Journey of a Lifetime: A Group Story – Chapter 9

Journey of a Lifetime: A Group Story is an account of the journey of a group through more than thirty years’ work.   Copies of the book are available from Sydney Goodwill.

CHAPTER NINE – Transference

Transference

Expansion of consciousness or the initiatory process, much considered in esoteric writings, implies that we ourselves initiate this movement in consciousness. It is not something that happens without our focused intention and attention, and recognition of a vaster area of awareness and function. The process involves a transference of our life focus from one state to another, from a more circumscribed or confined condition to a vaster or more transcendent state. All that we have formerly understood or developed is not lost but absorbed substantially within our new conscious environment, while previous complexity is resolved in the simplification revealed through an integrated or complete point of view.

We are actually speaking of the transference of the life from the outer form into the inner being – from the identification we have long held with the outer plane of life and its myriad forms, including our own, to identification with our true self or being in its own domain. And more than this. The goal is no longer the seeking of union with the soul as in the past Era, with the attendant belief that things were separated, but rather is it the understanding of an inclusive viewpoint as a result of transference of the life into a transcendent spiritual focus.

Transference is a process which may be appropriated in many ways:

• Movement within the subjective environment.
• Contacting of needed information.
• Communication with or within one’s inner group.
• Movement within time/space (back and forward) understanding that the Whole not only includes all beings, and all states, but also past/present/future.
• Movement between planes or dimensions.

Transference is a thought-directed process and therefore functions from within the etheric field within which we all live and move and have our being, as St. Paul told the Athenians. Just as light is the medium through which sight operates and sound waves are the carrier for hearing, so thought is transmitted per medium of the etheric energy field. This of course includes telepathy which becomes an automatic function within the group life.

Focused within the etheric body we come to understand that we are possessed of a mechanism to know that which is hidden, rather than depending only upon the usually recognised method of learning or discovery by receiving information from an external source. Within this field we may transfer our conscious focus. Transference, when truly understood, is a process that can be used in many ways both by the individual worker and the group as a whole.

The Group of which we are speaking in this book, being aware of the possibilities within the process of Transference, put their understanding into operation in various aspects of their work. One example, as the Group served within the public area, may illustrate an appropriation of this process.

During the second phase of the group work occasional public seminars were presented. One of these seminars was titled 2001 – A Vision from the Future. Some fifty participants, as a unit, and with the assistance of the core Group’s focused understanding, transferred their consciousness some years ahead in time from 1992 to the year 2001. Throughout the entire day everything was viewed and discussed from that vantage point. It was quite an experience to find fifty people so easily and quickly integrated and responding to the vision of what was emerging, what needed change and how we could assist.

Some issues addressed were: relations with one another and our planet; our new values, ideas and understanding; our powers and responsibilities; the inspiration of Life through all areas including youth and creativity, energy, economics, science, astrology, reincarnation, vision, prophecy and government. The seminar concluded with a recognition of the underlying synthesis and a consideration of the seeds evident in the actual year of the seminar, how we arrived at 2001, the challenges that guided us, the milestones of achievement.

A profound silence descended upon the group, lasting for many minutes. Everyone present shared a deep experience of oneness and knew that all had participated in the creative anchoring of transformative energies upon the planet.

This process can have considerably deeper possibilities of use. It needs us only to use this faculty to encourage its growth and activate the understanding of the process. For instance, transferring our consciousness to the vantage point of the inner plane we may examine any issue, teaching, knowledge or whatever in the clear light beyond the world of confined or limited thinking.

We are only limited by the extent of our imagination. Actually, there is nothing that can be imagined whose essence is not somewhere in the universe. Whatever we conceive of as possible, that we can imagine and that we bring into expression.

Understanding the Process

A scripture tells us that ‘as a man thinks in his heart, so is he’ and it is equally true that where we focus our thought, there are we. We may move wherever our thought can take us and especially so is this within the reality of our subjective environment. It is useful to understand just how we can put ourselves in touch with that which we seek or how it may be accessed. It is necessary that we contain within our minds some understanding or information of that which we wish to discover or expand. This is of the nature of a magnetic field that can attract to itself further thought of like nature.

Here we can be speaking of sensitivity to impression which involves the engendering of a magnetic aura that draws those impressions to itself. Impressions are not something that we should consider a laborious task to ascertain, to hold and seize upon, rather they drop into our field of consciousness because the magnetic aura invokes them and brings them into our mind.

However, there are other ways to understand this process when we consider the art of transference and its use within our service in the world work. For example, transferring our focus into the subjective dimension we may enter the inner ‘library’ or area of records wherein all things are available. Our magnetic aura, informed by our present knowledge or understanding plus the intensity of requirement demanded by the work in hand, draws to us that which is needed to enhance, expand, deepen or complete the task. We are now working from within the subtle dimension and not from the outer plane of focus reaching inwards.

One group member has an image of this ‘library’ as a corridor with information stored on either side and through which she walks and gathers that information needed. Another member describes the experience in a more pictorial sense in which he sees pictures on a wall as his consciousness absorb that with which he has come in contact.

As we make discovery, working in and from the subjective planes of life, we notice that we have the opportunity to explore ‘the mechanics’ of inner operations. These can then be used at will. It is a matter of knowing how things work. Then there is no question. We recognise, we take hold of, the principles that operate behind all functions and eventually it becomes an automatic process as we move into operation. Our point of focus combined with our intention sets the energies in motion.

Transference in consciousness also allows us to enter into close subjective communication with our co-workers and with the members of our inner group. This experience becomes increasingly clear as we leave behind the thought that the outer world of physical forms is the primary, or at least best understood, reality whereas it has existence only per favour of the subjective reality which substands it. The Group continues to develop this capacity that is so valuable and useful in the group work. It develops automatically to a great extent when a group of co-workers is very closely integrated within a common group purpose, but becomes increasingly clear as we all become identified within the experience of oneness and when we realise that form, time, place and distance are no barriers to immediate communication.

Our transference within time is actually an experience within, and of, the Whole. We recognise co-workers, friends from past time; we experience an ongoing or continuous relationship in service together with them. We are recognising the greater cycle of the soul, cycling in and out of the worlds of time and form, in the world and yet not of the world, and always serving the higher purpose. It strikes our awareness that age in the life of the soul is not related to time but to experience. It is not possible to measure age in the subjective world in terms of time.

Freedom from Form

As we discover our true identity beyond the confines of the world of form we find a freedom to use forms at will and in service for all with whom we come in contact. For instance, when we are free from the various forms in which teachings have been clothed, we find a facility in using any form to which others may respond in order to reveal to them a greater truth. We are no longer presenting a particular form of a philosophy but are using the form to convey the hidden essence or reality concealed behind the symbol.

When St. Paul was in Athens, he came upon an altar with an inscription to the Unknown God. He used the Athenians’ own form to declare to them the nature of God, the Father of all humanity in whom we live and move and have our being, as certain also of your own poets have said. (Acts17:28)

There was a medical practitioner whom a group member visited as a patient over a period of many years. This doctor was a man of religious persuasion, with a seeking mind. At each visit he would inevitably pursue a conversation along Biblical lines. Using scriptural reference it was possible to reveal to him a vaster world underlying the usual orthodox interpretation. The doctor had said that when he died and arrived ‘over there’ he would ask why some patients did not respond to treatment. The group member responded, “When you get over there you’ll probably find things far more important to ask than that question.” Some time later he died unexpectedly. Shortly after his death, while the group member was using homeopathic drops, which he had prescribed, he appeared to her inner sight and said with amusement, “You were right!”

It is possible to reveal hidden depths of life to another by using terms from their field of expression or discipline. We learn to speak everyone’s language in terms of their acceptances and with an emphasis on the underlying reality found behind all forms, we reveal a great reality according to the next step ahead of any individual.

Examining the principle upon which these capacities operate, we will note an extension of a statement within this chapter regarding the attraction of thought of like nature. It is not necessary to have a complete understanding of anyone’s field of knowledge. Identifying with the mind of another we may use his or her usual mental constructs to clothe a deeper truth. There is after all only one mind in the same sense that it is a mistake to speak of Soul in the plural.

And so, we are the inheritors of volumes of teaching and how are we rightly to understand their true use at this moment in time? That which is deeply esoteric and contained in books is never visible on the surface but is apprehended by those who know and guides their service. The primary value of such books is not in terms of their study but of the revelation of the hidden reality awaiting recognition and entrance into human consciousness. A sense of the esoteric is required and not merely the analytical processes of the lower mind.

The esoteric sense is the ability to live and to function subjectively and to use the mind at will in any direction. The aim is to bring freedom and not a confinement in yet another set of forms. It is ever and only reality that is designed to be revealed through anything.

It is time to discover the life we all share, our common origin, the life which flows through all, and to understand that there is a thread which runs through all cultures, all schools of thought and all religions. Although their outer forms of expression may be diverse and often concealing of the deeper truths, their source is one.