Get our latest book recommendations, author news, and competitions right to your inbox.
Stones of the New Consciousness
Healing, Awakening, and Co-creating with Crystals, Minerals, and Gems
Introduction by Robert Sardello
Published by Destiny Books
Distributed by Simon & Schuster
Table of Contents
About The Book
• Details the spiritual, healing, and energetic qualities of stones such as Moldavite, Nuummite, Circle Stones, Nirvana Quartz from the Himalayas, and high-vibrational Natrolite from the emerald mines of Russia
• Features color photos of exceptional examples of each of the stones
• Includes practices for deepening one’s awareness of the stones’ gifts--from expanding consciousness, to healing, to awakening the Light Body, to fulfilling one’s personal and collective destiny
In Stones of the New Consciousness Robert Simmons examines the 62 most important stones to help accelerate and enhance conscious evolution and spiritual awakening. Each entry is illustrated with color photos of exceptional examples. The stones include Moldavite, the extraterrestrial amorphous crystal; Nuummite, the oldest gemstone on Earth; and Circle Stones, the highly energetic Flint found in crop circle formations. Other featured rarities include Nirvana Quartz from the Himalayas and high-vibrational Natrolite from the emerald mines of Russia.
Simmons begins with a new approach to meditation with stones and to the possibility of conscious relationship with the spiritual beings who express themselves in our world as crystals and minerals. He includes historical and mythological references for each stone, positing that the fabled Stone of the Holy Grail and the Philosopher’s Stone of the alchemists may have physical counterparts among the minerals discussed. Simmons presents practices for deepening one’s awareness of the stones’ gifts--from expanding one’s consciousness, to healing, to awakening the Light Body, to fulfilling one’s personal and collective destiny. While emphasizing direct contact with stones, the book also explores crystal energy tools, energy environments, and applications such as stone elixirs and essences that can aid anyone on a spiritual path.
• Features color photos of exceptional examples of each of the stones
• Includes practices for deepening one’s awareness of the stones’ gifts--from expanding consciousness, to healing, to awakening the Light Body, to fulfilling one’s personal and collective destiny
In Stones of the New Consciousness Robert Simmons examines the 62 most important stones to help accelerate and enhance conscious evolution and spiritual awakening. Each entry is illustrated with color photos of exceptional examples. The stones include Moldavite, the extraterrestrial amorphous crystal; Nuummite, the oldest gemstone on Earth; and Circle Stones, the highly energetic Flint found in crop circle formations. Other featured rarities include Nirvana Quartz from the Himalayas and high-vibrational Natrolite from the emerald mines of Russia.
Simmons begins with a new approach to meditation with stones and to the possibility of conscious relationship with the spiritual beings who express themselves in our world as crystals and minerals. He includes historical and mythological references for each stone, positing that the fabled Stone of the Holy Grail and the Philosopher’s Stone of the alchemists may have physical counterparts among the minerals discussed. Simmons presents practices for deepening one’s awareness of the stones’ gifts--from expanding one’s consciousness, to healing, to awakening the Light Body, to fulfilling one’s personal and collective destiny. While emphasizing direct contact with stones, the book also explores crystal energy tools, energy environments, and applications such as stone elixirs and essences that can aid anyone on a spiritual path.
Excerpt
From SIXTY-TWO STONES OF THE NEW CONSCIOUSNESS
Introductory Note
For this book I selected the sixty-two stones that seemed to me most aligned with the emerging New Consciousness. Because the premise of this book is that the stones are the physical aspects of spiritual beings, and because the New Consciousness is one of relationship and co-creation, I felt the need to revisit the stones in a way that went deeper and attempted to give them a fresh look. I wanted readers to be able to join me in meeting the beings behind the stones, and I hoped to inspire them to re-imagine what is going on between us and our rock collections.
I worked meditatively with each of the sixty-two stones, attempting to find my way into their interior worlds and to establish relationship with them. This provided me with many fascinating journeys and a number of surprising and powerful moments of illumination. The sections of the individual stone essays marked “New Attunement” were dictated into a tape recorder during these meditations, and they display a variety of perspectives. Sometimes the information came in discursive form, almost like a newspaper report. At other times my awareness was filled with images that I reported and attempted to interpret. Some meditations flooded me with so much inner Light and feeling that it was difficult to speak. On several occasions the stones took me on amazing shamanic journeys, which I simply described. At the end of each meditation I attempted to allow the stone its own voice. These “quotations” are at the end of each section. . . .
SAMPLE STONE ENTRY
ALEXANDRITE
Keywords: Joy and wisdom, release of sorrow
Elements: Wind, Water
Chakras: Heart (4th), Third Eye (6th), Crown (7th)
Alexandrite is a variety of Chrysoberyl, a beryllium aluminum oxide with a hardness of 8.5. It is one of the hardest gemstones, second only to Diamond and Corundum. Its crystal pattern is orthorhombic, and it sometimes forms in hexagonal-looking twinned crystals. It was discovered in the Ural Mountains of Russia in 1830, on the birthday of Czar Alexander II, and was named after him. The magic of Alexandrite is in its property of color change--it is light red or red-purple in incandescent artificial light, and green or blue-green in daylight. (Appropriate to its name, the red and green colors of Alexandrite were the same as those of the Russian Imperial Guard.) In addition to the Russian discovery, Alexandrites have been found in Sri Lanka, South Africa, Burma, Brazil, Madagascar and the United States. The largest cut gem, weighing sixty-six carats, is in the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, DC. Alexandrite is one of the world’s rarest gemstones, and the finest specimens are more costly than Diamonds.
Since its discovery, Alexandrite was believed in Russia to be a stone of good fortune. As belief in the magical properties of stones faded with the rise of science and rationalism, Alexandrite was the only gemstone Russians still widely believed to be a beneficial talisman as late as the nineteenth century.
BACKGROUND Alexandrite carries a very joyful vibration. It is a powerful agent of inner transformation and spiritual evolution. It embodies both the heart energy (green) and the higher mind energy (purple). Its property of changing color in different lights symbolizes the ideal of inner adaptability in which one is able to respond from the mind, the heart or both together, in whatever way is most appropriate. It can stimulate a harmonic opening of the heart chakra, third eye and crown chakras, in which the three operate as an integrated whole.
Alexandrites are truly stones of joy, teaching us that the joy of the celestial realms is also simultaneously here at every moment, and that we are free to choose how much of it we receive. It encourages us to take in all energies that come to us, to transmute them into such harmony and beauty as is possible, and to do this with the inner resilience of a commitment to joy.
NEW ATTUNEMENT When I sat down to meditate with Alexandrite, I first held the stone in front of me with my eyes open, and I gazed carefully and intently upon it. Then, closing my eyes, I immediately saw its outline in blue-white light. This indicated to me that Alexandrite is a highly energetic stone that leaves an instant impression upon one’s vibrational field, which is experienced as the presence of light. Upon my watching this inner radiance for several minutes, it shifted into other colors--including golden, green and purple. Even orange and red lights came forward. One way of understanding the multiplicity of radiant colors stimulated in the mind’s eye by Alexandrite is to say that this is a stone of flexibility, adaptability and transmutation, as many meditative experiences with it have suggested.
Alexandrite in the physical world appears green in sunlight and red-purple in incandescent light. This is reflective of Alexandrite’s inner resonance with the heart, as well as the third eye and the crown chakras. Green is the color of the heart; purple is associated with the crown and sometimes the third eye. The fact that Alexandrite appears green in sunlight and green is the color of the heart is especially fascinating in light of the fact that the heart in us is our point of resonance with the Great Central Sun. Thus outer sunlight changes Alexandrite to the color of the heart, which is itself a Sun.
On the other hand, Alexandrite is purple in incandescent light, something created by human beings that is not otherwise existent in nature. This has a resonance with the fact that the center of our individualized consciousness is the mind, where our thoughts (and inventions, like incandescent light) arise. Alexandrite’s stimulation of the brain/mind centers displays a fitting resonance with the purple color it assumes in (human-created) incandescent light. Fittingly, purple is the color associated with the third eye and crown chakras--the centers of the conscious mind.
In meditating with Alexandrite, I found--as I held one crystal at the heart and another at the third eye--that the stones strongly stimulated the energy centers of the heart, third eye and crown. Initially, each of these chakras was pulsing at a different rate, but within a few moments, in the presence of the Alexandrites, they moved into a unified vibration. This is resonant with Alexandrite’s higher purpose--unification of mind and heart. Some esoteric teachers maintain that the heart chakra, as we evolve more fully into the human Light Body, will ascend to the location now known as the crown. This suggests the pattern of a fully integrated union of heart and mind and is signified by this new expansion of the heart chakra. My intuition suggests that the evolutionary shift we are experiencing may bring about a unification of the neural dimensions of the heart and brain, awakening a spiritual heart/mind consciousness.
Alexandrite engenders a powerful awakening of one’s entire being through its harmonization of the heart and mind centers. When the heart and mind become one, we enter a conscious ness in which feeling and thinking are in unity, and in which the heart’s wisdom is expressed with the full eloquence of our best mental capacities. The throat chakra, residing between the mind centers and the heart, then becomes the expressive tool of the unified heart/mind. Alexandrite encourages all of this. Alexandrite’s emotional tone is one of exuberant joy. It calls forth the heart’s natural state of delighted engagement with all that occurs in each moment.
Alexandrite, in its own color change, embodies an inner pattern of flexibility, adaptability and willingness to shift its expression in the presence of varying conditions. In us, a similar flexibility and adaptability are encouraged by Alexandrite. It engenders in one’s heart and mind a feeling of comfort and relaxed engagement with each moment. It allows us to feel the shape of each experience and adapt ourselves most advantageously for all concerned. Thus Alexandrite extends the heart’s predisposition to act always for the well-being of the whole. In this, it is a true stone of the heart. Yet the violet resonance of Alexandrite encourages the infusion of the personal heart with the great column of Light descending from the Heart of the All. Alexandrite is therefore a stone of the Higher Self, and it initiates the integration of one’s earthly, everyday identity with one’s true expression as the Higher Self. Thus, just as Alexandrite encourages the unity of mind and heart, it brings forth a new unity of one’s known self in earthly life with one’s Higher Self--one’s Perfect Nature emanating from the spiritual realms.
ALEXANDRITE SPEAKS “I am a blossom of the Earth’s joy. I offer the experience of Her Heart through me. She wishes the flower of your heart to bloom, and to reach ever upward toward the Light. Her gesture through me is a sweet beckoning, and you, as beloved partners--beloved children--are invited into the garden of Her joy.”
Introductory Note
For this book I selected the sixty-two stones that seemed to me most aligned with the emerging New Consciousness. Because the premise of this book is that the stones are the physical aspects of spiritual beings, and because the New Consciousness is one of relationship and co-creation, I felt the need to revisit the stones in a way that went deeper and attempted to give them a fresh look. I wanted readers to be able to join me in meeting the beings behind the stones, and I hoped to inspire them to re-imagine what is going on between us and our rock collections.
I worked meditatively with each of the sixty-two stones, attempting to find my way into their interior worlds and to establish relationship with them. This provided me with many fascinating journeys and a number of surprising and powerful moments of illumination. The sections of the individual stone essays marked “New Attunement” were dictated into a tape recorder during these meditations, and they display a variety of perspectives. Sometimes the information came in discursive form, almost like a newspaper report. At other times my awareness was filled with images that I reported and attempted to interpret. Some meditations flooded me with so much inner Light and feeling that it was difficult to speak. On several occasions the stones took me on amazing shamanic journeys, which I simply described. At the end of each meditation I attempted to allow the stone its own voice. These “quotations” are at the end of each section. . . .
SAMPLE STONE ENTRY
ALEXANDRITE
Keywords: Joy and wisdom, release of sorrow
Elements: Wind, Water
Chakras: Heart (4th), Third Eye (6th), Crown (7th)
Alexandrite is a variety of Chrysoberyl, a beryllium aluminum oxide with a hardness of 8.5. It is one of the hardest gemstones, second only to Diamond and Corundum. Its crystal pattern is orthorhombic, and it sometimes forms in hexagonal-looking twinned crystals. It was discovered in the Ural Mountains of Russia in 1830, on the birthday of Czar Alexander II, and was named after him. The magic of Alexandrite is in its property of color change--it is light red or red-purple in incandescent artificial light, and green or blue-green in daylight. (Appropriate to its name, the red and green colors of Alexandrite were the same as those of the Russian Imperial Guard.) In addition to the Russian discovery, Alexandrites have been found in Sri Lanka, South Africa, Burma, Brazil, Madagascar and the United States. The largest cut gem, weighing sixty-six carats, is in the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, DC. Alexandrite is one of the world’s rarest gemstones, and the finest specimens are more costly than Diamonds.
Since its discovery, Alexandrite was believed in Russia to be a stone of good fortune. As belief in the magical properties of stones faded with the rise of science and rationalism, Alexandrite was the only gemstone Russians still widely believed to be a beneficial talisman as late as the nineteenth century.
BACKGROUND Alexandrite carries a very joyful vibration. It is a powerful agent of inner transformation and spiritual evolution. It embodies both the heart energy (green) and the higher mind energy (purple). Its property of changing color in different lights symbolizes the ideal of inner adaptability in which one is able to respond from the mind, the heart or both together, in whatever way is most appropriate. It can stimulate a harmonic opening of the heart chakra, third eye and crown chakras, in which the three operate as an integrated whole.
Alexandrites are truly stones of joy, teaching us that the joy of the celestial realms is also simultaneously here at every moment, and that we are free to choose how much of it we receive. It encourages us to take in all energies that come to us, to transmute them into such harmony and beauty as is possible, and to do this with the inner resilience of a commitment to joy.
NEW ATTUNEMENT When I sat down to meditate with Alexandrite, I first held the stone in front of me with my eyes open, and I gazed carefully and intently upon it. Then, closing my eyes, I immediately saw its outline in blue-white light. This indicated to me that Alexandrite is a highly energetic stone that leaves an instant impression upon one’s vibrational field, which is experienced as the presence of light. Upon my watching this inner radiance for several minutes, it shifted into other colors--including golden, green and purple. Even orange and red lights came forward. One way of understanding the multiplicity of radiant colors stimulated in the mind’s eye by Alexandrite is to say that this is a stone of flexibility, adaptability and transmutation, as many meditative experiences with it have suggested.
Alexandrite in the physical world appears green in sunlight and red-purple in incandescent light. This is reflective of Alexandrite’s inner resonance with the heart, as well as the third eye and the crown chakras. Green is the color of the heart; purple is associated with the crown and sometimes the third eye. The fact that Alexandrite appears green in sunlight and green is the color of the heart is especially fascinating in light of the fact that the heart in us is our point of resonance with the Great Central Sun. Thus outer sunlight changes Alexandrite to the color of the heart, which is itself a Sun.
On the other hand, Alexandrite is purple in incandescent light, something created by human beings that is not otherwise existent in nature. This has a resonance with the fact that the center of our individualized consciousness is the mind, where our thoughts (and inventions, like incandescent light) arise. Alexandrite’s stimulation of the brain/mind centers displays a fitting resonance with the purple color it assumes in (human-created) incandescent light. Fittingly, purple is the color associated with the third eye and crown chakras--the centers of the conscious mind.
In meditating with Alexandrite, I found--as I held one crystal at the heart and another at the third eye--that the stones strongly stimulated the energy centers of the heart, third eye and crown. Initially, each of these chakras was pulsing at a different rate, but within a few moments, in the presence of the Alexandrites, they moved into a unified vibration. This is resonant with Alexandrite’s higher purpose--unification of mind and heart. Some esoteric teachers maintain that the heart chakra, as we evolve more fully into the human Light Body, will ascend to the location now known as the crown. This suggests the pattern of a fully integrated union of heart and mind and is signified by this new expansion of the heart chakra. My intuition suggests that the evolutionary shift we are experiencing may bring about a unification of the neural dimensions of the heart and brain, awakening a spiritual heart/mind consciousness.
Alexandrite engenders a powerful awakening of one’s entire being through its harmonization of the heart and mind centers. When the heart and mind become one, we enter a conscious ness in which feeling and thinking are in unity, and in which the heart’s wisdom is expressed with the full eloquence of our best mental capacities. The throat chakra, residing between the mind centers and the heart, then becomes the expressive tool of the unified heart/mind. Alexandrite encourages all of this. Alexandrite’s emotional tone is one of exuberant joy. It calls forth the heart’s natural state of delighted engagement with all that occurs in each moment.
Alexandrite, in its own color change, embodies an inner pattern of flexibility, adaptability and willingness to shift its expression in the presence of varying conditions. In us, a similar flexibility and adaptability are encouraged by Alexandrite. It engenders in one’s heart and mind a feeling of comfort and relaxed engagement with each moment. It allows us to feel the shape of each experience and adapt ourselves most advantageously for all concerned. Thus Alexandrite extends the heart’s predisposition to act always for the well-being of the whole. In this, it is a true stone of the heart. Yet the violet resonance of Alexandrite encourages the infusion of the personal heart with the great column of Light descending from the Heart of the All. Alexandrite is therefore a stone of the Higher Self, and it initiates the integration of one’s earthly, everyday identity with one’s true expression as the Higher Self. Thus, just as Alexandrite encourages the unity of mind and heart, it brings forth a new unity of one’s known self in earthly life with one’s Higher Self--one’s Perfect Nature emanating from the spiritual realms.
ALEXANDRITE SPEAKS “I am a blossom of the Earth’s joy. I offer the experience of Her Heart through me. She wishes the flower of your heart to bloom, and to reach ever upward toward the Light. Her gesture through me is a sweet beckoning, and you, as beloved partners--beloved children--are invited into the garden of Her joy.”
Product Details
- Publisher: Destiny Books (January 12, 2021)
- Length: 320 pages
- ISBN13: 9781644113875
Raves and Reviews
"The internal fire of Robert Simmons warms this writing--or, I should say, fires it up, so that you can see your life in a new light and feel a new kind of love ignited. . . . It contains perhaps the deepest mysteries of the Earth--and of the Cosmos. . . . The purpose of this writing is to invite us into a process without end--a new way of living."
– Robert Sardello, Ph.D., author of Love and the Soul
"In the crucial quest to restore accord between the human world and the living world which surrounds us, the reverent recognition of trans-human intelligence is our only chance. We have forgotten the indigenous wisdom that tells us ‘all created things are People.’ Stepping out of this prevailing amnesia, Robert Simmons takes us deep into a living rapport and relation with the ‘Stone People.’ This book is a gift to all who stand ready to enter the dance of participation, the never-ending co-creation of all that is."
– Daniel Deardorff, author of The Other Within: The Genius of Deformity in Myth, Culture and Psyche
"Finally, a book that ventures deep into the true realm of human and mineral relationship! Robert has eloquently revealed the larger picture of human evolution and the role of minerals in the shift of Gaia at this time, as well as honestly detailing the journey to deep intimacy with our mineral teachers."
– Naisha Ahsian, coauthor of The Book of Stones and creator of The Crystal Ally Cards
“Stones of the New Consciousness begins to spelunk the solidity of stones, taking us to the edge of consciousness and matter, and into the realm of co-creative evolution, fields of heart-intelligence, the crystalline nature of humans, the Soul of the world, myths and legends, shamanism, poets and prophets, and myriad ways that we can wrap our intelligence around the parallels and possibilities that working with stones offers. . . . It is not light reading; it is, however, authoritatively original and inspiring, and weaves a fascinating tapestry of science and spirit that itself exemplifies the new consciousness the author strives to make more understandable and accessible. . . . This book is going on my top shelf!”
– New Consciousness Review
Resources and Downloads
High Resolution Images
- Book Cover Image (jpg): Stones of the New Consciousness 2nd Edition, New Edition eBook 9781644113875
