A Look Back: Art Reveals the "Oracular"

 

Here's a post I found from 2016,  which I had completely forgotten about, but which reminded me  again of the "threads" that wind through our lives,  the warp and weft that weave life themes together without being hindered by time.  Perhaps,  in exploring myths as a visual vocabulary,  it is about contacting the intelligences of the "archetypes", which indeed do transcend personal history.  I can't explain or justify that comment, but there it is.

"Art as Oracular Process"  (2016)

This started out as a journal, but somehow it's become quite political, and I feel at least today like pulling it back to it's original introspective intent.

Here's a very old drawing I found, which of course I completely forgot about.  I did it when I was just 20 years old.   It's not particularly good, but from the perspective of 45 years later, it reads to me like a prophetic page in the book of my life, and the reason I'm sharing this little story is not so much about the content of my personal story, but the way it illustrates the seamlessness and timelessness that we can touch when we are in creative (and mythic) mind space, which is also where the "oracular" can perhaps manifest.

There are themes that run like threads through the personal saga......

I didn't know much when I was 20 years old  but I loved to draw.  I had not yet encountered feminism, let alone eco-feminism, Goddess spirituality, patriarchy, the Chalice and the Blade,  Lilith, etc. In fact, most of that was still underground everywhere,  and yet to evolve into the public eye.  Those forces were fermenting.  

I had encountered the story of St. George and the Dragon, which is what this drawing was supposed to be about.  

At the time I was living with my first boyfriend, and the face of George is clearly him!  I still remember his angry, bullying face.   He used to hit and humiliate me,  and after I left him I began the psychological quest to  selfhood that most women have to make when leaving such a relationship..........back then the path to understanding and empowerment was not so clear, certainly not so articulated, nor was it so available.  I am fortunate that I lived in Northern California, where the second wave of feminism was making its mark, and "consciousness raising groups" were becoming available, along with the early women's shelters.  

The face of "St. George" was, although I had no such language  for it, the face of male  domination, which was personally playing out at the time  in my own life and indoctrination. 

But looking at this strange drawing,  what was the "Dragon" all about?  It's curious to me, that drawing.  What a sad face that dragon has, not really fierce at all!  And it rises from depths in the earth.  Behind George is a barren kind of landscape, but behind the dragon, rising from the dark as the dragon seems to rise from the below, are  all kinds of foliage, plants, flowers, the abundance and vitality of nature. 

It was years later that I learned about the symbolism of earlier Goddess cultures, the importance of the snake/dragon  as a universal symbol of the Goddess - Earth Mother, the Shakti, the Kundalini force, and the moving forces of nature.  I think of the weaving dragons or snakes  represented extensively both in Celtic art and in Chinese art.  Perhaps the "slaying of the dragon", like "St. Patrick driving the snakes out of Ireland" was an intuiting of the loss of an earlier pagan reverence for the earth and the divine feminine.  

 This intuition was, I see, very appropriate for the world as it is now, a world striving to deal with climate crisis, and a religious mythos that has erased the Divine Feminine. 

And who is the falling winged woman who seems to be part of the dragon? I think she was supposed to be the "maiden" being rescued by "St. George", at least in my conscious mind which was not much versed in mythology.  But a strange maiden she is indeed!  Snakes seem to encircle her as well as her merging with the dragon.........and she does not seem at all happy about St. George turning up.  In fact, she looks quite tragically sad.  

Demeter,   shown with wheat, fruits, and snakes.

From my perspective now, I would say that what we have here is no "maiden" in need of rescuing, rather, she is  really Lilith, the Goddess banished, along with the Earth Dragon or snake in the Tree of Life (Lilith is often represented as a snake in the Garden of Eden) by the self-righteous sword of good old St. George the patriarchal warrior.  

Nu Wa,  primal Chinese Earth Mother/Goddess of nature, shown as half woman and half snake. 
 Often she is shown entwined with her husband, who is also represented as half man, half snake.

I don't know if we can all say that we have (or haven't) "found our life work".  I don't know that I believe in "destiny" which seems awfully egotistic if not downright arrogant as ideas go.  I believe we can have a number of "life works", among them things we have to learn to do our soul making, and these might just as aptly be  called "life themes".  But looking back at touchstones in my own life, I see that the Goddess has always been with me. If I contributed to anything significant in my life, it was my participation in the great wave of women (and men) who have sought to bring about the Return of the Goddess, with all that means, from women's rights  to uncovering the deeply buried past and understanding the lost and buried mythos and overlay hidden underneath the veneer of  patriarchal religion culture. 

It is time for Lilith to return from the wilderness and take her rightful place in the fragmented soul of humanity.  And it is time for the Dragon snake to rise,  and be honored again, instead of driven down, like Lilith, into the underground.  Or "slain".  Which is a negation of the importance and meaning  of this symbol so sacred to our ancestors anyway......... remember, snakes shed their skins.  They don't die, because they are ever  reborn!

Now that I think about it,  the Great Snake wove it's way into my imagination in ways that I did not know  many years later as well, in my 40's.   Inspired by Riane Eisler's Chalice and the Blade, I wrote, with my ex-husband, a story that evolved into a little novel called "The Song of Medusa" (I have posted the entire novel on my website, and it can be read for free).  

I knew quite a lot by that time about the Goddess, and Snakes.  The novel featured an ancient priestess/shaman who went into caverns to "sing", which was a trance that enabled her to prophesy and offer healing for her people at auspicious times of the year, as she communed with the spirit of the Earth in the caverns.  She had endured a difficult initiation to become a Shaman - as the novel opens she says "I was given to the Snake, and I lived".  In later days, after the destruction of her people,  she goes to Delphi to become one of the Oracles there. 

 

                                                    PREFACE

 

                                                 And perhaps a tree

                                                 standing in the forest

                                                 fills its leaves

                                                 with the breath

                                                 of the World

                                                 and we listen

                                                 and we are not alone.

What I did not know, nor did my Ex, was that the Oracle of Delphi went into her trance by sitting above a fissure in the Earth,  in caverns, and by breathing in the fumes was able to prophesy.  In fact,  originally Delphi was dedicated to Gaia, the First Mother of Greek mythology.  And the Oracle of Delphi was also called ......  "the Pythoness"!

"A House of Doors"

An onion, that's it.  All those layers

just when you think you can name yourself,

you discover new layers,

you’re forming a new skin,

a new ring.

But there's a core.

And where does that core start?

My MFA show in 1987 was called "A House of Doors", and I made, with the collaboration and generosity of artist and fellow graduate student Catherine Nash MFA,  a spoken word/electronic music  "sound track" to go with the paintings and lithographs that comprised the show. Catherine is an extraordinary artist whose work has always opened doors into other realms.  And  1987 was an exciting time to be alive, an optimistic time  when all kinds of inquiries into spirituality and consciousness were developing in the New Age era.  Catherine and I belonged to a group interested in exploring altered states of consciousness and other spiritual explorations, and from that group also came a show about art and spirituality.  We discussed people like Wassily Kandinsky and his book "Concerning the Spiritual in Art".  We meditated together, and did numerous sessions with Bob Monroe's Past Life Regression tapes - those shared visions were very significant for me, and became the inspiration for my show and performance piece  "A House of Doors" below:

https://soundcloud.com/user-972033003/a-house-of-doors-1987

Sometimes, you open a door, 

any door 

and you have to walk outside

into something tender,

like a touch on a winter night

into a quiet yard

because of a voice that you hear 

or a bell

or a train

pulling away

somewhere

Inviting Flow, and Temporal Density.............

Finally I'm alone.  I spend my winters and spring now running a "ladies boarding house".  My duties range from being a cleaning lady to a guide of souls, with the major emphasis on being a cleaning lady.  Perhaps in the future my art intensives, whereby people come to 5 day workshops and stay here in the process will provide a living..........but for now, I'm just glad to have a livelihood.

So now I confront a  Tucson summer, which is a little like confronting the strenuous and internalizing life of a Minnesota winter.  The heat, like the extreme cold, flattens everything.  Yesterday it was a mild 105 degrees, and it will not vary much until the Monsoons come in late July.  It is not without its beauties, but it is strange to not be travelling, to have this self-chosen solitude.  But I need this time of reflection, and I am devoting it to seeing what is inside me artistically. 

One of the advantages of being in my mid 60's is that I just don't give a damn any more about so much that tormented and constructed me before.  The joy of "deconstruction"!  I'm completely allergic to the art world, which never made much sense to me anyway. Do I care what people think of my work?  No,  but I do hope it can "emanate" something, even if its on an unconscious or  aesthetic level, emanate something that has its source in the divine thread that began it.   

As I write, I remember a woman I met once who created banners that hung in churches.  She lived at Findhorn, and the dyes for her banners were derived from flowers and herbs there, what she called "colors and gifts from the Devas".  As the banners faded,   she felt they were emanating a kind of spiritual fragrance, a healing power.  I like that.

I'm inviting Flow.  Like many, I find my mind so distracted and fragmented by the demands and  habits of "too much" that it is hard to contact the pregnant, dark, Silence from which the voice of the Divine speaks, from which our inner life is endlessly being sourced.  It always comes back to Gaia.   Religion, philosophy, all of it seems to be less important to me these days, my gratitude and appreciation for the privilege of living on Gaia, being a part of Gaia, is meaning enough.   Let my work in whatever form praise the Earth, from which all our stories arise, and to which they return. 

And if I am not walking in the cool beloved  woods of the dappled North Country this  Solstice, well, let me celebrate the strange beauty of the desert I am living in, those creatures of the fierce sun at its Zenith and the blessings of the cool nights.  

I found myself thinking of John Steele, as I try to clear the debris away from my creativity. Looking back, I see how many, many times I have been blessed by meeting people who set me on my path, who gave me touchstones to illuminate the way, and too often, I didn't even notice at the time.  

I met John Steele in 1989, at the Symposium on Art and the Invisible Reality at Rutgers University, sponsored by Dr. Rafael Montanez Ortiz.  I wish there was another such conference!  I presented a performance piece called "When the Word for World Was Mother", and not too long after John kindly sent me his amazing book Earthmind: Communicating with the Living World of Gaia, in collaboration with  Paul Devereux and David Kubrin.  An important book, to me, an important book, period.  

John J. Steele is an aromatic consultant, archaeologist, author and visionary.  His work, whether with aromas or philosophy, engages questions about the nature of memory, time, consciousness and being. He has worked with Terence McKenna and Paul Devereux (The Dragon Project).   Steele  explores Vedic culture, Kali Yuga,  geomancy and what he calls "geomantic amnesia", geobiology, time out of balance, shamanism, the effects of geological formations on human consciousness, cross state retention, and the importance of sacred sites and spaces. EARTHMIND explores ways of interfacing with the earth for planetary healing. And Planetary Healing is also our healing.

 In a (now unavailable)  collection of audio seminars, John Steele gave us an overview of how geomantic traditions worldwide, from the Aborigines of Australia to the Stones of Salisbury  have influenced human awareness, psychology and ways of life. He explains how sacred geometry can grant us access to "Present Time", the great and infinite place where silent knowledge flows into our consciousness unrestricted by the objects that surround us, and in many ways, "own us".

"The memorial capacity is the key to the strength of a computer, and our computers are valued by their increasing capacity to store memory.  There is an emphasis upon the acquisition of memory that can be stuffed into a computer..........What happens after a while is that the system becomes constipated by too much hoarding of memory.  This hoarding of memory (in human terms)  sets up a kind of psychological density, and as the system becomes clogged it becomes brittle.  That is to say it cannot react quickly to crisis situations because it is overloaded with information."

"The density of objects in the environment creates a corresponding density of memory necessary to record objects, and this density of memory creates temporial density.  Temporal density is a function of memorial density and memorial density is a function of object density.  You will notice that those cultures that have the fewest objects live in the dream time.  You look at the Australian aborigines with their minimal object array and you see that they live in a completely different time frame. The Bushmen the same.  As temporal density occurs it sets up this extended unconscious array of time - time is generated."

A while back I wrote an  article about Geomancer Sig Lonegren  (who also profoundly, and with utter serendipity, set me on my path many years ago) in which he commented that he believed the great Megalithic structure of Stonehenge was a "last attempt" to retain right brain, or "dreamtime" consciousness as human culture, with the continuing advent of language,  began to change during the Neolithic.  In a sense, he was perhaps  saying that the capacity for  greater contact with "the collective mind of Gaia" was gradually being lost.  Perhaps it is now time to regain that mediumistic capacity in a new way.  

I feel John Steele, and his colleagues, and Sig Lonegren............hold the key to something so important in understanding our place on the planet, and an ancient and arising paradigm that is essential.   I'm saddened that they are so little known.

And for myself, confronting the internal life of a long desert summer........May I open a Flow this summer as I create new Earth Shrines, new and yet repeated, endlessly repeated like a chant.......homage to our Mother Earth.  

"We live in the time of Kali Yuga.  Kali is the Goddess of the dissolution of time and structures.  She clears the way for those impediments of evolution that have arisen.  The Tibetan translation for "Kali Yuga" means literally the  "dregs of time", the bottom of the barrel of time.  Time has acquired such "temporal density" that it can actually be felt in the body.  And the definition of "Temporal Density" is that we have too many units of events in each day to fully or effectively assimilate them.........Another aspect of Kali Yuga   which is related to temporal density is that there is seasonal disequilibrium.  The climate and the seasons go out of whack."

John Steele

***




‘Earthmind: Communicating with the living world of Gaia’ by Paul Devereux with John Steele and David Kubrin 

 "The authors make much of the effect on mind of the electromagnetic properties of the Earth and its rocks. They believe that communication with the Earthmind or anima mundi can best be achieved at sacred sites, facilitated by the crystal structures within the dolmens there. However, the authors believe there are hopeful signs of a revival of belief in paganism and in Earth’s spirituality, which would contribute to lessening our desecration of our planetary home. The key to such a consciousness revolution rests, in the opinion of the authors, with acceptance of the existence of a universal field of consciousness and our spiritual integration with it – what Peter Russell (The Awakening Earth)" described as the Gaiafield and which Devereux calls Earthmind.

for a great review:   http://greenspirit.org.uk/bookreviews/2013/05/earthmind-communicating-with-the-living-world-of-gaia-by-paul-devereux-with-john-steele-and-david-kubrin/

"Marga"........Following Footprints in the Mythic Sand

Recently I lent the book "Women Who Run With The Wolves"  by Clarissa Pinkola Estes to a friend staying at my house.  As she was reading it, I was working on a little article called  "Spider Woman's Hands" for the Feminism and Religion Blog.  She returned the book to me, with the comment that I should re-read it myself, that it would help me to do so.  An hour or so later I picked it up, and opened the book at random, and read the text that my eyes immediately fell on.  Here's what it was (truly) :

"What are soul needs?  They lie in the two realms of nature and creativity.  In these realms lives Na'ashje`'ii Asdza`a`, Spider Woman, the Navajo creation Goddess who gives psychic protection to those who seek her.  She is in charge of teaching the soul both protection and the love of beauty." (page 196)

What are the odds, to open a book at random thusly?  I thought of the concept of Marga after I read that, the archetypal/mythic strands in the web that lead us on,  refresh our vision of  the links.  

The "Blog sphere" has been a continuing source of information and inspiration.  In 2011 I  received a fascinating correspondence from Robur D'Amour, who shared with me his insights about "Marga", having read some of my own posts on synchronicity. 

Marga is a term I had not run across before, a concept that resonates  with what I've fancifully called "conversations with the world". And to me, those conversation are founded upon a mythic language.

I was pleased that Robur  kindly gave me permission to reproduce rich information from his site. http://roburdamour.blogspot.com/2010/05/marga.html.  I have not heard from him in years, but remain grateful for his musings.

"'Marga' is a term that means following a path of signs or symbols that lead a person to their spiritual self. Marga is a bit like finding one's way through a labyrinth, by reading signs that are given to you by the unconscious."

Jung believed that what mattered in life, to him, was to find his spiritual identity. He believed that a person could do this by leading what he termed a 'symbolic life'. Jung wrote:

“when people feel they are living the symbolic life, that they are actors in the divine drama... That gives the only meaning to human life; everything else is banal and you can dismiss it. A career, producing of children, are all maya (illusion) compared to that one thing, that your life is meaningful.”

I think that this idea is the same thing that Joseph Campbell, who was a great admirer of Jung, refers to as 'marga'. It's a way of living, without following any particular creed or any rules worked out and written down by someone else, other than paying attention to what is presented to you by Fate, the Goddess, God, or the unconscious. In The Hero's Journey (p45) Campbell writes:

"Adolf Bastian, a German anthropologist, has meant a great deal to me with just this main idea. The common themes that come out of the collective unconscious he calls elementary ideas.... In India, in art criticism, the elementary ideas are called 'marga', the path. Marga is from a root word 'mrg', which refers to the footprints left by an animal, and you follow that animal. The animal you are trying to follow is your own spiritual self. And the path is indicated by mythological images. Follow the tracks of the animal and you will be led to the animal's home. Who is the animal? The animal is the human spirit. So, following the elementary ideas, you are led to your own deepest spiritual source."

 A snippet of that piece can be read on Google books: The Hero's Journey (Marga).  In practical terms, this means paying attention to what we see in the world around ourselves, and in particular to symbols presented to us, in dreams and the things we come across in our daily lives. The symbols we see around us are presented to us by - Fate, the Goddess, God, the unconscious, or whatever name you like to give to the thing that we cannot see, but what determines 'what happens next'. 

This is the entry for marga, from a Sanskrit dictionary. Following the links in a trail of symbols that are presented to us by the unconscious, amounts to finding one's way through a labyrinth, by reading the signs. Labyrinths and mazes were common features in Elizabethan gardens."

What was interesting to me particularly in this 2011 correspondance was a kind of synchronistic overlay ..... a "crossing of Margas".  He wrote that:

"The marga (path of symbols) that I seem to have been unwittingly following is a very curious one, the odd re-occurrence of names that have  served as footprints along the way  - names similar to "Marga" that represented been syncronistic touchstones.   I originally seemed to connect the word marga with Megara, a name that  was popularised as the heroine in a Disney version of Hercules. It's only a film for children, but Megara is a very vivid anima archetype.......Megara was originally a Greek word for a fissure in the ground used for sacred rites connected with beliefs about the underworld (the unconscious) and Persephone-Hecate."

This was quite amazing to me, as twenty years prior I found myself obsessed with writing the only short story/novel I've ever written.  The novel, The Song of Medusa, ......... an excerpt can be found here.  It was  inspired by Riane Eisler's Chalice and the Blade and a desire to envision the world of the Goddess, how it might have been in pre-history, and might manifest in today's world.  But in the course of the "flow" of the writing, an ancient fictional priestess emerged, a "Singer" who chanted, prophesized, and "spoke with the voice of the Earth" in trance  by going into sacred  caves and fissures.  I did not know at the time about the ways the Oracle of Delphi became entranced, only learning of this later.  And, the novel was developed around the Persephone/Hades myth.  

Twenty years later, via this correspondance, I learn about Megara.  It seems, once again, that in the course of opening to the creative process, we do indeed open to the collective mind.  

And the footprints in the sand, glimmering in the light of Marga,  can reveal themselves, leading us on.

Greg Braden and "The Science of Miracles"

"When we form heart-centered beliefs within our bodies, in the language of physics we're creating  the electrical and magnetic expression of them as waves of energy, which aren't confined to our hearts or limited by the physical barrier of our skin and bones.  So clearly we're "speaking" to the world around us in each moment of every day through a language that has no words:  the belief-waves of our hearts.

In addition to pumping the blood of life within our bodies, we may think of the heart as a belief-to-matter translator.  It converts the perceptions of our experiences, beliefs, and imagination into the coded language of waves that communicate with the world beyond our bodies.  Perhaps this is what philosopher and poet John Mackenzie meant when he stated, "The distinction between what is real and what is imaginary is not one that can be finely maintained ... all existing thing are ... imaginary."

Gregg Braden

I enjoy the quote above by philosopher and New Mexico visionary Gregg Braden........except at the end of the last quote, I might change "imaginary" to "imaginal".   Because, as Braden himself so fully argues in his life work, that's really where we are collectively now - at the "imaginal threshold" of our species evolution. 

I began this journal almost 6 years ago, as a journal for the evolution of my project "Spider Woman's Hands", which I received a Fellowship at the Alden Dow Creativity Center in Midland, Michigan to pursue.  In 2009 I was resident artist at Wesley Theological in Washington, D.C., and continued the project.  My fascination with ubiquitous myths and symbols of Spider Woman, from the Pueblo peoples of the Southwest, the Navajo weavers, the prehistoric Mississippian people, even the Maya......began with a deep realization of the significance of this metaphor of the Great Weaver for our time on multiple levels:  ecological, social, spiritual, and quantum.  We live in the participatory universe of Spider Woman, weavers and woven.  One of the names for Spider Woman among Pueblo peoples is Tse Che Nako, "Thought Woman", because She made the world with the stories she told about it.  There is a great Keresan Pueblo proverb that says,

"Tse Che Nako, Thought Woman, the Spider
is sitting in her room thinking up a good story.
I'm telling you the story she is thinking."*

Pueblo legends hold that it was Spider Woman who led the people through the cosmic Kiva at the end of each age into the new world.  According to their calendar, the 4th World is now ended, and we are entering the 5th World........and I believe that once again, it is Grandmother Spider Woman who is showing the Way, offering us the opportunity to pass through the Kiva, the Birth Canal, into a  new world, with the truth of  Her great Web at the very center.  We all know the Precipice we hang on as a common humanity.  Our technology and technological connectivity will either be the end of our evolutionary promise, or we will become a truly global humanity.  The new World, or "New Age", will be an age that puts into practice the great truth of  unity within the great co-creative diversity of life.  What I would like to pursue in future posts is not only how this is being demonstrated by science as well as metaphysics, but how we can, and are, putting the "New Paradigm of Connectivity" into pragmatic practice.  Because that's ultimately the good news we need.

As I return to  Spider Woman's Web, I find Greg Bradon, in  "The Science of Miracles", makes an eloquent discussion of how Quantum physics and metaphysics now agree on a "conversant world".

“The act of focusing our consciousness is an act of creation.

 Consciousness creates!” ~~~ Greg Braden

 http://youtu.be/otdAAm30lT0


** Patterson-Rudolph, Carol, " On the Trail of Spiderwoman" , 1997, Ancient City Press

So Much Light

 "Have you noticed that today lies and deceit come to the surface faster than before?…Well, to access God’s understanding and life’s functioning is also faster than ever before."

"We are living the best time that humanity has ever lived, we will be witnesses and actors of the biggest transformation of consciousness that you have ever imagined. Inform yourself; wake up your unrest for these subjects. Science knows that something is happening; you know that something is happening; we all know that many changes are happening in many levels. Be a conscious actor of these changes.”

I had a conversation recently with a friend about the Year 2012, and the darkness of our time.  She mentioned an interview she had read by  Sai Baba. She told me that Sai Baba said "There is so much light now" - meaning, so much opportunity for understanding, connection, enlightenment and disclosure than has ever been possible before......and for that reason, my friend said that in spite of the horrors of the news, she was very optimistic about our time.  I've thought about her comment a great deal and finally found the article she mentioned. 

What Sathya Sai Baba**, one of India's most important spiritual leaders, has to say in the following extract from a 2010 conversation with a reporter resonates for me on two particular points.  The first has to do with his words about "light revealing shadow", collectively and individually. They say that the greater the light, the more the darkness is illuminated. For the past few years, all the work I've been doing inwardly, and most of my dreams, have to do with the Jungian concept of "Shadow work", whether I want to do it or not. It's as if I cannot avoid any longer the so-called "dark" areas of my story and behavior - they all come up for review, one way or another. Which means, my power and grace also keeps coming up for review, my "integral" being.

I found this article is affirming of this personal process, and a collective process universally occurring. When I find myself despairing, I must also remind myself that this "light", the "visibility" of our time has wrought huge changes at an ever accelerating rate. You can look the other way, but abuse, injustice, and social evils that were not able to be examined in the past are now profoundly changing, because now they are visible.

The second aspect of this interview I find important is his commentary about the magnetic and viberatory rates of the planet. As a "Gaianist" who views myself as a part of the planetary organism and hence, planetary as well as human evolution, then his statement that "If there is a change on the earth’s magnetism, there is a change on the consciousness and also an adaptation at the physical level for this new vibration." makes a great deal of sense to me. We are "in relationship" with all life, with the planet, with Gaia - there is reciprocity, there is empathy.

The Events of Our Time - Bhagavan Sri Sathya Sai Baba 

Question: “Have you heard of the year 2012 like a year where something will happen?”

Baba:  The truth is that the planet has been changing its vibratory state, and this change has intensified since the year 1989 where the magnetic poles have moved the last 20 years more than the past 2000. Well, in one way there are several prophecies that signal this date like a term or important conclusion in the history of humanity, but the most significant is the end of the Mayan calendar, which prophecy has been interpreted in different ways. The most negative ones think that during this year the world will end, but it will not be like that, it is known that during that year a new era will start, the Age of Aquarius.

This has to do with the rotation of the whole solar system (solar cycle) that goes passing through the different eras each one of them lasts 5125 years. The era in which we now are, called the Age of Pisces, started on the year 3113 B.C. and ends on 2012. If there is a change on the earth’s magnetism, there is a change on the consciousness and also an adaptation at the physical level for this new vibration. The changes are not only on our planet, but also affect the whole universe, and today’s science can verify that.

Inform yourself about the changes on the solar storms (that are magnetic storms) and you will see that scientists are up to date with these things, or ask about the movement of the magnetic poles during the last years, and airports having to modify their instruments.

This change on the magnetism translates or it’s perceived as an increment of light, or an increase on the planet’s vibration.  For you to understand it easily you must know that this vibration is affected and intensified due to the consciousness of all human beings . Each thought, each emotion, each new awakening of a human being towards the consciousness of God elevates the vibration of the planet. 

This might seem a paradox, due to the fact that the majority sees around themselves more hatred and misery, but this is not so.  I have been saying this on previous messages, each one chooses where to focus the view, and those who only see the darkness are focused on the drama, the pain and the injustice. If you don’t see the spiritual advancement that humanity has made it is because you haven’t focused on it, but if you do the right work and liberate your mind of the negative you will open a space where you will be able to manifest your divine essence that will put on the focus of what is really happening with humanity and the planet. Humanity is elevating its consciousness as never before.

Question: “But how!…Can’t you see the darkness?” 

Baba:  Yes, I see it, but I don’t identify Myself with it, I’m not afraid of it…How can I fear darkness if I see such clear light?…Of course I understand those who fear, because I have also been standing where I could only see the evil. This is why now I feel love for all of that. Darkness is not a force contrary to the light, it is absence of light. You cannot invade the light with darkness, that is not how the principle of light works. Fear, drama, injustice, hate and sadness only exist in states of darkness, because you can’t see the global context in which your life develops. Once you have increased your vibration and frequency (state of consciousness) you will be able to see towards darkness and understand what you have lived.

Question: “But…How can you say this if there is more evil in the world everyday?”

Baba:  'There is not more evil…there is “more light,” and that is what I’m talking about on this message. Imagine that you have a room or warehouse where for years you have been storing your things and is lit by a 40 w. bulb. Change the bulb to a 100 w. and you will see what happens. You will see the mess and the dust you didn’t think existed. The dirt will be clearer. This is what is happening, and this makes possible that a lot of people are reading this without thinking of it as foolish, like it could have been some years ago.

Have you noticed that today lies and deceit come to the surface faster than before?…Well, to access God’s understanding and life’s functioning is also faster than before.

This new vibration of the planet is what is making everyone nervous, depressed or sick, because to be able to receive more light and to rise to that vibrational level, people have to change physically as well as mentally, they have to change the way they think and feel, and delete or eradicate from their lives such beliefs or parameters that generally differ from reality or that take them towards the negative side of things.

You must put your warehouses in order, because each day you are receiving more light on your consciousness and even if you want to avoid it, you should start putting your hands on the project and begin the cleaning,  or decide to live in the middle of the dirt. This change creates physical discomforts, pains on the body, on the skeleton system -  medical tests often can’t find a reason for the illness that provokes it. 

Generally they relate it to stress or nervous states.  Nothing farther from the truth, because these discomforts are provoked due to negative emotions accumulated during our lives, fears and anxieties that you have carried with you always and that now have the opportunity to transcend and transmute. It’s about that dust accumulated for years that you are now seeing, the opportunity for it to be cleaned because it's now visible.

There will be nights when you will wake up and stay up for a few hours…don’t alter yourself, read a book, watch TV, meditate, don’t fight thinking there is something wrong with you.  It’s the new vibration of the planet that you’re assimilating, you will go back to sleep and the next day you will not feel a need to sleep more. If you don’t flow with this process properly, the pains will be more intense and you will be diagnosed fibromyalgia, which is a name that medicine has given to these pains that have no visible cause and for which they offer no treatment with concrete results, they only give you a prescription for antidepressants and this makes you escape the opportunity to change your life.

One more time you chose which reality you want to live, only this time the drama will be more intense and of course will be the love. If the Light is increased, also is the lack of need for it, this explains why there is so much irrational violence during the last years.

We are living the best time that humanity has ever lived, we will be witnesses and actors of the biggest transformation of consciousness that you have ever imagined.  Inform yourself; wake up your unrest for these subjects. Science knows that something is happening; you know that something is happening; we all know that many changes are happening in many levels. Be a conscious actor of these changes and don’t let them take you by surprise because you don’t know what is happening.”

**I am aware of a controversy that concerns Sai Baba and allegations of sexual abuse.  This does not, for me, disqualify his words.  It is  an irony that lends a layer of credibility to his comments.  Sai Baba is considered a saint in India, and if even saints can have shadows that become  exposed,  then there is something encouraging in knowing that even the Gurus are not "perfect", are accountable, and  that we are all evolving toward becoming  integral beings.

***This article is excerpted with gratitude from http://horizonsmagazine.com/blog/?p=14208