FOUNDATIONS OF A GLOBAL SPIRITUAL AWAKENING
EDGAR JOHN BURNS
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About the Book
We are engaged in perhaps our histories most important event...a spiritual awakening of global proportions transforming every dimension of our lives. This work examines the fundamental ideas emerging in the latter half of the 20th Century which shape this world-wide spiritual evolution. These seminal ideas concern the nature of evolution itself, God, human beings, the relationship between God and us, our destiny, and the means by which we come to know God, our Selves, and attain that destiny.
These ideas, and others, are considered in the light of both certain recent works purported to be revelations including the With God books of Neale Walsch, A Course In Miracles, and The Urantia Book, and through several older spiritual traditions. Emphasis is given to the teachings of Maharishi Mahesh Yogi with their impact on the scientific basis of spirituality. Also explored are the ramifications of these ideas on our understanding of reality, knowledge, health, social progress, and world peace. The evolution and nature of scientific knowledge is reviewed demonstrating the growing convergence between scientific and spiritual truth. The book closes with a vision of the new world evolving as this awakening grows among us.
About the Author
Mr. Burns is a member of the Washington Academy of Sciences, elected for his work in applying cybernetics to management systems. He is a teacher of Transcendental Meditation and practices advanced TM techniques. He has been a member of The Urantia Book Fellowship, a student of Buddhism, and a reader of A Course In Miracles. He was treasurer of the New Jersey Natural Law Party, a contributor to the General Systems Research Society, author o f a play produced by the Boston Theater Company, has published numerous poems, and contributed to other professional journals including the IEEE. He is currently consulting to a national charity organization, and is engaged in an international movement for permanent world peace.
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Truth is eternal, yet unfolding. Unchanging, it assumes ten thousand guises. Its form varies in order to speak to a given age. Its scope and depth unfold as the recipients become able to hear. The crucial variable is the extent to which awareness is able to recognize, experience, and live that truth on both individual and collective levels. The number and degree to which individuals are conscious of any portion of truth, to align their momentary truth with eternal truth, has varied enormously throughout history. When many individuals recognize the truth of their being and the nature of life itself, the world witnesses periods of incredible spiritual advance...a transformation, an awakening.
We live in such an age. Perhaps never before have so many people come to understand the truth of life to such an extent as is occurring at this very moment. We are living in the midst of what may be our histories grandest spiritual awakening, the beginning of an era of astonishing spiritual progress. We are, in fact, not only participating in, but creating this great spiritual awakening from within ourselves. Such spiritual progress will, as it turns out, be the factor that solves the social, political, economic problems that vex humanity. This is an ambitious assertion, but defensible.
This spiritual awakening, it can be argued, is an inevitable event in human history...an event whose time has simply come. A strong case can be made that this spiritual awakening is a logical outcome of the evolutionary process of life. The inference is that evolution is a process that works toward enhanced spirituality achieved by means of expanded consciousness on both individual and collective levels. A central tenet of this spiritual awakening is the understanding that evolution takes the form of expanded consciousness, and through this expanded consciousness can be channeled to yet further expand consciousness. In terms of consciousness, evolution is a cybernetic, creative, self-referent, self-interactive, self-organizing system which builds upon its own inner nature to move onward with constantly greater impact, more rapidly, more deeply, more pervasively, and more beneficially...unfolding, infolding, expanding, and all inclusive As the individual rises to new heights of awareness, and joins others in this enterprise, that awareness spreads beyond even those “consciously” participating to become part of the fabric of the consciousness of the whole.
Slowly and painfully modern science and its philosophers have had to come to the conclusion that the physical universe as science perceives it, bears a marked similarity to the one that spiritual mystics have known over the millennia. The nature of the material universe uncovered by science reveals a unity underlying, pervading, and upholding all diversity in a replete lawful system. The surface appearance of hard, separated objects has given way to a swirling ocean of energy/matter in which every element is dynamically interwoven with every other element.
God explains that in the beginning God was all that is or was. Nothing else existed. But this All that was All that existed could not know itself in Its totality because nothing else existed. So, in effect, “All That Is” was not. Knowing that All That Is was All was not sufficient because Its unbounded magnificence could only be known “conceptually, not experientially.” Experience was the only way God could know God fully. God’s magnificence was only a concept.
Since nothing else existed, God had no point of reference outside of God by which to create that which was not magnificent nor anything else that was not All That Is and All That Is Not. Yet experiential knowledge was still desired. God could only use a reference point within Itself. Such a reference point would have to be only a part of the whole. Thus the All had to divide Itself. Because God is consciousness and consciousness can view itself from any angle within itself, division was possible. Having done so, each part could than look back on itself, being self-referral by nature, and see the magnificence of the whole. This division took place in one stupendous, glorious moment. Now that which is this and that which is that existed as did that which is here, and that which is there, and that which is neither here nor there. All this existed simultaneously.
Maharishi Mahesh Yogi has developed an understanding of this process in terms of God as Pure Consciousness. The mechanics of consciousness...the three-in-one unity of knower, the process of knowing, and the known repeated again and again, layer upon layer defines the mechanism by which the energy and, ultimately, the stable energy patterns that form matter appear as the material universe and all that exists within it. Consciousness is the field within which that which Is/Is Not can create within itself that which is other than itself and at the same time not other than itself. God seen from the perspective of Pure Consciousness is a self-referral, self-interactive, dynamic but silent field of existence from which diversity springs. But this diversity is ever structured in unity. Creation is unity in diversity and diversity in unity.
The process named The Cosmic Wheel is the eternal process of forgetting and re-membering. The wheel will continue to turn throughout eternity. Even upon reaching a state of complete remembrance it is possible to decide to begin again. And why? Because as long as a greater Self can be created, one will desire to create it. Since no matter how wonderful one’s self may be, it is always possible to be more. Therefore the Cosmic Wheel continues to turn for eternity. This is the lure of life itself. We are inevitably in love with the journey.
“Reality,” observed Robin Williams, “what a concept!” Indeed this is precisely what reality according to this spiritual awakening is not. Reality is not a concept. All concepts are only shadows of reality. They are shadows of the nature of life.
A completely new revelation concerning the nature of healing and with it a vast array of healing technologies has come into play in light of the understanding of health that has emerged in this spiritual awakening. This new understanding of health and healing is based on a new insight into the nature of human beings, the nature of reality, and the nature of the laws of nature which create health both on the level of the individual and on the level of the entire collective body of the human race.
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