SOWANTHA - A Mystical Journey
© 1996
I stepped again through the gazing glass and encountered the Greaters. I don't know what else to call them. My friend, the single Greater who welcomed me, has a name, but also a sense of self that utterly defies the limitations implied by "name". I call my friend Sowantha, only because that was the name I was told, not because I think I can somehow sum this entity up with a single word. Sowantha is neither male nor female in any sense that I can perceive, yet there is an overall femaleness to the world of the Greaters....a context in which my understanding and experience of gender quickly became useless.
Sowantha has no "body" in any way we conceive of. Being a completely mental creature, Sowantha assumes Individual shapes only as needed. That, in fact, is Sowantha's modus operandi, if you will. When I first encountered Sowantha and the world of the Greater's, I perceived myself standing on the surface of a dark planet where I was soon greeted by a darkly dressed, androgynous humanoid, sporting long black hair and aquiline features. I came to understand that both the planet beneath my feet and the humanoid speaking to me, were Individual manifestations of Sowantha, projected solely for the purpose of communication with me.
I've visited Sowantha and the world of the Greaters many times in the past year and a half. With each visit, Sowantha's planetoid and humanoid become brighter, more filled with light. It is absolutely clear to me that the brightness of Sowantha's projections is directly related to my level of understanding. Each thing I learn from the Greater's, brightens my perception of Sowantha, and what began as a very dark world, is fast becoming a luminous, detail filled gray.
Let me tell you about the world of the Greaters, or at least what I currently do and don't know of it. One thing I don't know, is exactly how many Greaters there are. Number, in this realm, is less relevant somehow, involving as it does "infinities" which are treated as closed Individuals. So, in our human terms, there could be anywhere from an infinite number of Greaters to only a small few. I can't tell yet, but I know intuitively that eventually I'll understand enough to figure it out.
I do know for certain that the Greaters have only one focus...the Work. They always capitalize this word when they speak it. I've seen the Work (perhaps I should say, The Work) and I am awed, overwhelmed, and humbled beyond words by its grand scope and sheer Beauty. The Greaters were kind enough to project a visual image of The Work for me, so that I could more easily learn about It. Their visual projection displayed a very sculptural work of art, composed of several modules. These modules are the Greaters themselves, and their Work is their Ultimate Unity (yes, they capitalize these words too). I won't go into any real detail of the image itself (and believe me, I could write thousands of pages, it was so detailed!) because the image was specific to my particular understanding. Its symbols might mean something entirely different to you (in which case you'd be presented with a different image), so I've only ventured to outline its essential meaning.
As I said earlier, their modus operandi is the projection of Individuals. This bit is hard to explain, so bear with me. Sowantha, as a Greater, somehow condenses and then projects its awareness, manifesting autonomous Individuals. Sowantha's Individuals have a greater density than Sowantha does. It appears that the whole process of the Greaters condensing and projecting their awareness', creates a special Universe. This Universe seems infinite from within, but closed and finite from the external perspective of the Greaters. Inside, there are things like time and space, which are foreign to the Greaters. Yet it is inside of this Universe that the Greaters project their Individuals. These Individuals inhabit physical bodies and have their own projections, which they wear like masks, called Personas. At the Persona level, there is usually no awareness of the Greater self, and only vague intimations of the Individual, so dense is its level of manifestation and so dim the penetration of light.
The Greaters perform their Work with, through, and for their projected Individuals. In a time-space sense, their "goal" is for their Individuals to become aware of their true nature, and for each of them to reach a state of conscious connection with their Greater selves. From the perspective of their Individuals within their time-space Universe, The Work is something "to be done", something that has beginning, middle and end. To the Greaters though, The Work simply "is". Their Ultimate Unity is a thing of which they constantly partake, while simultaneously they strive to create it. Since we have time-space words and language, the Greater's perspective is hard to translate. It seems filled with contradictions, but these are only contradictions in space-time...opposites which neatly resolve themselves in the world of the Greaters.
The Greaters very much see themselves as intermediary creatures. They bridge two realms, that of physical time-space and that of undifferentiated Unity. Their realm has three perspectives: From within the Universe, their Individuals assume that they are the creators of their world, and that the world exists for their benefit alone. The Greaters' perspective is that they are the ultimate creators of the Universe and of Individuals, but also the humble servants of the Ultimate Unity. Of course the Ultimate Unity knows with absolute certainty that It is all there really is, and that all other speculations of creatorship are irrelevant (and probably irreverent).
I guess the Greaters could even be said to be the projections of the Ultimate Unity, and that the whole shebang is just a single entity manifesting across a broad spectrum of self-projected "reality". So much depends upon one's perspective.
Truly, perspective is why I write this at all. You see, it has become quite clear to me that I am one of Sowantha's projected Individuals! When I rise to the realm of the Greaters, my proper place is Sowantha.
In that rising, my pathway is through the core of my Individual self. I withdraw from my physical life, as if I viewed it from above, detached from its alluring and consuming drama. I stand in my Tiphareth, my Individual Solar being, my Center. It is through this small Center that I encompass the whole infinite Universe by traveling both inward towards the infinitely finite, and outward towards the illimitable. Then, in looking down with my encompassing vision, my perspective shifts, by direct act of will, to that of the Greater's realm. My awareness explodes with a trumpeting of many-colored lights, to encompass several Individual perspectives, simultaneously. My ability to focus and choose amongst the various Individual awarenesses, comes from a grandly inclusive and completely self-assured consciousness. And this is Swantha, whom I know as only self can know self.
Each visit with Sowantha, each brightening of the Greater's world to my vision, brings me closer to the full perspective of my Greater self. I am becoming more consciously a part of The Work as with each visit I bring my Greater self's perspective and understanding, back with me to my Individual perspective. The once solid barriers between these perspectives are melting away and my Greater self finds more and more direct expression through my Individual self.
When I am with my Sowantha now, I explore other Individuals that I manifest throughout the stream of time-space, returning down "their" avenues instead of "my" rawn-Individual one. Some of these Individuals are familiar to my rawn-memory. A few of them/us/me even exist in the same time frame as my/our rawn-Individual. In this way, I-rawn am learning the Individual manifestations of my Greater part in The Work.
Each time that I merge with my Sowantha self, there is a moment in which I experience a sort of instinctual panic. It is expressly the fear of death, experienced by my rawn-Individual, as if I might get lost and not find my way back to rawn. At first this was a barrier, surmounted eventually by an act of faith and will. Conversely, when returning to my rawn-Individual, I am faced with an opposite panic of constriction, and a confusion over so great an abundance of choices within which to find rawn. This too was a temporary barrier, for it had the effect of making my search for the rawn-avenue, rather frantic, and precluded investigating other of the Individual-avenues available. With time, I have learned that these small panics are helpful guides that do not bar one's way when they are recognized as such. They naturally regulate the flow of consciousness from one focus to another.
Once these barriers became my friends and guides, I began randomly exploring some of the other Individuals which Sowantha manifests. I have used the word "avenues" in this connection, because it seems the most poetically descriptive. When I shift my Sowantha focus to that point where I can view all my Sowantha-Individuals arrayed before me, my connection to each of them feels/looks like an avenue. I have the option of traveling down any one of these avenues from this point of focus. With the act of choosing a single avenue, I find my Sowantha awareness focused into an Individual form, though at first nondescript, standing upon said avenue. As I walk forward and down, the Individual-life I am exploring makes itself known to me through the scenery surrounding the avenue. This progresses and transforms, both itself and me, and I become steadily more involved in this Individual. Following this avenue ultimately leads to a fully conscious, real-time experience of this particular Individual perspective. But my Sowantha awareness is not bound by such a descent, and easily arises from involvement with the Individual chosen. At each step along this avenue, a specific focus upon this Individual's life is achieved. The further I travel into the Individual, the more narrow the viewable time frame, but the more intimate my experience. But from the beginning of each avenue, I can glimpse, albeit less intimately, the entire lifetime of my/this Individual, and pick from it what I want to know, sifting through scenes of an entire life experience.
With another shift of focus, all my Sowantha-Individuals are experienced simultaneously, and with varying degrees of intimacy depending entirely upon my-Sowantha will.
Sound confusing with the me/us/them/my/our/we? Indeed, shifting from any one of these perspectives to another, with any fluidity, has taken practice. My first experiences where very abrupt and disorienting, but now I smoothly and willfully move from perspective to perspective. And to do this is very blissful...no other English, time-space word comes as close to an accurate description. I know that eventually there will be no separation between these perspectives and that "my" perspective will come to encompass them all as a Unity.
Three days ago, in my rawn-Individual experience of things, I was approached "physically" for the first time, by Sowantha. I say "physically" in quotes, because while I experienced it from the perspective of my physical body, it was with my more subtle senses that I actually did the perceiving. At any rate, three days ago, just before noon, I turned a corner in my small house and was confronted with the translucent, yet visually solid, appearance of a person very familiar to me. This Individual was a teacher of mine once, and is a person for whom I hold a deep love and respect. The apparition was very strong, and likewise, it affected me very strongly. My friend was mute yet he spoke volumes with the poetry of his blissful smile.
I simply did not know what to make of this apparition. It wasn't till later that night, when I journeyed to Sowantha in my nightly meditation, that I discovered the meaning of my friend's visit. The humanoid who greeted me upon Sowantha's brightening planetoid was not the same Individual I had come to associate with Sowantha, but was instead the visage of my former teacher. I came to understand that this Individual is/was also a manifestation of Sowantha Greater self.
The implications as to the complexity of The Work and its inter-weavings revealed to me by this simple statement were mind-boggling! Sowantha-memory passages were opened to me that showed in intricate detail, how for countless millennia, Sowantha has woven its Individuals together. One teaching the next in an unbroken chain of succession. And here and there, another Greater's string weaves in, revealing the richly textured fabric of The Work. Suddenly I see the Greaters as THE Weavers, and their Work appears as a grand tapestry.
The minutiae of the Ultimate Unity shines with a mind-numbing complexity. Looking at it closely is like shrinking down to sub-atomic size and glimpsing the endless rhapsody of universe-within-universe, hidden within absolutely everything, layer upon endless layer. In this looking, my Sowantha senses encompass the whole scene, offering the perspective of each and every one of its Individuals, strewn throughout the whole of time. To perceive as Sowantha is to also perceive, to some degree, as the Ultimate Unity, and so my focus shifts back and forth, from Individual to Greater to Unity, and back and forth.
This pendulum swing mixes my perspectives, broadening and contextualizing each to the point of radiant luminescence. I see my rawn-Individual part in The Work quite clearly, and from literally countless perspectives. Oh but that sounds so misleading when carved in these stone-like words! It sounds like everything is pre-destined...like we are locked into a mere, will-less enactment of some grand plan or something. This is assuredly NOT the case, but how to explain???
In their natural state, the Greaters do not have either space or time. In space-time terms (which are all we've got to work with here), I think the closest description would be that they experience ONLY a present moment, a "now". In time-space, we have "now" stretched out and divided into sequential moments, like an endless chain. The Greaters though, have only one "now", and encompassed by their "now" as a universe-within-universe, is the eternal time-chain of their Individual's Universe. No matter how I wrap my words around this concept, I still stumble over the fact that non-space/time just doesn't translate into space/time language.
Space-time is only truly experienced by Individuals. The magic in Individual perceptions is that they do not encompass all of time, and so each moment is experienced as spontaneous and filled with a multitude of choices. Individuals experience time-space as a living, evolving thing. I think this is a consequence of the Individual's short chain of moments called a lifetime. If we broaden our perspective to a hundred year span, we can see entire life cycles of Individuals and some part of the ripples of consequence their lives stir up, all encompassed by our singular view. Multiply this by infinity, add to it the perceptions of each of the countless Individuals involved, and then multiply again by the power-filled knowledge that you're essentially responsible for the whole thing, and you'll have a mere glimmer of an idea of a Greater's perspective.
From the midst of my immersion in the Greaters' perspective, I glimpse my Sowantha-self speaking to my rawn-Individual-self through the medium of my former-teacher-Individual-self. From some aspects of my multifaceted perspective, there seems a confusion of self-dialogue, of self telling self what self already knows. Yet at the more inclusive levels of my perception, this is quite clearly the natural mode of Greater communication with their Individuals. For my rawn-Individual to achieve a genuine understanding, I must needs receive information decipherable by, and relevant to, my Individual experience. It seems that this can only be accomplished one Individual to another, and so I-Sowantha speaks with me-rawn through the Individual of my former teacher.
I-rawn learn many things from my old friend, and when I look upon his face and hear his words, it is like conversing with completely familiar kin, so intimate is our knowledge of each other. We are like two mirrors reflecting each other, amplifying our Individual differences infinitely, yet by that very infinity we reveal our commonality. We revel in our commonality, and with equal élan, celebrate our differences. We are kin not by blood but by that inner spark which we share, whose relatedness is revealed only just now, here in the Greaters' realm.
I come to understand that a Greater translates those of its Individuals which achieve the level of their Greater self's awareness, into an existence external of the space-time Universe. Hence my former teacher, who assuredly reached at least this stage of self-realization during his Individual lifetime, has been translated to the Greaters' realm, his particular Individuality becoming an ambassador of Sowantha, for purposes of consistent and specific communication with Sowantha's self-realizing Individuals. This is yet another aspect of The Work's mind-boggling complexity of minute interdependencies and interweavings, as self raises self from within.
Individuals such as my old friend work together, seeking always to raise their fellow Individuals and move The Work forward through time-space. They are somehow an essential part of the Greaters' communication between Greater and Individual aspects of self. They seem to be a self-revealing veil that both separates, yet translates between, the realms of space-time and non-space-time...self-consciously Individualizing their Greater self.
These Individuals share the perspective of their Greater self, but not yet fully that of the Ultimate Unity. At some point in their eternal moment, they will choose to dissolve their Individual pattern and merge still further into their self. Again, this happens outside the realm of time-space and so these time-space words give only a small part of the picture. Suffice it to say, that these Individuals serve The Work, and most especially their Greater part in the Ultimate Unity.
Generally, Individuals like my former teacher act in the capacity typified by his contact with me. Here, he is the mouth-piece of Sowantha, communicating with me at an Individual level. It is important that his meaning be communicated to me at this specific level, instead of at the level of a direct merging with my Sowantha Greater self. For here at the Individual level, I have directly time-space involved experiences and learn things in ways that allow for a further communication on my part as an Individual to other Individuals. At the encompassing level of a Greater awareness, my rawn-Individual does not learn in the same way, and so translating these ephemeral perceptions into terms communicable to other Individuals would be made all the more difficult. The Greaters seem ever so considerate of their Individuals!
As my friend speaks his Sowantha words into our mirrored, infinite ears, I experience what I already know, and in so experiencing, come to know it differently, more viscerally. I am invited forward and offered conscious inclusion in Sowantha's part of The Work. This is not presented as an honor, for surely there are no rewards in accepting, nor any loss in refusing. What is offered is no different from what I-rawn am already doing and have no other desire but to do. But somehow this phrasing of it by Sowantha changes the context of my work, placing it in aspect to The Work, and I am deeply humbled. I must shake my Individual-rawn self to its foundation to first see if I am capable of such a task...I must ask my self and answer so many questions before answering my Sowantha's call. Oddly, this challenge is inherent in Sowantha's communication, but seems a benign, natural mechanism of self-proving internal communication between Greater and Individual levels of self. I-rawn do not feel questioned nor doubted, it is simply most appropriate to now make sure that all is in order and that the foundation is firm.
Each self-question is answered in its asking, and so I turn and answer my Sowantha with the only answer I have ever answered with..."yes". This changed no thing and changes everything at once! Sowantha opens to me-rawn and I-rawn melt, merging inexorably with Sowantha Greater self. It is very like I-rawn am a stream of water, entering the vast and seemingly infinite Ocean, connecting instantly with all the other molecules of water and becoming self aware as Ocean. As Ocean, I can easily distinguish between my Individual streams and see that it is their very multitude of differences that make me an Ocean at all...yet I, in my Ocean-ness, am what is common throughout. No longer need I communicate with my self through the medium of another Individual, for now I can communicate with the Universe directly through my rawn-Individual.
As all Individual time-space experiences must, this experience ended. I, Rawn Clark, an Individual Human being, re-inhabited with excruciating awareness of its cramped state, my very familiar physical body. My physical body is unchanged, only in need of movement after so long a stasis, but my conscious awareness is quite changed indeed. There is no barrier remaining between Greater and Individual levels of my self awareness, though my contact with the Ultimate Unity is still quite limited. I am still quite clearly Rawn Clark, with all my Individual foibles and strengths, only now more clearly so, more inclusively so.