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Questions:
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What
does HCS represent? Why does it exist and what are its basic principles?
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What
does the book Confessions of a God Seeker: A Journey to Higher Consciousness have to do with HCS?
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What
is the Great Work?
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Question 1: Post Your Question TOP
What does HCS represent? Why does it exist and what are its basic principles?
Answer:
The Higher Consciousness Society is a tax-exempt
spiritual education society dedicated to providing instruction and
guidance to those seeking to expand awareness, personal power, and
inner spiritual direction. The Higher Consciousness Society works
through on-line classes, local chapters, and centers around the world to provide the spiritual insight and guidance necessary
to build bridges to higher consciousness. For
more information, please click here.
Question 2: Post Your Question TOP
What does the book Confessions of a God Seeker: A Journey to Higher Consciousness have to do with HCS?
Answer:
HCS
is an outgrowth of the book Confessions, written by
author and HCS founder, Ford Johnson. The spiritual principles of the Higher
Consciousness Society and the Great Work are set forth in Part IV
of Confessions of A God Seeker. For more information,
please click here.
Question 3: Post Your Question TOP
What is the Great Work?
Answer:
As outlined in Confessions of a God Seeker, the Great Work is
a term used for the efforts of spiritually developed persons who aid others
in recognizing the innate spirituality within, and the illusion of worshipping
or depending on intermediaries for our return to the ONE (God).
Question 4: Post Your Question TOP
I am interested in the information provided by HCS.
How can I participate in this organization’s spiritual mission?
Answer:
If
you are interested in participating in the activities of HCS, there
are three distinct category of membership that have been created (Participant,
General Member, Sustaining Member) for those individuals who are at
various stages of spiritual transition and commitment. For more information,
please click here.
Question 5: Post Your Question TOP
I would like
to be a member of HCS, but am unclear about the financial obligation involved.
Could you please clarify?
Answer:
Membership
in HCS requires no mandatory contribution or fees, although donations
in support of the activities of HCS, to the degree that your financial
ability and conscience dictate, are appreciated. For more information,
please click here.
Question 6: Post Your Question TOP
How can I
contribute to the HCS mission?
Answer:
To
assist in the Great Work of liberating, enlightening and empowering
souls to understand and live from the divinity that lies within, the
categories of General and Sustaining Membership have been created.
As the bedrock of HCS, members share their spiritual experiences and
knowledge with others. This takes the form of conducting book discussions
on Confessions and other relevant books, write and share book
reviews, set up HCS Chapters in your area, distribute posters and
other brochures of the organization to those who are interested and
to serve as instructors for online classes covering a wide range of
spiritual topics.
Question 7: Post Your Question TOP
The book Confessions talks about a number
of other religions. Is Ford Johnson and HCS against religion?
Answer:
Neither
the book Confessions or its author are against religions as such. However, both
consistently portray an anti-deception, anti-mythology (as religion),
anti-lie entrapment perspective while recognizing the need for and the
role religions have played in the world. While the historical contributions
of religions are acknowledged, HCS also recognizes
that true inner guidance comes from the higher self, God-soul that lies
within each person. It accepts the guidance of others
as teachers but never as intercessors, masters, saviors, messengers, or
by any other title suggesting spiritual superiority. Instead, it views
every person as both teacher and student differing only in the degree
to which they understand, accept, and live by the highest of all spiritual
truths: I AM, GOD IS, WE ARE ONE.
Question 8: Post Your Question TOP
Many major religions use prayer as a means
of both worshipping and petitioning to the God of their understanding. What
is the view of HCS regarding prayer?
Answer:
As
stated in the book Confessions of a God Seeker, (page 354), “Prayer
is a means of calling upon the responsive nature of spirit. However,
it often fails due to a misunderstanding of its nature. Most prayer proceeds
from the assumption of a benevolent deity that responds to our entreaties
or not, depending on our worthiness. This has some validity, at least
in an oblique way. Yet, it misses the point that spirit’s responsiveness
to our prayers has nothing to do with morality, as we normally use the
term and everything to do with the Law of Spirit. This holds that
spirit is responsive to any idea or thought placed in it. Once placed
there, the duration and intensity of focus and belief determine the extent
and speed of spirit’s responsiveness.”
Question 9: Post Your Question TOP
Some religions and spiritual paths use chanting
as a means to move themselves closer to God. Some claim that the
word HU is the highest word there is; some claim it is the AUM. Which
one is it, or is there a highest word?
Answer:
The
thing that is most important to understand here is that the power
does not lie in the word itself, but in belief of its power. HCS helps
the truth seeker move beyond the mythology of the HU and the AUM to
the reality that the power of the sacred word resides in the consciousness
(the thoughts and beliefs) of the individual. (See
pages 393 to 405, Confessions of a God Seeker)
Question 10: Post Your Question TOP
Is there a word or mantra that
HCS recommends when meditating and attempting inner spiritual travel?
Answer:
For
personal meditation, it is useful for the individual to find a word that
works best for them, and there are many charged words such as love,
God, and others that will have a very healing effect. While we understand
that the power of any word lies within the individual using it, as a group
or individual mantra, HCS suggest the student try the “HUM” (chanted as
whooommmm). “HUM” combines the original and authentic sound of Hu (Hooo)
with the vibration of the “M” sound from Aum. The “M” vibrates the area
of the spiritual eye aiding in the movement of consciousness beyond the
physical dimension.
Question 11: Post Your Question TOP
In the Higher Consciousness Axiom
I AM, GOD IS, WE ARE ONE, why do you say I AM before you say GOD IS, shouldn’t
it be the reverse?
Answer:
On
this point, Ford spent some time contemplating which should come first.
He indicates, “Your point is correct in what it might imply, but in balance,
the decision was made to start with I AM. The reason is actually
quite simple. The only reality that we actually know is that we are. We
have awareness and whatever is our outer form, our awareness is what allows
us to acknowledge our existence. This is the starting point, the beginning
of all that we think we know or imagine. It is only after an acknowledgment
of the ‘I AM’ state of consciousness that we are able to contemplate or
consider the greater aspect of ourselves that ‘GOD IS.’”
“So it would be correct to say that I exist because GOD
first existed. But my awareness and recognition of ALL THAT IS starts
from my recognition of my own existence. It is true that at some point
this may become semantics or another "chicken and egg" scenario
but for me, I know that GOD is because I am and there is no other explanation
for my being than that GOD IS. That is why the starting point was
decided as I AM and not GOD IS. I could not know the latter, nor would
there be the question unless first I recognize, examine and acknowledge
my own existence.”
Question 12: Post Your Question TOP
What is God-soul? Is it a spark of God?
Answer:
God-soul
is similar to soul, but is a higher and more encompassing concept of who
we are than the notion of soul itself. Within this understanding is a
second concept of existence beyond time and space, which is the region
in which soul and our higher self, God-soul, function. When we move beyond
the notion of linear time and consider it from the perspective of soul
and God-soul we find that we are living all of our lives — past, present
and future — simultaneously. Each manifestation of ourselves in time and
space has a component of our higher self, functioning within that unit
of awareness. This is the concept of soul, an individualized aspect of
our higher self that functions within a particular dimension of time and
space. It is God-soul, our higher self, that is the true master. It is
that part of ourselves that provides the guidance we receive every day,
and in fact performs all the spiritual functions for which other religions
take credit. It manages the existence of each component of itself,
guiding each unit to experience what it needs to in order to become more
aware of its existence in the whole of God-soul and in turn God-soul’s
relation with ALL THAT IS. From this perspective, the expansion of consciousness
in the physical is truly a matter of stepping from one level of awareness
to another.
As to whether it is a spark of GOD, this is an accurate
description. But when we consider that ALL THAT IS is a collective
consciousness, we are IT of itself when we fully align our consciousness
with THAT state of consciousness. Thus, we are GOD of Itself when this
state of consciousness is adopted (a choice that we can make) or a "spark"
(much as the holographic image) when we function as individual consciousness--as
we are functioning in the physical plane. Whichever state of consciousness
we choose to function in at any given moment determines the most accurate
descriptor.
Question 13: Post Your Question TOP
What is your view on Transmigration—the idea that
from incarnation to incarnation we progress to successively higher forms
until the human form and state is reached?
Answer:
As
for transmigration, HCS does believe that all of life is one and that
souls differ only in their states of awareness. Without this understanding,
how can one embrace the nature of life as constantly expanding to
ever-higher states of consciousness? This understanding is central
if not essential to an understanding of evolution and the continuum
of life from one state of awareness to another. To suppose otherwise,
one would have to conclude that everything is created in its final
form without the need for progression or an expansion of awareness.
Either this is true or each path of evolution is different with limitations
on the level to which a particular living thing can advance (i.e.,
the animating spiritual principal within animals [soul] could never
expand or evolve to a higher form and never advance to experience
the free will and choice to which humans are allowed to reach, namely,
the realization to their oneness with ALL THAT IS without the movement
from one life form to another higher life form) We believe this
to be fundamental to an understanding of who and what we are. Without
this understanding we are left with a paradigm of a spiritual caste
system where souls of a particular type are forever limited in the
degree and extent of their spiritual evolution, a proposition that
is not consistent with the idea of the ONE.
The realization of God under this construct is the realization
not of something outside of oneself but of the divinity that we are.
We are one with ALL THAT IS. When we realize this we are able to
function at a level unimaginable from the human state of consciousness.
Take another look at Part IV of Confessions of a God Seeker in
this regard. This notion is the key to the next step that we are all taking.
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