attunement of a being who was in a very high state and may induce in us a similar state because the only way to lift ourselves into this next sphere, which is called malakut or ananda, is by emotion. We cannot attain it by our own efforts and so we are very grateful that we can avail ourselves of the inspiration and the attunement of somebody who was living in this whole atmosphere of the sacred. I think you see we have a very great need for the sacred. And that’s what the churches, and the synagogues, and the mosques are trying to convey. [They are] organized in a such a way as to create conditions that are favorable to getting to a sacred attunement. And here of course, music is particularly helpful.

You see, one could use a, you project a picture which is not quite adequate, but still it should give one some sense of what we’re trying to experience. And that is, imagine that things are happening down here, on a physical plane, and then things are happening on another plane, which we’ll call the celestial plane. And normally, one isn’t aware of it, but sometimes it comes through, somehow. It comes through in the eyes of a baby, it comes through in the music of Bach, it comes through in this music that we just heard [Misere by Allegri], it comes through in a cathedral, it comes through in the broken heart of a person. Well, you see there is an interpenetration between these two planes. And perhaps, as I say, this picture is inadequate because it’s all happening on the physical plane, but it’s just a different perspective. Just like in a hologram. It can have a different perspective. So I'll give an example, for example, the crucifixion of Christ. Can you imagine that it was a coronation in the heavens but a crucifixion on Earth?

So we see things from a very limited vantage point and, of course, if we are able to get into that attunement, then we discover elements in our being which we could ascribe to the heavenly spheres. And I suppose the most paramount is glorification, the emotion that one feels when one is glorifying. It’s very difficult to organize it. Churches are trying to do it everywhere, and all the religions are trying to organize it, but somehow, it escapes any kind of effort to organize it. But still, just look at the faces of the Muslims in Cairo during the Ramadan when everything stops and people are praying, and their faces are illuminated. The most earthy and worldly faces, and selfish people, all of a sudden are totally transformed by the act of glorification.

So it starts by bewonderment, and it gets into being bemused and eventually, of course, being carried beyond the earthly plane in one’s glorification. It arouses in us the most beautiful aspects of ourselves. We can see that it is our greed, or our resentment, or our hatred of course, or our lack of charity, that is keeping us, how can you say, constrained and encapsulated on the Earth plane.

And so there is no way of lifting our consciousness into the higher spheres unless we are able to bring about a change in ourselves. It’s not like a journey, that you can just a take a teleferique, as one says, a cable car, and reach the top of a mountain. No, you have to yourself undergo a whole process of catharsis and discover the child in you that is beautiful.

So then the only way to deal with the world is to think, as Christ said: They don’t know what they do. So, okay, so I don’t know if the word is “tolerance” but anyway, you have, even, a feeling of compassion for the suffering that people cause to themselves by their ignorance. Somehow you don’t allow the earthly, the grossness of the attunement of the world, make your attunement drop to that level.

So we’re talking much more about attunement now than seeing something or experiencing something. We always think in terms of experiencing. Whereas this is really attunement. And of course it’s true that it was our self image, our representation of ourselves as an entity, that was standing in the way because there’s no doubt about it that the breadth of our being is going to free us from our ego, from our limited [sense of ourself], from that which is holding us back.

Ultimately, of course, it is our getting in tune with the whole universe that will lift us up. So we can’t lift ourselves up from the Earth plane by our efforts, but by our connecting up with all the levels of being. And at this stage, we are trying to tune ourselves to the heavenly spheres.