The Ascension
Soul to Soul and Spirit to Spirit. Blessings to one and all.
Well, by now I am probably somewhere up near Canada in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan or on the way back. One thing is for sure, I’m several hundred miles away from here and yet I’m traveling in my very own consciousness. We cannot get outside of our own consciousness.
Now yesterday I had a meditation which started to reveal something and I will share that with you today. I guess we all struggle with this spiritual principle that this world is an illusion and the reason is, we have a tendency to want to say everything out here is an illusion, so why bother? And Joel, in his book “A Parenthesis in Eternity”, in the chapter, “Reality and Illusion” explains this really well. He talks about how there are races of people who believed that everything out here is an illusion so why bother with anything? And they just sort of sat down where they were in the mud and let everything fall apart. He says it led to a do-nothing attitude. Now, of course, you don’t grow spiritually if you do nothing. Spiritual growth takes effort, internal effort, extreme effort. Effort sometimes like you can’t imagine, you wouldn’t believe it if I told it to you.
So this concept that the world out here is an illusion is an erroneous concept or it is error. If you believe the world out here is an illusion, you’re wrong, you’re not seeing the truth, you are not seeing things correctly.
The next part of this that makes it difficult is you cannot look out here and say this world that you’re seeing is the kingdom because we are told repeatedly, thousands of times in The Infinite Way writings that there is no God in the human scene. The human scene is mass hypnotism, mental images in the world-mind.
Well that makes it really quite difficult to find this middle path between these two extremes. On the one hand, the world out there is not an illusion because no illusion is ever externalized, it says quite plainly. On the other hand, this world that you see, hear, taste, touch and smell is not the world of God’s creating and God is no where in it. Well now, if God is no where in it, sounds like it’s an illusion, doesn’t it? But the world out here is not an illusion. “This world is real,” says Joel.
Then where is this illusion located and what can be done about it? The best way I can explain it is by some of the things that have been revealed to me and maybe you can take them and run with them and maybe you can’t. But we’ll try and we’ll see.
Now, the clue that helped me the most is in that chapter, “Reality and Illusion” in “A Parenthesis in Eternity” because I knew the answer had to be there somewhere and I poured over that chapter and I contemplated and pondered and looked and prayed and begged and tried to see what was being said and so the clue was: “No illusion is ever externalized.” So that placed the illusion firmly within and yet, here comes the next quandary, we are told the kingdom of heaven is within you. Well now, how can I have the kingdom of heaven within me and the illusion be within at the same time? Oh, you can just rack your brain, going round and round and round to solve this.
Yet, I believe it is understandable or not understandable but I believe you can – let me rephrase that – I know it can be experienced, the truth can be experienced about this and then the understanding will follow. First the experience of the truth and then the understanding will follow.
So let me give you a few pointers if I can. Now, listen to a portion of the New Horizon. I know I have been covering this a lot, yet Joel says you should study it for two or three years. So perhaps we’re not doing too badly by looking at it once more.
The first glimpse of Reality—of the Soul-realm—comes with the recognition and realization of the fact that all temporary conditions and experiences are products of self-hypnotism.
All right, so you can pretty much take that to the bank. Is it temporary? If it is temporary, it’s illusion. Is it permanent? Is it eternal? Is it immortal? Well, if it’s eternal and immortal, it’s Reality. So now look around. Can you see with your eyes anything that isn’t temporary? No, I don’t see a thing. There is nothing I see with my eyes that isn’t going to dissolve into nothingness, given time. A law of entropy will strike everything I can see here in this room including this physical body. Then everything the eyes are showing me, is an illusion.
Ah, but you said that this world out here is not an illusion. That’s right, I did. Well then how come everything I see is an illusion? And the answer: Everything you see is not out here.
Well, let’s take the ears. Can you hear something that is eternal or is everything that you hear temporary? Well let’s just ponder that for a moment. I hear my wife’s voice. Is that eternal? No. We know that voice box will someday cease to exist. So that voice is not eternal. What about these birds I hear outside right now? Is that eternal? No, it’s not. Every one of them will drop off the limb sooner or later, given time. Well, then what is eternal that I can hear with my physical ear? And the answer is, nothing.
Furthermore, since no illusion is ever externalized, everything I hear with my ear must be taking place somewhere within. Then everything I see is not out there. Everything I hear is not out there. Everything I touch is not out there. If I smell it, it’s not out there. If I taste it, it’s not out there. Well now we know that the senses can only report an illusion. And yet, an illusion that is not out there. Then what are the senses showing me? Well look at the beginning of this chapter, “The New Horizon.”
The senses which presents pictures of discord and inharmony, disease and death, is the universal mesmerism which produces the entire dream of human existence.
Now that tells you right there, human existence, the entire human existence from the cradle to the grave is an illusion or mesmerism, hypnosis.
It must be understood that there is no more reality to harmonious human conditions than to discordant world conditions.
Ah, so there you go. All of the good—all of the good that the senses report is an illusion. Not an illusion out here because no illusion is ever externalized.
What about that purple mountain majesty that looks so beautiful? It’s not out there. Even a mountain can be destroyed in an atomic blast. What about the beautiful sunset? Sorry, not out there. Even the sun will eventually one day, wind down, given time. What about—well, let’s take Jesus. Is not Jesus eternal? Excuse me, where is he? Certainly not on earth. You might go so far as to say, Christ, the Consciousness that formed Itself as Jesus is eternal, but not Jesus. What about Joel? Where is he? Well I think they buried him, didn’t they or did they cremate him? I’m not sure which, he sure is not around; not eternal. Ah, but now the Consciousness that animated him, that is another story.
Well, I can’t see Consciousness or hear Consciousness, not with my physical ears and eyes. That’s correct. The physical ears and eyes can only show you an illusion and nothing but an illusion. So even the good pictures are, number one, an illusion and number two, not out there.
It must be realized that the entire human scene is mesmeric suggestion and we—you and I—must rise above the desire for good human conditions.
Uh, oh. I thought I was going to God to turn this bad health into good health.Isn’t that what happens when you practice spiritual principles? I thought I was going to God to fix my finances, which are in a mess. I thought I was going to God because if I went to God, the right companion would appear.
Well, I’m sorry. Joel has told us over and over, God cannot be added to humanhood. You can’t pull God into the human scene, ever at any time. God will never operate—I just read it today somewhere—God will never operate in the human scene—ever.
Well, then what is the use of all this? I thought we were trying to take a bad life and turn it into a good one? If you succeeded in doing that, you would still be standing square in the middle of the cosmic illusion and the joke would be on you, because you will have turned a bad illusion into a good illusion and it will still be made of the same fabric, which is nothingness.
The spiritual path has got nothing to do with exchanging a bad illusion for a good one. If you’re looking for that, you’re looking in the wrong place.
And so to continue…
Understand fully that suggestion, belief, or hypnotism is the substance, or fabric, of the whole mortal universe and both human conditions, good and evil are dreams, dream pictures having absolutely no reality whatsoever.
And don’t forget that clue we started with. We are still carrying that clue with all this. No illusion is ever externalized.
All right. So all of these things must be going on within somewhere; the illusion of bad and the illusion of good; the knowledge of bad and the knowledge of good; the knowledge of good and evil must be going on within. That is the only illusion there is.
So he says we must be willing—willing for the harmonious as well as the inharmonious conditions of mortal existence to disappear from your experience in order that reality may be known and enjoyed and lived.
Ah, okay. So there is a clue. I’ve got to be willing for both to disappear from my experience. Well, now that really sets up a quandary.
Let’s see what we have so far. So far, we know that if the senses report it to you, I don’t care if it’s your cute little grandchild and I have one of those or your beautiful seaside cottage or mountainside retreat. I don’t care if it’s a Rembrandt hanging in your living room or Mozart playing on your speakers. If the senses report it, if it’s temporary in nature and not eternal, it’s not out there. It is in here somewhere as a knowledge of good or evil. That is what we have so far.
Now, says Joel:
Above this sense-life, there is a universe of Spirit. Now here are two clues right here. Above this sense lifemeans there is some way to ascend up over the senses and there is a universe of Spirit, governed by love, peopled with children of God, living in the household or temple of Truth. This world is real and permanent.
All right. What do we have here? If we can ascend out of the senses we will see and hear and maybe touch a universe, a universe that is invisible to the senses, a universe of Spirit, which is governed by God’s love. God enters that universe. Yes indeed. And it is peopled, there are entities in that universe, called children of God which are living in the temple of Truth. And that universe is real and eternal: Its substance is eternal Consciousness. In it there is no awareness of discords or even of temporary or material good.
What do we have? We have, no illusion is ever externalized and if thesenses report it and it is temporary and not eternal, it is an illusion. And the illusion is somewhere inside of me, somewhere inside of you and it’s made up of the substance of some sort of knowledge of good and evil. And yet, if I can transcend that, that mind that has that knowledge, if I can come out of that mind, even briefly, I might be able to catch a glimpse of reality.
And Reality is a universe, a universe invisible to me right now, a universe of Spirit, governed by love, peopled with all the children of God that have ascended before me. That universe is real and eternal. Its substance is eternal Consciousness. And in that universe, there is no more awareness of discords or temporary and material good.
Well, by golly, does that not sound like heaven? Aren’t we told, even as children, that when we go to heaven there is no more crying? No more death? Sounds an awful lot like that same place. Now what do I have to do to get there? Do I have to die physically? No, it doesn’t say that. It says I have got to find a way to come above the sense life or the senses which are reporting this illusion.
All right, now let’s see. What do we have? No illusion is ever externalized. So this world that the senses are reporting are out there, as out there, is not out there. The world that the senses are reporting, the body that the senses are reporting, the wife, the husband, the partner, the senses are reporting; nature that the senses are reporting—all of it is somewhere within. And since it is the senses reporting it, all of it is in the sense mind and so the sense mind must be the instrument of—well, the sense mind must be the world mind. Yes. The sense mind is the world mind because the sense mind has pictures and thoughts about a world, a world that is not out there.
So the sense mind, within you, is the culprit, that is the Satan, that’s the hypnotism, that’s the illusion, it is hypnotizing me into seeing a world—people, places, things, conditions—and making me believe they’re out here.
But the kingdom of heaven is the only thing that God made and God is Omnipresent. So God is out here. I’m walking around in the center of God Being. I’m hypnotized while walking in God, seeing a world that was never made.
Aw, but don’t lose hope. Here stands one named Jesus, who says, I have overcome the world. I have overcome the world. And now his name is changed to Christ Jesus.
Here stands one name Gautama and he says the world is a dream, Maya. But I have come out of that. I am no longer in the wheel of rebirth. I have come out of the wheel, the cycle. I am free, I made it. Well, he seemed rather lofty.
Then here is this man named Joel. Well, what does he say? He says, in his very first book, that he has come above the sense mind and found a universe of Spirit, governed by Love, peopled with children of God, alive, eternally, living in the household or temple of Truth. He’s met them. And he says that this universe is real and eternal and that its substance is eternal Consciousness and that in it there is no awareness of discords or temporary, material good.
Here stands Joel, a man like me, a person like you, and he says I’ve seen it. I have come up over that sense mind world. I have overcome the world, the world of duality, Maya, the illusion. He didn’t have to do anything about a world out here because it wasn’t out there and as long as anybody thinks it’s out there, they won’t find the answer. That’s what he says. Since he found the answer, I believe him.
And so the clues are all here. We’ve only read a page and a half, probably less than three hundred words. And yet, in it is revealed to us that the entire illusory universe is taking place in the sense mind within you and this sense mind is showing you pictures—thousands, millions of pictures daily, based on a knowledge it has acquired over the centuries, all about good and evil and you believe it.
And so you can see, some of the places that I have gone with this, pondering this—this has taken years by the way—to come to this understanding.
Now, this man Joel, has told us that you can ascend out of this mind made up of the knowledge of good and evil and when you ascend out of this mind, you will find an invisible universe, suddenly—well, let’s hear it in his own words, shall we?
The first glimpse of Reality—of the Soul-realm—comes with the recognition and realization of the fact that all temporary conditions and experiences are products of self-hypnotism. With the realization that the entire human scene—it’s good as well as its evil—is illusion, will come the first glimpse and taste of the world of God’s creation and of the sons of God who inhabit the spiritual kingdom.
So, there he is saying the same thing again. You will catch a glimpse. You will see into another universe and you will see children of God there.
Now, in this moment of uplifted consciousness, we are able, even though faintly, to see ourselves free of material, mortal, human and legal laws. We behold ourselves separate and apart from the bondage of sense, and we glimpse the unlimited boundaries of eternal life and of infinite Consciousness.
Now, the substance of this world, the world that is an illusion, what is the substance of it? We’ve been told seventy five thousand times over the years in the books and the tapes, what is the substance of this world? Well, you know the fabric of this world is hypnotism, illusion or world mind, world thought, carnal mind. Right? Sense mind. That’s the fabric and since there’s no God in that, there’s no Reality in it; it has no life, its dead.