The Children of the Law of One & The Lost Teachings of Atlantis

C

cortez

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I'm looking around for anyone else who has read this book. I read it about 4 years ago, and it was a life changing event.

Anyway I'm not the best at representing anything, so I tend to throw a lot of links and quotes around.

Which I will do now.

Edgar Cayce made a reading in 1934, and may have been about the author of the book I just mentioned

Here's the reading

http:(2slash)mkackburn.tripod.com/index.html

R E A D I N G

The reading was given Jan 19, 1934, between 11:40 to 12:40 A. M.

4. Hence, in giving the interpretation, MANY are present;
many of those whose names alone would bring to others awe -
discredit, yet - even a wonderment. For, not only then must
the information be instructive but enlightening; yet it must
also be so given that it may be a PRACTICAL thing in the
experience of thine own self and in the experience of life of
thine fellow man. Not only must it be informative in nature,
but it must also be that which is constructive; though
[pause] that which is informative and that which may be
enlightening and constructive must at times overlap one
another.

5. First, then: There is soon to come into the world a body
[See Par. 6 below]; one of our own number here that to many
has been a representative of a sect, of a thought, of a
philosophy, of a group, yet one beloved of all men in all
places where the universality of God in the earth has been
proclaimed, where the oneness of the Father as God is known
and is consciously magnified in the activities of individuals
that proclaim the acceptable day of the Lord. Hence that one
John, the beloved in the earth - his name shall be John, and
also at the place where he met face to face [Peniel].
[GD's note: Could this mean that John, the beloved, had
been Jacob? See 3976-15, Par. R2.] * *attached below**

6. When, where, is to be this one? In the hearts and minds of
those that have set themselves in that position that they
become a channel through which spiritual, mental and material
things become one in the purpose and desires of that physical
body! [GD's note: Beginning of new age of spiritual
awakening? See 5749-5, Par. 5--7; 281-38, Par. 16.]



10. Who shall proclaim the acceptable year of the Lord in him
that has been born in the earth in America? Those from that
land where there has been the regeneration, not only of the
body but the mind and the spirit of men, THEY shall come and
declare that John Peniel is giving to the world the new ORDER
of things. Not that these that have been proclaimed have
been refused, but that they are made PLAIN in the minds of
men, that they may know the truth and the truth, the life,
the light, will make them free.

11. I have declared this, that has been delivered unto me to
give unto you, ye that sit here and that hear and that see a
light breaking in the east, and have heard, have seen thine
weaknesses and thine faultfindings, and know that He will
make thy paths straight if ye will but live that YE KNOW this
day - then may the next step, the next word, be declared unto
thee. For ye in your weakness [pause] have known the way,
through that as ye have made manifest of the SPIRIT of truth
and light that has been proclaimed into this earth, that has
been committed unto the keeping of Him that made of Himself
no estate but who brought into being all that ye see manifest
in the earth, and has declared this message unto thee: "Love
the Lord thy God with all thine heart," and the second is
like unto it, "Love thy neighbor as thyself." Who is thine
neighbor? Him that ye may aid in whatsoever way that he, thy
neighbor, thy brother, has been troubled. Help him to stand
on his own feet. For such may only know the acceptable way.
The weakling, the unsteady, must enter into the crucible and
become as naught, even as He, that they may know the way. I,
Halaliel, have spoken.



That particular reading, is the only Cayce reading that refers to Peniel by name. Cayce (or should I say Halaliel) seemed to say that John Peniel would become known as the Earth changes were about to, or had begun on Earth. Considering all that is happening on the Earth as far as climate, volcanic/quake activity, extinction of species, new disease epidemics, and many other things, such changes have begun. Note also, the emphasis on the Golden Rule ("Love thy neighbor as thyself") in the last paragraph.


If you found that interesting here's the website about the Lost Teachings of Atlantis

http:(2slash)www(dot)atlantis.to/LTA/free-online-chapters.htm
 
Well, there are several issues here.

First of all, Edgar Cayce did predict the arrival of a John Peniel (some time in the future after the reading was given), who would be an important spiritual messenger, and bring the world spiritual teachings to live by for the future, i.e., "the new order of things". As with all Edgar Cayce readings, this was obscure to an extent, but A.R.E. members and Edgar Cayce readers, think that when Cayce made his prediction about a John Peniel that the meaning was something other than a given name. Either he was giving an actual name of the individual that belonged to him in the previous life, or there was some cryptographic meaning in the name; or even both. It would be, in fact, entirely OUT of character for Cayce to give a name, as such.

Next, apparently, the A.R.E. does not support this person as being who he claims he is even after reading his material. One would think that if someone was the real "incarnation" of whatever that their writing would be so compelling that it would move those who are devoted to that "flavor" of work.

Now, regarding that "flavor" of work, I have to say that, after years of research, and chatting with the C's, I don't hold Cayce in as high esteem as I did when I was younger. He was definitely a gifted psychic and did some interesting things and brought forward some interesting information - some of it spot on - but I don't think he - or his information - was the yardstick by which we ought to measure anything.

There is also another thread in this forum where a particular reading of Cayce's is quoted that suggests strongly that he was also subject to being used by negative entities. So, even if he was predicting a "John Peniel," it is possible that such a prediction was underwritten by elements with which we might not wish to associate.

Finally, Cayce's main schtick was "The Law of One," and I believe that my research has shown that this is the Service to Self pathway. As the C's once said:

Q: Cayce talks about the division in Atlantis between the "Sons of
One" and the "Sons of Belial." Was this a racial division or a
philosophical/ religious division?

A: It was the latter two, and before that, the former one.

Q: When it was a racial division, which group was it?

A: The Sons of Belial were the Kantekkians.

Q: Well! That is not good!

A: Subjective... you are not bodies, you are souls.

[...]

Q: In a previous session I asked a question about the
'sons of Belial' and the 'sons of the law of One,' as
explicated by Edgar Cayce, and whether these were
philosophial or racial divisions.
You said that they were initially racial, and
then philosophical and religious. Now, from putting the
information about religions together throughout the
centuries, I am coming to a rather difficult realization
that the whole monothiestic idea, which is obviously the
basic concept of the 'Sons of the law of One,' is the most
clever and devious and cunning means of control I have
ever encountered in my life. No matter where it comes
from, the religionists say "we have the ONE god, WE are
his agents, you pay us your money, and we'll tell him to
be nice to you in the next world!"

A: Clever if one is deceived. Silly truffle if one is not.

Q: Well, I know! But, uncovering this decption, this lie
that the 'power' is 'out there' is unbelievable. So, the
Kantekkians were the 'Sons of Belial,' which is not the
negative thing that I interpreted it as at the time. So,
the 'Sons of the Law of One,' was perverted to the
monotheistic Judaism, which then was then transformed into
the Christian religious mythos, and has been an ongoing
theme since Atlantean times.

A: Woven of those who portray the lights.

Q: And that is always the way it has been. They appear as
'angels of light.' And, essentially, everything in
history has been rewritten by this group.

A: Under the influence of others. And whom do you suppose?

Q: Well, the Orion STS.

A: Sending pillars of light and chariots of fire to deliver
the message.
 
I searched for the other post I had made about Cayce after finding some interesting material and am going to include it here for ease of comparison. Interestingly, it refers to "Halaliel" referenced above by John Peniel, and supports my point that this was not a positively oriented entity.

Awhile ago I was reading about George Steiner and his views on WW II, anti-Semitism, and so on.

George Steiner wrote a book about Hitler entitled The Portage to San Cristobal of A. H., which was a novel that depicted Hitler escaping from Germany and living out his life in South America. That's a whole other subject that I won't get into here. What caught my attention was Steiner saying that he would have thought it was far more likely for the "Holocaust" to have happened in France than Germany. That kind of surprised me. He said that French anti-Semitism "had a kind of systemic power and political profit" which it didn't have in Germany. He also suggests that had there been a "French Hitler," he would have risen to power more quickly and easily.

Steiner obviously did not believe that Hitler was a product of the "German soul."

Anyway, this triggered in my mind something I had read in a book bout Edgar Cayce where he had described the "soul" of each of the countries around the time of WW II, so I went looking for it. I found a few interesting things besides.

First there is something that appears to be an extract from Sidney D. Kirkpatrick's book, Edgar Cayce An American Prophet (Riverhead Books 2000 ISBN 1.57322.139.2) which says:

In trance, Cayce told the assembled group to look for material changes that would be "as an omen," or "a sign." He went on to describe this in detail: "The earth will be broken up in the western portion of America. The greater portion of Japan must go into the sea. The upper portion of Europe will be changed as in the twinkling of an eye. Land will appear off the east coast of America. There will be the upheavals in the Arctic and in the Antarctic that will make for the eruption of volcanoes in the Torrid areas, and there will be shifting then of the poles ... As to times, as to seasons, as to places, alone is it given to those who have named the name - and who bear the mark of those of His calling and His election in their bodies. To them it shall be given."

The spiritual and physical changes, Cayce said, would touch everyone: "Those in lowly places [shall be] raised to those of power in the ... machinery of nations ... so shall ye see those in high places reduced and calling on the waters of darkness to cover them. [Through] those that in the inmost recesses of themselves awaken to the spiritual truths that are to be given, and those ... that have acted in the capacity of teachers among men, the rottenness of those that have ministered in places will be brought to light, and turmoils and strifes shall enter ... Armageddon is at hand."

It was at this point in the reading that the Source referred to itself as 'I,' not the 'we' that Gladys and the Cayces invariably had come to expect: "I have declared this! That has been delivered unto me to give unto you, ye that sit here and that hear and that see a light breaking in the east, and have heard, have seen thine weaknesses and thine fault - findings, and know that He will make thy paths straight if ye will but live that ye know this day ... Love the Lord thy God with all thine heart ... Love thy neighbor as thyself."

The speaker then revealed 'his' identity: "The weakling, the unsteady, must enter into the crucible and become as naught, even as He, that they may know the way. I, Halaliel, have spoken."

Finally, Halaliel suggested the mechanism that might trigger catastrophic events and bring 'material suffering' on a 'troubled people.' Halaliel said: "The young king will soon rein!" The nation that would produce the "young king" was identified along with his name. The country was "Germany." The king was "Hitler."

Much has been said and written about the prophecies offered in this reading, and about how many of these events actually came to pass. The shattering earth changes would not manifest themselves. And yet the reading was entirely accurate regarding Hitler's reign. Despite the major attention that has been paid this and Cayce's other prophetic readings, an important point has often been lost: the events foretold were ones that could potentially occur given the state of world affairs in January of 1934, when the reading was given. [...]

In a reading Edgar gave on October 7, 1935, long before America's experts had begun to perceive the political and geographical alliances that would soon involve nearly seventy nations, Cayce - in trance - said:

"[International affairs] are in a condition of great anxiety on the part of many, not only as individuals but as to nations. And the activities that have already begun have assumed such proportions that there is to be the attempt upon the part of groups to penalize, or to make for the associations of groups to carry on same. This will make for the taking of sides ... by various groups or countries or governments. This will be indicated by the Austrians, Germans, and later the Japanese joining in their influence - unseen - and gradually growing to those affairs where there must become, as it were, almost a direct opposition to that which has been the theme of the Nazis [or] the Aryan. For these will gradually make for a growing of animosities. And unless there is interference from what may be called ... 'supernatural forces' and influences that are active in the affairs of nations and peoples, the whole world ... will be set on fire by the militaristic groups and those that are for power and expansion in such associations."

In November 1939, two months after Germany invaded Poland and Britain had declared war on Germany, but two years before the United States was brought into the conflict by the Japanese, Cayce, in trance, said what "a sad experience [it] will be for this land [America] through forty-two and forty-three." Four months before Pearl Harbor, a young man deciding whether or not he should serve in the army or navy, asked how long hostilities would last. "Until at least forty-five," Cayce said.

Throughout all of these readings, the Source held out hope, knowing that future events would be avoided if individuals and nations prayed and "lived as they pray." In this sense, the readings seemed to emphasize not only the help available to mankind from the greater powers, but also how the spirituallife of individuals directly affected the values of nations and thus directed the course of human affairs on a global level.

The overriding message in these readings was that the collective will of mankind, and the extent of brotherly love in the world, would determine whether or not there would be war. Back in 1933, when Adolf Hitler was chancellor of Germany - before he had become "Der Fuhrer" - Cayce gave perhaps his most controversial readings on this subject, suggesting that even Hitler had the potential to be a force for positive change in Europe if his personal will could be turned toward the brotherhood of man.

In one reading Hitler was described as being "physically led," and as having been called for a purpose, "not only in the affairs of a nation, but as in the affairs of the world." Cayce admonished, "study ... the impelling influence in the man, in the mind as it has acceded to power," and pointed out that, "few [men] does power not destroy." In one particularly controversial passage, Cayce suggested that the Jews had wandered "far afield, and their rebelliousness and their seeking into the affairs of others has rather brought them into their present position," and made reference to the resurgence of an old influence that would mark "the beginning of the return that must come throughout the earth." Cayce might have been referring to the return of the Jews to their homeland in Palestine, which would become the formalized state of Israel in 1948.

However, the Source specifically stated that Hitler would be a force for good only if he were able to avoid falling into the trap of the forces of 'selfaggrandizement.' From the outset, the Source tempered every positive statement about Hitler with qualifying clauses such as, "if imperialism does not enter in." By January 1934, Cayce stated that, indeed, "[imperialism] is entering." And in 1938, eighteen months before war had officially broken out, and just as Germany annexed Austria, the Source became vitriolic on the subject, referring to Germany as "a smear upon its forces for its dominance over its brother, a leech upon the universe for its own sustenance!" In 1939, three weeks after Hitler invaded Poland, when asked about Hitler's future, the Source answered succinctly: "Death."

Germany was not the only country singled out for criticism. After allying itself with Germany in 1935, Italy was described in the readings as "selling itself for a mess of pottage," and was later denounced for "forcing servitude" upon others. And Japan, which had invaded Manchuria in 1931, was referred to as "domination forces." Cayce also said that England held "ideas of being just a little better than the other fellow," that the sin of France "is the gratifying of the desire of the body," and that the sin of India is "the cradle of knowledge not applied, except within self." The Source did not leave America out, either. Americans, according to Cayce, had to begin to live according to that which was written on their dollar bill - "In God We Trust ... That principle [is] being forgotten ... and that is the sin of America."

Another controversial reference in a reading done around this time was to Russia, which Cayce, in trance, said would emerge as the greater "hope of the world," but "not as that sometimes termed of the Communistic, or the Bolshevistic." Here the Source stressed exactly what Russia would bring: "Freedom, freedom! That each man will live for his fellow man. The principle has been born. It will take years for it to be crystallized, but out of Russia comes again the hope of the world. Guided by ... that friendship with the nation that hath even set on its present monetary unit "In God We Trust."

As inconceivable as this declaration would have sounded to anyone at the time, the Source went on to clarify in a way that made it seem more plausible, adding that this freedom would not come about until it [Russia] "knew freedom" at home. "A new understanding has and will come to a troubled people," Cayce said. "Here, because of the yoke of oppression, because of the self-indulgences, has arisen another extreme. Only when there is freedom of speech, the right to worship according to the dictates of the conscienceuntil these come about, still turmoils will be within."

In 1939, Edgar also gave some highly prophetic readings on the subject of life in America. One reading specifically addressed changes that would result from growing racial and labor-related tensions in the United States. "Ye are to have turmoils [in the aftermath of war]" the Source told ARE members assembled for their eighth annual congress in Virginia Beach. "Ye are to have strifes between capital and labor. Ye are to have a division in thine own land before there is the second of the presidents that next will not live through his office. [For a time there will be] a mob rule!"

Like the readings given on Hitler and World War II, the reference to the deaths of two presidents in office foretold actual events - in this case the deaths of Franklin Roosevelt in 1945 and John F. Kennedy in 1963. Likewise the statement about mob rule could be taken as a foreshadowing of the race riots that would take place in Little Rock, Birmingham, Chicago, and New York. "Then shall thy own land see the blood flow, as in those periods when brother fought against brother," Cayce said in another reading, given on December 2, 1941.

Along with commentary on the nightmare of World War II, which would ultimately leave over seventy-five million people dead or wounded, the readings started down another morbid path, by raising the specter of Edgar's own death. For many people who had come to know and love the 'sleeping prophet' - among them members of the Norfolk Study Group, who believed that 'Armageddon' was near at hand - the suggestion that Edgar was being 'called back' was in keeping with the idea that he would be a more effective force in the affairs of man from the 'other side.'
Next interesting item is the following commentary on Cayce, "Cayce's Secret", with emphasis on his "Hitler reading" as being a colossal blunder:

So far my summary of Cayce's teachings has followed the pattern set by the majority of Cayce writers, and Cayceans should find it familiar enough. Now I would like to introduce some criticisms of the standard. "naive" reading, since on inspection some of its underlying assumptions turn out to be quite hazardous.

To begin with, an obvious sort of question to ask is that of whether the readings are accurately recorded. In fact, they find their way to modem readers through a chain of transmission that usually includes Gladys Davis (who may or may not have "corrected" Cayce's language as she took dictation for him), then whatever writers and publishers were involved in reproducing them.

Without getting into tired hermeneutic controversies over the location of the "text," suffice it to say that I have checked all of my quotations from the readings against the CD-ROM version. which seems to follow the language and orthography of the typewritten readings transcripts more or less reliably.(66) Whether this in turn accurately reflects Cayce's spoken words must be judged on the basis of the one surviving sound recording of a reading, which is unfortunately of abysmal quality and full of gaps. to boot.

Certainly the published books about Cayce cannot be trusted to accurately reproduce material from the readings, although the ubiquitous lapses in this area are attributable to incompetence or unadvertised attempts to "clean up" Cayce's language rather than any intent to deceive. As to whether ARE leaders have suppressed or altered material from the readings. the answer is yes-but only on a very limited scale.

For example. Hugh Lynn kept several readings out of the general collection including his own life readings. which said that he had been the apostle Andrew in a previous life. Hugh Lynn apparently did not want to make this claim public, but changed his mind and restored the readings on being confronted about the missing files by young people at the ARE Camp.(67)

Another of the "lost readings" which remains unpublished is one for Gladys Davis which was removed from the files after her death after legal pressure from relatives who objected to its perceived suggestiveness. To convey some idea of its nature, another reading about Cayce and Davis which was left in the collection promises that "though their bodies may burn with their physical desires the soul of each is and will be knit ... when presented before the throne of Him, who gave and said. 'Be fruitful. and multiply'" (294-9).

Charles Thomas adds that five medical readings whose content is not particularly interesting have also been left out of the general files at the request of their recipients. Some Cayceans have claimed the number of purged readings to be much higher, but I do not see any reason to treat such assertions as anything other than hearsay.

Beyond establishing the text of the readings, there is the question of their context. Cayce writers commonly treat passages from the readings as if they were equally authoritative and generally applicable. despite the fact that most readings are addressed to individuals rather than humanity as a whole. and were delivered in response to a particular situation which is typically ignored by the exegete. (Mark Thurston is a noteworthy exception.) Yet Cayce clearly tailored his message to the person receiving the reading.

While Cayceans have acknowledged this to be a problem with respect to the physical readings (indeed, much of the research into them consists of ARE people trying to pinpoint the commonalities across all readings on a given disease, as opposed to details peculiar to individual patients), similar issues with respect to Cayce's spiritual teachings are seldom considered.

For example, many of Cayce's listeners asked him about certain books, movements, and ideas they were attracted to: and Cayce's advice to them varies considerably even when the topic is the same. It may well be the case that the sleeping, Cayce was less interested in ensuring the doctrinal correctness of his followers than in guiding them to apply values appropriate to them as individuals.

Worse yet, Cayceans generally acknowledge that Cayce's reliability varied with the quality of the inquirer's motivation, among many other variables-- factors which are rarely taken into account by modem commentators except in cases where Cayce appears to have spectacularly messed up.

For example the notorious 1933 "Hitler reading," (3976-13), in which Hitler and the Nazis are praised, was given for an inquirer with pro-Nazi sympathies who eventually emigrated to Nazi Germany in an expression of solidarity with its policies. To their credit. the ARE has published this reading in several places without distorting the magnitude of Cayce's blunder. Two of these imbed the reading within a commentary by Yonassan Gershom, a Hassidic rabbi from Minnesota.(69) To my mind, the fact that such embarrassing material exists is our best guarantee that large-scale expurgations of the Cayce corpus have not occurred. Indeed, it would be hard to imagine, even in principle, more embarrassing readings than the ones which have actually survived and been distributed.
This page, which touches on the same subject, seems to be an apologia for Cayce, "The Hutton Commentaries":

Reading 3976-15
January 19, 1934

Cayce Reading said:
As to the material changes that are to be as an omen, as a sign to those that this is shortly to come to pass - as has been given of old, the sun will be darkened and the earth shall be broken up in divers places - and THEN shall be PROCLAIMED - through the spiritual interception in the hearts and minds and souls of those that have sought His way - that HIS star has appeared, and will point [pause] the way for those that enter into the holy of holies in themselves.

As to the changes physical again: The earth will be broken up in the western portion of America. The greater portion of Japan must go into the sea. The upper portion of Europe will be changed as in the twinkling of an eye. Land will appear off the east coast of America. There will be the upheavals in the Arctic and in the Antarctic that will make for the eruption of volcanoes in the Torrid areas, and there will be shifting then of the poles - so that where there has been those of a frigid or the semi-tropical will become the more tropical, and moss and fern will grow. And these will begin in those periods in '58 to '98, when these will be proclaimed as the periods when His light will be seen again in the clouds. As to times, as to seasons, as to places, ALONE is it given to those who have named the name - and who bear the mark of those of His calling and His election in their bodies. To them it shall be given.

(Q) What are the world changes to come this year physically?1

(A) The Earth will be broken up in many places. The early portion will see a change in the physical aspect of the west coast of America. There will be open waters appear in the northern portions of Greenland. There will be new lands seen off the Caribbean Sea, and DRY land will appear. There will be the falling away in India of much of the material suffering that has been brought on a troubled people. There will be the reduction of one risen to power in central Europe to naught. The young king son will soon reign.....South America shall be shaken from the uppermost portion to the end, and in the Antarctic off of Tierra Del Fuego LAND, and a strait with rushing waters.
The entire hour-long reading was given for a group of people at the home of Mr. and Mrs. T. Mitchell Hastings, 410 Park Avenue, New York City, between 11:40 a.m. and 12.40 p.m., on January 19, 1934. Hugh Lynn Cayce (HLC) conducted the reading, and Gladys Davis was the stenographer. The reading was given in response to a request made by those present, including Carolyn B. Hastings, Josephine L. B. Macsherry, and T. Mitchell Hastings. Mrs. Hastings led in meditation, before Mr. Cayce went to sleep.

We begin with the conductor of the reading, HLC, giving the suggestion. I have no information, incidentally, as to the favorability of HLC with respect to his polarity. If anyone knows anything about HLC's positive or negative polarity, I would like to hear of it. The suggestion itself represents the harmony of the group requesting the reading.

Cayce reading said:
HLC: We seek at this time such information as will be of value and interest to those present, including T. Mitchell Hastings, Jr. in the next room, regarding the spiritual, mental and physical changes which are coming to the earth. You will tell us what part we may play in meeting and helping others to understand these changes. At the end of each fifteen minute period you will pause, until I tell you to continue, while the recording instrument is being arranged. You will speak distinctly at a normal rate of speech, and you will answer the questions which we will ask.
The first three paragraphs of the reading (below) are startling in their candor as to the intent of the group's members. The second paragraph anticipates that others would question the requesters later, about the channel, archangel Halaliel, through which the information was obtained. Such questioning did indeed occur later with respect to the sources mentioned in paragraph three below. And HLC was even asked to give a written opinion as to the Halaliel channel some 40 years after Norfolk Study Group No. 1 had rejected the archangel's offer of help in preparing the group's "Search For God" lessons.

Cayce reading said:
Yes, as each of you gathered here have your own individual development, yet as each seeks to be a channel of blessings to the fellow man, each attunes self to the Throne of universal information. And there may be accorded you that which may be beneficial, not only in thine own experience, but that which will prove helpful, hopeful, in the experience of others.

Many a one may question you as to the sources, as to the channel through such information that may be given you at this time has come. Know it has reached that which is as high for each of you in your respective development as you have merited, and do merit; and has accorded and does accord to the realm of light that which may be aidful and helpful in thine own experience, and in the experience of those that ye in your service to thy fellow man may give unto others.

Hence, in giving the interpretation, MANY are present; many of those whose names alone would bring to others awe - discredit, yet - even a wonderment. For, not only then must the information be instructive but enlightening; yet it must also be so given that it may be a PRACTICAL thing in the experience of thine own self and in the experience of life of thine fellow man. Not only must it be informative in nature, but it must also be that which is constructive; though [pause] that which is informative and that which may be enlightening and constructive must at times overlap one another.
In this last paragraph we understand that the channel, Halaliel, would be passing along only constructive and enlightening information, irrespective of the various sources to which he had access at the time. Note also that criterion 5 (Table 1) seems to have been resolved positively; that is, the ability of the requestors of the information to understand that provided had been taken into account.

As for the physical, mental, and spiritual condition of Cayce when he gave the reading, only his physical condition has ever come into question. Some have said that Cayce was in poor health in the winter of 1933-1934. He did have a bad cold on December 4, 1933 (294-156), but it was much improved by January 6, 1934. (294-166) On January 29, ten days after giving the Halaliel-channeled reading, Cayce obtained another reading (294-169) for "congestion." Note B1, covering the background of 3976-15 (on the CD-ROM for Cayce's readings), says that "before and after, EC was in poor health." Nowhere is it recorded that Cayce was in poor health on the day that he gave reading 3976-15.

The mental attitudes of those present for the reading were exemplary; no greed-based questions were asked, nor were any questions recorded that could have been considered "bothersome" to Cayce.

We continue now with a further consideration of the level of the Halaliel channel. Archangel Halaliel was first mentioned to have been a channel for a Cayce reading on October 15, 1933. (262-56) His name next appeared on October 24, 1933 (5756-10 and 11), as one of the "forces" composed of Lamech, Confucius, Tamah, Halaliel, Hebe, Ra, Ra-Ta, and John. All of these "forces" were said to be available to answer a complicated question about how "the various matters" [of the Universe] came into existence.

Then, on January 7, 1934, members of Study Group No. 1 asked (in 262-57) just who Halaliel was.

Cayce reading said:
(Q) Who is Halaliel, the one who gave us a message on Oct. 15th?

(A) One in and with whose courts Ariel fought when there was the rebellion in heaven. Now, where is heaven? Where is Ariel, and who was he? A companion of Lucifer or Satan, and one that made for the disputing of the influences in the experiences of Adam in the Garden.
On January 8, 1934, we find in reading 443-3, given for a woman seeking mental and spiritual advice, the following question and answer. (This reading was conducted by Gertrude Cayce, said to be a most acceptable conductor due to her negative polarity).

Cayce reading said:
(Q) How high is this source that this information is being given from?

(A) From the universal forces, and as emanated through the teacher that gives same - as one that has been given - Halaliel.
Then, on January 19, 1934, we come to reading 3976-15, when Halaliel gave the entire reading. I believe it is correct to assume that, once again, as happened in reading 443-3 some eleven days earlier, Halaliel transmitted the information in 3976-15 from the source referred to as "the universal forces." These universal forces may or may not be the same as the universal consciousness but, as interpreted by Halaliel, must be assumed to be amongst the highest of those levels available to humankind for information concerning future events.

At the time that Cayce gave reading 3976-15, Study Group No. 1 had not yet decided to reject Halaliel's offer of help. Thus, it would seem that Halaliel was a "clear and acceptable channel" to Edgar Cayce's conscious mind and to HLC's mind as conductor of the reading, at least at this point in time. Halaliel's services as a guide and teacher were not even offered to the group until September 9, 1934. (262-71) This was about nine months after reading 3976-15 was given.

In HLC's 1975 memo [see R3 of 262-56], he says, "Over a period of several readings....and after considerable discussion at the study group meetings a large proportion of Group #1 felt that the purposes and guidance for the group's activities should continue to be focused toward the level of the Christ Consciousness and that the offer of clarification and direction [from Halaliel] should not be accepted." This group "rejection" occurred well after September 9, 1934, although I cannot find the precise rejection date. Thus it is highly probable that when Halaliel announced, halfway through 3976-15, that "I Halaliel, have spoken," the announcement would not have adversely affected HLC's conduct of the remainder of the reading. [...]

This reading came from the highest of sources, the universal forces. It was transmitted to Cayce's subconscious mind by an archangel. Archangel Halaliel acted as a messenger of predictive truth, by using his ability to interpret the universal forces. ... Reading 3976-15, therefore, may be held up as the pre-eminent pole-shift and Earth-changes reading. It will serve as the standard against which all others will be measured. [...]

In recent years some have said that because 3976-15 was given in early 1934, and that because none of the changes described in answer to this question did occur in 1934, all of Halaliel's predictions must be wrong.

Look again, however, at the exact wording of the question. It is, "What are the world changes to come this year, physically?" We must ask, does the word "this" mean "the present," as in "What changes are to come in the present year?" Or, does "this" refer to some word or phrase given earlier in the reading?

The antecedent of "this," in "this year" is "the acceptable year of the Lord," being discussed two paragraphs earlier in 3976-15. The following unbroken quote from the reading shows the connection, and the two times that the word "year" is used are entered in red letters.

Cayce reading said:
Who shall proclaim the acceptable year of the Lord in him that has been born in the Earth in America? Those from that land where there has been the regeneration, not only of the body but the mind and the spirit of men, THEY shall come and declare that John Peniel is giving to the world the new ORDER of things. Not that these that have been proclaimed have been refused, but that they are made PLAIN in the minds of men, that they may know the truth and the truth, the life, the light, will make them free.

I have declared this, that has been delivered unto me to give unto you, ye that sit here and that hear and that see a light breaking in the east, and have heard, have seen thine weaknesses and thine fault findings, and know that He will make thy paths straight if ye will but live that YE KNOW this day -- then may the next step, the next word, be declared unto thee. For ye in your weakness [pause] have known the way, through that as ye have made manifest of the SPIRIT of truth and light that has been proclaimed into this Earth, that has been committed unto the keeping of Him that made of Himself no estate but who brought into being all that ye see manifest in the Earth, and has declared this message unto thee: "Love the Lord thy God with all thine heart," and the second is like unto it, "Love thy neighbor as thyself." Who is thine neighbor? Him that ye may aid in whatsoever way that he, thy neighbor, thy brother, has been troubled. Help him to stand on his own feet. For such may only know the acceptable way. The weakling, the unsteady, must enter into the crucible and become as naught, even as He, that they may know the way. I, Halaliel, have spoken.

(Q) What are the world changes to come this year, physically?

(A) The Earth will be broken up in many places. The early portion will see a change in the physical aspect of the west coast of America. There will be open waters appear in the northern portions of Greenland. There will be new lands seen off the Caribbean Sea, and DRY land will appear. There will be the falling away in India of much of the material suffering that has been brought on a troubled people. There will be the reduction of one risen to power in central Europe to naught. The young king son will soon reign. In America in the political forces we see a re-stabilization of the powers of the peoples in their own hands, a breaking up of the rings, the cliques in many places. South America shall be shaken from the uppermost portion to the end, and in the Antarctic off of Tierra Del Fuego LAND, and a strait with rushing waters.

(Q) To what country is the reference made regarding the young king?

(A) In Germany.
It is always possible to assume that the answer to, "What are the world changes to come this year physically?" had been formulated prior to the start of the reading and that the question really was referring to 1934, because the reading was given in January, at the beginning of that year. But we can just as well assume that an archangel may not like to have his train of thought interrupted. And when the question was asked, Halaliel had just been speaking about "the acceptable year of the Lord."

Buttressing my argument that Halaliel's answer was not referring to a typical 12-month year, consider that Hitler's rise and fall, predicted above, required 11 years after 1934 to be realized. Furthermore, it has taken more like 50 years after 1934 for there even to begin to be "the falling away in India of much of the material suffering" there, also mentioned above. By extension of these observations, we have every right to assume that the Earth changes mentioned above, and in the rest of Halaliel's reading, are yet to come.

The "acceptable year of the Lord" in the Halaliel reading seems to coincide with the period of time mentioned in reading 364-8 that says that the changes will materially come over the 1,000-year period of the first resurrection [when] "He will walk and talk with men of every clime." And the Messiah is to enter "in this period - 1998." (5748-5) Thus, there seems to be a convergence of readings that suggests that the catastrophic Earth changes mentioned in 3976-15 are to occur in 1998 and beyond.

Howard Church ("The Halaliel Question," Venture Inward, May/June 1992) has expressed the opinion that Halaliel's contribution to 3976-15 was limited "apparently" to only a portion of the reading. But Church's fertile imagination casts doubt on this conclusion when he goes on to say, "I think that we might agree that [Halaliel's] tone and style carried a dark, minatory ring, wholly alien to the spirit of the Christ. It was almost as if a "Lord of Karma" might have spoken - which could, in fact define Halaliel's appointed role in the angelic hierarchy." The "tone" referred to by Church actually moves back and forth throughout 3976-15, between "minatory," if one wants to call it that, and constructive, forming one enlightening whole. Thus, it is my opinion that the entire reading was channeled by Halaliel, from the universal forces.
I actually wasn't aware that Cayce was ever channeling such things as alleged archangels. Especially not archangels that declare Hitler to be a "king" and come off like a Fundie preacher calling down hellfire and damnation. Fairly gave me the creeps, it did!

So, I went back to the C's transcripts to search on Cayce to see what might be buried there:

C's said:
22 October 1994

Q: (L) What was the source of knowledge accessed by Edgar
Cayce?

A: Well, he had a unique biochemical composition
which allowed for easy opening and closing of his
consciousness from outside sources without interference with
his electromagnetic flow stream. It is a very unique and
unusual situation. The first manifestation of this was
when he asked for help. If he had not asked for help from
a higher source, possibly his awareness of his abilities
would never have come forth.

Q: (L) What is the source of Lama Sing's knowledge?

A: Lama Sing has studied long and hard in metaphysical
fields through meditation and other areas and therefore a
doorway or channel can be opened voluntarily. This
requires the cooperation of the host and is not as easily
opened or closed as it was in the case of Cayce.

Q: (L) In terms of access levels, which one of the two had
access to the greatest field of subjects or information?

A: Actually Cayce was accessing a somewhat different source,
but the overall accuracy level and the overall intensity
level were greater with Cayce.

Q: (L) In terms of relationships relative to the Cassiopaean
level of knowledge, how would Cayce and Lama Sing relate?

A: The access level is much greater and broader.


9 November 1994

Q: (L) I was reading an article about Cayce's teachings on
the root races. Is this idea as presented by him
basically correct?

A: Close.


26 November 1994

Q: (L) In terms of these Earth Changes, Edgar Cayce is one of
the most famous prognosticators of recent note, a large
number of the prophecies he made seemingly were erroneous
in terms of their fulfillment. For example, he prophesied
that Atlantis would rise in 1969, but it did not though
certain structures were discovered off the coast of Bimini
which are thought by many to be remnants of Atlantis.
These did, apparently, emerge from the sand at that time.

A: Example of one form of symbolism.


3 Dec 1994

Q: (L) Recently there was a supposed secret diary of Edgar
Cayce reported in the tabloids. Was there such a diary?

A: No.


4 March 95

(S) I want to ask something about auras. On some people,
their auras show, by kirlian photography, a white area,
like a halo, behind or around their head or near the
shoulder. What does this mean?
A: Open.
Q: (T) I guess what they mean is that it could be a different
thing on different people.
A: Yes.
Q: (L) Is there a general schematic of aura colors and what
they mean as has been presented by various groups.
A: No.
Q: (S) Was Edgar Cayce's readings on colors...
A: Reading anything requires accessing "higher levels" of
understanding which are fluid, not concrete and absolute.


18 March 95

Q: (S) Yes. Edgar Cayce said that the Atlanteans were going
to other planets...

A: Yes. With the same relative ease with which you would fly
to Atlanta.

Q: (B) Strange!

A: Pun intended! Triple! What is the base root of the name?



24 Feb 96

Q: Cayce once said that
he would return in 1998 as a 'liberator.' Did he mean
that he would be born in 1998, or 'activate' in 1998?

A: That is not important.



7 June 1997

Q: You guys are TOO MUCH! Next: Cayce remarked in one of his
vague dissertations - and for those who accuse the C's of
being vague, they ought to read Cayce, since he was a
MASTER of vague! He could talk for pages and say NOTHING!
- anyway he said that there were a lot of Atlanteans
incarnating between the years 1909 and 1930. He described
them as having strong minds and emotions as well as an
'engorgement' of carnal influences, self-indulgence and
high technical ability. He also warned that there was the
possibility repeating the errors of the past. Now, these
are the people who have set up the world as we have it
today. My question is: are we facing a replay of the
Atlantean situation, in karmic terms?

A: Well, these cycles do replay from an energy standpoint,
but there is always the opportunity to learn and thusly,
to advance. Was not his proclamation for those born
between 1909 and 1930?? And, if so, what is the
significance of when it was delivered, if the orientation
was one of the "present" tense?

Q: So, it was possible that he was referring to the Hitler,
WWII situation.

A: Or just not referring to those of a later "date" because
it was not germaine?

14 May 1998

Q: Anything in particular about what is going on with the
pyramid, the purported preparations to open the door in
the shaft, the supposed discovery of chambers under the
Sphinx... What exactly IS going on there?

A: That would be long and complex. Best to refer to Cayce.

Q: So, what Cayce had to say is what is going on?

A: Essentially.


4 July 1998

Q: (L) I read where Edgar Cayce said that a slight increase
in global temperature would make hurricanes something like
5 times stronger... given a baseline temperature. Does
this mean we are going to have stronger and more frequent
hurricanes?

A: Yes.

Q: (L) Will they hit land more frequently, or just spin out
in the ocean?

A: Either, or.
That's about it. I omitted a couple of remarks that were irrelevant (not questions and no answers). Looking at the material above, about Cayce, and the C's items, as well as all the research I did for Secret History which reveals a LOT, it sure looks like Cayce was receiving some negative entities.
 
Laura said:
Finally, Cayce's main schtick was "The Law of One," and I believe that my research has shown that this is the Service to Self pathway.
I don't know the Cayce material that well, or RA, but RA is also all about the law of one, from the Law of One, Session One, Book one, p. 72 of 233 of the downloaded pdf from here: http://www.llresearch.org/main.htm

Couldn't Cayce be referring to the same "Law of One" as Ra, and not as that of the "monotheists" ?

RA said:
Ra: I am Ra. Consider, if you will, that the universe is infinite. This has yet to be proven or disproven, but we can assure you that there is no end to your selves, your understanding, what you would call your journey of seeking, or your perceptions of the creation.

That which is infinite cannot be many, for many-ness is a finite concept. To have infinity you must identify or define the infinity as unity; otherwise, the term does not have any referent or meaning. In an ifinite Creator there is only unity. You have seen simple examples of Unity. You have seen the prism which shows all colors stemming from the sunlight. This is a simplistic example of unity.

In truth there is no right or wrong. There is no polarity for all well be, as you would say, reconciled at some point in your dance through the mind/body/spirit complex which you amuse yourself by distorting in various ways at this time. This distortion is not in any case necessary. It is chosen by each of you as an alternative to understanding the complete unity of thought which binds all things. You are every thing, every b being, every emotion, every event, every situation. You are unity. You are infinity. You are love/light, light/love. You are. This is the Law of One.
Here is some more extracted information from Ra transcripts re: The Law of One: http://www.lawofone.info/results.php?category=Law+Of+One
 
Yossarian said:
Couldn't Cayce be referring to the same "Law of One" as Ra, and not as that of the "monotheists" ?
That's what I thought when I just read the post too but I also remember Ra talking about distortion of the "Law of One".

RA said:
We now feel a great responsibility of helping remove certain distortions that have been given to the law of One. (B1, 65)
We, as social memory complex or group soul, made contact with a race on your planet which you call Egyptians. We spoke to one who heard and understood, and was in a position to decree the law of One. (Based on the Edgar Cayce Readings, we can see that this was the entity Ra-Ta, who helped Ra design the Great Pyramid with Hermes and much later reincarnated as Cayce himself). However the priests and the peoples of that era quickly distorted our message, robbing it of the compassion with which unity is informed. (B1, 66)
Maybe the name "Law of One" remained, but the meaning was altered, though initially originating from the true Law of One concept? Also notice the comment about Cayce - could it be that Cayce himself did not understand and thus distorted it unknowingly? Or maybe, if he was receiving messages from mixed sources as Laura said, the Law of One came to him in its true and then in its distorted form, and he was unable to make the distinction? In a way it would be similar how the Pathocracy changes meanings of terms (freedom, democracy, terrorism, etc), but does so in a subtle/confusing way, although the change is total and reverses the meaning entirely (like from STO to STS), and yet it escapes most people due to their own ignorance and lack of concrete understanding of the original meaning in the first place.
 
The Children of the Law of One & The Lost Teachings of Atlantis

One point I wanted to add a bit to from the book. It does deal with a bit of the topic presented about manipulation of the one God concept for control.



The "religion" of Atlantis?
Atlantis - Religion for Religion's sake?

Chapter Five

As I said earlier, part of our training at the monastery was to learn about the various cultures and religions of the world, so many of my earliest courses as a novice monk were about religions. At the time, as typical with my young ego, I thought I already knew all there was to know about the subject, but there was really far more to it than I thought. The following chapter is a recollection of a course given by elder Noah, regarding the Atlantean, and later, teachings about religion.

"There are a variety of reasons that can be behind the founding of a religion - some are good, and many are bad. Thus both good and bad religions have been created. There are religions that started as a means for worship. Some to help people improve themselves spiritually or otherwise. Others were specifically created just to control and have power over the people. But even many religions that started with good intentions, degenerated over time into self-serving power structures whose main function was to control people, and make money."

"How do they control people, other than by peer pressure and trying to convince someone about something with a sermon?"

"They vary in their methods and functions. Most offer their members personal salvation through following the religion's tenets (beliefs, rituals, and dogma). And thus, they insinuate you will not find God or salvation, if you don't follow their particular religion.

Most also aim to fill an emotional or psychological need in people's hearts and minds. They generally each have their own 'dogma' - answers to spiritual questions about God, who we are, and the rules that we should live by.

Some religions control by using people's insecurity, and have even been formed based on the insecurity of an ignorant society. Some were based on fear. There is the fear of hell (religion as 'fire insurance'). There is the fear of God. Which..."

"What exactly do you mean?" I said. (I was insensitively interrupting him before he was about to explain anyway).

"I was just getting to that. It is religion that basically comes from the idea of needing to worship and serve a God, or some kind of powerful supreme being, because you actually need to fear Him if you don't - because He is all powerful and has negative emotional attributes, commits atrocities when angry or jealous, and allows great suffering and disasters when He could easily stop them."

"So Noah, what you're saying is worshipping that kind of God is not much different than being respectful to, and paying homage and taxes to, an evil king, or warlord of the realm, because if you don't, he may come burn your hut or your fields, or kill you or your family, rape your wife, etc.."

"That's an interesting and insightful analogy. Yes, in fact, that is precisely what many religions did, and how they used the concept of God. But as opposed to being just a King or a warlord, people were told it was an all-powerful being, like a super powered evil alien from outer-space, bent on taking over and controlling all the people of this planet Earth.

And of course the next step in such a religion, is dealing with the abusive power of its leaders. The religion's leaders, being self-appointed representatives of such a God, would even torture and burn people alive for not 'believing', or behaving precisely as they dictated, or precisely as the 'God' they represented, dictated that they live. Millions of people have been murdered and tortured as the result of this."

"Like the inquisition?"

"Let's just say for now that people throughout time, and of various religions, have used their particular God, or even their particular 'name' for their God, as an excuse to control, torture, and murder. That's one reason we prefer to call God 'the Universal Spirit', rather than anything that personalizes, or segregates the concept.

But there have been legitimate, or sincere reasons and beginnings for religions too.

Some have been formed based on faith, or the moral ideas of the religion's founder. Some have been based on visions or insights of a great spiritual teacher (unfortunately, when the founding visionary dies, usually dogma and the 'religion' take over). Others provide a more direct means for personal salvation, within the framework of dogma."

"How and why was the religion of the Children of the Law of One started?"

A Religion that is Not a Religion

Noah paused, and stroked his beard for a moment.

"While the Children of the Law of One is a spiritual 'way', and also a monastic order, I suppose you could say it is somewhat like a religion. But, it is not a religion in a couple of very important ways. To start with, none of the above reasons were behind the founding of the Children, nor do they play a part in what they teach. There is no control. Not even an attempt to influence, only to educate and reflect the truth.

To understand why the Children of the Law of One was created, and what their foundations are, we need to go back to the beginnings of human life on Earth."

Ooooo, it sounded like we were going to get into some more interesting stuff.

"Please go on," I said.

"I will, just give me a moment." More "beard-stroking meditation" ensued, as he prepared himself to tell us the story.

The Fall

This book devotes an entire chapter to the history of the Children of the Law of One , from its Genesis prior to Atlantis, to the present, directly translated from the ancient texts, and my accounts of recent developments. But in the following segment, Noah just briefly describes the specific aspects of that history which led to the creation of the Children. You've heard Darwin, you've heard Genesis. Now you are about to hear another theory, the first one that made sense to me. And according to the Atlantean teachings, Genesis is actually a simplified, loose allegory, based on this.

"The historical records start with the premise that there is One Great Being (God/Universal Spirit) that is All things, including the Universe itself. It divides/multiplies within itself creating us, thus, our history begins with all of us (humans) essentially being part of, and One with God. The records describe us as being spiritual or 'angelic' beings, free to roam, create, and enjoy the Universe. The teachings go on to say that our beginnings on Earth, came in two steps - a 'first wave', and 'second wave' of 'human' (& semi-human) materialization into physical bodies on Earth. At the time, we had the ability to instantly alter our vibration, and instantly create anything we desired, with a mere thought. It was in this way that we 'thought ourselves' into matter, into material existence on Earth. Which began our fall from our angelic state, and Oneness with God.

You have probably heard of mythological beings such as the Minotaur, Centaur, Mermaid, etc.. The Minotaur, had a bull's head and a human body, the Centaur, a human head and torso with a horse's body. You may also have seen pictures of Egyptian 'gods' with animal heads and human bodies, or animal bodies and human heads (like the Sphinx). In the Pacific regions, ancient drawings and carvings of 'bird headed' humans can be found on both sides of the ocean. Why do you think so much of this exists? Many legends and myths have some foundation in fact, and this is no exception. The ancient teachings from Atlantis, reveal that such creatures did indeed exist, and that their origins were not what you might expect - they were the fallen angelic beings from the 'first wave' of materialization on Earth."

"Fallen angels??? You mean like Lucifer?"

"Well, yes and no. You have a misconception of sorts. That is a personalized concept from the allegory. The first wave of materialization was a terrible mistake [Author's note: this will be explained in greater detail in the history chapter]. The first wave beings materialized as partly human/partly animal creatures. This is why in the story of Lucifer, or the various creatures that were called 'devils' or demons or whatever, appear as horned, cloven hoofed creatures with tails - the fact is, they were part goat. This is why goats have become associated with the devil also. But evil, is an entirely different matter. Think not that evil does not exist. But true evil, disguises itself, and points the finger at innocents."

"So Lucifer was not evil?"

"Not initially. The stories you have heard have become terribly mixed up. Even the bible originally paints him as a great angel. But there was no 'rebellion' or defiance against the will of God until AFTER this fall, not prior to the fall as is often depicted. It was just a mistake at first. Try telling one person in the meeting hall a story, and ask him to repeat it quietly to the next, and the next person to the next, until it comes back to you. By the time you hear your original story, it will not even be recognizable. That is why our teaching methods are so stringent. We must keep the truth straight, and consistent, and this has been assured by our forbearers.

Getting back to the primary teaching today, there were more 'fallen angels' than Lucifer. And they took many different part animal forms. For ease of description we call the part human, part animal beings that fell into physical vibration or matter, during the 'first wave' of materialization, 'humanimals'. As soon as the first wave beings materialized in their 'humanimal' bodies, they suffered a great 'fall' in vibration from their previous spiritual, angelic state of existence. They instantly experienced a near total loss of consciousness, awareness, and intelligence. In less than the twinkling of an eye, the consciousness that just moments before, had encompassed the entire Universe, and experienced Oneness with the Universal Spirit/God, was virtually gone. The new limited consciousness of these pitiful creatures, 'trapped' them on the physical plane of the Earth, where they had to live in ignorance, with their animal-like intelligence and awareness. They were suddenly isolated from Universal/God Consciousness, and trapped in the lonely anguish of 'separate' consciousness. This separate consciousness gave birth to a sort of separate free will, which was ignorantly used selfishly, rather than in harmony with the will of God. Ultimately, they would also be trapped in slavery. Evil is spawned by selfishness, but later, even greater degrees of evil came about (which we will discuss more later). Yet all selfishness and evil, has since mistakenly been blamed on these poor unfortunate 'first waver humanimals'. To be sure, some had horns, and tails, and cloven hoofs - but they have been used as 'scape goats', and diversions, in order for others, including regular humans, to avoid taking personal responsibility for the real evil, the real devil, which is the selfishness living inside each human who maintains separate consciousness from the Oneness of God."

http://www.atlantis.to/LTA/5.htm
 
The Children of the Law of One & The Lost Teachings of Atlantis

Just to broaden the subject of the "Law of One" and risk, error, I am adding in the concepts of Pantheism and Panentheism--two broadly general ways of understanding and talking about ultimate reality or the divine. This way of looking at and talking about Reality has the advantage of leaving much of the usual doctrinal, dogmatic and conceptual frameworks of traditional religions behind--though not entirely--

I'm just curious on others thoughts on how these concepts align with the "Law of One" as described by Ra, (which I think is closely aligned with what the C's have said). I think the Law of One most closely aligns with Pantheism. This rather lengthy article--take it for whatever it is worth-- fleshes out thought regarding pantheism as it relates to other concepts of the divine in quite a bit of detail.

Encyclopedia Britannica wrote:

Pantheism-- the doctrine that the universe conceived of as a whole is God and, conversely, that there is no God but the combined substance, forces, and laws that are manifested in the existing universe. The cognate doctrine of panentheism asserts that God includes the universe as a part though not the whole of his being.

Both a��pantheisma� and a��panentheisma� are terms of recent origin, coined to describe certain views of the relationship between God and the world that are different from that of traditional Theism. As reflected in the prefix a��pan-a� (Greek pas, a��alla� ), both of the terms stress the all-embracing inclusiveness of God, as compared with his separateness as emphasized in many versions of Theism. On the other hand, pantheism and panentheism, since they stress the theme of immanencea�"i.e., of the indwelling presence of Goda�"are themselves versions of Theism conceived in its broadest meaning. Pantheism stresses the identity between God and the world, panentheism (Greek en, a��ina� ) that the world is included in God but that God is more than the world.

Pantheism and panentheism can be explored by means of a three-way comparison with traditional or Classical Theism viewed from eight different standpointsa�"i.e., from those of immanence or transcendence; of monism, dualism, or pluralism; of time or eternity; of the world as sentient or insentient; of God as absolute or relative; of the world as real or illusory; of freedom or determinism; and of sacramentalism or secularism.

The poetic sense of the divine within and around mankind, which is widely expressed in religious life, is frequently treated in literature. It is present in the Platonic Romanticism of Wordsworth and Coleridge, as well as in Tennyson, Emerson, and Goethe. Expressions of the divine as intimate rather than as alien, as indwelling and near dwelling rather than remote, characterize pantheism and panentheism as contrasted with Classical Theism. Such immanence encourages man's sense of individual participation in the divine life without the necessity of mediation by any institution. On the other hand, it may also encourage a formless a��enthusiasm,a� without the moderating influence of institutional forms. In addition, some theorists have seen an unseemliness about a point of view that allows the divine to be easily confronted and appropriated. Classical Theism has, in consequence, held to the transcendence of God, his existence over and beyond the universe. Recognizing, however, that if the separation between God and the world becomes too extreme, man risks the loss of communication with the divine, panentheisma�"unlike pantheism, which holds to the divine immanencea�"maintains that the divine can be both transcendent and immanent at the same time.

Philosophies are monistic if they show a strong sense of the unity of the world, dualistic if they stress its twoness, and pluralistic if they stress its manyness. Pantheism is typically monistic, finding in the world's unity a sense of the divine, sometimes related to the mystical intuition of personal union with God; Classical Theism is dualistic in conceiving God as separated from the world and mind from body; and panentheism is typically monistic in holding to the unity of God and the world, dualistic in urging the separateness of God's essence from the world, and pluralistic in taking seriously the multiplicity of the kinds of beings and events making up the world. One form of pantheism, present in the early stages of Greek philosophy, held that the divine is one of the elements in the world whose function is to animate the other elements that constitute the world. This point of view, called Hylozoistic (Greek hyle, a��matter,a� and zoe, a��lifea� ) pantheism, is not monistic, as are most other forms of pantheism, but pluralistic.

Most, but not all, forms of pantheism understand the eternal God to be in intimate juxtaposition with the world, thus minimizing time or making it illusory. Classical Theism holds that eternity is in God and time is in the world but believes that, since God's eternity includes all of time, the temporal process now going on in the world has already been completed in God. Panentheism, on the other hand, espouses a temporala�"eternal God who stands in juxtaposition with a temporal world; thus, in panentheism, the temporality of the world is not cancelled out, and time retains its reality.

Every philosophy must take a stand somewhere on a spectrum running from a concept of things as unfeeling matter to one of things as psychic or sentient. Materialism holds to the former extreme, and Panpsychism to the latter. Panpsychism offers a vision of reality in which to exist is to be in some measure sentient and to sustain social relations with other entities. Dualism, holding that reality consists of two fundamentally different kinds of entity, stands again between two extremes. A few of the simpler forms of pantheism support Materialism. Panentheism and most forms of pantheism, on the other hand, tend toward Panpsychism. But there are differences of degree, and though Classical Theism tends toward dualism, even there the insentient often has a tinge of Panpsychism.

God is absolute insofar as he is eternal, cause, activity, creator; he is relative insofar as he is temporal, effect, passive (having potentiality in his nature), and affected by the world. For pantheism and Classical Theism, God is absolute; and for many forms of pantheism, the world, since it is identical with God, is likewise absolute. For Classical Theism, since it envisages a separation between God and the world, God is absolute and the world relative. For panentheism, however, God is absolute and relative, cause and effect, actual and potential, active and passive. The panentheist holds that, inasmuch as they refer to different levels of the divine nature, both sets of claims can be attributed to God without inconsistency, that just as a man can have an absolute, unchanging purpose, which gains now one embodiment and now another, so God's absoluteness can be an abstract unchanging feature of a changing totality.

Panentheism, Classical Theism, and many forms of pantheism hold the world to be part of the ultimate reality. But for Classical Theism the world has a lesser degree of reality than God; and for some forms of pantheism, for which Hegel coined the term Acosmism, the world is unreal, an illusion, and God alone is real.

In those forms of pantheism that envisage the eternal God literally encompassing the world, man is an utterly fated part of a world that is necessarily just as it is, and freedom is thus illusion. To be sure, Classical Theism holds to the freedom of man but insists that this freedom is compatible with a divine omniscience that includes his knowledge of the total future. Thus the question arises whether or not such freedom is illusory. Panentheism, by insisting that future reality is indeterminate or open and that man and God, together, are in the process of determining what the future shall be, probably supports the doctrine of man's freedom more completely than does any alternative point of view.

Insofar as God is the indwelling principle of the world and of man, as in pantheism, so far do these take on a sacramental character; and insofar as God is separated from the world as in 18th-century Deism, so far does it become secular, neutral, or even fallen. In contrast, Classical Theism, though basically sacramental, places this quality in an enclave, the church.

On the basis of the preceding characteristics, seven forms of pantheism can be distinguished in addition to Classical Theism and panentheism:

The divine is immanent in, and is typically regarded as the basic element of, the world, providing the motivating force for movement and change. The world remains a plurality of separate elements.

God is a part of the world and immanent in it. Though only a part, however, his power extends throughout its totality.

God is absolute and identical with the world. The world, although real, is therefore changeless.

The world is real and changing and is within God (e.g., as the body of God). But God remains nonetheless absolute and is not affected by the world.

The absolute God makes up the total reality. The world is an appearance and ultimately unreal.

The opposites of ordinary discourse are identified in the supreme instance. God and his relation to the world are described in terms that are formally contradictory; thus reality is not subject to rational description. Whether being is stressed or the void, whether immanence is or transcendence, the result is the same: one must go beyond rational description to an intuitive grasp of the ultimate.

God is absolute, eternal, first cause, pure actuality, an omniscient, omnipotent, and perfect being. Though related to the world as its cause, he is not affected by the world. He is essentially transcendent over the world; and the world exists relative to him as a temporal effect of his actiona�"containing potentiality as well as actuality and characterized by change and finitude. Since all of time is part of God's eternal a��Now,a� and since God's knowledge now includes the total future as though laid out before him like a landscape, it is not clear that, in this system, man can have freedom in any significant sense; for although foreknowledge does not of itself determine anything, it vouches for the existence of such determination. Nonetheless, human freedom is in fact asserted by Classical Theists.

God is absolute in all respects, remote from the world and transcendent over it. This view is like Classical Theism except that, rather than saying that God is the cause of the world, it holds that the world is an emanation of God, occurring by means of intermediaries. God's absoluteness is thus preserved while a bridge to the world is provided as well. In Plotinus (3rd century AD), the foremost Neoplatonist, the Nous (Greek, a��minda� ), a realm of ideas or Platonic forms, serves as the intermediary between God and the world, and the theme of immanence is sustained by positing the existence of a World-Soul that both contains and animates the world.

In this alternative, both sets of categories, those of absoluteness and of relativity, of transcendence and of immanence, are held to apply equally to God, who is thus dipolar. He is the cause of the world and its effect; his essence is eternal, but he is involved in time. God's knowledge includes all that there is to know; since the future is genuinely open, however, and is not in any sense real as yet, he knows it only as a set of possibilities or probabilities. In this alternative man is held to have significant freedom, participating as a co-creator with God in the continuing creation of the world.

With only slight attention being accorded to Classical Theism (which is covered in another article), the incidence of the preceding eight forms of pantheism and panentheism in cultural history remains to be explored.

The gods of the Vedas, the ancient scriptures of India (c.1200 BC), represented for the most part natural forces. Exceptions were the gods Prajapati (Lord of Creatures) and Purusa (Supreme Being or Soul of the Universe), whose competition for influence provided, in its outcome, a possible explanation of how the Indian tradition came to be one of pantheism rather than of Classical Theism. By the 10th book of the Rigveda, Prajapati had become a lordly, monotheistic figure, a creator deity transcending the world; and in the later period of the sacred writings of the Brahmanas (c. 7th century BC), prose commentaries on the Vedas, he was moving into a central position. The rising influence of this Theism was later eclipsed by Purusa, who was also represented in Rigveda X. In a creation myth Purusa was sacrificed by the gods in order to supply (from his body) the pieces from which all the things of the world arise. From this standpoint the ground of all things lies in a Cosmic Self, and all of life participates in that of Purusa. The Vedic hymn to Purusa may be regarded as the starting point of Indian pantheism.

In the Upanisads (c. 1000a�"500 BC), the most important of the ancient scriptures of India, the later writings contain philosophic speculations concerning the relation between the individual and the divine. In the earlier Upanisads, the absolute, impersonal, eternal properties of the divine had been stressed; in the later Upanisads, on the other hand, and in the Bhagavadgita, the personal, loving, immanentistic properties became dominant. In both cases the divine was held to be identical with the inner self of each man. At times these opposites were implicitly held to be in fact identicala�"the view earlier called identity of opposites pantheism. At other times the two sets of qualities were related, one to the unmanifest absolute Brahman, or supreme reality (sustaining the universe), and the other to the manifest Brahman bearing qualities (and containing the universe). Thus Brahman can be regarded as exclusive of the world and inclusive, unchanging and yet the origin of all change. Sometimes the manifest Brahman was regarded as an emanation from the unmanifest Brahman; and then emanationistic pantheism"the Neoplatonic pantheism of the foregoing typology"was the result.

Sankara, an outstanding nondualistic Vedantist and advocate of a spiritual view of life, began with the Neoplatonic alternative but added a qualification that turned his view into what was later called acosmic pantheism. Distinguishing first between Brahman as being the eternal Absolute and Brahman as a lower principle and declaring the lower Brahman to be a manifestation of the higher, he then made the judgment that all save the higher unqualitied Brahman is the product of ignorance or nescience and exists (apparently only in men's minds) as the phantoms of a dream. Since for Sankara, the world and individuality thus disappear upon enlightenment into the unmanifest Brahman, and in reality only the Absolute without distinctions exists, Sankara has provided an instance of acosmism.

On the other hand, Ramanuja, a prominent southern Brahmin who held to a qualified monism, argued strenuously against Sankara's dismissal of the world and of individual selves as being mere products of nescience. In place of this acosmism he substituted the notion of world cycles. In the unmanifest state Brahman has as his body only the very subtle matter of darkness, and he decrees .May I again possess a world-body ; in the manifest state all of the things of the world, including individual selves, are part of his body. The doctrine of Ramanuja approaches panentheism; he has certainly advanced beyond emanationistic pantheism. There are two aspects to the single Brahman, one absolutistic and the other relativistic. As in panentheism, the beings of the world have freedom. The only qualification is that, although it is Brahman's will to support the choices of finite beings, he has the power to prohibit any choice that displeases him. This power to prohibit indicates a preference for the absolute in Ramanuja's thought, which is reflected in many ways: although God is the cause of the world, for example, and includes the world within his being, he is never affected by that world, and his motive in world creation is simply play. In sum, since the absolutistic categories were given the greater emphasis in his thought, Ramanuja is representative of a relativistic monistic pantheism.

The presence in the Hindu tradition of both absolutistic and relativistic descriptions of the divine suggests that genuine panentheism might well emerge from the tradition; and, in fact, in the former president of India, S. Radhakrishnan, also a religious philosopher, that development did occur. Although Radhakrishnan had been influenced by Western philosophy, including that of A.N. Whitehead, later discussed as a modern panentheist, the sources of his thought lie in Hindu philosophy. He distinguishes between God as the being who contains the world and the Absolute, who is God in only one aspect. He finds that the beings of the world are integral with God, who draws an increase of his being from the constituents of his nature.

Some 600 years after Buddha, a new and more speculative school of Buddhism arose to challenge the 18 or 20 schools of Buddhism then in existence. One of the early representatives of this new school, which came to be known as Mahayana (Sanskrit a Greater Vehicle ) Buddhism, was Asvaghosa. Like Sankara (whom he antedated by 700 years), Asvaghosa not only distinguished between the pure Absolute (the Soul as Suchness ; i.e., in its essence) and the all-producing, all-conserving Mind, which is the manifestation of the Absolute (the Soul as Birth and Death ; i.e., as happenings), but he also held that the judgment concerning the manifest world of beings is a judgment of nonenlightenment; it is, he said, like the waves stirred by the wind"when the quiet of enlightenment comes the waves cease, and an illusion confronts a man as he begins to understand the world.

Whereas Asvaghosa treated the world as illusory and essentially void, Nagarjuna, the great propagator of Mahayana Buddhism who studied under one of Asvaghosa's disciples, transferred Sunya ( the Void ) into the place of the Absolute. If Suchness, or ultimate reality, and the Void are identical, then the ultimate must lie beyond any possible description. Nagarjuna approached the matter through dialectical negation: according to the school that he founded, the Ultimate Void is the Middle Path of an eightfold negation; all individual characteristics are negated and sublated, and the individual approaches the Void through a combination of dialectical negation and direct intuition. Beginning with the Middle Doctrine School, the doctrine of the Void spread to all schools of Mahayana Buddhism as well as to the Satyasiddhi (Sanskrit: a perfect attainment of truth ) group in Hinayana Buddhism. Since the Void is also called the highest synthesis of all oppositions, the doctrine of the Void may be viewed as an instance of identity of opposites pantheism.

In the T'ien-t'ai school of Chinese Buddhism founded by Chih-i, as in earlier forms of Mahayana Buddhism, the elements of ordinary existence are regarded as having their basis in illusion and imagination. What really exists is the one Pure Mind, called True Thusness, which exists changelessly and without differentiation. Enlightenment consists of realizing one's unity with the Pure Mind. Thus, an additional Buddhist school, T'ien-t'ai, can be identified with acosmic pantheism.

Indeed, although a mingling of types is discernible in the Hindu and Buddhist strands of Oriental culture, acosmic pantheism would seem to be the alternative most deeply rooted and widespread in these traditions.

Just as the early gods of the Vedas represented natural forces, so the Canaanite deities known as Baal and the Hebrew God Yahweh both began as storm gods. Baal developed into a Lord of nature, presiding with his consort, Astarte, over the major fertility religion of the Middle East. The immanentism of this nature religion might have sustained the development of pantheistic systems; but, whereas the pantheistic Purusa triumphed in India, the Theistic Yahweh triumphed in the Middle East. And Yahweh evolved not into a Lord of nature but into a Lord of history presiding first over his chosen people and then over world history. The requirement that he be a judge of history implied that his natural place was outside and above the world; and he thus became a transcendent deity. Through much of the history of Israel, however, the people accepted elements from both of these traditions, producing their own highly syncretistic religion. It was this syncretism that provided the occasion that challenged certain men of prophetic consciousness to embark upon their purifying missions, beginning with Elijah and continuing throughout the Old Testament period. In this development, the absoluteness and remoteness of Yahweh came to be supplemented by qualities of love and concern, as in the prophets Hosea and Amos. In short, the categories of immanence came to supplement the categories of transcendence and, in the New Testament period, became overwhelmingly important. The transcendent Yahweh, on the other hand, had fitted more naturally into the categories of absoluteness. And, in the Christian West, it was the transcendent God who appeared in the doctrines of Classical Theism, while pantheism stood as a heterodox departure from the Christian scheme.

Early Greek religion contained among its many deities some whose natures might have supported pantheism; and certainly the mystery religions of later times stressed types of mystical union that are typical of pantheistic systems. But in fact the pantheism of ancient Greece was related almost exclusively to philosophical speculation. For this reason it is more rationalistic, possessing a style quite different from the Pantheisms thus far examined.

The first philosophers of Greece, all of whom were 6th-century-BC Ionians, were hylozoistic, finding matter and life inseparable. The basic substances that they identified as the elements of reality"the water proposed by Thales, the boundless infinite suggested by Anaximander, and the air of Anaximenesa"were presumed to have the motive force of living things and thus to be a kind of life, a position here called hylozoistic pantheism.

Impressed by the absolute unity of all things, the adherents of another philosophic position, that of Eleaticism (see Eleaticism), so-named from its centre in Elea, a Greek colony in southern Italy, found it impossible to believe in multiplicity and change. The first step in this direction was taken by Xenophanes, a religious thinker and rhapsodist, who, on rational grounds, moved from the gods and goddesses of Homer and Hesiod to a unitary principle of the divine. He believed that God is the supreme power of the universe, ruling all things by the power of his mind. Unmoved, unmoving, and unitary, God perceives, governs, and apparently contains, or at least he embraces all things. So interpreted, Xenophanes provides an instance of monistic pantheism, inasmuch as, in this view, the Absolute God is united with a changing world, while the reality of neither is
Continued
 
The Children of the Law of One & The Lost Teachings of Atlantis

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Continued--attenuated. This paradox may have encouraged Parmenides, possibly one of Xenophanes' disciples (according to Aristotle), to accept the changeless Absolute, eliminating change and motion from the world. Reality thus became for him a unitary, indivisible, everlasting, motionless whole. This position is basically that of absolutistic monistic pantheism in that it views the world as real but changeless. Insofar as the change and variety of the world are only apparent, Parmenides also approaches acosmic pantheism.

A third fundamental position is that of the Ephesian critic Heracleitus, among whose cryptic sayings were many that stressed the role of change as the basic reality. Heracleitus continued the hylozoistic tendencies of the Ionian philosophers. Fire, his basic element, is also the universal logos, or reason, controlling all things; and since fire not only has a life of its own but exercises control to the boundaries of the universe as well, the system is more complex than hylozoistic pantheism. In view of the circumstance that everything is either on the way from, or to, fire, this basic element is actually or incipiently everywhere. Since the divine works here from within the universe, indeed from within a single, but basic, aspect of it, the system is an instance of immanentistic pantheism.

The philosopher Anaxagoras, one of the great dignitaries at Athens in the golden age of Pericles, approached the problem somewhat in the manner of Heracleitus. Nous (or Mind) he held to be the principle of order for all things as well as the principle of their movement. It is the finest and purest of things and is diffused throughout the universe. This, like the preceding system, is an instance of immanentistic pantheism.

From the standpoint of the typology here employed, Plato may be regarded as the first Western philosopher to treat the problem of the absoluteness and the relativity in God with any degree of adequacy. In the Timaeus an absolute and eternal God was recognized, existing in changeless perfection in relation to the world of forms, along with a World-Soul, which contained and animated the world and was as divine as a changing thing could be. Although the material can be variously interpreted, panentheists hold that Plato has adopted a dual principle of the divine, uniting both being and becoming, absoluteness and relativity, permanence and change in a single context. To be sure, he envisioned the categories of absoluteness as situated in one deity, and those of relativity in another; but the separation seems not to have pleased him, and in the tenth book of the Laws, by invoking the analogy of a circular motion, which combines change with the retention of a fixed centre, he explained how deity could exemplify both absoluteness and change. Plato thus may be viewed as a quasi-panentheist.

Aristotle, on the other hand, with his exclusivistic, transcendent God, exemplifying only the categories of absoluteness, anticipated the absolute God of Classical Theism, existing above and beyond the world.

Stoicism, one of the foremost of the post-Aristotelian schools of thought, represents an immanentistic pantheism of the Heracleitean variety. First of all, the Stoics accepted the decision of Heracleitus that an indwelling fire is the principal element entering into all transformations and is also the principle of reason, the logos, ordering as well as animating all things, but that, second, there is a World-Soul, which is diffused throughout the world and penetrates it in every part. Rather than approximating Plato's spiritual World-Soul, the Stoic World-Soul is more like the Nous of Anaxagoras. The Stoics were Materialists, and their diffuse World-Soul is, thus, an extended form of subtle matter. That everything is determined by the universal reason is an unvarying theme in Stoicism; and this fact suggests that Stoic pantheism, despite its immanentism, stresses the categories of absoluteness rather than those of relativity in the relations holding between God and the world.

The life of reason brings man into harmony with God and with nature and helps him to understand his fate, which is his place in the universal system. Although the view is an amalgam of several types of pantheism, this particular mixture has retained its identity. It is therefore useful to call this position, or any similar combination of themes, by the name Stoic pantheism.

Plotinus, the creator of one of the most thoroughgoing philosophical systems of ancient times, may be taken to represent Neoplatonism, an influential modification of Plato's attempt to deal with absoluteness and relativity in the divine. Plotinus' system consists of the Oneai��"the absolute God who is the supreme power of the systemai��"the intermediate Nous, and the World-Soul (with the world as its internal content). His World-Soul follows the Platonic model. The system really blends pantheism with Classical Theism, since the categories of absoluteness apply to the One, and the relativistic categories apply to the World-Soul. The doctrine of emanation, whereby the power of the One comes into the world, is a clear attempt to bridge the gap between absoluteness and relativity. For Plotinus, as for Classical Theism, there is immanent in man an image of the divine, which serves as well to relate man to God as does the divine spark in Stoic pantheism. Even Classical Theism may thus contain a touch of immanentistic pantheism. This view, or any similar combination of themes, is an instance of emanationistic or Neoplatonic pantheism.

Though Scholasticism, with its doctrine of a separate and absolute God, was the crowning achievement of medieval thought, the period was, nonetheless, not without its pantheistic witness. Largely through Jewish and Christian mysticism, an essentially Neoplatonic Pantheism ran throughout the age.

The only important Latin philosopher for six centuries after St. Augustine was John Scotus Erigena. Inasmuch as, in his system, Christ's redemptive sacrific helps to effect a Neoplatonic return of all beings to God, Erigena can be said to have turned Neoplatonism into a Christian drama of fall into sin and redemption from its power. When Erigena said that, even in the stage of separation from God, God in his superessentiality is identical with all things, he advanced beyond a strictly Neoplatonic pantheism to some stronger form of immanentistic or monistic pantheism.

In the two principal writings of the esoteric Jewish movement called the Kabbala, known for its theosophical interpretations of the Scriptures, a mystically oriented system of 10 emanations is presented. A Spaniard, AvicebrAi��n, a Jewish poet and philosopher, similarly presented a Neoplatonic scheme of emanations. And in Spain, AverroAi��s, the most prominent Arabic philosopher of the period, represented an Aristotelian tradition that is heavily overladen with Neoplatonism. For AverroAi��s, the active intellect in man is really an impersonal divine reason, which alone lives on when man dies.

The German Meister Eckehart, probably the most significant of philosophical mystics, developed a markedly original theology. From his Stoic pantheism there arose his most controversial thesisai��"that there resides in every man a divine, uncreated spark of the Godhead, making possible both a union with God and a genuine knowledge of his nature. But Eckehart also distinguished between the unmanifest and barren Godhead and the three Persons who constitute a manifest and personal God. Thus, the system has similarities to both Stoic and Neoplatonic pantheism.

Cardinal Nicholas of Cusa, whose broad scholarship and scientific approach anticipated the coming Renaissance, continued the tradition into the 15th century. The ai��i��learned ignorance,ai�� in which a man separates himself from every affirmation, can have positive results, in Nicholas' view, because man is a microcosm within the macrocosm (or universe), and the God of the macrocosm is thus mirrored in all of his creatures. He also held that, in reference to God, contradictions are compatibleai��"his ai��i��coincidence of oppositesai�� doctrine, in which God is at once all extremes. Clearly, Nicholas wished to ascribe to God both the categories of transcendence and those of immanence without distinction. But in fact he displayed some preference for the categories of the absolute, insisting, for example, that the creatures of the world can add nothing to God since they are merely his partial appearances. Despite this bias toward absolutism, and even to acosmism, Nicholas can be appropriately viewed as espousing an identity of opposites pantheism.

The humanism of the Renaissance included an enlarged interest in Platonism and in its historical carrier, Neoplatonism, as well as influences from Aristotle and from Kabbalistic sources. The view of man as a microcosm of the universe was widespread. Marsilio Ficino, one of the first leaders of the Florentine Academy, found the image and reflection of God in all men and anticipated the divinization of man and the entire cosmos. The humanist and syncretistic philosopher Pico della Mirandola, also a leading figure in the Academy, substituted for creation a Neoplatonic emanation from the divine.

The most famous scholar of the Italian Renaissance was Giordano Bruno. Combining Copernican astronomy with Neoplatonism, Bruno thought of the universe as an infinite organism with monads as its ultimate constituents and world-systems as its parts. The universe, he held, is in a continual process of development and is infused with the divine life. Accepting Nicholas of Cusa's doctrine of the identity of opposites, he taught that contradictory ascriptions apply equally to God in particular and that claims concerning his immanence and transcendence are equally valid. More open to the categories of relativity than Nicholas, Bruno, however, exemplified a neatly balanced instance of identity of opposites pantheism.

The next great innovator of mystical religious thought was Jakob BAi��hme, who, in developing the concept of the divine life, took a decisive step beyond mere absoluteness. God goes through stages of self-development, he taught, and the world is merely the reflection of this process. BAi��hme anticipated Hegel in claiming that the divine self-development occurs by means of a continuing dialectic, or tension of opposites, and that it is the negative qualities of the dialectic that men experience as the evil of the world. Even though BAi��hme, for the most part, stressed absoluteness and relativity equally, his view that the world is a mere reflection of the divineai��"apparently denying self-development on the part of creaturesai��"tends toward acosmic pantheism.

In the 17th century the foremost pantheist was a Jewish rationalist, Benedict Spinoza, whose training in the history of philosophy included both medieval Jewish philosophy and the Kabbala. He championed a rational rather than a mystical pantheism, so much so that all that remained of mysticism, in fact, was his concept of the intellectual love of God. The rationality of the system is suggested by Spinoza's argument that, since God is the infinite being, he must be identical with the world; for otherwise, God-and-world would be a greater totality than God alone. Also, since God is a necessary being and is identical with the world, the world must also be necessary in all its parts. It follows from this that human freedom is an impossible idea; and the sense that man has of such freedom is based on his ignorance of the causes that have determined him. Spinoza distinguished between God and the world in three ways: first, by stressing God's activity in the active sense of natura naturans (ai��i��the nature that [creates] natureai�� ; i.e., God) compared to the passive sense of natura naturata (ai��i��the nature that [is created as] natureai�� ; i.e., the world); second, he related God to eternity and the world to time; and third, he distinguished God as self-existing substance, the whole, from the world, which he conceived as the attributes and modes of that substance. In terms of the present classification, Spinoza represents a monistic pantheism tending toward absolutism.

Goethe, the incomparable German litterateur, claimed that he was a follower of Spinoza. In fact, however, his beliefs were rather different inasmuch as Goethe championed man's individuality; opposed mechanical necessity; and held a hylozoistic, or vitalistic, position in which nature was organic, a living unity. His personalistic pantheism mixes hylozoistic and Stoic types with a touch of relativism added to the mixture.

During the 19th century, pantheism and panentheism were sustained by various kinds of Idealism that developed during the period. In these systems the categories of relativity gained in prominence; God was conceived as entering history and as being more intimately related to processes of change and development.

Although the philosophy of the German patriot J.G. Fichte, an immediate follower of Kant, began in the inner subjective experience of the individual, with the ai��i��Iai�� positing the ai��i��not-Iai�� ai��"i.e., feeling compelled to construct a perceived world over against itselfai��"it turns out eventually that, at a more fundamental level, God, as the universal ai��i��I,ai�� posits the world at large. The world, or nature, is described in organic terms; God is considered not alone as the Universal Ego but also as the Moral World Order, or Ground of ethical principles; and since every man has a destiny as a part of this order, man is in this sense somehow one with God. In the moral world order, then, man has a partial identity with God; and in the physical order he has membership in the organic whole of nature. It is not clear, however, whether in Fichte's view God as Universal Ego includes all human egos, and the organic whole of nature. Should he do so, then Fichte would be a representative of dipolar Panentheism, since in his final doctrine the Universal Ego imitates an Absolute deity who is simply the divine end of all activity, serving equally as model and as goal. In this interpretation God is conceived both as absolute mobility and absolute fixity. It is not entirely clear whether the doctrine is to be understood as referring to two aspects of a single God, the panentheistic alternative, or to two separate gods, the alternative imbedded in Plato's quasipanentheism. In either case, Fichte has enunciated most of the themes of panentheism and deserves consideration either as a representative or precursor of that school.

A second early follower of Kant was F.W.J. von Schelling, who, in contrast to Fichte, stressed the self-existence of the objective world. Schelling's thought developed through several stages. Of particular interest to the problem of God are the final three stages in which his philosophy passed through monistic and Neoplatonic pantheism followed by a final stage that was panentheistic.

In the first of these stages, he posits the Absolute as an absolute identity, which nonetheless includes, as in Spinoza, both nature and mind, reality and ideality. The natural series culminates in the living organism; and the spiritual series culminates in the work of art. The universe is, thus, both the most perfect organism and the most perfect work of art.

In his second, Neoplatonic, stage he conceived the Absolute as separated from the world, with a realm of Platonic ideas interposed between them. In this arrangement, the world was clearly an emanation or effect of the divine.

In the final stage of his thought, Schelling presented a theophany, or manifestation of deity, involving the separation of the world from God, and its return. In appearance this was quite like the views of Erigena or like the unmanifest and manifest Brahman of Indian thought. But, since the power of God continues to infuse the world and there can be no real separation, the entire theophany is clearly the development of the divine life. The Absolute is retained as the pure Godhead, a unity presiding over the world; and the worldai��"having in measure its own spontaneityai��"is both his antithesis and part of his being, the contradiction accounting for progress. The positing within God of eternity and temporality, of being-in-itself and of self-giving, of yes and no, of participation in joy and in suffering, is the very duality of Panentheism.

It was a disciple of Schelling, Karl Christian Krause, who coined the term panentheism to refer to the particular kind of relation between God and the world that is organic in character.

The third, and most illustrious, early post-Kantian Idealist was G.W.F. Hegel, who held that the Absolute Spirit fulfills itself, or realizes itself, in the history of the world. And in Hegel's deduction of the categories it is clear that man realizes himself through the attainment of unity with the Absolute in philosophy, art, and religion. It would appear, then, that God is in the world, or the world is in God, and that, since man is a part of history and thus a part of the divine realization in the world, he shares in the divine life; it would seem, too, that God is to be characterized by contingency as well as necessity, by potentiality as well as actuality, by change as well as permanence. In short, it would seem at first that the panentheistic dipolarity of terms would apply to the Hegelian Absolute. But this is not quite so; for Hegel's emphasis was on the deduction of the categories of logic, nature, and spirit, a deduction that provided the lineaments of Spirit-in-Itself (the categories of the intrinsic logic that the world, as Spirit, follows in its development), Spirit-for-Itself (nature as existing oblivious of its own context), and Spirit-in-and-for-Itself (conscious spiritual life, natural, and yet aware of its role in the developing world). This deduction, moving from the most abstract categories to the most concrete, is partly logical and partly temporal; it cannot be read either as a sheerly logical sequence or as a sheerly temporal sequence. As a logical sequence, it has the appearance of a Neoplatonic scheme turned on its head, since the Absolute Spirit that emerges from the deduction includes all of the steps of the preceding rich and multifarious deduction. As a temporal sequence, the system would seem to be a species of Stoic (i.e., Heracleitean) pantheism, qualified by a clear Parmenidean motif (see above Greco-Roman doctrines), which appears in its stress on an absoluteness that, from the eternal standpoint, cancels out time. This Parmenidean quality is to be found not only in Hegel but in most of the Idealists who were influenced by him. Time is real, on this view, and yet not quite real, having already eternally happened. And when Hegel spoke of the Absolute Spirit, this phrase held the internal tension of a near contradiction, for spirit, however absolute, must surely be relative to what is around it, sensitive to and dependent on other spirits. The fact that Hegel wished to give something like equal emphasis, however, both to absoluteness and to relativity in the divine being or process suggests that his goal is identical with that of the panentheists, even though he is perhaps more fairly regarded as a Pantheist of an ambiguous type.

It is impossible for one to leave the 19th century without mention of the pioneering experimental psychologist Gustav Fechner (1801ai��"87), founder of psychophysics, who developed an interest in philosophy. Fechner pursued the themes of panentheism beyond the positions of his predecessors. A panpsychist with an organic view of the world, he held that every entity is to some extent sentient and acts as a component in the life of some more inclusive entity in a hierarchy that reaches to the divine Being, whose constituents include all of reality. God is the soul of the world, which is, in turn, his body. Fechner contends that every man's volitions provide impulses within the divine experience, and that God gains and suffers from the experiences of men. Precisely because God is the supreme being, he is in process of development. He can never be surpassed by any other, but he surpasses himself continually through time. He, thus, argues that God can be viewed in two ways: either as the Absolute ruling over the world, or as the totality of the world; but both are aspects of the same Being. Fechner's affirmations comprise a complete statement of panentheism, including the dipolar deity with respect to whom the categories of absoluteness and relativity can be affirmed without contradiction.

The 20th century marks a decisive break with absolutism. In the first half of the century, panentheism gained in authority. The position of the Russian ex-Marxist Nikolay Berdyayev, a religious metaphysician, with his emphasis on divine and human freedom, is a manifesto of panentheism. Even more impressive was the work of the eminent British-American philosopher, Alfred North Whitehead. As in the case of Fechner, Whitehead came to philosophy from science and held an organismic view of the structure of the world. In Whitehead's view God has two natures: his primordial nature is abstract; his consequent nature is concrete and includes within itself the total history of the world. Whitehead was also a panpsychist and believed that feeling is present in some degree at every level of the world process. Whether or not he was, then, also a panentheist is in dispute. He held that the possible future and the total past are in Godai��"in his primordial and consequent natures; but for Whitehead the present moment is relative, and contemporaries exclude each other. In the present moment of any entity, since it is the present of that entity, it is appropriate to say that God is in that entity, part of the data on which it acts; thus the Stoic spark of divinity has here a modern application. From the standpoint of God, on the other hand, all entities are part of God; they come from him and return to him in the passage of time, but they are not in God in the sense that their independence in the present moment is prejudiced.

It was left to Charles Hartshorne, one of Whitehead's followers, to provide the definitive analysis of panentheism. It is Hartshorne's suggestion that the organismic analogy, present in Whitehead as well as in many earlier thinkers, be taken seriously. For Hartshorne, God includes the world even as an organism includes its cells, thus including the present moment of each event. The total organism gains from its constituents, even though the cells function with an appropriate degree of autonomy within the larger organism.

Panentheism is then a middle way between the denial of individual freedom and creativity characterizing many of the varieties of pantheism and the remoteness of the divine characterizing Classical Theism. Its support for the ideal of human freedom provides grounds for a positive appreciation of temporal process, while removing some of the ethical paradoxes confronting deterministic views. It supports the sacramental value of reverence for life. At the same time the theme of participation with the divine leads naturally to self-fulfillment as the goal of life.

Many pantheistic and Theistic alternatives claim the same advantages, but their natural tendency toward absoluteness may make justification of these claims in some cases difficult and, in others, some argue, quite impossible. It is for this reason that a significant number of contemporary philosophers of religion have turned to panentheism as a corrective to the partiality of the other competing views.

Charles Hartshorne and W.L. Reese, Philosophers Speak of God (1953), offers an extensive historical exploration of pantheism, panentheism, and classical theism. The fundamental basis of panentheism is discussed not only in the epilogue of the above volume, but in many other works by Charles Hartshorne, including The Divine Relativity (1948) and The Logic of Perfection (1962). For the relation of mysticism to pantheism, see W.T. Stace, Mysticism and Philosophy (1960). For information concerning any of the philosophers mentioned, reference may be made to their individual entries in The Encyclopedia of Philosophy, 8 vol., ed. by Paul Edwards (1967); the Enciclopedia filosofica, 6 vol., 2nd ed., ed. by G.C. Sansoni (1967); or the Diccionario de filosofAi��a, 2 vol., ed. by Jose Ferrater Mora (1965).
 
I'd like to a add a few comments about this book tomorrow, but just wanted to point out, in case no one has already, that there's at least one other John Peniel claimed to be the teacher that Cayce prophesied:

(http:/)/www.johnpeniel.net/

You can read his entire book there. It's "an important spiritual message" for "those who await the Second Coming" and takes a Jesus-was-a-psychic-mystic-astral-traveler tack. No mention of Atlantis.
 
The Children of the Law of One & The Lost Teachings of Atlantis

Hi, cortez, thought I'd drop in with a few thoughts on this. Looking at this book, I see it is the kind of thing that I would have dug into with relish twenty years ago, but now see as a little bit simplistic, not that "spiritual truths" can't be simple. I understand your enthusiasm and the effect it has had on you. Absolutely, I do not minimize this, though I would like to express that, in the past, I read life-changing books that I would not care even to refer to again. They were important stepping stones that opened my mind and knocked me off of the path of deepest sleep, but, in retrospect, they really weren't special. So, please consider that possibility regarding any book. This particular one contains lots that is of value (if, as the C's say, viewed from the proper perspective), but I think it is, ultimately, limiting. Now, it'll take me a few paragraphs to get around to how I come to that opinion. ^_^

About Peniel, I think Laura is spot-on about Cayce being a channel for multiple and mixed-polarity entities, as the C's spelled out pretty clearly:
he had a unique biochemical composition which allowed for easy opening and closing of his consciousness from outside sources without interference with his electromagnetic flow stream.
"Outside sources" indicates more than one, and if you're curious about how commonly STS entities hook up with human channels, I looked into this on the Channel Watch forum topic, particularly in the the last couple of topics on Ra. So, I don't think that looking to Cayce for an endorsement of this author is fruitful.

Scio wrote:
Maybe the name "Law of One" remained, but the meaning was altered, though initially originating from the true Law of One concept?
It says pretty much exactly that on page 2 of Peniel's foreward:
Our order (the Children of the Law of One [trademark symbol]), the author, and this book are not in any way connected to, or related to, the Ra material (which is now also being called the "Law of One" material)
It goes on to describe Atlantean religion, though, so Laura's comments seem to make that connection clear.

The book itself doesn't appear to contain a lot of overt disinformation -- it's just simple and limiting, and I think it's main flaw is its claim that the beliefs of the Children are the root beliefs of Earthly monotheism, which we already suspect is just a control mechanism given to us by Orion STS. Let me now elaborate and show how I came around to this opinion while reading the book.

The book claims that the Children's belief system is the father or root of all monotheistic religions on Earth today. It both derides other religions as corrupt and yet embraces them as relatives. Perhaps the intent is to draw believers from other forms of monotheism into this one, which amounts to no more than "musical chairs" or a "shell game" -- a lateral move, rather than an upgrade in theological standpoint. The material in the book is shallow, I think, which is not necessary negative. Ra said that the spiritual teaching was simple and "always and ever the same." By not being deep, though, I think it lacks a convincingness that some folks need, and is ultimately limiting, which is usually the aim of STS-given New Age beliefs. The most odd thing about the book (and an easy turn-off for the skeptical) is the fantastical story of how the information, the beliefs of the Children, came into the head of this author, John Peniel.

To give others an idea of how fanciful his personal story seems, let me summarize the author's spiritual journey, very quickly:

Peniel describes hooking up with a monastic "order" that "rang his bell of truth" inside and that he experienced pleasant deja vu when one of them described their lives in "monasteries" where they learned ancient spiritual knowledge. He somehow achieved acceptance into this order and received instructions to find one of their monasteries, which was in Tibet -- yes, Chinese-controlled Tibet. If this isn't, well, weird enough, he says he found his way to the Tibetan border where guides from the order snuck him into the country and led him to a strange oasis of warmth in the otherwise stark, frigid Himalayas, where people from all over the world who spoke perfect English showed him the utopian grounds of their monastery, dormitories, library of ancient scrolls (with a librarian called Gabriel), etc. The whole place was a secret repository of ancient spiritual knowledge for study by these monks. Over years he went from apprentice to graduate and finally emerged to write this book, which is claimed to be the first direct, public conveyance of the teachings, decended from Atlantis, of these Children of the Law of One. The production of his book is the fulfillment of a centuries-old prophecy to make the order's knowledge known to the world.

Now, I have read similar things about secret places, especially in Tibet, that turned out to be debunked pretty squarely, I think, though I'm not commenting on this particular story. I don't believe one needs to explain in detail how unlikely the existence of such a place sounds. Frankly, it struck me as reminiscent of the secret headquarters of a James Bond villain, a self-sufficient compound stuck away in a remote place of the globe where the goings-on manage to be hidden from the surveillance capabilities of governments or other PTB.

For all the talk in the book about being "not like a religion," it does, in its way, purport to have the truth, even though it doesn't promise any punishment for not believing. There is value here, as it reveals some credible, basic information about traditional religion as control mechanism. The Atlantean religion as described has a good dose of YCYOR, creating reality with the mind, and the usual attitude of "unselfish love" as the "measuring stick of goodness."

"Universal consciousness" is equated with "enlightenment" and described as what we around here might call objectivity or the greatest possible awareness. It suggests that all problems in the world spring from what we call subjectivity. There's some credible material pointing out the twists of logic that people use to defend their subjective viewpoints. What the C's call STS is blamed for all the evil in the world. As I said, the material tends to be shallow, thus the tendency to absolute black and white in the teachings. I'll mention here that Ra and the C's teach that our perception of "evil" is really more like a catalyst for spiritual growth/evolution, not something to be blamed or solved. The book also links movement toward universal consciousness with movement toward unselfishness, and movement toward separate consciousness as movement toward selfishness.

I don't know if it was being in a monastery that did it, but Peniel seems out of touch sometimes:
"The human race barely cares about people let alone plants and animals. I remember once seeing a breaking news story about 600,000 people who died in an Earthquake. It was in the L.A. Times. You would expect such a disaster to be on the front page. And be a long article. But it was only one small paragraph, about 40 words, buried on page 9. And the only reason why was because the quake was in China. Even then, I was shocked. Can you imagine how this article would have been treated if 600,000 French people had died? English? American?" (Of course, this was during a time when the U.S. was an enemy of China. The story now, would be bigger news at least, if for no other reason than because there would be 600,000 less Chinese consumers of American products).
There's a little bit of a borg-like mentality in the teachings about being One, as it talks about being "led," which seems a bit at odds with free will in an uncomfortable way.
Our Inner Being is One with the Universal Spirit, and when we allow it to ‘come out, and take control of us', we become an active link in the hierarchical chain of Universally Conscious beings. As a part of the chain, we are both led by the movement of the entire chain, and we become the chain.
When I read something like this, I imagine thousands of evangelicals in a mega-church receiving the message to go out and vote for Bush, then plaster their bumpers with stickers saying, "Does the road you're on take you to my place? -God" and "We vote pro-life," and "Why should I have to dial "1" for English?" ^_^

One of the teaching monks declared the Children's beliefs to be related to all monotheistic religions, which struck me as making this belief too close to Earthly monotheism, which, despite rhetoric, tends to consider God as something separate from ourselves, rather than everything. Then, he declared the belief of the Children to the be the father or root of all Earthly monotheism -- the original, pure teachings. If that's true, then we have nothing new in the Children's beliefs (which is later admitted), and they will contain and limit one as much as any other standard religion. Laura has already pointed out that this orignal monotheism is what became Judaism, which branched into the other monotheistic religions, all of which are control mechanisms. The introduction of this kind of monotheism was itself, research suggests, effected by Orion STS. So, why emphasize this relationship to typical Earthly monotheism? Well, there's no mention of Orion STS, of course, so it may be to contain restless seekers like ourselves. I believe that a common technique of "spiritual containment" of seekers, to keep them from growing, is to swap one set of limiting beliefs for another, that may be "better" or closer to the truth, but ultimately not enough to provoke much evolution, if the believer becomes "satisfied" with the new belief system.

Here is an excerpt that shows the Children's beliefs to be original monotheism.
Although some religions are almost unrecognizable from their origins now, almost any religion that speaks of One God (regardless of the name they call God), is somehow related."

[...]

"The teachings and heritage of the Children of the Law of One pre-date Buddhism, and all other religions. They all originally came from teachers or teachings of the Children of the Law of One, or those who somehow became one with the Universal Spirit - the One God, in some other fashion. But keep in mind, that while you may find bits of the Children's teachings here and there in many other spiritual traditions and religions, they are also unique unto themselves. Our teachings are the source, the roots of the many branches of the tree.
There's an interesting bit near the end of the book, that appears to expect and to address the very criticism I'm suggesting here, and that's quite clever.
There are basically two kinds of people reading this book (and some who are combinations of the two kinds). The first kind of person is just reading it because it is unusual, but perhaps somewhat interesting reading. That includes those who are fascinated with lost civilizations, lost history, and mysterious technology. But the other kind of reader is one who is more "into" spiritual knowledge, studies, practices, abilities, etc. What some call a spiritual "seeker". The remainder of this chapter, is really addressed to them, and you may want to skip to the next chapter.

SOMETHING TO THINK ABOUT.

A MESSAGE FOR THE SPIRITUAL SEEKER

OR SEEKER OF SPIRITUAL KNOWLEDGE

There are those of you reading this book right now, who have collected spiritual and metaphysical knowledge for many years, and been involved with various spiritual "paths", trends, or techniques. Some of you will read this book and say, "Yes, I already know," or, "It's redundant," or "I have heard these things before - I already know them, so this book is of little use to me".

I don't mean to offend you or belittle your knowledge or wisdom. But if you have thought such things, ask yourself the following questions before you read anymore of this book with that kind of attitude, or before you just "file these teachings away" with the rest of your knowledge.
But, as it continues, I think it reveals what I've been saying, that this belief system purports to have "the truth" and can one to what is calls "enlightenment," which it also suggests is the end of the line, so to speak. The suggestion that absorption of the teachings in this book is all that there is to do IS VERY LIMITING, in my opinion.
While there are certain exceptions, if you are already "enlightened", it is very, very unlikely that you would even be reading this book right now. You would likely have no need or interest in reading this book, because you would have achieved all you need. The searching stops. Those who have attained enlightenment, Universal Consciousness, or whatever you want to call it, generally no longer read books about spiritual teachings or philosophy, because they are of no use to them - they don't need them anymore. And when you don't need the things you once read a book for anymore, you change to where your interest in them falls away...

When you become enlightened, you are very, very busy, helping others to attain the same freedom, peace, and Unselfish Love you have found, or you go on and ascend to a higher vibrational plane. If you stay, you "work" for the Universal Spirit, so to speak. You align your will, with Universal Will, and thus you become very busy doing your little part in the "Universal Flow". For example, at this point in my life, I don't read any spiritual or philosophical books. I no longer have the inclination, let alone the time. I did need to write this book though, because it was both my "job" to do so (in the service of the Universal Spirit), and my desire to help you. I've been forcing my self to write it while very ill, so I hope you get something out of it that will help you.

Of course, like I said earlier, there was a time when I had a desperate desire and need for spiritual and philosophical information, and I did read everything I could get my hands on. Maybe that's the stage you're at in your life and evolution. I was desperately trying to find some answers - searching for some truth. I found bits and pieces of truth, but that wasn't enough, so I kept reading in hopes of finding consistent truth from one source. And after all the books, rather than finding what I was looking for in a book, I found it in my personal true teacher instead. What irony, eh? But there was nothing like this book out there when I was voraciously reading to find something. Not to say that it should do the same for you, because you may have a very different path (people do have different legitimate paths). But if I had read this book you are reading now, it would have at least been the end of the "book" part of my search.
So, Peniel essentially claims that this is last book on spirituality you'll ever need.
Spirituality is simple. Love is simple. Truth is simple. Enlightenment is simple. It's all basic stuff that we all really know deep inside somehow, yet most people don't live by it, and they've blocked it out.
Again, some may benefit a lot from this book, but it's only a beginning. I'd be very cautious about swallowing the message that the message of this book is the end-all. Interestingly, the second-to-last chapter ends with a single-line quote that represents an idea about which volumes could be written in the effort to impart its importance.
"Remember, "A little knowledge that acts, is worth infinitely more than much knowledge that is idle". - Kahlil Gibran
Unfortunately, there's little in the book about the enormous obstacles that are presented to us as we try to gather knowledge, and then especially when we try to act on it. For me, it makes the road to "enlightenment" seem way too easy, somehow.

I apologize for any redundancy that I may have written into this post, but I wrote it across a couple of days and two long sessions reading the book. And, as always, it's just my opinion. Hope it is of value to someone.
 
Thanks for all the info you guys have dug up on the matter. There is stuff I want to respond to later on Cayce and what entity Halaliel was.

AdPop,

Thanks for your insight. All of the things you point out make sense, since I had the same reaction to many things. The way the book was written, the odd subject matter, and fantastic claims were what allowed me a bit of skepticism to hold onto. It is hard to put into words the I guess the Spiritual Ecstasy I felt having read the book at many parts, what is referred to as the inner bell of truth. But also dread, and anger at the onslaught I felt reading about the selfish self described in the book. Things which I have not experienced to such degree from other materials or experiences.


Which is why I recommend it. I believe many people will benefit from having read it.

As for the monotheism aspect of the teachings or book . I don't personally believe the intent is to get allot of butts in the seats and create a new religion out of the teachings. A Rumi quote comes to mind "There's fool's gold because there's real gold." the guiding voice should come from within instead of what is taught, as to where that voice originates and whether it is one thing is another question.


They also go on a bit about the Elohim as a plural of creators, as well as God as the Universal Spirit. I'm still wrapping my head around a great many things still on the matter.



I also am interested in any insights or experiences anyone has had with the meditation techniques described at the end of the book.

The Star Exercise I have found to be particularly good results, it varies from time to time though

here's a link

http://www.meditation-techniques.net/meditations/starexercise.htm
 
<< As for the monotheism aspect of the teachings or book . I don't personally believe the intent is to get allot of butts in the seats and create a new religion out of the teachings. >>

No, certainly not. The butts of people reading this kind of material are already out of the seats, the bars of the cage having become visible to them, and that's what the PTB worry about. The idea is to stop their wandering by making them think they've found the "end of the line" -- to lead them into yet another cage, one with finer, still invisible bars. They don't care if the new cage has a slightly better view or higher perspective -- as long as it performs its intended function, OSIT.
 
Thank you AdPop.

Your opinion is very parallel to what my opinion has come to be about the "Children of the Law of One" and the “Lost Teachings of Atlantis" . I have read this book almost 10 years ago. After an accident which almost cost me my life, and my right forearm (both were saved), I came in contact with the works of Carlos Castaneda. I devoured those and read them three times in a row. As I came to understand/" know" that even Castaneda is not entirely trustworthy (especially the later books), I was in need for more material so that I would be able to weigh up the separate materials, also in an attempt to maybe find some truth credentials or distil some common truth.

As you have said, the Lost Teachings of Atlantis is rather simple. And that is alright I guess. But it did not really hook me. And, that is alright too, I guess.

The basic thing that is repeated again and again is that man’s "fall" resulted from the arising in mankind of a separate consciousness, which is always said to be coupled to being selfish, and this in juxtaposition to universal consciousness which is always coupled to being unselfish, or so it is said in these teachings. For somebody who has had some "top experiences" such could be easily believed and taken in as the whole truth and nothing but the whole truth, if it were not for Laura to "interfere" while taking her first steps on the internet and publish what came to be known as the C’s sessions.

It was after I had read the Lost teachings of Atlantis that I came to know, from the C’s sessions, that it was definitely not clear-cut who the "good guys" really were: the "Children of the Law of One" or the "Sons of Belial" ? This made me think twice and forced me to at least try to re-evaluate what I had just read. Where is the catch, the pit-fall, in this book? Is there anything present, in some sneaked-in details, or just the opposite, in the entirety of the whole package that could result in elitist thinking maybe?

At that time I also learned about the huge success that "the lost teachings in Atlantis" had in Israel. Shortly after, I also read how there seemed to be a wave of people in Israel that were being visited by “really ugly man-like creatures." I still do not know how much credit I should give to the latter stories. After all, this was still the beginning of the internet, and for me too, this was new territory. But I do remember that I somehow connected those two, and saw a relation between the success of the "The Lost Teachings of Atlantis" "enlightenment" and those visits. It is weird, I do realize, but who knows?

AdPop said:
There's a little bit of a borg-like mentality in the teachings about being One, as it talks about being "led," which seems a bit at odds with free will in an uncomfortable way.

Lost teachings of Atlantis said:
Our Inner Being is One with the Universal Spirit, and when we allow it to ‘come out, and take control of us’, we become an active link in the hierarchical chain of Universally Conscious beings. As a part of the chain, we are both led by the movement of the entire chain, and we become the chain.
When I read something like this, I imagine thousands of evangelicals in a mega-church receiving the message to go out and vote for Bush, then plaster their bumpers with stickers saying, "Does the road you're on take you to my place? -God" and "We vote pro-life," and "Why should I have to dial "1" for English?" ^_^
Yes, that is a very real possibility. And all who does not conform is an immediate threat for the establishment of the "Kingdom on Earth" , or something along that line. As such there will always be people or things or processes that will be perceived as such ( a threat) and thus will have to be destroyed, or converted. Such worldview can evidently take one very far. But I think that it can go even much further.

When I read something like this, I think "WALK-IN" . I do realize that THAT is a daring statement. Especially, since I also "enjoyed" reading the book. So please see it as a working hypothesis. I enjoyed it back then for very much the same reasons that cortez comes up with.
cortez said:
It is hard to put into words the I guess the Spiritual Ecstasy I felt having read the book at many parts, what is referred to as the inner bell of truth. But also dread, and anger at the onslaught I felt reading about the selfish self described in the book. Things which I have not experienced to such degree from other materials or experiences.
Yes, many times while reading it I also thought yes! Yes of course. And in the process I did open my heart, and lot’s of past pain did come back, and was acknowledged for what it was, and where it came from, or (correction) COULD come from. But in retrospect, and back to the book, lot’s and lot’s of explanations by ways of conversation, or description, or the usual circumscriptions are so very much interpretable and vague that most of the material simply MUST depend on the current capacity or make up of the reader of what he can put into it, or project unto it. That is one problem we do have of course with this book: the vagueness. But even for the empathic good-hearted person, there could be other pit-falls. I will try to picture it in what follows.
If I go back to the piece cited by AdPop and dissect statement by statement …

Lost teachings of Atlantis said:
and when we allow it to ‘come out, and take control of us’
Take control of us ??

Lost teachings of Atlantis said:
we become an active link in the hierarchical chain
Hierarchical chain (of COMMAND?)

Lost teachings of Atlantis said:
As a part of the chain, we are both led by the movement of the entire chain, and we become the chain.
As in enchanted? And thus also enchained? Hmmm

To continue, such "process" is said to be impossible with a separate consciousness. "Separate consciousness" is explained as in opposition to some universal consciousness.

If I remember well there is simply NO mention of "I" consciousness. It is OR Universal Consciousness, OR Separate Consciousness in their teaching. From this I can only deduce that any "I" consciousness in their teaching is unwanted. It even does not exist.
I just wonder WHAT entity in ones entire spectre of possible consciousnesses (maybe more like points of view and awareness) is then supposed to learn to "discern" , or to discriminate between possible paths .
Can this clarify why their form of "enlightenment" ends there. Mission accomplished? Any further learning …. errrr stops at that point. To me this does sound as if it entails a form of walk-in of "universal consciousness", a process in which the separate consciousness is displaced, to take control of the physical vehicle.

This is from the same page of the "lost teachings of A" as the citation of AdPop. That too is enlightening IMO.
Lost teachings of Atlantis said:
…A completely all-encompassing point of view is not really possible while functioning in a physical body. We can achieve this in deep meditation, but when we again return to full physical plane function,we can only grasp the essence of what we understood in our ‘ultimate point of view state’. That is why the Children teach that ‘getting out of our own way’, and allowing ourselves to be an instrument of the Universal Spirit (God), is the greatest wisdom. This too, is achieved simultaneously with Universal Consciousness – it comes with a package.
Maybe the reader (or whatever ‘I’ that remains within the reader that tries to live by such teaching) truly doesn’t know that a ‘Universal Package’ could come with both sto AND sts, and that STS has no problem with control or manipulation. What wisdom can there be in allowing oneself to be taken over? Maybe even the Children themsleves don’t really know, in that it is a gradual process. At least it is never mentioned.
But as if to anticipate such interpretation, they continue …

Lost teachings of Atlantis said:
When we have thus become an instrument of the Universal SSpirit (this was a typo, honestly), we are then always ‘watched over’ by our ascended, hierarchical kin, and guided when necessary. This is not actual ‘medium ship’ or channelling (ed. Note: see the teachings on channelling in the ‘Teachers and Students chapter). It is still having only our own Inner Being in charge of, or in possession of, our body and consciousness."
Inner Being? This could come close to ‘I’consciousness, perhaps, but it is not further explained described or circumscribed. So I can only guess here.

To use Rudolf Steiners terminology, at first the teachings in a round about way (working hypothesis!) sounds to me like something Luciferic.

In contrast to the archetype of Ahriman, who wants to make a giant head from humanity, clever but without a heart and very materialistic, the archetype of Lucifer attempts to achieve something similar, which is a decapitated man with no awareness in the "I" but following an entirely opposite strategy:
removal of the "I" consciousness, to go back to an animal like group consciousness. (EDIT: The luciferic influence was the first thing that popped into my being. I later came to realize that depending on the reader AND applier of certain guidelines of these "teachings", in whatever form, such "work" could also make one end up in the middle of some arhimanic influence. Rules, rules and very philistine-like.)

By the way, I think that true group consciousness of homo, can only be achieved by a group of people who are being aware in the "I" , which in a sense is very alone. IMO that would be a next step in our evolution, and not a step back, as in replacing "separate consciousness" with some "universal consciousness".

Also good that this thread is coupled to Cayce and his "Halaliel" . That too is something that has been bothering me …
 
Charles,

I'm glad to be able to discuss the book critically with others who have read it.

To clarify from what I understand of the information. The Separate self is not out of balance with the universe, but being separate esp here is this plane of reality has very difficult challenges to the spirit as there is very little perceived connection to anything. Selfishness is born after this point and the concept of taking and gorging/squandering on life is considered the desired effect of living.

So I believe what they are getting at with the 'I'/Ego is that it has to transcend separation, truly transcend it which means you must consciously experience death. Overcome your 'self' and understand reality from beyond the veil. When your ego returns from wherever it has gone, it's polarity has changed and a positive giving loving nature has overtaken and removed selfish motivation permanently. The inner voice is now in control, the same one we turn off now, when we know we want to do something wrong.

But obviously easier said than done, and it has been said many times before. The Cayce reading states that the message the Peniel was going to give was going to make the teachings 'Plain'. Which is why the book may seem simple, but I believe it holds some powerful truths in it. I value it because it gets at you in so many ways that many books don't it pricks at you.

I guess I keep coming back to that.

As for further questions I have, has anyone come across the writings of Eugene Fersen. The Jon Peniel website mentions his book 'The Science of Being' they claim he was a initiate in the 'Law of One' as well.
 
Just to add my two cents here - I read this book some years ago, and had kind of a weird reaction. I was enjoying the book, but about half way through, I started feeling really uneasy, to the point where I ended up taking outside to the garbage bin. I couldn't bear to have it in my house. There was nothing specific that bugged me, just a general sense of unease. At the time, too, I was totally non-critical of this type of book, so the reaction was very unusual for me, but I remember it well, because it was so strong.
 
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