[ONE MINUTE'S SILENCE] I am sorry to inflict that upon you, but I wanted to start with a little exercise, so that we have some experience to work with this morning.. I wanted to see how long you could bear to experience a collective unstructured space and to see how you respond to that, when you are expecting something familiar to happen. Most of us feel a little uncomfortable in such a situation. Without the ritual of external social cues we are thrown back on ourselves, and questions begin to arise within us; like "What's going on?", "What are we supposed to do now?", "What's he playing at?" "Is he all right?". You see, when we are in the presence of others and the normal social cues are taken away, we are thrown back upon ourselves, but at the same time we are also acutely aware that we are in the presence of other people who are in a similar situation to ourselves. We find ourselves in an awkward situation, we become self-conscious. In a situation like the one I have just created eventually someone would have to take some form of initiative out of their own judgement as to what is going on. You would eventually have to decide what to do - even if it was only to get up out of your seat and walk out of the building. You would have to take a step that has not been socially pre-agreed. If you did decide to walk out of the building the chances are that most of the rest of the congregation would follow you. If on the other hand, you decided to shout out from your seat "WHAT ARE YOU PLAYING AT MICHAEL - HAVE YOU GONE TO SLEEP?" the chances are that most of the rest of the congregation would nod in agreement and silently echo your question. Because you decided to act, your choice would be critical as to what happened next. You would become THE ONE. Normally we have an eye on what others are doing and base our actions upon what is expected. We try to fit in. We look for the social cues, the symbols and rituals, which will determine what we do. We may feel that we are in control of our own lives, that we choose what we do, and whether to fit in or not. Maybe we feel that we are independently minded or of an independent spirit. Maybe we do, or maybe we just choose one set of pre-arranged rituals for another. "I'm independent. I like to make up my own mind!" REALLY? You think your are free? That you are in control of your own destiny? That the impulse for your own thinking, your feelings, and your actions comes from within, and is not merely part of some elaborately staged illusion designed to make us THINK that we are awake to our true selves, when in fact we are asleep. Even as we sit and listen and talk to each other. "You've been living in a dream world," says Morpheus in the Matrix. "You are here because you know something. What you know you can't explain But you feel it. You may have felt it your entire life. There's something wrong with the world. You don't know what it is, but its there. Like a splinter in your mind." What is THE MATRIX? The Matrix, my friends, IS THE PHYSICAL WORLD. The Austrian philosopher and Initiate, Rudolf Steiner, once described the physical world as 'the entombment and fossilization of the Godhead. The physical world is an illusion, designed to make us think and believe that we exist as fully conscious self-determined individuals. When in fact, we will only realise ourselves as truly conscious individuals to the extent that we can see through the illusion of cause and effect which the physical world creates for us. When we begin to think that this is at all possible, we are already crossing the threshold into the spiritual world. It has not always been like this. In ages past, human beings have been very consciously aware of the existence of the spiritual world, not just as an abstract concept, but as a living experience filled with beings. This is what lies at the basis of all human mythology. The tales of the Norse gods with their storm giants and thunderbolt-hurling heroes were not just abstract stories invented in the same way as a modern novelist would sit down to invent a story, but were cultural renditions of actual human experience of the interplay between the spiritual beings animating the phenomena of nature and humanity. The people of earlier times actually experienced in their own souls the spirit-being in nature and the cosmos. Right up until the end of the Middle Ages human kind saw itself as placed at the centre of attention for the entire cosmic order of things, surrounded, as it was, by ascending spheres of more and more elaborated and elevated beings. In modern times we have lost the capacity to feel this. Such instinctive clairvoyance has been driven out by the development of modern logical abstract thinking, and now we think that we know everything when, in reality, we know next to nothing. All we experience today is the outside of things, and not the spirit within. When we hear Paul, or Apollos, we think that we hear contradictory points of view. We become a supporter of Paul or Apollos, without realising that they are inspired and guided by the same Spirit. And what did Paul say? You can't begin to live as equals in the new community unless you realise that it is not Paul or Apollos that stands before you, but your own true self, for you also are not who you are, but are, in reality, a spark of the same life-bearing Godhead. Let us return to our modern analytical thinking. To this tremendous power of analysis which we have developed. To analyse a situation or thing, you need to know what it is made of: what are its component parts. To find out what makes it tick you need to break it down into its individual components, analyse all the links between the parts and then try to re-assemble it. Unfortunately we have become very good at taking things to pieces but not nearly as good at the re-assembly. There is a word for this process. Disintegration. And, let's not be too delicate here, it is a manifest evil. Life is the interaction and flow between the parts - between the forms. When the parts are separated from each other the life-force vanishes, and no amount of rearrangement of what is left will ever restore life to that form. The creation of life comes from another source, the seed of which lies dormant within each and every one of us. Let us not get too emotional about what I have just said. Evil is simply a term for a process which has gone past the point of no return and which can no longer return to its source - complete its cycle - under its own steam. Its activity continues to be carried by its own downward momentum, continuing to push things further and further out of balance.  (There is another kind of evil which is characterised by a reluctance to do anything in the first place, but that is a story for another time). In our world today, we are surrounded by a rising tide of apparent evil - of actions and activities which have gone way over the line, a growing tide of environmental destruction, social unrest and unjustified brutal acts. Should we fight this evil? No. Should we ignore it? Again no. What we should do is wake up to it. We should learn to understand it for what it is, namely a distraction from our true human task. I am going to mention two more things and then I am going to stop. The first is a clue as to how to understand the nature of evil and the second will point towards a marvellous faculty, or tool, by which we can begin to heal and restore life both to ourselves and to the world. Let us once again go back to what St Paul said to the people of Corinth. The road to social disintegration lies in imagining that Paul and Apollos represent conflicting points of view that can be pitched one against the other, whilst in fact, they present the same point of view from two apparently opposing perspectives, and here I will paraphrase Paul's message for us here today. If you hear opposing ideologies, "We stand for freedom whilst they stand for tyranny" ignore the words, for these are mere labels. Illusions designed to keep you afraid, and thereby asleep, Instead, have the courage to look them in the eyes and look to the fruits of their actions. Do their deeds bring about harmony and balance or do they merely feed the momentum of destabilisation and disintegration. The Devil is a real being, who operates through sub-consciously manipulating the human mind into believing that it is making a real choice when in reality only one choice is on offer. In other words, by divide and rule. It does this in order to distract us from the making the only choice that really matters, namely to take responsibility for every aspect of our own lives. The more we divide things, without knowing how to put them back together, the more we cede our human potential over to another being, who wishes only to manipulate us for its own ends. As a result we are, like Alice, forced to run ever faster in order to get nowhere. Now for the good news. We have a choice. The nature of reality is changing. As Richard Seddon indicated in his book, "The Future of Humanity and the Earth", an entirely new faculty is developing in human kind, which allows us to perceive time itself in an entirely new way. We are all aware of the three directions of space - up/down - side to side - and - in front/behind:  but in our ordinary waking consciousness (if we really are awake), time only moves in one direction. If you knock over a vase and it smashes on the floor it is broken forever; permanently imprinted in the backward flow of time, but, time is not something that moves in a straight line and in one direction, no more than we are constrained to move only in one direction of space. Rather time is cyclic. The fabric of time is actually composed of an indefinite number of greater and lesser cycles. This means that it flows backwards as well as forwards. That is the second dimension of time. The third dimension of time is the perspective of God who beholds the beginnings and ends of all things as simultaneously united and together within the Eternal Unity of the Godhead. It is this perspective that we as human beings must begin to awaken to and cultivate within ourselves. For it is the source of all creative healing power, and there are practical ways that we can cultivate this within ourselves, by combining our power of analytical thinking with a renewed power of positive imagination. In the film the MATRIX, which has become something akin to a religious experience for a large number of young people, the character known as the Oracle, asks the hero Neo if he thinks that he is the One to lead humanity into the future. She asks him 'what does he think?' He answers that he honestly doesn't know. He has his doubts as to who he really is, at which point she asks him whether he really knows himself. It is not the Oracle who tells Neo that he is not ready yet. It is Neo himself who make the choice that he is not yet prepared to take the next step in waking up to reality. It is the same for all of us. We need help. We must learn to look at the world in a new way. Imagine for a moment a plant. The actual being of the plant is not merely the beautiful cut flowers that we see in the vases in our church this Sunday morning. This is only a small fragment of the true plant, for first it starts a small seed in the ground, which pushes out its first shoot and unfolds its first leaves. Over the coming weeks it grows taller. Its stem thickens and more and more leaves unfold. The simple form of the early leaves changes, as the leaves rise ever up the stem, until their form completely changes into the early green form of what will become the flower head. (the petals of the flower are actually metamorphosed leaves). Then the flower truly develops, opening itself out to the warmth of the sun.  In time the flower also begins a transformation - into the fruit. When this is formed it begins to harden and with it the whole plant, leaves and stem, turn brown dry and brittle. The weakened stem is no longer capable of supporting the flower, which casts its seeds outwards, where they eventually find fertile ground and after a period of rest germinate once more. So which part of this picture is the actual plant? All of it! This whole process is the plant. Its form at any given moment in time is different. And if we understand the whole process, which we can do, because it runs on a repeating cycle, then we can have a pretty good idea of what is going to come next. If we can do that then we cease to be driven by circumstances - by events, because we can look beyond the outer appearances to the underlying dynamic-spiritual processes. Just like the plant, a community is made up of many different individuals, each with their own unique offerings. Sometimes we lie dormant for a while, until it is our turn to act. Sometimes we recognise it is Paul who speaks the truth of the moment, sometimes Apollos. We realise that it is not a question of Paul OR Apollos but of Paul AND Apollos, each in their appropriate moment, just as there may be a moment when we feel inwardly called to make our own presence felt, for the good of the whole. If we want to avoid the sensation experienced by Alice, of forever running faster and faster in order to get nowhere, we need to learn to understand the points of view of others, and especially those whose points of view are opposite to the ones we normally listen to. Every time we do this we create something new in the world - a new sense of time and space - for each other and ourselves. We begin to create a social and personal capacity whereby that which has been broken can be restored; we begin to learn how to truly overcome the forces of physical and social disintegration. The seeding ground for such a process is within fledgling new communities like this one. What we are building here, in this community, is vital for the healing and restoration, not only of our own self but of the wider community, and the very fabric of the world itself. Herein lies a hint of the secret of what is meant by the death of Christ to matter and the subsequent resurrection to Spirit-life. Amen Michael Hallam