1. The word Beshara means "good news" and what it communicates is that being is one. Oneness of being consequently entails that there is no such thing as "other".

2. Beshara is like that voice, which speaks inside me when everything else falls silent. It is the voice of that real person in me announcing itself, saying, 'here am I', unconditionally, from my deepest origin. It is the voice of all our identities, speaking now through the separating clouds of our current ignorance, but which yearns to be heard, and being heard awakens in me a longing to be reconnected in that origin.

3. Beshara is a meaning. It is our essential meaning, our essential connection in consciousness and being with the reality of all that is. To realise our own meaning is to realise the meaning in everything.

4. It is the news that there is a real purpose and significance in being alive that both encompasses and transcends all that we do and all that we believe ourselves and others to be.

5. .that mankind is evolving to accommodate a universal perspective which is beyond religion, and free from all the constraints of nationality and culture, dogma, political ideology and selfhood.

6. .the realisation that the spiritual governs and controls the material everywhere, and that these are but two sides of a single coin; that all of earthly existence is therefore impregnated with meaning, value and the possibility of unified vision.

7. Beshara involves all who have ever loved and want to transform themselves and to find their true potential. There is no person, no place, no concept, and no essence, outside the intrinsic unfolding of the universes. Existence is unwaveringly one and absolute.

8. Beshara is the simplest direct framework for understanding who I am, what I am, where I am, where I came from and where I am going. There is no barrier, gap, or interval between the deep central meaning of the creation and the person who contemplates their place in it. Their place is, and always has been, at and in the very centre of existence. No one is on the edge, or to one side, or in any manner away from, the centralised and intrinsic unfolding of the universe.

1. The word 'beshara' means 'announcement of joy'.

2. It is from a Semitic root found in the Hebrew of the Old Testament, in the Aramaic of the Gospels and in the Arabic of the Quran. It means good news, the announcement of good news, and also the joy that one feels at having received good news. It can also be translated 'omen of joy', when it presages an extremely joyful event, that has not yet come about but which will at some point in the future.

1. Both no and yes... It is not a place, in the sense that Beshara is evidently a present universal possibility and opportunity - and available to all, no matter where and in what situation.

On the other hand, Beshara as an organisation and school had a place of beginning in England and Scotland - with its main location now in Scotland.

2. No. But perhaps one could say that Beshara 'takes place' wherever its announcement is heard and responded to. One could say that Beshara takes place in the world, in the human being, man and woman, child, baby, wherever that call to recognise our origin is heard in the human heart and responded to. The response evidences its origin, in the sense that if something is tasted, that which tastes manifests the taste in its expression. A sour plum puckers the face, a sweet peach provokes a smile. Joy engenders joy.

1. Beshara shows in people; people who do not see themselves as a group, if they do it's not Beshara.

2. Beshara is a universal. Its benefits are not restricted to any formal group, but are dependent on the opening of the heart, the real place in a person that feels and knows and tastes its origin, and is prepared to dive into him or herself to get it. If one person finds the connection in him or herself, no matter how fleeting or tenuous it may seem in the humdrum of day to day existence, that connection can be nurtured through awareness and remembering, and wanting to maintain that connection. It then becomes like a secret love affair. People who have this taste have come together in groups, some specifically/openly under the banner/name of Beshara, hence the Beshara School at Chisholme House, and various groups which meet around the world. But the connection in these matters is not limited to this.

1. Religion often means binding oneself to a dogma or a set of rules expounded by leaders who are seen to be superior in wisdom. In fact, they are intermediaries between the worshipper and the Almighty. Beshara is the way of no intermediaries and so one's religion becomes a private matter.

2. Unequivocally, Beshara is not a religious movement. It is not a sect nor is it a cult. It has no teachers, no leaders, no guru. Guidance, order, knowledge all these are universal principles available to everyone, and which the individual must discover for herself or himself through earnest and devoted enquiry and patience in themselves in their response to what comes to them in life, both in the interior and exterior.

3. The knowledge that Beshara brings is tied to all religions and not fixed to any one; texts studied from all the major religions and various practices used at the school are also drawn from them. However, these do not define the student in the way a religion might, rather each person must find their own place according to themselves. This education is inclusive and seeks to extend rather than limit how we see ourselves in the context of this world.

4. The knowledge of union, from which comes the School's education, is that to which all religions and spiritual movements are aiming.

5. Beshara does not move to diminish or undermine individual beliefs or doctrines.

1. What distinguishes Beshara is that it doesn't accept partiality. There is only the one existent being. Beshara implies the preparation for and the possibility of openly arriving at this kind of knowledge.

2. Beshara is not a way among ways. It isn't even a way, it is an announcement, a proclamation of what our situation really is, and who we are. Each student is encouraged to open his heart, to learn the truth about the unique individual who inhabits his body. The ultimate aim is to fully become oneself, free of dogma and coercion.

3. If we refer to the Beshara School, it helps provide a growth of perspective in which all the positive aspects of the different spiritual ways can be seen as describing different perceptions or aspects of the whole. It includes experiencing for ourselves that 'who we are' is intimately not other than that to which all the main spiritual traditions and paths have pointed. It brings us home to ourselves.

4. It is the way that includes all other ways in its point of view - the highest, most uncompromising, singular point of view of one being in existence - which has no room for: seeking for something (it is there already), gaining anything for oneself (for example "enlightenment"), going anywhere (there is nowhere to go), and particularly having to do anything...

1. The Unity of Existence tells us immediately that separate existence is illusion. If we exist, we exist only by and through the existence of the one existent being.

2. There is nothing that is not part of one reality - contrary to much everyday experience in the world of separation and conflict.

3. For all existence there is a connection that is the basis of our being; a very real, intimate and direct bond. So called 'personal characteristics' can make one belief that one is a separate person by oneself, liking or disliking other people or situations in life. When one is able to shift the point of view to experiencing all as being part of the same existence as oneself is, then oneness is felt and known - oneness that is now and here expressed as a person, situation, flower, hurricane or endless manifestations.

4. Unity of existence is our home, our connection, our reality from which each part can act and give its expression.

5. The awareness of the unity of existence is fundamental to the meaning of Beshara. The term implies that not only is all existence united in one being or is the unification of all that is multiple, it also indicates that existence is one and unique. The sweet scent of this truth is a breath of freedom from egoism and limited beliefs.

1. Yes, a unique place

2. Yes, you are in fact nothing other than part of that. Your very being is alive through and an expression of this unity. It is that which makes you capable of learning, loving and experiencing all facets of life.

3. Yes, one must assume that what one considers the 'I' to be is in fact a direct and particular expression of that original and all inclusive 'I', it is loved as a whole loves its parts, it is indispensable, completely part of the picture, the note without which the symphony sounds flat. We all belong, not simply as time-corruptible bodies passing in and out of the world, but as meanings inseparable from the origin itself, and which come into being to express its eternal uniquenesses.

1. Prayer gives peace and trust. Accepting that what ever the outcome might be - God knows best, and in that is the surrender. The prayer is addressed to that which knows, from that which does not know, in one's self. So then you end up or start again with peace, trust, acceptance and surrendering....

2. There is only the one, so who is it who prays, and to whom? This kind of leaning, stretching across eternity within one's heart, the reaching back deep inside oneself to that as yet unknown source and origin which itself is calling out to me, and has called me unceasingly since the beginning of my journey into the world of appearances is my response to my own inner truth. And my response is as if a mirror to its own yearning to know itself as me. So prayer becomes a dialogue of two in one. Or one could say it is a personal relationship, private, which has to be found and cultivated, between the unknowing dependent 'I' positioned in the outer world, and the permanent reality of the 'I' from which it is like a shadow.

3. Indeed what about prayer - there is no one to pray to, in the totality of one existent. Prayer is a state of being rather than an act directed towards the 'other'. For we are none other than the 'other'.

1. Not in a fixed way

2. True belief is a knowledge of the heart, the kind of trust that allows a child to accept a parents authority because of its dependency and because it already is cognisant of the parents' love. If we are able to recognise our ultimate dependency on that which is the source of our interior life, and know that it comes from love, then belief in what it shows us of ourselves, through whatever way, be it a feeling, a taste, or vision or understanding, will be a natural outcome, a kind of light in the darkness so to speak.

3. Belief is a form of prayer, in the sense of affirmation and invocation of higher intelligence. Specifically, belief in the unity of existence is a reminder and recognition of the true integrity which is literally beyond belief. In these terms, Beshara is less a matter of belief than of resolution not to be bound by ignorance.

Perhaps belief is like the scaffolding necessary during the construction of an arch, which has to be safely dismantled before the bridge can come into its full intended use.

1. It is the name of the Unity of existence.

2. Its meanings are one and infinite. For a start, it is a name that indicates the un-nameable reality of all existence. For me it is not something different to the supreme reality as designated by all the major religions, including those such as Buddhism which usually don't acknowledge the term.

1. The subject of Beshara is quite universal and as such not derivative or connected with Sufism.

2. The knowledge of union, from which comes the School's education, is that to which all religions and spiritual movements are aiming.

3. You might ask: is Beshara connected to Yoga, Taoism, or Christian or Buddhist mysticism? The aim of Beshara for a person is their realisation of unity, or a union with the origin of existence above and beyond any particularisation in form. If the aim of Sufism or other mysticisms really is this same Union, then it would be reasonable to say that Beshara is connected to the same source or root from which all true mysticisms originate.

If, however, one means, 'is Beshara connected to a form of an esoteric way within a religion, i.e. Islamic mysticism or Sufism?', then quite definitely it is not connected to Sufism, as Beshara is not connected to a religion or a particular way or form.

In the Beshara School certain texts from some of the above mentioned esoteric ways are studied. These texts carry the same taste and news of union quite apart from the aspect of their religious settings. A jewel set in gold or silver or wood, or just sitting hidden within the earth is the same jewel. The real esoteric education that is the manner of Beshara is that unique journey which is taking place in union within each one of us, above and beyond the books and 'teachings', to discover that hidden treasure.

1. Service is a prerequisite in all forms of spiritual education; it is how we learn and express our right relation to ourselves, the world and the reality itself. It is dependence and devotion; not done for any selfish gain but for humility, which is our true condition. It is a free act, naturally flowing and simply for the love of beauty.

2. Work and service provide a means of connecting with the nature of our interior reality and the unity of existence - life and meaning emerging in allowing expression of love in awareness. In serving others we serve reality and draw closer including to ourselves and others.

3. We can be in service to the moment or we can be in service to ourselves. If the former then with trust we can know our purpose and ourselves. If the latter, we are in bondage and not free to act or to serve anything. Service on the former level requires detachment from the paraphernalia of the work and dedication to the beauty of the love that surrounds and is in us.

1. One of the most important realisations for me, when I was on the six-month first course at Chisholme, was that love is the underlying motivation for everything. In this, it is not a sentimental preference for something or somebody; far less, a wish or need to possess. Often the motivation of love is hidden or distorted to our physical eyes. Only with the eye of the heart can the motivation of love be seen for what it is. Yet, even to have an inkling that love is what moves everything, stops one in one's tracks, and lays one open to seeing things differently.

2. Beshara is expressly about love and knowing what love is. Beshara is a love affair, and so it is joy-filled, most beautiful and the most demanding. It is the gift and the announcement of this love affair directly to our heart and to the whole of humanity.

What this brings up is a true sentiment where we can recognise the truth, witness it both in each other, and ourselves and in the world. This is an education of limitless expansion where we are taken to the origin of ourselves.