My Heroes

Heroism and Humanity by William Allan. Photo credit: Glasgow Museums.

A talk given to the Interfaith Communities United for Justice and Peace, May 6th, 2011

Good morning.

On this theme of Heroes and Heroines, it is firstly necessary for me to clarify what such a figure means to me for it is not something that I often think about. Perhaps I should. 

So when I do think about it, I am looking for someone who has stood apart from humanity and yet reminded us of our true self, and not just on an individual basis but on a worldwide human scale: someone who has literally changed or else reshaped the whole philosophical understanding and consciousness of mankind, and moved us in a new direction.

Such individuals are, it almost goes without saying, few and far between; though for me two certainly come to mind and stand out, to the extent that they both greatly changed my life and shaped my philosophical understanding of what this life is really all about. What is of interest, and again almost goes without saying, is that they have much in common.

Both came as Revolutionaries, not seeking nor needing approval or consent from the established hierarchies. Not that they came to overtly overthrow those established hierarchies for their methods were peaceful, borne out of love and a greater, direct and personal realization of what life really is: this profound gift that we are all so miraculously blessed to share, and yet which we have to a greater or lesser extent, so misunderstood, trivialized, diminished and demeaned. Rather, they both came to remind us of how special life is; how utterly and unspeakably rare, how precious and breathtakingly remarkable and, in the ultimate sense, how Divine it is. And what they have also both shared – regrettably, tragically, shamefully – and I am sorry to say that again it almost goes without saying, was the injustice, ridicule, maltreatment and, in the case of one, murder, that they both were forced to endure and experience.

The first of these, you may have surmised, was Jesus Christ who became a hero for myself when I first read, of my own spontaneous choosing and volition, the four Gospels - as a young man somewhat lost and confused in this world that over-emphasized the importance and value of temporal and material profit and gain, and power and influence. The teachings and lessons of Christ gave me in clear words and thoughts the examples and teachings that I needed to both understand the greater purpose of life and how to live it. I shall forever be in his debt for the sacrifices that he made, if truth be told, for all of us.

The second of my heroes is much more recent and, for myself, took on where Jesus had left off. At a time when I was struggling not so much with my own life but more with the world as a whole, asking where are Jesus and the Apostles now at a time, at least in my mind, when we most needed them, I learned the simple bare truth that what is sought with pure heart, motive and intention can indeed be found, though almost inevitably not in public places. Another truism I also learned was the metaphysical understanding that when the student is ready the Master will appear. And so it was for myself, at 25 years of age, when I was still living and working in London, England.

As Hamlet so well noted, there is indeed “a Divinity which shapes our ends rough hew them how we will”, and through, on the face of it, a curious set of circumstances, I encountered this other great hero of my life, my own Spiritual Master and Teacher who, a few years after finding, I was to follow to Los Angeles where I later became his personal assistant, even holding his hand when, in 1997 at the age of 78, he drew his last breath.

Yoga Master, Dr. George King sitting in padmasana, also known as “lotus pose.” © 2022 The Aetherius Society.

The man, and at least in the great yogic sense and tradition, Master, I am referring to was George King. Born in England less than three months after the ending of World War I and as such, like almost all families in Europe at that depressed and war-weary time, he was forced to endure a hard and impoverished upbringing. But he was well loved and tended by his psychically-gifted mother and grandmother, and schoolteacher father, who together taught him that there is more to this world than just that which we encounter through our physical senses, and by his teenage years this was something he would directly know for himself.

Such experiences naturally inclined him to non-violence and so, as a conscientious objector in 1939, instead of taking up arms against the Nazis he joined the London fire service, becoming a section leader during the devastating bombing of the Blitz in which he witnessed firsthand the killing of innocent civilians, and the tragic horrors and pain this inflicted on ordinary human lives. Encountering such wanton and unnecessary destruction, borne out of a wickedness that had once again ensnared humanity and driven it half insane, he turned his private attention to the study of yoga, an ancient science little practiced and even less understood in the West, especially at that time, through which he began to discover and unravel the deeper mysteries of the human mind and soul. After ten years of such practice, often for eight or more hours a day, and in addition to his full-time work, he attained mastery with a full rising of the Kundalini through the spinal column that brings about the goal of Yoga – a Sanskrit word meaning Union with God – as attained by Masters most commonly associated with Eastern mysticism and spirituality.

This was now a time of the Cold War which defined a world one might argue driven to new levels of insanity in which the atom bomb was replaced by the hydrogen bomb; “tested” in 1958 alone, the year of my own birth, with the equivalent of 1,600 atom bombs the size of those on Hiroshima and Nagasaki - and four years later by no less than the equivalent of 12,000 bombs, exploded primarily by the United States and the Soviet Union almost for the sheer and literal hell of it, and as if there should be no tomorrow.

However, to those paying attention, or one might say, “to those with eyes to see”, it was also a time of Space Visitors – a new era upon our world in which the term “flying saucer” was coined in 1947 by Kenneth Arnold, who had witnessed several disk shaped objects skipping across the skyline in Washington State.

The deeper questions were ‘why were they here?’ and ‘what was their message for our faltering world?’

Time here does not permit the opportunity to pose an in-depth answer to these profound and important questions, but to myself 25 years ago, most troubled and concerned by our world as I was, I sought answers to these questions and in Dr. George King, I found them. For through his ability to enter what is termed a deep Samadhic trance, gained through thousands of hours of intense yogic practice and discipline, he could be and indeed was used by these Space Intelligences as a Voice; and for those who were prepared to venture beyond the ridicule and scorn that, through naivety, fear, skepticism and doubt tend to put off or dissuade the less curious and determined, those answers were remarkably profound and – as time will surely tell – of a scale that can, and indeed I believe will, change the whole philosophical understanding of our race as to the truth and beauty, the unlimited potential and possibility of all that it means to be human in this vast unlimited Cosmos caused by the Creator we all call God; and at a time, more than ever before, when we really need to know.

The Aetherius Society’s logo. © 2022 The Aetherius Society.

Dr. George King, the second of my two heroes, in 1955 founded the organization to which I am proud to both belong and now serve as a Director, and which is named after an Intelligence we believe came from the planet Venus called - Aetherius.