Evolving to the Next Level

a talk given at a Unitarian Church

??I am here this afternoon because I have this urge to share with everyone who will listen the ideas I have picked up that might help accelerate human evolution. Also I discovered long ago that being of service as a doctor or in any capacity is the healthiest and happiest way to live one’s life. In fact, the consensus among sages seems to be that service to others is the main reason we are here on earth.?

We are fouling our nest at such a rate that soon we will not be able to survive on this planet. The best solution is to evolve into a higher form of human like Chief Sealth, for whom Seattle is named, who said,?

“The earth does not belong to us; we belong to the earth.”?

Instead we have created significant planetary changes in several vital areas. We have been responsible for the mass extinction of species, for significant deforestation, for a significant rise in the level of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, and for significant increases in nitrogen and phosphorus in the sea due to fertilizer runoff in rivers.

This is the kind of talk that I wish I had heard when I was young, and searching for answers. But much of what I will be talking about had not been written when I was young, or it was not yet accessible from India to those of us raised in the Western Hemisphere.

A big study has recently shown that lecturing is one of the less effective ways to learn. Interaction works better, so feel free to ask questions or make a comment.

I gave a talk here a few years ago about Michael Newton’s book, The Journey of Souls. He hypnotized a man who had a pain in his right side that many doctors failed to understand.?

“Go back to where it began.”?

To his astonishment, he went to his previous life, where he was bayonetted in the right side in 1918. Coming out of hypnosis, he was cured!?

A few months later, he hypnotized an unhappy woman. “Go back to when you were last happy. Where are you?”

“In the spirit world, of course.”?

These two cases inspired Newton to take 7000 individuals from the end of their previous life, to life between lives, to birth in this life.

No longer anecdotal evidence; this is scientific evidence for life between lives, and for many lives. In fact we are eternal beings. We are made in the image of God, and we have many godlike qualities that we are just beginning to learn about.?

There is this upward progression of souls. We start out as primitive souls, spun off the Godhead, and gradually, thru many lifetimes, we evolve into ever more loving souls, with the goal of going back to the Source, the Godhead from whence we came! This is what people told Dr Newton under deep hypnosis.

Dr Newton also learned that there was no negativity in the spirit world. There is no hell; there is a lot of joyousness, and a lot of humor, because everyone knows all about the lives of their core group, and humor is the best way to handle the fact that everyone knows everyone else’s weaknesses.

We are made from the same stuff as The Source because everything is made from the same stuff. Physicists are calling the basic building block strings, or pure energy, and I laugh bitterly when I realize that enlightened beings in the AyurVedic tradition have been saying this for 6000 years. Physics is now just catching up.?

We are all one. That means that when we harm someone, we harm ourselves. That is why most religions have the same wonderful ethical position: Do Unto Others

The only problem is that none of them live up to it, big time.

In Christianity: All things whatsoever you would that men should do unto you, do ye even so to them, for this is the law and the prophets.?

In Islam: No one of you is a believer until he loves for his brother what he loves for himself.

In Buddhism: Hurt not others with that which pains yourself.

In Taoism: Regarding your neighbor’s gain as your own gain, and regard your neighbor’s loss as your loss.

In Confucianism: Is there any one maxim which ought to be acted upon throughout one’s life? Surely the maxim of loving-kindness is such. Do not unto others what you would not they should do unto you.

In Hinduism: That is the sum of duty; do naught to others which if done to thee, would cause thee pain.

In Judaism: That which is hateful to you, do not do to your fellow.

Zoroastrianism: (Parsi’s) Do not do unto others whatever is injurious to yourself.

Think for a minute what the world would be like if everyone felt that doing something harmful to another also hurt himself, which is indeed the case. In the East, they call it Karma!

So when more people realize that we are all one, they will take this ethical position more seriously than they have in the past.

Even though we do not always live up to the Golden Rule, it really upsets me when I hear someone beating up on himself or herself.?

“I don’t deserve this”, they will say.?

The truth is that they are simply magnificent beings, the top of the evolutionary ladder, (with the possible exception of Orcas, those huge dolphins that inhabit the Salish Sea.)?

We did not make our bodies; they were given to us, and we need to recognize how very amazing they are, with all the things they are able to do built right in. We should never think that we do not deserve whatever it is.?We deserve it all. Now even if you do not believe all this, I suggest that you do believe it, because it is a much better way to live!

Now I would like to introduce a short History of man:?I believe that we will be able to evolve faster if we first understand how we got to where we are. Man and woman did just fine as a part of nature for 3 million years. Life may have been brutish and short, but man was free in many ways. Along comes the Agricultural Revolution about ten thousand years ago, right after the last ice age, and now the trouble begins. Hierarchies develop because of the needs of farming. Regulating the flow of water thru rice terraces requires someone in charge, and that is how hierarchies got started.?

The rest of human history – these last brief 5-10 thousand years - is simply the efforts of those in power to keep the rest of us down, to keep us under control. [Repeat that]

Early on, those in power developed armies to do the job. Armies might allegedly be for defense, or offense, but in fact they were also used to keep the populace down, in their place. It is happening to this day. Look at how the military-industrial complex which Eisenhower warned us about, is spending half of the money our government spends, when all that money could be spent on improving Americans’ lives. Instead of fighting foreign wars, to no clear purpose, huge amounts of money would be available to improve our lives – food for everyone in adequate amounts, better roads, fewer taxes, better health care.?

Of course, we can get much better health care at less cost with a single payer system, and that is what most doctors want so that they can practice medicine the way they would prefer, but that is another talk.

The next thing that those in power used to keep us down was organized religion. If we put mankind’s life on earth on a scale of one year, organized religion came into the lives of humans late on December 31st. From around 1500BC to 700AD, all the major religions of the world came into being: Confucianism, Buddhism, Hinduism, Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, all in that tiny space of time. Their priests, rabbis, and ministers fed us a bunch of untruths, for the express purpose of keeping us down – to keep us from knowing reality. As Carl Jung said:?

“The primary purpose of organized religion is to keep man from communicating directly with God.”?[Repeat]?

For if man knew how to do this, he would not need them. Now that we understand how we got to where we are today, we need to take steps to free ourselves from this tyranny. And that is exactly what many of us are doing with our efforts to become more spiritual. I feel like the last 5,000 years of human existence is an aberration, a sidetrack from the path of our spiritual growth. There are exceptions that we are now beginning to revere: India and Tibet. We need to get back on track and take steps to keep those in power, who continually misinform us, from getting to us. As a result of this misinformation, we are living in an illusion. We are not living close to reality. We must first see through this power play before we can do something about it.

Who are we, really? I am going to describe who we are according to ancient AyurVedic texts, and from enlightened beings. I want to suggest that even if this were not to be reality, it is a much better reality than the one we are all living under, so it would be a good reality to adopt even if it were not entirely true.?

As my friend William Fitzhugh says on his calling card, “The universe rearranges itself to accommodate your picture of reality.”?

However, there is now scientific evidence suggesting that it is closer to reality than the distorted ideas we have been fed by organized religion in the effort to keep us calm, when we should be fighting mad at the outrageous distortions of truth fed to us.

Each of us is special. Each of us has an individual fingerprint that no one else has or has ever had or will ever have. We are all made of the same stuff. Everything is made of the same stuff. Therefore everyone else is also special. The ancient seers have known this for thousands of years.?

I am that; you are that; all this is that, and that is all there is.?

So being made of the same stuff as everything else, we are divine. We are no more flawed than an elephant is flawed! We may have had our self-esteem weakened by an adult who told us we would never amount to anything, or by our intercessors, the priests, rabbis, and ministers of the world, but we had better get over it. We have no excuse. We are divine.

Who are we? We are spiritual beings temporarily residing in a physical body. Birth and death are merely transitions.?

An enlightened guru was dying. His devotees were sitting near him, weeping.?

“Don’t leave us,” they said.?

“Don’t be silly,” he replied. “ Where would I go?”?

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We are perfect just the way we have been made. We must not grovel in the dust, and think we are unworthy. Our self-esteem needs to be raised.?It has been kept down by our dominators for thousands of years. We must search for and realize our true nature. When we find it, all the little slights that formerly had harmed our self-esteem, will slide off us like water off a duck’s back.?

Today it is called blasphemy when we say we are Gods. I say to you that if indeed we are one with God, it is blasphemy to say otherwise. That is how badly we have been misled by those in power who would keep us down.?

And look how big the gap is between what we are told and what is reality. Our materialistic culture denies the existence of energy healing, and yet I think all of us here recognize that all we are is energy.

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The creator of the universe is a loving God, and he wants us to come back to him. All of this is either scientific evidence or is vouched for by enlightened beings whom I am inclined to trust completely. And this is what we can take for reality, not the stuff we have been fed for centuries. Even if it is incorrect, it is a far more pleasant belief system than the ones available from organized religion.

After all, a belief is only a belief. It is not necessarily true! I am asking you to suspend belief and consider taking on a different set of beliefs that have been around for a long time, and that will make you happier. And if you have not already done this, you need to do this to change the planet!

This is hardly a new idea. You know what this means: Namaste (with palms together):?I honor the Divinity in you! That has been the greeting in India for thousands of years.

We need to realize that we are basically peaceful, and non-violent by nature. For the past two thousand years, we have been going to war constantly, killing our fellow man, and for what? For religious differences. We need to realize that we will be much happier being compassionate toward others, cooperating with them, and accepting that their truth is also partially correct. This is the direction in which we are headed.

Is not this a better place to start from than the destructive pap of organized religion?

Ken Wilbur, the philosopher, is saying that the next step in evolution will be a generation of integral individuals, who recognize that each religion has something to offer. This is complete tolerance, and this attitude will make FEAR disappear. When fear disappears, men like our last president (G. W. Bush)will have more difficulty manipulating people. We can all work toward that by working to lose our tribal instincts, our fear of anyone not in the tribe, and change it to an attitude of celebrating and enjoying the wonderful diversity of the human rainbow.

Another thing we must do if we are to be whole is to take another look at homosexuality.

We cannot continue to treat them as “Other”.

Scientifically we know that individuals do not choose to be homosexuals. From a Darwinian point of view, homosexuals would disappear from the gene pool entirely unless they added survival value to the culture. But they do not disappear. They continue to be born into the world at around 10% of the population.?

What is that survival value??

Well, since they cannot have children, they have vast amounts of time to be creative, just as parents require vast amounts of time to be creative raising their children! And since male homosexuals have a larger commissure, a larger connection between the two hemispheres of the brain, like women have, they use this greater capacity to use both sides of the brain for creative pursuits. Since one cannot be interrupted when writing a poem, time has to be set aside when no one bothers you. So it would appear that the universe planned for gays, and those who oppose them are fighting the entire universe. So we should honor gays for their unique contributions to society, which others of us might like to make, but are too busy raising children.?

So much for some humans’ interpretation of the Bible, and all the harm it has caused for an integral part of society. We must be tolerant of gays before we can progress spiritually. We should go beyond tolerance and indeed honor gays for their contributions to society. I think generally accepted tolerance of gays would stop gay bashing, which is usually done by men who fear that they might be gay.

Dr Michael Brown received the Nobel Prize for his studies on cholesterol. He ascended the platform in Stockholm to give his acceptance speech, and dramatically tore up his notes in front of the expectant audience.

“There was a Nobelist living in California,” he began. “One day he was out for a drive with his wife, and they stopped for gas. The attendant filled the tank, took cash from the scientist, then walked around the car, leaned in and kissed the wife.”

The Nobelist was shocked, but said nothing. Later, he asked his wife, “ What was that about?”

She replied, “Oh, I almost married him!”

“Well, aren’t you glad you married me?”

“Well, if I had married him, he would have won the Nobel Prize!” Dr Brown brought the house down!

It is outrageous the way men have been treating women for thousands of years, and are still treating them badly today. I would say that it is this basic lack of respect that ruins most marriages. So this maltreatment hurts men as well as women. If we are all one, of course it does!

What have we accomplished by treating women the way we have. We have wasted an unbelievably huge amount of human talent, that if appreciated, would most likely have brought us to a much better place in the world today than we are now. In short, we would be further along the evolutionary path. Just one example: About 10 years ago, for the first time, corporations run by women outperformed corporations in America run by men.

Again we need to understand how we got there, so we can restore a balance in coming years. One fascinating theory is that fire and its use for cooking is what propelled us forward on the evolution track, and also made servants of women. Cooked food meant that we had to spend a lot less time eating. When a primitive woman was cooking, the smoke told everyone in the neighborhood. Big males would come over demanding food. So there developed the arrangement between one female and one male that he would protect her in return for food. He was the hunter; she was the gatherer, and the cook. To this day. But happily, since women got the vote a mere 95 years ago, an emancipation process has been occurring. It needs to continue at a rapid pace if we are to evolve successfully. Instead of wanting our wives to stay home and cook, we now have the opportunity to be proud of their accomplishments in this new world.

David Hawkins MD wrote the book, Power vs. Force. It is a remarkable book by a remarkable man. Dr Hawkins, by most standards, is an enlightened being. He had a near death experience as a young boy growing up in Wisconsin, became a psychiatrist with a huge Park Ave practice, seeing 1000 new patients every year. He was able to diagnose them intuitively. Dr Hawkins developed a Map of Consciousness in which he used Applied Kinesiology to determine the various levels. Applied Kinesiology is where you test the truth of a statement using the arm muscles, which are part of the universe. This technique has been rigorously tested scientifically, and holds up. It is more accurate than most scientific studies, and should replace them if we really want to know the truth.?

The Map is a vertical column on a logarithmic scale of 1 to 1000. As you know, a log scale means that 1 equals 10 to the first power, or 10. Two is 10 to the second power or 100. So you can see that the scale gets huge very quickly. Force is below 200, while Power is from 200 to 1000. Force contains negative emotions like shame, hate, fear, pride, and anger, while Power contains positive emotions?- courage, acceptance, reason, love and unconditional love. Force can go in either direction, up or down. Power, on the other hand, goes only in one direction – Upwards! (repeat)?

This map explains how Gandhi defeated the entire British Empire. The Empire was in Force, below 200. Gandhi was above love, at 700, in Power.?The British Empire did not have a chance!

78% of humanity is below 200, and that means that 22% are above 200, into courage, acceptance, reason and hopefully love, and ideally unconditional love.

Using Kinesiology, Hawkins found that a dog’s wagging tail calibrates at 500, way above most of humanity!

Now here is the really exciting and good news. If you are above 200, you counterbalance thousands of people who are below 200, even while you are sleeping – just so long as you are alive! This means you are doing good in the world without even trying – just being.

That is the first piece of good news.?

The second piece of good news is that for the first time in human history, mankind as a whole has risen above 200. This happened around 1987, when the calibration jumped from 190, where it had been for hundreds of years, to 205. Then in 2005, it jumped again to 207. Think of the implications. We are now into Power. Power goes only in an upward direction. So we are headed on a clear course upwards, and there is no turning back. This has presumably happened because of the spiritual revolution, where millions of people like ourselves are seeking to evolve to a higher level, and are taking the rest of the population with us.

So today I want to argue that those of us who are concerned with the fate of mankind need no longer worry about all the bad things that are happening in the world. Worrying in itself never did any good. It may be that there is nothing we can do about the situation anyway. In fact, worrying is positively harmful. We need to put all the energy we can into increasing our level of Power. That means promoting acceptance, reason, and above all, Love?- in fact, unconditional love for all beings.

Why don’t we need to worry any more? Because now that we are in Power on the Map of Consciousness, the direction is only upwards, so the more energy we put into increasing power, the faster it will rise.

But there is another very important reason why we should no longer pay much attention to all the bad things that are going on in the world. And that is the Law of Attraction.

The Law of Attraction says: “That which is like unto itself is drawn.” (repeat)?

In other words, it says that whatever you put your attention on, expands. Do you want bad things to expand? I don’t think so. So putting energy into concern over the bad things that are happening not only does not help, it actually gives energy to those bad situations. It is entirely counterproductive to your goal of increasing Power.

I think this concept is quite important: When you ask for something, you tend to say, I want…

This simply does not work, because you are telling the universe that you lack it. And so you will not get it. You must instead be grateful for what you do have, even if you do not have all of it just yet. You visualize yourself having it, and it is much more likely to come to you.

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I don’t know how much thought you have given to your next life. I know that I have not, because the concept that I have a next life is new to me. I am now quite clear, thanks to Michael Newton’s work, that I have had many lives on this earth. When I come back I would like to return to a nicer world, and that is also motivating me to do something now to help that come about.

What can we do??You do not have to agree with all of this. I am simply stating what I have discovered that needs to change.

First and foremost we must accept the fact that we are capable of evolving, and indeed are evolving, both as a species, and individually. And for the first time in the history of the earth, a species is capable of accelerating its own evolution. Many of us are growing and changing and evolving more in one lifetime than we ever did before.

We must stop harming each other. It begins at birth. 95% of births in the United States are traumatic births. It is not necessary to have a traumatic birth. The movie masterpiece, Birth As We Know It, shows a woman having orgasms during labor in a water bath. That is not how we think about birth, but that is what is possible. If parents knew how joyful children born this way are, and how much easier and more pleasant they are to raise, these indigo children, they would go to the ends of the earth to prevent all the troubles that we now consider the norm, many of them caused by a traumatic birth.?

I believe that I can make a case for the proposal that most American obstetricians should not be allowed near a woman in labor. They do too many important things wrong. This film, Birth as We Know It, is useful for men and women of all ages to see. We have all had the experience of birth, either giving birth or being born, and it is possible to replace that experience with a better one, which can help cure the trauma of your birth.

There will be no more partial penile amputations for any reason whatsoever. We call it circumcision, but that somehow makes it sound OK. It is not OK. It is profoundly harmful, and doctors who perform it have made a farce of their entire career, because they are constantly harming people. These people may not even be their patients. In the case of obstetricians, the mother is his patient, and the newborn infant is the patient of a pediatrician. But the obstetrician often brutally assaults this infant to make money. What should happen is that doctors must stop, and then forgive themselves.

There should be zero tolerance for bullying. Young men and women need to understand that they do not have the right to harm someone else, either physically or verbally. If they do, and if we are all one, they are also harming themselves.

We need to ignore organized religion. If we simply refused to give our money to organized religion, it might dry up and go away. If Jesus, who had a direct relationship with God, were to return, he would not be pleased with how organized religion has distorted his teachings.

In fact, some believe that Jesus did return, by channeling A Course in Miracles, a book that has benefited millions.?

Everyone would be a lot happier today if their church had not put them down in their formative years. Churches have kept us from really understanding that we are Godlike, and if we really understood that, nothing would harm us. I don’t think churches are going away any time soon, but each person must be aware of what it is that they are supporting. In one of the creeds that I used to recite in the Presbyterian Church that my father made me attend, I had to repeat the words, “There is no health in us!” That experience helped cure me of belonging to that church.

We can focus our energy on helping people in the now. We can help them by simply listening to them, and easing their suffering.

We can encourage them to find the work that is best suited for them – their dharma. There is one job that they are uniquely good at, and if they are lucky enough to find it, and do it, they will be most happy. Deepak Chopra told his kids:?

“You do not have to earn a living. I will provide for you. All you have to do is to find out what your dharma is – what is that one skill that you are really good at, with which you can make your contribution to the world.”?

Deepak says that his kids heard him when they were about 4 years old. By the time they went to college, they were financially independent, so he did not even have to pay their college tuition! If you understand that dharma is an important concept for each individual, you will be motivated to help people towards that goal. Do what you love, and the money will follow, and much, much more will follow.

You can love people unconditionally. That means that, no matter how they behave, you still love them. You do not have to approve of what they do; you just have to love them, no matter what. Until you do this, you may have no idea how much it will benefit you.?

In order to do this, you sometimes have to try to understand where they are coming from. Often you will find that they are victims, and that is what is driving their behavior. But even if you do not understand where they are coming from, just love them.

If you are having difficulty loving them, then you need to think about forgiveness. This is really big, and it is not only for them that you forgive. It is for you. It is difficult to make spiritual progress with unforgiven people in your life.

That brings me to gratitude. Like forgiveness, this is really big. If you concentrate on the things in your life that you are grateful for, you will realize how much you have, and the things you don’t have wont make as big a difference!

You can help people with their spiritual needs. I was trained as a scientist, and I now have a lot of pity for people who go through their entire lives only as scientists. They are missing so much by saying that until it has been proven by science, it does not exist. For example, extra-sensory perception does exist. Humans have far more than the five senses. We are all capable of performing telepathy, of having clairvoyance, and many other fascinating abilities. A few pioneering scientists have proven this, but most of their colleagues are not ready to listen.?

?I practice TM or Transcendental Meditation. I have found that I cannot persuade a person to meditate. They just have to be ready. Most of the people I have talked to about this tell me that they saw good changes in another person who was meditating, and they wanted to experience those changes too. That experience, of being influenced not by words, but by the behavior of another, led them to meditate. But you can of course encourage someone to go to an introductory lecture.

I am watching the future of education unfold at Maharishi International University (MIU) in Fairfield, Iowa. There everyone meditates, and the students say that the atmosphere for learning is vastly different from their experience in other schools. It is the future of learning.

It can be most helpful to write down your successes with helping others to evolve. Don’t be shy, and don’t feel that you can’t do this because it will be boastful. Do it because it is the truth, and you simply want to emphasize good things. And by writing it down, you will give it emphasis, and a life of its own. Try it for a while and see if it doesn’t motivate you to go for more successes, however small.

You can of course continue to work on your own spiritual growth, and that is one reason why you come to these sessions at the Unitarian Church. Once one gets started on this path, as you already know, it will not leave you alone. I experience a continual pressure to grow and expand, and I respond to it. By doing so, we are going up the part of the Map of Consciousness that represents Power, and increasing the number of people below 200 whom we counterbalance.

When we wonder what to do next, surrender to the universe, and let the universe tell us what to do. And please remember, we can use our arm to find the truth. I know a brilliant psychologist who has helped hundreds of clients become happier with their lives. She uses her arm frequently to determine whether or not some idea is the right one to go with. And if you go to chiropractors, you may well find them testing you by pressing on the wrist of your outstretched arm. Some of them use this technique hundreds of times each day.

If you take nothing else away with you when you leave this room, please take this: Pay more attention to the Law of Attraction in your daily life. Think about things you want to expand. Avoid paying attention to things that you would prefer not to see happening, unless you are actively doing something to stop them.

Speaking of coincidences, no sooner had I arrived in my mind at the main point that I wanted to emphasize in this talk, that we need to ignore the negative aspects of our culture as much as possible and concentrate on the positive, I picked up the sequel to the book, The Celestine Prophecy, by James Redfield, which is called The Tenth Insight, and lo and behold, that is its main thesis! That we should recognize The Fear that many people have, and recognize that they are trapped in it, but that they, like us, are souls trying to evolve. We should have compassion for them, but we should still do our best to ignore the Fear, and get on with bringing in the next evolutionary step for mankind.?

Here is what Jean Houston has to say: We have lived through the good times. We are now headed for the great times.?

We have a long and glorious future. Lets make the most of it!?

When you realize that your own personal evolution has huge implications for everyone else, you become much more highly motivated to try to evolve.?

I hope this gave you a new idea or two about how to accelerate human evolution.

Even better – I hope this talk has made you realize that you are already doing some of these things to help accelerate human evolution.