From a historical perspective, the Movement of Spiritual Inner Awareness can be understood as a synthesis of many different, preexisting practices and philosophies. The two principal components of this synthesis are India’s 500-year-old Sant Mat tradition and the West’s occult-metaphysical subculture - the subculture that gave birth to the New Age movement. As the successor movement to the counterculture of the 1960s, the New Age had become a significant subculture by the mid-1970s. This subculture proved fertile ground for the birth and growth of such new churches as the Movement of Spiritual Inner Awareness. As the matrix out of which MSIA emerged and from which the Movement continues to be nourished, the New Age subculture has profoundly shaped the face of MSIA.

In this chapter, I will present overviews of this subculture and the Sant Mat tradition, and then examine how MSIA is simultaneously related to - yet distinct from - both. As a way of working our way into this discussion, I want to relate an experience from a New Age (non-MSIA) retreat that will serve as a point of reference for some of the points I will be making later in the analysis.

The Occult/Metaphysical/“New Age” Subculture

In April of 1990, I flew to Maui to attend the Spring Renewal, a gathering at a YMCA camp on the northeast side of the island at which participants (mostly “New Agers” who live on the island) come together to renew their spiritual life. The basic idea behind such gatherings is not new - the same general notion informed the annual camp meetings that were part of nineteenth century Evangelical Protestantism - but in most other ways the activities that take place during Spring Renewal depart markedly from the camp meetings of the past century.

The workshop that had the most personal impact for me occurred early in the retreat. The workshop leader began with a discussion of women’s repression across the ages and led into an analysis of the tension between the sexes that has been generated as a result of the oppressor-oppressed relationship. As part of this discussion, reference was made to the idyllic, primordial goddess religion that - in this New Age “fall-from-Eden” myth - was supposed to have been the original religion of humankind (before its suppression by males and male deities). The conventional academic in me winced at the dubious scholarship that lay behind this uncritically appropriated tenet of New Age thought. The presentation did not, however, dwell on this point, but rather went on to deal with other issues.

The charismatic teacher leading the workshop gradually worked his way from historical generalities to personal specificities, eventually asking us to reflect on how we had hurt, and been hurt by, the various romantic partners we had encountered over the years. Infrequent are the relationships that end on a note of compassion and mutual understanding; far more common are the broken relationships that leave us with deep feelings of resentment, guilt, or both. Such feelings linger as emotional burdens that keep us from fully opening up to each new experience of love. In an ideal world, he went on to say, we might be able to recontact all of our old lovers and try to effect a better resolution to our broken relationships. But, even if that were logistically possible, it would be unlikely that we would be able to completely heal all of the old bitterness. Such was the gist of the discussion that led up to a group exercise, an exercise I cannot describe with any hope of doing justice to the experience.

We stood up and formed two circles, one consisting of approximately forty males and the other of about the same number of females, and were instructed to successively ask each person of the opposite sex to forgive us and to accept our love. The exercise was quite structured: We held hands and said, “I ask your forgiveness.” Our partners responded by saying, “I forgive you.” We then said, “I offer you my love,” and our partners responded with, “I accept your love.” The men first requested forgiveness of all of the women, and then the women requested forgiveness of all of the men. While we went through this exchange, we were asked to try to see the other person as someone of the opposite sex we needed to forgive (relatives as well as ex-lovers), or as someone by whom we wanted to be forgiven. As we were forming the circles, I knew that the exercise would be powerful, but I was not prepared for the intensity of the actual experience. Had I had a clearer inkling of what was about to occur, I probably would have run away (or, at least, have excused myself for a restroom break and not returned for a couple of hours).

To the extent that it is possible, I ask the reader to imaginatively place himself or herself in my situation: I tried to bring as much sincerity to each person as I could muster, although at first I had to at least partially “act out” the exercise. It was not long, however, before the experience became quite intense. After looking into the eyes of only a few women - people who really seemed to be offering me complete forgiveness - I began to drop my protective barriers and open up to the experience. I very quickly found myself genuinely asking for forgiveness for the many times I had consciously or unconsciously hurt my romantic partners. I do not remember at what point I began weeping, but I do remember that when I reached the camp yoga instructor I let go of the last shreds of my resistance. The instructor herself was red-faced from crying, and the fullness of her sincerity allowed me to feel completely forgiven. A lifetime of pain and guilt washed through me, followed by a wave of forgiveness and love. I felt reborn. The reciprocal experience seemed less difficult. Perhaps it was because I already felt open, or because I had already been forgiven by every female in the room, or some combination of these. But at that point I was ready to forgive all of womankind for every offense, real or imagined, that its members had ever committed against me.

The initial comparison I made with the Christian tradition was the parallel between Spring Renewal and the camp meetings of American Protestantism: As I noted, the idea of gathering together to renew one’s spiritual life is basic to both. There is, however, a deeper parallel between New Age spirituality and Christian spirituality, a parallel that had escaped me until it was forcibly brought to my attention during this workshop. The parallel is that both hold out the promise of forgiveness.

No matter how hard we work on becoming better people, whether we are Christians, New Agers, or Secular Humanists, we often feel burdened by our past mistakes and misdeeds - by our sins, if you will. This “knot” of incompletely resolved issues from the past, which we can never fully undo by isolated acts of expiation, weighs us down and prevents us from growing into that New Being that we look to as our highest potential. The “good news” that both traditional Christianity and the New Age extend to the weary traveler is that forgiveness is possible, and that all one really has to do is to accept it - but, and here is the problem, accepting forgiveness turns out to be difficult, far more difficult than it at first appears.

What I did not know (or was not fully aware of) before my Maui experience, but which any traditional revival preacher could probably have told me, was that it is hard to accept being forgiven. We cannot forgive ourselves because we do not feel that we deserve forgiveness, so how can we ever be pardoned? This paradox keeps true “redemption” - true “forgiveness of sins” - from ever being a simple matter and is why traditional conversion accounts sometimes appear to be exaggerated exercises in self-analysis and self-torment.

When I later took my personal experience of New Age “redemption” as a lens through which to view the Movement more generally, I found myself becoming less critical of the New Age emphasis on the self. While admonitions to “love yourself,” “forgive yourself,” et cetera can, of course, be taken to narcissistic extremes, there is a more profound dimension to such discourse about the self than I was previously willing to acknowledge. Once we feel that we are forgiven, we are empowered to act in new and potentially healing ways, such as being able to genuinely forgive others. John-Roger goes so far as to portray the process of forgiveness as a portal to enlightened consciousness:

As you gain wisdom, you go into forgiveness. You forgive yourself your own stupidity and ignorance and lack of knowledge, and you forgive everybody else in the same instant. And at that moment, you’re moving into enlightenment.

I have chosen to focus on the meaning of one event. I could, however, have related other realizations no less profound that I have experienced while doing fieldwork at other New Age gatherings. These encounters were a far cry from the commercialized spirituality that the mass media has chosen to portray as being at the heart of this movement. What was most evident to me during the Spring Renewal were people seeking a deeper understanding of themselves and of the larger universe of which we are a part. While I was far from being an uncritical participant, and while the people I met were far from perfect, I came away impressed by the event as well as by the intelligence, sincerity, and mutual caring of the other participants. During the time I spent on Maui, the more superficial, sensationalistic side of the New Age movement felt very far away indeed.

This is not, of course, to deny that the less-inspiring side exists. But judging the Movement solely on the merits of its least reputable aspects - such as some of the silly, grandiose claims made during even sillier channeling sessions - would be comparable to judging Christianity on the merits of televangelists like Jim and Tammy Bakker. Few people would be willing to condemn all of Christianity on the basis of its least-exemplary side, and the New Age should be approached with a similar evenhandedness.

If, however, the New Age movement is more than just a flaky survival of the hippie counterculture, what is it? The New Age can be viewed as a revivalist movement within a preexisting metaphysical-occult community. As such, the New Age can be compared with Christian revivals, particularly with such phenomena as the early Pentecostal movement (a movement that simultaneously revived and altered a segment of Protestant Christianity). Comparable to the influence of Pentecostalism on Christianity, the New Age had an impact on some but not all segments of the occult community. Also like Pentecostalism, the New Age revival left a host of new organizations/denominations in its wake.

From another angle, the New Age can be viewed as a successor movement to the counterculture of the 1960s. As observers of the New Age have pointed out, a significant portion of New Agers are baby boomers, people who two decades earlier were probably participating, at some level, in the phenomenon known as the counterculture, if only at the level of fashion and popular music. As the counterculture faded away in the early seventies, many former “hippies” found themselves embarking on a spiritual quest - one that, in many cases, departed from the Judeo-Christian mainstream. Thus, one of the possible ways to date the beginnings of the New Age movement is from the period of the rather sudden appearance of large numbers of unconventional spiritual seekers in the decade following the sixties.

Narrowly considered as a social movement held together by specific ideas, the New Age can be traced to England in the late 1950s. At that time, the leaders of certain independent occult groups heavily influenced by the reading of theosophical authors, especially Alice Bailey, began to meet to discuss the possible changes coming during the last quarter of the twentieth century. Those meetings continued through the 1960s and, as they grew, came to include their most well-known participants - the founders of the Findhorn Community in Scotland. By the 1970s, a vision of the New Age had been clarified, and the movement was ready to reach out to like-minded people around the globe. The process of spreading was greatly assisted by the work of Anthony Brooke and the Universal Foundation. Brooke toured the world, contacting occult and metaphysical groups, and created the first international networks of New Age believers. David Spangler, a student of the Alice Bailey writings, traveled to England in 1970 and stayed at Findhorn for three years. Upon his return to the United States, he began to author a series of books, which laid out the hopes and aspirations of the New Age.

One can pinpoint certain essential ideas which came to distinguish the New Age movement. None are particularly new ideas, their distinctiveness being in their being brought together in a new gestalt:

1. The possibility of personal transformation. The New Age movement offers the possibility of a personal transformation in the immediate future. While personal transformation is a common offering of some occult and New Thought groups, it is usually presented as the end result of a long-term process of alteration through extensive training in the occult life (in conscious contrast to the immediate transformation offered by revivalist Christianity). Thus, the New Age, without radically changing traditional occultism, offered a new immediacy which had been lacking in metaphysical teachings. The transformative process is most clearly seen in the healing process, and transformation often is first encountered as a healing of the individual, either of a chronic physical problem or of a significant psychological problem. Healing has become a metaphor of transformation with the New Age movement. The stress on transformation and healing (in the sense of healing blocks to soul awareness) is clearly evident in MSIA’s teachings.

2. The coming of broad cultural transformation. The New Age movement offered the hope that the world, which many people, especially those on the edges of the dominant culture, experience in negative terms, would in the next generation be swept aside and replaced with a golden era. As articulated by spokespeople like David Spangler, the hoped for changes are placed in a sophisticated framework of gradual change relying upon human acceptance of the new resources and their creating a new culture. According to Spangler, a watershed in human history has been reached with the advent of modern technology and its possibilities for good and evil. At the same time, because of unique changes in the spiritual world, symbolized and heralded (but not caused) by the astrological change into the Aquarian Age, this generation has a unique bonus of spiritual power available to it. It is this additional spiritual energy operating on the world and its peoples that makes possible the personal and cultural transformation that will bring in a New Age.

It is, of course, the millennial hope of the coming of a Golden Age of peace and light that gave the New Age movement its name. This millennialism also provided a basis for a social consciousness that has been notably lacking in most occult metaphysics. Once articulated, the New Age vision could be and was grounded in various endeavors designed to assist the transition to the New Age. The New Age movement wedded itself to environmentalism, lay peace movements, animal rights, women’s rights, and cooperative forms of social organization.

On the theme of millennial transformation, MSIA departs significantly from the New Age. While many Church members are clearly working to improve society, MSIA as an organization is focused on Soul Transcendence rather than on world transformation.

3. The transformation of occult arts and processes. Within the New Age movement one finds all of the familiar occult practices from astrology to tarot, from mediumship to psychic healing. Yet in the New Age movement the significance of these practices has been significantly altered. Astrology and tarot are no longer fortune-telling devices, but have become tools utilized for self-transformation. Mediumship has become channeling, in which the primary role of the medium is to expound metaphysical truth, rather than to prove the continuance of life after death. Spiritual healing launches and undergirds a healing relationship to life.

The number of practitioners of astrology, tarot, mediumship, and psychic healing had been growing steadily throughout the twentieth century. Thus the New Age movement did not have to create its own professionals de novo, rather it had merely to transform and bring into visibility the large army of practitioners of the occult arts already in existence.

Possibly the most widely practiced New Age transformative tool is meditation (in its many varied forms) and related tools of inner development. In its utilization of meditation, the New Age movement borrowed insights from the findings of the human potential movement and transpersonal psychology, both of which, in isolating various practices for study, demonstrated that techniques of meditation and inner development could be detached from the religious teachings in which they were traditionally embedded. Thus, one could practice Zen meditation without being a Buddhist and yoga without being a Hindu. That insight made all of the Eastern, occult, and metaphysical techniques immediately available to everyone without the necessity of their changing self-identifying labels prior to their use. MSIA generally aligns with the New Age reinterpretation of meditative techniques, though the organization has not made the other occult arts part of its teachings, and specifically cautions against giving up responsibility for making one’s own decisions by going to psychics, fortune-tellers, “readers,” or anyone outside of oneself.

4. The self as divine. Within the New Age, one theological affirmation that has found popular support is the identification of the individual with the divine. Underlying this notion, which finds a wide variety of forms, is a monistic world in which the only reality is “God,” usually thought of in predominantly impersonal terms as mind or energy. This is a tenet the New Age shares with traditional Upanishadic Hinduism (discussed below). Again, MSIA is clearly in synch with this dominant idea of New Age thinking, although its teachings simultaneously posit the alternative possibility of a personal, loving relationship with God.

Thus the New Age movement, narrowly defined, can be seen as an occult-metaphysical revival movement generated among independent British theosophists in the post-World War II generation, which spread through the well-established occult-metaphysical community in the 1970s. Through the 1980s it became a popular movement, which enlivened the older occult-metaphysical community and which both drew many new adherents to it and greatly assisted the spread of occult practices (such as astrology and meditation) and ideas (such as reincarnation) into the general population far beyond the boundaries of the New Age movement proper.

The New Age is a synthesis of many different preexisting movements and strands of thought. In the early 1970s, the movement was characterized by the prominence of newly imported Asian groups, although many of the older occult-metaphysical organizations were also experiencing a growth spurt. These various groups, in combination with a significant number of less formally affiliated individuals, constituted a fairly substantial spiritual subculture that became the successor movement to the counterculture. This initial phase of the New Age movement looked forward to the transformation of society, but did not place an emphasis on many of the things that outside observers now regard as quintessentially New Age.

Emerging in the 1970s, MSIA was fully formed as a mature organization before phenomena such as channeling and crystals became faddish within New Age circles, and these did not become incorporated into the MSIA synthesis. However, some of the earlier New Age healing techniques dealing with different aspects of the self were adopted by MSIA, such as “aura balancing,” “innerphasings,” and “polarity balancing.” (These techniques will be described in the next chapter.)

At this point, the reader may well be asking himself or herself, What does the proliferation of an alternative religious subculture mean for society as whole? There have been a variety of historical periods during which religious innovation flourished. In the West, there was a proliferation of a new religious consciousness in the late classical period, as well as in the wake of the Reformation. In the United States, historians have noted a recurring pattern of religious awakenings, beginning with the Great Awakening of the 1740s.

The most general observation we can make is that periods of renewed spiritual activity occur in the wake of disruptive social and economic changes: The established vision of “how things work” no longer seems to apply, and people begin searching for new visions. In previous cycles of American religious experimentation, innovative forms of Protestantism often formed the basis for these new visions. As revivalist fervor died down, new or reinvigorated Protestant denominations became the pillars of a new cultural hegemony. The most recent period of American religious innovation occurred in the decades following the demise of the 1960s counterculture. However, unlike previous cycles of revival, the religious explosion that occurred in the 1970s and 1980s has not provided a basis for a new spiritual and cultural synthesis. While there has been a growth in conservative Protestant denominations during this period (a growth parallel to the pattern of earlier Awakenings), there has also been a marked growth in “metaphysical” religion. The most visible manifestation of this latter strand of spirituality has been the New Age movement, which offers a vision of the world fundamentally different from that of traditional Christianity. Thus, during this most recent cycle of religious enthusiasm, Protestantism has failed to reestablish its traditional hegemony over American culture.

South Asia and the Sant Mat Tradition

Beyond the considerable influence of the New Age, the other major component of MSIA is South Asian religiosity, particularly as South Asian religion is embodied in the Sant Mat tradition. Hinduism is the blanket term for the indigenous religious tradition of the South Asian (Indian) subcontinent. It is constituted by a broad diversity of beliefs and practices that, at their extremes, bear little resemblance to one another. Hinduism’s sometimes mind-boggling diversity is at least partially a result of the complex history of the Indian subcontinent, which, over the millennia, has seen innumerable influxes of different peoples from outside South Asia. Around 1,500-1,000 b.c.e. or much earlier, according to Hindu scholars, a group of aggressive pastoral peoples from central Asia invaded India through the northern mountain passes and conquered the indigenous people. These peoples, who called themselves Aryans (“Nobles”), originated from around the Caspian Sea.

The worldview of the Aryan invaders of India was preserved in a group of (originally oral) texts, the Vedas. After settling down in the Indian subcontinent, the Aryans became more introspective, started asking questions about the ultimate meaning of life, and developed an ideology centered around release or liberation (moksha) from the cycle of death and rebirth (samsara). The various disciplines that are collectively referred to as yoga developed out of this introspective turn.

A group of religious texts called the Upanishads postulated an eternal, changeless core of the self that was referred to as the Atman. This soul or deep self was viewed as being identical with the unchanging godhead, referred to as Brahman (the unitary ground of being that transcends particular gods and goddesses). The equating of the deep self with the ultimate is expressed in innumerable ways, such as in the Upanishadic formula Tat tvam asi (“Thou art that!”), meaning that the essential “you” is the same as that indescribable (“Where from words turn back”) essence of everything:

He who, dwelling in all things, yet is other than all things, whom all things do not know, whose body all things are, who controls all things from within - He is your soul, the Controller, the Immortal.

Untouched by the variations of time and circumstance, the Atman was nevertheless entrapped in the world of samsara. Samsara is the South Asian term for the world we experience in our everyday lives. This constantly changing, unstable world is contrasted with the spiritual realm of Atman/Brahman, which by contrast is stable and unchanging. Samsara also refers to the process of death and rebirth (reincarnation) through which we are “trapped” in this world. Unlike many Western treatments of reincarnation, which make the idea of coming back into body after body seem exotic, desirable, and even romantic, Hinduism, Buddhism, and other South Asian religions portray the samsaric process as unhappy: Life in this world is suffering.

What keeps us trapped in the samsaric cycle is the law of karma. In its simplest form, this law operates impersonally like a natural law, ensuring that every good or bad deed eventually returns to the individual in the form of reward or punishment commensurate with the original deed. It is the necessity of “reaping one’s karma” that compels human beings to take rebirth (to reincarnate) in successive lifetimes. In other words, if one dies before reaping the effects of one’s actions (as most people do), the karmic process demands that one return in a future life. Coming back into another lifetime also allows karmic forces to reward or punish one through the circumstance in which one is born. Hence, for example, an individual who was generous in one lifetime might be reborn as a wealthy person in his or her next incarnation.

Moksha is the traditional Sanskrit term for release or liberation from the endless chain of deaths and rebirths. In the South Asian religious tradition, it represents the supreme goal of human strivings. Reflecting the diversity of Hinduism, liberation can be attained in a variety of different ways, from the proper performance of certain rituals to highly disciplined forms of yoga. In the Upanishads, it is proper knowledge, in the sense of insight into the nature of reality, that enables the aspiring seeker to achieve liberation from the wheel of rebirth.

What happens to the individual after reaching moksha? In Upanishadic Hinduism, the individual Atman is conceived of as merging into the cosmic Brahman. A traditional image is that of a drop of water, which, when dropped into the ocean, loses its individuality and becomes one with the ocean. While this metaphor is widespread, it does not quite capture the significance of this “merger.” Rather than losing one’s individuality, the Upanishadic understanding is that the Atman is never separate from Brahman; hence, individuality is illusory, and liberation is simply waking up from the dream of separateness.

The most that the classical texts of Hinduism say about the state of one who has merged with the godhead is that he or she has become one with pure “beingness,” consciousness, and bliss.

In the wake of a series of devotional movements that swept across the subcontinent, various strands of “sectarianism” developed, focused on the worship of Vishnu/Krishna, Shiva, Durga/Kali, or some other form of the divine. The deity of one’s sect was portrayed as the supreme god or goddess, and the other divinities envisioned as demigods or demigoddesses, inferior to the supreme. This high god/goddess was also seen as being the creator, a creator concerned with his or her creation and particularly concerned with the fate of human beings.

Despite these modifications, the samsaric cycle of death and rebirth was still viewed as unattractive, and the goal was still to achieve release from the cycle. By the time of Buddha (approximately 600 b.c.e.), the Indian consensus was that it was desire (passion, attachment, want, craving) that kept one involved in the karmic process, and hence desire that kept one bound to the death/rebirth process. Consequently, the goal of getting off the Ferris wheel of reincarnation necessarily involved freeing oneself from desire.

To reduce the possibility of karma-producing actions, the Upanishadic tradition had tended to view asceticism/monasticism as the mode of life best suited to achieving the goal of release from samsara. However, by the time of the Bhagavad Gita, the earliest important work of devotional theism, another possibility had been thought through. Because it was the craving associated with activity that set the karmic process in motion, rather than the activity itself, the author (or authors) of the Bhagavad Gita developed the alternative approach of remaining in the everyday world while performing one’s deeds with an attitude of dispassionate detachment. In the Gita, this detachment is discussed in terms of detachment from the “fruits of actions,” meaning that actions are not undertaken for personal gain. Difficult though this may be, Krishna, who in the Gita is the principal spokesperson for this point of view, asserts that such a frame of mind is indeed possible if the individual will constantly maintain an attitude of devotion to God. When successful, one can even engage in such activities as war (as long as one is fighting because it is one’s duty) and avoid the negative karma that would normally result from such actions.

During the devotional revivals that swept across South Asia during the Indian middle ages, a strand of spirituality developed in Northwest India that came to be referred to as the Sant Mat tradition. Like other devotional paths, this new tradition was built around devotion to a single divinity. However, unlike the others, Sant Mat portrayed the divine as an essentially formless God who, unlike Krishna, Shiva, and so forth, did not enter into incarnation on the earth. Instead, he was represented by a guru who taught one how to reconnect with the divine source. MSIA’s core spiritual practices lie in the Sant tradition. Beyond these core practices, however, MSIA diverges significantly from Sant Mat. In an interview conducted toward the end of the present study, John-Roger stated that MSIA is neither a Sant Mat group, nor a Sant Mat-like group. MSIA is, rather, more like a simile of Sant Mat.

It’s too much NOT like Sant Mat, because when you get further into MSIA teachings, you start to hear things about the basic self, and you get to hear things about such things as obsessions and possessions. You don’t hear things like that in Sant Mat groups. You hear, “Worship the guru and he will lead you to salvation.” In MSIA you hear, “. . . disregard who’s bringing the message.”

Unlike Sant Mat, MSIA does not, for example, practice dietary restrictions, and members generally regard themselves as followers of the Christ Consciousness. In common with the religious traditions that have originated on the South Asian subcontinent, MSIA accepts the notion that the individual soul is caught up in the material world, which, though viewed less negatively than in classical Hinduism, is nevertheless less desirable than the state of liberation from this realm. However, like other religions in the South Asian tradition, MSIA members aim ultimately to be liberated from the cycle of death and rebirth.

In common with other Sant Mat groups, MSIA pictures the cosmos as composed of many different levels or “planes.” At the point of creation, these levels sequentially emerged from God along a vibratory “stream” until creation reached its terminus in the physical plane. The Sant Mat tradition teaches that individuals can be linked to God’s creative energy, and that this stream of energy will carry their consciousness back to God. Although there are theological differences and some minor technical variances in the different Sant organizations, the basic tenets are shared by all groups.

Central to the teachings of the Sant Mat tradition is the necessity of a living human master who is competent in initiating disciples into the practice and technique of listening to the inner sound and contemplating the inner light (Surat Shabd Yoga, referred to as “spiritual exercises” in MSIA). While the Sant tradition refers to the living human master with such honorifics as “guru,” “Satguru,” “Perfect Master,” and so forth, in MSIA the teacher is referred to as the Mystical Traveler. The Mystical Traveler Consciousness is, however, a somewhat different notion from that of “guru.”

According to MSIA, each individual on the planet is involved in his or her own movement of spiritual inner awareness, of which the Movement of Spiritual Inner Awareness is an outward reflection. Individuals who wish to develop total awareness and free themselves from the necessity of reincarnation can seek the assistance of the Mystical Traveler, who holds the spiritual keys to Soul Transcendence and can assist students in their quest. MSIA is devoted solely to supporting people who are reaching toward Soul Transcendence. However, the organization of MSIA is not necessary to the spiritual work of the Mystical Traveler, which is seen as a consciousness existing on the planet from the very beginning of time.

For example, MSIA holds that Jesus was a Mystical Traveler. In this regard, John-Roger has even asserted that Jesus Christ is ultimately the head of MSIA and is his (J-R’s) spiritual master. Furthermore, Jesus in his (present) ascended state both embodies the Mystical Traveler Consciousness and holds the office of Christ, as that office is understood in the theosophical tradition (roughly analogous to a “presidency” of the planet).

The Mystical Traveler, in the sense of a living person, has a complex relationship with the Mystical Traveler Consciousness (MTC), which is a much larger reality, and much harder to explain. The MTC is a bit like the Christian notion of the Holy Spirit, in the sense that the MTC is an impersonal yet conscious “energy” or “spirit” that seeks to spiritually uplift human beings. The Traveler Consciousness is also said to exist within each person on the planet, though some are more aware of this than others. The human being through whom the energy of the MTC flows is said to “anchor” the MTC into the physical realm - the world of our ordinary, everyday experience. Anchoring the energy allows it to become available for everyone to use for his or her spiritual upliftment. Thus, the MTC is described as being like a conveyer system or an “escalator” into the higher realms of Spirit.

The Mystical Traveler Consciousness is simultaneously aware of God as the formless Ground of Being and individualized souls and all of the evolving forms and environments of creation. As such, the MTC represents or mediates (or “mystically travels”) between God and the souls and creation as an aspect of God that furthers cosmic evolution - a universal, compassionate intelligence that teaches, heals, uplifts, and liberates.

John-Roger formerly served as the anchor for the MTC, but in 1988 passed that function on to John Morton. In their roles as Mystical Travelers, John-Roger and John Morton are simultaneously greater and lesser than gurus - greater in the sense that the Mystical Traveler Consciousness is a larger notion than that of guruship; lesser in the sense that the person who “anchors” the MTC is an ordinary human being who is not identical with the MTC. Because it is the MTC that is the significant reality, MSIA initiates need not have a personal relationship with John-Roger or John Morton in order to follow the MSIA “path.”

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