It is very easy today to become mentally top-heavy and thus fall prey to all sorts of noxious thoughts (your own and others’). Often centering yourself will bring this process to a halt. It usually involves some conscious attention to the sensation of the body or the breath. People who are centered in this way frequently have some sense of “I” in the area of the heart or the solar plexus. Expanding your attention to your surroundings—or farther, if you like—can also advance this process. Recently a friend wrote to me and said that he begins his meditations by saying, “I extend my senses to the front, to my left, to my right, behind, above my head, and under my feet.” There are any number of variations.

I imagine that most readers of this magazine have a fairly good idea of how to center themselves and can do it easily enough once they remember to do it. The task, or the first part of the task, is remembering.

Richard Smoley

Printed in the Summer 2016 issue of Quest magazine.
Citation: Boyd, Tim, "Viewpoint: The Scale of Our Vision" Quest 104.3 (Summer 2016): pg. 98-99

Tim Boyd, President

Not long ago I had a visit from Pete Pedersen, a longtime member of the Theosophical Society. Every two or three months he stops by my office unannounced. Whenever I see him or hear his voice outside the office, I stop whatever I am doing and call him in to talk. Although he would certainly argue the point, he is a fascinating man. On his next birthday he will be ninety-nine years old. His mind is superclear. Three times a week he drives an hour each way to oversee a service project he heads up here at the TS. I am told that when he was in his seventies, he used to play touch football with the young guys during lunch breaks. He is that rare combination of right living, high thinking, and good genetics that points to greater possibilities for the rest of us.

One of Pete’s most refreshing characteristics is his unrelenting interest in what is going on in the world, particularly the Theosophical world. He doesn’t tire of hearing me tell stories about places and people, about trends and movements. And I don’t tire of asking him about the people he has known, the places he has been, his experiences working for the TS, and his life. Always I learn something new.

The last time we talked, I was describing a trend I was witnessing within the consciousness movement—those groups working in various ways toward the unfoldment of consciousness. The idea I was expressing was that for so long, small groups of people had been working in seeming isolation, largely unaware of the growing movement of fellow workers around the world. But, I added, one of the features of this time is that these groups are becoming aware of each other and finding points of connection to pursue what many are perceiving as a shared effort. Necessary links are forming at the same time that technology is facilitating the broad dissemination of these powerful ideas and practices. My main point was that even though it is not something that would appear in any popular media report, the network of conscious people and groups necessary to move humanity to its next level of functioning is rapidly forming. He was intrigued by this view, which contradicted the information he received from newspapers and nightly news reports, and found it hopeful.

While speaking about the variety of events and changes he had witnessed during his ninety-nine years, he shared with me what he felt was his greatest challenge. He said that at this stage in his life his greatest difficulty is to stay interested —to maintain a vital involvement with the things going on in the world. For me it was a revelation that was initially surprising. It seemed so contradictory to the way I viewed him. His engagement with life was one of his outstanding characteristics. As we talked, his meaning became more clear.

During his life he had witnessed changes, great and small. He was born at the close of World War I—the war that was fought “to end all wars.” Instead of witnessing the end of war, he went on to see millions more lives destroyed in World War II, the Korean War, the Vietnam War, the war in Iraq, and countless others around the world. He had seen changes from dictatorships to democracy, communism to capitalism, “liberation” movements in Asia, Africa, and Latin America. He had also seen new social, political, and economic structures that seemed to change only the identity of the oppressors. He had seen the shift from a rural America to an urbanized nation, as well as technological breakthroughs that with time resulted in the unforeseen consequences of pollution, displacement of workers, and carcinogenic impacts. Even within the Theosophical Society he had seen great ideas flourish and motivated people appear and disappear. After almost one hundred years of watching, it all seemed repetitive. The specific movements, technologies, or ideas were all significant and different. It’s just the results that looked the same.

“The more things change, the more they remain the same” is a popular saying that suggests that as human beings we have a tendency to reduce even great things to the limits of our understanding. The great French writer, philosopher, and wit Voltaire famously expressed this idea in a different way. He wrote that “If God made us in his image, we have returned the favor.” Even the highest, most all-encompassing, and potentially most ennobling features of existence we have reduced to a human scale, and a petty one at that.

H.P. Blavatsky, in her introduction to The Secret Doctrine, points our attention to certain key ideas. She says that a clear understanding of the Ageless Wisdom tradition would be impossible without some acquaintance with these “Fundamental Propositions.” In her words, “it is absolutely necessary that he [the student] should be made acquainted with the few fundamental conceptions which underlie and pervade the entire system of thought to which his attention is invited. These basic ideas are few in number.” One of these relates to cycles in nature. She makes the point that our awareness of cycles such as “Day and Night, Life and Death, Sleeping and Waking, is a fact so common, so perfectly universal and without exception, that it is easy to comprehend that in it we see one of the absolutely fundamental laws of the universe.”

The great difficulty for us is that during the course of a lifetime we clearly see movement within some of the smaller cycles, but the grand cycles are too vast for the scope of our vision. Although the discoveries of science take us a long way, they have yet to envision the dimensions of the cycle HPB describes as “the appearance and disappearance of worlds . . . like a regular ebb of flux and reflux.”

Glimpsing the nature of these larger movements requires a faculty of vision that exceeds normal knowledge and history. Just to give some perspective: the cycle of one planetary year here on earth occurs when the planet completes one revolution around the sun. During that time each of the seasons—winter, spring, summer, and fall—appear and disappear—one time. In a similar manner our entire solar system is circling around the center of our galaxy: the Milky Way. One galactic year for our solar system takes 200–250 million of our planetary years. The nature of the “seasons” of each galactic year is beyond our comprehension. Similarly, here on earth there are creatures whose entire life span lasts a few weeks. The life of a mayfly lasts a total of one day. It is literally “here today, gone tomorrow.” For such creatures, the scale of human perception is incomprehensibly vast.

There are things that we cannot know in the normal sense—realities that exceed our intellectual grasp but still are known at deeper levels of our being. In 1967 Martin Luther King, Jr., gave a speech that included the much quoted statement, “The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.” It was a statement of a profound truth about one of the grand cycles that we all intuit, but which at times seems to conflict with our day-to-day experience. The original source for this statement was Theodore Parker, a Transcendentalist minister and abolitionist who died in 1860. Parker stated it this way: “I do not pretend to understand the moral universe; the arc is a long one, my eye reaches but little ways; I cannot calculate the curve and complete the figure by the experience of sight; I can divine it by conscience. And from what I see I am sure it bends towards justice."

There is an important distinction between the eye, which “reaches but little ways,” and the “conscience,” which has the capacity to “divine” the direction and end of the cycle. In The Voice of the Silence these two ways of seeing are termed the Doctrine of the Eye and the Doctrine of the Heart, with the eye being the organ of outer, illusory perception and the heart being the organ of spiritual perception. It is only through the intuitive capacities of the heart that we grasp the grand cycles and the Greater Life within which we live and move. For most of us, that vision is fleeting but powerful. Once seen, it changes us.

A thousand brushstrokes go into making a painting. A thousand notes make up a symphony. Taken in isolation, the few strokes that we see standing close, or the few notes that we hear in passing, convey no meaning. It is in the whole, the grand network of relationships, where meaning is found. Our role is to be guided by our immersion in an ever growing vision of the whole.