The Deeper Journey Awaiting Us and the Guide for All Times

Whether we want to admit it or not, like it, resist it or deny it, it is now clear that we are in apocalyptic times. The Dalai Lama has said this and you know he is the most benign and optimistic of human beings, Caroline Myss has been saying this for a few years, and if you know her, you know that she always struggles to tell her truth with relentless integrity; Marianne Williamson is now ready to say this and I, of course, have been saying this all over the world for 20 years.

None of us are speaking out about this as alarmists because all of us know that apocalypse has two meanings: destruction and unveiling or revelation. The Dalai Lama has told me that our terrible situation could be the birth of a new humanity. Caroline has been indefatigable in her call for deeper prayer and wiser action. Marianne put her passionate principles into a brave and very painful bid for the presidency in 2020 and I have stood up amidst mocking and deriding voices to keep summoning people to sacred activism, which I know to be the destined force that even now could transform our world if we are brave enough to align with it.

In order to transform our world, we have to ask the Divine for the courage to see things exactly as they are. Nothing can be done from denial or paralysis, despair or disillusion. In order to see things as they are, we must each develop through sacred practice and trusting surrender a container vast enough to hold these unprecedented opposites—the very real possibility that humanity could go extinct far sooner than any of us dare imagine and the message of the great evolutionary mystics like Sri Aurobindo, Father Bede Griffiths and many others of all traditions that humanity is destined to embody and co-create a wholly new world with the Divine.

The two are secretly connected because what is becoming clear to the major spiritual teachers in all traditions is that if humanity is going to be birthed into the next stage of its evolutionary grandeur it can only be through a process that dissolves all of its previous illusions about itself, not to punish it but to unveil its secret divine consciousness that it will then claim humbly and enact globally.

What all major teachers are realizing is that we are in what we could call a quantum situation in which both possibilities of extinction and radical rebirth are simultaneously possible. What quantum physics has revealed is that in every moment what we intend transforms the multiple possibilities many of them seemingly contradictory that exist in potential.

What this means for you and me is two things: first, we must face without illusion but also without panic the very real darkness in ourselves and in the structures that are now strangling the world.

Second, we must all go on a far deeper journey than we have ever been on, into the secret depths of divine presence and truth because if we do, we will begin to discover through grace, that we are deathless consciousness and divine love in action, capable if we marry our inherent goodness with fearlessness of rising up together to create wholly new solutions societies, arts, sciences, and ways of living in harmony with the natural world. In my experience the most grueling work imaginable is trying to get up the courage to face the dark without illusion.

If you look around at our world, I believe you will feel compelled to recognize that at the very moment when the New Age and liberal humanism and certain misinterpretations of Eastern philosophy deny the very existence of the dark, it is having an orgy of almost unimaginable destructiveness.

The sign of the dark is the Lie. In the Koran the dark part of the One is called the whisperer, the liar. In Christian mysticism it is known that at every stage of the path there is always a temptation to choose a subtle glamorous lie over the rigorous and demanding truth. In our world there are now three dominating and astoundingly powerful lies working their black magic and threatening the future of humanity.

Aided and abetted by certain aspects of the media, funded by extremely rich deluded people, and fueled by both demented and skillful misinformation experts, these dark lies spread like ink through social media outlets like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and Telegram, weaving their instant and often invisible webs of lies across the entire planet. I believe it is very important to see this and to call out these lies.

The first big lie is the lie of authoritarianism, the lie that destroying democracy and living in autocracy can provide humanity with security. This big lie is now burning away the fragile thread of democracy in America through the claims that the election was stolen, and through the massive coverup of the real facts of the January 6th insurrection.

Never doubt the power of this lie. We are now in the almost inconceivable position of witnessing the potential birth in America of a fascism that would make Nazism look amateurish and will ensure that the world cannot rise in unity to solve global problems.

I urge you to see this and do everything in your power as citizens to urge the Democrats, Independents and willing Republicans to move fast on getting voting rights through and on bringing the full force of the law to bear down on all those who are clearly committed to shredding the Constitution and installing authoritarian rule.

Preserving the Constitution is not a political issue. Enlightened politicians of all parties are aware that without a Constitution remaining sacrosanct, the whole gorgeous dream of democracy will burn to ash, with unspeakable consequences not only for America but for the whole world that looks to America for all its obvious flaws as a flame of inspiration. So I am not talking from one side or the other. I am talking about a fundamental human right that does not belong to any political party that now has to be defended nonviolently but with great fearless courage.

The second big lie is that despite every evidence to the contrary, climate change is either a flat-out hoax or being grossly exaggerated for shady political purposes. This is insanity because if you have done the research as I have done over many years and if you listen to the overwhelming majority of scientists and if you just pay attention to the erupting climate catastrophes. it is now ice clear that if we don’t altogether demand radical changes on every level of our society to deal with this overwhelming problem, the world will within the next ten years or even sooner, be in climactic free fall. This is not alarmist, this is factual.

What is truly alarming is that the governments and elites as COP 26 proved in devastating detail, are even now hopelessly unwilling either to tell humanity the truth to help everyone make the sacrifices and shifting viewpoints that are essential for any chance for survival, let along thriving, to be possible.

However, like Greta Thunberg, I still believe that the worst outcome can be averted, but only if we unmask this lie and commit to doing everything we can to urge those in power to change their ways immediately and, like her, I believe this may mean that we will all have to go to the streets in massive global nonviolent demonstrations that will make it clear that we are not asking but demanding and that we are ourselves prepared to radically change our lives and make the necessary tough sacrifices to insure that our children and grandchildren will not inherit the wind.

The third big lie is that the pandemic is invented and an excuse for inauguration of authoritarianism. As you all now know, there is a new and extremely dangerous variant, Omicron, spreading over the world and although there are signs that it may not be as lethal as delta—it’s still very new—insufficient data makes it impossible to know how dangerous this new variant could be. We do know that it is much more contagious than the previous strains.

I do not speak about Covid simply from watching the news. I have been studying for years the nature of pandemics because I understood in the early 2000s that one of the great dangers of humanity could be a pandemic caused by our relentless exploitation of nature. I have read everything I could get my hands on about the subject and my greatest and oldest friend is one of the world’s leading epidemiologists.

At every stage of this tragic epidemic, I have been consulting with him on how to present to you my dear friends both the darkest and most hopeful facts. This week he told me that Omicron is almost certainly not the last variant that we will see. There are others even more deadly that are almost certainly incubating due to the horrifying fact that a great deal of Africa and Asia are still unvaccinated and many people in the western world have been swayed by misinformation not to take advantage of a vaccine that 90% of scientists recognize as a near miracle.

My friend was very close to tears when he told me this and spoke to me of the enormous exhaustion, frustration and desperation that scientists, doctors and nurses all over the world are now enduring. He asked what more can we do and how can we reach those who, despite millions dead and this new wave of potential danger and destruction, still hold out from helping themselves and so helping others. I spoke to him of the reaction that some of you gave me when I called for vaccinations and I told him I regretted using the word "narcissist" because it was harsh and unskillful. I asked him what word I should have used and he suggested “hoodwinked”.

We shared how hoodwinked each of us has been in our own lives. I told him I had been hoodwinked by my guru into believing she was a divine incarnation, hoodwinked by my husband, believing he was telling me the truth, hoodwinked when I believed that millions would “get” sacred activism and that disaster could be averted which was clearly not the Divine’s intention as we can all now see.

My friend spoke how as a scientist he had been hoodwinked early on in the AIDS crisis about his own certainty that there would be early solutions to the AIDS crisis because of his passion as a gay man who had endured the death of his greatest love, when the means to effect rapid healing was not yet anywhere on the horizon.

Why am I telling you this?

I realize from my own experience how hard it is not to be deluded in a world of illusion and lies especially in a culture where people of power and influence lied like hell to us at the outset of this pandemic and persist to this day, so please forgive me my skillful use of the word narcissist and please all of you who are still unvaxxed at a time when this exposes you to the very real possibility of death, make an extra humble effort to hear the other side.

I will love you and be with you if you let me, whatever you decide. I will never abandon anyone in my heart but I am urging you not as a guru but as your heartbroken friend to please listen.

The Dalai Lama is completely aware of the terrible danger of this third big lie and has asked everyone to get vaxxed as he, as both a scientist and an enlightened being, has been and I would tenderly advise you that if you can’t trust me for whatever reason, please trust the one person I think all humanity can agree has our best interests at heart.

I continue to admire Robert Kennedy Jr. and Charles Eisenstein for their brilliant and heroic work in the past but I think that what they are saying is dangerous because THEY are saying it. I urge you to trust the Dalai Lama over them and even me, even if you still disagree with what I am saying.

We need to hold each other in love even when we disagree most fundamentally and I ask for your prayers for my health as I pray every day for yours. It is precisely because I am aware of all of this and have been carrying it all in my heart for many decades that when Covid first struck and I knew myself as an older guy to be in its firing line, I asked myself, If I am to die, what would I like to give you as my final gift?

I had already written everything I have to say for myself and given away everything God had given me, but there was one more thing that I wanted to live to be able to give to you and that was Kabir. Kabir, I have discovered and experienced viscerally, is one of our supreme guides, the Everest of mystics, universal revolutionary, and timeless.

When I did my first Kabir book, Turn Me to Gold, it was the consummation of living with Kabir in a log cabin in Arkansas, working day and night on his amazing naked poems initiated me into the truth of what he was trying to tell humanity. That brings me to my final topic and my news of the holiday gifts I am presenting to you.

When I decided last year to bring out a day book of 365 fresh translations of Kabir, I realized at an even deeper level than I can express from my own seared and exultant conscience how absolutely essential it is for as many people as possible to let themselves be inspired by this magnificent being in this terrible time. This is for four interlinked reasons.

The first reason is that Kabir, who lived in the 15th century, woke up to the fact that kali yuga, the era of destruction, was beginning. He saw its signs in the lies and corruption in the world around him. And he called it all out with the most noble clarity, majesty and divine ferocity. God knows we need that all now as kali yuga goes into its potentially lethal last phase.

The second reason is that Kabir belonged to no religion. He was awakened beyond religion into embodied divine consciousness and realized that all the religions, however great their original inspirations, had ossified in dangerously tribal ways and were actually preventing humanity from getting to the naked direct connection with the One beyond all forms, rituals and dogmas and names that could transfigure it.

The third reason is that like Rumi he knew from his own experience as I do that the birth of embodied divine consciousness can only be effected through a grueling dark night process which cannot be avoided and must not be avoided if the beauty and power and revelation of the birth are to be complete and completely transformational.

The fourth reason is the most important. What Kabir woke up to and knew in himself was not only enlightenment but what he called engoldenment. What he woke up to was in fact what he knew to be the next potential stage of human evolution itself. Not just the enlightenment of our minds and consciousness and hearts but the unification of our entire being—heart-mind, soul and body—in engoldenment.

(Note: Join me next month for "Exploring Engoldenment", a one-hour class and shared integration session to learn how Kabir’s majestic vision can be integrated into the depths of our everyday lives. Find out more here.)

When I began to experience the fringes of this experience in my cabin in Arkansas through his grace and in his sacred company, I understood at a far deeper level than I had ever done before how important it was to get his vision out as clearly, as lucidly and as inspiredly as I could with all my flaws and remaining shadows.

This is what I have done for you because I know in the cells of my being that this great being is returning with Rumi and other supreme mystics as essential guides through our evolutionary dark night into the potential birth of a new embodied divine humanity. And I know in the cells of my being that such guides are now our highest, deepest richest source of help.

Even the most enlightened politician will only be able to help us so far. Even the most enlightened scientist, loving and intelligent activist and teacher, brilliant investigative journalists and public intellectuals will be able to help us so far. Since we are in a divine universe and our evolutionary crisis is a divine event as well as a human event, it is only those who have experienced divinization who can give us the clarity, the balance and the sacred inspiration that they have won from both the most terrible and most amazing imaginable in experience.

For all these reasons and in response to your loving comments about the online Kabir daybook, I cannot tell you what joy it gives me to announce that it’s now available as both paperback and e-book as Engoldenment—A Year With Kabir, 366 Timeless Poems.

If I could, I would publish it for free and give it away at all the street corners of the world. Unfortunately God has not made me a billionaire which is something I will take up with her later when the time comes. So I humbly make this astounding book available to you in the easiest way possible for you. I believe it to be the most important thing I could possibly give you at this moment. (You will find various treasures of Kabir’s hot wisdom in the gifts I offer below as well.)

Let me tell you one last thing about Kabir: if you feel intimidated in any way by poetry, don’t let that intimidation prevent you from getting to him. He speaks with electrifying simplicity and his songs are sung all over India by Hindus and Muslims and Sheikhs by people of every class and kind precisely because he speaks as one human being nakedly and without any mask to another.

I once read Kabir to a group of prisoners in Sing Sing and believe me, these guys were not the types to go for Rumi or Meister Eckhart. But Kabir lit them up. Tears flowed and cheers erupted. And one of them came up to me when I’d finished and said the perfect four words: “Kabir is my guy.”

My dear friends, Kabir is your guy; please find out how amazing it is to have this noble tender guy as your ready companion through these devastating times.

I love you with all my heart. I wish you the happiest and most restorative of holidays and I bow to all of you whether you agree with me or not and wish you Engoldenment now and through these intense times.

Always your friend, Andrew

P.S. My holiday gifts to you! Enjoy!

Gift #1

Please download and enjoy a free copy of my translation of Becoming God: 108 Epigrams from the Cherubinic Pilgrim, by Angelus Silesius.

You will see from these translations that Angelus Silesius woke up to the engoldenment process in terms of the Christian tradition in 17th century Germany. His epigrams and their simplicity make them a perfect accompaniment to what you will discover in Kabir. They are two great instruments playing the same evolutionary music. Please enjoy this amazing mystic as my heart gift to you.

Gift #2

Here are three Kabir transmissions I have done recently as part of the celebration of the publication of Engoldenment—A Year With Kabir, 366 Timeless Poems. I am proud of them and happy that Kabir came through and I feel that they will inspire you.

Enjoy my conversation with Prama™ Wellness Center Director, Ramesh Bjonnes as we chat about Engoldenment. Learn more about how Kabir's timeless poems offer comfort and insight day after day, year after year.

Conversations with Jim Garrison of Ubiquity University
Humanity Rising: Turn Me To Gold
Chartres Community Call

Gift #3

Here is my amazing conversation with Paul Levy for Powell's books on his extraordinary new masterpiece, Wetiko--Healing the Mind Virus That Plagues Our World. We covered a great deal of ground. I can’t tell you how much I admire this man and his pioneering work; the vision of darkness and shadow that he is presenting is directly consonant with everything I have written in my message to you, so please hear it from another voice, so you can truly embody it.

Gift #4

Johanna Bell is a dear friend whose profound mystical truth and knowledge have moved and impressed me. I was delighted to be invited to celebrate Kabir and the publication of my new book, Engoldenment--A Year with Kabir, 366 Timeless Poems with Johanna and her friends. The hour and a half we all spent together has left a permanent golden memory in my heart and it thrills me to present to you the richness of this evening to inspire you, to introduce you to the glory of Kabir that my book is dedicated to and to invite you to create your own Luminous Sanctuaries or to join Johanna’s. May Engoldenment give you hope and make Kabir come into the depths of your life.

Gift #5

My dear friend Asha Paul has written the most gorgeous holistic cookbook which I believe will help all sacred activists in a simple and satisfying way. She is a disciple of Father Bede Griffiths and so part of my heart family and I invite you to listen to our wonderful conversation and to get her book to help you protect and invigorate your health. What better way is there to begin the new year!

Gift #6

Finally, please enjoy the video of my wonderful, rich conversation with Thanissara on the world crisis and Buddhism and how best to respond to what we are going through. Thanissara is a leading Buddhist teacher and her book, Time to Stand Up, is the radical reimagining of the Buddha’s original message. 

Enjoy these gifts, my dear friends. Happy, safe and memorable holidays to each of you!