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ASCENT
AN AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL SPIRITUAL ANTHOLOGY
Dedicated to Bhagavan Sri Sathya Sai Baba
Who continues to be my Guiding Light
“You are a child of God, and it is your God-given role to help others to remember that they are also children of God”
[Divine decree received 2010]
‘Energy cannot be created or destroyed;
It can only be changed from one form to another.
Everything is energy and that is all there is to it.
Match the frequency of the reality you want,
And you cannot help but get that reality.
It can be no other way.
This is not philosophy;
This is physics’
[Albert Einstein]
Why these Writings?
On completion of the Labyrinth here at Jacaranda Haven in 2010, I walked it on my own for the first time and then stood – silent and empty- in the centre. A loud voice spoke telepathically to me:
“You are a child of God, and it is your God-given role to help others to remember that they are also children of God”
Sai Baba had gifted me a pen and vibhuti (sacred ash) whilst leaving Puttaparthi in 1999, renowned psychic Joan Moylan had told me in 1998 to write, and psychic Jennifer Starlight conveyed to me from Spirit in early 2022 that I was meant to write…but what ?
And then I realised that all I could write about to assist others on their paths was my own experiences, teachings and learnings in order to “…help others to remember that they are also children of God”. Hence these autobiographical writings…
Modules
This is but one ‘module’ in this collection of autobiographical writings that I choose to call ‘modules’. Each one stands alone, but some cross-reference others. A completed book is a static thing once finished: however, these modules are flexible in that I can add to them at any time should new experiences/information comes to hand, and the reader can pick & choose which particular modules attract them. The collection of modules thereby constitutes an’ anthology’.
The intent of writing these is to share experiences and teachings that I have been blessed with along the way of a human incarnation – the ascent of consciousness – such that the reader may also benefit to illumine their own path/ascent to the ultimate inevitable goal for all humans: that of ‘self-realisation’.
Belief vs Truth
As a precursor to reading any of these Modules, there is a need to clarify the difference between ‘Belief’ and ‘Truth’: one may ‘believe’ eg it is raining outside by the sound on the roof, but when you actually see the rain falling/walk out and get wet, you actually then ‘know’ it is so – ie it is ‘true’, and so ‘belief’ about that instantly ceases.
Many go through life accumulating fixed ‘beliefs’ about people/things, and, as Krishnamurti taught:”… the moment you arrive at a conclusion/form an opinion/a belief, you block the possibility of further enquiry and discovery”.
So, a hot air balloon called ‘Ascent’ awaits: I invite you to climb into its basket with me, throw overboard the ballast of all those accumulated ‘beliefs/opinions’ you have acquired to feel safe, and therefore allow this balloon to rise free and drift to destinations unknown.
Because, otherwise, some of what you read herein may sorely challenge your accumulated beliefs…
Everything recounted within the Anthology is absolutely true, unless I have qualified otherwise.
John Stephen Butterworth
KARMA
ACT 1
I jerked awake to feel a cold metal tube pressed against my forehead, and heard a male voice just behind it in the dark saying something like: “Make a wrong move and I’ll blow your brains out!” then
“Get out of bed slowly” and I presume that’s when someone turned the lights on and I saw the gun pressed against my forehead.
The bed/living room of my bachelor flat had maybe three or four men dressed in suits standing around with some starting to open wardrobes/cupboards – going through my clothing etc.
I was in such a state of shock, I am uncertain as to exactly what then unfolded but generally they said they were police and were arresting me with the intent of charging me for robbing a bank!!
I was probably just dumbfounded and protesting that they must have the wrong person. And asking to phone my brother-in-law who was partner of one of the larger Sydney law practices.
They then put me in a car and drove me to their offices in Liverpool Street Sydney where I assume they charged me and then allowed me to phone my solicitor brother-in-law.
I was then driven to North Sydney Police Station and placed in a cell…
To provide some context to all this:
It was late 1982, and my wife and I had separated at the end of 1980. I had just about finish coursework at the University of NSW for my Bachelor’s degree in Landscape Architecture; having finished, I was immediately employed and moved into this small bachelor flat down near Cremorne Point in Sydney. About 18 months later, a recession hit Australia, work dried up and I was ‘let go’. Initially, I used the freedom to complete my undergraduate thesis (as most of us doing the course simply could not find the time to do so during the course). That done, I started promoting myself by ‘door knocking’ the offices of architects and developers etc seeking work… meanwhile my bank balance was shrinking and so I had to be very careful about what money I had left.
One ‘fateful’ day, I went into a bank branch in Crows Nest to draw out a small amount and remember spending quite a few minutes away from the counter deliberating on exactly what little amount I should withdraw. Transaction complete, I left, but was stopped shortly after by detectives saying to go with them as they wished to interview me. They took me to their office on a back lane in North Sydney and interrogated me including searching my briefcase.
I thought that must be the end of that, and accepted an invitation to friends that night for dinner (two of whom just happened to be clairvoyant – but more of that shortly).
And then I went back to my bachelor flat at Cremorne Point… for the rude awakening in the pre-dawn…
I vividly recall the sense of powerlessness as I sat in the cell in North Sydney – despite my brother-in-law and an associate asserting they would get me out of this situation. Someone else was brought into the cell, then late afternoon, we were loaded into the back of a ‘paddy wagon’ and driven by a seemingly indirect route picking up others from other police stations until we finally arrived at Long Bay Remand Centre.
We were duly processed, given prison clothing and taken to our cells.
I found that I was sharing with one other young man who fortunately was quiet and kept to himself.
I came to understand that all there were on remand, awaiting a court hearing as the next step.
Daily life was fairly simple, with an exercise yard where an impromptu game of cricket might happen or you could just walk, work out on gym gear or even access a lending library.
Prior to my hearing scheduled for North Sydney Local Court a few days hence, I was permitted to don my street clothes again and go with my brother-in-law & associate to brief a Queens Counsel, none other than the famous Chester Porter, to represent me at the hearing.
Chester silently heard what had happened and told us of some of the crimes he had seen carried out with banks eg a friend of a teller comes in, says this is stickup, takes the cash, and later shares it with the teller friend. My situation, he felt for certain, was that I was being used by others to pretend there had been a robbery, steal the cash and share it later. So he was engaged to represent me at the hearing at which I felt most cheered up especially due to his reputation. The hearing before a visiting magistrate was brief with the detectives, 2 in particular, putting forward what they must have claimed was circumstantial evidence. The magistrate promptly denied bail/dismissal of the charge, and Chester met me outside saying:
“You are so unlucky to get that magistrate because that’s so typical of him: he’s renowned for acquiescing to the police case. So sorry, I did my best”.
And so back to Long Bay it was for at least another 7 days before a second appeal hearing was scheduled before a Judge in the NSW Supreme Court.
However, in the meantime, ‘the plot thickened even further’ when my brother-in-law and his associate personally interviewed 2 of the bank tellers at the bank branch where they claimed the ’robbery’ (so-called) had occurred as witnessed by them. When the tellers heard what had transpired with me being arrested and put in remand, they reportedly became very nervous, with one of them pacing up and down and smoking nervously. My legal representatives left the interview convinced that there was indeed something very fishy going on.
Additionally, when I later told my clairvoyant friend (where I had dinner the night before the home invasion) about what had transpired, she then confessed to me that both she and her clairvoyant daughter had ‘perceived’ that night that I was about to undergo a very challenging experience BUT that they, as responsible psychics, were morally unable to warn me of such: what I had to experience, they had to stand back and allow. What the mother did say after the event that there was something extremely suspicious about the whole train of affairs…
While I was awaiting that second hearing, an interesting thing happened: another inmate, a man in his thirties, approached me saying that he’d seen me writing on paper during free time after dinner, and shyly confessed that he wanted to write to his mother but didn’t know how to address the envelope. My heart went out to him, and I discreetly showed how… I also had time there to observe that most were very ordinary people who had only turned to criminal activity out of desperation to make ends meet… I felt that, in many cases, this was an indictment of society’s shortcomings in education and upbringing support…
The other matter I wanted to comment on was how it all affected my mother who was shaking uncontrollably the day she was permitted a brief visit: this caused me to develop deep hatred for those who had brought this sham about and were perpetuating it just to be able to claim to their bosses that they had ’solved the case’ because the way it affected her nerves and general health: I was VERY angry (which I had to deal with later down the track) ( see separate module:” Forgiveness).
So, seven days later, I was given a suit, shirt, tie, shoes etc that my family had obtained from my bachelor flat, changed and was taken in a paddy wagon to beneath the Supreme Court building in Macquarie Street on Queens Square. I was led up flights of stairs and emerged into a dock in a large courtroom empty apart from my family (adults only), legal representatives and the Police barrister plus the two detectives, whereupon a Judge appeared. We all stood, bowed, and he took his seat.
The details of the matter (as flimsy as they were) were read out by both sides – at the conclusion of which, the Judge memorably said:
“I find the whole matter highly unlikely and order that Mr Butterworth be released (on bail) immediately!”
Talk about music to my ears!!
Outside, I was re-united with my mother and family adults, plus, of course, my brother-in-law and his associate. It brought me immense relief to see how happy my mother was!
I must also share something else that I vividly remember: it had been 10 days since I had been wrongfully arrested in that home invasion. In that 10 days, I suddenly realized that I was only in the company of men… as I walked out of the building and along Macquarie Street, every woman I saw looked utterly delightful in their femininity! Just couldn’t keep my eyes off them – not in a sexual way, but just enjoying the female gender in a way I never had before. Just couldn’t get enough of looking at them! I returned to my bachelor flat and probably explained the fiasco to my landlady who lived next door: Did she believe me? I have no idea!
That night, I had terrible nightmares from the home invasion and the next day, as I told my mother about the nightmares, she kindly invited me to move back in to her place as I had nowhere else to go. I remember she took me to a department store in Sydney and bought me a double bed for an upstairs bedroom where my sister and husband used to live.
Unexpectedly, I got a letter in the mail one morning, saying that my fee proposal to design & document the landscape design for a new retirement village ‘Peninsula Gardens’ at South Bayview in the northern suburbs of Sydney had been successful and I suddenly had to set up a design office with a few staff to do the work. But where?
My mother calmly said that I could use the extensions to her house that my sister and her family had formerly occupied – and so my landscape design practice (JS Butterworth Pty Limited) started. It continued to grow and lasted there until I voluntarily let it close down in early 1996 after about 13 ½ years when I changed life directions (see separate module: ‘1996 – A Seminal Year’).
But back to the home invasion fiasco: just when I might have thought it was all resolved, it reared its head again.
ACT 2
It was now 1983. I still had to report to North Sydney Police Station once a week to confirm that I was still in the area ie that I had not debunked elsewhere, and was “…still out on bail” whilst the police were deciding what to do about their tenuous situation – for it was all based on the assertion of a few bank tellers that I had, undisguised, held them up at gunpoint, stolen $4,000 (I think??) and calmly walked back into their branch few days later, undisguised once again, and spent some time debating to myself about whether I should draw out eg $80 or maybe $100 cash from my small account, completed that small withdrawal and left… as if !!! It was all so preposterous, we still didn’t understand what substantive grounds the police had to keep me on bail & regular reporting in… all very dubious…
I was friendly with a lady and her daughter who ran a jewellery shop in Northpoint in North Sydney and used to occasionally drop in for a chat if I was in that area on business.
Next door, a lady ran a dress shop and I think I was introduced to her briefly once. One day, someone stole some dresses and so she reported it to North Sydney Police Station across the road. Apparently, they sat her down and showed her a book of photos of known criminals… and you guessed it, there was my photo.
“Oh, I know that man. He’s friends of the shop owner next door” to which the police officer is reported to have said to her:
“You need to be careful who you associate with as he’s in this book “ etc etc
She then told my friends at the jewellery shop what had transpired, who in turn told me, and I naturally told my legal representatives.
I don’t recall whether they protested to the police for defaming me, or whether they went straight to The NSW Ombudsman but that’s where we ended up lodging a complaint very promptly, at their offices in Macquarie Street Sydney.
The Ombudsman’s office issued NSW Police with a complaint for this defamation demanding their response. Whilst the police were obviously going to avoid apologising to me at all costs (as that would have been tantamount to admitting wrongful arrest etc), they were ordered by the Ombudsman to:
- reimburse me with all legal and other expenses incurred to date
- destroy in my presence all file material relating to the matter
- plus (I assume) to return the bail money/sureties
Simultaneously, my brother-in-law obtained a legal advice from a prominent Sydney QC John Sackar now, some 40 years later, (according to the Internet) a Judge in The Supreme Court of NSW about the matter who advised in writing that, should I choose to initiate legal action for defamation, it almost certainly would be successful along with the awarding of monetary damages.
I knew immediately that, despite urging by my solicitors to do so, and without any awareness of karma at that stage, that it was prudent to now step back – as to take such legal action would only bring Press/media exposure that almost certainly could prove to be most unsavoury especially for my family and my professional practice.
ALTERNATIVE CONSCIOUS ACTION
And that was a critical point in this ‘play’: I chose NOT to retaliate with a defamation action. In hindsight, ARMED WITH THE WISDOM OF WHAT I HAVE SINCE LEARNED, to have done so would have generated further karmic consequences for myself and many of the other ‘players’ – some of whom obviously have their own karma to deal with eg those who initiated the apparent fraud/embezzlement/whatever in the first place.
‘Action and re-action’: sound familiar? It should as it’s Newton’s Third Law – as taught in high school science… in Sanskrit: karma.
On an international level, how often does one see such an outcome? For example, one country fires armaments at another country which usually retaliates in like fashion (‘appropriate force’) as current world consciousness expects of its leaders. And so a conflict starts that sometimes goes on for years/decades and sadly may well escalate – causing immense suffering and destruction… eg Northern Ireland.
But there is another approach: that of reprimanding the initiators, forgiving them, and NOT retaliating by force/sanctions…
“Unthinkable?” you protest, but surely has to be the way of the future, of higher conscious awareness – as indeed demonstrated by Tibet upon its invasion by China in 1959, and as taught to this day under the guidance of The Dalai Lama, who is The Buddha of Compassion (Avalokiteshvara) in embodiment. And as taught by The Buddha in His time…
My stepson, Peter Whitfield, who publishes children’s spiritual education books and who has lectured/taught for the School of Practical Philosophy for decades, wrote one such book ‘No Presents Please’ in his brilliant ‘Zen Tails’ series. In this story, in brief, an angry man challenges the Buddha who is just sitting peacefully beneath a tree and the Buddha chooses to ignore him – finally explaining that He has no need to accept the man’s ‘gift’ of his anger. Whereupon, the formerly angry man eventually calms down and finally becomes a disciple/student of the Buddha.
This has to be (an example of) the way of the future – as consciousness ascends….
Reminder
Karma is an integral part of God’s Creation: it is inescapable – what you put out to others, comes back to you.
Newton’s Third Law declares “…that for every action (force) in nature, there is an equal and opposite reaction”.
No-one/nothing is exempt.
Kind, gentle and loving thoughts, words and deeds attract propitious outcomes, and likewise, the converse applies.
As Christianity teaches: ”Do unto others what you would have them do unto you”.
And the final word from Sai Baba: “Karma is karma”.
POST SCRIPT
The legal fees and costs were indeed fully reimbursed by the Police and I used them to go on a study tour of Italy in October 1984, meeting Italian landscape architects and inspecting famous gardens and landscapes.
As for the Police records, I was invited to go to police offices near Parramatta west of Sydney one day and sat in a large room with a table and 2 opposing chairs plus an electric shredder in the centre.
A senior police officer entered carrying a variety of documents and sat opposite me. He systematically showed me each record then destroyed it in my presence. And then left. (I felt, and still do, somewhat cynical about this exercise, as, even though it was the early days of computing, I sense that there is still an electronic record somewhere in police archives…)
Overview
The ‘Play’
So, what was this ‘play’ really all about?
You will note that I have broken the text into 2 parts: Act 1 and Act 2, as in the recounting of it all now some 40 years later in the light of understanding about ‘karma’, it reads almost as a ‘divine play’ in 2 Acts that might have been agreed to by all the players at another time/in another dimension…
So what was my part all about? (Noting that all the ‘players’ had their ‘roles’ to play, and may have generated karmic consequences for themselves proportionate to how they acted…)
In a trance channelling session many years ago, it was revealed to me that, in Atlantis (which civilisation some say lasted for 250,000 years of so), apart from being an alchemist/scientist, I had at least 2 very unpleasant roles: one as a jailor and one as a cruel, insensitive man on a large ship. I’ll deal with the latter role later, but first as a ‘jailor’.
Having had that 10 days in this life in remand, I sense that this was the ‘karmic balance’ as it were for being a ‘jailor’ in a previous life: what you put out, comes back to you. Karmically, I had to experience what it is like to be arrested and put in gaol… so I did and handled it in a fairly dignified manner but as one that, at that time, was totally ignorant of the law of karma.
However, at the time, I had a lot of fear and anger onboard that I had to deal with.
The fear aspect is surely quite self-explanatory: the shock home invasion by police at gunpoint, being incarcerated, feeling helpless and vulnerable to the unpredictable power & control of others…
And why ‘anger’?
As well as interviewing some of the bank tellers, my legal representatives also asked me for the contact details of an academic from my university faculty who knew me well and who could give me a glowing character & academia reference to aid my appeal: I gave them such details and the senior individual concerned agreed to meet with them one evening at his home.
To their astonishment, when they told him of my predicament, he illogically and irrationally carried on to them about his home having been broken into recently and not wanting to get involved in anything that might be to do with police! Despite their protestations that they simply needed a reference for me!
When they reported this back to me still in remand at Long Bay Gaol, I became furious and extremely angry at his obtuseness and unwillingness to aid a professional peer in trouble for no reason of his own making! (Incidentally, when I graduated shortly after, it was with First Class Honours plus I had previously won 2 academic awards during my 4 year course).
So that was ‘anger’ that needed to be dealt with by me.
Additionally, I was very angry with the two police detectives who had arrested me and the fact that they were persisting with such a tenuous case.
Likewise, this was ‘anger’ that I needed to deal with…
[See separate module ‘Forgiveness’ about how I did eventually deal with my anger over these matters and everyone who I felt had ever ‘wronged’ me].
My ‘back learning’
- I first fell heavily backwards in my late teens when, carrying a large leather bag full of letters as a casual postman, I slipped on the greasy concrete forecourt of a service station and landed on my back. After I recovered, I managed to continue and finish my day’s deliveries.
- About 1981, I stood on a wheeled chair to reach up for a file in an office I was working in: the wheels slipped and down I came…onto the flat of my back again. It really hurt, but once recovered, I fortunately seemed to be OK…
- In the 1980’s, I took my mother on a trip around New Zealand and at Queenstown, we embarked on a lake cruise on the steamer TSS Earnslaw at the foot of The Remarkables – those astonishing hills that rise up sheer to great heights opposite Queenstown. I went to the top level of the steamer to get a cup of tea and a cake, and as I went to step forward to climb down the steep flight of steel steps like a ladder, I momentarily checked that my tea was level and missed the top step… I crashed down the full flight to the floor below and came to with the Captain standing looking down at me making sure that I was OK. As I sat with my mother on the open air fore deck for the rest of the cruise, I could feel his eyes glued to me from the wheel house where he stood at the helm. A day and a half later, we were in Invercargill and I was in agony from the bruising: at that point, I confessed to my mother what had happened on the steamer.
- I stood up on a bar stool to adjust a curtain in my daughter & son-in-law’s home, lost my balance and fell heavily hitting the back of my head on the edge of a table. They put me on a lounge and called a friend of ours Antoinette to urgently come over for healing: as she and a friend worked on me, she said:
“You know this is karmic don’t you JB ?” I nodded knowingly in agreement, and thank her once again for caring for me that day.
- A couple of years ago, I was driving our old electric golf cart into the setting sun one afternoon here on the farm – blinded by the dazzling light diffused by the very scratched windshield when I crashed at high speed into one of our driveway avenue Jacarandas. The impact threw me out onto the compacted gravel drive like a sack of potatoes. I screamed with the pain of the impact and lay there groaning with not another soul in earshot…and knew once again, it was karmic…
Understanding
As mentioned above, I had discovered at a trance medium session (plus had a vision of myself) that, in one life in Atlantis, I had been on the foredeck of a ship where there was a hatch open and I was throwing people into the open hatch to fall the long drop distance to the floor of the hull below – probably with bodies falling onto bodies – obviously injuring most/all, and almost certainly, seriously…
I know within myself that all 5 events described above have been in response to what I had done so dreadfully at that time…but that I have so far been fortunately spared lasting injury in experiencing this karmic balance…
I also remember now being told in sleep one Friday/Saturday night around 1998/1999, that I was to suffer serious back injury. First thing the next morning, I went for a walk along the edge of Narrabeen Lake near where we were living and talked passionately and vehemently with God/Spirit/Sai Baba that I refused to undergo such. As I was at that time totally committed to my spiritual path, perhaps, in light of this passionate plea, I was granted ‘clemency’ by having that downgraded to these 5 experiences which have not left any lasting injuries – thank God.
From a purely practical point of view, I also immediately took out income protection insurance – which expired at age 65.
Overview
Sai Baba has said that “Karma is karma” ie that which you do is what comes back to you eventually: it is the way Creation works- it is the way God created the world/Universe. Karma is hence an intrinsic part of Creation. Good deeds attract propitious outcomes, and conversely likewise. Action and re-action in operation. Hence, the modern saying:
”What you put out is what you get back” or in Christianity: ”Do unto others what you would have them do unto you”.
I used the word ’eventually’ just above: not long ago, I heard of a lady in another part of the world losing her right hand small finger trying to stop 2 dogs fighting. When I immediately went before my Sai Baba altar beseeching Him to compassionately intercede, He spoke clearly to me saying simply:” She cut off someone’s finger in a former incarnation and so this had to happen”. As shocking as this might seem to conventional Western society, He was just stating a karmic fact.
The Best Way to cure Illnesses: Karma at work
In a Q & A session on 21.11.2019, Sadguru Sri Madhusudan Sai answered a question about the relationship between illnesses and past karma, and how to heal these.
In summary, He first explained how everything we experience is due to some karmic effect, either individually or collectively. In the process of interacting with people, all kinds of energies are accumulated. These energies stay with us throughout our lifetimes and eventually manifest physically.
He said that we can heal ourselves, first of all, by not cursing our illness, but rather by accepting it is there.
We should additionally purify our mind and entertain good thoughts, words and actions; because our mental health has a great effect on our physical health. When all our thoughts and ways are thus purified, we will naturally choose things that are healthier for us – be it our food, friends, actions; the benefits of these choices and actions always come back to us and manifest as good health and a peaceful, happy mind.
To watch that Q & A session: https://youtu.be/PxRKUo-zHEU
Karma in Daily Life
In my own life, where I have occasionally ‘stepped out of line’ from my committed spiritual path, I have been sometimes instantly/sometimes later pulled ‘back into line’ – in remarkable and often very unpleasant ways eg at Jacaranda Haven one morning, I accidentally stepped on the edge of a stone slab bearing an altar where most mornings Rosemary and I would place an offering to Lord Shiva, Lord Pan and the First Nation ancestors of the Worromi people.
Suddenly I felt an intense pain on the anklebone of that right foot and discovered an otherwise unknown black spider biting me. Having brushed it off, I applied medication to alleviate the pain but then started to develop raging conjunctivitis in both eyes which lasted a week. Even though I had not been near anyone for days to have… caught it from them”. And I can recount a few other similar occurrences.
Whilst that was ‘immediate karma’ and recalling my use of the word ‘eventually’ above, another example over a longer timeframe but still in this life is when, as part of ’muck up’ at the end of the last year of high school, I threw an egg over the school buildings into the quadrangle where all the school was assembled and ran for my life to hide in nearby parkland…
Some 40+ years later, we were driving home one night, when an egg smashed all over our car windscreen and I saw 2 boys running away into bushland… and I knew instantly that it was the egg that I’d thrown coming back to me.
Since I fully committed to a spiritual path, every time I’ve had occasional karmic repercussions to ‘stepping out of line,’ I have instantly known that ”…what I’d put out was coming back to me”.
And ‘the karmic correction/slap on the wrist’ has, for the last few decades, happened almost immediately – not years nor lifetimes later…
Which gives me to understand that, for me at least, time is of the essence. There is no time to be wasted since I am committed to achieving self-realisation in this lifetime.
Before that, I would have just felt sorry for myself plus attracted similar reactions from others hearing of my ‘misfortunes’.
Karma and Relationships
Keeping in mind that all these writings are largely autobiographical, I have had relationships wherein I can look back and realise that in the act of getting together and spending time together, there was completion of karmic ‘debt’.
I had a brief relationship with a lady in Hawaii in the early 1980’s in which she and I initially “…had electricity running between us” at our first meeting (to quote another who witnessed it). I shortly after had to return home to Australia, but went back a few months later as we both knew we had to explore what was between us. During our island ‘hopping’, she got to pour out her heart about so many things that had ‘gone wrong ‘ for her and told me that I was the first person to ever listen fully, openly and compassionately to her history – for which she was very grateful. It was very cathartic for her, with many tears and outpourings, but once done, she knew our brief time was complete and she went her way with gratitude, and feeling ‘emotionally cleansed’.
In another relationship back in Sydney, I found myself for about 4 ½ years with a lady (and her two part-time children) who I realised later was probably a reincarnation of Kdjinimatu – the First Nations lady I had co-habited with in the 1800’s when I had an incarnation as a European sailor, Andrew Collins, captain of Governor Gidley King’s gun barge and he gifted me land at Milsons Point (Refer separate module: ‘North Sydney’). We had ‘unfinished business’ karmically-speaking: once complete, we went our separate ways.
When I was gifted a car in USA in 1996 which I had in turn to pass on to a Native American of my choice/guidance, once again it was almost certainly ‘karmic’ in that the Hopi lady & family I ultimately handed the car to may have done me a favour/helped me in a previous life and likewise her cousin who I suddenly had to do sound ‘healing’ on by the roadside when she went into crisis in the car on First Mesa on our way to Flagstaff Arizona (Refer separate module:’ 1996-A Seminal Year’).
If you sit back and consider the various relationships/friendships you’ve had in this life, you may well also recognize with fresh eyes that it was/may have been/may be currently resolving a karmic balance…
Karma on a Broader Scale
Sai Baba is quoted as once saying:
“God does not decree calamities such as earthquakes, floods, droughts, famine, epidemics etc. but man invites them by way of retribution for his own evil deeds.
Man’s own inhumanity to man expresses itself in the form of natural catastrophes”
(Source: Prasanthi Nilyam Diary 2022 – footnote June 17 2022).
Hence, this provides a very different understanding to such catastrophes which, these days, are increasingly frequent. As I write, Western NSW is experiencing floods of a magnitude never seen before by Europeans – as indeed has occurred in other areas in recent times: catastrophic flooding, and massively destructive bushfires especially. Other parts of the world have also been experiencing likewise, and continue to do so.
And whilst we must act compassionately to anyone affected/suffering, the European conditioning is to ‘pity’- which actually doesn’t help anybody very much…for ‘compassion’ is surely emotionally – detached observation of others going through their karma as we ALL are doing on the path to liberation from the cycle of birth and death…and then acting when/as appropriate out of that compassion ie understanding of karma…
(In another module within these writings entitled ‘Forgiveness’, I explore that essential difference between ‘pity’ and ‘compassion’).
And it is not just what evil deeds humans do to humans: Mother Nature/Earth continues to be defiled/raped by humanity out of greed – polluting her soil, air and waters, destroying vegetation and fauna worldwide, and it sadly just goes on…
At present, with global temperatures increasing (which may be partly man-induced/partly a regular natural phenomenon of the Earth heating/cooling), there is much talk and action about climate change – but one senses that it may be just too little, too late…
So How to Live A Karmically-Propitious Life ?
Very simply, Sai Baba has taught that all one has to do is to live strictly in accordance with the 5 Human Values of Peace, Love, Truth, Right Action and Non-Violence and what He terms his ‘WATCH’ principles – watch your words, your actions, your thoughts, your conduct and your heart.
Live a life of selfless service: Loving All, Serving All and regularly (heartfelt) pray ‘Samasta Lokah Sukhino Bhavantu (May all beings in all worlds be happy).
That is the path to God, to full self-realisation that can be only achieved in a human incarnation, and is the Ultimate Goal.
A Further Commentary on Karma/Personal Responsibility
In his 1975 book ‘Sai Baba: The Holy Man and the Psychiatrist’, US psychiatrist Samuel Sandleweiss opines on p. 162:
“I believe that the condition of the world today is due to our low level of consciousness, in which injustice and suffering are inherent. If we hurt others for gain or sensual gratification and willingly destroy the land and its creatures for money, prestige or power, we are at that level of consciousness where suffering comes about. Given our present state of consciousness and awareness, if someone were to rid the world today of all its evils and suffering, we would inevitably be back in the same mess tomorrow.
All of us together must take responsibility for righting the ills of our world. We must stop blaming God for our troubles, and start searching for strength within ourselves. It is my belief that in assuming responsibility ourselves for transcending human suffering, we will not only improve the human condition but transform it as well into something divine. In this transformation may lie the deepest meaning and purpose of suffering.”
And Sogyal Rinpoche in his authoritative masterpiece on Tibetan Buddhism knowledge and practice: ‘The Tibetan Book of Living and Dying’ declares:
“…so, the teachings tell us, if we do not assume the fullest possible responsibility for ourselves now in this life, our suffering will go on not only for a few lives but for thousands of lives”
(p. 98, 1992 Rider hard cover edition).
[Bolding of above words and phrases are mine for desired emphasis].
Phobias and Recurrent Fears: How to Possibly Resolve]
Periodically, we get to meet or hear of someone with a seemingly – perpetual fear of some creature/experience/phenomenon eg spiders or snakes or heights or oceans… if you stop to briefly consider this, it is quite apparent that there has to be a reason why for such ‘phobias’ when others may not be bothered in the slightest eg they might actually keep and breed eg snakes (as indeed a former work colleague of mine does). Chances are the phobia is carried over from one or more previous lives…
Actual Case
To illustrate an actual case of such, I ran one of my ‘Sacred Sound’ weekend workshops in Canberra in the 1990’s at which a middle-aged, single man participating suddenly told the group of his morbid fear of spiders and how that fear was finally resolved.
He lived in a townhouse with floor to ceiling windows to the lounge/living area that looked out on gardens immediately outside. He shared with the group how all his life, he had been terrified of spiders. Everywhere he went, he would constantly be faced with them which affected the quality of his life. It didn’t matter what he did with insect sprays or whatever, there would be spiders appearing constantly terrorising him…
Until one morning when he opened the blinds to those living room windows, and discovered to his horror that they were covered with small spiders(which had possibly drifted there on the wind?)…he probably recoiled in terror, and then he says, he saw one on the carpet. His normal instinct would have been to spray or stamp on it BUT he had heard someone suggest trying a different approach… and, steeling his nerves, he got a glass tumbler from the kitchen and a piece of flat cardboard, he quickly placed the upturned tumbler over the spider and realised that he now had it fully under his control. He then slowly slid the piece of card under the tumbler so that it became a base and carefully picked it all up…
And then, as he walked to the back door, he found himself seeing (safely) at close quarters the remarkable design of the spider, and found himself slightly in awe of its perfection…
And that was his moment of epiphany…
He carefully released the spider outside into the back garden and went back inside…at peace at last…
And, needless to say, he smilingly recounted to our group that he’s virtually never seen a spider cross his path since. He had faced his fear which almost certainly was from a past life where, who knows, he may have been intentionally killed by human-placed spiders, or whatever…
And in facing that fear, he had moved into a state of admiration for the creation we call ‘spider’…
Lesson Learned:
What that man taught us all that weekend was that any fear that we are karmically faced with in this life is a God-sent opportunity to meet it face-to-face and resolve it once and for all here and now, and not have to come back to deal with it in a future life.
My sense is that God/Spirit will continue to lovingly place such challenges before us in order to give us the opportunity to resolve such fears once and for all.
Snakes are also another creature that many have fear/phobias about: I know of one lady originally from the NSW Southern Highlands who went through a similar sequence of experiences with snakes to the Canberra man with spiders – only to finally have a moment “…of epiphany” where she steeled herself to stop and closely observe a snake in her path at close quarters, admired the pattern of scales (incidentally, as 2 interlocking Golden Mean spiral patterns- if you ever get a chance to examine a snake skin, such as one found that has been shed), its astonishing fluid serpentine movement that seemingly has no beginning and no end – and was thereafter free of her crippling phobia forever more…