Nicholas Roerich’s painting, Madonna Oriflamma, or Great Mother of the World holding the Banner of Peace Through Culture. The Mother of the World represents the biosphere, our planet, solar system and beyond – all we rely on for life and sustenance.

PAX CULTURA
“Where there is Peace, there is Culture;
Where there is Culture, there is Peace.”
- Nicholas Roerich

This banner of three circles is an ancient diagram symbolising the trinity – in this case the triune reality of Love, Beauty and Action, and of Art, Science and Spirituality.

“The Banner of Peace is the official flag used around the world and displayed at all events, gatherings, and centers which
promote natural time and planetary peace.

The Roerich Pact and Banner of Peace was designed by Russian artist and humanitarian, Nicholas Roerich (1874 – 1947) as a response to the destruction of the first world war and the Russian Revolution.

It is an international treaty signed by India, the Baltic states, and 22 nations of the Americas including the United States. The Roerich Peace Pact established an international agreement allowing any nation to protect its cultural or artistic heritage with a symbolic banner, the Banner of Peace. Signed in 1935, this treaty is international law today.

Just as the Red Cross protects hospitals, the Banner of Peace was implemented to protect culture.”

“Let us be united – you will ask in what way?
You will agree with me: in the easiest way,
to create a common and sincere language.
Perhaps in Beauty and in Knowledge.”
Nicholas Roerich

Source: Reviving the Roerich Banner of Peace http://www.13moon.com/banner%20of%20peace.htm

This symbol indicates some of the significant forces and deeper factors now increasingly operating as the new age advances.

The symbol is set in a limitless field of blue, which signifies the sphere of life expression of our solar Logos, who is said to be a deep blue, second-ray Logos. The potency and quality of his pervading life maintains and conditions all within the solar system including the life and destiny of our planetary Logos, Sanat Kumara. It is the most powerful factor which we are able to touch mentally.

The golden disc, against which the triangle and the star appear, symbolises the all inclusive background of our life on this planet. Sanat Kumara may look through it. We look at it, being aware of its reality. It is spoken of in that most ancient of all mantrams, the Gayatri: “Unveil to us the face of the true spiritual Sun, hidden by a disc of golden light, that we may know the truth”.

Behind the entire symbol, extending beyond the disc of golden light, emerges the cosmic cross, which is found in the consciousness of the great ones on that distant sun, Sirius. This cosmic cross is the origin of all the cross symbology as perceived and used by humanity down through the ages.

As evolution proceeds, spiritual potencies ebb and flow. In the coming age certain forces are available to Sanat Kumara not formerly at his disposal. This is largely so because he has achieved an expansion of solar consciousness, or, as we might put it, “taken an initiation”.

Some of these forces are partially available in the council chamber of Shamballa, and from thence in the Hierarchy led by the Christ. Our symbol touches only a few of these new potencies and includes a blend of both the old age and the new. It is the perfecting of this blend which is a supreme task of the Christ at this time. A blend must be achieved which is suitable to the condition of humanity as it is now.

The triangle superimposed upon the disc is yellow, because that is the colour of buddhi. The Hierarchy functions on the buddhic plane, so-called, and the potencies of this triangle make their entry into our planetary life there. This triangle is formed by the three great extra-planetary entities now aiding the Plan for the planet, and especially standing behind the Christ to aid his work for humanity. The values they bring, therefore, reach us primarily through him. Their influence on human consciousness is of transcendent power. How that power is used is up to us, and will be constructive if we respond to the Christ.

One of these great beings is known to us as the Lord Buddha. This, however, limits our understanding far too much. His work as the founder of what has become the Buddhist religion, is completely transcended. He, like the Lord of the World himself, has achieved an expansion of consciousness, making him now of extra-planetary potency. He brings a balancing wisdom especially adapted to human need. He is the closest of the three to the Christ. He stands at the right hand of the Christ, depicted, therefore, at the lower right hand point of the triangle.

At the lower left hand point stands the great Entity who carries the potency of solar equilibrium, now newly available to Sanat Kumara. He Is referred to by the Master Djwhal Khul as the “spirit of equilibrium”, and also as the “spirit of peace, the peace that passeth all understanding”. The active agent of peace is goodwill, which will find ultimate expression in the human family as established right relations. Right human relations are the practical goal of the coming Christ in the new age.

At the top of this new and unique triangle stands the Avatar of Synthesis, whose direct influence is now identifiable in the human consciousness in emerging trends. He is the most potent of the three in relation to mass consciousness at this time. His permeating influence hastens the realisation by humanity that, in fact, we live in one world as one humanity with a common destiny.

Such, in brief, indicates a small part of the significance of the new triangle now standing behind the Christ to aid his work.

Superimposed upon the triangle of new age forces is the five pointed star of the Christ. This star has been his vehicle in the human family during the entire Piscean era. It has been, and is today, of marvellous potency. The Star is blue because it represents as much of the solar quality to which humanity can respond.

Humanity today, in mass consciousness, is largely the product of Piscean pressures. Although we are already entering the Aquarian age, the established rhythms of the old era are still dominating humanity as a whole and will do so for what may seem to us a long time. Were the Christ to abandon the old and go all out for the new, the automatic inevitable revolt of the sons of men would crucify us all. The old and the new must merge. The problem is not a fight to kill out the old, but a wise and rightly timed infiltration of the new into the boiling cauldron of our times.

Our symbol, therefore, blends the two eras and rightly pictures the work of the Christ today and the forces he must wield. The point in the centre is the place where the Christ stands. It is the centre of the star, the centre of the triangle, and the centre of the disc of golden light.

From that centre he works, and as he works the cross of the new era emerges. This is the equal-armed cross, reflecting its cosmic archetype, which will in its own right become the cross of humanity in the days to come. It symbolises the balanced life of right relation to God through aspiration and right relation to man through service and sharing. Eventually we shall know and live by the fact that nothing actually belongs to any individual man.

By focusing attention on this centre of power in our symbol, illumination comes. Concentration on this point, where the Christ stands, reveals the entire field; this, according to our individual spiritual status.

by Foster Bailey
copyright Lucis Trust

http://www.lucistrust.org

What is The Great Invocation?
It’s a mantra or invocation. It can also be described as the intelligent organisation of spiritual energy to evoke the forces of love into the planet.

TheLucis Trust website describes The Great Invocation as a tool to help bring about a better world. It can be used by anyone and due to its simplicity, can be used by busy people for just a few minutes each day.

The Great Invocation may seem like a prayer or a chant, but it’s more than that. The way the Invocation is worded means it carries powerful energy for positive change. It inspires the energy of goodwill within humanity to establish Right Human Relations everywhere – and as we know, this is the essential ingredient for Peace.

If you want to be part of the solution to help create a better world, just speak the Great Invocation, aloud or silently, once a day. .
Watch this site for information about the spiritual warrior Hercules’ labour in Leo coming soon.
for more info go to:
http://www.lucistrust.org/en/service_activities/the_great_invocation__1

For a PowerPoint slide show of the Great Invocation copy and paste this link:

http://www.lucistrust.org/en/content/download/21220/268923/file/The%20Great%20Invocation.ppsx

Nicholas Roerich’s painting titled Himalayas Setting Moon.

After our daily labors, let us gather to discourse about the heart. It will lead us beyond the domains of Earth toward the Subtle World, in order to bring us closer to the sphere of Fire.

Thought is the manifestation of vital happiness; thought that is rent from the heart will not penetrate the surface of Being, but thought that comes from the heart is like an impetuous arrow!
One need not be confused by the inception of thought amidst the intensification of energy; those thoughts are like a battering ram, which will penetrate into the depth of Be-ness. Therefore, after outer action, let us value the reality of the creativeness of thought.

No. 48. Heart (1932) Agni Yoga.

*The Agni Yoga Society was founded in 1920 by Nicholas Roerich and his wife Helena.

The aims of the Society are embodied in the philosophy of Agni Yoga, and these are contained in the books of the Agni Yoga Series. They detail a synthesis of ancient Eastern beliefs and modern Western thought, providing a bridge between the spiritual and the scientific. Unlike previous yogas, Agni Yoga is a path not of physical disciplines, meditation, or asceticism—but of practice in daily life.

It is the yoga of fiery energy, of consciousness, of responsible, directed thought. It teaches that the evolution of the planetary consciousness is a pressing necessity and that, through individual striving, it is an attainable aspiration for mankind. It affirms the existence of a Hierarchy of Beings of Light who are the inner guides of humanity. Agni Yoga has been called a “living ethic.”

Beauty does not wither and die, for it is eternal
Increasing its radiance as we approach nearer
It radiates love to our hungry hearts, and feeds our minds with thoughts of powerful joy
Beauty never claims us, we only approach closer to its embrace

For beauty is in all and everything, yet sometimes so deeply veiled that its face cannot be found
As each of us is alive, so each of us is a teardrop of infinite beauty.

Resonance sounds as we hear its note, harmonising with our own
Stumbling, falling, recovering, we journey on our life’s path
Sometimes straining to hear the sound reverberating, subliminally, within us
Beauty beckons with the promise of peace, harmony and meaning
Each day another chance to lift one more veil from beauty’s shroud, as we strive and struggle, live and laugh
For beauty is in all things, and not a moment is empty of its wonder.

The Easter Festival (30 March 2010), was the first of three spiritual festivals, celebrated around the world. The next is during the full moon in May (Wesak Festival), and then the June full moon (World Invocation Day).

What Are They?

These festivals are the embryo of a new spiritual approach to life that is gaining increasing interest globally – from people of all cultures and backgrounds.

This spirituality is based on the now scientifically proven fact of our one human family,and also on the belief that there is a plan and a purpose for our life on earth.

What Are They?

The next three months, from April to June, offer an opportunity to tap into higher planetary energies. Through meditation, concentrated thought and focussed intent, we have the chance to find solutions to some of the questions burning in the back of our minds. What can I do to make the world a better place: help others to live a healthier life, end world poverty, prevent animal abuse – the list is endless.

What Can I Do?

There are unlimited ways that we can use our unique presence here on earth to create positive change. Now is a great opportunity to tap the pool of collective thought, gain inspiration and start planning and doing. Large or small, what matters is that we’re trying; using our creative energy in ways that help build new and better ways for us all to find meaning, peace and joy in our lives.

Three Spiritual Festivals 2010:

Easter Festival – March 29

Wesak Festival – April 27

World Invocation Day/Goodwill Festival – May 27

It’s raining. Thunder and lightning assert their ascendancy as monarchs of earth, air and sea.
Rain falls, heavily, splatting the patio tiles with large drops.
Each drop recoils as it touches the cold, hard surface of compressed earth.
It summons its energy and leaps away in a sparkling pirouette; silvery beauty belies the recoiling horror – the hard, cold reality of dense earth.

The drop gathers its stored energy, leaping upwards, away, seeking again the safety of the known.
Arms outstretched towards the mother – the ineffable cloud of unknowable unity – each drop stretches flickering, beseeching, quick silvery arms.
The unrelenting force of planetary gravity sucks, draws, caresses, enveloping the tiny life into its dry, hungry arms.
From the cloud of oneness came the rain.
For one brief moment, each drop knows itself, by knowing its not-self. Thrust into the timeless weaving of light and dark, the raindrop knows duality.
Animated by the light of the sun, each drop dances in exquisite frenzy as other drops fall.
A pounding, relentless procession of lives birthed from unity into light, finding individuality, dying again to oneness.

It’s the heart, that’s what we’re craving.

The freedom to be.

The passion to search, to try, to sense, to think, to imagine.

To touch the unconditional love of the soul; of the source of being; of life itself.

The sense that we belong, that we have a purpose in having visited this short stay on Earth.

That there is justice, meaning, and a larger vision than our own limited perspective.

We want to know that our individual life counts for something; that we’re important, valuable and unique in the part we play.

That while our footprint is set deep in the earth, our echo soars with the stars.

So we listen intently, and in those quiet moments, we understand.

Our freedom lives in the heart of all things; in our connection.

With all other hearts singing together, yet each with their own distinct sound.

We feel it in the pulsing aliveness of each cell.

As minute by minute, we breathe with the symphony of souls.

We hear the steady beat; we know why we are here – fully alive, creatively inspired, divinely loved.

Pluto rules the underworld, the place one goes after death, and in order to pass the border, a price is agreed upon. Something is given to pay for the new wealth, the gain in psychological and spiritual knowledge.

Why do I have to die?
That’s the million-dollar question that many of us will ask at least once during our life. If not when we’re still fit and healthy, then usually as we’re sliding further down the slippery slope towards our apparent annihilation.

We used to know how to die well, consciously preparing for each step along the way. It wasn’t until the late eighteenth century, that the process of dying and death changed from being a part of the life-death continuum, to something abhorrent and fearful.

With the development of modern scientific medicine in the early nineteenth century, death was relegated to the ‘things that shouldn’t happen to us anymore’ pile, along with plague, smallpox and polio.

So how did we manage to die well, before our modern reductionist bio-medical model of disease encouraged us to see our life as a purely physical-molecular phenomenon?

The Tibetan art of conscious dying is called Pho-Wa which is the art of separating from the dying body. The Tibetan Book of Living and Dying gives advice on how to prepare for a conscious death. The trick is to live a conscious life. And whether or not you believe in an afterlife makes no difference to your experiences after death.

In the West, Christians were guided in ways to have a good death by Ars moriendi (The Art of Dying). This book was a response by the Roman Catholic Church to conditions brought about by the Black Death.

These ancient texts differ in form but agree on content: the way we live our life, the daily thoughts and acts, the nice or nasty things we say and do, are all laid down on our life’s canvas. And that is the document used to determine how we’ll experience our last breath and beyond.

“You’re looking better today,” we tell our dying loved one even as they lay gasping, connected to beeping machines like a bionic lab rat. Family and friends try to keep their loved one with them here in the light of the known, for the fear of the unknown is too great to bear. With no guides to show us the way, few of us are ready to face the apparent abyss and darkness of death.

Here are four steps to consider when next brave enough to open the conversation around death and dying.

Step 1: Find Out Where You’re Going
If you want to build a ship, don’t herd people together to collect wood and don’t assign them tasks and work but rather, teach them to long for the endless immensity of the sea.
Antoine de Saint-Exupery

If you believe there’s only blackness after death, that’s fine. If you believe you’ll meet up with your loved ones who’ve died before you, lovely. If you believe you’ll burn in hell, oh well. And if you believe you’ll go onto to do other work in other places and return to another incarnation on earth, okay great.

No matter what we believe, no one can say for sure. But according to the ancient texts, the first step in preparing for death is to decide what lies beyond the door. When we’ve chosen what our new journey will be like, even if it’s nothingness, at least we’ve become conscious that the door will one day open to us.

Step 2: What Do You Need To Do Before The Day Arrives?
People living deeply have no fear of death. Anais Nin

James Bymes, confident of Franklin Roosevelt and one of the most powerful men in American domestic and foreign policy in the mid-1940s said, “Too many people are thinking of security instead of opportunity. They seem to be more afraid of life than death.”

It sounds simple – live life everyday as if there’s no death. How? By living as if we’re part of something much greater than ourselves, as if we’re unique and precious with a valuable contribution to make to this thing called Life. And so logically, to treat everyone else as if they too are unique and precious.

Step 3: When The Day Arrives
We are not human beings having a spiritual experience. We are spiritual beings having a human experience.  Pierre Teilhard de Chardin.

If we like this hanged-man way of looking at life, then we can also consider the ancient texts take on life after death.

They suggest that we retain a self-consciousness when our body is dead (like during a near death experience), and that while we’re busy living our life, we would be wise to also be preparing for the next journey of death.

How can death be a great adventure when all we know and love is being taken from us? Turning to the ancient texts again we are advised to live well. How? Ironically, by first journeying deeply and fully into life and then by turning and starting the outward journey towards detachment and dispassion from our bodies. As the Sufi’s say, “Be in this world, but not of it”.

Step 4: Why Not Use This Death As An Opportunity To Transform?

I think if one were asked what was the most common mental state in which the majority of people arrive in the spirit world, I should be disposed to reply from a fairly extensive experience, that they arrive in a state of bewilderment and complete ignorance of the fact that they have passed from the earth world. Anthony Borgia, spiritualist psychic.

The Buddha gave the formula for liberation: know the mind, govern the mind, perfect the mind.

We have mastered the art of living well and we’re feeling ready to consciously traverse the dying landscape when we arrive there. But have we really embraced death as an adventure?

Alice Bailey tells us that the elimination of disease is not the way to overcome death. Instead she suggests we develop a continuity of consciousness. When we sleep and dream it’s like dying except that the link with our life force remains. So to practice dying we can try and keep our consciousness as high as possible – to see the light in our head – as we fall asleep. We can follow the light and it will show us the way. Our body dies but our consciousness continues.

“Death…is one of our most practised activities,” says Bailey. But as long as we identify with our body, we’ll fear death. As soon as we know we are our consciousness (soul, spirit, higher self), then we know that when we die, we’re only going to the place we’ve been every night as we sleep.

Here’s Hoping
With no better alternative, the prospect of being in control and conscious during a natural death seems infinitely more attractive than drugs and machines ruling the day. Granted palliative care is valuable and pain relief often a must, but these can be used to enhance rather than dull that moment when we look out over the vast expanse of the ocean of being and finally know who we really are.

For detailed information on the art of conscious dying see the references below.

Bailey, A. (1998) Death: The Great Adventure, (3rd ed). London. Lucis Trust

Capra, F. The Turning Point. Retrieved September 9, 2009 from
wplus.net/pp/Julia/Capra

Goble, D. (2009) Beginner’s Guide to Conscious Dying. Oregon. Cosmic Creativity.

Griffin, J. Practice Dying Retrieved September 4, 2009 from www.worldu.net

Life Positive. Islam – The Sufi’s Whirl of Love. Retrieved November 29, 2009.

http://www.lifepositive.com/Spirit/world-religions/sufism/sufi.asp

Reyes, B. (1990) The Practice Of Conscious Dying: Off-Ramp to Liberation and Freeway to Conscious immortality. California. World University.

Rinpoche, S. (2002). The Tibetan Book of Living & Dying. Rigpa Fellowship.