Throughout this age the emphasis has been on the evolution of consciousness of individuals, not on the collective. The collective has, in fact, remained stuck in an evolutionary holding pattern. But the collective’s intractability has neither hindered nor impeded the evolutionary impetus of the individual. It has actually played an important role in facilitating individual evolvement.
Prophetic scripture compares this age of the individual to the season of agricultural harvest, with the consciousness of individuals evolving from the Adam man to the Christ man being like a prized crop gathered securely and inviolably into a great barn. At the beginning of the age the field was plowed and fertilized, so that the conditions for the consciousness expansion of individuals might be optimal. Then the drama of the ingathering of the crop began, and it has continued unabated for the past six thousand years. Everything else that has taken place on the human scene during this time period has been of secondary importance, including all of our national alignments, technological advancements, inventive lifestyle improvements, and attempts at cultural sophistication.
This being said, it must be understood that the environmental nuances of the earthly plane needed to produce the optimal harvest of human individual consciousness evolution are not the same as those needed to produce a bountiful agricultural harvest. They are unique and in some cases even surprising. That is one reason why many have been kept from recognizing the true purpose of this age.
In his short parable of the wheat and the tares (Matthew 13:24-29; 36-43) Jesus
painted for us an imaginary scene, in which some wheat that had been planted in a certain field was found to be growing alongside some tenacious tares (weeds). Upon this discovery the field workers asked the owner of the field if he wanted them to try to pull the tares up, so that the wheat could grow more freely. But the landowner did not think it wise to try to pull up the tares at that stage, lest in doing so some of the wheat might also be uprooted in the process. “Wait until the harvest,” the landowner told the workers. “Let them grow alongside one another for now. Then at the harvest I will instruct the harvesters to pull up and burn the weeds, while bringing the grain into my barns.” In this parable the wheat represents the good crop of individuals that are undergoing the evolution of consciousness during this lifetime, while the tares speak of all the oppositional inert forces at work on this plane that seek to hinder and disrupt individual consciousness evolution. The agricultural wisdom behind this was that allowing the tares to grow alongside the wheat would not only keep the wheat from being uprooted; it would actually strengthen the wheat plants and make them more fruitful. It might look ugly and seem illogical, but it worked. In the same way the earthly plane throughout this age has had an extremely oppositional element at work when it comes to consciousness evolution. It has introduced endless distractions and diversions to the human scene, in an attempt to steer us away from what we are really here to do. That is why the collective has not budged an inch. But the illogical truth is that this opposition has actually had a strengthening effect on the individual. One reason for this is that the individual, unlike the collective, tends to respond to spiritual life privately, which, in turn, keeps their pursuit of consciousness evolution hidden and pure.
Thus as the end of the age approaches and the barn fills with harvested individuals, the true purpose of the age continues to remain a secret. And instead of it being common knowledge that the age is reaching its climax we see everything on the human scene carrying on just as it has for the past six thousand years. We see the collective still given over to frivolous and futile pursuits. We see men’s achievements still being heralded as the greatest work of the age. And we see an overall materialistic agenda still dominating human consciousness.
Some find it mysterious that the influx of individuals experiencing consciousness evolution does not do more to impact the collective. Many have undertaken to dedicate much of their time and energy to trying to help the collective become more conscious and enlightened. But even such altruistic impulses fall short of having any significant impact. Why is this? Because that has not been the purpose of this age. And when that day finally comes in which the collective is impacted it will signal the beginning of the New Age. Thus we can only surmise that the collective has been unresponsive in this age for a reason. And that reason is so that more and more individuals might make their way into the barn of Christ consciousness. In other words, something about the stuck-ness of the collective has served to promote and strengthen the individual in his or her quest to evolve, just as the tares in Jesus’ parable served to make the wheat plants stronger.
This also dispels the humanistic notion that man will at some point in time solve all his problems through scientific initiative and thereby turn the earth into a kind of utopian paradise, without the need for spiritual consciousness evolution. In this scenario there is no God, no true purpose to life, and consciousness is nothing more than a biological function of mind. But as we should be able to see by now, this is simply not going to happen. This is because the oppositional quality of the earthly plane environment that man has been trying to overcome was actually put in place by a higher power. It has a purpose and will not be removed until that purpose is fulfilled. And that purpose has been the consciousness evolution of the individual from the Adam man to the Christ man.
Thus we come to understand that mankind has a much higher destiny than previously believed. When man is viewed as being totally on his own and finding himself living on this planet as a result of happenstance, the highest goal that we can aspire to is to try to improve human life and make the earth a friendlier place. But, in truth, this sells us incredibly short. Even an improved planetary existence will still bring a scourge of purposelessness and despair to the human scene. If all we are doing is living for eighty or a hundred years and then dying, does it really matter what our lifestyle was like during those years? Enjoying an improved lifestyle might seem progressive and good, but it does not address the pointlessness of our existence. But man is more than this, and our existence on this planet is not due to happenstance. We are part of a universal circle of life, in which consciousness is forever expanding.
In the Bible this higher destiny for human beings is often alluded to. In the Psalms we read: “What is mankind that you are mindful of them, human beings that you care for them? You have made them a little lower than the angels and crowned them with glory and honor. You made them rulers over the works of your hands; you put everything under their feet.” (Psalm 8:4-6). What is it that makes man so special? What elevates us above all other creatures and crowns us with glory and honor? It is our created endowment of spiritual consciousness.
But at the present time we do not see man being like the angels. Rather we see him as debased and carnal—the ultimate promoter of universal discord and disharmony. This is because there is one aspect of our created makeup that we have greatly misunderstood. We have acknowledged that we have consciousness, but we have viewed this endowment as nothing more than a biological function of mind. We have not understood that consciousness is a spiritual force in its own right and that it is evolutionary in nature. We have not realized that it is through the evolution of our endowment of consciousness that we reach our highest destiny. Yes, even the lower bestial state of consciousness that we have been moving in as a collective is a legitimate state of consciousness. The key is that it was never meant to be our permanent state. It was rather our infancy state, out from which we were meant to evolve into a much higher state. In the Bible these dynamics are prophetically portrayed in the lives and experiences of two men: Adam and Jesus. Thus we call the infancy state Adamic consciousness and the evolved state Christ consciousness.
But even this may not be the ultimate leap of consciousness for our species. True, it is what is before each and every one of us to accomplish now, and that is what this age has been all about. But the nature of consciousness is that its evolutionary thrust is actually limitless and infinite. How do we know this? Because the higher power that we call God is, in fact, consciousness in its ultimate infinite manifestation. And we are made of the same stuff.
The collective has been mired in Adamic consciousness throughout this age, and it is this state of consciousness that has defined human existence during this time. It is Adamic consciousness that built our world. And what is the condition of this world? It is
a place of unbridled cruelty and injustice, driven by lust and greed, and rife with suffering. Consciousness creates after its own kind. So what does that say about Adamic consciousness? Precisely that it is a lower state that must be raised if we have any hope of building a better world. Therefore our true hope is and always has been in the evolutionary quality of human consciousness. And hopeful individuals find a way to sidestep the hopelessness of the collective and experience the evolution of consciousness for themselves. This may not change the world yet, but it is something truly positive and hopeful that we can do. Not only this, but by doing so we actually end up aligning our individual destiny with that of the true purpose of the age. In other words, we flow harmoniously with what the higher power had in mind when It created the earthly plane.
It is consciousness evolution that enables us to transcend death and embark upon the eternal. The Adam man is mortal because death is a reflection of his state of consciousness. But the Christ man is eternal for the same reason. What this means is that once having made the evolutionary leap from Adam to Christ, our karma dissolves and the cycle of births and deaths onto the earthly plane ceases to control our destiny. Thus we are gathered into the barn, where we are kept and preserved. And what are we being kept for? For the emergence of the New Age—a new earth. Yes, we who have fulfilled the mandate of this age and experienced the individual evolution of consciousness from the Adam man to the Christ man will one day come forth to populate the new earth. And yes, we will build a new world also—one reflective not of Adamic consciousness but rather that of the Christ. Thus will the human family finally come to reflect its high destiny. We who were made a little lower than the angels will finally come into our own.