There is sometimes a tendency in spiritual, religious or political groups, to think that you are the only ones who are open to a sophisticated teaching. You are therefore the only ones who are saving the world or bringing forth the golden age or whatever it may be that you think in your minds. But the reality is that there are people all over the world in many different contexts, who are mature beings who have volunteered to take embodiment in many different situations around the world, in order to bring forth something new, in order to make a contribution to the forward progression of humanity as a whole.
This may not be some big sophisticated thing in many cases. As an example of this, look at the entire movement where women protested against the fact that, even in democratic nations, they did not have the right to vote. There were some people who started and led this movement that had a certain degree of attunement with higher awareness. Therefore they could receive these universal ideas. What really drove that movement was the many, many thousands of women in these democracies (that were not yet the modern democracies, but were among the first democracies). These women did not necessarily have an attunement with higher awareness and with the ideas coming from there, but they had an attunement with something else. This attunement allowed them to sense in their inner beings, in their hearts, to sense intuitively, to know intuitively that it simply was not right that in a democratic nation, women did not have the right to vote, or for that matter, run for office. They just knew this, and they knew it why? Well, they knew it because they had what is normally called the Mother flame, or the Mother awareness.
In the normal process of motherhood, something profound happens in a woman’s psychology. When you start feeling a physical child growing inside your womb, you realize that you are no longer just you. You are no longer living your life based on being yourself, being alone, not having anyone to be responsible for except yourself. You realize you are responsible for another being that is not you, and you feel intuitively that that child has certain rights. Now, this could be said to be the driving force behind what we can call the basic humanity. The basic humanity is really the very basis for being human, for feeling that you are a human being. What is the foundation for feeling that you are human? This is not talking about the lowest, or the lowest common denominator, but the basis for recognizing that you are a human being. Well, the basis is recognizing that you are not the only human being in this world. You are not alone. No man is an island. No woman is an island.
Now, of course men can have this as well, but women when they become mothers, they usually become aware of this in a much more clear manner than most men have attained. Of course, there are men who have this sense of the basic humanity, it is often because they have been women in some past lifetimes, where they have also become mothers. It is not that becoming a mother is the only way to achieve this, but it is the most common way. What you have is that in the women’s suffrage movement, the movement that argued for women being allowed to vote, there were many women who because of their motherhood had awakened this sense of the basic humanity.
Now, if we want to give a very concentrated description of the basic humanity, (not a full description), we can say that it is the outpicturing of the admonishment given by Jesus: “Do unto others what you want them to do unto you.” This is found in many religions and it is the basic humanity. When you are in touch with your own basic humanity, you know from within that there are certain things that other people should not do to you, and you would not voluntarily accept that they did this. You may be exposed to something involuntarily, where in a war situation someone comes to kill you, but you would not voluntarily submit to this. You know this is not right—as most people see it, still thinking in terms of right and wrong. Nevertheless, you know this should not happen. When you are aware that there are certain things that should not be done to you, then the Omega aspect of that is that you also realize there are certain things that you do not do to others. We can say that the basic humanity is simply an inner knowing, an inner awareness an inner acceptance, that there are certain things you do not do to human beings. This is basic humanity.
This in a way has nothing to do with any spiritual teaching. We are not even talking about there being a purpose to life, or there being some kind of path you are following, or there being a purpose to society, or a purpose to history, or anything like this. We are simply saying this is an inner feeling, an inner knowing. There are certain things you do not do to human beings. In a mother, it is awakened by the fact that she realizes there are certain things I do not do to my child, but it also extends beyond that to the realization that you do not do it to other people as well.
What higher awareness foresees, and what the more aware people can work for in this coming decade, is this awakening of this basic humanity, first in women then in men. Where there is more of a widespread recognition and awareness that there are certain things you do not do to human beings. This is not just an individual matter but it can also become talked about in society.
What is the next step for these modern democracies? Why are they, in a sense stuck at a certain level? Why are there certain problems they cannot solve? Well, because they have not acknowledged that if you live in a modern democracy, you may well have a constitution that is based on giving certain rights to the people, but you still have not risen to this level of discussing why you have this, why people should have rights, why there are certain things that society cannot do to its own citizens. It is because of the basic humanity. Whether you call it basic humanity or something else, there needs to be an open discussion in these modern democracies of why we even have the concept of human rights. It is because we need to recognize here that a human being is not just a human being, a human being is not just an evolved animal, a human being is not just a biological machine.
A human being has self-awareness. One aspect of self-awareness is that you can suffer. There are some reasons why you can suffer, but that is not really what needs to be debated. It needs to be recognized by modern democracies that human beings have the capability to suffer because they have self-awareness. They are aware that they are alive, they are conscious, they are aware of their outer conditions, they are aware of their reaction to these outer conditions. They are able to know, to determine that there are certain things that are not human to do to others. This you do not do to others. This could lead on to a recognition that human beings cannot be strictly material beings, because if you were the product of an evolutionary process, based on the saying of “nature, red in tooth and claw” and the “survival of the fittest,” then you would not have this ability to recognize there are certain things we do not do to other human beings. It simply would not be there. You would do whatever you saw fit to do to secure your own survival. It is that simple.
The primary goal for higher awareness is for people to recognize there is a certain basic humanity. When you recognize this, you recognize that what it is that has enabled these modern democracies to reach the level where they are at. It is because we have had a certain recognition of this basic humanity. We have not clearly identified what it was, but we have had this inner sense that there are certain things that the state cannot do to its own citizens, and that one group of people cannot do to another group of people. This is the basis for what it means to be human. You can then acknowledge consciously and publicly that in these countries, a majority of the population have developed this inner sense of what we do and what we do not do. We know that there are certain things that should not be done to us. We know for example that if the state starts to randomly arrest and imprison people because they demonstrate against police violence, then this is not what a democratic state should be doing.
Once we recognize that there are certain things that we know should not be done to human beings, should not be done to ourselves and should not be done to other citizens in our country, we can then take the next step. This is where you step up from that individual flame of motherhood, and you tune in to what we might call the Cosmic Mother, the Planetary Mother. Here you recognize that if something should not be done to myself, or to my immediate family, or to the people in my country, then it should not be done to any human being on earth. That is when the modern democracies could, in the little bit longer run, come to a more conscious acknowledgement of the fact that the motto of a modern democracy should not be to “live and let live,” which in all actuality means “live and let suffer.” You live your own life as the modern democracies and you let the people in other countries suffer. Instead, the motto should be: “Live and help other people live. Help other people overcome their suffering as you have overcome your suffering.”
This is something that in the little bit longer run can happen in at least some modern democracies. It will first happen among women in that women can build this solidarity with women in other countries who are less fortunate than themselves, and can therefore say: “These things that we would never dream of doing to our own children, should not be done to any children, anywhere. These things that we would never dream of doing to each other as women, should not be done to women anywhere. These things that we will never dream of letting men or society do to women, should not be done anywhere”. This is basic humanity and it is a concept, an entire philosophy that is ready, that has been lowered through the identity, mental and emotional levels, so it is ready to break through to the physical in a more widespread manifestation. You can be very instrumental in making working for this, to make it break through in the physical.
One aspect of what we might call the Mother Flame, is that you empathize. You feel what other people feel. You experience what they experience. If your child suffers, then you suffer. When you expand this, you realize that if children suffer anywhere, you suffer, if women suffer anywhere, you suffer, if people suffer anywhere you suffer. It is not the highest manifestation that you suffer when other people suffer. Yet this is what can happen to the broad population, the majority of women. It is that they can begin to recognize that one aspect of the Mother Flame of the basic humanity is that you cannot just ignore what is happening to people in other countries, to children and women in other countries. You cannot just ignore this when you are a modern, aware woman. This is not saying that women should suffer, but that women can acknowledge that: “Other people are not as fortunate as I am, and I can use my freedom and my affluence and my opportunity, to help others instead of just focusing on living a good material life, which is really empty of any sense of purpose.”
The sense of purpose that many women are ready to acknowledge, comes from this helping others, comes from raising society to acknowledge this basic humanity. Also raising the modern democracies to realize that we have a responsibility to help other people in other nations that are not as fortunate as we are. This is not about building an army and sending it in to overthrow a dictator and after that, allowing the big multinational corporations to move in and monopolize the market for diapers and baby food, as you have indeed seen in some countries. This is about democracies that use democratic means to raise the living conditions for people in other countries. This is a multifaceted, very complex equation that will require many, many people. Many of these people are already engaged in doing the work. But what can happen is that they gain more and more support, more and more momentum. This begins with the more aware people doing the work, holding the vision, sharing your ideas in a universal way and then it can spread like rings in the water.
Now, the next thing we need to look at is the essential humanity. There is a differentiation of the basic humanity and the essential humanity. The essential humanity is that you realize you are more than physical beings, you are spiritual beings who are in physical embodiment to expand your awareness, to grow in awareness, to follow the path to higher awareness. But these are not ideas that the majority of women are ready to acknowledge and embrace. They are ready to acknowledge the teachings about Abraham Maslow’s levels of needs and that there comes a point where you have satisfied the lower needs and it is time to embrace the higher needs, the self-actualization needs.
Many women in the modern democracies are ready to acknowledge that in these countries, most people have satisfied the lower needs, the deficit needs, the fear-based needs, and they are therefore ready to embrace these higher needs. This does not mean that these women are necessarily having to discover and follow an openly spiritual teaching. It does not mean that the countries have to acknowledge a spiritual teaching. It especially doesn’t mean that these countries or the people have to acknowledge one particular spiritual teaching. This has been the limitation of spiritual movements, all spiritual movements so far. They have always tried to promote one particular teaching instead of universal ideas. This simply is not a realistic approach, especially in the Age of Higher Awareness.
What needs to happen is that a majority of women come to the recognition that living a good material lifestyle, pursuing a career, having a family, buying a big nice house, all of this is not enough for them. They want something more, they even need something more because they have a need for self-actualization. Maslow was not affiliated with any particular outer movement or organization, it is simply a universal teaching. Many people are ready to acknowledge that as part of your essential humanity, you have this higher need for a sense of purpose, a sense that your life has a goal, a direction, a sense that you can actually consciously improve upon yourself. It is not just a matter anymore of improving your outer situation, your material living situation, your job, the way you are treated in society or on your job. It is a matter of how you are treating yourself, how you are looking at yourself, how you are relating to yourself, how you feel about yourself, what you believe about yourself. All of this is your essential humanity.
Why? Because, as human beings you have the ability to feel this need. This need will be overshadowed by the lower needs, when you are at a certain level of consciousness. But many people in the modern democracies are now at the level where this is no longer being overshadowed by the lower needs. This is the dominant need that they have, they have not been consciously aware of it, they have not been able to put words on it but this is the central need that these people have. There are many, many people in general who are ready to acknowledge this, but especially women. How many women do you see in spiritual movements? How many do you see practicing yoga, mindfulness, meditation, coaching, going into various forms of psychological work therapies?
Are women not more conscious about improving their health, improving their bodies, improving their diet, all of these things. You see here that women are the ones who are in a position to bring change, at least in the modern democracies because they have become liberated to the degree that they are ready to embrace this. They are ready to step forward and say: “It is time that our societies step up to a higher level of not pursuing material welfare, but psychological well-being.” This is completely universal, it is not affiliated with any particular religion or organization, or spiritual teaching. It is not something that anyone has a patent on, there is no copyright, there is no monopoly on these ideas. Higher awareness gives them freely to all and you can do the same.
Do not go into this state of mind, where spiritual people think that the goal is to get people to come into their spiritual organization. Just spread the ideas without requiring people to believe in a particular organization or teaching. Do not put a label on the ideas and that they come from there or they belong to there, just spread the ideas and let the ideas grow on their own.
Another aspect of essential humanity is that nature has no prejudice. You can see that even the statement in the scriptures “that it rains upon the just and the unjust,” the sun shines upon all and that nature basically is not a respecter of human prejudices. There are people, and as an example take some fundamentalist Christians in the United States. If you took the logical consequences of their beliefs, you would think that if you had a farmer who was a fundamentalist Christian and next to him was a farmer who was an atheist, then nature wouldn’t let it rain on the farm of the atheist. Nature would hold back the rain so that his crops would fail, and he would be forced to acknowledge the superiority of the Christian belief system. This is essentially what they think. You know, of course that this is not how nature works. Nature does what nature does. It rains upon the just and the unjust, the sun rises and shines upon all. Certainly, there are natural disasters that seem to hit some groups more than others, but nevertheless nature does not respect human prejudices. Therefore, why should human beings respect human prejudices?
What is a modern democracy? Is it not a country that has transcended at least some forms of human prejudice? Has the democracy not said, we should not treat people differently based on whether they are men or women, whether their skin is this color or that color, whether they belong to this ethnic group or that ethnic group? All people in our nation should have equal rights. Is it not a recognition of the fact that you will live in a world where there is much human prejudice? But this human prejudice has no reality, has no existence beyond the minds of human beings. It is not outpictured in nature. It is not written into the laws of nature, even though some people will use both religious scriptures or scientific materialism and evolution to claim that some are more favored than others.
This is not the belief that a modern democracy is based on. If it was, you would not have rights that apply to all people. You would have selective rights and you would have attempted to create societies, as you have seen in the past, and as you see in many places on earth, where there is a privileged elite. Democracy is fundamentally an anti-elitist philosophy and system, where you ideally should prevent an elite from enslaving the majority of the population. This is because democracy recognizes that rights must be applied to all people, not just to certain groups. There are certain things you don’t do to others, and why don’t you? Because all human beings have self-awareness, all can suffer, all have the potential to change themselves, to improve themselves, to raise themselves up.
What is it that the higher awareness ideally would like to see for people? You may look at a certain situation. Let us take as an example, women in Arabic, Muslim countries, who are forced to cover their bodies, who cannot get a driver’s license, who cannot move around on their own without having a guardian with them, and all of these restrictions that are put upon women.
Certainly, higher awareness would like to free these women from these outer restrictions. But how does higher awareness envision that this could be done? There are some people (for example in America) who are fundamentalist Christians and who believe that Christianity is the only true religion. Islam is a religion of the devil and therefore must be eradicated. Even though they are not particularly feminist in their mindset, they may say: “Women in Arabic countries should be freed from this limitation, and it is put upon them by Islam. The United States and Western nations should assemble an army, go in and overthrow these Islamic governments and institute a free democratic government in these countries.”
This is not how higher awareness sees it. This is a perversion of the manipulators. What higher awareness looks to, is not simply a political change, a legal change where these women are freed from these outer conditions. It is a raising of the collective awareness in these countries, so that the women themselves will raise their awareness and start realizing; “I am more than this role I have been brought up to accept for myself as a woman. I am more than this. I have a basic humanity that says I should not be treated this way.” I also have an essential humanity that says: “I am more than this role that has been predefined for me by my parents, my family, my society, the leaders of my society, the leaders of my religion. I am more than this and I have a right in my mind to free myself from this self-image. I have a right to let it die, to raise myself to a higher self-image.”
How did women in the modern democracies get the right to vote? You do not realize today what kind of a process that was because you can no longer remember or even imagine how it was. But if you go back to the late 1800s, it was by no means a given that women would gain the right to vote. Because there were many, many men, especially the leading elite of what is today the modern democracies, who had some belief or other that women were inferior and should not be allowed to vote, because it would lead to chaos and the downfall of civilization. The mindset you saw in these men, only a little over a 100 years ago in the Western world, was not that different from the mindset you see in the leaders of Islamic countries today. There were differences in details, but the mindset was the same. They had a fixed attitude to women. They believed it could never be improved upon, meaning they were in a fanatical state of mind and they were completely closed to any ideas that challenged this mindset.
How was the mindset challenged? Did women rise up and raise an army and go to war with the men? No, they raised their own self-awareness. Whether they were conscious of this or not, they came to the realization; “I am not the kind of being that I was brought up to believe I am as a woman in this society, I am more than this. Therefore, I am capable of knowing what goes on in society, I am capable of understanding politics, I am capable of casting a responsible vote. It is important for me to do so and it is important for my society to do so.” It was the raising of the self-awareness of women that gradually brought this change.
What can bring a change to Islamic countries and many other countries around the world where women are suppressed, without violence, without force? Well, it is exactly the same process that women in Muslim countries raise their self-awareness, acknowledge that they are more than this, they find a way to come together, they talk to the men around them and they make the men listen. There are many men in Arabic countries that have been brought up to play the role of men, but they feel as limited by that role, as the women feel by the role of women. There are many men who acknowledge that they are limited by the fact that their wives are so limited, and they are ready to let go of these limitations. They are wanting to be free but the men cannot figure out how to do it.
The women can gradually bring forth thehigher awareness that many men will then support and gradually this gains momentum. Gradually by some women speaking out, as some women have already done, writing books about how they drove a car, were imprisoned for driving a car even though it was not strictly illegal in Saudi Arabia. And even though it led to intense persecution, it also made an essential contribution to shifting the consciousness, not only in Saudi Arabia but in Muslim countries in general, in the West, and people’s attitude to Muslim countries.
One of the biggest opportunities for creating a shift, not only in Muslim countries, but other countries around the world, is that women in the modern democracies develop this solidarity with their sisters in other countries and say: “If we do not accept in our countries that women cannot be treated this way, how can we accept that women are treated this way in other countries? What can we then do as democratic nations to improve the conditions of women in other countries? How can we use our democratic means to liberate women in these countries? What kind of pressure, if necessary, can we put on these nations? What kind of dialogue can we enter into? How can we help them make the transition that we see is inevitable, and that many people in those countries also see is inevitable, but that many among the leaders have not yet acknowledged is inevitable?”
If this breaks through, you will see that there are many men for example in Muslim countries who are ready to change things, because they see that the world is evolving in a certain direction and that certain things must fall by the wayside in order to give growth. There are even leaders in some of these Muslim countries who would like to see a change, but they cannot see how to bring it about because the religious authorities are so set against it. The people are so hypnotized by the religious authorities that the secular rulers cannot see how they can change the equation without creating some kind of revolution or uprising. But if they saw that there was support among the people for this, then they would be willing to act. These are some of the ways where you can see that it is not a matter of spreading a particular spiritual teaching. But there are certain universal ideas that will come in and that will shift something in the collective awareness.
As an example, during the 1800s, higher awareness gave a certain support to the spiritualist movement. This was a movement where people would get together, they would sit in a dark room, usually around a round table and they would have various rituals. What they would be doing is attempt to communicate with the dead ancestors of some of the people in the room. So, someone had a parent or a loved one that had recently departed and they would attempt to get a message from that loved one. Today, higher awareness is not encouraging the more aware people to engage in these activities. But in the 1800s, the Western world was on the brink of becoming entirely materialistic, of denying all religion, seeing it as superstition and going entirely into a materialistic paradigm.
One of the factors that changed the equation an prevented societies from becoming completely materialistic, was the Spiritualist movement. Because there was a certain amount of people, even some among the intellectual elite of society that took part in these spiritualist seances and they experienced something that the rational mind could not quite explain. By having this direct experience, they received a frame of reference that prevented them from becoming entirely hypnotized by the materialist movement.
It is not that higher awareness sponsored the Spiritualist movement in order to make the Spiritualist movement a dominant factor in society, or in order to get people to feel some outer loyalty to this movement. But what the Spiritualist movement was instrumental in doing, was to put certain universal ideas into the collective consciousness. This had the effect of preventing the Western world from becoming entirely materialistic.
This was not an ideal situation, it was so to speak, a stopgap measure. But nevertheless, it is not the goal to promote a particular teaching, messenger, guru, movement as the dominant one in the Age of Higher Awareness. Higher awareness has no desire to see any spiritual organization become as dominant in the golden age as for example Christianity was in the previous age. For if that were to happen, you can be absolutely sure that this movement would be infiltrated by the manipulators, would be affected by the collective consciousness and therefore will become just as far from the true teachings of higher awareness as the Catholic church was from the true teachings that higher awareness gave through Jesus. Otherwise the movement would not gain that kind of popularity.
What can happen is that a set of universal ideas will become commonly accepted by many people. As we move further into the Age of Higher Awareness, there may be a certain widespread recognition of higher awareness and its ability to bring forth ideas and inventions. But this will again not be centered around one particular movement. It is simply unrealistic to believe this, to have this image in your mind.
As these ideas are broadcast into the collective consciousness, they start a spiral that will gradually gain momentum, be reinforced by the work of the more aware people, and by hopefully many women beginning to embrace some of these ideas, talk about them, bring them out there. Women can then realize that you have a tremendous power by working with higher awareness. But all women who even talk about these ideas, put their minds on them, are also contributing to building and reinforcing that upward spiral that upward momentum that will eventually bring a shift.
There will be a shift, there will be several shifts during this decade of the 2020s. There will be several shifts around the world in how women are looked at, how women are treated and there will be concrete, physical, measurable improvements in women’s situation during these coming 10 years.