Magically Manifesting Heaven on Earth  

by Michael Robbins

The opening talk given at the 2005 Conference of the Seven Ray Institute and the University of the Seven Rays

The magical controls that will make us effective magicians have not yet been fully given to us.  The solar angels have them in their custody for release when the time is right.  And given the state of humanity the time is not yet right, and I think we can all agree on that. But we are on our way and we are becoming effective manifesters and the Aquarian Age will see the great flourishing of the art and science of magic.

Now we might pause and ask the question, “Why manifest at all?  Why attempt to manifest heaven on earth?  Why not simply escape after all, is it not all maya anyway?” We must pause and ask about this effort to manifest.  Well, it may all well be maya, but I define maya as, “a magically created, divinely necessitated, ever recurrent reality.”  It was early in the morning when I was writing this and my thoughts simplify as the sun keeps getting higher.  A magically created, divinely necessitated, ever recurrent actuality and as long as the universe exists, we will be dealing with it. Maya is a cyclically perpetual necessity.  You are not going to get away from maya.  We are the very maya from which we would escape, from what we have forever become, and we will forever become. The only escape, if I can call it that, is to do the will of God, which effectively means to manifest his nature, her nature, our nature, according to his will, her will, our will. You can’t put these things in terms of polarity, which is the one way through--to do that will.

Now I want to focus upon what I consider to be an important thought--to manifest what we essentially are is to bring heaven to earth, in a way, we are heaven. And in the moment, perhaps you will agree, heaven unrevealed. And we are also hell, something which Swami Vivekananda realized in that ice cave dedicated to Shiva-- he realized that he was both heaven and hell. And this is something that all fourth degree initiates (such as he was) come to fully realize and with appalling clarity—heaven and hell both.  But the hell is illusory and the heaven is real, that’s the good part. And we are to become heaven revealed, not heaven unrevealed, and we are to do so magically and according to law and according to rule.  When spirit comes to light, heaven appears and all this is another way of saying that if heaven is to appear on earth, each of us must be ourselves. What more profound magical formula could there be than to be ourselves.

In order to be ourselves, we must lawfully turn ourselves inside out.  Thus we return to the injunction of the Delphic oracle which Socrates thought so important, “Know thyself.”  This is the beginning of the whole process and this means that each one of us has to discover the heaven that we are, rather than be deluded by the rather evident hell we sometimes appear to be. And once having discovered our true nature as heaven, we have to consciously know the laws and rules by which we can happen.  Yes, when we are considering magic we are considering it as providing the laws and rules by which we can happen. Now let us think about that because at the moment we are not happening, at least not fully.

Do we understand what it means when being happens?  First aspect being, third aspect happening.  So I’d like to put the whole question of how heaven comes to earth in the following psychological terms. I know there are going to be all sorts of practical approaches to this whole question and I generally take the psychological approach which I think is very practical.  Heaven is, now this is a little bit of an equation, heaven is as far from manifesting on earth as I am distant from becoming myself.  That’s the distance.  It is a great occult statement that the Christ gave us, that the kingdom of heaven is within, and it’s almost another way of saying that you and I are both within and that we are not what we seem to be.

We come to this idea of the externalization of the Hierarchy. Well, what is it really?  You know we think of it as being the time when the Masters will be here and they will walk and direct and so forth. But let’s look at it psychologically.  The externalization of the Hierarchy is the externalization of everyone of us as we essentially are. It is the externalization of the real self. And the correlation of this is also true, the reappearance of the Christ is the reappearance of the inner Christ that each one of us is. I’m taking it right back to home because if it doesn’t touch us at the deepest route, it doesn’t make any difference so it’s got to do with our identity.  The distance between what we are and what we seem to be can be annihilated by the white magic of the loving soul. It is, to state the obvious, that the archetypal heaven on the monadic plane, the plane of our spirit, must one day pattern the lower elemental life.  This is heaven coming to earth, another way of saying this is that Sanat Kumara, the great king of Shamballa, will one day walk the earth. We’ll have to wait until the number seven fulfills itself for that to happen. The highest and lowest will have met and what we are and what we seem to be will be the same.

Right now there is that sort of ontological distance between those two things, what we are and what we seem to be. We are trying to bring those things together and the only way to do that is through the power of love. I think the only thing that separates us from that longed for state is work. Work separates us, the part that we are and the part that we seem to be—work. And maybe that’s why the Tibetan’s last published written words to his disciples, as far as I know, were “work my brothers.”  Work my brothers is good advice because that will bring the highest and lowest together, the highest and the lowest then will meet.  And as many of you know, magic as an alchemical transformation, is called the great work--the magnum opus, that is before us all the time. I would say that if we want to see heaven manifest on earth then we have to be engaged in a process called the drawing forth of heaven, or the evocation of heaven. So each one of us is a tiny piece of heaven, each one of us is a tiny design in the universal fixed design, each one of us is a tiny archetype in the great archetype and all of these things have to be drawn forth.

So what we have to do then, is to magnetize each others heaven. Which is another way of saying that soul calls to soul and spirit calls to spirit and I think we can see how much the power of love is required if we are to do this. And I would like to leave us with this thought, that there is no white magic without the power of love regardless of all our magical controls which we will inevitably learn and skillfully apply over the centuries. If we overlook the quality of love while attempting to manifest heaven on earth, there will be no such manifestation.  Magic alone will not do it, the first ray, seventh ray, third ray--these are magical rays, and alone they will not do it. The power of love must be present, love is the conduit through which heaven comes to earth. Love is the way by means of which we happen, through love. Without love, that which I truly am cannot manifest and it is love that turns me inside out. Love turns us inside out. So the pure reason of love is the real magic by which the inner temple of the heavenly worlds will appear.

Contact Michael Robbins at:
infinitize@aol.com