Today we celebrate the festival of Easter –the first of the three great spiritual Festivals that mark the higher interlude of the year. Easter, coinciding with the full moon of Aries, is the great Western, Christian Festival, followed by Wesak at the time of the Taurus full moon, the great Eastern, Buddhist Festival, and the Christ’s own festival, the Festival of Goodwill, which coincides with the full moon of Gemini. This marks the culmination of what is essentially a tremendous inflow of potent spiritual energies—energies originating on planes of existence higher than the most spiritual levels of our planetary life or even our solar system; energies which are focused by the Christ and the Buddha, directed through the Hierarchy and intended for distribution into humanity.

These inpouring energies represent the forces of the subjective world that humanity needs to become more aware of so that the bridge of souls and servers working in the physical world can establishing a linking relationship with them. Ultimately, this is the major goal of the Plan of God—the integration and fusion of the fourth and fifth kingdoms upon the planet.

This is the spiritual intention behind the work we shall be doing this year with the keynote "Let the ‘bridge of souls and servers’ link the subjective and objective worlds, thus aiding the Christ in His work". Much needs to be done before all this can happen. The world today is so divided—politically, economically and religiously. And the one great healing force that can bring harmony out of conflict is of course the dynamic energy of divine Love, first anchored in human consciousness two thousand years ago by the Christ. Love brings forth the sense of oneness, a realization that is needed before the fusion process can proceed. It is that oneness and love that is evoked when saying the beautiful Mantram of Unification. So let us now take a few moments to reflect deeply on this spiritual intention and say together this mantram and sound forth the note of oneness and love that is so much needed in the world today.

The sons of men are one and I am one with them.
I seek to love, not hate;
I seek to serve and not exact due service;
I seek to heal, not hurt.

Let pain bring due reward of light and love.
Let the soul control the outer form,
And life, and all events,
And bring to light the Love
That underlies the happenings of the time.

Let vision come and insight.
Let the future stand revealed.
Let inner union demonstrate and outer cleavages be gone.
Let love prevail.
Let all men love.

The Mantram of Unification was chosen as a way to build the momentum for the growth of the divine energy of Love throughout the world. It exists as a great thought form hovering over humanity. It is an energy that is still much needed as a means of building right relationships and goodwill among people and nations.

There is still much division and divisiveness being expressed in human interactions today. But not nearly as much as there was one hundred years ago, say, in 1912, for example. The nations of the world were much more divided then; and the imprisoning effect of dense materialism and autocratic rule was stifling. Since then, humanity has suffered through two major world wars and a long list of smaller regional wars. Thankfully many of the crystallized patterns of thought have been shattered, and more light is now illuminating human consciousness, the United Nations Organization has been formed and world finance and world trade is flourishing. Building harmonious relationships is now seen as necessary to create a stable world so human creativity and life can grow. So the divine energy of Love has made a tremendous impact. It has finally taken hold to a certain degree. But we need to keep the momentum going because in many places the world is still divided, presenting an ever-present danger of major warfare.

So the basic message of divine universal Love that Christ anchored in the world 2000 years ago is just now working its way up through human consciousness and affecting human decisions and planning. And this is why the Easter message is so important. Love and goodwill must continues to condition human consciousness until it is able to finally gain control over the stifling force of materialism, corruption and greed that still characterizes much of human thinking. It isn’t a question of eliminating the forces of materialism, because we still need those forces to sustain physical life. It is really a matter of right control over those forces—control by a soul enlightened mind that responds to the inflow of Love.

The true nature of and spiritual intent behind the Easter Festival has never been fully understood. At least, until recently. The divine intent motivating Christ’s great service to the world is stupendous in its worldwide extent. Much more happened during that first Easter experience than simply seeing a man get nailed to a cross and crucified and then rising up again three days later. The meaning that whole experience is of course extraordinary; it was a huge revelation for humanity. But above and beyond the whole outer life story of Christ is the revelation of the fact of another kingdom in nature, a fifth kingdom, the Kingdom of God, the Kingdom of Souls. And it is the destiny of humanity to eventually realize the existence of this kingdom and through a great redeeming and refining process, merge with this kingdom and demonstrate is qualities in the world. This is the great revelatory message that Christ and the spiritual Hierarchy are bringing to the world today.

The Tibetan has this to say about the revelatory message of Christ: "Christ came and gave out to the world (mainly through His disciples) two major truths: the fact of the existence of the human soul and, secondly, the system of service (this phrase is used advisedly) as a mode of establishing right human relations—to God and to one's fellowmen. He told men that they were all the Sons of God in the same sense that He was; He told them in many symbolic ways who and what He was and assured them that they could do even greater things than He had done, because they were divine as He was. These greater things, humanity has already accomplished upon the physical plane and in its control of nature, as Christ knew men would, because He knew the workings of the Law of Evolution. He taught them that service was the key to the life of liberation, teaching them the technique of service through His own life as He went [Page 108] about doing good, healing the sick, as well as preaching and teaching the things of the Kingdom of God and feeding the hungry, both physically and spiritually. He made the life of every day a divine sphere of spiritual livingness, thus emphasising the teaching of the Buddha, through desiring nothing for the separated self. Thus the Christ taught, loved, and lived, carrying forward the great continuity of revelation and of hierarchical teaching; then He entered for us within the veil, leaving us an example that we should follow His steps (1 Pet. II.21)—follow Him in His belief in divinity, in His service and in ability to penetrate into that area of consciousness and that field of activity which we call the true Church of Christ, the spiritual (at present invisible) Hierarchy of our planet, the true Kingdom of God".

Love is very much the central theme of the Easter Festival, the festival of the risen Christ. Easter always occurs during the sign of Aries, and we will be working in meditation with the energies of this sign as well. Aries plays a significant role in the Easter theme of crucifixion, death and resurrection. Aries is the sign in which a new cycle of manifestation is initiated. As it says, "it is the place where the initial idea to institute activity takes form. It is the birthplace of ideas." Two thousand years ago, Christ took advantage of the influence of Aries to introduce and express through His own being and life many new ideas, at least they were new at the time. Among them, and the most important of all, was the revelation of the all-inclusive love of God. Christ, of course, was an embodiment and a pure expression of the divine Law of Love which, in this great earth cycle, is the primary Law governing and qualifying all expressions of life in this entire system.

Christ was of course the perfect expression of the principle of Life. He said, "I am come that they may have life and that they may have it more abundantly" (John X.10). We understand what form is; and we are learning through the practice of meditation about the intricate nature of consciousness. But this highest aspect called Life is still a bit of a mystery. We have a number of definitions of Life, like "Life is loving synthesis in action" and "life is one and naught can ever take or touch that life." The Tibetan also points to a deeper definition, saying that Life is "that fourth something which hovers behind all manifestation and behind all objects, all qualified expressions of divinity and which is hinted at in the BhagavadGita in the words: ‘Having pervaded this whole universe with a fragment of Myself, I remain’". As that "fourth something", life seems to be in the nature of a pure electrical essence which passes through all dimensions and through us and binds us together with all other forms and kingdoms and the whole earth itself, and the solar system and the universe. Life is like a great sea of universal electrical energy through which we move and have our being. It has no beginning, it has no end and is not affected by death of any kind. When we experience that which we call death, we simply withdraw to another part of the great sea, which continues to sustain us.

Is this what Christ meant by "life more abundantly"? Life has been defined as "a free and flowing current, sweeping away obstructions and barriers, and establishing an unimpeded circulation of truth and life itself—the essential quality of both being love."

The continuity of the principle of Life is what binds us to the Kingdom of Souls, to the Hierarchy, to Shamballa and to the universe; it binds us all together as one spiritual unit. We just need to recognize what already exists. We need to break through the illusion in human consciousness that life is only material, that life and consciousness continue on after death, as demonstrated by Christ's resurrection. Life is the bridge on which the group of souls and servers link the subjective and objective worlds. They open a window that reveals the vast beauty of the inner realms of life. It is a beauty of divine, all-inclusive Love. That beauty of right relationship can be ours if we let that love flow freely into the world in great abundance. And that is what Christ and the Hierarchy will bring to the world--divine Life in great abundance. Expressing pure love is humanity's destiny.

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THE EASTER FESTIVAL
New York, April 5, 2012
Dale McKechnie