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AN INTERVIEW WITH
RUSSELL PAUL SCHOFIELD


In 1975 I interviewed Russell Paul Schofield, the founder of Actualism, for a radio program called "The Way of Enlightened Consciousness", which was broadcast on a local FM station in San Diego, California. The following has been excerpted from that interview. --Bruce R. Jaffe

 

BRJ: How did you arrive at the interesting perspective of seeing the illusions on which the reality world is based, and the [many truths] of the Actual World?

RPS: It would take a book to really answer that question in full, but in brief, I can only report that as a child I saw my mother, who was a healer, I saw the "fire" come out of her hands and move through the bodies of those that she was healing. And, when I tried to talk to her about this fire, she would "shush" me and say that God works in mysterious ways to do His miracles, and wouldn't talk about it...When I was about six years old, and she was at a relatively young age herself, she passed on. When I was told that God had taken my mother, I became an atheist immediately, and I was an atheist for about three years.

At age nine, I was lifted up in consciousness. The Immortal One, the God-child that I am, lifted me up into the consciousness and the perspectives in which I was able to see, and perceive the images that governed humanity. Not all of them, but enough to be aware of the fact that the images my family had of God was God being able to reach down and pick up my mother and take her away, and that wasn't the way God works. That wasn't the God nature at all. But...I pursued the subject...after having been shown that my purpose--the reason I came into life--was to bring about the renewal and the return of lightwork to the planet. The lightwork is one of the most, is the most ancient of all work on this planet. The lightworkers were the great ones in former times who performed their miracles as magi, as lightworkers in Atlantis, and lightworkers in various other areas of history and pre-history. So, the return of the lightworker is a necessity in order to bring about peace in our time, or peace in any time.

BRJ: Well, on your journey to this knowing which you have, did you have any teachers? What sort of training did you have on the inner or outer?

RPS: The training was mostly on the inner. I worked with teachers all over the planet in this way. Those who were clairvoyant and had the gift of seeing on the inner--with inner sight--would rise up into higher levels of consciousness and report the truth as they could report it. as they saw it there. But we often found that when the report came out in time-space by way of the mouth, deviations had occurred. So we would take turns, one rising up to the higher level of consciousness and reporting, and the other recording. Then the other rising up and reporting, and the other recording. And [again] we found deviations, so we would have to rise up and down and trade positions several times in order to arrive at undeviated truth. A truth that was an undistorted and undeviated fact. So, in that way I had many teachers. And in the way of just going to a teacher, and sitting at the feet of a great teacher--we always sat together. We never sat at each other's feet.

BRJ: I know that many of our listeners are Christian in faith, and I often hear them ask how the Being of Light that we teach about, that we awaken people to experiencing in Actualism--how this can be related or understood in terms of the Christ teaching, which many people, think was a teaching that he was the only way, through him personally, to know or experience God.

RPS: This is an interpretation of his teaching, of course, as we know his teachings were never recorded in a written form until anywhere from 100 to 300 years later. And during that time it was passed on by word of mouth. Even after it was written down, there were changes in the script by various churches as it passed along, until our present day King James version and various other versions of the Bible.

So, in order to understand the teaching of Christ, we must have some perception of some of the wisdom, and the love, and the goodwill of which he spoke. In other words, he never proposed himself as being the only one. He presented himself as a way-shower, showing the way to accomplish. And the way to accomplish was to unify personality with the Father within. To "become as a little child to enter the Kingdom of Heaven within." He never said the Kingdom of Heaven was out there, he said it was within. And to become as a little child, he didn't mean become childish, he meant become the God-child, unify the personality with the God-child that one is, and that is becoming as the little child, the God-child that inhabits the heaven within. And as we become one, as the personality systems become one with the God- child within, heaven is externalized so it is in earth, in the earth elements of the physical body as it is in the heaven within.

BRJ: Considering the fact that you are the one who brought through the ancient teachings in the modern form we teach in Actualism--formulated for the western mind and body--how do you avoid falling into the role of being thought of as "a Master"?

RPS: Very easily, being aware of images, I know that where a person is set up, or sets himself up as a Master, he's a target. Not just for the idealized image of him as a Master, but the hated that's underneath the idealized. So, rather than go through tumult and torment of being idealized on the one hand and hated on the other, I feel--and find--that where we meet as God-children and seek to externalize the heaven from within by way of the being that we are, the Being of Light that we are within, throughout and all about, we can meet as peers. And treat each other as peers. One may be a teacher to a student, but the student is also a peer. He's not someone inferior, with the teacher superior. That superior/inferior game is an image game imposed upon humanity by images, and as long as humanity is governed by images, or an individual allows himself to be governed by images, he finds himself playing that inferiority/superiority game which is totally false to the Actual Design.

BRJ: So, in other words we come to face the problem of ego, this nature of ours that is governed by images. How do you deal with this problem of the ego.

RPS: Well, the personality ego is afflicted by images, by conditioning imprints. By conditioning influences of many kinds depending on the culture or the regional area in which we live. But as we work with [inner] light-fire as lightworkers do, and we become trained in how to work with light-fire, we are able to free the personality ego so that we neither seek fame nor blame. We neither seek superiority or inferiority. We are not manipulated by images into positions of inferiority or superiority. We meet everyone as equals, as peers.

BRJ: Then, suppose you have a group that's at this place you're describing of being able to relate as peers. How would that group relate to another group, say one with completely different beliefs or ideas or understandings?

RPS: Well, we find as we enlighten awareness and illumine consciousness that there are many places on the evolutionary path. Each group is at a place on the evolutionary path where they are located in consciousness. The evolutionary path is a path in consciousness. not in outer, I mean we can't find it any place on the face of the planet. And as we move forward in consciousness along the evolutionary path we find alterations take place. Consciousness is altered. As consciousness is altered, function is altered. As function is altered, structure is altered. New structures grow to accommodate new function. So at these various places along the path, we find groups that are functioning in the manner that is appropriate for that place, and not appropriate for another place. A person may be at a place in consciousness where he's in a civilized milieu but he's behaving like a barbarian. So it shows that he's in a place in consciousness way back along the evolutionary line, not up here in the civilized place in consciousness.

BRJ: That would be the criminal?

RPS: That would be the criminal, the psychotic, there are various labels, but they are people who are caught by images and are bound to a place in consciousness way back along the evolutionary line rather than being able to move into their place in the social order where they are. So, we hold no judgmentalism on this, we don't say that one place is superior to another. Naturally barbaric behavior...is not up to the level of civilized behavior, and destructive behavior is not up to the place where it's the most civilized. But, every group has its place on the evolutionary path, and the time will come probably, when those who are more enlightened will form together in groups so that they can help those who are not as enlightened.

BRJ: So, in the New Age, or the age we are now moving into, would you say that traditional religions and churches would have a place as long as there are those who are interested in that?

RPS: Oh, definitely...every church and every denomination of every church has its place, and exists because there are people on the evolutionary path that require it. So it serves at that place on the path and does its job there. And again, we don't become judgmental about it and say that one is superior or another inferior, one's ahead and one's behind. Because there are places on the path and who can say? Any person can awaken at any place he is on the path where he is and come forward to the most advanced place. It's a matter of awakening, of becoming enlightened. The "way of enlightened consciousness".

BRJ: Another aspect of moving into the future is the idea, the plan actually, for the City of Light. Could you share some of the guidelines and ideas that are involved with establishing a City of Light?

RPS: Well, that, of course, again is a very good question and one that would require quite an elaborate response, and we don't have the time...But very short, in a few words, I can only say...that as lightworkers we come to share the City of Light with others. For instance, in your last session you gave in this series of [programs], you showed them how to rise up to the High Place within...

BRJ: The "Upper Room".

RPS: The Upper Room within, which is a high place in consciousness that establishes a lighted place in consciousness. And "city" esoterically means a lighted place, or a place. If it's a lighted place, it's a lighted city. So the City of Light is something that we share, which you have already shared. Each one, has a personal city of light, a personal place in consciousness, a lighted place where he can go and be refreshed, invigorated and purified. Now as we share with others the City of Light, their personal city of light, which they can establish. and we have enough together who are dedicated lightworkers, we will establish an outer City of Light where lightworkers from all over the planet can come and work together lighting up vast networks of light so that we can share the light not only with those whom we can reach by way of radio or television, but we can reach out to every part of the globe with networks of light and share with love, wisdom, and good will, the City of Light that each person has. We can help people establish this personally, and as they come in for training we can help them help themselves still more, and then reach out to others.

So a city of light then, will be a place where lightworkers can come together and work together with enlightenment, and with enlightened interrelationships that, due to image government throughout humanity rarely occur. All the utopias that have ever been formed have been formed and fallen because they didn't first free themselves of the images which were making them try to escape from the image-governed world around them to a better place. But they didn't purify themselves, didn't rid themselves of the images which governed them. The images destroyed every utopia that's ever been built. They didn't last very long. So, we are not building a utopian type of city of light, we are building a city of light based on lighted interrelationships.

BRJ: And that destruction you were talking about happens on a personal level too, doesn't it, when the Physician-Within is cut off, when the person with lack of awareness cuts himself off to the healing power from within?

RPS: Yes, the Physician-Within aspect of the Immortal One or the God-child that each one is, is there to be called forth, just as the Teacher-Knower within is there to be called forth. The God-child, the lighted Beingness of each individual has many aspects and tremendous potentials. These are the tremendous potentials that each individual has, but which he never calls on because he is so separated from the within, so separated from the heaven within. He's looking for heaven everywhere else out there and so, as he's cut off from the Teacher-Knower and therefore is in confusion, he gets cut off from the Physician-Within and therefore he seeks healing from every other source external to himself. That's necessary. Due to the conditioning that's made us externally oriented, we can't immediately move from the complete external orientation to being internally oriented. We gradually work through the images that bind us to external sources to the point where we can turn within and bring forth from within. Because if we just turn within, without bringing forth the healing power of the Physician-Within, we don't reap the benefit, the reward that is there for us.

BRJ: Along a similar line, what role does the outer teacher, the teacher of Actualism play in the awakening of the student to his own Teacher-Within?

RPS: The teacher in Actualism, awakens the student to the Teacher-Knower-Within, as well as to the Physician-Within, in a step by step process. That is why it is called a ministry of healing by teaching and teaching by healing. So that the Physician-Within aspect can become operative, all the obstructions, all the deviations that stand in the way must be removed. And the inner light-fire is the process, but it's a step by step process. It's not a single blinding flash of light, unfortunately. We wish it could be that way!

 

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