God's Plan Hovers Over The Scene

Messages come to us in meditation. They disclose a vista of God's realms, and reveal the way things work up there. It is a bestowal and a blessing.

Several of my meditations have been especially rewarding in this respect, and I would like to share them with you.

I visualized the power of the Lord, seeing the radiance of Light over a mountain, as captured on a painting. I wondered how to describe the Light. The words effulgent, brilliant, blazing came to me. Effulgent means brilliant with light; brilliant means shining with light; blazing means penetrating with light and with heat.

It occurred to me that all these words are more than just a description we apply and which call upon our remembered experiences. They are, in fact, creations of the Arch-guide up there, which, like the muse of music, is expressing itself, and expressing itself through us. For those reasons we choose the words, or, if you will, we create the words at the behest of the Arch-guide. This cooperation is the way it works in all respects. Our openness to something higher brings something higher -- reflecting a kind of teamwork. It is a continuous feedback loop of creation. For this reason, we find the Divine Archplan also within ourselves, and we too are creators. Insofar as we find the right word, we create effulgence, brilliance, blazing light and heat. But we create it at the behest of something higher, and we create it because we are, within ourselves, also something higher. For that reason, the word is the creation. In the beginning was the Word and the Word was made flesh.

And then there was another meditation, which revealed the "archplan":

More and more I realize that as I read and as there is a resonance within me, an interest, a light which says "Aha!", it says that I am moving upward within myself, and inward at the same time. As I move upward and find revealed truths, I am released to the joy of the high and higher realms.

I meditated on the "Archplan," a truth which was described by Rudolph Steiner as he studied the works of the great poet, Johann von Goethe.

Goethe was known as a poet, but he was equally a great scientist. In this respect he was re-discovered by Steiner. Goethe had divined the archplant as God's plan for the plant. The archplan is inherent in the seed, and expresses itself as the seed unfolds into the stem, the leaves, the flower, the seed and again the plant. This entire blueprint is inherent within the seed, but it is also inherent in the universe. It hovers over the scene, to guide and make sure of fulfillment. The archplant is only one example of the archplan.

God's plan is materialized and fulfilled in all of His/Her creations. While the plan hovers on high, creations become progressively manifest and become known as evolution. Thus, as the Hindus teach, we have evolved in our consciousness from mineral to plant to animal to human to high human, and will in the future rise to angels, archangels, archai and on and on. On this plane and within ourselves we evolve biologically, progressively, to fulfill the potential of the archplan.

Recently, Ken Wilber, an American philosopher, has described how, anthropologically speaking, man has emerged from an early consciousness to another to another on a rising plane. In the beginning he was animal-like, aware only of hunger and its fulfillment, and body needs. There was no projection of self as different from the environment, only needs; needs-fulfilled, needs-unfulfilled; food, eating, comfort, blankness. After a considerable evolution, consciousness of the self as distinct from the environment emerged. And then came "time, and then planning, and then language, and then an awareness of the self in a different way as part of a community, part of a higher something; following this, an emergence to an on-high and an on-higher."

Such is anthropology, but we recapitulate this in our biology, our culture and our personality development. This has been described, on a material level, by the great scientists: Jean Piaget, who described the phases of the emerging self in the child; Margaret Mahler, who delineated the growth from the envelope of symbiosis with the mother into increasing dimensions of self; and Eric Erikson, who carried it throughout the phases of this lifetime; and then came Abraham Maslow and the Transpersonal Psychologists and Ken Wilber. Others will come. Others are already on the scene. The evolution of consciousness which we achieve will accelerate as we allow ourselves to fulfill the archplan, as we reach and extend and lift into the higher planes of our ultimate rebirth -- termed fulfillment.

I have seen this evolution within my own meditations. I have witnessed the ascent through the chakras as attention to the body was released; as attention to the lower mind was released; as attention to the higher mind was released into intuition; and then as intuition itself was released to the higher realms of knowing, sensing, and knowing-beyond-knowing. All this depicts a return to the silent blankness of the velvety Void, wherein we know that we exist, but we have lost our attention to the ego, and have become a part of the All while knowing that we remain as the entity called "I," the Witness.

And so, we progressively fulfill the potential released within ourselves. Progressively we fulfill the archplan. Progressively we release ourselves to biological and personal ascension. We recapitulate anthropology, and we create anthropology by this individual effort

And so too, reading is meditation; the resonance of an undiscovered knowledge is released into an "Aha!" of enlightenment. As enlightenment occurs, potential expands and fulfills itself more and more in our return to God and the fulfillment of the archplan.

Maurie D. Pressman, M.D. is the co-author (with Patricia Joudry) of Twin Souls: A Guide to Finding Your True Spiritual Partner, published by Carol Southern Books, an imprint of Crown Publishers, New York.

Dr. Pressman is Emeritus Chairman of Psychiatry at the Albert Einstein Medical Center in Philadelphia and Clinical Professor of Psychiatry at Temple University Health Sciences Center. He is Medical Director at the Center for Psychiatric Wellness, clinics that operate in Philadelphia and Haddonfield, N.J. These clinics bridge traditional and spiritual psychotherapy. Dr. Pressman can be reached at 200 Locust Street, Philadelphia, PA 19106; telephone 215-922-0204.

Next Article