Theos-Talk Archives (February 1998 Message tt00017)

I have been reading James Redfield's THE TENTH INSIGHT.  His sources which
he acknowledges indirectly are theosohpy, kabala, Eastern gupta-vidya and
new age politics.

His real talent is not being scholarly or profound, but his ability to
popularize a wide knowedge of the ANCIENT WISDOM and apply it to the crises
in the modern world without getting strident or apocalyptic ( I could
learn from him :)

He has two interesting psycholgical ideas that I haven't heard put so well
before:

1) negative materialistic dysfunctional people ( and aren't we all from time
to time) drain people of their power by attacking their auras so to speak.
Positive people give off love energy and build each other up with
encouragement and hope.  Others are just shut down due to familiy of origin
issues and ongoing addictions to power, money, sex, drugs etc.

2) People inject their psychic environments with life scripts which create a
comfortable maya or veil of illusion.  This is temporarily satisfying, but
destructive in the long term because it keeps out real relationships with
people, the real lessons of life and access to higher levels of
spirituality.  In other words, if I am always blaming this group or that, my
parents, my spouse, the IRS etc etc I create a veil of poisonous maya
circulating around me.  This feels comfortable.  It is kind of the idea of
skandas or patterns brought over from past lives and that continue on after
death.  The afterlife worlds are temporarily dream like states where one
continues to work out life scripts, but on a higher level.  In other words
the purgatory and heaven worlds are just mirrors of what  we put out in this
life and we get it right back even in the afterlife for a while  (HPB talks
about this at length in THE KEY TO THEOSOHPY)

The problems with spin these spider like webs of maya or illusion is that
one can become trapped in them as a spider in a web ( another common
metaphor).  People also inject each other's lives with this maya in an
insect like manner.  I have a chip on my shoulder and I go around poisoning
the atmosphere due to my unresolved neurotic knots or skandhas.

People are constantly attempting to inject us with their maya and we are
always trying to put up a defenisive wall or inject them back so to speak.
The solution is to put out love energy.

He also has some interesting ideas on soul groups which sounds a lot like
Alice Bailey's idea of rays.  That is we are born on a certain ray with all
the sub-rays active also and we can contact the Masters of that ray in this
life and become a "master" on that ray after we die and help or hinder
others through dreams, visitations etc.

He finally states that the hardest part is "holding the vision" of a better
world after one has gained all the "insights" of the spiritual path.

Some may turn up their noses.  I know I did at first.  But I must admit that
his maya may be of a very cleansing type that ultimately adds to the
solution rather than the problem of maya.  Love. peace, understanding may be
maya, just one of the syzigies of the manifest world.  But I know I need
this kind of maya now more than ever.

Namaste
Keith Price