A REITERATION
If you’re seeking greater spiritual understanding, don’t sell yourself short: soak in a good teaching until you know you’ve ‘got it’ fully and completely. Nothing in the whole wide world could be more urgent by virtue of the fact that nothing in the whole wide world exists!
Sometimes the strangest thing can be just what a person needs to enjoy a huge burst in spiritual awareness – for me it meant having my imagination and trust kicked into high gear. I was blown away by a book that is clearly not for everyone. It shined a light on Fourth Dimension phenomena and sprinkled in quantum physics happening at every turn. Mind you, I did say this book “Disappearance of the Universe” by Gary Renard is not for everyone. He writes
“Today, there are more lucky people than ever who either are or will be enlightened this time around by having the unconscious guilt in their minds completely healed by the Holy Spirit. The number of them has gone up in the last couple of decades, mainly because there are a lot of people studying and practicing the Course. You thought I was going to say it’s because the world is more enlightened. I’m sorry, but salvation is not a critical mass thing. People cannot be enlightened by the thinking of others, or simply by being in their presence. But they can be pointed in the right direction. Most of the people who are enlightened today, or soon will be, are not going to be written about in the annals of spiritual history. That doesn’t matter. How could it really matter in a dream?”
Maybe it was his thumbing his nose at all unillumined living, maybe his unabashedly collapsing time right under our noses or maybe it was his spellbinding ending that could propel any non-judgemental reader into the fourth, fifth and beyond, dimensions that really got my attention!
drrobinstarbuck
Arten: “…the Course wants to help people realize what’s in their unconscious – so they can get rid of it.
Most people, especially nice, spiritual people, don’t know about the murderous thought system that runs this universe, or the hatred that’s underneath the surface of their mind.
Nor do most of them want to.
Most people just want everything to be hunky-dory.
You can’t blame them for wanting peace, but REAL peace is found by undoing the ego, not by covering it over.” D.U p.p 159-160
Gary Renard
Disappearance of the Universe
LOTSA SALIENT SNIPPETS FROM
“DISAPPEARANCE OF THE UNIVERSE”
Arten: Before the beginning, there were no beginnings or endings; there was only the eternal Always, which is still there – and always shall be. There was only an awareness of unflawed oneness, and this oneness was so complete, so awe-striking and unlimited in its joyous extension that it would be impossible for anything to be aware of something else that was not Itself. There was and is only God in this reality – which we will refer to as Heaven. p.122 DU
Arten – Unlike the concrete, specific world you appear to be in now, this constant and enthralling state of awareness is completely abstract, eternal, unchanging and united. DU p.123
Arten : Then something appears to happen which, as in a dream, doesn’t really happen – it just appears to. For just an instant, for just one, inconsequential fraction of a nanosecond, a very small aspect of Christ appears to have an idea that is not shared by God. It’s a kind of ‘What if?’ idea. It’s like an innocent wondering in the form of a question – which unfortunately is followed by an apparent answer’ DU p.123.
Arten: ‘…your state of innocence is about to be seemingly replaced by a state of fear and erroneous, vicious defenses that this condition appears to require.’ DU p.123
Arten: Because your idea is not of God, He does not respond to it. to respond to it would be to give it reality. If God Himself were to acknowledge anything except the idea of perfect oneness, then there would no longer be perfect oneness. There would no longer be a perfect state of Heaven for you to return to.’ DU p.123
Arten: ‘…you never really left anyway. You’re still there, but you have entered a nightmare state of illusion. While you travel only in dreams God and Christ, Who are always One, have continued as they always did and always will – completely unaffected by what J refers to in his Course as the ‘tiny, mad idea…’ Of separation.’ DU p.124
Arten: ‘In this cosmic instant of seeming individuality -and no matter how attractive you may think individuality is, it is nothing but separation – there seems to be tiny aspect of Christ that is now aware of something else. That is duality. Now, instead of oneness, you have twoness.’ DU p.124
Arten: ‘….The mind that is reliving the seeming separation has actually fallen asleep and is dreaming an idle, insignificant dream, or nightmare, because anything that seemed to be apart from Heaven would have to be symbolic of an opposite to Heaven. It would thus seem to include opposite characteristics…’ DU.p124
Arten: ‘We’ve already talked about the first division in the mind, and along with it has come consciousness. Because of this, for the first time, you have a conscious choice to make. Before that there was nothing to choose between. But now there are two possible responses to this idea of separation. That’s what leads to the second division of the mind.’ DU p.131
Arten: ‘In our story this new, seemingly individual mind is going to make its very first decision. At this point there are only two choices, and there will always be only two choices. There you have the second division of the mind. Now you have a right mind and a wrong mind, each representing a different choice or different response to the tiny, mad idea.’ DU p.132
Arten: ‘If, at this point where we find ourselves in our story, you had chosen to believe the Holy Spirit’s interpretation, or response, to the separation instead of the ego’s, then your little dream adventure would have been over. The ego had a selfish yet tantalising response of its own. If you continue to believe in the separation, it offers you your own individual identity – separate from God, very special and uniquely important.’ DU p.133
Arten: ‘Of course, you have no idea what you’re getting yourself into – and you make another numb choice. This is all new to you, and you’re more than willing to give curiosity a chance to kill the cat. You choose with the ego so you can see what it’s like to be apart and special. This in turn causes the third division in the mind.’ DU p.133
Arten: “…Once you choose the ego and cause the third division , it’s the Holy Spirit that’s just a memory. You are now totally identified with the ego. However, being holographic by the grace of God, even when the mind seems to divide each part still maintains the characteristics of the whole-so you can never really be lost. Both the ego and the Holy Spirit are still to be found in every mind; it’s just that the Holy Spirit is being drowned out by the egos voice because that’s what you chose to listen to-and what you really are has been pushed out of your awareness. We said before that you may have forgotten the truth, but it’s still there-buried in your mind.” D.U p.134
Arten: “…Your choice for the ego instead of the Holy Spirit, resulting the third division of the mind, has made the Voice for God almost completely inaudible to you. Meanwhile the ego is giving you it’s own version of what’s happening – and here’s where things really start to get nasty.” D.U p.137
Arten: “So – in our story, you’ve chosen with the ego, and now you’re identified with it. The first division of the mind made the awareness of your perfect oneness with God just a memory. The second division brought two parts to the mind. The third division has made the Holy Spirit just a memory, and the ego now has your attention. You look to it to explain to you what’s going on, and the ego has a message for you. The message is this: “You’d better get the hell out of here, pal.” Then it proceeds to give you some reasons. In your confused state of mind, these reasons sound pretty damn convincing in their logic.” D.U p.138
Arten: “”Don’t you know what you’ve done?” – the ego asks in our metaphorical story – “You’ve separated yourself from God! You’ve sinned against Him big time. You’re in for it now. You’ve taken paradise – everything he gave you – and thrown it right in His face and said, ‘Who the hell needs you?’ You’ve attacked Him! You’re dead. You haven’t got a snowballs chance in hell against Him – He’s awesome and you’re nothing. You’ve ruined everything; you’re so guilty. If you don’t haul ass out of here right now, it’s gonna be worse than death!”
Oh my God, you think in response to the ego. What have I done? You’re right – I’ve ruined everything and attacked Heaven! But where can I go? I can run, but I can’t hide. There’s no place I can hide from God Himself.
“Well, that’s not exactly true” says the ego, “because I’m here to help you, I’m your friend – and I have an idea. I have somewhere we can go together. You can be your own boss and not have to face God at all. You’ll never see Him. He won’t even be able to get to this place!”
Really? You ask. That sounds pretty damn good to me. Let’s go!
“All right” says the ego. “Do exactly as I say.” D.U p.138
Pursah: “Of course everything the ego is saying about God is about as sane as Caligula Caesar. God would never do anything except love you. It’s here that you need to know just a little bit more about how the mind works.
Because of the power of the mind, you need to appreciate the power of your belief. It was your belief in the idea you could be separate from God – your taking it seriously – that gave it so much seeming power and realism…
You also have to realise that because you made duality by deciding to be a perceiver, everything you perceive will include characteristics that appear to be the opposite of that which you have apparently separated from. What you have seemingly separated from – Heaven – has one set of characteristics, and what you are perceiving as your reality has an opposite set of characteristics.” D.U p.p 138-139
Pursah: “Heaven, although it is beyond all words, has these kind of characteristics: It is perfect, formless, changeless, abstract, eternal, innocent, whole, abundant, complete Love. It is reality; it is Life. God and Christ and Christ’s Creations are perfect Oneness. There is nothing else. This is the domain of God’s Will – The Knowledge of the Father. To describe the experience of your awareness of this perfect oneness is not really possible, but I assure you that you will know it when you have a temporary experience of it. It’s not quite like anything else you are familiar with.” D.U p.139
Pursah: “The domain of perception, on the other hand, being Heaven’s seeming opposite, includes very different characteristics. Keeping in mind we are still speaking on a metaphysical level here, these attributes include: individuality, form, shapes, specifics, changes, time, separation, division, illusion, wishes, scarcity and death. That’s why in the Book of Genesis 2:16-17, which comes right out of the writers unconscious mind, it says, “You may eat freely of every tree of the garden; but of the tree of knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you shall surely die.” Good and evil are opposites, and once you have a seeming opposite to Heaven, you have death. But, as the Course consistently says in a thousand different ways, beginning right in its introduction, “…what is all encompassing can have no opposite.” D.U p.139
Pursah: “Once you’ve chosen to listen to the egos temptation to be a separate individual, your belief in the reality of the separation begins to cause some very serious problems for you. God now seems to be outside of you, and everything you experience tells you that you’ve separated from Him. That’s a problem you still have this very second. Practically all of your mind is unconscious to you, just like almost all of an iceberg is underneath the surface of the water. As long as you believe in the reality of the physical universe…, then everything you perceive will be a constant, unconscious reminder to you that you’ve committed the act of separating yourself from God.” D.U p.140
Arten: “…the ego-voice in your mind has told you some things about your condition and also about God that simply aren’t true. You’ve brought into it partly because you like the idea of being an individual with a seemingly separate will – even though that’s not really possible. By taking the separation and the egos voice seriously, that translates within your seemingly separate mind as a sin against God, now if you’ve sinned, that means you’re guilty, and on this metaphysical level you feel it – even though on the level of the world you will not always feel it. Being the guilty bastard you think you are, it means you think you’re going to be punished, big time. Even on the level of this world, a psychologist would explain to you that guilt unconsciously demands punishment – and if you really think about it, it will explain a lot. On the metaphysical level we’re talking about how you sincerely believe that you’re about to be attacked and punished by God Himself!” D.U p.140
Arten: “The anticipation of this fate-worse-than-death kind of punishment from God creates fear – a fear so terrible you can’t even comprehend it. Yet you’ve been running away from it for what seems like billions of years. So now we’re at a point where we can tell you why your universe, your world, and your body were made by the mind in the first place. They were all made simultaneously even though in a linear dream, things seem to happen separately.” D.U p.p. 140-141
Arten: “The egos voice speaks to you as though it’s your friend and is watching out for your best interests. You’ll recall we’ve already said that the ego has convinced you that God is going to get you and you better run for it to a place where you’ll be safe. That place is this universe. As far as the ego is concerned, the best defense is a good offense. In fact, defense and offense are two sides of the same coin.” D.U p.141
Arten: “So, believing that the separation has actually happened, and given your fear of Gods punishment and retaliation that you desperately think you need to defend yourself against, you’ve already developed – by listening to the ego – a thought system that says you’ve sinned, you’re guilty, and Gods inevitable punishment requires a defense. You feel completely vulnerable, and the ego has told you that it has an idea – a place where you can go where God will never be able to find you. In your confused state, you are now a follower of the ego instead of Gods Will, and you listen to the egos brilliant but twisted idea to make you safe from that which you no longer remember is actually your own true reality – but which you now live in mortal fear of instead.” D.U p.142
Arten: “So now the instant has arrived in our spectacular revue where the ego is about to give you it’s grand answer to your nightmarish predicament.
The awesome magnitude of painful shame and acute guilt in your mind, resulting from what you believe you’ve done, appear to require an immediate and complete escape. So you join with the ego, and then the incomprehensible power of your mind to make illusions as a perceiver – rather than spirit as a creator – causes the method of your escape to become manifest. At this point the ego, which you are now totally identified with, uses the ingenious but illusory method of projection to hurl the thought of separation out of your mind, and you – or at least the part of you that seems to have consciousness – appears to be projected right along with it. This instantly causes what is popularly referred to as the Big Bang, or the creation of the universe. Now you appear to be in the universe, while you do not realize you are literally out of your mind.” D.U p.p. 142-143
Arten: “Now the enemy you live in terror of, God, no longer seems to be in the mind with you – where you thought you wouldn’t have had a chance against Him. Instead God, and for that matter everything else, is now apparently completely outside of you. The source of your problems, including your guilt, are now someplace else – even though we’ve already made it clear that there can’t possibly be anyplace else. The making of the cosmos is your protection from God, your ingenious hiding place. At the same time, the universe itself becomes the ultimate scapegoat.” D.U p.143
Arten: “There is no other spiritual discipline that understands and explains the motivation behind the making of this world, the same motivation that runs it today. That motivation is fear, always ultimately traceable to the fear of God. The trans-temporal, non-spatial, seemingly separate mind is in a paralysing state of fear because of a punishment you believe is coming from God. So the ego convinces you that you need a defense, without bothering to mention that the defense it offers is designed to ensure its own survival through your individuality.” D.U p.141
Arten: “Now, both the cause and the blame for your problem of separation, not to mention the blame for all of your new, illusory replacements problems, can be found – if you look hard enough along with the ego – somewhere outside of you. Indeed, a whole new level has been made in which the thought system of sin, guilt, fear, attack, and defense can be acted out in such as way as to protect your seemingly separated mind, which you presently think of as your soul, from your terrible, yet completely unconscious guilt and fear.” D.U p.143
Arten: “This universe, the world, and your body give form to a defense structure in which you hide from your imagined sin, guilt, and the resulting fear. The ego has a method firmly in place to deal with this now-unconscious sin, guilt, and fear – by projecting it onto others.” D.U p.143-144
Arten: “Now, as the crowning achievement in its grand scheme, the ego makes – drum roll, please – the body. This allows the ego to permit into awareness, almost exclusively, only those things which testify to the reality of its cherished illusion. Yet the body itself is just another part of the illusion, and to ask it to explain the illusion to you is no different than asking the illusion to explain itself – and of course the ego is more than happy to furnish you with its answers.” D.U p.143
Arten: “Once we explain to you…how this thought system is acted out on the level of this world, you’ll be able to clearly observe it in action everywhere – in all of your personal relationships, the relationships of others, in international relationships, in politics and other professions, and anywhere else you care to look. Then you’ll begin to see that the message of the Course is true. In discussing this, we’re going to be telling you some things that are not for the squeamish. The ego isn’t pretty.
After that, we can start to have some fun.” D.U p.144
Arten: ” When you’re capable of observing the ego’s thought system in action – which is certainly interesting enough to begin with – then we’ll be able to explain to you how you can help the Holy Spirit turn the tables on the ego, hasten your own salvation at the same time, and eventually break the cycle of birth and death.” D.U p.144
PRACTICE FORGIVENESS BY REMEMBERING YOU’RE DREAMING
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You authored the dream and made the figures in it act out for you, so you could see your unconscious guilt outside yourself. If you remember your dreaming, then there’s nothing out there but your own projection. Once you believe that – and belief only comes from practice and experience – then there’s no need for what you’re seeing and now forgiving to have any impact on you…
As we say, this will all become part of your attitude, but it’s helpful at first to think of it as being made up of different components. Once you’re the cause and not the effect, another component of forgiveness would be to forgive both your projected images and yourself for dreaming them.
…You already know the Course tells you to forgive your brother for what he hasn’t done. That would be true forgiveness because, as the Course also says, you’re not making the error real. You’re not giving truth to your illusions; you’re bringing your illusions to the truth. Now it’s time to forgive yourself for dreaming this whole mess in the first place. If nothing’s happened – and if the Course teaches anything, it’s that nothing’s happened – then you’re innocent. Thus as you forgive your brothers and sisters, your mind realises simultaneously that you are forgiven. Remember, we’ve also quoted the Course as saying that as you see him, you will see yourself
Gary Renard
The Disappearance
of the Universe
FORGIVENESS IS AN ATTITUDE OF NON-JUDGMENTALISM
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Everything you learn becomes incorporated in that attitude until forgiveness happens automatically. For most people, especially during the first few years, forgiveness requires that you think about it. You become a master by having forgiving thought processes. These right-minded thoughts eventually dominate the mind instead of the ego. A situation occurs or someone comes along whom you need to forgive, and following the lead of the Workbook, you’ve learned to have right-minded thoughts about the person or situation. Using your understanding of the Course’s entire thought system, including the Text and the Manual, contributes to and strengthens your attitude of forgiveness.
These forgiveness thoughts of yours usually won’t be linear.
Gary Renard
The Disappearance
of the Universe
In taking a closer look at my everyday life, I was shocked to see how automatic my judgments often were. I made gains in observing this knee-jerk tendency, detaching myself from it and taking the charge out of my grievances. That wasn’t all the way to forgiveness, but it helped me become more aware of my ego’s thought patterns. I realized that even in my discussions with Arten and Pursah, my smart-ass defense against shyness would dominate my personality and make me say things I probably wouldn’t say if my ego wasn’t running the show. I wondered if Arten and Pursah were just trying to make me feel comfortable by speaking to me in my own language; I realized that if I changed my style a little, they probably would, too. As I practiced the Course’s Workbook lessons, I was being steadily trained to choose to think with the Holy Spirit in my right mind instead of the ego in my wrong mind. This resulted in some wild and joyous light episodes during the day as well as bloody and horrific nightmares while in bed at night. I would have never believed such ugly images could be in my unconscious. I was sure that such nightmare images didn’t show up for everyone who did the Course, but here they were, reflecting the awful and insane self-image that was buried in the depths of my ego —and now being shown to me in order to be forgiven and released to the Holy Spirit in peace. It was disconcerting to remember that my thinking wasn’t really being done on this level. The mind was signaling to my brain what to see, hear, think, do and experience. My brain was simply the programmed hardware that ran and regulated my body, relaying to me a movie that could be called “Life of Gary.”
It is because the thoughts you think you think appear as images that you do not recognize them as nothing. You think you think them, and so you think you see them. This is how your “seeing” was made. This is the function you have given your body’s eyes. It is not seeing. It is image making. It takes the place of seeing, replacing vision with illusions. This introductory idea to the process of image making that you call seeing will not have much meaning for you. You will begin to understand it when you have seen little edges of light around the same familiar objects which you see now. That is the beginning of real vision. You can be certain that real vision will come quickly when this has occurred. As we go along, you may have many “light episodes.” They may take many different forms, some of them quite unexpected. Do not be afraid of them. They are signs that you are opening your eyes at last. They will not persist, because they merely symbolize true perception, and they are not related to knowledge. These exercises will not reveal knowledge to you. But they will prepare the way to it.
Gary Renard
The Disappearance
of the Universe
The mind was like a programmer that told me, through my brain and body, what to experience and how to respond. I had been controlled like a robot, told what to do, and programmed to think it was really me making these decisions on this level. Just as a human being could build a computer, program it, and tell it what to do —or could direct a virtual reality figure to do things within an environment that didn’t truly exist —the programmer mind was directing me to move within and experience a world that didn’t truly exist in order to convince me I was a body. That body was sometimes getting what it wanted, but usually missing out on something, whether physical or psychological. This sense of lack was symbolic of being separate from God. The specific reasons for my problems were shown to me as external to myself, operating in a universe that was never really there, in order to serve as a scapegoat for my hidden unconscious guilt over that very same separation. I realized that even though this unconscious mind that was calling the shots seemed to be outside of me, it really wasn’t. The mind issuing the directives of the ego thought system was within me, not without, which also meant that the universe was in my mind, not without. I had to turn the tables on it; Heaven was also here and was, in fact, all that really existed. There was no place else —but I had made an illusion that seemed to replace Heaven and then tucked that illusion in between myself and God in an effort to escape an imaginary punishment that I now secretly and erroneously believed I deserved. Like everybody else, I would find a way to punish myself for this imagined guilt. Yet all the while, God was merely waiting to welcome me home —as soon as I was healed by the Holy Spirit and ready to return to reality. We would then celebrate for all of eternity. Until now, I hadn’t had a clue about all this. Being aware of these things made me begin to appreciate the magnitude of my mind. I knew that all the decisions for illusion had been made unconsciously, and then the corresponding symbols of those decisions were acted out in the false universe. The decision to be separate and guilty came first, and then the universe had instantly put up its smokescreen. This all seemed so real to each individual observing from his or her particular point of view in the dream that it would take training to forgive what they thought were authentic happenings and think with the Holy Spirit instead.
Gary Renard
The Disappearance
of the Universe
IF YOU FIND THIS HARD TO PROCESS, REMEMBER WE’RE ALWAYS DEFERRING TO SPIRITUAL REALITY. rjs
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PURSAH: We’d like to leave you with a thought from the Course you may want to remember when you’re tempted to judge someone. Whether you’re driving down the street, working with people, socializing, watching television or reading something on your computer, if you feel the addiction of judgment assert itself, remember J’s words from the section in the Text called “The Self-Accused”: …Learn this, and learn it well, for it is here delay of happiness is shortened by a span of time you cannot realize. You never hate your brother for his sins, but only for your own. Whatever form his sins appear to take, it but obscures the fact that you believe them to be yours, and therefore meriting a “just”attack. You judge only yourself, and you forgive only yourself.
Gary Renard
The Disappearance
of the Universe