This book is a sequel to A Vision of the Aquarian Age first published by Coventure Books in 1977. In that volume discussion of the meaning and role of the Christ Impulse in our present age was somewhat deliberately suppressed for fear of drawing negative reactions in certain quarters. Many readers did however detect the omission, which stands like an empty hole in the argument of the book. In the present volume I have tried to set this right. My hope however is that this in no way makes the book sectarian in its nature. It is concerned with the holistic world-picture and its application to current problems, for axiomatically the Oneness Vision must touch and colour every aspect of our living. It is concerned with the coming of the Light, the prospect of the redemption of mankind by the forces of higher intelligence in the living universe. This implies God ubiquitous and in action. Furthermore it implies the Blakean conception of a spiritual sun behind the physical sun, the focus of operation of the Elohim, the highest beings of spiritual Light. The Lord of all these is known in esoteric knowledge as the Christos and by other names in other religions. But all recognize this over-lighting source which can reach and be in personal touch with all souls of every race and creed, just as the physical sun warms all our bodies. Thus the concept of the Cosmic Christ is central to the holistic vision and this has little to do with any sectarian thinking in any particular church. It must be a vital strand of our world view, and my hope is that it will not be taken as narrow dogma. I have also referred not infrequently to the thinking of Rudolf Steiner, since this is the approach which I personally found most meaningful and inspiring. Again my hope is that even for those who are not anthroposophists, these comments will help clarify basic issues in our dramatic time. Steiner achieved an intensification of intuitive thinking which enabled him to explore into the spiritual worlds in a manner consonant with scientific method, and to give us his findings in a great structure of clear thoughts which in no sense have a mediumistic character. Thus in our age of breakthrough, when spiritual knowledge is flooding from so many sources, the body of Steiner's thinking may stand as a kind of touchstone which can prove of deep significance to many different movements concerned with the spiritual awakening of the New Age. Ours is an age of dramatic and even sensational change. The great theme is that there can be no renewal without a dying process, no death without resurrection. Thus events in the coming two decades are likely to be apocalyptic in nature. This implies what I have called 'Operation Redemption', a supreme hope that tribulation and cleansing change are a prelude to a new dawn.

THIS BOOK, the third of a trilogy, follows A Vision of the Aquarian Age and Operation Redemption. As I worked on it, I suddenly knew that its title must be "Exploration into God". What presumption I thought! Who am I, who have no qualifications whatever as a theologian, to use such a title? Yet I knew it was right and fitting. The phrase comes from a passage in Christopher Fry's play "A Sleep of Prisoners". Prisoners of war, locked in an empty church at night (itself a powerful symbol) talk and banter, joke and smoke, but one after another they are taken over and speak from higher inspiration out of the spiritual world. Finally Meadows, the Sergeant, touched with the higher consciousness, says this: The human heart can go the lengths of God. Dark and cold we may be, but this Is no winter now. The frozen misery of centuries breaks, cracks, begins to move; The thunder is the thunder of the floes, The thaw, the flood, the upstart Spring. Thank God our Time is now when wrong Comes up to face us everywhere, Never leave us till we take The longest stride of soul men ever took. Affairs are now soul size. The enterprise Is exploration into God. Where are you making for? It takes So many thousand years to wake But will you wake for pity's sake? I have quoted this frequently in lectures, since it gives a powerful expression of the age we live in and the hope of a change in consciousness which will usher in a New Age. While Principal of Attingham Park, I invited a distinguished theologian and Shakespearean scholar to conduct a weekend course on the work of Christopher Fry. I spoke of my admiration of the above passage and to my great surprise he responded: Oh, Christopher went badly wrong there! There can be no question of our exploring into God. All we can do is to pray and wait for God's grace to be granted to us. And then I saw that the emergence of the spiritual and holistic world view in our time was calling and challenging us to go beyond academic or traditional viewpoints and really take our own initiative in exploring into the field of God-thought. So I offer it, with due humility, as truth.

THIS BOOK is in no sense dogma to be believed. It is an attempt at exploration of Ideas which are alive and can therefore enter our consciousness and bring change. We can all recognise the faculty for apprehending an idea for its very beauty. We seize it out of the ether, with a feeling "that's lovely, that gives meaning to life". And then, all too often, the cold intellect comes in and says, "Oh, no you don't! You can't prove that and you must not accept what cannot be demonstrated to the senses". But we are exploring the supersensible worlds. The technique is to take these ideas (if we like them) and learn to live with them as if we believed, while at the same time reserving judgement and watching life in the light of them. Then there is no need for argument, that debased form of human exchange. Ideas of this sort are alive and will therefore draw to themselves a certainty as one lives with them. A remarkable change is taking place in the intellectual climate mate of our time. The holistic world view is penetrating our consciousness and superseding the rational materialism which is surely proving inadequate to explain our fantastic universe. Really we are recovering what was called the Ageless Wisdom of the ancient Mysteries, which knew that the Universe is Mind not mechanism, that the Earth is a sentient creature and not just dead mineral, that the human being is in essence spiritual, a droplet of Divinity housed in the temple of the body. This vision, once apprehended, lifts the basic fear of death in our death-ridden culture. The body may be destroyed, but the soul! spirit in each of us is deathless and immortal. Our age is filled with prophecies of doom and breakdown, which are obviously alarming. But the greater truth is that there is no death without rebirth, no renewal without the breaking down of outdated structures and habit patterns. Just because the world is so mad and so bad and so dangerous, it is valid to look at the apocalyptic picture. This suggests that behind disaster is a transforming power at work out of the Living Whole, which can cleanse the planet, sweep away much that is negative and bring in a New Age. We certainly approach years of dramatic change. Technocratic man in greed, avarice and ignorance has failed lamentably in his stewardship of the planet and the Living Earth hits back at him in ever increasing disaster. But the grasping of the holistic world view leads directly to the emergence of an alternative lifestyle, working with the Living Earth and not merely raping and polluting her. This means nothing less than the emergence of a new human species, filled with a love for all life and a readiness to serve the Whole in caring, cooperation and compassion. It has been called MULIER/HOMO NOETICUS a human being balanced male-female, of developing consciousness. This may give meaning to the statement "the meek shall inherit the Earth", for behind NOETICUS is a divine power which in the long run is absolutely unconquerable. Certainly the vision of the spiritual nature of man and the universe brings the conviction that the human potential is unlimited and that we stand at the threshold over which a quantum leap in consciousness is possible. Cosmic consciousness, a blending of mind with Universal Mind, is being achieved and demonstrated by more and more people. This world picture by no means implies that we just sit back and let God do the job. Human initiative is the vital factor, but we are working with energies of life and being from the ocean of Divine Intelligence which can bring about change. There never was such a generation in which to be alive. "Look up, for your redemption draweth nigh".