Dear Team:

Here is a letter to Mary. Our new Brazilian editor who is working closely with Deo whose husband is a bit ill. Mary has great experience on the spiritual path. Welcome!

Michael

Mary:

The thing about Harvest of Gems is that it is NOT just about Tibetan Buddhism. Tibetan Buddhism, aswell as the Harvest of Gems pilgrimage are just scaffolds for deeper ideas about mind energy and how it becomes transformed through time and space.

How mind energy in any individual just shifts and becomes purified and how this process has echos in
larger group minds which are collections of individual minds. The idea of karma shows how past human mind activity determines present and future human mind activity. But this is NOT a mechanistic system.

NO. There is an element of grace involved which is mysterious and cannot be predicted. This is why faith is important. Higher forces are at play which are not understood by most humans. The act of puja is not just a process of psychic waste management. It is also a process of psychic purification in preparation for higher forms of spiritual evolution.

Psychic energy is not spiritual energy. No. Psychic energy like material energy is a double-edged sword. Spiritual energy is NOT. Spiritual energy can NEVER hurt you. This is why it is so precious. Teilhard de Chardin saw spiritual energy as the guiding force of all evolution both psychic and material.

I feel that most mainstream Buddhist publishers will NOT appreciate Harvest of Gems. In Brazil or in
America. Why? Because Harvest of Gems transcends Buddhism. It is more UNIVERSAL in its symbols and language. Buddhism is a universal religion like Christianity, but it is still a prisoner like Christianity of certain symbols which have lost much of their power to inspire in today's rapidly changing world.

Harvest of Gems is pointing in a new direction even as it uses old religious symbols to jump off into this new direction. Challenge and Glory continues this new direction in a more conscious manner. My lastest poem The Alien which I just wrote two months ago breaks even more new ground in a very powerful and shocking way.

Michael