2002-5-1 23:22:00
Hello my friends. I have just a few minutes to say a few words to you.
One thing of interest in the news the past few days is that they think they've found the age of the universe to be 13 billion years old. They've come up with that by researching throughout the Milky Way and found the oldest discovered stars at 13 billion years old. Because of this, they assume this is the age of the universe. I don't see the logic in this. It discounts the idea that there may have been older stars which have passed away leaving no evidence that they existed.
They corresponded this to another method using the expansion of the universe. The expansion of the universe is interesting in the fact that scientists are observe that as galaxies move away from each other they seem to be moving completely equidistant; all accelerating at the same speed, moving away from each other in extreme uniformity. This is like a balloon blowing up and the outward pieces and ingredients of the balloon are all expanding away from each other in the same amount. I wouldn't be surprised if there isn't some illusion in this. For instance, if we shine a light beam away from the earth in one direction then shine it in the other direction, according to this the speed of light is 186,000 miles per second both ways even though in one direction we may be going half the speed of light already. Logically it would seem that light should be going one and half times the speed of light then. Because of the time equation in relativity it seems that light always goes the same speed (relative to the starting point) in either direction no matter what speed we are traveling.
I think it's quite possible that there is some illusion like this in the way they are figuring the age of the universe. One of the problems that shows a flaw is that a year or two ago they discovered galaxies about 20 billion light years from Earth. They couldn't figure this out because the universe was supposed to be 13 to 14 billion years old so how could there be galaxies whose light has already taken 20 billion years to reach us? Since then I haven't heard anymore about it, perhaps, because the scientists don't want to inject any of that into their formula because it upsets their idea of the age of the universe.
It's interesting that according to the Ancient Wisdom the very solar system itself is older than what they think the age of the universe is. According to the scientists the Earth is 6 or 7 billion years old or something like that which is about half of the age of the universe itself. But according to the ancient wisdom there are many objects much older than that. The Ancient Wisdom says they are fairly close to the age of the Earth, perhaps, but very far off on the age of other heavenly bodies. Interestingly Blavatsky taught that the age of the universe from its birth to its death will be 311 trillion years. A trillion is a thousand million, remember. This would mean the universe is much more ancient than the scientists realize. Some scientists believe the universe is very ancient; others believe it is eternal. The ancient wisdom teaches that nothing in form is eternal but the universe is created then re-created even though it lives to be a very ancient age. So I suspect that the Hubble [telescope] is going to confirm that there are objects further away than the 13 billion light years. This will put a kink in their estimates and they'll need to go back and revise things because if objects or galaxies are discovered further away than 13 billion light years that means the age of the universe is older than 13 billion years.
Susan brought up an interesting point that I'll just cover briefly. She spoke of "the Beast" which is any unjust authority that we lean too heavily upon. She asked if I could be a beast to the people here in the group or could Djwhal Kuhl or Alice A. Bailey be a beast to me. It is possible. Jesus Himself or the Bible can be a beast of authority if we accept them blindly. However, once an authority is proven, if for instance, you learn Spanish from a teacher and you know that he knows Spanish and you ask him the Spanish word for "rock" or something, and he tells you, you can have quite a bit of faith that he's come up with an accurate word because you've tested him. So relying somewhat intelligently upon an earned authority is not relying on beastly authority. However even if we have a true teacher and we rely on him with blindness without checking him out and giving him enough tests to assure us that he guides us in the direction of soul contact, then a true teacher, whether he be a Jesus or a Buddha, can become a beastly authority to us.
We've all seen how the Bible, which is a good book with a lot of truth in it, can be a beast of authority to many religious people throughout the Earth. There are people who pick up snakes and handle them because it's mentioned in the Bible. Without reading it first and studying it with wisdom and their own discernment, even something true and good can lead to disaster.
Now as far as the writings through Alice A. Bailey go, I have tested them a lot. Still if I come across something that sounds a little odd I will put it on the shelf. I consider that it's always possible that DK could be wrong in something that He writes or its always possible that Alice A. Bailey didn't get the wording right on something. But when I come across something I have a hard time accepting, I remind myself that He has proven Himself with soul contact with me so many times, and I give it a lot of weight. I don't accept Him as a beastly authority or an unjust authority but when He says something that sounds unusual or hard to accept I still give it a lot of weight and I contemplate it. When I've done this in the past I've often wound up agreeing with him when all is said and done. If I hadn't taken it seriously and just discarded it then it would've been my loss.
One of the problems people encounter when you teach them about the beast is they tend to go from one extreme to the other, from relying on authority to thinking I won't rely on any authority. Then the person may end up challenging everybody all the time. This is the other extreme. To challenge just to be challenging is not escaping the Beast. That's falling into the beastly trap because to truly escape the Beast a person needs to develop discernment so he can discern when to rely on just authority and when not to. If he rejects every authority he'll have a difficult time learning because a true authority or a true teacher who can help to bring us to a higher level.
But like I say, there are many who go to extremes. One extreme is rejecting all authority and the other extreme is accepting authority blindly. We must use the middle way and test new authorities that come into our life. Test new authorities that come into our life and find out if they are an earned authority. Can the person really speak Spanish? Does he know about soul contact if he's going to teach that to me? Find out if the person knows what he's doing. Find out if he knows something that he might be able to stimulate your knowledge in. If he can, and if he earns your trust and authority and acceptance, then putting a little trust in his words and giving his words weight can lead you to greater knowledge. All of us had to do this at one time or another, for instance, with the words of Christ. We read over His words and they just strike us as true. Again and again we test them until finally when we see the words of Christ from the scriptures carries a lot of weight with us. Those who have contemplated the words of Christ have learned to trust them because they are proven reliable.
Robill asks the question, can one create his own seed thoughts for a particular purpose. The answer is definitely yes. As you may remember we talked about seed thoughts a year or so ago. I gave several seed thoughts to people to contemplate. We considered doing that on a regular basis but didn't follow through. It wouldn't be a bad idea to throw out seed thoughts now and then. Actually when I ask questions it's similar to a seed thought because with any seed thought we need to run it through our mind and ask every question from every angle pertaining to the thought. So, yes definitely, you can give yourself seed thoughts to contemplate to help you learn in any direction that you wish.
I took a speech class way back in high school. One thing that was fun was that each of us wrote down one word on a sheet of paper. We put them all into a bowl then picked a word from it. When we received that word we were given a minute to prepare then we had to get up and talk on the word. It was quite a challenge and it was fun. It was actually like a seed thought. What amazed me was how much you could actually end up saying on one word off the cuff. This is a little bit like a seed thought. If the seed thought is one word or a phrase, it is amazing how much you can extract from that.
So, as long as we're talking about seed thoughts, let me give the group one to contemplate. The seed thought I'm going to give you is a question. Most of you remember that in "The Immortal," its pointed out that "I am that I am" is a mistranslation. It should be, "I am becoming that which I decide to become." So the question for you today is, "What are you deciding to become?" Contemplate that. What are you deciding to become? Think about it and ask yourself this question in the morning, in the afternoon and in the evening. Try to think about it three times a day and think about it at least 5 minutes in each of those time periods.
As thoughts occur to you, make a post about what impressions come to your mind. Even if they don't seem that deep, let us know what impressions are coming to your mind.
As you know we're having the Gathering at the end of May near the Austin Texas area. For those of you who've been considering attending but haven't signed up, the lodgings are just about full so if you want to go you need to contact Robin right away, or contact me; either one of us.
[See 2002 Gathering podcasts & transcriptions.]
That's about all the time I have tonight. We'll be talking to you again soon.
-- End Of Lesson Three --
False Christs & More
Becoming What We've Never Been
Going Where We've Never Gone Before
True Authority
Illusion and Self Correction
The Importance Of Knowledge
The Desire To Gather
Compiler's Note:
Because of a change in circumstances, the original content which was found here preceding the lesson has been modified to reflect those changes. However using the title, date, the original content can be located and read in the Keys Of Knowledge (KOK) Digest Archives here at FreeRead.Com.
Despite the success of using an audio/MP3 podcast presentation of lessons prepared by JJ Dewey on a wide variety of metaphysics, spirituality and esoteric topics, the experiment was discontinued due to increased demands on his time to continue to write the next book in "The Immortal" series.
Also, continued technical problems with the cross-platform recording and playback of the audio files, caused a decision to remove the files from the website.
However, as the MP3 files were voluntarily transcribed from the original audio/MP3 versions of the lessons by members of The Keys Of Knowledge spiritual discussion group, these lessons can be accessed and read using the links at the end of this article -- which is "Lesson One" in a series of "Nine Lessons."
The above lesson is the transcription of the third lesson in the series of "Nine Lessons."
There are collections of other audio podcasts entitled "Teachings For The New Age" which are "lessons" covering a variety of popular metaphysical, spiritual, and esoteric topics. They are all recorded by JJ Dewey -- in his own voice -- in MP3 format, and have been made available for you to listen to them online, and/or you can be download them for free onto your computer hard drive and listen to them when and as you choose. These collections of audio podcast lessons, retreats, seminars, lectures & workshops can be found in the Podcast Index feature here at FreeRead.Com
Copyright 2002 by J.J. Dewey, All Rights Reserved