Hi everybody, welcome to this Compassion Dialogue. Today's Compassion Dialogue is with William Peter, and I have a particular interest in this conversation because my background in esoteric readings and learnings is similar to William's, but I've never taught explicitly from that tradition where the main... Teacher is Alice Bailey, DK, the Alice Bailey books.
And I'm really, really interested in how William got into this, what his own personal experience of it was at the very beginning that brought him into this field. So this is going to be, I hope, an interesting and really inspiring conversation, both for you and for me, of course. So, William, welcome. gratitude to you for being with us today.
You've just flown over from Ireland to Wales, while you're staying in a friend's home. And how are you today? Very good.
Thank you for the invitation. Yes, I just arrived yesterday. I've been in Ireland for a week doing some teaching work. And I'm here in Wales for some teaching work.
And then I'll be doing quite a bit in England in a few days. So I'm in your part of the world. It's good to be here.
Yeah. Very, very welcome. Now, a lot of people won't know the Alice Bailey Theosophical Tradition, but for many of us, it's the deepest, most profound, most sophisticated esoteric teaching that is available.
It's definitely post-postgraduate level. It's kind of dense reading. It's experiential at the same time.
One gets insights and buzzes. But before we get into that, William, I'd love to know, what was your childhood? What kind of family were you brought up in? What were your parents like? And were you, as a child, having an awareness of altered states, spiritual realities?
Tell us a bit about your childhood. Okay, well. I was born and raised in Minneapolis, Minnesota. And in terms of how I was raised, I was raised pretty much in terms of spirituality.
I was raised a conventional Lutheran, actually. You know, Minnesota is one of those Scandinavian countries, so everybody's Lutheran. And so my childhood in terms of formal religion was that.
But honestly, as a child, I didn't take that. I wasn't really committed to it. I was just sort of felt like I was going through the motions because my parents were there.
And so it was just more of a childhood conditioning process. But in terms of my early years as a child and any kind of spiritual insights that I had, I did. I had several very meaningful childhood experiences that really kind of. had awakened me to some sort of spiritual reality.
And I'd be happy to share a little bit about that with you. I remember the first experience I ever had was, I was probably about four or five years old, actually, that early. And I remember being in the garage of my home, a two-car garage, and I was in the garage, in the car, playing as if I were the driver in my dad's car. And while in that state, something happened, something that at the time I just had no way of explaining it other than in hindsight, I could say that there was some sort of a downflow that overwhelmed me.
And it was an incredibly blissful experience. And it almost felt like almost Christ. And as a four or five-year-old, I had no language for it, no way of describing it, no way of even trying to describe the experience with my parents.
But I remember it left a mark on me. It really did. It left some sort of etching of something.
And it really began the process of realizing that there's something else. There's something else that is non-tangible that seems to be relevant. So that was sort of my very first experience.
And I had several types of experiences in the early childhood years. But it was really when I became 16 years old is when I really became more, you might say, deliberate in my search and my spiritual process. Let me pause you because you said you had several types of experience. Yes, yes. Were they similar to the one you had when you were four years old?
I'll give you another one. How's that? Okay, this is going to sound really strange, and I don't know, I've rarely shared this with people, but I'll share it with you.
I had an experience when I was probably about 10 or 11 years old. We had moved home to a suburb of Minneapolis, a place called Bayport, and Minnesota gets these incredible winters. It's really frigid there in the winter. And I had an experience where I woke up in the middle of the night in my bedroom, but I woke up in a very strange way.
I woke up very slowly and I found myself, I woke up finding myself seated in a cross-legged position. But because it was so cold, because even the heating in the house doesn't quite keep up with the fullness of the bitter winter cold, there was a shivering quality with me. But what was really shocking is that it was like a meditation. I didn't even know what meditation was at that time, but I was postured in a meditation pose. And the surprising thing was that I was utterly naked.
All my pajamas were gone, and I was filled with cold goosebumps all over my body. And I remember as I was coming out, there was this sense of, as I was waking, there was a sense of I was deliberately trying to overcome the cold in a kind of transcendent way. Again, I'm only 10 years old. Again, no real words to describe this.
And I also found that everything on my bed, all the bedding was gone. There was no blankets. The sheets were gone.
I was on a raw mattress. I certainly didn't go to bed that night that way. So I got up and I turned on the light and I found all of my bedding in a tightly knit ball tucked in the corner of the room.
And I had no explanation other than it was like being in a deep meditative transcendent state and needing to prove something about being able to rise above the discomfort of. of the cold that I was experiencing. So it's not the typical kind of thing that people have at 10 years old, but it's another example of what I'm trying to say. That's an extraordinary experience. And I've got two threads going through my mind immediately.
One is to do with, oh, I wonder what kind of Tibetan yogi... history is bleeding through there. And the other is, were you able to talk to your mom or dad or best friend about it?
Or did you keep quiet about it? I don't think I don't recall ever, certainly not with my parents. And I actually don't think I've actually shared it with a friend.
In fact, right now, I probably shared it with certainly a few friends over the years as an adult, but I probably haven't shared that more than a half a dozen times in my whole life. What's interesting to me is there's a pattern amongst my friends in these conversations that a lot of us have these very early experiences, but we're like cuckoos in the nest. The family may be kind or not kind, but it's definitely not the people we talk to about this.
Yeah, and I certainly wouldn't later because I should also mention that. I'm in a family of four boys, and I was the oldest of four. And as we got into my teen years, and late teens, actually, my three younger brothers all became born-again evangelical Christians. Yikes. Yeah.
And at the same time, I, at the age of 16, and this was a big turning point for me, prior to they becoming born-again Christians, I had found out about meditation, I heard about meditation through a set of circumstances, and I was so curious about what is that, that I did some exploration about it, and I found TM. so many of us do start with tm you know i started with tm and so i learned transcendental meditation at 16 years old and that's really the beginning of i would say a more deliberate spiritual effort while my brothers were hardline fundamentalists so you can imagine the house they're they're downstairs you know doing things like speaking in tongues and i'm upstairs chanting my mantra through tm so Where did you go to learn TM? Was there a little center in your town city?
Well, interesting. It's a small town. At the time, it has about 3,000 people in it.
But it also had the state penitentiary in that town. And interestingly, there was a man who was living in the town because he was a TM instructor. And he was going into the prison and teaching prisoners meditation.
And he was part of that. There was a lot of research done about can you change recidivism through meditation? And he was one of those people that happened to be doing that in my hometown.
So I was real fortunate that there actually was a pretty high-powered individual teaching TM right there. So one of the things I'm hearing now is quite a, in English we call it a blokey background, like blokes. Man, you do this 10-year-old.
very yogic up in the mountains, warming yourself in the middle of freezing temperature practice suddenly. You've got three younger brothers. Your TM teacher is working in a prison.
It's quite a macho background that you're emerging from. Well, it certainly is unusual. And yet the process of learning TM was really the real major. movement for me, because from that point forward, my life became much more deliberately and intentionally spiritual. After that, I started studying many things, did a lot of reading in Buddhism and alternative thinking.
For a while, I got involved in the Church of Religious Science, which is also at the time was called the Science of Mind. And eventually, I ended up getting really involved in the Course in Miracles. And then And that's when, after completing the Course in Miracles, I, through a set of circumstances, discovered the Alice Bailey writings. Let me pause you before we get into the Alice Bailey work.
Okay. 16, TM, 17, 18. Do you go to college? Oh, yes. So what do you study?
Well, to surprise you, I studied business administration. And I have a... bachelor's degree in business administration at that time. I have graduate degrees now, but back then, and it was one of those things where what to do for a career, didn't know. My father was a businessman, so he kind of gave me the nudge and I said, well, why not?
So I went ahead and got a business degree and much later got a graduate degree in psychology in California, but that's years later. And so, yeah, I went to- Business degrees are very useful, very practical. They're practical and they- In a certain sense back then, any degree suggested to employers that you were dedicated to learning and doing the hard work of getting a degree.
And that had some value in its own right. I'm also thinking, I'm being slightly humorous now, maybe, as a freelance mystic, making a living, having a business degree is a way of staying grounded and organizing it as well. Yeah, I actually have no regrets. And I worked in various, many corporations in the early part of my life. So I was immersed in that world for some time.
So what was the most interesting corporation you worked in? Because I think people's mainstream careers are also interesting as well as the spiritual path. Well, I would say that the company that I worked for that was probably the fourth.
third or fourth corporation by that time i was had moved to california so i left minnesota and um had worked for a toy company mattel toy company for instance for that was my first full-time job i can't tell you how many barbie dolls i shipped around the world and kens let us not forget ken and then but eventually i got i was employed by a lock manufacturer and i was just doing product management sort of particular type of lock. But something happened in that job that just changed my life from a career perspective because I was approached by a couple of colleagues that I got to know, a couple of women who worked there for many years, and they came into my little cubicle at the time. and said to me, you know, there's a certain kind of job that's opening up in this corporation, and we've gotten to know you a little bit, and we think you'd be really good for it. And I said, well, what is it? And she said, she said, it's a, it's a staff development training trainer.
And I thought, trainer? I've never done any teaching before in my life. But they convinced me that I should apply for the position. This is a big corporation, and there were many, many applicants.
And to my utter surprise, I got the job. And So it was involved in working with people in different departments in this company. How old were you? I was a bit older.
I'd been studying Alice Bailey now for a few years. So I was doing that on the side. But I think I was probably about, gosh, I was probably mid to late 20s by then. And probably about 28, right about the time of the Saturn return, actually.
Okay. So let's rewind. Okay.
I want to find out. What went on in your brain and heart with the first Alice Bailey book you read? And which one was it? Do you remember? Sure.
Well, I discovered Alice Bailey quite accidentally, if there is such a thing. And I was living in another part of Los Angeles. And I was laying on my bed. I was in my kind of early 20s, maybe 23, something like that. And I was listening to an interview.
on the radio. And there was a man who was being interviewed by a radio interviewer in Los Angeles, and he was talking about spirituality and particularly the reappearance of the Christ notion. And it was such a unique perspective because I had only really been familiar with how Christianity looked at that.
And this was such a different format that I thought, wow, this is a really interesting and intuitively it felt much more real. Let me just pause you. People need to know what was the gist of the reappearance of the Christ teaching or interview that you heard in that interview? Well, it was basically how this esoteric philosophy is given to us by the Tibetan is forming that idea that there is the world teacher which is not a world savior.
that is being spoke of with the Christ. But there are three levels of Christ too. There's the Christ as the head of the hierarchy of masters. There's the Christ as the Christ principle. And there's the Christ within each of us.
And that we are in a period of transition in humanity where the reappearance of the Christ on all of those levels is trying to make itself known. And so I found the whole thing very intriguing. And it happened that this man that was being interviewed. was actually coming to Hollywood.
And he was going to do a talk at a church in Hollywood. And now Hollywood, you think of movies, but actually Hollywood's a big residential city as well. And so I decided to jump into my little beat up Honda Civic at that time and head down the Hollywood freeway that next night.
And I'll never forget it because it was in the evening and it was in a residential area and I had to... park my car several blocks away in order to find a parking spot. But when I walked to the church and finally got to the church, to my utter surprise, around the church was a picket line of born-again Christians, all with picket signs that says, this is really all about the Antichrist.
And I thought to myself, oh, this is going to be good. And so I pushed my way through that line, went in and listened to this speaker. And in that talk, he mentioned the name Alice Bailey.
And I wrote it down immediately. And then that night after the talk, I went to the, in Hollywood, the most well-known metaphysical bookstore is called the Bodhi Tree. And I went to the Bodhi Tree, you may know about it, and asked, where are the Alice Bailey books? And there was a big shelf of them up there. And I kind of intuited which one I want to start with.
Let me just ask you, I'm just curious. This is just curiosity. Do you remember the name of the teacher who was in the... Yes, he's British, and you probably know Ben Creme.
Oh, Ben Creme. Okay. You know Ben Creme, of him. And so that was my first introduction.
And the very fact that he introduced me to Alice Bailey, I feel like forever indebted, because if it weren't for that talk, I don't know if I would have found it. Maybe I would have, but there was the beginning. And so I ended up... My first book, as you had asked, was...
a compilation called Ponder on This. And Ponder on This was wonderful because it It listed so many topics and there were extracts. There were compilations of many, many subjects, a couple hundred that are related to the philosophy. And I just devoured it.
And when I devoured it, it was like, I got to tell you, William, it was like coming home. It felt I kind of knew this stuff already. And so immediately I went back and started buying and reading the fuller texts. And then I would ponder on this, always on the side.
of whatever text I'm reading, and I used it as a glossary. So it was beautiful in that way, and that's really how it all began. So I think, you know, before we came live into this conversation, I said to you, I want to know what happened in your head and your heart when you first started reading DK's work. People are listening. We often call it DK's work.
because the Tibetan teacher who dictated the books to Alice Bailey was called Dwal Kul Dk So you'll find us referring to Alice Bailey, Dk, almost in the same way. Or also The Tibetan is sort of the nickname, The Tibetan, yeah. So yeah, that's good that you mentioned that. So can you remember when you said it felt like you were coming home? Well, it really enlivened my heart.
And it... It sort of triggered almost like an inner alignment that it had a vertical list to it, you might say. And I found that even my meditations began to become deeper having discovered this material.
So it enhanced the meditations. It awakened the heart in a way that hadn't fully opened in the way that it did with that. It's still there.
It's still there. So yeah, it's been transformational. And at the time, I had no idea that I would eventually be a teacher of it because this is before I had discovered through that business that I was in that I would be transitioning into a teaching role. And that was important to me because when I met with the first, switching gears a little bit with you here.
When I met with that first group in that company, I had to work with 15 groups of people and do staff development, but also team building and that sort of thing. And there was some teaching involved and I had never done any teaching. I'll never forget it. I stood up in front of this group of people, a little nervous, but I began to teach something that I was supposed to be teaching in this session. And I'd never done that before.
And I was maybe, William, I was probably 10 minutes into it. And I'm thinking, oh my God. This is so easy.
This is so natural. This is really what I should be doing. And so that's when I made the transition into teaching. And then I realized that to do this even more effectively, because it really involves a lot of understanding human behavior, I thought, I need to go back to school and study psychology. And so I approached the management of this company.
I said, look. This is a unique job in this company. No one else has this kind of job. And because of that, I think I need to go to night school and study psychology, get a master's degree.
And I told them, I think you guys should pay for it. And they agreed. They said, you've got such a unique position.
It's not an MBA. It's not a business degree, but in your case, it's unique. So I went to night school at Pepperdine University and studied for two years. And so I do that at night, do the.
did the work in the company during the day and ended up getting a master's degree. Give us the stuff you were training inside the company. It was team building groups? Give us the names of the titles of the...
There were kind of two parts. There were kind of two parts for... At that time, in the business world, there was a new technology coming out called Quality Circles. And you may know about that Quality Circles was a concept of management that promoted participative management and it came out of Japan actually.
And so companies were hiring, what were called facilitators to do that. And I was partly a facilitator as well as they made me a management trainer. So I began to do a lot of things like, look, I can't tell you how many Myers-Briggs I applied to people. team building, leadership skills, communication skills, those sorts of things.
And all of that was kind of a package of a unique position I had in this corporation. And it really was pivotal because it brought me into being an educator and focusing more on the people of a circumstance rather than a product. And that was a big change for me.
In parallel with that, what you must have been deeply inspired and reassured by, as I was, was the fact that Dk the Tibetan, Jharkul, Alice Bailey, part of the whole thrust of those writings is we're coming out of an individualistic and self-centered stage into one in which you have to understand the dynamics of groups. Absolutely. Both at an inner level and at an outer level. And so you were actually externalizing those teachings inside your company.
Yeah. Were you thinking about that consciously and saying, kind of, thank you, this is clever? Oh, yeah, absolutely.
I was always thinking, I was trying to figure out how do I apply some of these ideas, but you have to change the language. So like, for instance, I could never use the word soul in the corporation, but I could use the term aspirational self. That worked. And so you kind of modify it to the environment and you sense what will take and what won't. So, yeah, it was good.
But ironically, after just not long after I finally finished the degree, there was a downturn in business and I became redundant. But I got the degree anyway. I became redundant. So I moved to Northern California. Where else could you go?
Yeah, right, exactly. So I went to Northern California, and for about six months, I ended up renting a place out of Chico, California, but it was a place that, a little place, a little shack, you might say, in the middle of an almond orchard. And I spent six months just reading Alice Bailey, collecting unemployment. And meditating, enjoying some wine, and just really got into nothing but that.
And then a position opened in a community college, which is a two-year college, which is sort of preparatory. It's like it provides the first two years of a four-year education. And they had a psychology position open on a part-time basis, and I applied for it and got it.
So then for the next seven years, I was teaching. freshman and sophomore psychology. And so I moved out of the business world, but I still did a little private business training stuff on the side. Where was the community college? It was located in a place called Chico, California.
Where's that? Well, it's about an hour and a half north of Sacramento. I lived in a town called Paradise, California, which was right next to Chico. Yeah, so those are wonderful days.
And yeah, I just reflect back on them with great fondness. I have to put in something in brackets here. I worked for a decade in a community college in the UK.
Oh, did you? Okay. In central London. Yeah. Okay, well, there we have something in common beyond our names.
Yeah, yeah. So did you connect with the... psychosynthesis, meditation, Mount Ohai-type groups at that time?
Were you ever linked with that thread of... Not at that time. That came much later. That came much later.
And then I got acquainted with Ohai and meditation Mount, and of course there's the Krishnamurti Center there, and Kritona through the Theosophical Society, but that came much later. Okay. So... Community college, you're teaching there.
Yeah. What people may not know is that in parallel and integrated with Alice Bailey and DK's teaching is the Lucis Trust and the Arcane School. Right. Which is basically a school of meditation and spiritual development.
Were you involved with that? Well, interesting. Interestingly, no.
The Arcane School, which is a division of the Lucius Trust, it was founded by Alice Bailey and completely dedicated to those teachings, and you would think I would be. But it's ironic that when I was up there in Chico, in the Almond Orchard studying and all of that, I just wanted to immerse myself in it. But so much of the Tibetan's work was all about group.
um you know a lot of people find that reading alice bailey like it's much easier if you do it in a group but personally i had no problem with that on my own truthfully i i've So, I didn't do that, but I thought, you know, I better look into this group thing. So, I ended up discovering another organization called the University of the Seven Rays, which was founded by Michael Robbins, who at one time was a primary instructor through the Lucius Trust and the Arcane School. But he created a spinoff school, and he was doing a Seven Rays seminar in San Francisco.
So, I thought I'd go down and do that seminar and get to kind of connect with other people. Because at the... Up to that point, I never met another Alice Bailey person. And I had been reading and studying Alice Bailey for about 10 or 12 years by that time before I ever saw another person who was familiar with that.
And then, so I met Michael Robbins and got acquainted with that. And that led me to a whole program that he was offering. And he created a kind of formal education with a five-year program, which is actually a degreed program.
And I entered into that program and he was a fabulous teacher, brilliant mind, kind of an encyclopedic mind, you know. And it was a five-year program and about two and a half years into it, he decided that he wanted to create a similar five-year program in Copenhagen, Denmark for Europeans. And he approached me and he said, would you be interested to be my co-teacher?
And of course, I said, that would be fantastic. And so then I did this five-year course twice with an overlap of two and a half years, once as a student and once as a co-teacher. And that's really where my teaching of this philosophy directly began. I went from being a student to an international teacher in one moment.
And it really, I'm forever grateful to that opportunity that that happened to me. And then eventually I started to... I have other opportunities that emerged and I sort of began to work on my own.
And for many years, I was just going to three places. I was going to Denmark to work with him, a door open for me to go to New Zealand. And so my first independent international group was in New Zealand. I still work with them. And then in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania for many years.
But now I work in several other places, including here in the UK. I've been here many years. I love coming here, and your country is just filled with interest in this philosophy.
Here's a question for you. There's Alice Bailey books, big, lots and lots of words, right? Very, very dense.
Difficult for some people to get into. One of them I couldn't understand at all, that's esoteric astrology, completely over my head. And a treatise on cosmic fire I've maybe read three times, and I reckon I understand 20% of it, maybe 25%. So in your experience of teaching that material, and this will relate partly to the kind of person you are, the kind of soul you are, and the kind of people who come to you, what is the teaching that you notice? over and over again, your students, colleagues go, they just open up to it because they go, oh, I'm so glad to hear that.
I needed to hear that. What is it in DK's writings that just rings a huge bell for people? I think that what rings the bell for people, there's kind of two or three levels of this. But first, let me just say this, that if I look at what I know on my own.
calling is, or you might say my own inner ashramic responsibility is with this, is that you are quite right. When people read Alice Bailey, they often go, oh my gosh, this is so deep, so difficult that it's hard to grasp. But the most common feedback that I get that is near and dear to my heart as well is that basically my role is to give clarity to the Alice Bailey work.
without dumbing it down. That's the goal. And so it's, you can really expand it more and make it more reachable and not lose the depth of it.
If you just use the right language, that's more useful at this time in history, because the baby books have been around for many, many decades. And so I enjoy trying to find a language that reaches people. And then the type of people that it reaches, there's sort of like three levels.
There's people brand new to who are that recognizing that this is interesting and let me hear about it and there are people that are recognizing it. They feel like not only is it interesting, but they'd like to more deliberately engage with it. Maybe they'll start reading the books themselves.
Maybe lots of times, study groups have emerged as a result of me kind of nudging them into this philosophy. And then there are some people that it's so interesting. There's some people that, yes, I'm providing them a deeper understanding of it, but there's a deeper sense that in a way I'm helping them remember, helping them remember, because on some level they too were like me. They heard it for the first time and went, I kind of know this already. So it's kind of like concentric circles of people that come into this work.
And that's kind of how I see it has unfolded over the last several years. Yeah. Well, let me, let me, my...
experience of the Alice Bailey material. For instance, I was talking to somebody a week ago, very intelligent young person, 30s, 30-ish. And they asked me what I read and what inspired me.
And I said to them, if you want to read someone who is wiser than you, wiser than me, more intelligent. more insightful than you or me and knows more about the inner dimensions, then, hey, go read Ernest Bailey. It's not going to be easy.
And if that's not your style, there are a couple of other books that get there, I think, A Course in Miracles in its own way. Yeah. It's a six-word version of esotericism in a way. Yeah.
But I think what I find for people is intelligent, independent-minded folks. are deeply reassured that in the middle of all the New Age flakiness and all the religious and theological dogma, there are these books that are considered and deep and intelligent and start with the advice, hey guys, this has got to make sense to you intuitively. If it doesn't make sense to you intuitively, just forget it. I carry on reading this stuff. Yeah, yeah.
I find that deeply reassures people. Yeah, yeah. If they can go through the barrier and get into the books. Yeah, yeah. And it's a body of writing that recognizes both the absolute sacredness of loving intuition coupled with higher mind.
And that, you know, there's some... Because the soul is understood as both an agency of loving intuition and higher mind. And so it doesn't insult your intelligence at all. And a lot of new age things out there, some of it is very flaky where it's filled with glamour and distortions.
And it doesn't really build the mind, higher mind in the way that this is really about building your higher quality of love and mind, recognizing that the two must dance together. and support each other, leading to what in Hinduism is called buddhimanas. Buddhi is pure intuition.
Manas is the Sanskrit word for mind. And we're all trying to ultimately evolve our consciousness to become increasingly buddhimanasic. And that's really what this work is really about, actually. So if you were stuck in an elevator with someone and you know you've got them for a few minutes, what's...
Do you have a kind of a well-rehearsed, well-repeated, because people who teach know over the years, oh, that particular piece of teaching works. Do you have one of those that you know that you can unpack in an elevator? Well, it depends upon who's at the elevator, I suppose.
But I think the kind of when I'm on an airplane. Let's put it that way. And the guy next to me is saying, what do you do? And I'll say something like, well, I'm a teacher of a spiritual philosophy.
And then they want to know a little bit more about it. And, you know, you kind of got to be careful as you because you got to feel the person out a bit to see where they're at. But basically, I might say something like what this philosophy really highlights the importance of understanding that. That human consciousness is dual in the sense that you have both a higher consciousness and a day-to-day consciousness, which we call soul and personality.
And that the first step in really awakening your spiritual life is to recognize that inner duality. And then to start to realize that that higher, wiser part of you is the part of you that we must evolve more and more to become more and more. And that the lower part of us must eventually act as the servant of the higher.
That's the destiny of every human personality is to be the outer garment used by the soul to... be expressed through the personality. The soul expresses itself as a function of service and upliftment. And as you well know, William, there's nothing more important when it comes to spiritual development than service.
It's all of the soul in each of us wants to bring forth its wisdom, its acquired wisdom, and its Christ-like love. It wants to express itself through the personality. It wants the personality to get out of the way. and there's the challenge, and in so doing it wants to make an uplifting contribution to the betterment of something beyond itself. And that's the core of it, and the whole philosophy must lead more and more to that process in all of us.
Service, service, service. And of course this philosophy teaches that there are seven types of souls. So a deep understanding of the seven rays is important. Seven types of souls.
seven lenses through which life looks out and acts and interacts and frames thought. And each type of soul is part of an inner ashram. There are seven ashrams. And so your spiritual, your soul is actually an agent of an inner ashram that has a piece of work to do on behalf of humanity's betterment. So the philosophy has a huge and rich inquiry into that process of transforming the personality so that it becomes a more suitable instrument to serve the soul.
And at the same time, a recognition that each of us is energetically related to an inner ashram and that your purpose, your purpose is even not really your purpose. It's the inner ashram's purpose. You as an awakened soul are simply an outer agent on its behalf.
Anyway, those are some of the ideas. Again, it depends upon who I'm with. And if I find that the guy next to me in the airplane is a fundamentalist Christian, I may not quite go down that road that way.
But I hope that gives you some idea. Yeah, no, it's lovely to hear you saying those things. It made me reflect that I'm not sure that I'm ever fully...
of service, fulfilling my potential of being a service, except in meditation, actually, where I'm fully embodied and present and being of use at a quiet inner level. And I say that as someone who writes books and teaches and all that kind of stuff, which looks like a form of service. Yeah. And I'm not sure whether I said to Sabrina, my wife, earlier today, because we're organizing the house and there's boxes of my books.
Yeah. Compared to just sitting quietly. Well, you know, esotericism basically says that there are three fundamental things.
They call it the three pillars. Number one, heartfelt service to humanity. Number two, study, to build your higher mind, because it's in the higher mind where the causal body is found, the container that's holding your acquired wisdom, your soul's wisdom.
And the third is meditation, the three pillars. And also by incorporating those three together in the fabric of your day-to-day life, all of that's related to service in a certain sense. Repeat them again, William.
I think it would be useful. Heartfelt service to humanity, committing your life lovingly to making a difference somehow. Number two, study, particularly things that are more abstract and cultivating that higher, more abstract mind. And three is meditation, the three pillars. And all of those also contribute to what is called the building of the antahkarana.
Now, for those of you who are listening and that may not know, antahkarana is a... There's something called the science of the Antahkarana. The Antahkarana is a communication bridge that links the soul with the personality.
And in many ways, the whole path is the slow building of it because it doesn't exist naturally. It has to be built and it's built over many incarnations, but it's built with a kind of deliberate acceleration when we incorporate these three things into the fabric of our spiritual life. Study, service, study, meditation. And when the antichron is fully built, it means you have a perfected conduit between the soul, which is impulsing its intuitive wisdom, through the instrument. into the personality to make right brain registration of the soul's guiding influence.
And in many ways, where you stand on the path of evolution has a direct correspondence to the measure of antahkarana that has been successfully built deep within. Let's just explore heartfelt service for a moment, because one of my observations and reflections is that... Heartfelt service very often is not so much what someone does, but how they do it.
So, for example, someone could be a carer in a nursing home, but if they're harsh, their attitude is harsh and the vibe is harsh, then they're not actually doing heartfelt service, even if the label of carer or nurse, medic fits. And I remember thinking once that someone who works in a cosmetics counter in a department store, if they do it kindly and with care, is of heartfelt service. So it's how you do it rather than what you do.
Would you kind of go along with that? Absolutely. Absolutely. In many ways, service is, you shouldn't first think of it as a doing. You should think of it more as a state of being.
Heartfelt service manifests as a life demonstration actually, and the doing part of service is really an effect that naturally arises through an aligned sense of inner being with heart and soul. So a lot of times when we study the subject of service, which is so important in this philosophy, A lot of times what we think is service, we think of it as a doing, but actually service is much more about lifting your consciousness to the highest and wisest part of you, knowing that that's truly you and that the outer doing is a horizontal effect that arises from the inner alignment with your own heart and your own soul that you're able to hold. So it's sort of like we...
We look at cause and effect in a little different way here. But I agree absolutely with everything you said, William. It's a loving vibe, not virtue signaling.
Virtue signaling goes on in our world at the moment. I'm continually reassuring my students that it's just stop being concerned about your work. who you're in relationship with and be concerned about, that you're just a stable loving presence.
Rick Archer That's right. Actually, the Tibetan has a wonderful definition of service that I enjoy. He says, service is the spontaneous effect of soul consciousness, period.
The spontaneous effect of soul consciousness, the more you're aligned with your higher nature, the more you live your life in a natural way that naturally creates uplifting in every situation that you live. And so, but he also, it's wonderful to go into what is not, what is not service. Like, for instance, service should not be viewed as something that you should do because it's vogue, or service should not be done because somehow you feel that it's going to contribute to your spiritual growth. No, it's... You know, in this philosophy, there's a study of the causal body, which I know you're familiar with deeply, which is the container that's holding the soul's consciousness.
And indeed, I'm going to be doing a whole weekend workshop on that at Hawkwood in a couple of weeks. But the causal body is said to be governed by certain spiritual laws. And one of those laws is the law of service.
And so when you're really living a spiritual life, service is... is a natural demonstration that, as I say, it's a life demonstration. So what inspires you the most, at a very personal level?
What floats your boat? What opens your heart? at the moment?
Well, right now, this philosophy teaches us that humanity is in a huge transition between two astrological ages, Pisces and Aquarius, but also two rheological ages, sixth-ray age and seventh-ray age. Without going into the details of what all of that means, it means that these are forces that are conditioning the collective consciousness of humanity with the Let's use astrology for a moment, Pisces and Aquarius. Those are two forces that are shaping the collective consciousness of humanity. And because there's an overlap of these two, and people have different views of how long the overlap is, most people put it at a couple hundred years. It looks like we're at about the midway point.
That causes an increased tendency toward polarization of humanity's consciousness. And all we have to do is look out at the world and see how that polarization is playing out. So humanity is said to be right now walking the burning ground.
It's a testing time. It's like walking hot coals. And we're trying to get across the other side because on the other side is where the humanity itself will have the opportunity to what we call take the first initiation. And much of the crisis that the world is going through right now has a lot to do with. a testing period to see if we can rise to the occasion to really, really prove ourselves as a one humanity.
Because esoterically, that's what's trying to happen. Humanity is trying to figure out how to be one. And a lot of fears, a lot of shadow issues, a lot of cultural biases are coming up in opposition and fear. And there's a whole group of disciples in the world, and I would imagine that many who are listening to this interview right now, are part of it.
It's called the New Group of World Servers. And they are the sum total of all people on the planet today who have had some measure of awakening to their own soulful promptings, who as a result are recognizing a deeper and deeper sense that they want to commit and contribute to the upliftment of something better than, to better something in their lives and in service to others. And they realize that they have to do some transformational work of their lower self so that it becomes a more effective instrument in that regard. In total, that's called the new group of world servers. They're now in their millions.
They're found in every country. They're found in every socioeconomic group. They're men and women.
They're found, they have some kind of rooting in all world religions and many in no world religions, but in total, They're the new group of world servers, and they are also called the forerunners. And much of the capacity of humanity to get across this incredibly difficult time is resting on the shoulders of the new group of world servers. And it's why it's called the forerunner. You know, 2,000 years ago, at the time of the Christ coming forward, the forerunner was John the Baptist. But today, it's an Aquarian forerunner.
group, the new group of world service. So what gets me going is the crucialness of this time in history and that I'm committed, my whole life is committed to conveying this philosophy in a way that enlivens that commitment to live life in support of the greater whole, in support of the oneness of humanity. And this philosophy offers the ideas that really can make that happen.
That's what gets me going. Yes. I want to grasp the nettle.
Let's wrestle with something. I want to wrestle with what's happening in Israel. I'm 65% Ashkenazi Jew, so I have some skin in the game and I feel very conflicted.
And Alice Bailey, DK, has... some quite strange writings about the Jewish folk, the Jewish people. And I'm wondering whether you have any useful insights about that situation, enlightened ideas about what's playing out at the moment, not at a superficial level that Netanyahu and the right-wing Jews, Israelis, have managed to take over control of the government and all that. Not those politics, but a kind of deeper level of the ancestral soul of the people's politics that's going on there.
Do you have a view on that? Yeah, I do have a view. And I think that there's no one side that's right or wrong at all, as often as the case. Every side has darkness and light.
And that's the same when we look at this situation. I will say this, that from an esoteric perspective, as I understand it, and the Jewish... Think of the Jewish race as a unit within the collective consciousness of humanity as a whole.
Now, I'm hesitant because I have to go very deep into something. I'll try to do it as well as I can. I know it's difficult, which is why I said we'll grasp a nettle. But I'll just say this, that one of the great gifts of the Jewish consciousness is that… They are collectively, the Jewish consciousness is a third-ray manifestation. Now, the third ray is called the ray of active intelligence and adaptability.
And so, the collective consciousness of Judaism is third-ray. And that's the most brilliant of the minds of all the seven rays, by far, by far the third ray. In the esoteric philosophy, the view is held that in the big picture over many, many, many millennia, the destiny of the Jewish people was really rooted in the diaspora, and that the diaspora was designed so that the brilliance of the Jewish consciousness was to spread, to disperse throughout the world.
and enrich the entire world with the incredible, uplifting, visionary mind nature that that particular group has available to it. So, it was designed to be a great upliftment. The return back to Israel was not actually part of the divine plan. Instead, it was supposed to be a gift to the whole world with that brilliance. So, the return was not intended, but it happened.
that it happened. And the biggest challenge that now is facing, and according to the Tibetan, the thing that is the greatest obstacle to achieving peace there now, is that the partition. The partition in 1947 or 48, I forget where, I think it was 48, that is the greatest obstacle because it actually promotes what is called, promotes separateness. separateness. And as the Tibetan would say, the greatest obstacle to humanity is what he calls the heresy of separateness.
And so, built into the whole Arab-Jewish circumstance is this fundamental perspective on both sides of separative existence. And that is the obstacle, because really, on a deep level, they actually come from the same root. And so, all of the political stuff going, and the tragedy, and the death, it is tragic.
And our personalities have different views about that. But in essence, the root problem is the heresy of separateness held on both sides. And there are undoubtedly disciples in the world today, who their ashramic responsibility is to try to find ways of resolving that.
And personally, I don't think that either Hamas's leadership or the Jewish leadership are the people that are destined to do that. They're actually continuing to support the inflammation of the heresy of separateness. Anyway, I could go on, but I hope that gives you...
No, it's useful for us to be... to be real about a real world situation which challenges us, absolutely challenges us. And I'm hoping that our ability as a kind of temporary community in this conversation is a homeopathic dose of integration and friendship, actually.
Yeah, and the more we evolve our consciousness, the more we see that the Jewish person and the Palestinian... in the deepest, most fundamental sense, is you, is me, is us. Because, you know, it is a way of looking at it is, in this philosophy, if you look at what are called the three periodical vehicles, there are three structures within each of us that define our sense of identity.
The first and lowest, and the one we're most familiar with, is the personality. The next that we're striving to become more of. is the causal body or the soul consciousness, but there's even something above that called monad, pure beingness, pure life itself. And those three structures look at the outer world in quite a different way.
The personality, the lower self, it looks at others and says, I'm different than you. It's attentive to how it's different than another, and in fact, sometimes prizes that difference or it... triggers envy because of that difference.
The soul in each of us, when it looks out, it says, I see myself in the other. That shapes a whole different way of attitude of life. And then at the level of the monad, beyond the soul, it's the realization, I am the other.
I am the other. And so the evolution of consciousness brings us to As we lift our consciousness toward the soul and eventually toward the monad, we become more and more aware that that which we thought was separate from us is actually ourselves. It's one being, the soul of humanity, the soul of humanity.
And the conflicts that are going on today in the world collectively are related to that as well. The soul of humanity is said to be, is a fourth ray soul. And you would know what that is. The fourth ray, because we're the fourth kingdom of nature.
First kingdom is the mineral, second is the plant, third is the animal, fourth is human. And then there are three above, actually. There are said to be seven kingdoms.
But the fourth kingdom, because it's the fourth kingdom, the soul of that kingdom is fourth ray. What's that ray called? It's called the ray of harmony through conflict.
It's not called the ray of harmony and conflict. It's the ray of harmony through conflict. It's in the human kingdom and only in the human kingdom where conflict and crisis is actually a facilitating energy that moves us to a higher unity.
And that has to do with the idea that when life is evolving through the human kingdom, it's in the human kingdom. where we awaken to our own duality. We recognize there is a higher part of me and a lower part of me. And then we start to realize that we want to transform the lower so that it becomes more cooperative with the higher. But the lower has an independent agenda and says not so fast, and it puts up a kind of inner battle.
So the real root of the conflict within the human kingdom is actually the conflict between our God self and our form self. or as Kyle Gibran would say, the God within us and the pygmy in the mist, and all of it is rooted in it. And that outer conflict in the outer world is simply an outer reflection of the inner conflict that's built into the evolution of consciousness within the human kingdom.
It's not true when we look at the evolution of consciousness within the plant kingdom, the animal kingdom, the mineral kingdom, or above. There's a whole different set of patterns of development. in those kingdoms that this philosophy addresses. But the human kingdom is the one that is the battleground between the higher and lower in our nature. So, yeah.
But as we come towards the end of this conversation, numero uno, if people ask you, oh, which is the one Alice Bailey book I should start with? What do you normally say? Not knowing who the person is.
Well, I'm a little biased because I found that Ponder on This was a good way to go. But if you want to read a full book, then the first one I would say would be, well, you know, Initiation, Human and Solar is a very good beginning. And it's a smaller book, so it gets you into it.
My favorite book of all over the years is called A Treatise on White Magic. And that has a lot to do with... what is called it's sort of like the manual of discipleship that's the one i started with it's the one that there is the title that attracted me oh yeah yeah yeah but but i i would say that Have ponder on this available because it really, really gives you bite-sized pieces of wisdom that can then make more sense out of much of the rest of the readings. I've put into the chat box, people, the link to William's website.
So if you want to follow up any teachings actually with William, go to and also be in the email confirming email about for those of you registered. But it's William. It's Meder.
M-E-A-D-E-R dot org. All right, so ponder on this. Maybe it should be the book to start with. Or maybe a treatise on white magic, which is one that I kind of nudge people to.
Yeah, and then there's many bridging books that are said to be written. Even my own books are kind of bridging books to help you get into it as well. I think people are into healing and medicine.
Esoteric healing is useful. If you're interested in healing, there's a wonderful book on healing, Esoteric Healing, yes. So, that was a really interesting, helpful conversation, William. Thank you.
Oh, thank you. It's been a pleasure to be with you. I'm going to put you on the spot. Is there a prayer or a blessing that you could close our meeting with?
Sure. How about a brief alignment, just if you would close your eyes for just a moment, and then take a couple deep breaths to clear the inner space, and then try to move yourself into a deeper, subtler dimension. Feel yourself turning into a place where there's a feeling of expansiveness. And when you find that place, realize that it's there, in that place, where the inner ashram and the soul seeks to guide your outer life.
So as you hold that alignment in your own way, affirm your commitment to live and serve and support the upliftment of something beyond yourself. And on that note, let us just silently chant the Aum. to close. Thank you.
Thank you, William, for your time and your presence and your excellent teaching. very grateful on behalf of all of us. Thank you, everybody.
Thank you very much. Lovely to see you here in this session. Thank you.
Blessings. Lots of love. Take care.