You speak of the new consciousness’ time having come, but if this is true why then do things on the human scene look bleaker than ever, with pandemics, disruptions, economic disaster looming, social and political unrest, etc.?
Often when people ask me about the rise of the new consciousness in our times, my response is this: The rise of the new consciousness is what is really happening in our world. What do I mean by this? The rise of the new consciousness is happening simultaneously with all these other global changes. It is happening quietly, beneath the surface and behind the scenes. You won’t read about it in the daily news. But when the dust of these tempestuous times settles, the fully evolved new consciousness of man will shine forth and present itself. It will be the one enduring outcome of our times and, as such, will not only radically change the character of human life; it will catapult us forward into a future so glorious that most of us would be hard pressed to imagine it now.
There can be no denying the seriousness of the problems currently confronting the global community of man. It is safe to say that the troubled times we are now going through are unprecedented and unparalleled in the history of our species. But these difficult events are, in truth, not substantial or enduring. If such were the case, we would all be given over to despair. But that is not what is happening. Rather people can sense that something else is also going on. They may not know what it is that they are sensing, but many people feel more hopeful than despairing right now. This paradoxical response has actually been fairly consistent since the sixties. For, it was at that time that human corruption really began to proliferate in our midst, causing the appearance of evil to increase incrementally, while simultaneously making many aware of an undercurrent of human goodness and idealism that would not and indeed could not be snuffed out.
Few understand, however, that all of the difficult global events we are currently experiencing are being caused and propelled by universal creative law. Whenever there are serious devastations that take place on the earthly plane, the root cause of such disturbances is the universal creative life force acting to correct some imbalance or violation. This has been going on since time immemorial. But that being said, it also happens on occasion that a time of great upheaval and major correction is mandated. The Bible refers to this universal corrective impulse as judgment. For example, the Prophet Isaiah once wrote: “The earth is defiled by its people; they have disobeyed the laws, violated the statutes and broken the everlasting covenant. Therefore a curse consumes the earth; its people must bear their guilt.” (Isaiah 24:5,6). When we ponder this passage of scripture we may think of such loaded biblical terminology as sin, judgment, divine retribution, etc. But nowhere does Isaiah say that a wrathful personal God is moving in a kind of tit-for-tat vindictive payback mode. Rather Isaiah’s take on things is strictly impersonal and scientific. It is the universal law of cause and effect at work—a law that has operated on the earthly plane since the dawn of creation and does so without any personal or emotional energies whatsoever. Thus all judgment actually has a purely legal scientific basis. We defile the planet; we disobey the laws; we violate the statutes and annul the created covenants. Therefore we must pay the price. Earthly life then becomes cursed for a time with a disproportionate outworking of death, devastation, and destruction. Isaiah calls this bearing our guilt. And there are two prominent ways in which we as individuals do this. One way is to throw in our lot with the collective human entity—that is, the entity that has brought about the devastation through the law of cause and effect—and take our lumps in suffering and fearful uncertainty. And the other way is to individually, in the privacy of our hearts, repent of the willful violations of the collective entity, disassociate ourselves from it, and take our chances with the effects of universal law on our own from this humble stance. In this latter scenario we may still suffer some of the effects of judgment (simply because we are living on this planet). But it is almost guaranteed that these effects will be mysteriously mitigated for us. This is because the stance of sincere repentance is also governed by spiritual-universal law, and, as such, the universal life force recognizes this. In fact, this mitigating phenomenon is also spoken of in the Bible. Using religious imagery such as the Angel of Death passing over the houses of the Israelites after they marked their doorposts with the blood of a sacrificial “Passover” lamb, we see the universal life force acting with great intelligence, discrimination, and divine justice. In the same way that violating the statutes that govern life on this planet brings judgment, sincere repentance and disassociation brings mercy and the mitigating of suffering’s effects. Both of these outworkings are governed by impersonal universal creative law.
It is also universal law that is giving rise to the new consciousness of mankind behind the scenes in our times. How can we know this? For one thing, only universal law could bring about and sustain such a crazy contradiction. If the rise of the new consciousness were not mandated by divine law, if it were strictly a human phenomenon, it could never survive the opposition of the effects of judgment currently taking place. But the fact that it is a development mandated by evolutionary law means that it is virtually unstoppable and unassailable. Isaiah speaks of this too, comparing such benign evolutionary impulses to the laws of nature: “As the rain and the snow come down from heaven, and do not return to it without watering the earth and making it bud and flourish, so that it yields seed for the sower and bread for the eater, so is my word that goes out from my mouth: It will not return to me empty, but will accomplish what I desire and achieve the purpose for which I sent it.” (Isaiah 55:10,11). The rising or evolutionary outgrowth of the new consciousness on earth is the fruit of God’s word, because it is an original (that is, created) aspect of the divine will concerning mankind. Therefore like a seed planted in the heart of the earth it must eventually mature and achieve the purpose for which it was created.
What this means is that the new consciousness of man is far from being new. It was actually planted as a seed at the beginning of the age (the creation), and only now is it reaching that point of maturity that Isaiah describes as budding and flourishing. It has been growing in human consciousness for several millennia and will continue to do so until it is firmly established on earth as it is in heaven.
This is, in truth, what Jesus the Christ came to show us. In all his words Jesus taught of the inevitability of the flowering of human spiritual consciousness (a state he had already achieved and was moving in). And in his deeds he demonstrated what this new consciousness of man could and would do. But at the same time he was under no illusions about the readiness of the collective status quo entity of his day to respond to this evolutionary thrust. He knew that the time had not yet come for the new consciousness to fully flower and thrive. So he was not surprised by the backlash of dark intent that confronted him on the collective scene. This was simply Adamic consciousness—the state of consciousness that man was and still is dominantly moving in—rising to the occasion. Nonetheless, Jesus left his mark, representing the new consciousness nobly in a world that vehemently opposed it. And part of that representation involved his teaching that the new consciousness would one day, when its time had fully come, be the most dominant consciousness on earth. He referred to this prophetic inference cryptically as the second coming of the Christ. Furthermore, he assured his followers throughout all time that greater works will you do, meaning that the second coming of the Christ was not to be limited to the reappearance of the man Jesus but rather the ultimate evolutionary flowering of the consciousness of the Christ—the flowering we are now beginning to experience. This comprised the essence of his verbal teaching, but amazingly he left us an even more powerful testimony of this truth through one of his actions—his resurrection from the dead.
Jesus let the darkness in men’s minds (Adamic consciousness) win the hour, when he meekly submitted to their unjust sentence of death on a Roman cross. But he had the final say when he rose from the dead. And more than anything else, what that action spoke of was the invincibility of the new consciousness. It brought home to us the assurance that though darkness may hold forth for a time, it can never overcome the goodness and light of the God-essence housed inside the created human psyche. The brightness of this essence is so powerful that whenever it shines forth, as it did in Jesus’ resurrection, it has the effect of exposing the darkness of Adamic consciousness as being nothing more than a phantom power.
This is what Jesus meant when he said, “I saw Satan fall like lightning from heaven.” (Luke 10:18). The new consciousness not only supersedes the old Adamic consciousness; it renders it a non-power. When confronted with the full evolutionary thrust of the new consciousness, Satan (human Adamic consciousness) will fall, never to rise again. And it was this elucidation of evil’s phantom power that has been one of the key truths propelling this inevitability ever since.
Thus when we see all the devastations of judgment that are currently taking place in our world today we can rest assured, based on the proof of Jesus’ resurrection that the new consciousness is still gaining ground in the unseen realm. Though we cannot deny the indomitable appearance of these devastations, we can know in our hearts that they are, in truth, but phantom powers. Jesus saw Satan fall—that is to say, he saw the invincibility of the new consciousness. And thanks to him we too can emerge as victors in this great evolutionary drama.