It’s also called the Festival of Humanity, because humanity’s role is to receive, assimilate and distribute the spiritual energies that pour in at the time of the Higher Interlude.
Robert: Welcome to Inner Sight. Inner sight is simply seeing that which is always present, but not yet fully recognized. You have within you the ability to see yourself and the world around you in a new way, with new eyes. So, stay with us and together we’ll look at the world and ourselves with inner sight. Our theme for today is the Festival of Goodwill and we’ll begin with a thought from the works of Alice Bailey: “The hope of the world lies in the development of goodwill. Not peace as the word is usually interpreted but the cultivation of a spirit of goodwill intelligently applied.” Since we’re speaking about goodwill, we’d like to talk about the Festival of Goodwill and perhaps even invite you to join us in that festival. Can you tell us something about the Festival of Goodwill?
Sarah: It’s a festival that’s held every year and has been observed for many decades now, at least since the 1930s or 1940s. It coincides with the full moon of Gemini. We’ve talked about how many religious festivals are timed according to the phases of the moon: Passover, Easter, Ramadan, among others, and the Festival of Goodwill comes with the full moon of Gemini. It’s the third of the three spiritual festivals which are discussed at considerable length in the books of Alice Bailey. These three consecutive months of the three spiritual festivals are called the Higher Interlude of the spiritual year, meaning the highest point of receptivity on our planet to inpouring spiritual energies. We’ve talked in recent programs about the Festival of Easter, which is the great western or Christian festival, and the Wesak Festival, which is the great Buddhist festival—the major Eastern festival of Buddhists, and now this third and final Festival of Goodwill demonstrates the partnership and the cooperation of what are called in the books of Alice Bailey “the two brothers,” the Buddha and the Christ. The Buddha arose out of the Hindu tradition of ancient India and a religion developed around his teachings which is called Buddhism. Christ arose out of the Jewish tradition and a religion developed around his teachings which is called Christianity. So, we can see that there are really four major world faiths represented in their cooperation. And on this day, the Christ acts as representative of humanity, receiving the blessing brought by the Buddha at the time of Wesak, releasing it into human consciousness and stimulating the potential of human beings to express the energy of goodwill.
Dale: Yes, it’s a very important festival because it reaches right down to humanity and to human consciousness, and it is the time when this blessing of the Buddha is taken by the Christ and distributed into human consciousness. It’s a very powerful festival and particularly so if people join together in groups and use this time for group meditation to help distribute the energy and goodwill into human consciousness.
Sarah: That’s why many groups all over the world do have meditation meetings at this time, and we will be having one here in New York and anyone who is interested in coming is welcome to attend. We have a group meditation to cooperate in this release of spiritual energy into human consciousness. I suppose I could say a word about some of the other names of this festival. It’s kind of unusual in that the writings of Alice Bailey give it a number of different names. It’s called the Festival of Goodwill; it’s also called the Festival of Humanity, because humanity’s role in receiving, assimilating and distributing the spiritual energies that pour in at the time of the Higher Interlude is so crucial. Humanity is the linchpin and the question mark in this whole process of spiritual energy being poured into our world. Humanity has to be the receiving mechanism for its anchorage on Earth. I think there are some other names of this festival, another one being the Festival of Unification, because unity is a crucial factor in being able to express goodwill.
Dale: It’s also sometimes referred to as the Christ’s festival, because the Christ is the major central figure. In fact, he’s the central figure in all three of the festivals: the Easter Festival as the resurrection and the spirit of life and goodwill, and at the Wesak Festival he is present to receive the blessings of the Buddha, and then at the Festival of Goodwill he is of course the central figure. What is also important at this time is the sounding of the Great Invocation, and this is the prayer we’re going to talk about a little bit later on. It’s the very prayer that Sarah sounds at the end of each of our programs, so you may want to tune in your ear to that because it’s crucial and it’s central to the celebration of this Festival of Goodwill.
Sarah: One of the interesting things about these three spiritual festivals is that they demonstrate or they depict the cooperation of humanity in God’s Plan. Humanity has a part to play in this bringing of spiritual energy to our world and its distribution to all living things on our earth. So, these festivals demonstrate how humanity must be engaged and guided to cooperate with spiritual Hierarchy, with the Creator, in the fulfillment of the Plan for our world. Year after year after year, these festivals are observed with an emphasis on meditation because that’s how the human mind is engaged in this cooperation. It’s cooperation first and foremost through conscious consent and understanding; that’s why meditation is such an important factor.
Robert: People use the word “goodwill” so often, and sometimes I wonder if any of us really understand the deeper meaning of it. We hear that reference to goodwill so frequently. What does it really mean in the true sense?
Sarah: It’s one of those words, as you say, that’s so frequently heard and yet not that easy to define. There are a few definitions that I think give you something to hook your mind onto. One that I especially love — but it’s very mysterious — is from the books of Alice Bailey. It says that “Goodwill is the touchstone that will transform the world.” A touchstone, as I understand it, is something by which you measure the worth of something, particularly a mineral. You rub it against the touchstone and it reveals its true quality.
Dale: Yes, that’s where it originated. I think you rubbed the gold or whatever the mineral was against this touchstone, and it defined the value of it.
Sarah: Well, doesn’t that thought then — that goodwill is the touchstone that will transform the world — suggest that all lasting change has to be founded in goodwill, or it has to be premised on goodwill? In other words, if you look at the political realm, coercion and forcing consent from people doesn’t have true goodwill because their wills are not engaged. They’re being convinced against their will, and there’s that old cliché, “A man convinced against his will is of the same opinion still.” So, goodwill as the touchstone that will bring transformation to the world is one definition. Another is that loving determination or fixed intention to bring about right human relations is an expression of goodwill: loving intention.
Dale: Goodwill is an expression of the energy of love and it is said in the writings of Alice Bailey that goodwill is humanity’s first attempt to express the love of God. It is related to the will of God because at the higher end you would have the will of God, and at the lower expression, here in the human kingdom, about the best that we can accomplish right now is an expression of goodwill. But that’s one thing that gives this energy of goodwill its real dynamic, because it has this higher source of energy that provides the dynamism and the power that makes this energy so powerful and able to work to build right human relations.
Sarah: Yes, it has a building quality. It also has a creative aspect that to my mind is related to the concept of forgiveness that both goodwill and forgiveness create for the future. They turn the consciousness, the determination, the will, toward that which it hopes to achieve rather than being imprisoned in looking back at the past and trying to settle a score or trying to find justice in circumstances that happened which seem terribly unjust and unfair. If you are engaged in that, you’re always trying to recreate the past and that can’t be done, whereas goodwill orients you toward the future in that you choose to create something for the larger whole and for the future that will be better than what you have experienced in the past and present. So, it has a creative component to it.
Dale: Right, it’s both an attitude and a harmonizing energy. As you say, it’s not really always taken seriously today because it is looked upon as simply a passive kind of expression.
Sarah: It’s not at all passive.
Dale: No, it isn’t, and it’s a very necessary energy to establish any kind of relationships. That’s really what is needed in the world today—the building of relationship, and the energy of goodwill is the only energy that will accomplish this.
Sarah: It turns aside anger and aggression. It’s enormously creative. I remember the first time I ever saw somebody express goodwill in a way that I was really able to recognize it, when years ago, watching Gloria Steinem on a television programme in which she was speaking about feminist issues, and a woman in the audience stood up and berated her verbally and really abusively. She was very angry, very defensive. I think Ms. Steinem must have touched on something that really cut her to the quick because she really went after her. I remember Gloria Steinem listening to her calmly, kindly, hearing her out and responding without any aggression or defensiveness at all. She respected that woman’s viewpoint and disagreed with some of it, but also accepted what she had to say and what she felt without being hurt by it personally and also without attacking her in return. It was such an impressive example of how goodwill turns aside aggression that I’ve never forgotten it.
Robert: Yes, it’s interesting, and what you said before also reminds me of that biblical thought that God knows the heart of man. I guess true goodwill is being genuine in one’s heart about an expression of celebration over another’s achievement, of joy and to be in sync with the spiritual world and God. I suppose that genuine feeling has to really be in the heart, not just a platitude; like to shake someone’s hand and wish them well, but in your heart you’re wishing you were in that position and had achieved that. In what way is goodwill working out in the world?
Sarah: Well, with all that’s happening right now, for example, in the Middle East and Afghanistan, I think there’s a great desire for goodwill. People may feel that there is really very little goodwill being expressed, but I think it’s a matter of knowing what to look for. To begin with, it seems to me that to believe in goodwill as a powerful spiritual energy, you also have to believe that the rule of law lies behind what’s happening on the outer plains, and by the rule of law I mean God’s law, spiritual law. If you have that belief that all things are righted eventually, that karma brings divine justice in its own cycle, then you don’t feel that you have to even every score or render every judgement, that some of that can be left to God, to spiritual forces to take care of. So, with that idea in mind, I think that the globalization we see underway in the world is teaching us that if we don’t realize and accept that we all belong to something much greater than any one individual, we are never going to achieve goodwill. We are all caught up in something that is far more powerful, far greater, far more significant than any one individual, and I think that’s what globalization is making so apparent to consciousness today.
Dale: I think one of the ways you see goodwill working out is in seeing what is trying to counter goodwill, and that’s the forces of evil that are rampant in the world too. One rises up when the other one does, and goodwill illuminates the evil in the world by its very presence because it provides an alternative, a more positive alternative that allows the energy of love to flow through the world. Wherever that’s been tried, we see graphically many ways in which it has produced something far more powerful and positive than evil can ever achieve.
Sarah: What is that line from Alice Bailey, that “goodwill reveals cleavages”? Is that what you are saying?
Dale: Yes, that’s part of it because it’s the energy of love, and love brings imperfections to the surface. That’s one reason why I think we have evil rearing its ugly head again in the world. This has been going on for a hundred years or so, but we’ve been kind of working through these evil tendencies in human nature because there is such a growth of goodwill in the world. You can see it where great lines of relationship are being built in economics, in the world of finance, in the world of the economy and the globalization that you mentioned, and in the unification and integration of countries like Europe with the European Union. That couldn’t be built without the energy of goodwill. We saw what happened when they brought down the Berlin Wall. Once that came down, then everything began to flow from East to West and through all of the countries in Europe, and there was a great outpouring of creative energy at that point. So, it breaks down barriers, it reveals cleavages, and it builds bridges. This is the healthy, positive part of the energy of goodwill.
Sarah: So, would you say that what’s happening, for example in the Middle East, might be a temporary effect on the path to real goodwill?
Dale: Yes, all of that discontent is being brought to the surface and it has to be dealt with.
Sarah: Wrong conditions are being illumined. I don’t think you can establish a true peace or ask for harmony when conditions exist that at their core are wrong. So, it’s coming to public awareness that there are things that have to be changed on all sides, and that’s what they’re dealing with.
Dale: I think it’s recognised in the hearts of most people there, that the eventual outcome has to be built on relationships, and that’s the only thing that will solve the problems there.
Robert: You’ve talked in the past about World Invocation Day. How is that related to this Festival of Goodwill?
Sarah: Well, in 1952 the first observance of World Invocation Day was held, and it’s now something that is truly observed worldwide by groups and individuals in virtually every continent and in many countries. It’s based on public recognition and public sounding of the Great Invocation. This is, at this point, genuinely a world prayer. It’s been translated into some seventy languages, and more languages are being added all the time. I think the most recent language in which the Great Invocation was translated was the language spoken in Rwanda. I don’t remember the name of the language, but how heartening to think that the people of Rwanda can now say the Great Invocation in their own tongue because they certainly need its healing, stimulating energies. The idea of World Invocation Day is to fulfill one of the names of this festival, the Festival of Unification, in the sense of inspiring large numbers of people to cooperate in a unified expression or unified demand for God’s light, love and power to be made recognizable and to manifest on Earth. That’s the appeal that stands behind the Great Invocation.
Dale: And that’s why everybody can participate in this. You don’t have to sit on the sidelines and leave it up to somebody else. Everybody listening can participate in this festival — or at any time of the year for that matter — by sounding out this Great Invocation, and really reflecting on the meaning behind the words because that’s where the power lies.
Sarah: Some people make a habit on this particular day — World Invocation Day — of repeating the invocation every hour; some of them say it every fifteen minutes. There is an effort in New Zealand that I know of, where a group there has each year for the last three or four years registered their co-workers so that an individual will be sounding the Great Invocation every fifteen minutes throughout the twenty-four hours of World Invocation Day. Another suggestion people might consider is saying it at dawn when they get up, at noon, at five in the afternoon, at sunset, and then just before they go to bed. That would be five times a day, but this constant expression of demand for God’s light, love, and purpose has a powerful potency because it’s said that whatever humanity determines that it must have, it will achieve that, because desire is the strongest force available to us. The point is to lift and transmute our desires.
Robert: And of course, the Great Invocation is the prayer that’s said at the end of this show, and Sarah, I can’t tell you how many of our listeners have told me that they say the prayer along with us as you say the prayer at the end of the show. That’s about all the time we have for our discussion today. You’ve been listening to Inner Sight. Now we would like to close with the world prayer called the Great Invocation. It’s a call for light and love and goodwill to flow into the world and into our hearts. Let’s listen for a moment to these powerful words.
Sarah: Closes the program by reciting the adapted version of the Great Invocation.
(This is an edited transcript of a recorded radio program called “Inner Sight.” This conversation was recorded between the host, Robert Anderson, and the then President and Vice-President of Lucis Trust, Sarah and Dale McKechnie.)
(Transcribed and edited by Carla McLeod)
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