12 - Christmas Message II

Christmastide flashes once more on our calendars - a recurrent tide imprinting a pulse amongst the intricate rhythms of the harmony of the spheres and upon the humdrum of our lives. It evokes the hope that arises wherever one makes a fresh beginning, and carries with it a message of forgiveness, gratitude and goodwill for all beings.

This year's message heralds the hope for peace on earth, nurtured by the masses of forces of good will throughout the planet. We embody this massive plea, inasmuch as we have committed ourselves to serve the Spiritual Government of the World. Now the time has come to harness the network of forces of goodwill in an effective drive for peace. The way to effect this is for those who take responsibility for what is happening in our time to write this intention into our New Year's resolutions.

While our day and age seems to be besmeared with violence and some sordid permissiveness, it is paradoxical to discern, emerging in the midst of manifest decadence, an acute awareness of human suffering and despair. In fact, our era is hallowed by the awakening of consciousness fostered by elite esoteric movements. The signature tune of those who entertain awareness of the psychological, social and ecological tribulations of our time is "solidarity", a powerful rallying bugle call for a humanity recklessly risking massive suicide as well as genocide. What it really means is that we are all in this together and mutually interdependent. It is curious to see how synchronistically this development is perfectly in line with the holistic views of modern science; it is all a dynamic interplay.

A few decades ago, if people were being tortured for their beliefs, one would have said, "It's outrageous, but what can I do about it? ... Glad it is not happening to me. ... It is a political issue and there is no way in which I can interfere in the internal affairs of another country without myself getting tortured, perhaps."  Now as a result of the experience of Amnesty International, it has been shown that when a large number of people from all over the world send a massive bulk of mail to the responsible authorities, in some cases, eventually, the guilty conspiracy that operated covertly started to crumble when unmasked. A tidal wave of outraged indignant human consciousness on a momentous scale represents an unwieldy force; the force of solidarity could stem the tide of violence. Unrelentingly, inexorably spurred on by respect for the dignity of the human status which is being violated by unscrupulous people for the purpose of dominance, this human tidal wave will penetrate surely enough all the fissures of a power that is often precariously balanced on a hoax of make-believe and bad faith. We have often had occasion to witness this in our studies of the history of crumbling empires.

Singly we may cower under a frustrated feeling of impotence; together, in concerted action, the forces of goodwill in the world represent legion.

Knowing this, it follows that we each shoulder some responsibility in the balance between war and peace on the planet. Human activities on the planet are the outcome of thinking and emoting on an enormous scale. We all know that the simplistic, uninformed interpretation of outdated scientific views entertained fifty years ago led people to deride the effectiveness of "mind over body." Today we know of cancer victims in remission - paradoxically, from the medical view - purely for having applied positive thinking. Despair turns off the immune system and optimism and fun enforces it, as the experience of Norman Cousins indicates.

A recent experiment by physicist Buryl Payne, of the Academy for Peace Research, shows that synchronized concentration of a large number of people has an effect on sun spots. The Academy has studied the correlation between the curve of sun spots and the incidence of war in the course of some of our history. The inference is that, should a large number of people pledge themselves to concentrate on peace at the same time every day, we might contribute to shifting the balance of forces on the planet towards peace.

The British observed a minute of silence at the stroke of Big Ben at midday during the darkest and most distressful days of World War II. The buses used to stop and everybody stood still for one minute. Many attribute to this practice the prodigious turning of the tables of fortunes of the adversaries at that precise juncture in the war.

I would now wish to suggest that all of us motivated by a sense of responsibility and solidarity would observe a moment of silence precisely at midday, local time. Since midday in New York is not the same as midday in Los Angeles or midday in Paris or Delhi, we would thus be launching a circle of positive thinking encircling the planet. Meanwhile, the Academy for Peace Research will be checking on whatever effect this has on sun spots. This will be our feedback to confirm that something tangible and observable does actually happen. Since Dr. Payne is demonstrating the impact of thought upon the bio-field of the body and consequently the impact of the masses of human bio-fields upon the sun's magnetic field, I suggest that during that minute we identify ourselves with being a force field and realize that it is without boundary and therefore, intermeshes with kindred fields to form a massive wave-interference pattern. It is then important to concentrate on the far-reaching power of this field and use the password, "Ya Vakil", the name of a protective archangel manifesting personally in each of us as our guardian angel.

I will always stand by you in loyalty in the name of our commitment to the Message of Unity brought by Pir-o-Murshid Inayat Khan.
