The Information Society is a key factor in the drive towards synthesis; for through information and communications technology, the collective mind of humanity can be more rapidly synthesised into an invoking agent of the divine. Before this revolutionary goal can be achieved though, humanity’s thinking must be integrated and appropriately directed.

Although mental direction powered by selfish desire is rampant in the world at this time, mental direction powered by love-wisdom and the consecration of thought to the good of the whole is rapidly increasing, even if it is not immediately apparent. A vast realignment with the direction of God’s thought is taking place and as we’re all caught up in the state of flux that this reorientation entails, it’s difficult to hold onto the spiritual vision that instigated it. But as part of the cause of this great planetary shake-up, each of us can also be part of the solution, as we fight our own psychological battles and cast out the inner demons that are obscuring the light. Through meditation, we can transmute the energy of conflict within ourselves into a point of tension above our everyday consciousness, and learn to hold this creative vibration no matter what is happening. In this way we are helping to thin the veils between the inner and outer worlds so that the energy of the spiritual Hierarchy can flow through more freely.

It is through the right use of the fire of mind that human direction is determined, and those who are responsive to the inner vision are urged to lift their eyes above the fires of materialistic pleasure seeking towards the pure fire of soul consciousness. We do this by aiming beyond the intellect towards the intuition – towards the “flame that gleams beyond the mind revealing direction sure” – the mind providing a foundation from which to project.

Right mental direction
An outstanding example of this kind of right mental direction was the second phase of the World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS) that recently took place in Tunis 1 – the first having taken place in Geneva in 2003. The aim was to facilitate one of the UN Millennium Development goals – to create “a global partnership for development including making available, in cooperation with the private sector, the benefits of new technologies, especially information and communications technologies, to all”. This was a true demonstration of “firing the world with the spirit of relationship” and the statement of intention released at the first conference expresses this in the following manner: the “common desire and commitment to build a people-centred, inclusive, and development-oriented Information Society, where everyone can create, access, utilise and share information and knowledge, enabling individuals, communities, and peoples to achieve their full potential in promoting their sustainable development and improving their quality of life, promised in the purposes and principles of the Charter of the United Nations and respecting fully and upholding the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.”

Meticulously laid out in the same document were some 67 points describing a common vision of the Information Society. While simplicity and creative vitality rarely characterise these types of documents, nonetheless the detail of principled thinking indicates the tremendous amount of spiritualised mental energy that has gone into them; they form part of a precipitation process, whereby ideas infused with the energy of synthesis slowly emerge into more concrete expression. When there is so much dire need in the world, the process may seem exasperatingly slow, but these potent thought-forms can gather further momentum if they are sufficiently publicised worldwide. The intelligent desire of the masses provides decisive impetus for their precipitation onto the physical plane sooner, rather than later, and we can therefore see what a vital role the media has in this process. Over the last decade, there has been a significant growth in the public’s demand for world news and current affairs, with 24-hour news accessible via radio, television, mobile phone and Internet. This interest in international news demonstrates a shift in identity away from the national and towards a more global state of consciousness.

Intellect serving the intuition
The Internet, as part of a burgeoning Information Society, is playing a significant role in this change, demonstrating the awakening intellectual power of humanity. However, the intellect has to use information for right purposes, and only if the Internet can become a servant of the intuition rather than a slave of desire can this powerful tool achieve its creative potential as a network for the sharing of ideas. Hence the need to educate the children of the world in right values and sharing, for the Information Age is upon us with amazing developments taking place, and children have an essential part to play in its service potential. No matter what their social and economic background, children take readily to computers and information processing, as a WSIS report confirms. This faculty is inherent in the young due to their natural receptivity to the new energies of consciousness that are now becoming available, including the incoming energy of organisation and order, the seventh ray. And so it is encouraging that one of the widely reported initiatives launched at WSIS was the ‘hundred-dollar laptop’ campaign to supply every child with a laptop computer 2. These special computers have very low power consumption, and in the absence of a mains supply of electricity can be powered with a wind-up crank. UN Secretary-General, Kofi Annan, said, “Children will be able to learn by doing, not just through instruction, they will be able to open up new fronts for their education, particularly peer-to-peer learning.” He added that the initiative held the promise of economic development for children in developing countries.

Many of the children of today will play a large role in shaping the direction in which the Information Age ultimately takes us; and their natural aptitude for computers, combined with an education based on social responsibility and the right sharing of ideas, can lead to the spiritualization of the World Wide Web as a tool for integrating the world mind around the highest aspects of human thinking. Concentrated group thinking of this kind generates a field of magnetic tension that is invocative of the Universal Mind and the Ideas that are ready to precipitate from it, and so we can see the potential for revelations of many kinds if all proceeds as it should. The Triangles network3 – an archetypal communications network – has been in place for many decades now performing this kind of function, as it circulates the light, love and power of the Plan. And undoubtedly this is facilitating the externalisation of communication networks in the physical world, as the living essence of the ethers is prepared and organised for future developments in telecommunications.

This preparation of the ethers is also facilitating the next logical stage of communication – telepathy – where the familiar tools are eventually bypassed, and direct communication between minds supervenes. This may be a distant future for most – one reason why it is not more prevalent now is the amount of psychic noise in the planetary aura, with great rushing hither and thither in pursuit of desires, much of which is driving the Internet. There is therefore an increasing need for “restraint of speech through control of thought”, and as many minds fall into this state of silent receptivity, alignment with the direction of God’s thought can take place, and telepathy will rapidly start to hold sway.

Towards synthesis
The turning tide that this represents takes us on a journey back towards simplification and synthesis, when, the Ageless Wisdom tells us, “talk will die out and books will come to naught”. This is because the exchange of energy through the creation and exchange of thought-forms as a redemptive act will largely supersede speech and writing. All forms of communication have potentially redeeming features, but telepathy takes this a step forward. Accurately built and transmitted thought-forms are potential liberators of consciousness through the esoteric light and sound they can radiate. The correct use of the Great Invocation is a supreme example of this process – for amongst other things, it is a formula for cleansing the planetary ethers for increased telepathic sensitivity with the higher kingdoms. The use of the sacred word, the OM, at the end of the Great Invocation, serves to reverberate its power throughout the world and is said to be like “the roaring of a blazing fire”. The effect of the OM in substance is something akin to that of fire in the natural world, creating the right conditions for renewal and the propagation of new seeds and fresh growth. The action of fire prepares the way for the expression in substance of new spiritual truths.

Embedded intelligence
Although a world of silent tension, in which the creative dynamism of telepathy can flourish, may seem very distant now at the beginning of the Information Society, if we use information wisely, it may not be so far away as we think. At the recent WSIS, a report entitled “The Internet of Things” said that we are entering a world “in which the increasing ‘availability’ of processing power is accompanied by its decreasing ‘visibility’…the most profound technologies being those that disappear by weaving themselves into the fabric of everyday life until they are indistinguishable from it”. This is embedded intelligence, where the world of things is integrated into one cooperative whole. The report looks at the next step in ‘always on’ communications in which new technologies promise a world of networked and interconnected devices. The report points to four key technologies, all at advanced stages, that will enable ubiquitous network connectivity: RFID (radio frequency identification) tags, sensors, embedded intelligence and nano-technology. It predicts that this “Internet of Things” will soon be able to connect the world’s objects in both a sensory and an intelligent manner, so that the many things around us will be communicating with each other without any interaction from us.

First thoughts suggest that these developments could herald a further step towards materialism and increased noise, but it is certainly the case that we are heading towards a more silent age, where the roar of machinery has been replaced by a silent, invisible technology. Provided we are not lured further down the path of materialism, intelligence embedded into matter in the service of humanity has the potential to revolutionise the world. It will free us up to become more creative and delve further into the esoteric nature of light, at a time when the seventh ray of ceremony and order is organising etheric and physical substance into a matrix so that the higher aspects of divine light can penetrate down into the physical plane. The seventh ray provides a "transitory point of synthesis” for blending all the seven rays together into one great energetic Light. Embedding intelligence into the substance of the environment is an initial, unconscious participation in this process through which the light of the planet will be further intensified. Substance is already imbued with active intelligence from the past, and is easily persuaded to take on smart characteristics and capabilities; and the goal is for this substance to take on another quality, that of active love. By introducing order into substance and then radiating the spiritual fire of love throughout all communications and interactions, humanity will eventually participate consciously in this majestic process.

We have to remember that ‘embedded intelligence’ is really the conscious control of matter, for all substance is alive and conscious in its own way. The atom itself demonstrates its own peculiar state of consciousness, and nowhere is dead matter to be found – all is infused with the life of God. This gives an interesting slant on the debate about artificial intelligence and whether there is a point where machines may cross a threshold and become truly conscious; it is, however, a moot point, for like every other form, they already display a rudimentary, if unrecognisable, form of consciousness.

Alice Bailey informs us that science is yet to acknowledge the ‘entified’ nature of substance, and thus account for the life that energizes the substance of the three lower subplanes, and when the scientist begins to work with the consciousness that animates substance (atomic or electronic), and when he brings under his conscious control the forms built of this substance, he will gradually realise that all entities of all grades and of varying constitutions go to the construction of that which is seen. This will not be until science has definitely admitted the existence of etheric matter, and until it has developed the hypothesis that this ether is in differing vibrations. When the etheric counterpart of all that exists is allocated to its rightful place, and known to be of more importance in the scale of being than the dense vehicle, being essentially the body of the life, or vitality, then the role of the scientist and the esoteric investigator will merge.

Grounding the energy of light
The embedded intelligence and the etheric lines of communication that will create the ‘Internet of Things’ is a way of organising substance that will render it radioactive in the broadest sense – viewing all radiations, including magnetism, as part of a process of transmutation into higher forms. In radioactivity we have the eastern conception of Vishnu-Brahma, or the Rays of Light vibrating through matter. And IN-formation, as the word suggests, is the introduction of an organised pattern of energy into substance through which light can circulate and radiate – it is a means of grounding light. It is part of the great process that will see humanity steadily lifting itself out of gross physical matter and drawing all planetary lives upwards with it into etheric realms. We can contribute through the building and transmission of thought-forms that can hold and radiate the light of the higher kingdoms of nature into the lower. This intelligent, redemptive work is part of our journey towards the reorganisation of the etheric body of the planet. Through the laws of thought-form building, we strive to fire the world with the new spirit of relationship, reorienting humanity towards the glory of living synthesis.

1. For more information, see www.wsis.org
2. For more information, see laptop.media.mit.edu
3. For further information on Triangles, go to www.triangles.org, or write to Triangles at the address on the back.

2006 #1 - Patterns of meaning	The extended self
Transition Activities	Book review