I was impressed that Leslie Stahl on "60 Minutes" managed to contain her incredulity while two ex-members (and the daughter of one of them) of that group calmly and gently held themselves forth. That the people in Rancho perhaps chose inappropriately in dealing with transmutation difficulties is regrettable not so much for them as for the perceptions which are attendant to it. The San Diego authorities are washing their hands of the matter thereby reducing that media circus to after event speculations. Fortunately for purveyors of non-news, Oklahoma City redux is beginning in Denver.
Humankind as a whole is pretty much locked into concepts and belief systems for which transcendence is still the highest probability of "heaven". Monotheistic perceptions are a very perverse stage of human evolutions as they make absolutely no intuitive "sense." Essential, however, for implementing Genesis II and lauching the rape of Gaia as dogma.
Kototama, a very obscure proto-Japanese system, about which I have the sketchiest of information and a very large intuitive hit comes from perspectives quite dissonant to monotheism. Kototama attaches itself to consciousness back in the Gondwanaland times and then comes forward over the millennia since. It is usually dismissed as primitive animism by those who need to dismiss such knowings.
Introduced as a youngster to many people in forest, wetlands and lakes of Northern Michigan by a Blackfeet elder; I know in epistemological terms the vitality of all in this "council of beings." There is nothing that is accurate about "animate" and "inanimate." There are, rather, degrees within which we, in present form, are able to perceive vitality. The problem lies with our perceptions not in the actuality of vitality within which all share time and space with transient humankind.
Whether one bases awareness within the Genesis of monotheists, any other spiritually-based creation "story" or scientific "Big Bang;" one message is common: "it" all came from nowhere to somewhere: from unity to diversity. Since the beginning all that was is still in being--who needs thermodynamics?
Hale-Bopp is dispensing vital components of life in its melting tail. Is that much different than antennae broadcasting TV programs? Or a refinery dispersing petrochemical by-products named as carcinogenic? Or planets influencing more than simply tides?
From one nearly universal premise common to creation stories, all matter has the identical qualities of all other matter--just the forms are different. The inter- and intra-atomic and molecular spaces of matter held together by some form of energy fields are well covered in the scriptures and sutras and koans, etc. Contemporary science is another religion with its own explanations for what cannot otherwise be explained. In many ways, a dynamic and highly useful religion but still a belief system more than a espistemology.
The folks who shifted form in Rancho Santa Fe did so awkwardly and, my sense is, prematurely in response to Hale-Bopp. I suppose fatigue sets in eventually. They were, to a major degree, still prisoners of perceptual actualities from which there were ernestly trying to free themselves. Their methods were rooted in conditioned belief--again no matter how hard there were working to de-condition themselves. By isolating themselves as they did, they were hoping to minimize distractions. Choosing to do websites was an intriguing choice better left for other speculations.
As perception is largely belief and one of the glues of belief as form is language, therefore speaking a language with no provisions for communicating transitions from, say, transcendent process to transmutation may be impossible. My teachers have explained ritual as a means to wear down resistance so that a student or chela would simply surrender belief out of exhaustion and fall into knowledge in desperation.
For example, the Pali and Sanskrit, Tibetan and other Asian Languages derived, in part, from them, operate by entirely different internal processes within a human than European languages like English. Our glyphs or symbols need to be collected in a linear process to incorporate thought. For Asians, as a generalization, the glyphs or symbols incorporate thoughts or concepts. They arrange concepts into collections with the purpose of communicating beyond conceptual fields.
Japanese Haiku, 5,7,5 syllable arrangements is a common form as we would diagram in parsing Haiku, is perceived very, very differently in English translation than in Japanese perceptions. A Japanese friend explained that Haiku form is nearly infinitely expressive in Japanese. Each symbol involved has a very large potential of communication which is a function of the arrangement(s) of the symbols. When incorporated with a visual symbol such as plum blossom or bamboo twig; still other dynamics of meaning emerge. We simply don't come anywhere close with poetry in English.
Other possibilities for stretching our credulity exist with intriguingly similar forms such as Tibetan and Dineh sand paintings. Look at a Blessing Way creation or a Kalachakra representation (both available on line--how is that for a adducing a degree of permanence when both Tibetans and Dineh consider them highly impermanent and situational expressions rather than "art" as we do when putting them on websites or in museums).
In spiritual areas, key words translated from early Asian language forms into English distort, limit might be more accurate, possibilities sharply. The native speakers or ones whose spiritual boundaries and domains, logical types and classes are within Pali, Sanskrit, Tibetan, and such hear, sense would be better, the words in their base perceptions and have as little context for grokking the English as the English speakers have of grokking Pali, etc. Sanskrit "characters" or "letter symbols" incorporate sound perceptions which, when heard, open doors of perception largely closed to Western minds.
An example, Buddha Shakyamuni gave us the Four Noble Truths about human existence. This Buddha for this time (the time end of which is that within which we are present on Earth) has been translated and interpreted within a Piscean perceptual context for which linear process, cause and effect are appropriate. Linear process, cause and effect are coming to be acknowledged as limited perceptual forms in a universe which is totally dynamic, multidimensional and occurring all within the same instants.
The Sanskrit word, "Dukha" is usually translated into English as "suffering." Human existence is characterized as suffering thereby. Duhka as suffering is awfully close conceptually to original sin in the monotheistic concepts. Well, the Sanskrit context for Dukha is closer to the English concept of "ignorance." When the Buddha for these times is translated as noting that the human "problem" is ignorance, the Four Noble Truths make a great deal more sense and provide quite different directions for human behavior than the concept of suffering. We don't "nned" an extraterrestrial Father God or a post-death heaven, when spirit is within us and our key to heaven is dropping the veils of ignorance about our actualities within our time in human form. Probably have little need for priests, either.
Likewise, in the Vedic context, the Sanskrit word "ananda" is usually rendered as "bliss." Bliss in English is something quite at variance with ananda. Ananda comes over into English much better and with greater understanding as being closer, nearly identical in important contexts, to "grace." Christians usually grok grace as in the Grace of God.
The Vedic-based spiritual systems (Hinduism commonly) postulate a state of grace, ananda, within the framework of sat-chit-ananda, i.e., when being, consciousness and grace meld. Buddhism for this time, evolving from Vedic and Aryan bases, was recorded and translated and commented upon by people with Piscean-transcendent perceptual networks from which they were unable to free themselves. If they had, probably few would have been able to grok the message and we would not have what we name as Buddhism.
Buddhist popularizers in English such as Christmas Humphreys looked at Buddhism through Christian eyes and wrote Christian-embued words about Buddhism. Western assimilations of Buddhism are held primarily within monotheistically conditioned perceptual networks or belief systems.
The next Buddha, Maitreya in Sanskrit, like the second coming of Christ and/or the appearance of the next Mahdi, is in the green room of the spiritual theater. Buddhists call it Tushita Heaven. Maitreya is up there playing with the other spiritual beings awaiting their cues. Maitreya, in Buddhist iconography and perceptions, is in charge of the transitions or evolutions of human consciousness to transmutation processes. Is Tushita Heaven an earlier naming of UFO?
In transcendent processes, the transcended actuality of a individual contains the past in a layer of consciousness. We are born again and again and again and again -- usually slipping back between each again. The attachment is not adequately broken. In transmutation, the resultant individual has no memory about, consciousness of or attachment to a past form. Some of these issues are involved with what Rupert Sheldrake calls morphic resonance--what Gregory Bateson calls the patterns which connect and James Lovelock senses with a Gaia Hypothesis. These are all highly accredited "western" scientists with distinguished careers who have tapped into Tushita Heaven of a type.
The essential teaching involves knowing in epistemological terms that of which we are now mostly ignorant. That some of those forms of ignorance may result in suffering ties the package together with the mistranslation of dukha. However, the actuality involved (notice I don't use words like "truth" or "reality" both are subjective concepts masking epistemological knowing) is that of acknowledging who I am, dissolving the veils of ignorance, I know my actuality as a spirit momentarily in human form.
To transmute that human form, whether to join a passing UFO or whatever, is as much a heaven-thought for Aquarian consciousness as dying and going to heaven is for monotheistists of Piscean mindset. One person's sky heaven is another person's actuality on earth--warts and all, as the expression goes. That comment hints at the integration of "good and evil" within being as opposed or contrasted with the Christians kicking the devil out of God and Lilith from the Garden of Eden.
The folks in Rancho, however, appear to have rushed, maybe pushed would be better, the process beyond their capacities in response to a premature identification of Hale-Bopp as signal. We won't know until and unless we transmute in our own ways. And then, if we have, what difference would it make since we would have no memory of the events. How is that for a paradoxical conundrum?
I make a point of staying quiet on these issues for the most part unless and until asked directly to comment, as I have above. There is not a shred of available "proof" in anything I am writing. To say, "If you don't believe it, ask me," is a mean put-on. Anybody who attempts to communcate with those whose existence if bounded by conditioned parameters of existence risks being judged "crazy." Psychics and others who push themselves forward for whatever reasons are taking risks and reaping accordingly. Those games are simple one-ups-manship. Unverifiable unless no verification is needed.
I suspect the channelers will have a field day over coming months. Their channelings may be more interesting than the next media circus in the Denver trial which will be our OJ of the summer on the way to the Nichols trial which will be our winter diversion to non-news.