Dispatch from New Zealand: Land of Crystallized Lightby Robert Simmons
Many people who read the Heaven and Earth catalogs, website or Newsletter know that my wife Kathy and I moved to New Zealand in April of 2013. Our company is still in Vermont, USA, and is being ably staffed by our great crew and our company manager Patrick Gaudreault. The move to New Zealand was a big surprise to my wife and me--we had no plans to leave Vermont, and we definitely did not come to New Zealand to retire. I am still writing books, hunting stones, planning teaching events and helping to run the company.
So why did we move? The rocks made us do it!
Okay, so it's true that New Zealand is an amazingly lovely country (think of the landscapes in the Hobbit movies, which were made here), and the people are wonderfully friendly. The ocean is never far away, and the climate where we live on the North Island is subtropical. But still, it's half a world away from just about everywhere. What's the big attraction, for us at least? It's the stones.
New Zealand does not have precious gems, like rubies and diamonds. It has no huge beautiful crystals like Brazil. It is not full of opals, like Australia. What it has is an abundance of the world's most common crystal--quartz, much of it in the form of bulk quartz rather than prismatic crystals. And some of the New Zealand quartz, both bulk and crystallized, carries the most wonderful energy (to me, anyway) in the mineral kingdom--the currents of spiritual Light that pour through Azeztulite.
When Kathy and I first visited New Zealand in April of 2011, synchronicity took a hand. As we were riding together up the Coromandel Peninsula on the North Island, Kathy looked out the window and called out, "Look! A mineral museum, you have to stop!" When I pulled the car over, she pointed out an old gray stone building that was indeed a mineral museum. The proprietor was there alone, and he gave us a personal tour of the exhibits, explaining that much of New Zealand's mineral wealth was in gold, which had been mined in great quantities during the 1800s, and which was still being mined in other parts of the country.
New Zealand's gold was not found in rivers, or in veins within caves--it was found in reefs of quartz, including thousands (or more likely millions) of beautiful crystals. The gold was extracted by crushing the quartz and separating it from the gold within it. (I still cringe at the thought of all those crystals being sacrificed to extract flakes of gold.) Even today, one can sometimes find quartz clusters in the tailings of New Zealand's abandoned gold mines.
At the end of our tour, the museum curator showed us the display counter where there were some items for sale. Always eager to meet new stones, I scoured the case and immediately was drawn to several white stones with tiny crystal points on them. When I held one, to my surprise and delight, I instantly felt the signature currents of Azeztulite. Light poured into my third eye, along with pulsations of joy and pleasure. They were Azeztulites, but of a different variety--sweet, powerful and very, very full of happiness! "Felicity" was the word that came to mind. I told the curator I wanted to buy all of these wonderful stones, and was hoping for more. He said these were all he had, but he would give me the telephone number of the gentleman who had brought them in.
That's how I met Kevin, my first New Zealand friend. And synchronicity piled upon synchronicity--when we got together, we looked at each other and realized we had already met five years earlier, at the Tucson Mineral and Gem Show! Through K. and his wife, we were able to get a supply of beautiful New Zealand Azeztulites. More than that, as we viewed their collection, I realized that the energies in these stones were the most advanced of all the Azeztulites, because they permeated the entire body while centering in the heart. The joyfulness emanating from these stones was even sweeter and clearer than any I had felt before, and seemed to me to be a pure and true transmission of the enlightened emanations of the Great Central Sun, source of the Nameless Light transmitted by all Azeztulites. Eventually I named the New Zealand Azeztulites Sauralite Azeztulite, after the Sanskrit word saura, the ancient term for the spiritual Sun (aka Great Central Sun.)
Now that I am living in New Zealand, I have gone into the bush to find some of these crystals myself. It isn't easy, but it can be done, with the help of friends like K. We have gone together to several sites, some in the old, collapsing gold mines, others in areas where erosion exposed veins of crystals. There is nothing quite like the thrill of being the first person to see and feel a piece of New Zealand Azeztulite, with its beautiful, delicate crystal formations and its sweet, joyful energies!
In addition to finding crystals out in the bush, we have had the opportunity to buy some old collections of very fine pieces. The most recent batch we purchased covered a span of forty years of collecting, during which one of the areas most persistent rockhounds assembled an extraordinary array of fine pieces. When I inspected that collection, I felt almost like Indiana Jones finding the Lost Ark. But in this case, the spiritual treasure is very real.
Over the past few months, I have spent much more time tuning in to the Sauralites (New Zealand Azeztulites), and some new insights have come to me. I'll offer them here for our readers' consideration:
One of the big surprises was a strong sense of Sauralite's connection to Lemuria. I first received this insight two years ago, on our initial trip to New Zealand. There is something within the land--something that the land emanates--(especially where we live, on the Coromandel Peninsula), which has a magical quality to it. The land's energy has a way of gently nudging one into an altered state of consciousness. The qualities of this state include increased capacities of intuition, empathy, and the ability to feel the presence of spiritual beings. The veil between the inner and outer worlds is thinner here, and this tends to widen and deepen one's awareness. If one allows the suggestions of the spiritual currents to guide one's attention, one will become ever more centered in the heart. Feeling, intuitive knowing, and the wisdom of the heart may take precedence over the more detached and ego-centered habitual consciousness of the brain. One's abilities to sense other realms--past, future, and outside of time--are increased. Inner guidance feels constantly present. Access to the akashic records--the morphogenic fields of knowledge--can open dramatically or subtly, but is always a felt potential. All of these enhancements of awareness are characteristic of the type of consciousness associated with the legends of the Lemurian world. [Interesting to note: In her recent book The Lost History of the Little People, Susan B. Martinez, Ph.D, has asserted that the lost continent of Lemuria extended over a number of areas of the South Pacific, including New Zealand.]
Some readers may recall the myths of Shambala, the mythical divine city or realm which "hovers" vibrationally "above" a place somewhere in the Himalayas. In a similar way, I feel that Lemuria hovers over New Zealand. It is a presence that wishes to manifest in our world, and which would transform our existence--but this can happen only if we invite it, and if our invitation is grounded through intentional vibrational connection with the Earth. One of the quickest and best means of establishing this connection is through resonating with Sauralite Azeztulite.
Other qualities of "Lemurian consciousness" as I have sensed it here, include love, sensuality, joy, pleasure, compassion, affection, intimacy, comfort, and a direct heart connection to Divine Source. These qualities are precisely the ones I have felt to be magnified by attunement to the currents of New Zealand's Sauralite Azeztulite. I am not sure whether Lemuria has ever physically existed on Earth, or whether it is more like Shambala--a potential existence which is present on another plane, but could exist here. The latter is my current intuition. And my feeling is also that the reason Lemuria hovers tangibly here in New Zealand is that the Sauralites are so attuned to this vibrational state that they literally bring it closer. If the energies carried by Sauralite are spread around the world, I feel that the "descent of Lemuria" (or the "descent of Heaven on Earth") to our entire planet, and to all of us, can more readily occur.
Other aspects of Sauralite Azeztulite's special qualities are also quite extraordinary. As their name indicates, Sauralite (from the Hindu saura, for the spiritual Sun) is linked to the blessings emanating from the Great Central Sun, source of the currents within all Azeztulites. These energies are always associated with Gold-White Light, which many people experience inwardly when meditating with Sauralite. The currents of these stones kindle the Gold-White Light within us. This is congruent with the fact that Sauralites tend to be gold-containing quartz, a physical manifestation of Gold and White.
Another intuition came to me regarding the solar energies of New Zealand Sauralite Azeztulite. The beginning of the activation of Azeztulite of all types began only about twenty years ago, so perhaps the energies of Sauralite were only recently kindled to their present level. And here in New Zealand, the sun's light is much more powerful and intense than it is in the Northern Hemisphere. Physically, this has to do with the hole in the ozone layer which exists here. Because of that, and a relative lack of air pollution, the sunlight is far more intense than it is in the USA, Europe, Japan, etc. While this may create some danger on the physical level, Nature has many ways of compensating. On the spiritual level, I feel that the intensification of the sunlight here in New Zealand coincides with an enhanced connection to the Solar Logos and the Great Central Sun. This may be the reason that the New Zealand Azeztulites are so powerful! (I am reminded that in Chinese the word for "crisis" and "opportunity" is the same word!)
Interestingly, a recent scientific article has suggested that all of the gold on Earth is of extraterrestrial--even intergalactic--origin. It noted that only neutron stars--incredibly dense stellar bodies (in which a bit of matter the size of a grain of sand weighs as much as a Boeing 747)--seem capable of forming the heaviest elements such as gold. So, literally, the Earth's gold must have come from the stars, and it's marriage with quartz in places such as New Zealand can be viewed as the marriage of Heaven and Earth. On the spiritual level, the Divine qualities of the Gold-White Light are reflected in this physical marriage.
Can you imagine what it would be like if a Divine realm--Shambala, Lemuria, Heaven--were to manifest itself on Earth? How would we experience ourselves, other people, space and time? If the tales told by those who have received such revelations are accurate, we would feel joy, pleasure, empathy with others, an intense interior sweetness and an ecstatic connection to Spirit. These are very much the kinds of things I and others feel when we meditate with New Zealand's Sauralite Azeztulites. And they are present, on a more moderate level, in the land here, within which these crystals are found. My sense is that these crystals--the purest, most intricate and delicate Azeztulites found anywhere--carry these currents and imbue the land itself with the magic people tend to feel when they are here. Part of my mission in New Zealand is to gather some of these wonderful stones and help to spread them around the world.
I say I am gathering only some--not all--of the New Zealand Sauralite Azeztulites for a good reason. Though I believe these energies need to be spread all over the Earth, I also would not want to drain this land of its magic. Although no amount of crystal mining by rockhounds like myself and our New Zealand friends could put a dent in the supply of such crystals underground here, certain industrial activities, such as wholesale gold mining, could do so. And gold mining also involves destroying the crystals--crushing and heating them to extract the gold. It is interesting to arrive here and realize that the very activity that brought these sacred stones to light--the relatively small-scale gold mining of 150 years ago--has evolved into something that could potentially deplete the magical essence of this land. It feels like a misguided attempt to physically grasp and hold onto the Divine energies of the Gold-White Light by crushing the earthly white quartz to get at the "heavenly" (interstellar) gold. This unconscious spiritual materialism is the opposite of the spiritual marriage of Heaven and Earth I described before, and I hope the conservation activists here can hold the large scale gold mining in check. It would be tragic for this blessed land, so near to the Heaven that wants to manifest on Earth, were to lose its special link.
In the meantime, if only New Zealand continues to have this particular connection, that is not enough. The energy needs to spread. My hope is that the crystal lovers who feel a call or a connection to these stones and their energies will acquire them and work with them inwardly to bring the heavenly realm of Lemuria into manifestation in our world, through their own being. We are endowed with consciousness and will, and we are able to choose what can happen through us, if we are aware of our choices. As a writer and explorer in the field of working spiritually with stones, my mission is to help see and understand some of our choices, and to encourage others to try them. As a lover of stones, and of the Beings whose essence is embodied within them, my joy is to go and meet them, to find them, touch them and invite them into my heart. The loving exchange that occurs through that invitation is a great treasure, and a great blessing. To this blessing, there is no limit, except our willingness to receive it, and to offer ourselves into relationship with the Stone Beings. I encourage our readers and friends to taste for yourselves the sweet energies of which I have written here, and to help them permeate your life and your world.