Everlasting community (ICA)

This is the experience of embodying a multitude of internalized mentors, expressing and embodying all who have gone before. Such an individual becomes wise beyond his years, as the common mind of the saints informs him and makes his presence radical. This is Hermann Hesse's image of the "League" in the book "Journey to the East", and may be compared to Nikos Kazantzakis' image of the crimson line in history and of the ancestors who live within every person's skull. Perhaps this was the experience of Joan of Arc when she heard voices calling her to save France.

A dimension of this experience is a sense of awe, that is fear and fascination. There is knowledge that history is not mechanically predetermined but that people participate in creating it; and a strange sense of power as an individual chooses who will inform his consciousness. He is overwhelmed with the choice before him; and with a kind of stage-fright in knowing that all creation is watching him act out his life. He is responsible to all creation for all creation. The decision is to be intentional about the only life and death he has and which mentors he will allow to inform it. There is an internal silence as the individual quietens his own voice and focuses his being to listen to the others; it is as though he has thousands of colleagues awaiting his call.

This state is number 63 in the ICA Other World in the midst of this World.