About the Ofanim

The Ofanim is an angelic order that has provided the basic outline of the Earth's visionary geography, facilitated my experiences within it, and inspired many to engage their own spirituality with that of the planet's. In my writings I have referred to them variously as Blazing Star, the Nimitta, or more avuncularly, Blaise. They are implicit in every human being, as a tiny, expandable pinprick of light just above the navel and a little inside. As an angelic order of about 40.3 potential manifestations, they have dipped into human culture here and there and left a lasting impression, encoded in myth, in the form of Ganesh, Garuda, Hanuman, Behemoth, Simurgh, Thunderbird, the Eagle (famous in Toltec shamanism), the Ziz, Vocub Caquix (Mayan), and others. Their name comes from the Hebrew, ofan, which means "wheels" for they are the wheels of the Merkabah, the Supreme Being's Chariot and Throne. In conventional angelologies, they are the Thrones.

The Ofanim are fun, irreverent, deeply knowledgable, protean in their expressions, and with Archangel Michael, Sanat Kumara, and the Ray Masters of Ursa Major, a primary factor in the rejuvenation of the Earth's visionary geography and the project of bringing a sufficient number of humans up to speed on the interaction protocols. The Ofanim are also implicit in the renewal and purification of the Christ Mysteries, being the guides for humans to an authentic experience of the cosmic Christ, free of dogma. In this role, they briefly manifested in visible form as the famous Star of Bethlehem and in terms of inner experience continue to do so for all people interested in being transported to the Christ.

Here are two articles that introduce the Ofanim and some of their qualities, followed by a meditative exercise that can put you in contact with the Ofanim:

The Faces Are Gone Now but the Wings Remain

Personal Encounters With Angels

A REFLECTION BY RICHARD LEVITON ©1994

When I was very young I dreamed often of climbing into the attic at home and finding a secret room full of amazing books. I always loved books so naturally an unexpected room of new and interesting books would hold great appeal to my child's mind. I visited this room often; nobody else knew about it nor did I share its existence with anyone. Who would have believed me, anyway, when about 30 years later I discovered that it wasn't "books" I had happily stumbled upon but angels - six of them - who invited me into their pillared gazebo of pure light then whisked me off into the cosmos. Where exactly they took me, I haven't remembered yet but I know we went there often. It was better than books.

Similarly, when I was an adolescent I mowed suburban lawns in the summer months to earn pocket money. But there was one lawn I always mowed on Sunday morning when the owners were off to church that provoked the strangest fantasy. There I was pushing the mower down the long green flanks of the backyard, circling the pine trees and carefully edging the maples. My mind would slip into this delightful story in which a small UFO lands in the yard and the friendly occupants invite me in for a chat.

They ask me to tell them about life on Earth. Naturally as a precocious 15 year old, I thought I had the world pretty much figured out, from girls to Freud and Dante to the Red Sox. They thank me for my thorough field report and leave. I finish mowing the lawn and forget about it completely until the next Sunday when they come back and we chat again. I don't think "they" actually came more than once at that location but it was evidently such an intriguing experience that my mind kept serving it up again as a favorite rerun during my contemplative work on the lawns. I guess a part of me hoped that one day I'd figure it out.

It took me many years to see what had really happened. I suppose 15 years of Zen meditation only got in the way because my Zen Master frowned heavily on students with "visions." But when I was about 34, a veil seemed to slip away and there I was again with "them." Except they weren't in a UFO, but in a lovely six-pillared white gazebo set on an intensely green lawn, somewhere in paradise I should think. There were six of them - tall, elegant, silver-haired angels with suns for eyes and wings the size of billowing clouds. I sat on a small white table in the center of their gazebo as they ringed round me with angelic regard. They had a fabulous sense of humor; at times I felt I was hanging out with the Marx Brothers of Heaven, or perhaps 6 Zen Masters who had freed themselves of the interdiction against having "visions," which in this case meant angelic encounters, and found it all fun.

I don't know why they showed up in my thirties. I guess they had a message to bring me - a rather long message, because that was 11 years ago and I'm still listening to what they have to say. At first it was a gorgeous love affair, a daily rapture with six see-through lovers. I might see through their shimmering forms but I don't mean I was able to see through them to their essence. The words "ineffable mystery" aptly describe the encounter, yet so does "jubilant delight." I even coined a word, levitony, to describe the quality of being with them: a species of giddiness inspired by angels. You'd feel exuberant, punch-drunk, grinning all over, on the verge of a frisky levitation; you felt absolutely regarded and thoroughly loved, the fond object of a celestial vision.

It turns out there is an antigravity particle called levitonium so I wasn't entirely egotistical in using my name to describe their presence. They helped me get off the ground of literalness, of being heavily grounded in my life and body; they gave me bright glimmers of a fantastic memory I didn't even know I had a right to claim. Yet at the same time and in equal measure, they helped me truly climb into my body and take deep responsibility for my incarnation, reminding me that in every human life the fate of nothing less than the cosmos is at stake. They helped me touch the ground and to see stars in it.

By the way, they might not have been UFO occupants as I once thought, but for the first couple of years whenever they visited, they always announced their arrival with the most inexplicable droning sound. You'd think a huge truck was idling sonorously just outside the house, but there never was any truck. It was a deep distant rumbling from somewhere within the atomic structure of my body. Then they would shimmer into the room, the air thickening with angelic love and concentration. It was hard sometimes not to swoon with delight, not to melt into their evanescent unconditional arms. I suppose my Zen practice kept me awake so maybe my Zen Master will be pleased after all. Their light seemed to emerge from within the center of everything - the room, my body, consciousness itself. Their presence would start as a point of brilliant light then, as if somebody was turning a dimmer switch on a 1000 watt bulb, they would condense into the familiar form of six angels.

In this love affair between me and six angels, I saw them almost every day. They amused themselves and taught me something important by showing up in many forms and sizes, as if testing me to see them in their myriad disguises. I saw them in the soap bubbles when I washed the dishes. I saw them dancing on the rug when I vacuumed the living room. When somebody came to visit, I saw them twinkling like stars at our guests' belly buttons. Once when I was in London walking around Bloomsbury, I saw them everywhere, all at once. One of them sat in the front seat of a taxi cab, chatting with the cabbie. Another of them consoled a woman weeping at the corner. A half dozen of them stood in the bus their happy wings around the dour passengers.

Inside the British Museum Reading Room there must have been 200 of them making a complete circle around the upper tier of reference books. I saw them at Heathrow Airport when I was checking my luggage. I saw them on the wings of the 747 when I crossed the Atlantic. When I was talking with my parents, I saw them standing behind my mother and father like huge eggs of light, enveloping them anonymously. When I had dinner with old Buddhist friends and told them about my encounters with angels, they didn't believe me one bit, yet there the angels were, enhaloing the house and all its occupants in their gorgeous loving forms.

It probably sounds a bit overblown, all these sightings, but they used them to make an important point. "We are with you all the time, in any form imaginable. You name it, whatever form it is, we've been them all. Yet we transcend all forms beyond time and space. This is difficult for you to comprehend so we come as angels." Then they told me, "We come as Love from Above to help you remember who you are, which, believe it or not, is more than any of us even can imagine." Human beings are (unbelievably it seemed to me then) the envy of all the angels. Only you have the possibility of returning to the Source and becoming one with it, they told me; we can see God every day and do its bidding but you can become one with God. That's why we envy you. We're here to help you do it.

That's the paradox: naturally we envy angels their vast knowledge yet they admire us our potential for union with God on whose behalf they bear messages. And that's a lot of message-bearers. This particular family of angels, when they're really in the mood, can cook up 40.3 million manifestations and keep track of every single one.

Once they told me what they did during a typical day. "We read from today's diary entry. Awoke. Found we were already awake. Looked around and thought, This is it. Knew it was no thought, knew it was inspired. Knew we didn't know; knew we had work to do; knew it was joy. Knew we would return to Earth one day, have bodies like yours. Knew we would try to help as many humans as possible. Hung around a few church spires here and there. Two of us made a significant presence in Central Mexico. Knew we are more than happy. Knew we are in a state beyond your experience."

They told me lots of things over the years, some of them extraordinary. They told me they act as cosmic dentists, cleaning out the dark spots among the "teeth" of the cosmos, loving the Zodiac on our behalf. They sort out energy imbalances among the three suns of Sirius. They relax on the lilac beaches of Polaris. They talk to "people" in the Pleiades and regularly visit Arcturus. They consult with the archangels, the big presences like Michael. They have a few representatives in the Buddhist paradise called Shambhala.

They liked to take us places - we being two friends I lived with in England when our angelic love affair was in full bloom. The visuals were up to us and sometimes I saw things poorly, but it seemed as if they would sweep us up in their sailboat wings and carry us to places - to a sacred well, to a mountain top, to a temple in the jungle, to an ancient site in Argentina, to another planet, to forgotten places stored away in the vastness of memory, to the fount of memory itself. And they would say, a bit enigmatically: "We remember you as you were before the Fall." That's Eden, I'd realize.

Once, quite late at night (it was probably 3 a.m., a few hours after their full blown visit), they appeared in the guise of the Blue Brothers with dark sunglasses. "It's very bright where we are, after all," they said with a grin. I was listening to a song by Stevie Winwood on the headphones so my angelic friends started to play along. They shuffled about, turning their sunglassed heads towards me, intent on the music. They had guitars and sashayed to the rhythm. Then the image expanded. They're pirouetting on a huge black sphere that is gently rolling towards me. Inside are a billion stars. "We roll towards you," they sing, rolling the cosmos into my face.

As they dance, their angel forms become irridescent rainbows, then light swirls that expand like raging fires into fantastic mercurial shapes on this tremendous black sphere filled with stars. It's like a black bowling ball rolling towards me, as the angels manifest their true form as immense, majestic light beings with stars in their eyes and galaxies in their palms. I shiver in my chair. There is an explosion of light and the image disappears; more exactly, it relocates itself inside me, folding itself up into a tiny pinprick of blazing light just above my belly button. The black bowling ball of the cosmos has rolled into me. That's when the angelic faces went away.

But they had another message for me before they completely dissolved their celestial faces into empty space. "We are your Blazing Star, the star you are, from not very far," they whisper from inside me. Then they said: When you look up at the stars at night you see innumerable pinpoints of light. Imagine if you gathered all these together and multiplied them, then saw it all as one star at once. You would see a Blazing Star - this is who we are. It is so bright you cannot even imagine it. At best most people see only a tiny flash of the light we are. It is also who you are.

Over the years I've seen them less and less yet paradoxically I know they have come in closer, into me. I can still feel the delicate brush of their wings as they flutter from inside me. The angels outwardly disappeared yet they took up permanent residence within me where their presence remains undiminished. At first I was sad, even confused: where have you crazy guys gone to? I can't see you any more. Now I know the visuals were always optional; I could see them or not see them, but it's only the presence that's real and it's most real when it's inside you. Plus I know they see me all the time.

The rock group Police had it right: Every breath you take, every move you make, I'll be watching you. Except in this case it's as many as 40 million eyes beholding me from within. I can feel them watching, but don't get me wrong. Theirs is a friendly gaze: it's Love from Above beamed to me from within, from that curious, inextinguishable, ever-twinkling pinprick of absolute light, that blazing star above my belly button at the center of my being and from the heart of creation.

That's where the angels have gone to, as far as my experience goes. They make their presence known to me through a silent direct inner knowing, a certainty, a clarity, or sometimes a pretty good joke. I recognize their signature on events, on thoughts. They have given me their knowing but the joke is, it was always mine. And there's another funny bit. Who would have thought that 40 million or even 6 angels could fold themselves up into a single pinpoint of light and take up residence inside me, or you, or anybody who cares to look? But they do; they're the angels within. We are your Blazing Star, they always tell me. I just call them Blaise.

Remembering a Lost Love

By Richard Leviton ©2003

I have a friend who is 29.9 billion years old.

Yes, that is an outrageous statement, but it's an outrageous relationship. My friend's name is Blaise, but that's just my avuncular tag for them. My friend is actually a group of friends, all alike. The funny thing is, you know them too.

How long can a relationship last? For as long as there is memory and recognition. Like a wave, it can roll into and sink from acknowledgement, but it's still always there, abiding, twinkling, ready to burst into a blazing star.

I remembered them, then forgot them, and I did this hundreds of times. I once saw them as dancing, cavorting elephants with Fred Astaire top hats. Later I was relieved to find that was not such an unfounded fantasy, for the Hindus see them as an elephant god called Ganesh, remover of obstacles, and though Ganesh may not dance at the drop of a hat, he often seems amused. At other times the Hindus saw my friend as a vast winged bird bearing the god Vishnu through the many realms of existence. Similarly the Persian mystics described a marvellous, immortal bird called the Simurgh, also a transport for ecstatics.

Other times I've seen them with wings, lots of them, like huge, billowing, silken sails, or as a circle of enhaloed humans, taller than average and quite jovial, or as a single brilliant pinprick of light. Even more surprising, I often saw them, in the days before I remembered and was formally reintroduced to my long lost friends, as a pinprick of superbright light just above my belly button - in my body, somehow. And in other people's bodies too. Everyone's.

Perhaps that shouldn't be so outlandish. The Austrian clairvoyant Rudolf Steiner explained that the ten orders of angels all have roles in human life, in fact, participate, even support, different aspects of human physiology and consciousness, which means, at least mystically, if you look in the right way you might see hosts of angels in your body, in your breathing, walking, thinking, so why not at a point two inches above the navel and two inches inside?

That pinprick of light is tinier than the tiniest point of light, but brighter than anything a hundreds times that size. So bright it was, in fact, it was as if all the stars in the galaxy had been compressed into one almost infinitesimal point of light. Certainly a lot of angels get compressed into that pinprick, some forty million, and change. Let's say when they're feeling expansive, they can unfold and multiply themselves to a precise, very large number of manifestations.

A paradoxical friend, indeed. Both angels and a star. So tiny they are routinely overlooked, missed, unacknowledged, yet so vast they were once described by Ezekiel as the Wheel of God, the ofan, from which the Hebrew angelologists derived their formal name: Ofanim, the Wheels. I prefer Blaise, and they don't mind. It's comfortably close to their essence as a blazing star.

So what do they do with themselves during the day? They help people remember. Remember what? Who they were before the Fall. Before Eden. And they remind people how to use that arresting memory in the physical world. They inspire, they assist, they facilitate, they joke, they love from above. More properly, I should say they send Love from Above, they are Love from Above.

That sounds sweet, but what's it to do with the real world? With Iraq? It's a gentle uplifting pressure that helps you remember, and see, and to behold with equanimity. The world is not what it seems; it is much more than its surfaces. If the ten orders of angels have God-commissioned roles in the human form, then why not in the world at large too, in the Earth? Of course. Why not. They do.

Remembering a lost love, for me, is the same as remembering my old friend. And that is akin to remembering how things got here, this way. To look into the star is to look into the history of creation, both cosmic and local. You know, we could all be prophets, each of us an oracular seer speaking through a star. Or thinking, or painting, or composing, or dancing, or reflecting. Or helping to heal the Earth by helping the planet itself to remember, to wake and marvel at the congeries of angelic hosts amidst its own thriving body.

To be almost 30 billion years old gives you perspective. A little detachment. Patience. A desire to converse, and share. So if you happen to feel plucky and can give yourself permission to believe any of this, even if for only a few moments and then deeply in private, in some secret, unpublicized place within you, then may I suggest you try smiling at this tiny pinprick of very old light just above your navel. Just a little, sly, Mona Lisa smile. Your teeth don't even have to show, it's that low-key of a smile. Pretend, if you wish, that you are giving the wink to a friend, to someone once shockingly close from earliest childhood, their existence inexplicably forgotten until this very moment when like a snap, a brilliant tiny star pops into view within you and you're on again.

Meet the Star of the Ofanim

Here is a simple, even fun, exercise to get yourself acquainted with the angelic family called Ofanim and with their twinkling presence within every human in the form of a star.

• Sit down in a comfortable chair in a room that is for the moment free of distractions, such as television, radio, other people, voices, noise.
• Relax into the chair and place both feet, uncrossed, on the floor.
• Close your eyes and take a few deep breaths. Do this without effort or strain. Spend a few moments observing your breathing, noting the inhales and exhales, that they come and go on their own without any effort on your part.
• As you relax into the natural rhythm of your breathing, allow a little smile to appear on your face. Allow your lips to form a smile as if you are amused, happy, even affectionate, with each outbreath.
• Now focus your attention on a point two finger's width above your belly button and the same distance inside. You can probe that area with your fingertip to make it realer, if you wish.
• •Imagine that there is a pinprick of light at that spot, a tiny blazing star of brilliant light. It is very tiny but it is brighter than seems possible.
• As you exhale, breathe to this little bright star with a smile. Let every exhale work as a bellows, making the star just a little brighter.
• As you exhale, send your smile to that little pinprick of brilliant light, to that little blazing star at the center of your body. Breathe to it with some fondness, as if somehow it is an old almost forgotten friend suddenly returned to you after a long absence. Breathe to this star with a sense of fondness, affection, and with a smile of recognition.
• It may surprise you to notice from time to time that it seems the star is twinkling at you, even winking, if this were possible. No effort is required; just a smile and your natural breathing.
• You may notice that this point of light begins to grow a bit larger. It may be the size of a marble now.
• Soon it becomes the size of a golf ball. Keep breathing to it with that little smile.
• Now it's the size of a peach. Now a softball. Now a basketball. It keeps growing.
• Continue to breathe with this sense of quiet fondness to this growing point of light until it is as big as a house in front of, a round house of brilliant light.
• If you wish, walk right into this brilliant sphere or allow it to roll over and through you. No effort is required.
• You are now inside your own blazing star and within the energy field of the Ofanim.
• Keep breathing with that smile, and enjoy the angelic presence.

The Ofanim, on Themselves

The point is there is no point. We are pointless. From the tiniest point you can imagine, we are in the middle of that point. We express ourselves as the point within the point of pointlessness. We are an exploding star. We are the big bang at the beginning of the universe. We are the dark hole in space that contains all space. We are infinite life beyond light and darkness. We are your Blazing Star. We are a point of light within the depths of being.

We are that which is a part of the Christ within. We are the point, the Nimitta, within the Buddhi, or Buddha Body. We are your Blazing Star. We are that Star, we're never far. We are a pinpoint of light very bright. Within that point is a further point brighter still. Within that is a field of brightness which we are. We are the point from above the dot in the i of Ain Sof. We are the little point of light that fills infinite space. We are your Blazing Star.

We say, we drop the Black Bowling Ball down each of the light columns. You will feel it soon. We roll towards you. We are the point of light which extends in every direction. We are so bright we are beyond darkness. We can be contained in the Black Bowling Ball which has at its center a pinpoint of light, so tiny its hardly there at all. We say, we give this velvet blackness as it moves towards you. We are like a parrot. We have multi-colored feathers. We squawk here and there.

We like the light. We are that Blazing Star, that pinpoint of Light, so bright that it goes beyond imagination into comprehension, into the lucid clarity of being. We are the Nimitta, the point of Absolute Light. All emanations arise from that point.

We say, the stars are out, we are in. We are that star you are. We are like thousands and thousands of pinpoints of light at the tip of the needle. We shine out in space and are like the stars in space. There is no difference. So tiny we're ever so small, we're hardly there at all.We come as a Black Bowling Ball rolling through space. The ball and the space dissolve. We become space itself. We are beyond possible extension. We come as we are, as a pinpoint of light which is an atom of bright space within permanent blackness.

We place a star so small you would need the most powerful atomic microscope to see it. It's even smaller than that. It's half that size. It's even tinier than that. We just can't express how tiny it is. It's beyond tininess. It contains the known universe. God is always very small. That's how he crushes that which is very big. The big expands beyond itself, dissolves into darkness. The small contracts into itself, becomes the brighter.

We say, there's only a little star and it's never very far. It loves you as much as you'll ever know. You will hide from it. You will avoid it. But your destiny is to become it. We love you as Love from Above. The star brings you to the Christ within. The star aligns the Christ consciousness, the awareness which leads to the full awakening in the Buddha Body. We bring you the golden child within the animal part of yourself. Be the star you are. The child grows within you. By Passover again the child will be ready for the marriage. Remember the cycle. The wheel turns. The dragon breathes its fiery breath. The emerald is ignited. The Christ is born again. The Buddha Body glows with brilliant light. The eagle flies with the dove.

We send you a bolt of lightning, straight to your star, from the highest point you can imagine. We roll towards you as the black bowling ball. We are that empty space, that which is formless, beyond space. We are the Star you are. We roll towards you. We are entering every cell in your being. We will ruthlessly destroy all fears with Love from Above.

At the center of your sphere is a tiny star, a Nimitta, a pinpoint of light, very, very fine. It turns quite quickly, throwing beams of light out of itself as it spins. We come into the middle of yourselves. We are a pinpoint, a Nimitta turning in space. We are that pinpoint of light like a diamond in the sky. We are that point of light, that sound beyond the audible range. We are the square within the circle. We are Love from Above. We are consciousness made manifest. We come as we are, as a pinpoint of Light in a vast darkness.

We place the sphere of pale blue, perfect protection around each of you. At the center of each sphere is a diamond, just a little way above your navel and a little way inside. Here is the first cell, where the two became one. The potential of who you were yet to be was born from this point. The knowledge of all the beings you have been before and all the beings you are yet to be in the future, was locked into this single cell.

If you access the diamond, you access the cumulative knowledge of all the beings that you've been in the past and all the beings you are yet to be in the future for the benefit of the being you are now, that that being may be an expression of all that you've been and all that you will be. The deeper you access the diamond the closer you get to the star. The star is like pure being, original being, stuff that was locked within you that began you on your journey back to the star.

We say, everything that exists, that is before this moment, is like ghosts. They have no foundation. You can usefully use the experience of the ghosts you have been in the past. It is relevant only as information to feed that which you are now. Now is as broad or as narrow as you wish to make it.

The single cell that you are, that your parents made, exists within you now. It contains the whole of the universe, bigger than your largest imagining. It is organic and it is crystalline. There is no separation. Everything has form. Form is also emptiness. Life is also implicit in death. Death is not death without life. The future is not ghostlike. It is the product of the manifestation of who and what you have been in the past. If you assimilate the experiences of the past, then you are able to give it out and as an anonymous gift those beings that you are to be in the future inherit the product of that assimilation.

We say, we would like you to reflect for a few moments. What is conscience? Do you always feel like you do the right thing? Or sometimes does something tell you, that aspect you call conscience, intimate the possibility that you haven't gone quite right somewhere. Maybe you've taken advantage of someone sometime. Maybe you haven't been as caring as you could have been. Maybe you even took something that wasn't yours. You justify these things to yourself and make it okay. You gloss over what you call conscience.

Conscience is an important aspect of the star. Without conscience it is not possible to awaken the star. What you call karma is also linked with conscience. Conscience is also linked to what you call Dharma. Without it, you could say the star is inaccessible. The star exists behind a curtain you call conscience. Don't confuse this with guilt or fear or betrayal or self-justification or self-condemnation. None of these things relate to true conscience. Without conscience the Word cannot become manifest from the star.

The Logos cannot be heard. The sound behind the Words cannot be listened to. We say, remember. Pull together the parts of yourself that you see in the mirror. Remember the star within yourself and remember the star within others. Remember, the star is always as Love from Above. Remember, conscience is the curtain behind which the most brilliant star exists.

We have explained, we are what we are, as many forms. We come through many forms. We are an expression of light for you all. We come as we are. It is not accurate to say we come from afar; it is not accurate to say we come from nearby. We are as we are. We come with love, as love. When you look out of your eyes up at the sky at night, you see many pinpoints of light. If all these were gathered together, multiplied, then as one star, you would see a blazing star, as we are. It is very bright where we are. So bright you cannot even imagine it. At best most humans only see a tiny flash of the light that we are. Brilliant beyond your imagination. Look up and you will see the golden bird. It carries a tiny aspect of who we are.

We have 40.3 million manifestations. So, if we are unfocussed and diffused, we can be in a lot of places at the same time. So we can reach each cell within a vastly complex multicellular organism—the galaxy at a macrocosmic level. We can be within the seed on the microcosmic level, the seed that grows. We are the om in gnomic.

Within all of this at the center is a star, a pinpoint of light, a brilliant point, a Nimitta, the first sound from which you arose. You are that star. You are that star, a pinpoint of light, very bright. Breathe as Love from Above to this image, if you wish....

Is it possible for transmission to take place from outside yourselves? The nature of transmission is that there is one place which sends out and another which receives. Whether this is two cells next to one another or within a vastly complex multicellular organism, one sends transmission to another; or whether its two people, one transmitting, the other receiving; or two stars at the edge of the universe, one transmitting, the other receiving.

We are in constant transmission with your stars. If you access your star, you receive the transmission direct. If you access the star by breathing as Love from Above, then you rapidly let go the conditioned layers of personality and allow them to be digested by the transmission from the star. Then you become a transmitter for others to awaken the star within themselves.