What is the Greater Community?

The Greater Community is the environment in which you live. It includes your world and all the worlds in its vicinity. It is a vast region of space where intelligent life is interacting with each other, representing a great network of relationships between societies and between individuals in societies, a greater cosmology and a greater universe. For this, it is necessary to have a greater perspective, a greater understanding and a greater religion.

It is difficult for those who only see their own personal culture and immediate environment to realize the importance and significance of Greater Community Spirituality. The significance isn’t merely in the scope of its teaching, its perspective and its understanding, but in the tremendous practical advantages that it gives you in daily life in your own world and in the very small affairs with which you are normally preoccupied.

The Greater Community here serves as a context—a context for seeing, for understanding and for knowing. It provides an opportunity to see beyond the limits of human thinking, human preoccupations and human beliefs and assumptions. This gives you a tremendous advantage. Thus, the emphasis here is not on what is beyond your realm, but on how to understand your realm within a larger context. What is occurring in other worlds and between other worlds is not your concern. Only very little of what is going on in the Greater Community will have any direct impact on humanity. However, the impact that is being exerted on your world from Greater Community forces is quite sufficient to create the need to learn a Greater Community Spirituality and a Greater Community Way of Knowledge.

Gaining a more universal understanding and perception is the emphasis when we speak of the Greater Community. In the Greater Community, there are many forms of intelligent life and great diversity in cultural ethics, preoccupations, concerns and activities. Yet what is common to all life everywhere that has evolved into the stage of intelligence is the presence and purpose of Knowledge.

Knowledge in the Greater Community is Greater Community Knowledge. The ability to receive Knowledge, to accept it and to apply it represents Wisdom, not only worldly Wisdom, but Wisdom in the Greater Community. As you were taught to see yourself in a very small way, we take you beyond yourself into a larger universe. Then, as you look back upon yourself, you will see what you could have never seen before. And you will recognize your environment more clearly than you ever could have previously.

The Greater Community is made up of a great diversity of life representing many different kinds of physical environments and many stages of individual, cultural, political and spiritual development. The range of this diversity is not your concern. However, the fact that it exists and that you will encounter its reality is profound indeed and gives rise to the great need that we are fulfilling in our presentation to you.

In the Greater Community, there are many worlds where intelligent life has evolved. And there are even more worlds and locations that Greater Community forces have colonized for resource acquisition or to seek new and more safeguarded environments. Worlds such as yours are quite rare and are therefore highly prized and regarded by those in the Greater Community who are aware of them. Indeed, your world has been used as a biological storehouse and resource for millennia by several different races.

You might ask, “Why hasn’t a Greater Community force come to colonize the world and taken it over?” There are several important reasons for this. The first is that the great biological diversity that you enjoy and that represents such splendor in your world poses a great dilemma for advanced races, many of whom have evolved in more sterile environments. Living here is difficult because of the biological diversity itself.

Another disadvantage to your world is that human beings live above ground, which is not preferred by most advanced races. Underground settlements have proven to be far more effective and accommodating, especially when you are actively engaged with other Greater Community powers. This gives you greater security and a greater opportunity to protect your physical resources and your population at large. However, living underground isolates you from biological elements in the outer environment, thus making you more susceptible to illness and attack by other kinds of organisms. This presents an interesting truth in the Greater Community: The more safe and secure you become, the more vulnerable you are.

Therefore, while your world is splendid in its diversity and in its abundance of plants and animals, it also poses a great difficulty for Greater Community visitors to dwell and to abide here with any degree of freedom and mobility. Yes, they can visit you and travel about. Yes, they can do marvelous things. However, they cannot live on the surface very effectively. That is why there is a great attempt now to interbreed with humanity in order to gain this adaptive biological advantage. Mix Greater Community social cohesion and intelligence with human physical endurance and you have a race that, indeed, can abide within the world.

These ideas might seem startling, but from a Greater Community perspective they are quite obvious and apparent. Because you have not functioned within this larger context consciously, these things may seem frightening or difficult to comprehend. However, you must now accept that you are not alone and that you are certainly not at the pinnacle of development in the Greater Community. This is both humbling and refreshingly honest. This gives you the advantage and the motivation to learn, to progress, to overstep your former limitations and boundaries and to gain new abilities and understanding, which your visitors will give you, either intentionally or inadvertently. The conditions of the world require this. This is the world that you have come from your Ancient home to serve. And these are the things that you must now learn and apply.

The Greater Community offers humanity redemption, but not in the way that you might think. It offers redemption because it poses a greater set of problems and occasions to which you must rise and to which you must now dedicate yourself. This provides escape from the terrible dilemmas and limitations that bind humanity and keep it in a desperate state of survival and self-preoccupation.

Solving greater problems gives you the opportunity to gain greater intelligence, greater ability and greater Wisdom. Only greater problems can do this because their resolution is necessary and because they require greater things from you. It is rare when a human being can develop these qualities without tremendous external demands. The external demands now are here. And though the risks are great and the problems are tremendous, the opportunities are unparalleled.

To meet these greater problems, you will need the Greater Power which the Creator has given you. You cannot rely on conventional wisdom; you cannot even rely upon your intuition. You must seek the Greater Power that is within you that can help you accelerate your development and meet a new set of requirements for adaptation, survival and accomplishment. In this, the Greater Community offers you redemption by requiring greater things of you and by calling upon a Greater Power within you. This is how humanity will advance. This is how all races in the Greater Community advance. And this is the evidence of the Creator’s work, for the Creator does what works, even if it is incomprehensible to those who are destined to be its beneficiaries.

Therefore, do not seek understanding first. Seek involvement and experience. Knowledge within you knows exactly what you must do in life, what you must aspire to and what you must accomplish. It cannot be confused or distracted by the pleasures or the terrors of this world. It is not ambivalent. It is not doubtful. It is not beset with painful memories of the past or a dismal view of the future. It is relentless in carrying you towards your fulfillment and your purpose, for they are one. Fulfilling your purpose represents your work in the world and the purpose for your coming here. The Greater Community is the context for understanding this now, for indeed humanity is in the process of emerging into the Greater Community. You have come to participate in this and to support its successful establishment.

Thus, the Greater Community is your context. It represents a greater life, requiring a greater Wisdom from you and the establishment of greater relationships in your life. This is the evidence of God’s work in the world, which is largely beyond human appreciation. You have not advanced far enough to look back and see the overall impact of this. You do not see how important it is for humanity’s survival, how important it is for humanity to meet the great environmental and political challenges that it faces within its world and how important it is for humanity to meet the even greater challenges of successful engagement with races from the Greater Community.

The Greater Community represents a new understanding of Divinity, Divine purpose and human accomplishment in physical life. It is an entirely new threshold through which to pass. In fact, it represents many new thresholds of understanding. For now, the Greater Community must be equated with the physical universe, but in truth it is not limited only to the physical realm of life. It includes the greater and more refined dimensions of intelligent life and intelligent interaction. It is a consummate experience of life and of the presence of life in which you are immersed.

When we bring you to the Greater Community, we bring you to your life as it really is, in all of its fullness, magnificence, diversity and depth. We do not take you from your world and place you somewhere else. We do not put you in alien environments. We do not give you alien viewpoints and alien understandings. Instead, we bring you to your life as it is and as it will be. And we call upon you to meet life as it is and to prepare for life as it will be.

What is theology but the recognition of Divine involvement in physical life? Speculating about what God is, what God looks like, where God lives or how God functions is clearly a pointless endeavor. The answers to these questions exist in the realm of Mystery far beyond human understanding and concepts, far beyond your ability to understand at the level of ideas and intellect. This is the realm of pure experience. It is the realm of affinity and relationship. It is the realm where greater purpose is to be found, experienced and fulfilled. Therefore, we take you beyond your understanding into a greater arena of life in which you already live to encounter the forces which are already there for you to encounter, to give you a greater presence of mind and a greater facility to deal with life’s mundane problems and to enable you to rise to meet the great challenges which you face in your world at this time. As we do this, we encourage humility, open-mindedness, faith, perseverance and clear discernment.

When we speak of the Greater Community, we are not advocating that you leave the world and travel to some distant place. We are not preparing you for space travel. We are not even encouraging space travel. Space travel will occur because that is part of your destiny and evolution, but that is not what is being encouraged here. You do not need to go to another world to realize you live in a Greater Community, for the Greater Community is at your doorstep. It is looking into your windows. It is in your neighborhood. It is here. It represents splendor and terror, wonderment and beauty, grave problems and dilemmas, just like your world but in a larger context and to a larger degree.

Meet these greater challenges and you will be able to solve the problems that are endemic in your own world. A greater set of problems will enable you to solve lesser ones. This is the ability you need to cultivate now. The Greater Community is redemptive because it creates necessity for you. It is not simply a problem that will exist at some distant time in the future. Greater Community forces are in the world now and are determining the direction of world evolution. The Greater Community represents your destiny and your fate, your dilemma and your greater promise. Success and failure here are critical, and that is why we give Greater Community understanding and Greater Community preparation such tremendous emphasis.

In this book, we present the theology of the Greater Community, which represents the will and the work of the Divine in physical life. To sit in the world and to speculate about what God is up to is not the work of theology. To recognize the work of the Divine and to involve yourself with it wisely and appropriately is what theology is all about. Theology is about understanding and action. If the understanding does not lead to action, then real understanding does not exist. This is the great difference between Wisdom and idealism. Wisdom leads to action, and idealism leads nowhere. It has no direction. You cannot act upon it effectively, for it is not going anywhere. Theology is visceral. It is real. It is here. It is the movement of the world and the movement of the Divine within the world and within the Greater Community as a whole.

The Greater Community is redemptive to you for another very important reason. It is your great opportunity to see into the larger arena of life, to see the grandeur of life and the expanse of life. In this, you will gain a greater appreciation for why you have come into the world and for who sent you. The Greater Community context gives you this opportunity and this requirement. You see, God redeems you by giving you something important to do, something greater than your personal preoccupations, fears and concerns. This is how your value is restored to you. This is how your gift is discovered. And this is how your existence in the world is justified and blessed.

You have been given a greater task and a greater understanding to learn. This is a greater mountain to climb that will make all the small hills that frustrated you before seem truly small and insignificant in comparison. Here you will escape your addictions and dilemmas because you are taking on something greater in life. Here you will escape fear and self-protection and all of the miseries that attend them by moving in a certain direction, by working within a larger context to gain a greater understanding and by using this larger context to resolve the little dilemmas that could only frustrate and obstruct you before. For all these reasons you are blessed to live in the Greater Community and to have the need and the opportunity to learn Greater Community Spirituality and all that it means for your well-being, your development and your continuance as a race.

The Greater Community offers you the requirement to unify your race, a requirement that you desperately need in your world, a requirement that is a necessary part of your evolution and that will make great accomplishments possible both now and in the future. Those things that overshadow you and that call you out of your individual preoccupied life call for the very things that the world needs from you and for you. No matter at what level, in what avenue or in what context your contribution is made, it is to serve this greater movement of humanity. The greater your understanding, the greater the gift that can be given.

Therefore, we present to you the Greater Community as it really is, not as you want it to be, not as it is hoped for, not as it is prescribed by the religions of your world, but as it really is—with all of its inherent problems and its magnificent opportunities.

Redemption is based upon accomplishment. This is the appropriate understanding to have. Therefore, when you pray for peace, for healing, for education, for Wisdom or for equanimity, what you are really calling for is a means for you to gain access to Knowledge, the Greater Mind that you possess, which joins you and bonds you to all life everywhere. You are calling for greater requirements to be given to you. Asking for peace or equanimity, Wisdom or Grace means that you are asking to be given those things that make the fulfillment and experience of these things possible. However, if you ask for escape from life or a reprieve from life or the avoidance of life, you are asking for nothing. In this case, should your request for peace and equanimity be granted and an answer given, you will not understand the answer. The opportunity is to be found in resolving the problems of life and in facing the problems of the Greater Community as they have bearing on your world. Accomplish something here and cultivate a greater awareness and understanding, and you will have a reward that could never be obtained otherwise.

The Greater Community is your new home. It is not new, but it is your new home while you are in the world. You do not live in a village any more, a little municipality or even one nation alone anymore. You are a citizen of a whole world. The Greater Community requires you to have this understanding and this identity because from a Greater Community perspective, human beings are all the same. They are all alike. The differences between you are insignificant. No matter where you are born, what language you speak, where you go to church or what kind of food you eat, from a Greater Community perspective you are a member of the human race. You are a human being. You are a citizen of this world.

This perception of yourself is necessary for your development because you are a member of one race and one world. Your race needs to become unified, even with all of its diversity—its idiosyncrasies, its cultural distinctions and its ethnic divisions. You are still a human being, a member of one race, of one world. Gain this awareness and great things can be done through you. The Creator can work through you. Your purpose can be experienced, and its contribution can be given. Only the Greater Community can offer this to you. You cannot gain this if you are bound to your culture, to your race, to your nation, to your family, or to your daily affairs.

As you learn over time to gain a Greater Community perspective and understanding, you will realize what needs your attention and what problems and difficulties you must set aside or avoid. Then your life will become simple, direct, magnificent and demanding—all the things that lead to accomplishment and to true satisfaction. Life asks a lot of you because your prayers for peace have been answered. You live in a demanding situation because your need for Knowledge and self-integration is so pressing. If you regret that the world is the way it is, you will miss its opportunity. If you regret having to consider or accept that your world is emerging into the Greater Community, then you will miss the answer to your prayers. God gives you something to do that takes you out of your misery and requires that you demonstrate a greater Wisdom and intelligence, both for others and for yourself.

This is the way because in these greater activities, greater relationships are fostered and greater abilities are called upon. You are freed from the past and are called into the present to something greater where you are needed, where you are destined to be and where your contribution is required. This is fulfillment. The Greater Community is calling this from you because you live in the Greater Community, because you are part of a race that is emerging into the Greater Community and because forces from the Greater Community are engaging with the world and are encountering people everywhere. Do not try to understand this, for your understanding cannot encompass its full meaning. However, you can experience it and recognize its value and its meaning for you specifically.

If you can accept that you have come from beyond the world to serve the world, then you will realize that the world you have come to serve is offering the conditions that will bring forth that which you came to give. If you can accept this, then you will stop condemning the world and start looking for its opportunities and allow it to call from you that which you came to give. This calling is natural and the response from you will be natural, more natural than anything else that you can think of. If you can accept these things, then you have entered the path of redemption, accomplishment and fulfillment. It is a long path, a path with many challenges and great learning requirements, but it is a path that will set you apart from others to such an extent that you can gain a greater understanding and a greater ability. And others will benefit from your accomplishment and from your education.

Your preparation for the Greater Community represents the greatest and most vital education that can be fostered and extended in the world today. This education is the only thing that will enable you to solve the growing global problems of the world that seem so overwhelming and that your societies seem so incapable of facing and so poorly equipped to resolve. Preparation for the Greater Community is the most essential thing. It involves all aspects of learning. It requires that the student of Knowledge become effective at solving problems on a small scale so that problems on a larger scale can be recognized, attended to and resolved.

What is the Greater Community? It is your answer. It is what you have come to attend to. Working in your own specific way, you will play a part in the world’s evolution and will fulfill your mission here and the mission of those who have sent you. This is the great promise that we offer. This is the great promise that is born of the world’s emergence into the Greater Community. And this is the great promise that Knowledge within you must respond to, for in this it has no choice.