We recently learned of the sad passing of Sarah McKechnie, a friend and coworker, who wrote extensively on these pages over many years.
Sarah led a dedicated life of service. In her early years, she worked as a volunteer teaching English in Turkey with the US Peace Corps. Ever seeking to understand more about life and the part she could play in serving humanity from a deeper level, she joined the Arcane School (the work of the School is funded by the Lucis Trust). The School trains people worldwide in meditation and service to develop and understand their responsibilities in serving not only their communities but also the wider world.
She went on to work at the Lucis Trust headquarters in New York. In 1997, she became International President of the Lucis Trust. During this period, Sarah traveled widely for international speaking engagements, conferences, and seminars, talking to coworkers and students of the Arcane School who shared the same vision of a better world, and attending to the administrative and spiritual responsibilities of overseeing the three headquarters centers in New York, Geneva, and London.
In 2000, Sarah and her husband Dale (former Vice President of the Lucis Trust) began a series of 30-minute Inner Sight Radio Programs. Over an eight-year period, these programs were broadcast by NYC WOR in the New York area to an estimated audience of 40,000. They focused on a number of spiritual themes relevant to the advancement of human thinking and life. Many of these edited transcripts and audio recordings can be found on the Inner Sight section of this website. Presently, about 150 programs have been uploaded. Further transcripts and audio recordings are uploaded each month.
In 2012, Sarah and Dale retired from the Lucis Trust and moved to the Pacific Northwest of the US.
Sarah worked tirelessly to help bring about a transformative change in human consciousness, to cultivate right relationships among peoples and nations, and in our approach to God. She will be greatly missed by her friends and coworkers around the world. But no doubt, she continues to serve on the inner lighted side of life.
Sarah is survived by her husband, Dale. Dale recently sent to us a beautiful reflection of Sarah’s final days, which he wanted to share with others, in the hope that they too will come to recognize that death is release into greater life.
Sarah’s Release
Dale Mckechnie
This article is very personal, as its focus is on the recent death of my wife Sarah. I was impressed by a quote I recently read in one of the Bailey books: “The emphasis during the past two thousand years has been on death…the emphasis in the Aquarian Age will be on life and freedom from the tomb of matter”.(1) In many ways this is a description of the way my wife passed out of her body. She knew her so called death was coming soon, so she prepared for it. There was no sense of fear; there was only preparation in her mind of what needed to be done. She, of course, being a student of the Alice Bailey teachings knew much about the nature of death. It wasn’t a process that needed to be feared because to her it was a peaceful release from a depleted body; it was “freedom from the tomb of matter”. The body into which she had incarnated had become like a tomb, a closed space in which one could be bound for hundreds of years unless one was aware of the process of freedom. She knew the process.
I remember saying to her while she lay on the bed: “It’s time to go sweetheart; it’s time to let go of this body”. Her body at that time had very little energy, so she could not speak, but she heard my voice and I could tell she agreed. The preparation for release took three days and on the third day, early in the morning, she departed and gained her freedom.
Her so called “death” was very similar to what one may read in many of the Bailey books. For example: “Then comes the happy release which we call death, that great moment in which the ‘spirit in prison’ escapes from the confining walls of its physical form. Our ideas about death have been erroneous; we have looked upon it as the great and ultimate terror, whereas in reality it is the great escape, the entrance into a fuller measure of activity, and the release of the life from the crystallized vehicle and an inadequate form”.(2) And also this quote: “There is no death. There is, as you know, entrance into fuller life. There is freedom from the handicaps of the fleshly vehicle”.(3)
Sarah knew all of this. She, like everyone, had been through this process hundreds of times in the past. And in each life a little more perfection and purification is achieved. Much was achieved in this life time; it was a life of loving service. And I now hope she will wait until I come and stand by her side.
(1) The Destiny of the Nations p. 151.
(2) The Consciousness of the Atom pp. 64-65
(3) A Treatise on White Magic p. 300