Chapter One - An Introduction

Once below a time...

There was colonial world, settled long ago by a great race of humans, called the Azureons.  It is not far away at all, circling the small orange sun of a double star system.

The Double Star System of Rina

I saw it once in a dream and it continues to fill in its own details as the years go by.   I have learned much by examining it.

This took place on a planet called Naturia.  It really is surprising just how close in proximity to our own world Naturia is. You might say it is practically right on top of us. I think that is why I am compelled to tell you about it.

Naturia

It was like a heavenly place, yet below heaven, with fragrant grassy vistas, savory oceans, snow-covered mountain tops, fluffy white clouds...and nitrogen blue skies. It was a green and azure gem of vibrant life, floating in the blackness of the space vacuum--the medium of the void.

Peopled by a diverse, beautiful and imaginative race of humans, it was bursting with energy and potential, and was allowed to develop on its own, only rarely being influenced by its distant home world's human architects, and by the celestial authorities who accompanied the colonists there--yet were unseen to them. Naturia was singular in its agricultural, artistic and musical ways, and this made it the envy of its neighboring worlds... 

Though technologically more advanced, it was like our world in many historic ways.  At the time that I caught my glimpse, a uncomfortable force had recently altered Naturia's social evolution, making it suffer under a new kind of greed--one that we should understand well, but we don't.  It was not a greed for money, but a greed for POWER.

Naturia's morals were not at war with its technology.  Materially, its once flourishing democracy was now at war with its space-age capitalism, but this was the smoke screen for deeper menace.  Spiritually, its Noble heritage was at war with an iniquitous disloyalty, that transcendent human experience. 

However, I saw the beginning of a turn towards the blending of personal religions along with the institutionalization of free thought, instead of the other way around (as it is here on earth).

Evil could still find a place to function there though.  And it took that opportunity, prosecuting its agenda with great abandon.

Naturia was in the earliest stages of its Later Days when I saw it. The two periods before - the Early and Middle Age of its settlement - were studied by this later and more spiritually advanced generation with great scrutiny and interest, for they had become discouraged and would have been willing to sacrifice anything to find what they had lost.

In the Middle Age of this world there had been a kind of spiritual unity.  There were no churches, as there are on earth.  Their "religion" was already fully evolved on the home world long before Naturia was even settled.  But now, after the so-called "Economic Revolution," a new spiritual battle was taking place; seen, and unseen.  A strictly secular and rationalist tendency began to dominate the minds and harden the hearts of those who held the power. The political pendulum seemed to tarry there, with them, suspended for years, and was only falling back now, because it was pushed by an Intention stronger than any other.

Eventually this pendulum would come to rest in the center. Fortune was about to be brought by the work of that single generation: calling itself the "Children of the Blue Dawn." Its days of influence became known as the Transformation. And as we will see, the word is especially appropriate.

Sometimes when changes take place, even profound changes, they happen very quickly. 

Unity had been hijacked.  For many years, wanting to reclaim it became just a fantasy that people would escape into.  It was a disheartening time when they knew they needed to work together but still hesitated, until it was almost too late.  It was ACTION that brought reality back to them.  I may not succeed in telling it very well, but I want this story to be living proof that some fantasies can come true.

After this sea change, there would be no reason for conquests of any kind. There was no need for inquisitions or crusades when new spiritual ideas were made to appeal to people rather than to intimidate them into submission.  Healthy competition in the space faring marketplace, too, re-developed out of a conscious desire for collective social progress--without the trappings of selfishness, and it enhanced the experience in people's lives rather than exploiting their weakness for the accumulation of power and the stumbling blocks of the blind greed that grabs for it.  But my story starts just before this Transformation.

In these Later Days, the political right to "the pursuit of happiness" had been suddenly submerged in a world-wide legal system based on absolute control over the economy.  A new need arose in the hearts of the Naturians to resurrect true happiness forcing itself to the summit and center of all social and cultural focus.  And it was brought to this rarified place by botanists, artists and musicians; not by economists, priests and politicians.  The Naturian equivalent of the words about valuing happiness would someday become a slogan carved on the capitals of their most ornate columns.  I was given the chance to see the story behind this victory.

If you were to go there today, you would see just what a profound change the simple notion of "being happy" can make upon an entire planet.  It was because of this "Blue Dawn" envisioned by artists, kept sacred by botanists and then trumpeted through the melodies of their finest musicians--by one very special woman in particular, that peace would finally be realized.

When she sang to the people, they saw that there was no longer a need to fight for "life" or "liberty."  The fulfilment and satisfaction of TRUE happiness (something I think we don't understand at all on our world yet) immediately precluded these other more obvious "rights."  She delivered cognitive liberty to them, with unbelievable beauty and grace.  And the depressed population drank it up with their ears and beheld it with their eyes.  It was sweet water in a desert.  But that is only one part of the story.

During their Middle Age the leaders of regional federations were not intimidated by the idea that citizens might have original thoughts of their own. But due to their relative isolation from the home world of Azureon, problems developed that they were not planning for.  As on our world, the infantilization of the citizenry by a self-serving, paternalistic elite had replaced the scholars and philosophers of the Middle Age with the jack-boot of a highly dictatorial, but hidden, order. It was a fascism in disguise; accepted initially by a population that was now fatigued by that acceptance; disappointed in what they had done.  Restlessness and impatience weighed on the entire world, as it was haunted by the dogma of its own deep hypocrisy. 

The more I relate, the more like our world Naturia becomes in my mind. There - as here - the risk that original thought posed to the entrenched and secret ideology of selfishness, hatred and lust for power, manifested itself in this brief, but brutal, struggle.  This time was called "The Blue Age."   Unfortunately, other, unseen forces were also conspiring to crush this last and most sweeping contest for human rights.

Ultimately, it was a humble vine that would be used as a weapon against evil: the "Blue Dawn Flower."  After the Economic Revolution, when this flower was suddenly rediscovered and used once again to offer inner enlightenment and enhance original thought - through individual and collective psychic exploration - relief from the political and economic illusions that Naturian culture had regretfully adopted, became possible again, and in a profound way.

To the establishment, the man who rediscovered this flower became the most dangerous human on the planet, and was hunted like an animal, for the information he held within his soul.  He made it his life's mission to show that the flower itself could be used as a tool to fix the mistakes of the flawed world order, if it were only able to be distributed to the people again, as it once had been.

Even more dangerous was the fact that this flower opened a door to the otherwise invisible world, allowing the human user to temporarily cross over to these higher realms of reality and even speak with the personalities resident therein.  But it also allowed these super-mortal beings on the other side to have a kind of permanent access to humanity, in a way they had never had before.

As we will see, this "contact" was a mixed blessing.  A Monster of Light waited on the other side of that veil.  But this invisible former ruler of the unseen world was not as he should have been.  Not at all.

He was once a brilliant Son, and literally shone like sun to the beings who served him.  But he stumbled.  He fell in love with his own brilliance.  He became insincere, and used his enormous power to turn every being he could reach, high and low, against the plans of his own superiors.  And he wasted no time projecting a shadow into the minds of the human leaders of Naturia through the flower.  They had been using the flower in secret, keeping it exclusively for themselves, attempting to wipe it out of existence for all other people. 

Laws were passed. Propaganda was published.  Flowers and their seeds were burned almost as quickly as the books written about them. The campaigns of politicians were financed by the monopolistic company who maintained contact with this Monster.  With the infusion of power that this black-contact allowed, they re-doubled their unnatural legislative efforts against the flower and turned on their own brothers and sisters.  The company (who also ran the world government now) joined together into a star-system wide police force with one objective: to prosecute a Great Prohibition. 

Still, a small group of botanists continued to seek out the flower's medicine and the sacred visionary experiences that it brought, despite the very real risk of a public execution if they were ever found out.  For decades they produced and preserved the Blue Dawn seeds in suspended animation, waiting for the right time to reintroduce them.  And their inner human journeys met the outgoing beings who were determined to fight the Monster.

This is the story of turning an historical tide; the movement from this government's institution of ignorance, through prohibition, into the morally higher state of peace, justice and egalitarian ideals that finally won over Naturia.

It took only one year to swing the entire planet out of darkness and into an age of truth, beauty and goodness. And it could have only happened from the bottom up.  But, it should be said, that it only happened because open-minded people could perceive that the time was right. The hour was toning. The signs of the times were suddenly apparent. It was the "Fulcrum Year." Just a few people were needed to light this fire of Truth and righteousness that, once it was ablaze, could never be extinguished again.

So I now move from the macrocosm of the many to the microcosm of the few, for that is where the spark would first land; settling down to smolder in the life of one man and his amazing and loyal group of friends.

He did have his flaws though, and some of them were very serious.  Nevertheless, he was resourceful.  It turned out that he was the right man for the job and that he acted at the right time. 

But, as I have so many times asked myself about my own fortitude--about the expectations I have for myself: Could he deliver to the world what it truly needed while also remaining strong enough to witness - for himself - the ultimate triumph of his efforts?