If someone had told me on January 1, 2010, as I was completing my mandala, that in thirty-one days I would no longer be bankrupt, I'd have said it was impossible. But on the soul level, it was not only possible, but it was also easy and perhaps even inevitable.
Jung explained this miraculous power: “Most mandalas have an intuitive, irrational character and, through their symbolical content, exert a retroactive influence on the unconscious. They therefore possess a ‘magical’ significance…whose possible efficacy was never consciously felt” (Mandala Symbolism). This is a great relief. It means that you do not have to, nor should you, have conscious control over everything you put on your mandala. Lao Tzu knows why:
Trying to control the future
is like trying to take the master carpenter's place.
When you handle the master carpenter's tools,
chances are that you'll cut yourself.
—Tao Te Ching, verse 74, Translation by Stephen Mitchell
There is something far greater than individual will at work in the mandala. To Jung it appeared as if “the solution, seemingly of its own accord, appears out of nature…felt as ‘grace’” (Memories, Dreams, Reflections).
No one understood this mysterious grace better than Jose and Miriam Arguelles. Their definitive book Mandala, long out of print, is my essential mandala resource. Every time I open it, I find something deep to ponder. They begin by explaining the principle of the center, which is the source of the mandala's energy: “The center is the beginning of the Mandala as it is the beginning and origin of all form…. The center is symbolic of the eternal potential.” Then they explain how we work with that eternal potential:
Essentially, each human being is a Mandala…; but this Mandala must be developed and created anew for each individual…. The Mandala may be regarded as an engine of change, releasing energy to the extent to which the individual using it and concentrating upon it is capable of identifying himself with it. Ultimately, the Mandala leads its user to a visualization and realization of the source of energy within.
I love the term an engine of change. It sets my heart singing. But how is a mandala an engine of change? For that we need a dose of modern physics. Einstein opened the door when he said, “A human being is part of the whole, called by us ‘universe,’ a part limited in time and space. He experiences his thoughts and feelings as something separate from the rest—a kind of optical delusion of his consciousness.” In Science and the Akashic Field, Ervin Laszlo, the great systems theorist, explains,
[R]esearchers are rediscovering what Einstein realized and ancient cultures have always known: that we are linked by more subtle and encompassing connections…. [T]here is not only matter and energy in the universe, but also a more subtle yet real element…. In-formation of this kind connects all things in space and time—indeed it connects all things through space and time.
But how is it all connected? My dream showed everything floating in black space and connected by golden threads. Physicists call that black space the Akashic Field. Akasha is an ancient Sanskrit word for the invisible ether in which everything is connected. In 1907, Nikola Tesla, the father of modern communication technology, first postulated that this invisible element exists. In an unpublished paper, he described an “original medium,” a force field that becomes matter when energy acts on it.
With modern equipment, scientists can now observe the effects of this original medium—a quantum field of energy that remains after all other forms of energy are removed at absolute zero. They call this primal energy the Quantum Vacuum, Akashic Field, or A-field.
It may be a vacuum, but it sure isn't empty. Laszlo explains that the Akashic Field is superfluid, superdense, frictionless, and positively alive with information. Everything in the universe is not only immersed in the Akashic Field, but everything also sends energy and information back and forth to everything else. This exchange of energy is called quantum entanglement, and it means nothing is separate. Laszlo's startling conclusion is that “all matter is conscious…there is no categorical divide between matter and mind” (Science and the Akashic Field).
Well, if science can point to the presence of the Akashic Field, then perhaps my best sources of information on the power of the mandala and my vision of the floating sphere were the masters and teachers of the Akashic Record. The Akashic Record is a name for the countless traces of information that have passed through that quantum medium throughout time. Many cultures sensed the presence of this unseen library and gave it a special name; the Hebrew Bible, for example, calls it the Book of Life. This information is so precious that it is protected by highly evolved beings called masters and teachers. With training, you can learn to open your own records. Through the brilliant Akashic Record trainer and reader,
Lauralyn Bunn, I asked the masters and teachers to please explain what I was shown. They said:
First and foremost, it has geometric information. It is a mathematical representation through symbology of that which is law. The image contains sacred symbols. The gold lines are the grid of information transfer and communication. The black sphere is not a void; it is black as in the law of photography. Black contains all that is yet to be manifest.
Wouldn't Jung have been thrilled to hear this? As much time as he spent studying the effects of mandalas, he did not know that the mandala is a three-dimensional sphere or that it sends and receives information. This 3-D aspect matters because, Laszlo explains, it means that our intentions, our thoughts, our desires—our mandalas—are not only sparks of information that go out into an information-dense universe, but they also go out as three-dimensional holograms. And those holograms have seemingly magical powers. Laszlo admits this image of information as hologram “boggles the mind,” but, he says, it makes perfect sense in a quantum, everything-is-connected-to-everything universe. “Through the holograms created in and conveyed by the A-field, things are directly ‘in-formed’ by the things that are most like them,” he says in Science and the Akashic Field.
This means that my mandala—my 3-D sphere hologram—resonates only with other holograms holding similar information, like a tuning fork that vibrates only with tuning forks calibrated to the same pitch. And because this resonation happens in a fluid universe, it can happen very, very fast. “[T]hrough torsion waves in the vacuum the A-field links things and events in the universe at staggering speeds—a billion times the velocity of light,” said Laszlo (Science and the Akashic Field). As I read this, I realized my mandala was not only a hologram, but like a hologram, it also moved. It released energy and received energy. It released information and received information. My mandala was alive. It was a wheel. It spun. It moved.
With that level of information, energy, and speed at play, I guess going from bankrupt to bankful in thirty days wasn't such a miracle after all. Nor are all the other stories I've heard from people in my Lotus and the Lily telecourses, who tell me about the intentions on their Intention Mandalas coming to pass practically before the ink is dry.
In light of the magical properties of our quantum universe, Jung's poetic description of a mandala now makes perfect sense. Quoting Goethe's Faust, Jung said the mandala is “Formation, Transformation, Eternal Mind's eternal recreation.” I didn't understand this when I first read it, but now I see that when we create our mandala, we form it and, in the process, form ourselves. Then, as we live with it and release its powerful intentions and commitments, we are transformed, and the whole miraculous adventure happens according to the playful laws of Eternal Mind.
There was a woman in the sixteenth century who
