The Tenth Insight: Holding the Vision (15 page)

A
s from a great height, a large holographic image opened up around me and I could somehow see, in one glance, the long saga
of human history. Without warning I was drawn into the image, and I felt myself being swept forward into the story, reliving
it somehow in fast-forward, as if I had really been there, experiencing it moment by moment.

Suddenly I was witnessing the dawn of consciousness. Before me was a long, windswept plain, somewhere in Africa. Movement
caught my eye; a small group of humans, unclothed, was foraging on a field of berries. As I watched, I seemed to pick up on
the consciousness of the period. Intimately connected to the rhythms and signals of the natural world, we humans lived and
responded instinctively. The routines of daily life were oriented
toward the challenges of the search for food and toward membership within our individual band. Levels of power flowed downward
from one physically stronger, attuned individual, and within this hierarchy we accepted our place in the same way we accepted
the constant tragedies and difficulties of existence: without reflection.

As I watched, thousands of years passed by and countless generations lived and perished. Then, slowly, certain individuals
began to grow restless with the routines they saw before them. When a child died in their arms, their consciousness expanded
and they began to ask why. And to wonder how it might be avoided in the future. These individuals were beginning to gain
self-awareness
—beginning to realize that they were here, now, alive. They were able to step back from their automatic responses and glimpse
the full scope of existence. Life, they knew, endured through the cycles of the sun and moon and seasons, but as the dead
around them attested, it also had an end. What was the purpose?

Looking closely at these reflective individuals, I realized I could perceive their Birth Visions; they had come into the Earthly
dimension with the specific purpose of initiating humanity’s first existential awakening. And, even though I couldn’t see
its full scope, I knew that in the back of their minds was held the larger inspiration of the World Vision. Before their birth,
they were aware that humanity was embarking on a long journey that they could already see. But they also knew that progress
along this journey would have to be earned, generation by generation—for as we awakened to pursue a higher destiny, we also
lost the calm peace of unconsciousness. Along with the exhilaration and freedom of knowing we were alive came the fear and
uncertainty of being alive without knowing why.

I could see that humanity’s long history would be moved by these two conflicting urges. On the one hand, we would be moved
past our fears by the strength of our intuitions, by our mental images that life was about accomplishing some particular goal,
of moving culture forward in a positive direction that only we, as individuals, acting with courage and wisdom, could inspire.
From the strength of these feelings we would be reminded that, as insecure as life appeared, we were, in fact,
not
alone, that there was purpose and meaning underlying the mystery of existence.

Yet, on the other hand, we would often fall prey to the opposite urge, the urge to protect ourselves from the Fear, at times
losing sight of the purpose, falling into the angst of separation and abandonment. This Fear would lead us into a frightened
self-protection, fighting to retain our positions of power, stealing energy from each other, and always resisting change and
evolution, regardless of what new, better information might be available.

As the awakening continued, millennia passed, and I watched as humans gradually began to coalesce into ever-larger groups,
following a natural drive to identify with more people, to move into more complex social organizations. I could see that this
drive came from the vague intuition, known fully in the Afterlife, that human destiny on Earth was to evolve toward unification.
Following this intuition, we realized that we could evolve beyond the nomadic life of gathering and hunting and begin to cultivate
the Earth’s plants and harvest them on a regular basis. Similarly we could domesticate and breed many of the animals around
us, ensuring a constant presence of protein and related products. With the images of the World Vision deep within our unconscious,
driving us archetypically, we began to envision a shift that would be one of the most dramatic transformations in human
history: the leap from nomadic wandering to the establishment of large farming villages.

As these farming communities grew more complex, surpluses of food prompted trade and allowed humanity to divide into the first
occupational groups—shepherds and builders and weavers, then merchants and metalworkers and soldiers. Quickly came the invention
of writing and tabulation. But the whims of nature and the challenges of life still pierced the awareness of early humanity,
and the unspoken question still loomed: why were we alive? As before, I watched the Birth Visions of those individuals who
sought to understand spiritual reality at a higher level. They came into the Earth dimension to specifically expand human
awareness of the divine source, but their first intuitions of the divine remained dim and incomplete, taking polytheistic
form. Humanity began to acknowledge what we supposed was a multitude of cruel and demanding deities, gods that existed outside
of ourselves and ruled the weather, the seasons, and the stages of the harvest. In our insecurity we thought that we must
appease these gods with rites and rituals and sacrifice.

Over thousands of years the multitude of farming communities coalesced further into large civilizations in Mesopotamia, Egypt,
the Indus Valley, Crete, and northern China, each inventing its own version of the nature and animal gods. But such deities
could not long forestall the anxiety. I watched generations of souls come into the Earthly dimension intending to bring a
message that humanity was destined to progress by sharing and comparing knowledge. Yet, once here, these individuals succumbed
to the Fear and distorted this intuition into an unconscious need to conquer and dominate and impose their way of life on
others by force.

So began the great era of the empires and tyrants, as one great
leader rose up after another, uniting the strength of his people, conquering as much land as possible, convinced that the
views of his culture should be adopted by all. Yet, throughout this era, these many tyrants were always, in turn, conquered
themselves and pressed under the yoke of a larger, stronger cultural view. For thousands of years different empires bubbled
up to the top of humanity’s consciousness, disseminating their ideas, rising for a time with a more effective reality, economic
plan, and war technology, only to be later deposed by a stronger and more organized vision. Ever so slowly, through this method
old, outdated ideas were replaced.

I could see that, as slow and bloody as this process was, key truths were gradually making their way from the Afterlife into
the physical dimension. One of the most important of these truths—a new ethic of interaction—began to surface in various places
around the globe, but ultimately found clear expression in the philosophy of the ancient Greeks. Instantly I could see the
Birth Visions of hundreds of individuals born into the Greek culture, each hoping to remember this timely insight.

For generations they had seen the waste and injustice of mankind’s unending violence upon itself, and knew that humans could
transcend the habit of fighting and conquering others and implement a new system for the exchange and comparison of ideas,
a system that protected the sovereign right of every individual to hold his unique view, regardless of physical strength—a
system that was already known and followed in the Afterlife. As I watched, this new way of interaction began to emerge and
take form on Earth, finally becoming known as
democracy.

In this method of exchanging ideas, communication between humans still often degenerated into an insecure power struggle,
but at least now, for the first time ever, the process was in place
to pursue the evolution of human reality at the verbal rather than the physical level.

At the same time, another watershed idea, one destined to completely transform the human understanding of
spiritual reality,
was surfacing in the written histories of a small tribe in the Middle East. Similarly I could also see the Birth Visions
of many of the proponents of this idea as well. These individuals, born into the Judaic culture, knew before birth that while
we were correct to intuit a divine source, our description of this source was flawed and distorted. Our concept of many gods
was merely a fragmented picture of a larger whole. In truth, they realized, there was only one God, a God, in their view,
that was still demanding and threatening and patriarchal—and still existing outside of ourselves—but for the first time, personal
and responsive, and the sole creator of all humans.

As I continued to watch, I saw this intuition of one divine source emerging and being clarified in cultures all over the world.
In China and India, long the leaders in technology, trade, and social development, Hinduism and Buddhism, along with other
Eastern religions, moved the East toward a more contemplative focus.

Those who created these religions intuited that God was more than a personage. God was a force, a consciousness, that could
only be completely found by attaining what they described as an enlightenment experience. Rather than just pleasing God by
obeying certain laws or rituals, the Eastern religions sought connection with God on the inside, as a shift in awareness,
an opening up of one’s consciousness to a harmony and security that was constantly available.

Quickly my view shifted to the Sea of Galilee, and I could see that the idea of one God that would ultimately transform Western
cultures was evolving from the notion of a deity outside, of us, patriarchical and judging, toward the position held in the
East, toward the idea of an inner God, a God whose kingdom lay within. I watched as one person came into the Earth dimension
remembering almost all of his Birth Vision.

He knew he was here to bring a new energy into the world, a new culture based on love. His message was this: the one God was
a holy spirit, a divine energy, whose existence could be felt and proven experientially. Coming into spiritual awareness meant
more than rituals and sacrifices and public prayer. It involved a repentance of a deeper kind; a repentance that was an inner
psychological shift based on the suspension of the ego’s addictions, and a transcendent “letting go,” which would ensure the
true fruits of the spiritual life.

As this message began to spread, I watched as one of the most influential of all empires, the Roman, embraced the new religion
and spread the idea of the one, inner God throughout much of Europe. Later, when the barbarians struck from the north, dismembering
the empire, the idea survived in the feudal organization of Christendom that followed.

At this point I saw again the appeals of the Gnostics, urging the church to focus more fully on the inner, transformative
experience, using Christ’s life as an example of what each of us might achieve. I saw the church lapse into the Fear, its
leaders sensing a loss of control, building doctrine around the powerful hierarchy of the churchmen, who made themselves mediators,
dispensers of the spirit to the populace. Eventually all texts related to Gnosticism were deemed blasphemous and excluded
from the Bible.

Even though many individuals came from the Afterlife dimension intending to broaden and democratize the new religion,
it was a time of great fear, and efforts to reach out to other cultures were distorted again into the need to dominate and
control.

Here I saw the secret sects of the Franciscans again, who sought to include a reverence for nature and a return to the inner
experience of the divine. These individuals had come into the Earth dimension intuiting that the Gnostic contradiction would
eventually be resolved, and were determined to preserve the old texts and manuscripts until that time. Again I saw my ill-fated
attempt to make the information public too soon, and my untimely departure.

Yet I could see clearly that a new era was unfolding in the West. The power of the church was being challenged by another
social unit: the nation-state. As more of the Earth’s peoples were becoming conscious of each other, the era of the great
empires was coming to a close. New generations arrived able to intuit our destiny of unification, working to promote a consciousness
of national origin based on common languages and tied more closely to one sovereign area of land. These states were still
dominated by autocratic leaders, often thought of as ruling by divine right, but a new human civilization was unfolding, one
with recognized borders and established currencies and trade routes.

Finally, in Europe, as wealth and literacy spread, a wide renaissance began. As I watched, the Birth Visions of many of the
participants came into my view. They knew that human destiny was to develop an empowered democracy, and they came hoping to
bring it into being. The writings of the Greeks and Romans were discovered, stimulating their memories. The first democratic
parliaments were established, and calls were issued for an end to the divine right of kings and the bloody reign of the church
over spiritual and social reality. Soon came the Protestant Reformation, which held the promise that individuals could go
directly to important Scriptures and conceive a direct connection to the divine.

At the same time, individuals seeking greater empowerment and freedom were exploring the American continent, a landmass symbolically
lying between the cultures of the East and the West. As I watched the Birth Visions of the Europeans most inspired to enter
this new world, I could see that they came knowing that this land was already inhabited, aware that communication and immigration
should be undertaken only by invitation. Deep inside, they knew that the Americans were to be the grounding, the road back,
for a Europe quickly losing its sense of sacred intimacy with the natural environment and moving toward a dangerous secularism.
The Native American cultures, while not perfect, provided a model from which the European mentality could regain its roots.