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Evolution in

Consciousness

Conversations
D r. M i c e a l L e d w i t h

Dr. Miceal Ledwith, L.Ph., L.D., D.D., LL.D (h.c), served as a


Catholic priest and as Professor of Theology and College
President for over 25 years in Ireland. During the course of his
academic and administrative careers he lectured extensively to
interested adult groups in many countries and continues to
speak at venues all over the world today.
He is a long-time member of Ramtha's School of Ancient
Wisdom and has been invited to speak at events held by the
school for several years at many venues throughout the world.
He was one of the scholars featured in "What the Bleep Do We
Know," and its sequel" Down the Rabbit Hole."
Given his life's experience and long years as a professional
theologian Miceal Ledwith believes he is in a unique position to
assist people who are also searching for information and
answers, and to point the way so that they too can move
towards finding the journey of discovery which he is on. To
assist in that way is the objective of both the DVD series and
his forthcoming major work, "Forbidden Truth." His book "The
Orb Project Phenomenon," co-authored with the German
physicist Dr. Klaus Heinemann and his DVD Orbs: Clues to a
More Exciting Universe". Part One of his book "Forbidden
Truth," which will be titled "Jesus of Nazareth," is forthcoming.

Conversations
In January 2013 he will be recording five new DVDs to be
entitled Conversations. They deal with how the brain forms
and processes fundamental and crippling beliefs,especially
religious beliefs. Why it is so difficult to change them and how.

Dr. Miceal Ledwith


Photo by Robert Leon

Evolution in
Consciousness

Articles & Sights

Author

Adviser

Mystic

Scholar

Religions, a Sexist Organization?


Hatred of the Way God Made Us: Jesus and Mary Magdalene.
THE GODS OF MEN,III.
Mary Magdalene Enigma: A Person of Puzzling or
Contradictory Character
The Rise and Fall of the Halo
The Wino and The Master
Reversing the Law of Cause and Effect
How Can Little Green Men be Made in the Image of God?
Orbs, is the Vail Lifting?

http://www.flickr.com/photos/15396401@N00/11463203

t a public lecture many years ago a

speaker surprised me by saying the some


of the most sexist organizations on this
planet have been the world's great
religions.

Indeed many of them, he went on to say, claim to base such

prejudiced attitudes on the inspired written word of God. It occurred to me then

Knowing how far apart the belief and


practice of any organization can sometimes
drift I wondered if this prejudice was a
matter of fundamental doctrine for the great
religions, or was it just how things
happened to develop in practice for any
number of the many reasons imaginable. So
I began to look afresh at the principal
writings that the great religions hold sacred,
to see how they estimated women, such as
the Old and New Testaments, the Talmud,
the Koran, and the sacred scriptures of the
Buddhists and Hindus.
It was a discouraging investigation.

f we start with the most ancient the Hindu laws of Manu state: In childhood
a female remains subject to her father. In youth a female is subject to her husband. When
her lord is dead she shall be subject to her sons. 'A woman must
never be independent.' Indeed the sacred texts of the Hindus state
that it is the highest duty of a wife to burn herself after her husband
has died. Some central streams of Buddhism believe that to be
born a woman is due to bad karma. A woman ought to pray to be
re-born as a man in a future existence. The Koran regards a woman
as 'half a man.' Forgetfulness overcomes a woman. They are
'inherently weaker in rational judgment.' Even the great western
thinker Plato quotes Socrates approvingly: Do you know anything at
all practiced by mankind in which the male is not far better than the
female. It's hardly surprising that Plato's pupil Aristotle, the tutor of
Alexander the Great, didn't even accept that women were legitimate
human beings: they were & failed men due to some mishap in the
womb during the conception process.
There is no doubt that the influence of the Church has profoundly shaped our culture in the
West, and that has brought many good things for which we should be profoundly grateful.
But it does not take much research into either the sacred texts of the great religions or the
history of their practice down the centuries to see that they have played a central role in
fostering the disenfranchisement of women. That did not stay within the Church's sphere,
for its religious influence has come to be expressed in most bodies of fundamental secular
legislation and practice around the world, not just in the West.
But I came to see eventually that the facts of the matter were much more complicated even
than this.

This was not an influence that found an unwelcome reception in those over

whom it was exercised. It seemed to me unmistakable that a pro-male and anti-female bias
was buried deep within the human male psyche, independent of and long prior to anything
we would today regard as a religious influence. If this is the case then it should come as
less of a surprise to find so much overt sexism in fundamental religious texts, given the
traditions out of which those religions have themselves grown.

A language's slang vocabulary can reveal a great deal


of what prejudices lie deep at the heart of any culture,
and Bishop Shelby Spong was one of the first to point
out how so many popular words for sexual intercourse
display enormous male hostility and contempt for the
female.
One of the greatest libraries that ever existed was
established at Nineveh, beside Mosul in modern Iraq,
by the last of the Assyrian kings, Assurbanipal (died
about 627 BC). He was known as Asenappar in the
Hebrew Bible and as Sardanapalus to the Romans. He
was one of the few kings in antiquity who could read
and write, and was the only literate monarch in fifteen
centuries of Assyrian Kings. History regards him as
forming the first deliberately collected library.

Bishop Shelby Spong

Its significance for us here is that we can


assume all ancient written works and records
in cuneiform literature that existed in
Mesopotamia, that most ancient cradle of
civilization, were collected at Nineveh using
all the resources of the mighty Assyrian
Empire to do so. It is an incomparable record
of the earliest recorded stages of human
history and our best source to discover
where the anti-female bias in our history truly
began. The remains of this library were
unearthed in the latter part of the 19 century
and comprised more than one thousand
documents now in the care of the Iraqi
Department of Antiquities and the British
Assurbanipal

Museum.

Most reputable scholars today will admit that several of those documents are the
precursors of seminal documents that later went to form the foundations of the JudeoChristian tradition, in particular the Book of Genesis which is central to understanding the
estimate of the female in the Judeo-Christian tradition. Genesis is an immensely profound
work despite having been turned on its head all too often by well meaning preachers.
These worthy gentlemen have apparently convinced themselves that it is no more difficult
to read and understand a three thousand year old text from a culture as remote from ours
as is possible to imagine, than it is to read the morning newspaper.
Genesis wrestles with an age-old issue that must at some stage come to perplex every
living person. If we persist in thinking of God and God's relation to the world, in the homely
ways to which we have so long grown accustomed, then we are left with an insoluble
problem, which is what the opening chapters of Genesis wrestles with.
The world as we know it is replete with more than its fair share of suffering, disease, old
age, infirmity, natural disasters, frailty, disappointment, betrayal and ultimately death.
That kind of world cannot have come from the hand of a good God, so either God did
not create the world or something went wrong. Those indeed are the only two options
we have in the mindset I have labeled the Hamburger Universe.

What is a Hamburger Universe?


http://www.youtube.com/watch?
v=ZPohpsN9n-o&feature=related

Photo by Robert Leon

That God did a good job originally but something


went wrong was the explanation the authors of

what is really
notable is that the blame for
what went wrong was laid fairly
and squarely at the feet of Eve,
Genesis went for, but

the mother of the human race. So now from some


of the earliest sources in the human record we
have the female blamed for everything that's
wrong with the world, (even though it should be
noted that in the Nineveh documents a minor god
is blamed as well). I had often noted in my biblical
studies years ago that whenever something went
really wrong some woman was usually blamed.
But we have to ask if those ancient texts are the
root of the anti-female bias in the male psyche, or
did those texts themselves grow out of an already
existing bias? If it's the former then a major
element in rectifying the situation would be to ask
the religions to clean up their act as far as the
female is concerned. If it's the latter then we have
a far deeper problem that originates way beyond
the realms of rational thought and discourse,
rooted in the shady realms of the unconscious, the
subliminal and taboo. It probably also is connected
to those aspects of the female that are related to the mysterious, their closeness to the facts of
birth and the renewal of life, the unavoidable attraction they hold for men which undermines males
perceived power, and those aspects of the female that provoked cries of ritual uncleanness in every
culture of which we have knowledge. Once we understand all of that we will have gained a major
insight into the operation of religion and its rationale for the subjugation of women over the past
four thousand years. Indeed some of the worst atrocities for which religions were responsible have
come when the seal of divine approval is used to justify our wars, fears, hatreds and phobias and
the oppression of the female must surely rank as one of the most outstanding examples of this.
This prejudice against women as the cause of all our woes has descended as an integral part of
most of our cultures and history, and its hardly surprising that eventually the distrust and avoidance
of women became a central religious duty and indeed the very badge of holiness in the West.

So even if the religions have historically been some of the most sexist organizations on earth
it seems they were more the agencies who exacerbated what was already there than that they
were the origins of it. In turn that would mean that addressing the anti-female bias would
have to be the first priority for any body of teaching that purported to be in the vanguard of
spiritual evolution. It would also have to be the touchstone of its validity.
This raises some serious issues. Less than two decades after the Passion of Jesus, and
some two decades before the appearance of the first Gospel of the New Testament, St. Paul
started to put pen to paper. Over the next fifteen years more than half of the New Testament
as we know it came from his hand, and those writings preceded all the Gospels.
Paul never mentions the quintessential Christian female, Mary the Mother of Jesus, in his
extensive writings. He states women will be saved only through motherhood (1 Tim. 2: 15);
and that they ought to be subject to men. There is little doubt among scholars of the New
Testament that Paul saw in the growing emancipation of women in the Roman world, a
major strand in the breakdown of orderly society, and he believed that Christians should
adhere to the traditional strict lines of family life. Peter says that women should be
cherished because they are weaker, and the context implies he is not just thinking of
physical weakness (1 Peter). Things hardly improved when St. Jerome came on the scene
and justified marriage only because it could produce more virgins. The highest praise
Augustine could manage for women was to regard them as a malum necessarium,; 'a
necessary evil.'

Saint Paul Writing His Epistles

If we look back twenty or thirty years earlier than St. Paul's writings we can see the cultural
and religious background from which Jesus emerged. He had, of course, made enormous
waves among the religious traditions of his day. It was time when at every religious service
the men prayed; ;Blessed are you O Lord who has not made me a woman, or worse,
Blessed be God who has not created me a heathen, a slave or a woman. It was a time
when the women had to sit in separate sections, and when they were not counted in the
votes. It was unusual for them to be taught the Torah. Indeed the writers of the Talmud
added that it would be better to burn the words of Torah than entrust them to a woman.
This very unpromising context is the background from which Jesus emerged, and seems to
be the general background which Paul and Peter wished to perpetuate.

If, as noted earlier, the emancipation of women has to be the touchstone for the
validity of any leading edge spiritual movement for human liberation, then this
raises disturbing questions because of these elements in the witness of Paul and
Peter. But before we ask those questions, we have to inquire if this version

of things was in fact true to what Jesus taught and did, or not, or
whether the structure erected on the foundation he had established
had drifted from his message?

But looking back over those


previous 20 or 30 years we
see a very different attitude in
the teaching and practice of
Jesus. The New Testament
clearly acknowledges that
w o m e n w e re a m o n g h i s
earliest followers. Mary
Magdalene, Joanna and
Susanna accompanied Jesus
during his ministry and
supported him financially.
According to one account an
unnamed Gentile women
stated to Jesus that the
Ministry of God is not confined
to particular groups or persons, but belongs to
all who have faith. (Mk.7: 24-30; Mt. 15: 21-28)

Illustration by Paolo Veronese of Jesus


healing the woman with a flow of blood.

Raising of Lazarus
John Bridges Christ healing the mother of Simon Peter

Jesus ate with women as well as men, which would not have been customary, and spoke
to them both in public and private. In the very early years of the church this trend continued
and some of the earliest gathering places were in the houses of such women. Churches
often grew up on those sites later, and have preserved their names in those locations even

Whatever may be said of the teaching of


Jesus about women in the New Testament his conduct and
practice would certainly have been branded as
revolutionary.
into our own times.

Hemis gompa in Ladakh

However, the most poignant of all the


teachings of Jesus on the dignity and nobility
of women came to light just over one hundred
years ago, and from another non-canonical
source, the famous scrolls discovered by
Nicholas Notovitch at the monastery of Hemis,
near the city of Leh in Nepal. It was said that
similar scrolls were to be found in many other
monasteries scattered throughout India and
Tibet, not just at Hemis. The scrolls shed light
on what Jesus was doing in those eighteen
years of his life that are missing from the New
Testament directly after his appearance in the
Temple at the age of 12, presumably for his
/www.flickr.com/photos/75823101@N00/1364617997/ Hemis Gompa, India 2006
Bar-Mitzvah. Are we told nothing of those
missing years by the New Testament because nothing of any account was happening, or
was something so significant happening that all mention of it had to be omitted since it did
not accord with the politically correct version of him which it had now been decided to
preach?
The Notovitch scrolls fill in what was happening in those missing years. According to the
Scrolls Jesus arrived in India at age 14 and studied in the sacred cities for six years, after
which he went into the high places and studied there for another six years. He returned
home to Israel about the age of thirty having survived several attempts on his life because
of what he taught.
Because of the tumult which his teachings provoked in Israel he was constantly under
scrutiny by the religious and secular authorities, and the spies of Pontius Pilate were
constantly monitoring him.

One day an old woman who was listening to his teaching was roughly pushed aside
by one of those spies. He was rebuked by Jesus, and what followed must be one of
the most inspirational pronouncements on the dignity and nobility of woman that
has ever been produced. It merits quotation in full.
It is not good for a son to push away his mother, that he may occupy the place which
belongs to her. Whoever does not respect his mother, the most sacred being after his
God - is unworthy of the name of son.
Listen to what I say to you. Respect woman, for in her we see the mother of the
universe, and all the truth of divine creation is to come through her. She is the fount of
everything good and beautiful, as she is also the germ of life and death. Upon her man
depends in all his existence, for she is his moral and natural support in his labors.
In pain and suffering she brings you forth, in the sweat of her brow she watches over
your growth, and until her death you cause her the greatest anxieties. Bless her and
adore her, for she is your only friend and support on earth.
Respect her, defend her. In doing so you will gain for yourself her love, you will find
favor before God and for her sake many sins will be remitted to you.
Love your wives and respect them for they will be mothers tomorrow, and later the
grandmothers of a whole nation.
Be submissive to the wife; her love ennobles man, softens his hardened heart, tames
the wild beast in him and changes it to a lamb.
Wives and mothers are the priceless treasures which God has given to you. They are
the most beautiful ornaments of the universe, and from them will be born all who will
inhabit the earth.
Even as the Lord of Hosts separated the light from the darkness and the dry land from
the waters, so does woman possess the divine gift of calling forth out of man's evil
nature, all the good that is in him.
Therefore I say unto you, after God, to woman must belong your best thoughts, for she
is the divine temple where you will most easily obtain perfect happiness.
Draw from this temple your moral force. There you will forget your sorrows and your
failures, and recover the love necessary to aid your fellow men.

Suffer her not to be humiliated, for by humiliating her you humiliate yourselves and
lose the sentiment of love, without which nothing can exist here on earth.
Protect your wife, that she may protect you-you and your household. All that you do
for your mothers, your wives, for a widow or for any woman in distress, you will do for
your God.

Gustav Klimt

But we do not have to go as far as ancient Nepal to gain a different view. A treasure trove of
early Christian documents discovered in Egypt in the 19th and 20th centuries give us some
amazingly fresh insights into Jesus's relation to women during his ministry. Several of these

Pistis Sophia, the Sophia of Jesus Christ,


the Dialogue of the Savior, the Gospel of Philip and the
Gospel of Mary, focus on one woman in particular whom we already knew from the
documents such as the

New Testament as a prominent prophetic leader and visionary in at least one section of the
early Christian movement, Mary Magdalene. In the Sophia of Jesus Christ; five women and
twelve men are gathered to hear the Savior. Mary is entrusted with the most elevated
teachings of Jesus and has a prominent role in handing on his message. In the Pistis
Sophia; she is also prominent among the disciples and asks more questions than all of the
rest put together. Her high spiritual status is affirmed and she intercedes with the Savior
as some of the disciples are despairing. In the Gospel of Mary the Magdalene is
portrayed without doubt as a woman leader among the disciples. She alone of all the
disciples is not frightened and afraid. She is pre-eminently the one whom Jesus most
esteems. The Gospel of Philip focuses on the special relationship between Jesus and her.
In the Dialogue of the Savior Mary is named along with Jude Thomas and Matthew as
partaking in a prolonged dialogue with Jesus, and she questions Jesus on several matters
as the representative of the group. All of this evidence
should settle the debate we often hear about whether
she was an apostle or not. The real question now is
not whether she was one of the Apostles of Jesus but
whether she was in fact, in the title often ascribed to
her of late, the Apostle of the Apostles.
Some churches still prohibit women from the ministry
and the reason adduced normally is that the pattern of
an all-male priesthood laid down by Jesus is not
something that the Churches are at liberty to alter.
Even when some churches admit female ministers, to
then admit them as bishops is seen as a further major
barrier. But what if the pattern of the priesthood
established by Jesus was entirely different, and not just
that but that the chief among the first such group was
female? Certainly if the primary duty of any true religion
has to be to set about rectifying the inbuilt anti-female
bias in the male psyche, no other initiative could ever
hope to be as appropriate and successful as that.
Nuestra Seora de los Dolores. Capilla del Sagrario de la Iglesia Parroquial de Santa
Mara del Alcor. El Viso del Alcor (Sevilla).

And what of the personal side of things?

A succession of works such as

Holy Blood, Holy Grail, 'Bloodline of the Holy Grail,' ;Rex Deus andThe Da Vinci Code, have
raised afresh the question of what kind of personal relationship there was between Magdelene
and Jesus. That inevitably leads to the further question of whether there exists any such thing
as a Messianic Bloodline, and if there is, what does it entail? Is it simply a matter of historical
physical descent from this preeminent pair, or would such descendants carry something in their
physical or mental make up that sets them apart?
More than 150 years ago Ludwig Feuerbach remarked that rather than God having created us in
his own image, it is we who have created God in our image. So in all the religions what we are
dealing with in the first place is human-style images of the creator rather than with the real thing.
As far as repression of the female goes those images have to be recognized in the truest sense
as nothing more than the Gods of Men.
Copyright, Miceal Ledwith.

http://www.hamburgeruniverse.com/

The conclusions put forward about Jesus in


this DVD will come as a surprise to both the
religious right and the religious left, because
these precise conclusions have never before
been drawn in the long debate about him. The
early Christian Church spent several centuries
of tortured controversy trying to explain how
God could have become man in Jesus the
Christ. The Church would have been far more
faithful to the original message and intent of
Jesus if it had focused instead on how the
divine element in every man and woman could
be effectively drawn forth. According to the
teachings of Ramtha, and upheld by a
thorough investigation of all the historical
sources, that is precisely what Jesus came to
exemplify and facilitate for everyone. Running
time of the DVD 3 hours 40 minutes.

Order
Here

The insights of leading-edge science


indicate a very different understanding of
God and our place and purpose in creation
than the ways of thought with which we
were traditionally familiar. In the main this is
because in the theologies of the religions
cosmological views about the nature of
reality have never been distinguished
p ro p e r l y f ro m t h e re l i g i o u s b e l i e f s
themselves. A good example is how the
belief that the earth is at the center of the
universe still tends to hang on in the form
that the human race is in some way at the
center of existence in the universe and at
the very heart of Gods design and purpose.
In this DVD Miceal Ledwith uses a
humorous image which he called The
Hamburger Universe to describe a mindset
of which we may be almost totally unaware,
but which nevertheless will keep up firmly
blocked from any significant spiritually
unless we address that mindset.
The
separation of time conditioned modes of
thought and views about the nature of
reality, as well as how we understand God
and human destiny, is a painful but very
rewarding process for any person seriously
interested in finding the answer to lifes
great questions. Running time of the DVD:
57 minutes.

If the New Testament appears to be silent


about the relationship between Jesus and
Mary Magdalene perhaps it is because it
was formulated in the period after the Bar
K o c h b a r r e b e l l i o n a n d t h e fi n a l
destruction at Jerusalem and Masada. It
was a period when it became imperative
to placate the Romans and accuse the
Jews of being the cause of the hostility
which the message of Jesus aroused. In
the later era when the Gospels were
formed incidents and their significance in
the life of Jesus would come to be
missed. But they would have been clear
as crystal when the early Christian
movement was still predominantly a
Jewish or eastern Semitic thing. If the
New Testament as we have it wished to
be silent on the relationship between
Jesus and Mary it did not realize the
significance which the Eastern mind
would read into several incidents which
are recounted in the New Testament. If
their implications had been realized they
would have been removed.

Married?
The original meaning of
"Apostle was "apostellein,"
'to bear witness.'
If Magdalene was not alone just a witness,
but the very first witness who saw him at
that time, does it not justify her having the
title not simply of "Apostle" but also that
very ancient appellation often attributed to
her, "Apostle of the Apostles?"
In John 2: 20, 28 and 29 the incident is told
of Jesus returning from his travels to the
house at Bethany which belonged to
Martha, Mary and Lazarus who had just
died. Martha goes out to meet him, but
not Mary. Is it because a wife in mourning
cannot go out to meet her husband
returning from a journey until she is sent
for? That was the Jewish custom then,
and Mary did go out to meet him when she
was sent for.

In Matthew 26 and Mark 14 we are told of


the woman who anointed the feet of Jesus
with oil. John Christopher Thomas in his
perceptive work "Foot-washing in John
13" points out that it was only a wife who
would be permitted to engage in such an
intimate act with a man, and indeed that in
that culture it often was a prelude to
sexual intercourse between husband and
wife. In the Diatessaron, which dates from
about 150-160 AD, we are told that the
foot-washer was the woman known as
Mary of Bethany or Mary Magdalene.

it would have been considered scandalous


for any woman other than a wife to do this.

In the same category is the incident told in


Luke 10:39: the woman Mary who sat at
the feet of Jesus. In first century Judaism

Excerpts from article by Dr. Miceal Ledwith


Hatred of the Way God Made Us: Jesus
and Mary Magdalene. THE GODS OF
MEN,III.

In the New Testament's seven lists of


women associated with the ministry of
Jesus Mary Magdalene is named first in six
of them, even ahead of the mother of
Jesus.
In the narratives of the
appearances of Jesus in the garden after
his passion
Magdalene was the first to
meet him and it was within the context of
an exchange of intimacies.

By Dr. Miceal Ledwith

For full article click here

Mary Magdalene is traditionally depicted with a vessel of ointment, in reference to the Anointing of Jesus.

By Dr. Miceal Ledwith

Enigma:
"a person of puzzling or contradictory character:"
Of all the characters of ancient history that have captured our imaginations powerfully in recent
years, Mary Magdalene must surely rank as the most enigmatic. Her name has been linked to a
vast range of issues that peak our curiosity ranging from the conspiracy theory/secret society
gloss to the sultry insinuations of being the intimate companion of the Savior.

There is little doubt than those who would find the idea of Jesus being linked in a personal
relationship to as woman as inappropriate or even blasphemous, would do well first of all to
examine why they consider hatred of the way God made us to be a primary religious duty.

Mary Magdalene

But perhaps what is even more important is to realize that those concerns that
preoccupy us so much today may not have concerned the contemporaries of Jesus and
Mary nearly as much. Perhaps the contemplation of such a close relationship between
these two persons is such an issue for us today that it actually serves only to obscure
the real importance of the message of both those figures. All the while we merrily go
about working out what really are after all only our own mental prejudices and
gymnastics, but at their expense.
Several acclaimed authors have quoted the famous text from the second century
Gnostic Gospel of Philip: "Jesus loved her (Mary Magdalene) more than the other
disciples and used to kiss her often on the lips" (Philip 63, 64). What they blithely ignore
is the actions of many mischievous termites down the centuries which have left holes in
that ancient manuscript precisely where those loaded words figure in the Coptic text.
There is no word for "kiss" and there is no word for "lips" in the text as we have it. What
those words may have been is anybody's educated guess, but it is certainly not
legitimate research to quote the text as if no gaps existed, for we will fill the gaps with
terms that suit our own interest. Several respected authors have stated that the Gnostic
documents from Nag Hammadi describe Mary Magdalene as the lover of Jesus. There
are no such Gnostic texts.
If you are looking for evidence of a special relationship between Jesus and Mary there is
no need to look to the early 1940's Gnostic texts of Nag Hammadi. You should look to
the New Testament itself.

By a fortuitous accident of history the original Western

redactors of the new Testament text did not appear to fully realize the import certain
narratives would carry for the eastern mind, which is the mind in which the very early
oral and written traditions about Jesus were formed.

In an earlier article in this series

(The Gods of Men, III, Bleeping Herald, July 2008) I have analyzed the several
references within the New Testament canon which demonstrate beyond doubt that
there was a very special relationship indeed between Jesus and Mary, so there is
no need to look for dusty documents to prove it in texts found a generation ago in
an ancient burial ground of the sixth dynasty Pharaohs.
But one of the issues that concerns me most in the discussion of the Magdalene today
is the fascination with the secret knowledge or teachings which Jesus is alleged to have
given her as "apostle of the apostles."

One of the greatest delusions that has dogged humanity's path on its quest for evolution is the
conviction that there exists a secret knowledge, which if only one could find it, would open up
the doors to all we have ever desired. True spiritual evolution certainly requires true knowledge
about how things are before we can make any progress, and we have certainly been fed with
far more than enough defective knowledge about these matters from those who have decided
to their own satisfaction that they are in charge of our immortal destiny. But knowledge on its
own can never do it. There is no secret knowledge to be given to anyone by anybody which
will automatically lay the miracles of the universe at our feet.
The second century Gnostics were preoccupied with secret knowledge, so it's no surprise to
find their texts have the form they do. If one believes the moon is made of green cheese, or that
the sun revolves around the earth, these are harmless enough beliefs in terms of everyday living
- unless you are instructing astronauts. If you believe we were sent here by God to work out our
destiny by obeying a set of rules, and that Jesus came here to suffer and die because of our
sins, those are relatively harmless beliefs too, unless you happen to be advising people on how
to work out their eternal destiny in this world.
But that being said, there is no secret knowledge that can deliver this to you ready made; there
is only knowledge that will help you to engage that knowledge into experience and that is
where the work of salvation comes in.

Salvation, or working out your destiny, or evolving

spiritually, or whatever term you choose to describe it, does not come from knowledge, but
from what you accomplish using informed knowledge.

This is why it was always called The

Great WORK. Any secret knowledge that was supposed to have existed in certain exalted
circles in the past, was only secret because of a prudence that the great masters used to
prevent the information about how things worked from getting into the hands of those who
would misuse it for their own selfish gratification, usually in the manipulation of others. This was
the sense in which Jesus spoke of "not casting your pearls before swine." In the case of the
Magdalene whatever so called "secret" knowledge was given her by Jesus, was given only to
facilitate and guide her own personal work in the voyage of self-discovery along which mastery
lies. And it would not have been given to her in the context of any personal favor or relationship,
but in terms of what she had already earned in terms of personal effort and discovery of the
path along which evolution occurs. Basically, that consists in confronting and dealing with our
own personal issues that have kept us blocked life after life. It is not about finding any magical
secret knowledge which will deal with it for us.

Secrets

So if Jesus revealed certain secrets to Mary


Magdalene, as he is recorded also as having done
to his twin

brother Thomas, it was not done

because of any privileged personal intimate


relationship or connection, but because of the
seriousness they had demonstrated in
accomplishing the degree of spiritual evolution they
had already made. That now made this knowledge
meaningful for them in terms of personal spiritual
growth.
Mary was a very common Jewish name in the times
of the New Testament. There are 16 women whose
names we know from the New Testament Gospels
who were associated with the ministry of Jesus and
six of those were called Mary. So when the name
"Mary" is mentioned in the New Testament you
usually have another qualification tagged on to
identify more clearly who the person being spoken
of really is; for example "Mary of Clophas,"" Mary of
Magdalene, " etc..
In fact the Mary Magdalene of the Gospels as we have come to know her from the Christian
tradition is something of a conglomerate figure ranging over the full scale from the reformed
demoniac to the repentant prostitute who anointed Jesus before his passion.
Of the six Marys in the Gospels all recognize Mary who was the mother of Jesus. Then there is
the Mary whom Luke calls "the sinful woman," the reformed prostitute, or the one from whom
several devils were ejected, according to Mark; the one who anointed Jesus prior to his
passion, according to John, and therein the one who first saw him in the garden after his
passion, thus meriting the title "Apostle of the Apostles."

Passion

We have Mary of Bethany, who is the sister of Lazarus. In John's Gospel it is Mary who is preeminent, but in Luke it is Peter. But then Luke was Peter's secretary, and there was no love lost
between them. It was not until the year 591 AD, in his famous Thirty Third Homily, that all of
these female figures were combined into one by Pope Gregory the Great.

So who really was Mary of Magdalene, if she


is not a five-part composite of history?
At Magdala, a town near top of the Lake of Galilee, the cult of Ishtar or Astarte, mother
goddess and Queen of Heaven, was common. The cult
of Ishtar had a seven-fold initiation in which the sacrifice
of doves was held to be important. The dove in fact was
the symbol of the goddess. There is independent
evidence that sacrificial doves were raised in village of
Magdala.
So coming from Magdala it is extremely likely that Mary
might have been associated with that cult, and the
statement in the Gospel of St. Luke that she was a
woman out of whom seven devils were cast might mean
something quite different if interpreted correctly in a
wider context.
It might not refer to
an exorcism at all, but to some progress along a path of
initiation wherein each of the seven levels of initiation
might be symbolically expressed as the casting out of a
devil from us -

demons"

"facing your

as we would express it today.

The

New Testament saw that as a terrible thing. It might in


fact turn out to be something quite wonderful if seen in
terms of a progress of initiation in the school of the female goddess at Magdala.

We would do well to remember that in the esoteric tradition the principal teacher of
Jesus during his time in the Himalayas, between the ages of 20 and 26 years, told him
that when the time of his passion was imminent he would send him a jar of precious
ointment as a sign to warn him to be ready, and to assure him that he was not going to
be alone and abandoned during the time of his initiation.
Mary was the one who performed the anointing.

Did this indicate that she had some

connection with that same brotherhood and sisterhood, and did this have anything to do
with the Mother Goddess Cult of Magdala?
This is not something I casually suggest. In my DVD " How Jesus Became a Christ" I said that
to my mind the greatest proof that Jesus was in India and Tibet was not just the scrolls that so
emphatically say he was there, the most famous of which were the ones discovered and
published by Nicholas Notovitch in 1893. The real indication, even if such scrolls had never
been discovered, is the well over one hundred major parallels I have pointed out between
the message of the Buddha and that of Jesus, even though the Buddha was five hundred
years earlier. Does that mean Jesus was a plagiarist or the Buddha his inspiration? By no

What it indicates is that both were


conduits of a much older wisdom that predated each, a wisdom old as the foundations of
the world.
means.

We would do well to remember that in the esoteric tradition the principal teacher of
Jesus during his time in the Himalayas, between the ages of 20 and 26 years, told him
that when the time of his passion was imminent he would send him a jar of precious
ointment as a sign to warn him to be ready, and to assure him that he was not going to
be alone and abandoned during the time of his initiation.
Mary was the one who performed the anointing.

Did this indicate that she had some

connection with that same brotherhood and sisterhood, and did this have anything to do
with the Mother Goddess Cult of Magdala?

This is not something I casually suggest. In my DVD " How Jesus


Became a Christ" I said that to my mind the greatest proof that
Jesus was in India and Tibet was not just the scrolls that so
emphatically say he was there, the most famous of which were
the ones discovered and published by Nicholas Notovitch in
1893. The real indication, even if such scrolls had never been
discovered, is the well over one hundred major parallels I have
pointed out between the message of the Buddha and that of
Jesus, even though the Buddha was five hundred years earlier.
Does that mean Jesus was a plagiarist or the Buddha his
inspiration? By no means. What it indicates is that both were
conduits of a much older wisdom that pre-dated each, a wisdom
old as the foundations of the world.
But I said earlier that Mary Magdalene was an enigma. In the
celebrated Gospel of Mary, discovered by Dr. Carl Reinhardt in
Cairo in 1896, (another copy was part of the Nag Hammadi find in
1946) but not published until 1955, it is also not hard to detect
very obvious Buddhist and Taoist ideas, and given that this
Gospel had strong associations with Mary's tradition, it raises
very interesting questions about Mary and her associations in the
Orient which no one hitherto has expressed.
In the Gospel of Mary Jesus is quoted as saying

" All

natures, all formed things, all creatures, exist


with and in one another, and will again be
resolved with their own roots, because the
nature of matter is dissolved into the roots of its
nature alone."

This closely resembles the Taoist idea of the

one-ness and the return, which you find in the Tao Te Ching:

"All things derive their life from Tao; all things


return to it and it contains them."

Another striking parallel in the Gospel of Mary is the description of the soul's journey after death
and the trials it has to overcome, and how critical it is to prepare for this. The Egyptian Pharaohs
were preoccupied with this from the first moment of their reigns. This is uncannily reminiscent of
passages in the Tibetan Book of the Dead which describes the encounter with the loving and the
angry God which the soul has to encounter after its departure from the physical body.

"When the soul had overcome the third power, it went


upwards and saw the fourth power which took seven forms.
The first form is darkness, the second desire, the third
ignorance, the fourth the excitement of death, the fifth the
kingdom of the flesh, and the sixth the foolish wisdom of the
flesh, while the seventh is the wrathful wisdom. These are the seven
powers of wrath."
So I think in some odd ways we would have to agree with Peter and Andrew that Mary was
indeed a "woman peddling strange and alien ideas" in a very powerful way, more powerful
obviously than they were able to accept.

But did she also, like Jesus, get those ideas in the

Orient? That is the background against which I would like to present the enigma of Mary
Magdalene

if we are trying to understand her significance for today;

not just reflecting the preoccupations of the present, which can


only try to assess her significance largely in the sultry terms of
whether she was the companion of Jesus or not. That aspect
will undoubtedly help to correct many of the disabilities
under which women have had to labor over the past two
thousand years.

But there is much more to the enigma of Mary than what figures in the four Gospels of the New
Testament, or what is traditionally associated with her sojourn in Rennes-le-Chateau, or as is
narrated in The Golden Legend. That aspect is far greater than any of the others; that is where the
real enigma of Mary lies, and it is one which today's authors have still to notice.

Dr. Miceal Ledwith


Photo by Robert Leon

The Rise and Fall of the Halo


Mcel Ledwith
Stories of the renowned saints and mystics always
fascinate; the vortex of many colors that surrounded
Joseph of Cupertino before he performed his outstanding
feats of levitation and teleportation; or the adventures of
that paradox of mysteries, Teresa of Avila. She was
profoundly mystical, yet an immensely practical reformer of
enormous energy, a bastion of orthodoxy, while at the same
time under suspicion by the Inquisition who believed her
paranormal feats were diabolical in origin. When she came
from prayer her fellow workers were frequently dazzled by the
blaze of light surrounding her head.
Anyone who ever pokes through the dusty files of history will certainly agree that "things are
seldom what they seem," including Teresa of Avila's halo. Many of the most sacred religious
practices and symbols often have quite a different origin and explanation than is commonly
assumed. While this is certainly true of the halo's history, what is even more interesting is what
this phenomenon might now herald for a new stage of awareness in humanity's evolution. I

was intrigued to discover well over one hundred parallels between the
teachings of the Buddha and the teachings of Jesus five hundred years
later, just as I was to discover that the seven sacraments of the Christian
Church were all initiation ceremonies of the ancient Egyptian Mystery
Schools. What did that tell us: was Jesus or the Buddha a plagiarist? On the contrary, they
were both channels of a much more ancient wisdom.

If this is the case with such central matters as the teachings of Jesus or the sacraments of the
Church, then what do the levitations of Joseph and the blazing countenance of Teresa tell us?
That they were specially favored by God, who was thereby putting his stamp of divine approval
on them? Or rather are they not far more likely to be telling us something of

ultimate concern about the real nature of God and the true make up of the
human being and of this universe in which we float?
The halo has been understood as an artistic device only, and by the nineteenth century it had
definitely gone out of fashion with artists who were too embarrassed to portray it any more. But
we're still accustomed to think of it as a religious trademark, and in the West, of course, to
consider it the very badge of medieval Christian art.

But in its origins the halo

is neither western, Christian, nor even religious, and most


interestingly of all, is probably not an artistic device either.
Haloes began to appear in art long before any
religion with which it has been associated had ever
assumed recognizable form. At the end of the Greek
Dark Ages, twenty nine hundred years ago, Homer's
Iliad describes a preternatural light shining around
the heads of Greek heroes engaged in murderous
combat at the height of pitched battle. But long
before Homer, "sun discs" or rays of light appear
around the heads of Ra and Hathor in Egyptian art.
The Kushan Emperors of northwestern India seem
to have been the first to depict themselves with
haloes on their coins in the second and third
centuries before Christ. And by doing that I think
they intended to say far more than that God was on
their side.
Later the depiction of haloes becomes quite common in both Japanese and Chinese Buddhist
art and eventually appeared frequently in a great variety of Hindu religious literature.

Even when the halo began to be understood in the West as some form of divine radiance
that conveyed closeness to divinity, it was probably an
import from the Persian Empire and made its way to
Rome with the spread of the Mithraic religion. The
images of the Roman Emperors, like Alexander before
them, began to feature aspects redolent of divinity,
including the halo. Initially this was the practice only
after they had died and were now judged to have been
deified, but it soon came to be used also in the
depictions of living Emperors.
It was only long
after all of this long history, in the fourth century after
Christ, that the halo began to be used by the
organization that now claims the image as its own:
the Christian Church. It belonged to the

movement that more and more


accommodated Jesus and Christianity to
the traditions, practices and symbols of
the mystery religions.
It is hardly surprising that within Christianity a hierarchy of haloes soon began to form. In the
beginning only Christ was depicted with a halo and it was meant to represent his divine
nature. In the early Christian centuries a considerable body of Christians believed that Christ
was born in a state similar to every other human being and that he only acquired the state of
being divine as his journey progressed. The Church, in confronting this view in what it called
the Nestorian Heresy, defined as an article of its faith that Christ Jesus came into this world
with a fully formed divine nature as well as a human nature. Some artistic depictions of
Jesus before the Church made this pronouncement did not show him with a halo until after
the time of his baptism by John, which was regarded as the most likely stage at which he
assumed a divine nature. Those artworks would of course be regarded as seriously heretical
by the orthodox believers.

Surface is composed of triangles.- Plato


In medieval art it became customary to represent Persons of
the Holy Trinity with a halo within which the figure of a cross
was inscribed but God the Father was sometimes depicted with
a triangular halo. Lesser mortals had to be satisfied with plain
round or spherical haloes. This became the practice in the
Middle Ages and later it became usual to depict only the
circumference of the halo as a circular line.
For individuals who were revered for their sanctity but who had not
yet been formally declared saints, it was usual to depict rays of light
emanating from their heads, but no actual halo was added until
canonization had taken place.
Sometimes in the early medieval period living people of renown were
depicted with square haloes to indicate that, however illustrious they
were, they were still alive.
Notorious villains of this world or of the world to come, such as
Judas or Satan, were depicted with black solid haloes.
And finally even back in the
secular days when haloes
began, sometimes the entire
body of the person was
encased in a halo radiating
beyond the physical body.
Examples are found where
Jesus is depicted with such a
full-body halo and also a halo
around his head. Where both
intersected a vesica piscis
was formed which had its own
special significance.

By the High Renaissance period most of the major Italian painters had stopped depicting haloes
altogether. Part of the reaction against the Protestant Reformation mandated that they be used
in Catholic Christian art, but usually the painters tried to comply with this by placing a natural
light source behind the subjects head to give the effect of a halo. By the nineteenth century
haloes were definitely gone, unless one were striving to give a medieval 'flavor' to a scene. They
are now found only in images of popular piety with those bleeding Jesus figures of the Mel
Gibson genre.
However, haloes in their origin are neither western, Christian, or even religious, and most
interestingly of all, are probably not artistic devices either.

What then does the luminescence around people like Teresa of Avila and
Joseph of Cupertino really tell us? It wasn't imagined; those images were
included by artists because that is what was actually seen around certain
individuals.
But, even if it has ceased to be fashionable in
mainline art, how is the luminescence of the halo to
be explained and what has it to tell us? In both my
book and DVD on the orb phenomenon, I point out
that doing nothing but
wondering

in

amazement at the
variety of orbs pictures that can appear to us would be as if those
physicians who first saw chromosomes in the blood after the
invention of the microscope simply continued to look, without taking
the knowledge they gained from looking to fight disease and
promote health. If my contention is correct that orbs are seen by
fluorescence, not by reflected light, is it possible that the different
colors of fluoresced light that comes from the orbs really reveal
dimensions above this physical one to which the orbs belong?

About Orbs Science to Sage Sept issue


About Orbs and Vortexes December Issue

If so, then as individuals would we


also exist right now in those same
six planes of the electromagnetic
spectrum above us which every high
school text book of physics shows,
since it is impossible for a lower
frequency in the electromagnetic
spectrum to exist without a higher
one to hold it in place, right back to
the source . If all those fabled and

http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Special:Search/TimothyRias

legendary beings of folklore and religious


traditions really do exist, they would also
presumably exist on one of those six planes
above the physical that make up the whole
gamut of the creation, but that would not
make them superior to us, quite the contrary.
So for example, if an Archangel is a being
who lives on the fifth dimension or plane of
reality, we would need to realize that so too do
we exist there on that same dimension in
another aspect of our makeup which plays its
indispensable part in holding this physical
aspect of us in being.

D-Kuru/Wikemedia Commons

Dispersive Prism Illustration by Spigget

Hebrews 2:7, quoting Psalm 8, says that God made us "a little less than the
angels" but if my hypothesis is true would we not actually be more? Perhaps
the effulgence, caused by the reaching of altered states in remarkable individuals of the past, and
which was made visible and immortalized in the
halo, is the talisman and pledge that we do

not live in the kind of universe we


thought, but in one that is frequencybased, and, even more important, one
that is intensely responsive to thought?
Is it possible that the
interaction of mind
Light dispersion conceptual waves by Kieff

with a frequencybased universe is what opens up access to the other dimensions


that make us what we are, and that make up the universe as well?
And is the mechanism that produces this what causes the halo?
Lookang/CC 3.0

If so this would be the path along which our emergence into true
power and ability within ourselves lies. So if originally the halo was neither western, Christian, or
even religious, and was probably not an artistic device either, who would have thought that now
understood in a profoundly different way, it might be the herald for us of an enormous and longforgotten human potential, not too long after we became embarrassed to depict it any more?
Copyright Mcel F. Ledwith All rights reserved.

http://hamburgeruniverse.com/articles.html

The Law of Cause and Effect, which we accept so uncritically that it has
become part and parcel of the very way we think, can be one of the greatest
barriers we meet on the road to manifesting our desires. - Miceal Ledwith

LAW

miceal ledwith

REVERSING
THE LAW OF CAUSE AND EFFECT

Whenever we discovered something fundamental about the nature of


reality it seems we couldn't resist calling it a "law."

So in all the

disciplines from physics, to philosophy, to theology, psychology or


chemistry, we have a range of such "laws"; the law of Gravity, the Laws
of Thermodynamics, the Natural Law, the Law of Conservation of Energy,
the Laws of Motion, and most recently in the buzz phrase, "The Law of
Attraction."

In the normal sense of the word a "law" is passed by some authoritative body
such as Congress or a Parliament, comes into effect on a due day, and
presumably can be altered or abrogated subsequently.

The "laws" of nature have nothing at all in common with such usage.
Presumably gravity, for instance, worked fine long before anyone decided to
stick a label on it. And even the most diehard proponents of the view of God
as some sort of human being enlarged; have never suggested that it would be
possible for God at some point to abrogate the Law of Gravity or the Second
Law of Thermodynamics. All down the centuries the natural law traditions have
viewed the "laws" of nature not as regulations promulgated by God acting as
some form of cosmic legislator, but as reflections of something in the divine
nature itself, and therefore unchangeable as long as God remains God.

All of that of course might not matter very much were it not for the fact that in following
out the course of spiritual evolution, to which so many in the world are wakening up
right now, the ways in which we think of such "laws" can radically alter our ability to
manifest what we desire.

That is equally true whether we are aiming at fabulous

wealth, glowing health and long life without disease, or a lasting personal happiness.
Isaac Newton eloquently expressed something fundamental about the nature of reality
in what we know as the "Third Law of Motion:" or more popularly "The Law of Cause
and Effect." To every action there is an equal and opposite reaction. This is absolutely
true of everything we experience, whether it's hitting a golf ball or launching a probe to
Mars.

Unfortunately applying this way of thinking to our spiritual evolution is


going to land us in a heap of trouble and disappointment, because all of
those supreme and unchangeable laws do not apply at all in the realm of
manifestation. We are dealing now with a realm whose laws are entirely different
from what has become familiar, and we have never been told that, or if we have been
told, we have not come to realize the implications.
The Law of Cause and Effect, which we accept so uncritically that it has become part
and parcel of the very way we think, can be one of the greatest barriers we meet on
the road to manifesting our desires.

There has never been time when human beings didn't


desire to have something that was attractive to them,
whether that be was a good home, a new job or a
satisfying personal relationship. As a race we have gone
through various stages in how we enlist powerful forces
seen as outside ourselves, to help us attain those desires.

The earliest form of this was to envisage God sitting up there, seen in some way as an
enlarged human being, who has the ability to grant our requests. Even today most people's
form of prayer is based on this form of assumption. However this flies in the face of another
fundamental "law" which was expressed by Jesus in the form in which it is most familiar to us
today:"When you pray for something, believe it is already yours, and it shall be so." (Mark
11:24). Instead of obeying this "law" we instead beg, implore, desire, hope, beseech, request
and pray that God will grant our request. What this means is that we have stated that the
desired thing is not ours, and given what Jesus taught, we have in effect now issued a law that
it can never be ours as long as we persist in that attitude of supplication or lack. We have to

first become it in order for us to have it. Most assuredly this is one of the hardest
lessons for us to learn on a path of spiritual growth.

"When you pray


for something,
believe it is
a l r e a d y y o u r s,

Prayers

and it shall be
so." - Jesus

will find dozens of titles assuring us that we create our own reality and
that all we need to do is hold our focus on whatever it is we want and it
will be ours. This also is a very over-simplistic version of this truth, but it
is certainly a major advance over viewing God's main role as some
cosmic form of wish fulfiller.
But even in this shift we still tend to become bedeviled by the "Law of
Cause and Effect." We try to figure out what the appropriate "input" might
be for this "Law of Attraction" to take effect and create the output we
desire.
Unfortunately the law of cause and effect does not operate in the
quantum field, or to put it more accurately it operates in reverse.

In

manifestation from the quantum field, the effect


has in a real sense to come before the cause.
That's also the reverse of everything we have been used to experiencing,
and it is the reverse of what has been the received wisdom about the
nature of reality and about God and prayer for millennia. This is the

main reason why there is so much disappointment in religion


centering on apparently unanswered prayer, and why

the art

of prayer is so little understood and so poorly


practiced.
Dr. Miceal Ledwith.
http://www.hamburgeruniverse.com/

Be Cause

Nowadays when you go into any reasonably good bookstore today you

BY DR. MICEAL LEDWITH


The Wino and The Master

ometimes when I speak to groups about matters related to quantum


physics I pose the question Who do you think has the greater ability
to manifest reality: an unfortunate homeless person living in abject
poverty under a bridge, or an ascended Master such as we read about
in those fabled accounts from long ago?

For months, the media has been filled with


accounts of one series of economic disasters
after another all across the First World.
Its very rare that such a vast swath of
humanity has been so united in focus on the
same thing. Everyone across all of North and
South America , Europe and the East seem to
be concerned with the same realities, and
with a fierce intensity; will my investments be
safe; will my savings, if I have any, remain
secure, how will I pay the mortgage or meet
my childrens school fees this year? Will I
have a job in six months time? How can I
afford to heat the house this
winter? As a 19th century
writer put it: Its a prospect
Both the
to dizzy and appall.

in recent years have actually done a great


disservice to the majority of people who
espoused them. The impression was given
that it was all very easy, even automatic to
master these techniques. That suited the
instant gratification societys expectations
but it just didnt work and the result was
disillusionment. There is no doubt that what
we have deeply and profoundly accepted will
manifest into our lives. Unfortunately, all

too often, what we have deeply and


profoundly accepted in this way is
lack, ill health, misfortune and what
we are pleased to call bad luck.
Sometimes when I
speak to groups about
matters related to
quantum physics I pose
the question Who do
you think has the
greater ability to
m a n i f e s t re a l i t y : a n
unfortunate homeless
person living in abject poverty under a
bridge, or an ascended Master such as we
read about in those fabled accounts from
long ago?

Wino and
the Master have
exactly the same
ability to manifest.

There are aspects to this


present situation in the world
at large which give great
concern to anyone who has
realized even the most basic
facts about what quantum physics has to tell
us about how reality functions. For almost a
century now the quantum physicists have
been telling us that reality obligingly takes on
the shape corresponding to the way in which
we observe it. Needless to say this insight
has been popularized in countless versions
which usually neglect to mention the
awkward fact that while the realities we
experience every day are determined by the
way in which we observe them, it is no small
task to acquire the skill to manifest what it is
we would like to see popping up in our lives
as opposed to what normally does.
In that sense, I believe that many of the
wildly popular self-improvement programs
that have attracted such enormous attention

The answer invariably is The Master - who


has everything his or her heart can desire.
But that is not so. Both the Wino and the
Master have exactly the same ability to
manifest. There is obviously an enormous
difference between the circumstances of the
two, but the difference does not hinge on
their ability to manifest because they both
have that ability in equal measure, and so
has everyone else who ever walked this
earth.

Everyone is born with the innate ability to


manifest any reality out of the quantum field
that corresponds to their deeply accepted
beliefs and feelings. This is as much a part
of us as our unique DNA, our digestive
system or the circulation of our blood. You
cannot exist without the ability to manifest
out of the quantum field. It is not something
you have to learn.
The problem lies in the fact that what the
vast majority of people take for granted and
deeply accept is usually the reality of lack;
the conviction that things are scarce; that if I
do not get my share before someone else
gets it I am in danger of being left short; that
life is unfair and unless I am on guard and
alert I will end up being pushed around to
my detriment by organizations and people
who are more powerful than I am. Is it any
wonder then that such negative realities
figure so often in many peoples life
experiences?
So in pondering the case of the Wino and
the Master, the Wino stands as an archetype
of someone who is convinced that the world
is harsh, hostile, discriminatory and unfair.
As this is what is deeply accepted it is
inevitable that more of the same will
manifest in such a persons life. The Master
on the other hand started out by realizing
one of the most basic realities about human
life: the kind of life I have been experiencing
mirrors the way I have been thinking. In
What the Bleep I said Positive Thinking
was fallacious, because usually all it meant
was that I had managed to put a thin smear
of positive thinking over a vast boiling
cauldron of negative thinking underneath,
which is obviously what is going to manifest,
because I is what I have deeply accepted.

We all come into this world endowed with a


certain type of character, intellectual ability,
and physical attributes, but I know that
through the course of my life I can alter what
I have been endowed with, for better or for
worse.
The person who grows to be a Master
realizes this even though he or she may
have suffered hardships, disappointment,
discrimination or betrayal. That individual
came to realize that it could all be turned
around if only they could learn to control
their thoughts at the deepest level.
That is a very different exercise indeed from
suppression. We are masters at fooling
ourselves into thinking that we have
accomplished real change in our lives when
all we have done is suppressed the
tendencies, thoughts or beliefs which we
want to be freed from and are thus no longer
welcome in our lives. But these suppressed
realities hide like a festering sore until the
day when they erupt to the surface again in
a much more virulent form than they ever
had before the attempt to squash them into
submission.

Any form of enemy we perceive


without is visible to us only because
it mirrors what is already within
ourselves, but which may be so
deeply buried that we are not aware
of it until it is mirrored back to us by
some person or thing that is
external to us.

It should alert us to the fact that normally the


varieties of ways in which people focus on
things that matter to them cancel each other
out for the large part. But now the focus of
most people on the earth is much more unified
than that, and it is concentrated by the
apprehension of doom and gloom. When there
is such a rare common focus, when it is
negative, and when it is feared, then we can
rest assured that a self-fulfilling prophecy is
about to manifest and what was bad in itself
can very easily become much worse simply
because most of the worlds population has

much more of the Wino in them than the


Master.
Many will say We can change this and that is
true, but while bailouts may solve the external
economic crisis, the only way to avert the
power of such a widespread negative focus on
disaster as we are experiencing now is to
accomplish a profound revolution in our
habitual ways of thinking. That is a much more
difficult and long drawn out process, but it is
the only way to eventually bring our habits of
self -destruction to an end.

Vatican Observatory Telescope in Castel Gandolfo/CC 3.0

From South America, to the


Vimanas of India, to the spaceship
of a Christian drawing - Bible to the
Vedas.

How Can Little


Green Men be Made
in the Image of God?
The new Director of the Vatican Observatory announced fairly
recently that it was all right to believe in extra-terrestrials, and
that such a belief did not conflict with belief in God. I wasn't sure
what to make of the statement since I couldn't figure out any way
in which belief in aliens could ever be construed as counting against
belief in God - quite the contrary. And while an interview with the
Vatican Astronomer is a far cry indeed from an official Church
statement, it was given some weight by the fact that it appeared in
the official Vatican newspaper, L'Osservatore Romano.
But a few days later the British Ministry of Defense announced a
four-year program to release previously classified documents
about UFOs into the National Archives. I wondered if it was just
co-incidence.

There is a time bomb ticking at the heart of all the main western religions and it has to
do with the troubled subject of aliens. The vastness of even the visible universe can be
realized by anybody nowadays by viewing the extraordinary
images from the Hubble Telescope. And when you see that, it's
very easy to realize the depth of arrogance needed to believe
that the human race on this earth is the only intelligent form
life in the entire universe, or that all life would have to occur in
our form of it. To make matters worse we don't seem to be
even living in prime real estate: we are situated in the very
boondocks of what is itself a comparatively rural galaxy. Oh for
the happy times of Galileo and
Giordano Bruno, when the only issue
that troubled the Church was
whether the sun revolved around the earth or vice versa.

Come to My
Mansion...

It is said there are many mansions and


scientist believe there are many galaxies,
then consider, that when we look into the
night sky and see billions of stars, that it
would only be common sense to assume
that we do not exist alone.
Even on earth there are so many
creatures that look entirely alien. StarWars
a n d S t a r Tre k d e p i c t e d t h i s i d e a
wonderfully with their cast of characters.

It's a public secret that reported sightings of UFOs and the


dramatic quality of them has escalated over the past few years.
From time to time rumors circulate that authoritative
statements on the subject from major world governments is
anticipated, not all of those rumors coming from conspiracy
theorists. If this should ever happen it would pose enormous
difficulties for all the main tenets of almost every major
Christian belief system.

Most of the Christian churches and denominations have


managed to turn their basic message into a proclamation that
Lord knows there are plenty of characters
the creation as a whole is in a fallen state. From this condition it
in our own lives.
can be rescued only by God sending his only Son to suffer and
Science states that opposing forces are
die for our sins so as to appease God's anger against us. If the
what keeps us in motion. Perhaps this
existence of aliens were ever to be undeniably proven the
rule still applies to visitors, some possess
mind can only boggle at the extent of the enormous doctrinal
the dark force and others the light. This
updating the Churches would be faced with to accommodate
is the epic story of the our planet. Then
that fact within their belief system's view of reality. Belief in
why not the universe? - Karen Elkins
aliens may not threaten belief in God, but it would certainly
pose enormous difficulties for almost every other major belief
held by the western religions. The matter of course would be
made immeasurably more difficult for them since the main religions maintain their central
doctrinal beliefs are perennially true and irreformable, and so cannot be updated.

However, let's take look at some of the main alterations that would have to be made to accommodate
that fact that aliens exist and where they fit into the scheme of things, particularly into God's plan; what
beliefs might have to be jettisoned or adapted, what new ones adopted?
If God is supposed to have "made man in his own image" then in whose image would the proverbial
little green men from outer space be made? And what if we were to discover that our definition of life
was hopelessly narrow and left no room for life forms so different from ours that they didn't need
oxygen, hydrogen, or even a carbon base? And what if the claims of some scientists made earlier this
month came true that within a decade, on the basis of some current research discoveries, they
anticipate being able to artificially generate life, which would have no connection with any life form
known on this earth? Maybe at that stage we would have to realize that the way we have couched the
relationship of God to the origin of life is hopelessly dated and outmoded.
The western religions believe that life began as the result of a specific and personal divine intervention.
Some minor groups even go so far as to maintain that this all happened during a particularly busy week
for God about 6,000 years ago.
The Christian religions of the
west believe that the fallen
state of the race began on the
fatal day a talking serpent
cajoled that famous ribwoman into eating fruit from a
magic tree.
It is equally believed that the
only hope for the human race
now is a rescue by Jesus,
God's only Son incarnate.
Jesus is seen as a savior, not
just a savior but a universal
savior, so that all access to
God by rational and intelligent
forms of life, and access to
their destiny, is possible only
through him, and through his
agents here on earth whom
he has sub-delegated.

Tenochtitlan, Entrance of Hernan Cortes. Cortez and La Malinche meet Moctezuma II. , November 8, 1519

But suppose for purposes


of argument that one day
aliens were proven beyond
doubt to exist. Where
would this scheme of
things leave them? Or
more to the point, where
would it leave Jesus, or
rather the Churches
version of Jesus?
All of this imaginar y
scenario reminds of a
situation five hundred
years ago when a series of
frenzied debates took
place at the renowned
University of Salamanca in
Spain. The debates were
provoked by the Conquistadores discovery of the many races of "Indians" in the New World of the
Americas north and south. If every human being is supposed to have descended from our first parents,
Adam and Eve, how did these people get there, since up to now at least Adam and Eve and their
descendants had no means of crossing the great oceans? If they didn't descend from Adam and Eve how
could they be human? And of course if they weren't human it was perfectly all right to plunder them of
their vast treasures of gold and silver to swell the coffers of Europe. Fortunately the majority of the expert
Spanish theologians eventually accepted that they were human. They left the historical problems of Adam's
and Eve's transportation system to be solved by someone else at later date.
So how would extraterrestrials relate to the progenitors of the human race? If Adam and Eve had no
boats capable of crossing the Atlantic most assuredly they had no interplanetary craft. Or how would they
relate to Jesus, whom the entire Christian system wants us to accept came as a savior to rescue the
human race from the worst effects of their ancestors' blunder?
In recent times many thinkers who contemplate qualities such as emotion, intelligence and memory in
what we are pleased to term the sub-human forms of life on this earth, such as cats, dogs, horses,
dolphins, whales, or birds, are willing to attribute to them something of spirit. It's often phrased: "They have
a soul, but it's a lesser grade then the human soul." So, to use this terminology, if aliens did not descend
from Adam and Eve, do they still have a soul, and is it a lesser, greater or equal grade of soul to that
possessed by humans?

When the American


"Indians" eventually became
accepted as human, even
though no one ever
managed to explain how
they had descended from
Adam and Eve, it was in
large part because Christian
thinkers began to realize that
the circumstances
surrounding the origins of
life and the origins of the
race were far more complex
than just what God
supposedly did during that
particularly busy week six
thousand year s ago
surrounding the origins of
life and the origins of the
race were far more complex
than just what God
supposedly did during that particularly busy week six thousand years ago.

Copyright 2005 David Monniaux/CC 3.0

Creator in Old Testament

Sophisticated literature that claims to have an alien origin is abundant these


days. As in all other areas of life the fake is liable to outnumber the genuine

But one thing is notable


above all else in some of that
literature, the high quality of its
spirituality. The same of course is true in relation to much of
by a hundred to one.

the spiritual literature that forms the body of this earth's religious traditions.
While in general subscribing to these exalted concepts what's remarkable
about us is the degree to which we ignore them in practice. Indeed some of
this allegedly alien literature assesses the human race as far more barbaric
and less evolved than the aliens are. We have grown so unthinkingly
accustomed to measuring everything from a human-centered standpoint that
the bitterest pill of all would be having to accept that at least some
extraterrestrials might turn out to be superior to us.
Creator Myth of Mayan

That superiority to us of course should come as no surprise if they had a technology capable of taking
them to this earth. At that point we should start to fervently hope that their spiritual development had
kept pace with or surpassed their technological progress.
Where would all of this leave Jesus or indeed
God, as they are envisaged in the Christian
systems? Is Jesus now to be demoted from being
the Universal Savior? Or did God separately also
send him to those alien races in some appropriate
local form, just as he came among us a human?
Maybe in pondering what would be the
implications for our beliefs, if alien beings exist, we
can manage to prune, refine and make those
central everyday beliefs of ours more consonant
with the facts. Maybe for far too long we have held
them unquestioned within a system of knowledge
about reality which was seriously deficient?
Maybe the truth is that Jesus did not come here to
suffer and die for our sins to appease God's
vengeance against us? Such an interpretation in any
case doesn't do much for either Jesus or God.
Indeed one might ask have we ever pondered the
hugely negative impact such a picture has for how we imagine God to be, or Jesus to be? What kind of
father would demand the suffering and death of his only son who was completely innocent? What kind of
son would willingly comply with that sentence and at the same time never cease to speak of the profundity
of God's love for us all, which is totally belied by that very picture?

The Greek tradition in Catholic theology has always


maintained from the most ancient times that the work
of Jesus had nothing to do with appeasement of God's
anger and everything to do with the making divine of
the human being. It's an insight of which most western
theologians down the centuries have either been
ignorant or have chosen to ignore.

What atrocities and suffering would have been avoided over the last thousand years if such a different view
of Jesus and salvation had held more general sway?
Or perhaps the aliens' ancestors were more fortunate than ours and never had to ward off the
unwelcome attentions of whatever their equivalent of that talking serpent would be. If that were so then
they wouldn't need to be saved or redeemed.
If they did not need this, then by our theological standards they would have to be immortal or at least
extremely long lived, since both the Old and the New Testaments regard death as the result of "the Fall,"
and not part of the original scheme of things at all.
The pictures of God and human destiny in western Christianity were eventually to become exclusively
shaped within the context of sin and redemption, and now Christianity can no longer think outside that
box it seems. As a result nowadays it seems almost impossible to think of Jesus, or indeed of Christianity
itself, except in terms of the suffering and bloodied savior who struggled up the hill of Calvary to die for
our sins. Consequently trying to envisage a race that would neither have "fallen" or be in need of
redemption, actually smacks of the impious to us. Maybe part of the reason might be that we are beginning
to suspect our own race might be in a similar position, and because we sense the catastrophic implications
that would have for our major belief systems.
So if our picture of God and human destiny was totally shaped by the consciousness of sin and redemption
how differently would an alien race, which had not "fallen," picture God? And would they worship such a
God, or is worship just one other downside that comes from the context of our unfortunate history?
If God could and did create other worlds and beings to inhabit them, did he then also create another
heaven for them, or do we have to share with them what we always thought was exclusively ours? Do
they need their own Devil to test them, and do they have a private Purgatory, Limbo and Hell? And if they
do not, why not?

But of course in this imaginative scenario which I put out here for the
sake of pondering the ways in which some very deep matters have
been formulated historically by the religions, the biggest question of
all would have to be not whether there are other heavens, hells or
saviors, or the lack of them, but why there is no mention at all, or
even a hint, of any of this stuff in the Scriptures or in the doctrinal
traditions?

If aliens exist that is quite a problem.

Posing imaginative scenarios like this can often help us to prune and refine our beliefs and tell us where we
have drifted off the mark in the ways in which we have responded to God knows what historical
circumstances down through history. In many ways it's reminiscent of the bizarre and complicated system
of cycles and epicycles which the Ptolemaic astronomers over time had to introduce into their theories to
reconcile their belief in an earth-centered solar system with the actual rotation of the planets. When the
Copernican theories came to be known, the entire paradigm changed and the complexity of the Ptolemaic
system was seen to be useless and redundant. When too many qualifications, complications and mental
gymnastics have to be introduced into any system its time to recognize that the real problem may well be
that the original insights got the matter wrong. If that is the case no amount of subsequent modification of
the original insights will ever rectify the matter.
It's only four hundred years since Giordano Bruno was burned at the stake in Rome for suggesting that
God might have created other worlds on which intelligent beings would relate to God in their own way. If
the reality of extraterrestrial life ever becomes impossible to deny then the Church will come to mourn
bitterly the loss of that four hundred year head start which Bruno's invitation offered to it.
With all due respect to the new Vatican Astronomer the fact that belief in aliens doesn't threaten belief in
God should be the least of his worries. Almost every other religious doctrine would be
challenged to the very core by that fact. Furthermore, by interpreting the whole reality of God
and Jesus so exclusively in terms of sin and redemption, the religions have maneuvered themselves into
such a corner that effectively dealing with such a major doctrinal crisis would be almost impossible without
jettisoning the majority of its system of beliefs. Maybe this semi-official interview in L'Osservatore, as well
as the similar statements over several years past by the Vatican's official Exorcist, Monsignor Corrado
Balducci, might well be the humble beginnings of an effort to avoid being too blindsided if the worst ever
came to the worst.

Dr. Ledwith puts words on the


problems most thinking people
have found with the traditional
proposals about God, religion, and
human destiny.

A scholarly perspective
2012 Phenomenon
Much
Much ofof the
the material
material circulating
circulating isis either
either disdisinformation
informationororhighly
highlyinaccurate
inaccurateand
andexaggerated.
exaggerated.

Dr. Miceal Ledwith


In this DVD Miceal Ledwith makes a
dispassionate analysis of this mountain of
material, ranging from 13 prophecies
frequently cited to bolster up a world
catastrophe in 2012, to a candid assessment of
the real challenges we face and the
Order Here or at Banyen Books
opportunities they present.

Only the FACTS ...


Order Here or at Banyen Books

They are circular shaped visual phenomenon showing up in hundreds of thousands of photos in a
myriad of different settings, under all kinds of conditions. These mystifying orbs have attracted
attention in both the scientific and spiritual communities all over the world.

ORBS
IS THE VAIL LIFTING?
Some orb enthusiasts theorize that these spherical lights have been
with us for centuries, possibly the source of our belief in angels, fairies,
or other paranormal intelligence. They could be the inspiration for the
halos shown around the heads of spiritual teachers in classic paintings.
With the introduction of digital photography, these bright balls of
energy are no longer confined to religious art and sacred mythology.

Although orbs have previously appeared up in photos


taken with traditional film cameras, it has only been since point
and shoot digital cameras moved into the mainstream that
photographers have been able to consistently record them.
Many believe that, since digital cameras are more sensitive to
the infrared section of the electromagnetic spectrum, they are
able to see slightly beyond what is visible to the naked eye.
However, even with the aid of our new cameras, it appears
that it may take something of a leap of faith to make contact.
Photographing orbs may require a shift from an Ill believe it
when I see it attitude towards the unknown, to an Ill see it
when I believe it perspective. That, along with a good camera
and a working flash is all thats necessary to become an orb
photographer, says Miceal Ledwith, co-author with Klaus
Heinemann, of The Orb Project. With over 300,000 orb photos
in his collection, Ledwith speaks from experience.

The other 90 percent is rejected by the


brain which focuses only on stuff we want to
help us with everyday living such as food,
bringing the children to school, paying the
mortgage, etc. Orbs obviously dont fit into
that category so we dont see them. The
difference between looking at something and
seeing it involves an act of consciousness by
the brain. You can convey to your brain that
you are interested in seeing orbs.

You dont need to be a guru, a mystic, an


avatar, or specially favored by God to see an
orb, he says. All you need is a cheap digital
camera and an open mind.
It may also help to have a basic
understanding of how we process what we
see.
Ledwith explains that the brain
comes into play in human seeing
and we dont see all thats out
there. We only take in 10 percent
of the information coming in
through the lens of the eye.

DR. MICEAL
LEDWITH

B o t h m e n a re e x p e ri e n c e d
re s e a rc h e rs w i t h e x t e n s i ve
backgrounds in both science and
spirituality.
Heinemann is a physicist and former NASA researcher.
Ledwith, a theologian and former president of Maynooth
College in Ireland, served on the International Theological
Commission at the Vatican for 17 years. Neither Heinemann
nor Ledwith accepted what they were seeing in their photos
without considerable skepticism, and both took painstaking
efforts to validate their results.
Although many critics have dismissed orbs as dust
particles, water droplets, or even tiny insects that have
wandered into the cameras field, the evidence indicates
otherwise.
I devoted a lot of time and research to make sure I was
on solid ground and I wasnt dealing with easily explainable
phenomena, says Heinemann. However, that doesnt mean
fake orb photos dont exist. Although he concedes that it
certainly is possible for natural phenomenon to produce
occasional orb-like effects, he is quick to point out that the
overwhelming number of orb photos that now exist make this
explanation highly implausible.
For the skeptics, Heinemann offers a series of indicators
that can authenticate orb photos. For example, he says, if a
photograph shows an orb that is positioned behind another
object, it essentially rules out the possibility of water or dust
on the lens of the camera. He also classifies as authentic
photographs that show orbs that change size and move from
one location to another in successive shots. Equally hard to
dismiss are photos of extremely bright orbs that are easily
visible without digital enhancement, or orb photos taken in the
same location at the same time by different cameras. The
multitudes of photos that depict orbs in strategic locations
such as at the elbow of a healer or the mouth also defy
logical explanation.
Some skeptics also suggest that orb photos are the result
of image manipulation. However, Ledwith explains, because
the cameras EXIF (exchangeable image file format) log tracks
all changes made to the original picture, it is extremely difficult
to successfully fake an orb photo.

These strategies apparently work. Both Ledwith and


Heinemann have captured thousands of orbs of every size and
color in their massive array of photos. However, these
researchers are not shooting orb photos for the sole purpose
of adding more and more spectacular images to their
impressive collections. They believe the orbs are much more
than a curiosity; that they have both a meaning and a purpose.
Inspired by their orb experiences which, between the two
of them, comprise over 12 years of concentrated study,
Ledwith and Heinemann have come to their own separate
conclusions about the true nature of the orbs they
photograph.
Heinemann believes the orbs are the perfect
bridge between the scientific and the spiritual,
allowing us to see that we are just a part in a
huge continuum of consciousness and conscious
beings. He says the orbs are Spirit beings, or more
correctly, Spirit emanations. They are emanations from a Spirit
being, he explains, rather than the entirety of that being. I
liken it, he says, to a person using a flashlight. Standing in the
dark, you as the observer only see the flashlight you dont
see the person. That person could be moving that flashlight

You could
say that person is directing the
flashlight and it is emanating from
that person, but there is so much
more to them than just what you
see.
around and even shining it in your camera.

Spirit Emanations
Are digital cameras the vehicles for providing us with at
least the initial answers to these intriguing questions?
It all remains to be seen, of course both literally and
figuratively.

Ledwith Concludes
...that, Orbs are, basically, at least in the first
form in which we become aware of them, what
you and I would be without the physical body.
He further suggests that, we are living in a
frequency-based universe That means, he says,
that these are beings just outside of our present dimension of frequency.
They belong to a realm where you and I have been many times before we
come back into a physical incarnation.
Ledwith explains the implications of his conclusion through comparing
human beings to icebergs 1/8 of which are above the surface while the
rest is hidden below. The part of us which is beneath the surface exits in
all of the various dimensions.
Does this mean that orb encounters are paving the way to a greater understanding of
the nature of the universe?

Dr. Ledwiths personal collection of orbs is well over 100,000 images.He is the co-author of
The Orb Project. His DVD Orbs: Clues to a More Exciting Universes draws some thought
provoking conclusions about the nature of the universe and our place in it. Dr. Miceal Ledwith
uncommon blend of wisdom be it from the conventional religion text to ancient wisdom
traditions. He is featured in the movie What the Bleep Do we Know? and Down the Rabbit
Hole.
http://hamburgeruniverse.com/
Article courtesy of BellaSpark Magazine and
interviewer Linda M Potter

Orbs: Clues to a More


Exciting Universe

Trailer
ORBS - Clues to a More
Exciting Universe
http://hamburgeruniverse.com/
trailers.html

Order
Here

Dr. Miceal Ledwith

Conversations
Coming
January
2013

In January 2013 he will be recording live new DVDs to be


entitled Conversations. They deal with how the brain
forms and processes fundamental and crippling
beliefs,especially religious beliefs. Why it is so difficult to
change them and how.

Join the Conversation


in the Hamburger Universe
with....

Dr. Miceal Ledwith

http://www.hamburgeruniverse.com/
Designed by Karen Elkins/Science to Sage Studio
www.sciencetosage.com

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