I had taken off for a stroll in the late afternoon. The dense forest spread out across the rolling hills like a frozen green ocean. Lost in thought within the stillness of the woods, a distant rumble of thunder roused me from my reverie. Glancing upward through the canopy of leaves, I was startled by the sight of dark, thick, rapidly-approaching rain clouds. While the path I was traveling was unfamiliar, I intuitively knew it would lead to shelter. I quickly picked up my pace from a leisurely stroll to a brisk walk.

The thunderclaps soon became louder and more insistent. The treetops began to sway in response to the approaching storm. Within a matter of minutes, what had begun as a light breeze grew to become a gale-force storm. By now I was running through the woods. Black clouds blocked out the light of the sun, and I could almost taste the moisture in the cold gusts of wind. As I broke out of the woods into a clearing, the first raindrops began falling around me. The rain fell in heavy beads of water that made hard plopping sounds as they hit.

I found myself running as fast as my legs could carry me toward what appeared to be the ruins of an ancient temple on the other side of the clearing. However, the wall of water sweeping across the forest reached me before I was able to reach the shelter of the ruins. Without slowing my pace, I peered through the gray veil of the heavy thundershower, seeking some outcropping or other surviving part of the structure that might shelter me from the onslaught of rain. The roof of the temple had long ago fallen through. There was, however, a small, cave-like opening at the rear of the sanctuary where the back of the original temple had rested against a low bluff of land.

Reaching the opening, I ducked to avoid bruising my head against the low archway. After feeling my way along three or four yards of a narrow passageway, the corridor opened into a large chamber. The space was dimly lit by a light source I could not detect. Then I noticed what appeared to be a white bed sheet on a large marble block near the doorway. It was as if someone knew I was coming. Chilled in my rain-soaked clothes, I quickly peeled them off and wrapped myself in the bed sheet. Feeling somewhat awkward in my new garment, I turned to make a closer examination of the chamber.

Directly opposite the entryway, and partially concealed by fallen ceiling and wall materials, was a heavy wooden door that looked like it came out of a Gothic novel. Despite its massiveness, it felt inviting rather than foreboding. I stepped across the room and tried to open it, but it was frozen shut. Alongside the door, poised as if to protect the threshold, was the life-sized statue of an ancient Greek god. Handsome and bearded, somehow I knew this image had been the holiest in the entire temple complex, and that the room in which I had taken shelter had originally been a hidden chamber in which occult initiations took place. Moving closer, I was drawn to the figure's eyes. Though cold and stony, they seemed to take on a life of their own, as if to invite my consciousness to step forward across an invisible threshold between my ordinary reality and the realm of the gods. In the flash of an instant, I found myself on the other side of the door, in an enormous cavern lit by thousands of candles. Hundreds of people, all wearing the same sheet-like garment, were seated in what appeared to be an ancient Greek theater absorbed in a - lecture being delivered by a withered old man dressed in the garb of a Confucian scholar.

I sat down in the back of the stony auditorium and tried to listen, but it all sounded like gibberish to me as if he was just repeating "ham and eggs, ham and eggs" over and over again. I turned to the person nearest me, a short fellow who reminded me of Yoda from Star Wars. I asked him where I was and what the lecturer was saying. Yoda turned and faced me, gave me a stern look as if irritated that I had interrupted his concentration, and said, "You were able to get through the ten percent without a key, but you forgot about the other ninety, you dork-head. " And then turned back to continue listening to the lecture.

Though he looked like Yoda, I knew it was John-Roger. Then a fellow sitting next to John-Roger, who was wearing an aviator's cap from the early barnstorming days, turned toward me and in a mocking voice said, "You're half-baked Mr. Eggo. You need to get cooked." His appearance was as unfamiliar as the Yoda character's, but I sensed he was John Morton. John pulled out a huge, tarnished old key that looked like the key to a horror movie dungeon, and, before I had a chance to react, struck me over the head with it. Startled by the abruptness of his action, I awoke to find myself tangled up in a sheet in the familiar surroundings of my own bedroom, still caught up in the emotional reality of having been struck.

This vivid dream occurred a month or so after the dreamer had begun to study with the Movement of Spiritual Inner Awareness and marked a significant threshold in his understanding of the Movement. Unusually detailed (and, in its final form, considerably embellished), this dream is otherwise typical of nocturnal experiences reported by MSIA participants. Dreams, as I have already indicated in earlier chapters, are a highly significant aspect of the MSIA "path."

The above experience was preceded by a period of confusion about MSIA, and the specific contents of the dream spoke to the individual's puzzlement. A number of details - from the academic lecture image to Yoda's remarks about 10% and 90% - have specialized meanings within MSIA, as reflected in the following passage from John-Roger's Dream Voyages:

The work of MSIA is about 10 percent on the physical level and about 90 percent on the spirit side, in the realms of Light. In the dream state, which reflects your activity in the other realms of Light, there are continuous seminars going on, continuous schooling, training, and learning. This training is going on all the time - "twenty-five hours a day, eight days a week." if you become aware of these levels, you can consciously receive more and more information from them. You have the potential for becoming more and more aware of them and using them as part of your daily living. When you are working directly with the Mystical Traveler, as a student preparing for initiation or as an initiate into the Sound Current, you will be involved in some experiences in the night travel that will be particular to that relationship.

I have related the story of this dreamer's experience as a way of providing a vivid image for what it means to be a Movement participant on a day-to-day basis. What I see as central to understanding the MSIA path is the notion that participants are studying with a Mystery School -a spiritual school that, while having its roots in the ancient world (e.g., the Hellenistic mystery "schools") has been updated and adapted to the modern world. What I found attractive about the above dream, beyond its humor and wealth of detail, was the way in which it brought together the alternative (and, to my mind, more universal) image of treading the spiritual "path" (an image derived ultimately from pilgrimages) with the dominant Movement metaphor of attending a spiritual "school."

The dreamer begins by treading a path and then is "baptized" (a universal symbol for purification) by the rain. After divesting himself of his clothes - clothes can signify either one's old self, the physical body, or one's everyday persona he makes a transition across a threshold to suddenly find himself in a seminar. Morton then initiates the seeker via the key he holds in his role as Mystical Traveler. The dreamer awakens and later finds that his puzzlement and confusion have dissipated - he can finally grasp the "teachings."

While I have already noted the importance of educational forms and images in the metaphysical/New Age subculture, it will repay our efforts if we develop this observation a little further before looking more closely at the experiences of individual Movement participants. Many of my remarks about the learning metaphor will refer to the larger metaphysical subculture and to the New Age movement - a movement from which MSIA consciously distances itself (as I have previously noted). Despite this distancing, the particular points I want to call attention to are shared by MSIA and the New Age.

Like other religious and cultural systems, the world view of the contemporary metaphysical subculture is held together by a shared set of symbols and metaphors - shared images of life reflected in the discourse of participants as a set of commonly used terms. For example, due partly to a vision of metaphysical unity inherited from theosophy and from Asian religious philosophy (but also due to this subculture's reaction against the perceived fragmentation and alienation of mainstream society), the metaphysical/New Age movement emphasizes the values of unity and relatedness. These values find expression in such common terms as "holistic," "oneness," "wholeness," and "community." This spiritual subculture also values growth and dynamism - an evaluation expressed in discourse about "evolution," "transformation," "process," and so forth.

If one reads New Age material long enough, one comes away overwhelmed by a sense of organic profusion.

The image of education is related to the growth metaphor (e.g., one of our linguistic conventions is that education allows a person to "grow"). If we examine the metaphysical subculture through the "lens" of the education theme, we discover that, in contrast to so many other religious movements, the dominant New Age/metaphysical "ceremonies" are workshops, lectures, and classes, rather than worship ceremonies. Even large New Age gatherings, such as the Whole Life Expo, resemble academic conferences more than they resemble camp meetings.

It is also interesting to note the extent to which educational metaphors inform New Age thought. In terms of the way the Western metaphysical tradition has interpreted the ongoing process of reincarnation, spiritual growth and even life itself are learning experiences. To cite some examples of this, Katar, a New Age medium who formerly resided in Santa Barbara, channels such messages as, "Here on Earth, you are your teacher, your books, your lessons, and the classroom as well as the student." This message is amplified by J.L. Simmons, a sociologist, who, in his The Emerging New Age, describes life on the physical plane as the "Earth School," and asserts that "We are here to learn . . . and will continue to return until we `do the course' and `graduate."'

Similar images are reflected in an essay on "The Role of the Esoteric in Planetary Culture," where David Spangler argues that spiritual wisdom is esoteric "only because so few people expend the time, the energy, the effort, the openness, and the love to gain it, just as only a few are willing to invest what is required to become a nuclear physicist or a neurosurgeon." It would not be going too far to assert that, in the New Age vision of things, the image of the whole human life particularly when that life is directed toward spiritual goals can be summed up as a learning experience:

Each of us has an Inner Teacher, a part of ourselves which knows exactly what we need to learn, and constantly creates the opportunity for us to learn just that. We have the choice either to cooperate with this part of ourselves or to ignore it. if we decide to cooperate, we can see lessons constantly in front of us; every challenge is a chance to grow and develop. If, on the other hand, we try to ignore this Inner Teacher, we can find ourselves hitting the same problem again and again, because we are not perceiving and responding to the lesson we have created for ourselves. [It] is, however, the daily awareness of and cooperation with spirit [that] pulls humanity upwards on the evolutionary spiral, and the constant invocation and evocation of spirit enables a rapid unfolding of human potential. When the Inner Teacher and the evolutionary force of the Universe are able to work together with our full cooperation, wonders unfold.

-From a 1986 flyer entitled

The Findhorn Foundation

In these passages, we see not only the decisive role of the educational metaphor, but also how this metaphor has itself been reshaped by the spiritual subculture's emphasis on holism and growth. In other words, the kind of education this subculture values is the "education of the whole person," sometimes termed "holistic education," and this form of education is an expression of the "evolutionary force of the Universe" (a parallel to what, in more traditional language, might be called the redemptive activity of the Holy Spirit). Thus, despite the marked tendency to use images drawn from the sphere of formal education - a tendency that has created a realm of discourse saturated with metaphors of "classrooms," "graduations," and the like - the metaphysical subculture's sense of the educational process has tended to be more informal (more or less equivalent to learning in the most general sense), as well as more continuous - a process from which there may be periodic graduations, but from which there is never a FINAL GRADUATION after which the learning process ceases.

While some aspects of this view of the spiritual life as a learning experience are based on tradition (e.g., the Pythagorean "school"), the widespread appeal of this image of spirituality is the result of the manner in which modern society's emphasis on education informs our consciousness. The various social, economic, and historical forces that have led to the increased stress on education in the contemporary world are too complex to develop here. Obvious factors are such things as the increasing complexity of technology and of the socioeconomic system. Less obvious factors are such considerations as the need to delay the entry of new workers into the economic system. But whatever the forces at work in the larger society, by the time the baby boom generation began attending college in the 1960s, formal educational institutions had come to assume their present role as major socializing forces in Western societies. Being a college graduate and achieving higher, particularly professional degrees became associated with increased prestige and the potential for increased levels of income. In other words, to a greater extent than previously, education and educational accomplishments had become symbols of wealth and status.

Because the generation from which the majority of participants in the spiritual subculture has been recruited is the baby boom generation, the majority of participants in that subculture have been socialized to place a high value on education. Baby boomers, however, also tend to have been participants in the counterculture of the sixties, which means that they come from a generation that was highly critical of traditional, formal education.

While some members of that generation revolted against the educational establishment by denying the value of education altogether, other college students of the time reacted against what they saw as an irrelevant education by setting up alternative educational structures such as the so-called "free schools." These educational enterprises, which could offer students nothing in terms of degrees or certifications, were viable, at least for a time, because they offered courses on subjects people found intrinsically interesting - including such metaphysical topics as yoga, meditation, and so forth. The free school movement, in combination with the adult education programs that emerged in the seventies, provided the paradigms for the form many independent, metaphysical educational programs would eventually take.

Metaphysically-oriented groups like MSIA fit into the omnipresent educational ideology found in the contemporary spiritual subculture in at least two ways:

I. Firstly, such groups frequently (though not invariably) present their religious system via a wide variety of classes and workshops directed both to members and to the larger subculture. In some organizations - including MSIA - this educational outreach is a major activity, if not the major activity of the group. It should be noted, however, that even in such "classes," "seminars," and "workshops," much less stress is placed on a purely theoretical or intellectual knowledge than one would find in a mainstream educational setting. Rather, MSIA's teaching activities draw on both the free school tradition's emphasis on relevant and experiential education, and on the New Age movement's emphasis on learning that involves all levels of one's being ("holistic" education). As a consequence, MSIA classes tend to consist of about one-third information and about two-thirds interaction with others, sharing with the group, or some form of spiritual exercise.

II. Secondly, merely being a member of such a group is itself viewed as an educational experience. Thus becoming affiliated with an organization like MSIA is comparable to enrolling in a university ("joining a mystery school"), and the experiences one has in the Movement while participating in MSIA activities - as well as the experiences one encounters in one's life more generally - are viewed as part of one's course of study. In the words of one of the respondents to the MSIA survey:

MSIA is the most highly evolved and true "spiritual school" that I have ever seen, heard of, or read about. There are many beautiful religions out there, [but] I've found that no "teaching" can compare with one's personal experience of the light and love of the Holy Spirit, God, Christ, Traveler . . .

It appears that many early Movement participants originally viewed the focus of their mystery school education as acquiring esoteric knowledge and experiences. For example, some of J-R's seminars, particularly the early seminars, dealt with such topics as the Lords of the Seven Rays, devic beings, details of the inner planes, and other subjects that constitute the bread-and-butter of theosophical and occult lectures. A passage from John-Roger's Dream Voyages -which, in context, is an aside to a larger discussion about meditating on a candle flame - is useful for illustrating this kind of discourse:

There is a devic force that works with the flame. It is a life force, a consciousness that is from the devic kingdom (which is the lower part of the angelic kingdom), and it is part of the fire's existence. Remember the Bible story of the prophet who was thrown into the furnace to burn? An angel appeared and protected him so that he was not harmed, even in the midst of the fire. This was a form of fire elemental or fire angel. They exist, and they have dominion over fire. They can control it and all its functions. There are people who are attuned to these fire forms and who can work with them. I've known people who could take burns away from the body because they worked with the fire lords. In ancient cultures, people almost always worshipped fire gods. In Hawaii, the god of the volcano was worshipped, which is a form of fire god. These forces definitely do exist, and communication with them can be established.

While plenty of this kind of information has been (and still is) presented in MSIA seminars, an examination of early Movement records reveals that - alongside of such esoteric data - John-Roger's teachings also stressed the importance of working out the flaws in one's psyche and learning to live everyday life as a sane, moral being. For example, in the very first issue of the first MSIA periodical, On the Light Side, one finds a J-R discourse that contains nonesoteric information about such straightforwardly psychological matters as how we displace our anger onto the people closest to us:

If you are full of tremendous inner turmoil and you're irritated, you are going to try to find somebody to blame for this irritation because you are not being responsible and controlling it and bringing it into balance. You will immediately shift it off onto the one nearest to you and that will probably be the person you love the most. And they often wonder, "How could you love me if you are treating me this way and saying these things and doing this to me?" The answer is, "I'm doing this to you because you're the closest one around. An enemy would knock me flat and my mother and father won't pay any attention but you're captive and I'm really going to let you have it."

As the Movement matured, and, especially, as members of the Movement matured, the focus of many participants changed from acquiring exotic information about the inner planes to the more difficult and less glamorous task of hammering out one's impurities on the hard anvil of life. In line with this maturation process, the focus of the learning that is the essence of the MSIA path has gradually shifted from esoteric education to an emphasis on self-understanding and personal growth. And, while neither component has ever been completely eclipsed by the other, it is nevertheless clear to anyone who has observed and interacted with Movement participants (particularly in recent years) that learning about the self -as well as learning to be attentive to the promptings of the Light in one's everyday life - is central to the spiritual lives of most current MSIA members.

The learning that takes place in everyday life is conceptualized in a variety of ways. John-Roger teaches, for example, that one should "use everything for your growth," which refers, in particular, to the trials and challenges of everyday life. In one participant's words:

He [J-R] was giving pertinent information for all my levels from the mundane paper work, to accepting job responsibility, to having better emotional and mental balance, and in my spiritual growth. I was seeing answers to my questions. I had to have reasons, and I found that I could take the information John-Roger had given me and keep expanding it. There was always continuation and et cetera. Part of the teaching was to be able to use everything that happens; this is a fantastic key. If I was in a traffic jam, I could work on impatience. Or if I was required to do something that I didn't see any reason for, I could work on that area to make myself more complete. I started noticing things align in my daily life. I was taking on more responsibility.

Another way of understanding the challenges of everyday life is in terms of karma. Karma, as noted in an earlier chapter, is the moral equivalent of the law of cause and effect roughly expressed in the familiar biblical idiom, "As one sows, so shall one reap." In terms of this idea, the problems and difficulties that confront one (as well as the positive things, 'though "good karma" is mentioned much less often than the unpleasant variety) are the direct results of the individual's past actions, either in this lifetime or in some past incarnation.

A widely assumed principle in the metaphysical subculture `'is that some conscious force or entity (a guardian angel, Lords of Karma, or some functional equivalent) is able to regulate the effects of one's karma so that each challenge provides the `individual with a growth opportunity - a potential "learning experience," as it is often expressed. According to this line of thought, it is our own karma and not some external "devil" that is responsible for human suffering. Furthermore, it is the process of "learning the lessons" meted out by our karma that eventually empowers us to become liberated from the cycle of death and rebirth. As one respondent to the MSIA survey wrote:

My life has been a difficult one [and] I see the misery that people have all the time. I sometimes wonder how I and my mom and dad escaped from Nazi Germany and certain death at the hands of the SS .... If you believe in karma, then perhaps it can make sense. If you believe we come back in reembodiment to balance the scales and learn lessons, and that we do this until we get it right, then it makes sense.

As a core concept in this understanding of the "earth school," karmic "lessons" have many facets. One way in which karma teaches the (often reluctant) spiritual seeker is through what has been termed "instant karma." While people generally relate it to unpleasant experiences, it can also produce positive results:

I was in the parking lot of a very crowded mall, and had spotted a car pulling out of a space pretty close to the mall entrance. Unfortunately, it was on the other side of the lane from the way I was going. But I was able to pull over and not block the traffic behind me as I waited for the space. The person pulling out was taking a lot of time, putting her packages away and stuff, and while I waited an expensive car on the other side of the lane pulled into position to take the soon-to-be-vacated space. I flashed my lights at the "intruder" to signal I was already waiting for the space, and the person flashed their brights back at me and jockeyed into closer position letting me know in no uncertain terms they were claiming the space despite my prior "rights" to it. At that point I was faced with a choice: I could tough it out and try to zip into the space when the car pulled out, or I could just be calm about it, maintain my peace, and let it go. I chose the latter, and as I moved along another space, even closer to the mall opened up and I easily pulled in. "Now, this is instant karma," I thought. And as if to show me that there sometimes is "justice," as I walked into the mall, I glanced back and saw the expensive car still waiting for the space I had originally tried for.

A related form of karmic lesson is learning that one must give in order to receive:

When I first came to seminars people would come to me after it was over and exclaim, "Wasn't that semi nar fantastic!" . . . (but) I didn't seem to be getting much out of it. I made up my mind to watch them during contributions to see what was happening, why they were so lifted, and why I was not. It was very interesting. They were giving of themselves. I had come to seminars to see what I could get out of them, never thinking that I had to give to get. Then, as every person spoke, I listened. if they were having problems, I would send them the Light, really being a part of them. I was giving of myself and sending the Light. The more I gave, the more I received. I would be bursting with the Light and I would want to hug everyone.

In addition to being a vehicle for our education, past karma is also viewed as posing an obstacle (a cosmic "debt") that must be surmounted ("repaid" in full) before we can proceed to the ultimate goal of Soul Transcendence. As a conse quence, participants in MSIA conceptualize the challenges that confront them when they commit themselves to following the spiritual path as a "speeding up" of karma.

When I first started coming to seminars, [there were no] ups, no downs, pretty steady, and everything was going fine. But by my third seminar, everything had suddenly fallen apart . . . my entire world was down around my head. I could not understand it. I knew it was connected somehow with the seminars and with John-Roger, but I said in my contribution, "I don't know what is happening, John-Roger, but since I have been coming to seminars, everything has gone wrong. It's terrible!" Everyone laughed, and so did John-Roger. He said, "It looks as if you have been working off your karma prematurely - you are banging on the doors of Heaven wanting to get in, and things are coming down fast and heavy.

Another MSIA participant's account of how he was able to overcome frustration from a common everyday experience provides a useful example of how individuals treading the spiritual path learn from, and eventually overcome, difficult karma:

Sometimes it would take a couple of months to understand the teachings within my own level of consciousness. The Mystical Traveler Consciousness would bring the experience to me specifically for that teaching. For instance, somebody pulled into a parking place that I had just gone around the block to get after driving and looking for a half an hour. At first my expression was anger: "Why that dirty crumb! He got my place." Immediately after creating the emotions in my body, the teaching came in. I thought, "Oh yeah, last night at the seminar I was told about this type of situation. Because I understand that now, I don't have to do it anymore." But I had already done it. That was okay, because John-Roger didn't mind; he would bring me the experience again, a hundred times if necessary. He was only interested in my being able to clear these patterns. After a while the frustration would start, and then the teaching would come in before I went all the way through the action. Later the teaching would come before the frustration started. Once I had learned the lesson, people didn't take my parking place anymore.

As the spiritual advisor of the MSIA mystery school, John-Roger embodies and exemplifies the goal of the school's educational process - he is someone who "knows" in a way that simultaneously incorporates and yet transcends intellectual knowledge. This sense of J-R as the Knower was expressed by one of the respondents to the MSIA survey who first encountered John-Roger as a speaker at a metaphysical conference:

The next day there was a question and answer session with several of the speakers. John-Roger blew all of the other guys away. He just seemed to know the answers. It wasn't a theory, it wasn't a belief system, it wasn't a nice thought - he just knew. And I kept thinking, "He knows. This guy knows."

In addition to his generic teachings, John-Roger has sometimes (particularly in the early days) focused his educating activity on individual students. This aspect of his work with aspirants can take many forms. In one case recorded in an early Movement publication, Across the Golden Bridge, John-Roger suggested a "homework" exercise that addressed someone's specific personal issue:

One personality trait that came out of my Light Study was my feeling of being cut off and alone in a group. [John-Roger] said that I could break through this pattern by introducing myself to fifty people. "Hi, my name is John. How are you?" I decided it was a good idea and started at a supermarket in Newport Beach, California, but I only introduced myself to a couple of people. Next I did it in Isla Vista, a UCSB student community. This time I introduced myself to about thirty people, although I would skip those who looked unfriendly. Finally, one day between classes I started from the middle of campus and even though I was scared, worked my way toward the edge, determined not to miss anyone. I stopped long enough to establish contact, and then went on to the next person. By the time I had gotten through fifty, I was ready to keep going. I broke through the pattern, which helped me to feel closer to people.

For most of the people who have worked with and assisted John-Roger personally, and for some of the people who have had fairly extensive personal contact with him, J-R has sometimes resorted to unorthodox teaching tactics that these students have found extremely disconcerting. For example, one long-term Movement participant related the following incident during an interview:

I was driving in a car with J-R. He turned to me and said, "By the way, don't ever trust David Gold" [another Movement participant; not his real name]. Immediately when he said that, I felt a lurch inside. And I said, "Oh really, Why?" He says, "Well, you never know" - some vague thing. I felt repulsed .... and then, to my sheer disgust, I said, "I know what you mean J-R. " I had no clue what he meant. I was so busy brown-nosing, and wanting to be accepted by him, and to be a part of the inner circle, that I left my own truth and moved into this brown-nosing consciousness. J-R looked at me, and then looked out the window, and didn't say another word to me. I felt like dirt and I was close to hating him. I was so angry.

It took me about three months [of confusion and inner conflict] before it finally dawned on me: if J-R had turned to me and said, "Situ [not her real name], you persist in brown-nosing me. You persist in letting go of what you know is the truth in your own heart. You so much want to be accepted by others that you enter into illusions you know are not real and become a part of them. You lie and you underestimate yourself and you belittle yourself and you belittle the truth that's in your own heart. " [If he'd confronted me directly,] I would have immediately gone into self-protection, given all sorts of explanation of why not, and I couldn't have gotten the teaching. So what he did was to manifest the ugly little demon. Then, when I finally picked it up, . . . it was one of the most profound teachings of my life.

This interviewee felt that the kind of challenging teaching style exemplified in this experience with John-Roger - which, on the face of it, seems harsh and even cruel - explains, at least partially, the many negative stories that disgruntled former staff members have related about J-R.

Another arena in which individualized learning experiences are possible is during certain altered states of consciousness, such as during dream states.

In contrast with many other metaphysical groups, dreams are a highly significant part of the MSIA path. As one might anticipate, educational images have been extended to encompass and interpret such states. Thus, as John-Roger asserts in the passage cited earlier in the present chapter, in the dream state there are "continuous seminars going on, continuous schooling, training, and learning." In the dream realm, dreamers enter "halls of learning" in which they can attend lectures on metaphysical subjects, as we saw with the dreamer who reported listening to the discourse of a Confucian scholar.

The notion of halls of learning or halls of wisdom that one attends in the hours of sleep is actually quite widespread in the metaphysical subculture, particularly in the theosophical tradition, though the idea is rarely developed at length. The work of theosophical author Alice A. Bailey may be taken as typical in this regard. In several of her books, Bailey describes the halls of learning in the following way:

Classes are held . . . in the Hall of Learning and the method is much the same as in the big universities classes at certain hours, experimental work, examinations, and a gradual moving up and onward as the tests are passed .... In the Hall of Learning the pupil is taught nightly for a short time before proceeding with any work of service. This teaching he brings over into his physical brain consciousness in the form of a deep interest in certain subjects . . . . [Such experiences may also be reflected in] dreams which are symbolic presentations of teaching received in the hours of sleep by aspirants and disciples in the Hall of Learning on the highest level of the astral plane, and in the Hall of Wisdom on the mental plane.

Attending night school in the halls of learning does not automatically mean that dreamers will consciously remember their nocturnal experiences upon awakening. In fact, most do not remember. As John-Roger notes:

You will wake up knowing that you were taught something during the night. You'll know you were in a a class. Most often, if you've been on the mental plane, you may not see people or remember particular places. Your memory will probably be more related to ideas, knowledge, and thoughts; it will be a mental process. You may remember hearing part of a lecture or someone reading out of a book, but you may not be able to remember anything of the lesson.

One's failure to remember dream learning does not obviate its significance, as the discussion in Chapter One indicated. Because MSIA is the exoteric expression of a specific esoteric school, participants sometimes report sharing the same dream landscape with other participants - as if a group of MSIA members met together during "night school":

I've had many dreams in which John-Roger played a starring role. I would tell someone about a dream, and they'd begin to tell me about the same dream. We would find out that there were three or four people in on the dream, and that it was an actual experience on the other side in which we were all gathered.

While such group dreams are not uncommon, the great majority of learning dreams remembered by Movement participants embody individualized lessons, often with John-Roger. The following experience is typical in this regard:

[In my dream] you [John-Roger] challenged me to do some interesting things like sitting cross-legged upside down on the ceiling. My fear blocked me. You explained to me that the trick to it was in my perception of the space . . . . It is interesting that the key seems to be one of perception rather than of trying harder.

Significant spiritual dreams need not, of course, always involve J-R, nor need they necessarily be dreams in which one explicitly learns something. The following dream, for instance, was described to me by one longtime Movement participant:

I'd never thought once about doing ordinations - it had not even crossed my mind. One night, during which I had slept only three hours, I was shown how to do ordinations. So I woke up, and, when I remembered it, my first thought was, "Oh no, please." I'm already stretching myself to facilitate [MSIA events]. But I said [to mysel fJ, I have got to write and ask if this is really how one does this, and the reply came back, "Yes." So what happens to me a lot now is that, if I pay attention, I'm shown things on the other side that are coming forward. But that's begun to happen only after years and years and years of wanting to discern what's the truth and what's karma and all that.

This dream seemed to be directing this individual to undertake a particular kind of service work. Soon afterwards, she became involved in the ordaining of MSIA ministers.

One of the more unusual aspects of John-Roger's teachings on the significance of the dream state is the notion that individuals can experience and overcome a certain amount of one's negative karma in dreams. This is a notion which, if not unique to MSIA, is an idea that I have never come across anywhere else. It explains, among other phenomena, certain kinds of nightmares:

There is a master force, or dream master, from the spiritual realms who works with the students of MSIA. One of the reasons the dream state becomes so valuable spiritually is because, through the action of this dream master, you are allowed to balance actions in the dream state instead of on the physical level. How would you like to live through those nightmares in an awake state? Through this special action, many negative actions (like car wrecks, accidents, or other dangerous or threatening situations, etc.) have been bypassed in the physical and completed on another realm through the dream process.

Like everyday life, dreams can also provide situations in which the aspirant can learn from one's karma through working on one's responses to trying situations. Compare, for instance, the following dream experience with the experience of the person who was angered by other people always taking his parking place:

I had a dream where there was a woman in trouble, and she was talking to me on the telephone; she was in dire, desperate straits, suffering, and needed help immediately. There were many people around me cutting up, making noise, making fun, and pulling the telephone away. I got extremely angry and infuriated. In my earlier dreams I had lashed back at these people. But this time I was at the point where I just took a book and threw it against the wall. I wouldn't unleash it against somebody, but I still had it there to unleash. I woke up in a sweat, and said, "No, no, I blew it. I want to go back and do it right. "

The implication in this passage, which is taken from Across the Golden Bridge, is that this individual was having a dream experience in which he was gradually improving how he reacted to an irritating experience he was encountering over and over again in a series of dreams. The parallel with the other individual's reactions to his "parking place karma" is quite close, indicating a greater or lesser degree of interchangeability between learning in the dream state and learning in the waking state.

But what, we might well ask ourselves at this point, is the goal of such learning? Why bother to invest so much effort into changing our personality patterns? Is it really so bad to just react to life spontaneously? Should we really be trying to radically modify ordinary human nature? While such questions invite more than one response, it might be most meaningful if we focused on the question of naturalness.

"Natural" means to be in accord with the nature of a thing. In most religious traditions, a human being is viewed as having more than one "nature." The deepest and most real part of ourselves - the soul or higher self - has, in the traditional view, a Christ-like nature that transcends the pettiness of our everyday life. From this perspective, the day-to-day struggles with the less pleasant aspects of our personality is really an effort to heal the split between our two natures by bringing our everyday personality into alignment with our soul. Or, in a somewhat different religious idiom, one might say that the goal is to learn to surrender ourselves to God. In the words of one Movement participant:

I seem to be the most relaxed and at my best when [I can say], "Okay God, I'm yours. It's your breath, it's your body, it's your heart, it's your mind. Use me. Guide me. Show me." I hope I'm a good listener. I do my best to follow and to live my life that way. And that's really where I'm going. I want to be a freed up vessel to hold God's consciousness.

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