“Endless choices await us every moment of our day…our brain is wired
for the extraordinary. Our body waits the experience of these choices.
The great school teaches us the sciences if turning on and enabling
these greater life experiences. Come learn and engage in the wonder
that you are really capable of being.” JZ Knight
“Let us pray that our acts of kindness, buy our desire be received for
the sake of sharing, we move closer to that more perfect place. We
women are already created as higher spiritual vessels. May we use
that Vessel to further all that is good and sweet in life now and
always.”—Karen Berg
God and the Spiritual Liberation of Women
By Alan Steinfeld (2006)
This summer (2006) I had the opportunity to interview two of the most dynamic
and influential women in the current spiritual movement; Karen Berg creator of
the Kaballah Center and JZ Knight founder of the Ramtha School of
Enlightenment. Each currently has a book on the market that is full of practical
wisdom, spiritual knowledge with a feminine perspective. There are many striking
similarities, yet the sharp differences between these remarkable women have
added to the abundance of today’s spiritual treasures.
Both women are self-made yet have a very strong male presence behind them.
Each come from humble beginnings, who nevertheless have built great
organizations bringing new spiritual understanding to many thousands of
people around the world emphasizing the importance of women. Most
importantly, their particular esoteric wisdom comes from an ancient mystical
source.
For Ms. Berg, and the Kabbalah Center in general, their main reference is the
Zohar (the Book of Splendor). This 23 volume set attributed (some would say
even channeled ) to a 13th century Spanish Rabbi Moses de Leon. The Zohar
was his attempt to uncover hidden meanings behind the world of appearances.
However JZ Knight has been privy to the wisdom of Ramtha, the Enlightened,
an Atlantean warrior, who ascended from this plane 35,000 years ago.
Using JZ body he has delivered his message of hope and ultimate freedom.
Both teachings have become exceeding poplar in recent years. Thanks to
Karen Berg’s efforts the Kabbalah Center has become a multimillion-dollar
empire with more than 40 branches all over the world. However it is only
recently that the knowledge of Ramtha has become more available mainly
thanks to being featured in the hit movie “What the Bleep Do We Know.”
For those who “don’t know” this film was inspired by the teachings of Ramtha
as it was at the Ramtha school that the 3 filmmakers met, formulated their
ideas about quantum physics, emotional addiction and how to “create their day”.
There are also many philosophical differences between these two modes of
thought, for instance: The Kabbalah states that men are here for “a soul
correction” and women are here to help support this correction in men so
both can achieve a return to the light of the Creator. Ramtha/JZ state we are
already complete when we incarnated and we are here to add to the manifestation
of God in the world as creators. Ramtha’s teachingspoint to the light not as the ultimate,
but one of levels and levels of being. Ramtha states that although light is above
this physical plane it is not our final destination as we proceed back home to the
void, point zero, the source of our being.However, the overall difference, as I see
it, is comes down to the idea that there is still a deity outside of us who takes
credit for the world (that is the Kabbalah Center way; And the idea that divinity
is inside us and we are creating the world according to our level of consciousness,
which is what Ramtha teaches in the Great Work.
Books By Two Pioneering Women
A State of Mind by JZ Knight & God Wears Lipstick by Karen Berg
JZ Knight’s book, A State of Mind is a more personal reflection of awakening.
This intensely personal autobiography is written with feeling and humor as it
spans her early life from her modest beginnings as the daughter of a cotton picker
in East Texas to 1981 when she meets her soulmate Jeffrey Knight. In the re-telling
are many life lessons that change the young Judith Hampton into the women she
will one day be. This includes a UFO encounter at a teenage sleep-over party that
started to open her up to other concepts of reality. We also hear about her early
relationships and her struggle up the corporate ladder to became a successful
businesswomen. It was here that she acquired the nickname of "Zebra" (giving rise
to the nickname JZ), due to her ability to make clean-cut, black-and-white decisions.
However the stress of the business world lead her into serious health problems.
Of great fascination is her miraculous healing when a sudden bolt of light hit her at
revival meeting, just prior to Ramtha appearing in her living room in 1977.
Since then and on an ongoing basis for the past 28 years, JZ has allowed her body
to be used as a channel for the deep spiritual message of Ramtha. His major emphasis
can be summed up in four major principles. They are: we are god, consciousness and
energy create the nature of realty, we are here to make known the unknown and lastly
we are here to conquer ourselves. Ramtha, like JZ does in this book, uses his lifetime
as an example of how to unfold the divinity within.
To quote Ramtha:
“My path in my life upon this plane was to become the Unknown
God — which I was to discover was myself —
and to go beyond the dimensions to frolic in the
adventures of forever. And so I did, and still do. I have returned
to tell you that those adventures are awaiting you also,
when you have embraced all of this life as I did.”
In God Wears Lipstick, Karen Berg reveals women’s special spiritual
role in the universe, the power of soulmates, managing relationships,
reincarnation and the meaning of sex. However the book contains only
brief biographical incidences. Early in the book she recalls her destined
coupling with Philip Berg — the spiritual leader known to followers as the Rav.
Years before either of them knew anything about the kabbalah, Karen was a
secretary for Mr. Berg’s insurance business. Their reunion seemed destined when the
two happened to meet by chance after each started to pursue spiritual knowledge.
Ms. Berg also tells how in 1971, with virtually no money, she and the Rav — opened
their first Kabbalah Centre, turning traditional Jewish wisdom upside down. It was her absolute
Before Karen Jewish orthodoxy believed the philosophy of the Kabbalah was so complicated
that it could only be taught to ultra-religious Jewish men over 40 who had spent their lives studying Judaism.
Berg’s book is a tribute to the practical wisdom of the Kabbalah but lacks the mystical
sense that marks true esoteric literature. In my interview with her, she noted that “we
have to do the work on the self, our own internal process, before we can achieve the
higher mystical states.” As a book it is very good manual for becoming self-responsible
for your life and meeting daily circumstances as a preparation for the Great Work.
God may indeed wears lipstick, but its only a state of mind where the potential of
becoming has infinite possibilities. If you want to make the ordinary become extraordinary
go to the Kabbalah center and if you want to make the extraordinary into the ordinary
visit the Ramtha School of Enlightenment to master your body, mind and soul.
JZ Knight and the Ramtha School are located in Yelm, Washington.
For information about this event check www.ramtha.com , under NY events or call 212 616 3075.
The Kabbalah center is located in New York at 155 East 48th street and has free
introductory classes. http://www.kabbalah.com
Alan Steinfeld is the host of the New Realities. He welcomes comments at This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it
It's Here Now (Are You?) A Spiritual Memoir by Bhagavan Dass
review by Alan Steinfeld
In the tradition of Yogananda's Autobiography of a Yogi and Gurjiefff's Meeting With Remarkable Men, Bhagavan Dass has written about his journey for spiritual knowledge that is bound to become a classic. What makes this book so fascinating is upclose and personal descriptions of the many holy men and women of the East and West. He relates how these encounters sparked a deep inner experience which he describeds with passion and clarity.
Born Michael Riggs and later named Bhagavan Das (BD) by his guru Neem Karoli Baba, BD is one of the central figures in the spiritual movement that has swept into this country since the 1960 s and he is partially responsible for it too. He was the person who told, the LSD dropping Harvard neurotic Richard Alper to "be here now." He was also Alper's first spiritual teacher and the person who introduced him to his Guru, Neem Koroli Baba, who gave him the name Ram Dass.
BD begins his story with the incarnation of himself as a typical example of the disillusioned youth of the post Eisenhower America where living in the suburbs of Southern California. He realized the ridiculous of he material American dream way before that became fashionable.
"Once, when I was sixteen, I came home drunk at 3 o'clock in the morning. I pulled into the wrong garage, closed the wrong garage door, walked into the wrong house, and opened the door to my room-, which I found was the wrong room.... I knew I have to find a place where people lived differently. I began wandering in my mind because I felt so stifled by my predictable life and the future. I was looking for roots and didn't see ant I j America. I felt that the was mouthing here for me."
It was in the great mysteries of the East that young Michael Riggs (BD) would find what he was seeking and his ongoing love affair with wharf he realizes to be the divine Mother.
The Divine Mother is the love behind life's energy that pulsated inside and outside us. And it is has always been the case since time immemorial that those who seek find. When BD arrives in India, in 1963 (and where he will stay for seven years ) he says: "it was walking into a concert that had been playing for five thousand years and had seven hundred million people in the band." What BD finds on his search for his spiritual roots are all the greatest saints of the 20th century. He has encounters with everyone from Mahareshi Mahesh Yogi, Muktananda, Sai Baba, Anada Mai Ma (who Yogananda also met earlier and relates a similar experience of this great Being.
For BD these are not just casual encounters, but intense passionate experiences that blast him to a deeper state of bliss. Throughout the skill of the writing that bliss is somehow felt by hew reader. It is an act of transmission that BD is the great bring for divine revelation to the west even thought to this day as he continues to struggle with his own self-determined ego. But his experiences add up to a great mountain of treasure. Perhaps that is why the poet Gary Snider called him “a National Park.”
With every holy person he describes beautiful awakened experiences. But it is only in the intense encounter with his "sat" guru that he finds his true love Neem Karoli Baba. His disciples knew him, as Maharaja. It was this master that transformed BD, the seeker, into one who has found. He says of Neem Karoli: ” I was so happy to be near his body. He had the most beautiful fragrance you've ever smelled. It was like the top of a new born baby's head, it took me out t of my senses"
The love that comes through when a BD talk about his guru just expands in the chest of the reader. According to BD in an interview with this writer, he said that “it was this love that has lasted to this day. Spanning death and time and distance."
Masharishi's love was not always so sweet and BD had to endure those hard lessons of tough love. Sending him away at times and at other times BD running away from the intensity of dissolving ego. In these cases he would seek out other spiritual seekers and teachers meeting such great masters as the Tibetean Lama Kalu and the last Karmapa. He devotion to the Tibetan Buddhist lineage creates the inner turmoil of betrayal in BD over his Hindu guru. His resolution here is a burning through his ego.
BD comes out of it all ----not quite enlightened, but more as a way shower to those willing to confront their Western self image and take the plunge into a life connected to that essence beyond the body: The Spirit of the essential Self, the Atman.
The best book I have read on the alchemy of spiritual transformation.
The Red Lion: The Elixir of Eternal Life by Maria Szepis
review by Alan Steinfeld
The Red Lion puts together, in a narrative form, the secrets of alchemy and its effects on the on the consciousness of those striving to discover the ways of transforming lead into gold. For any true alchemists this is merely a metaphor for the transformation of body into spirit. The story of this book traces the experience of one seeker, as he awakens through the pre-mature ingesting of the philosopher's stone in a mad quest for immortality. In this case, the adept had not been spiritual qualified to undergo such transformation and is consequently thrown up against his own demons. The awakening that occurs, for the main character as well as the reader, is due to the confrontation of the darkness and bringing of light to the deepest part of being. Maria Szepis had written a superb tail about this act of confrontation and draws on much Hermetic research to bring out the theosophical truth in discovering the God of our being.
Written , May 4, 1998 for Amazon
David Anderson of the Anderson Intstitute talks with Alan Steinfeld on time travel as not a possibility, but a reality. More information can be found at: http://www.AndersonInstitute.com
After the interview David wrote:
Hello Alan
Thank you for the opportunity to join you on your show. I enjoyed our discussion and I look forward to whatever our new friendship may bring, and hopefully more interesting discussions on or off the air. I do hope we find the opportunity to collaborate on a project and I will send you a copy of our new documentary as soon as it is released. Just let me know the best place to send it.
As I mentioned my personal focus is on managing the Anderson Institute and my role as an Ambassador for your for the United Nations. I promised to send some links, so here they are:
1. www.WorldGenesis.org- Our official site describing our mission, vision and structure.
2. www.WorldGenesis.org/hot-news.html - This link includes highlights of our last 10 years of projects and results. On the right side are a list of press releases and each includes many more links to reports and media impressions of the projects.
3. Selected news highlights can also be found via links on Face Book at: World-Genesis-Foundation
4. www.Atlantykron.or g This is one of our flagship projects we manage under UNESCO Romania. This is an annual event involving about 500 international youth and instructors. We launch in just three days, so we are quite busy with this at the moment.
With warmest regards,
David Lewis Anderson, PH.D.
President & CEO, The Anderson Institute
“Innovation and Excellence in Time Technology”
This is only a small section of the whole 90 minute interview NewRealities did with Bruce Lipton in August, 2000.
For the whole interview, in 3 parts go to the Exclusive video section of this website:
In this section Lipton lays out the next phase of our evolution:
Alan Steinfeld: As organisms, we have developed from the organelles of cells to the organs of animals to the organizations of cultures. Human development has now covered the planet with a web of ideas. What is the next phase of evolution for the individual?
Bruce Lipton: Our evolution is not with the individual. We already have all the information capacity that we are capable of dealing with as individuals. Our evolution is the evolution of community. In reality, I am a bustling community of 50 billion single cells sharing organization in a community of cells to a create a larger entity that will have a greater life.
The human body is a cell that exists as a community of cells functioning as a single unit. No matter how complex we are, there are no new functions in my human body that is not already present in a single cell. The human is a reiteration of a cell. A community of humans is like a multi-cellular organism that came together to share awareness to make a new whole.
We human beings are each individuals cells coming together to form a community to share awareness to create one living organism called humanity. We are not humans until we create humanity. This is when we all recognize that we are all cells in the same living organism working in a coherent capacity. When we come together as a one, we have created the next level of evolution.
When humanity is complete, the earth as an organism completes its evolution as a living, breathing, pulsing being — Gaia. This completion as a single unit is equivalent, on a fractal level, to the completion of the single cell.
AS: Julian Huxley said, "Humanity is nothing else than evolution becoming conscious of itself."
BL: The internet is an evolutionary leap. It is the equivalent of the communication system by which all the cells of my body are coherent. So now we have the ability for all the cells in our new human organization — humanity — to communicate with each other and share information. This is why the cells came together in the first place.
AS: So what is next step?
BL: You tell me! According to this pattern, when the cohesive functional unit like the single cell was complete in its evolution, what was its next phase of evolution?
AS: To hook up with other complete cells to form a greater multi-cellular organism.
BL: Right. And when humans are complete in their evolution as individuals, what was their next step?
AS: To hook up with other humans and form communities.
BL: So when the earth completes its evolution with humans, coming together as humanity, functioning as coherent unique receptor sites, what is the next phase?
AS: To hook up with other ones.
BL: Yes! When we as humanity are at the level of a unity, with a single voice, that will allow us to speak as a one. And that will allow us to speak with other Ones.
AS: Ah ha! Thank you.
At that point in the interview I had an epiphany. I realized, that in a very concrete way, we absolutely need to know we are all equal parts of one greater living being. Then we can come together as conscious elements of this greater whole to share our awareness for the common benefit of all. I feel this is when we will evolve out of our cosmic isolation and establish relationships with other ones. It is only then that we will formally meet the other planetary civilizations and become part of the greater Galactic community.
In an interview for the television program, New Realities, Grey talked about his inspiration and what he hopes to achieve as an artist:
Alan Steinfeld of New Realities: What goes on for you when you are creating these forms? Are you aware of the energy bodies when you are painting? What is it that you are feeling?
Alex Grey: The question has always been about self-discovery. What am I and what is this? It is a constant mystery and hopefully that will relate to other people as well. A long the way I plugged into what I would call visionary worlds, which have been part and parcel of art since the beginning; since the shamans painted on the cave walls tens of thousand of years ago. All the different cultures with all the multi-headed beings were all plugging into these visionary inner worlds. I think it is the same as the Platonic archetypes. Blake called it the “the divine imagination”. So to me art becomes an emblem; a passionate encapsulation and convincing proof that these inner realities exist. You don’t have to argue for one ideology over another. Art in general argues for the reality of the inner worlds. That is what we need to resurrect in the 21st century; the value of the inner worlds.
The subjective is what brings meaning and purpose to our lives. And this is what has been devalued in the materialist, modernist [world]. It is what [Ken] Wilbur calls “the flatland that doesn’t see depth or height or meaning or purpose, but only describes the surfaces of things”.
AS: You can feel these depths in your paintings. It’s the power of art and it’s resonance in our bodies.
AG: For me that is one of the most important things about art. It can key you into the template of spirit that is within you that maybe has been obscured in one way or another. Schopenhauer talked about the aesthetic experience as one that draws you out of your constricted ego sense and for a moment you are released. You’re just a pure subject looking at this object.
All the wisdom traditions that talk about art talk about this. When you see something beautiful or remarkable, it takes your breath away for a moment and you go (he grasps). In that moment of aesthetic release there is kind of an ego death. It is kind of a mini mystical experience.
In that relaxation you become one, if you trust the art enough to release yourself into that. To me it is another form of contemplation. It is very powerful. It is adjunct to anyone’s spiritual practice. The Hindus use the yantras and various meditation focusing devices; the Tibetan Buddhist use the Thangka paintings to visualize and align themselves with the inner worlds.
This function of art has always been powerful [but] in our society art has become more of a fashionable bauble or a seasonal investment that you can maybe get rich from. But I still think that the sacred aspect of art is its most worthy and important function.
AS: A common imagery in many of your paintings is the cosmic grid. Many of your figures are depicted against that kind of background of the web of eternal life. What does this grid mean to you and where did you get the idea of using that in your painting?
AG: It comes from seeing the grid work in meditation and on psychedelic voyages and it seems to be related to one’s perceptions and projections. Theologue is a recounting, an experience of witnessing a grid work that was emanating from my own awareness. I was a node in the sourcing of the web and felt so expansive I was beyond my sourcing it. I could both see it and it projecting from my awareness.
AS: Were you both projecting it and immersed in it, like the life force?
AG: Since we are all projecting it, it is a part of all of us. It is an aspect of our being. Yet it is a bit different than our notion of Prana, which is just energy. The grid is amore coherent and structured thing. As an artist I see the grid as rational and tied to that aspect of our perception. Prana is sectioning things out of what our structuring mind does. It is essentially conceptual. The mind out wisdom is what the Buddhist call, Manjushri. He has a flaming sword that cuts through all BS. He is the Buddha of transcendental wisdom. It is a highly disciplined and a highly organized state of discrimination.
The grid is not a manifestation of the conceptual mind, but of transcendental wisdom mind. Instead of seeing things in terms of logic and effect, there is a way it is analogical.
AS: I would think the grid is more analytical.
AG: I see it as greater than an analytical and conceptual mode. That is identified with this web that is weaving the world. There are different qualities that underlie the manifested world. Chi is different than conscious. In the highly developed structure of the Buddhist mind, the grid that the Buddha sits in, is the jewel net of Indra. The foundation is beyond grid and the nothingness that is that. There are realms in the realm of manifestation.
AS: Do you feel it’s the role of the artist to create new myths, new symbols?
AG: This is what [Joseph] Campbell said, that we’re in a kind of secular reality and our job is to re-sacralize [make sacred] our everyday life. It is one of the reasons that I have chosen the human body as my main focal point; to try and suggest the interweavings [of] spiritual and soul-like energies that are not specifically one religion over another. We are all here in our bodies right now! So we can relate to that and we can relate to the spiritual light that is beyond dogmas.
AS: That is what I feel is so important about your art. In particular it is that you see the mundane aspect of being here in our bodies and present it a multidimensional experience. Your paintings remind us that at each moment there is an incredible infusion of energies. So in a way you are creating a sacred picture of life.
AG: That is the whole point of the sacred Mirrors series. To reflect on one’s self, one’s surroundings, one’s friends, ones community and everything. The whole universe is sacred. The more we can tap into that holy eternal now, the more love and justice and all the ideals of the ”true, the good and beautiful” we can bring into our lives.
AS: Thank you Alex for your pure inspiration in helping so many of us conceptualize the realm of new realities.
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