I remember a prayer I was taught as a child. “Lord, I am not worthy1 that Thou shouldst enter under my roof. Yet say but the word, and my soul shall be healed.” You have said these words, and I feel healed. I no longer feel unworthy. You have a way of making me feel worthy. If I could give one gift to all human be-ings, that would be it.
You have given them that gift, with this dialogue.
I would like to keep on giving it when this conversation is over.
This conversation will never be over.
Well, when this trilogy, then, is complete.
There will be ways for you to do that.
For that, I am very happy. Because this is the gift my soul yearns2 to give. All of us have a gift to give. I’d like this to be mine.
Go, then, and give it. Seek to make everyone whose life you touch feel worthy. Give everyone a sense of their own worthiness3 as a person, a sense of the true wonder of who they are. Give this gift, and you will heal the world.
You will always have it. We are friends.
Meanwhile, I am loving this dialogue, and would like to ask a question about something You said before.
I’m here.
When You were talking about life “between lives,” so to speak, You said, “You may re-create the experience of your in-dividual Self whenever you choose.” What does that mean?
It means you may emerge from The All anytime you wish, as a new “Self,” or the same Self you were before.
You mean I can retain, and return to, my individual con-sciousness, my awareness5 of “me”?
Yes. You may have, at all times, whatever experi-ence you desire.
And so I can return to this life—to the Earth—as the same person I was before I “died”?
Yes.
In the flesh?
Have you heard of Jesus?
Yes, but I am not Jesus, nor would I ever claim to be like
Did he not say, “These things, and more, shall you also do?”
Yes, but he wasn’t talking about miracles like that, I don’t think.
I am sorry you don’t think so. Because Jesus was not the only one to have risen from the dead.
He wasn’t? Others have risen from the dead?
Yes.
It’s blasphemy that someone other than Christ has risen from the dead?
Well, some people would say that it is.
Then those people have never read the Bible.
The Bible? The Bible says that people other than Jesus came back to the body after death?
Ever hear of Lazarus?
Oh, no fair. It was through the Christ power that he was raised from the dead.
Precisely7. And you think that “Christ power,” as you call it, was reserved only for Lazarus? One person, in the history of the world?
I hadn’t thought about it that way.
I tell you this: Many have there been who have been risen from the “dead.” Many have there been who have “come back to life.” It’s happening every day, right now, in your hospitals.
Oh, come on. No fair again. That’s medical science, not the-ology.
Oh, I see. God has nothing to do with today’s mira-cles, only yesterday’s.
Hmph. . . okay, I’ll give You the point on technical grounds.
But no one has raised himself from the dead on their own, like Jesus did! No one has come back from the “dead” that way.
Are you sure?
Well . . . pretty sure
Have you ever heard of Mahavatar Babaji?
I don’t think we should bring Eastern mystics into this. A lot of people don’t buy that stuff.
I see. Well, of course, they must be right.
Let me get this straight. Are You saying that souls can return from the so-called “dead” in spirit form or in physical form, if that’s what they desire?
You’re beginning to understand now.
All right, then why haven’t more people done it? Why don’t we hear about it every day? This kind of thing would make in-ternational news.
Actually, a lot of people do do it, in spirit form. Not many, I’ll admit, choose to return to the body.
Ha! There! I gotcha! Why not? If this is so easy, why don’t more souls do it?
It’s not a question of ease, it’s a question of desir-ability.
Meaning?
Meaning it’s a very rare soul who desires to return to physicality in the same form as before.
If a soul chooses to return to the body, it almost al-ways does so with another body; a different one. In this way it begins a new agenda, experiences new remem-berings, undertakes new adventures.
Generally, souls leave bodies because they are fin-ished with them. They’ve completed what they joined with the body to do. They’ve experienced the experi-ence they were seeking.
What about people who die by accident? Were they fin-ished with their experience, or was it “cut off”?
Do you still imagine people die by accident?
You mean they don’t?
Nothing in this universe occurs by accident. There is no such thing as an “accident,” nor is there any such thing as “coincidence.”
If I could convince myself that was true, I would never mourn again for those who have died.
Mourning for them is the last thing they would want you to do.
If you knew where they were, and that they were there by their own higher choice, you would celebrate their departure. If you experienced what you call the af-terlife for one moment, having come to it with your grand-est thought about yourself and God, you would smile the biggest smile at their funeral, and let joy fill your heart.
We cry at funerals for our loss. It is our sadness in knowing that we will never see them again, never hold or hug or touch or be with someone we loved.
And that is a good crying. That honors your love, and your beloved. Yet even this mourning would be short if you knew what grand realities and wondrous8 ex-periences await the joyous9 soul leaving the body.
What is it like in the afterlife? Really. Tell me all of it.
There are some things which cannot be revealed, not because I do not choose to, but because in your present condition, at your present level of understand-ing, you would be unable to conceive of what is being told to you. Still, there is more which can be said.
As we discussed earlier, you may do one of three things in what you call the afterlife, just as in the life you are now experiencing. You may submit to the creations of your uncontrolled thoughts, you may create your ex-perience consciously out of choice, or you may experi-ence the collective consciousness of All That Is. This last experience is called Reunification, or Rejoining the One.
Should you take the first path, most of you will not do so for very long (unlike the way you behave on Earth). This is because in the moment you don’t like what you are experiencing, you will choose to create a new and more pleasant reality, which you will do by simply stopping your negative thoughts.
Because of this, you will never experience the “hell” of which you are so afraid, unless you choose to. Even in that case you will be “happy,” in that you will be getting what you want. (More people than you know are “happy” being “miserable.”) So you will keep experi-encing it until you don’t choose to any more.
For most of you, the moment you even begin to ex-perience it, you will move away from it and create something new.
You can eliminate the hell in your life on Earth exactly the same way.
Should you take the second path and consciously create your experience, you will no doubt experience going “straight to heaven,” because this is what anyone who is freely choosing, and who believes in heaven, would create. If you do not believe in heaven, you will experience whatever you wish to experience—and the moment you understand that, your wishes will get bet-ter and better. And then you will believe in heaven!
Should you take the third path and submit to the creations of the collective consciousness, you will move very quickly into total acceptance, total peace, total joy, total awareness, and total love, for that is the conscious-ness of the collective. Then you will become one with the Oneness, and there will be nothing else except That Which You Are-which is All There Ever Was, until you decide that there should be something else. This is nir-vana, the “one with the Oneness” experience that many of you have had very briefly10 in meditation11, and it is an indescribable ecstasy12.
After you experience the Oneness for an infinite time-no time, you will cease to experience it, because you cannot experience the Oneness as Oneness unless and until That Which Is Not One also exists. Under-standing this, you will create, once again, the idea and the thought of separation, or disunity.
Then you will keep traveling on the Cosmic Wheel, keep going, keep circling, keep on being, forever and ever, and even forever more.
You will return to the Oneness many times—an in-finite number of times and for an infinite period each time—and you will know that you have the tools to re-turn to the Oneness at any point on the Cosmic Wheel.
You may do so now, even as you are reading this.
You may do so tomorrow, in your meditation.
You may do so at any time.
And You’ve said that we do not have to stay at the level of consciousness we’re at when we die?
No. You may move to another as quickly as you wish. Or take as much “time” as you like. If you “die” in a state of limited perspective and uncontrolled thoughts, you’ll experience whatever that state brings you, until you don’t want to anymore. Then you’ll “wake up”—become conscious-and start experienc-ing yourself creating your reality.
You’ll look back at the first stage and call it purga-tory. The second stage, when you can have anything you want with the speed of your thought, you’ll call heaven. The third stage, when you experience the bliss13 of the Oneness, you’ll call Nirvana.
I have one more thing I’d like to explore along these lines. It’s not about “after death,” but it is about experiences outside of the body. Can You explain those to me? What is happening there?
The essence of Who You Are has simply left the physical body. This can happen during normal dream-ing, often during meditation, and frequently in a sub-lime form while the body is in deep sleep.
During such an “excursion,” your soul can be any-where it wishes. Frequently, the person reporting such an experience has no after-memory of having made vo-litional decisions about this. They may experience it as “just something that happened to me.” However, noth-ing which involves an activity of the soul is nonvolitional.
How can we be “shown” things, how can things be “re-vealed” to us, during one of these experiences, if all we are do-ing is creating as we go along? It seems to me that the only way things could be revealed to us would be if those things existed separate from us, not as part of our own creation. I need some help with this.
Nothing exists separate from you, and everything is your own creation. Even your apparent lack of under-standing is your own creation; it is, literally14, a figment of your imagination. You imagine that you do not know the answer to this question, and so you do not. Yet as soon as you imagine that you do, you do.
You allow yourself to do this sort of imagining so that The Process can go on.
The Process?
Life. The eternal Process.
In those moments during which you experience yourself being “revealed” to yourself—whether these are what you call out-of-body experiences, or dreams, or magic moments of wakefulness when you are greeted by crystal clarity—what has happened is that you have simply slipped into “remembering.” You are remembering what you have already created. And these rememberings can be very powerful. They can produce a personal epiphany.
Once you’ve had such a magnificent experience, it can be very difficult to go back to “real life” in a way that blends well with what other people are calling “reality.” That is because your reality has shifted. It has become something else. It has expanded, grown. And it cannot be shrunk again. It’s like trying to get the genie15 back in the bottle. It can’t be done.
Is that why many people who come back from out-of-body experiences, or so-called “near-death” experiences, sometimes seem very different?
Exactly. And they are different, because now they know so much more. Yet, frequently, the further they get from such experiences, the more time that passes, the more they revert16 to their old behaviors, because they have again forgotten what they know.
Is there any way to “keep remembering”?
Yes. Act out your knowingness in every moment. Keep acting17 on what you know, rather than what the world of illusion is showing you. Stay with it, no matter how deceiving appearances are.
This is what all masters have done, and do. They judge not by appearances, but act according to what they know.
And there is another way to remember.
Yes?
Cause another to remember. That which you wish for yourself, give to another.
That’s what it feels I am doing with these books.
That is exactly what you are doing. And the longer you keep on doing it, the less you will have to do it. The more you send this message to another, the less you will have to send it to your Self.
Because my Self and the other are One, and what I give to another, I give to myself.
You see, now you are giving Me the answers. And that, of course, is how it works.
Wow. I just gave God an answer. That is cool. That is really cool.
You’re telling Me.
That’s what’s cool—the fact that I’m telling You.
And I will tell you this: The day will come when we will speak as One. That day will come for all people.
Well, if that day is going to come for me, I’d like to make sure I understand exactly what it is You’re saying. So I’d like to go back to something else, just one more time. I know You said this more than once, but I really want to make sure I really un-derstand it.
Am I clear that, once we reach this state of Oneness which many call Nirvana—once we return to the Source—we don’t stay there? The reason I am asking this again is that this seems to run counter to my understanding of many Eastern esoteric and mystical teachings.
To remain in the state of sublime18 no-thing, or One-ness with the All, would make it impossible to be there. As I’ve just explained, That Which Is cannot be, except in the space of That Which Is Not. Even the total bliss of Oneness cannot be experienced as “total bliss” unless something less than total bliss exists. So, something less than the total bliss of total Oneness had to be-and continually has to be—created.
But when we are in total bliss, when we have merged19 once more with the Oneness, when we have become Every-thing/No-thing, how can we even know that we exist? Since there is nothing else that we are experiencing.. . I don’t know. I don’t seem to understand this. This is one I can’t seem to get a handle on.
You are describing what I call the Divine Dilemma20. This is the same dilemma God has always had—and that God solved with the creation of that which was not God (or thought it was not).
God gave-and gives again, in every instant—a part of Itself to the Lesser21 Experience of not knowing Itself, so that the Rest of Itself can know Itself as Who and What It Really Is.
Thus, “God gave His only begotten22 son, that you might be saved.” You see now from where this mythol-ogy has sprung.
I think that we are all God—and that we are constantly, every one of us, journeying from Knowing to Not Knowing to Know-ing again, from being to not being to being again, from Oneness to Separation to Oneness again, in a never-ending cycle. That this is the cycle of life—what You call the Cosmic Wheel.
Exactly. Precisely. That is well said.
But do we all have to go back to ground zero? Do we always have to start over, completely? Go back to the beginning? Re-turn to square one? Do not pass “Go,” do not collect $200?
You do not have to do anything. Not in this lifetime, not in any other. You will have choice—always you will have free choice—to go anywhere you wish to go, do anything you wish to do, in your re-creation of the ex-perience of God. You can move to any place on the Cosmic Wheel. You may “come back” as anything you wish, or in any other dimension, reality, solar system, or civilization you choose. Some of those who have reached the place of total union with the Divine have even chosen to “come back” as enlightened masters. And, yes, some were enlightened masters when they left, and then chose to “come back” as themselves.
You must surely be aware of reports of gurus and masters who have returned to your world over and over again, manifesting in repeated appearances throughout the decades and centuries.
You have one entire religion based on such a report. It is called the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, and it is based on the report of Joseph Smith that the Being calling himself Jesus returned to Earth many centuries after his apparently23 “final” departure, this time appearing in the United States.
So you may return to any point on the Cosmic Wheel to which it pleases you to return.
Still, even that could be depressing. Don’t we ever get to rest? Don’t we ever get to stay in nirvana, to remain there? Are we doomed24 forever to this “coming and going”—this “now you see it, now you don’t” treadmill25? Are we on an eternal journey to nowhere?
Yes. That’s the greatest truth. There is nowhere to go, nothing to do, and no one you have to “be” except exactly who you’re being right now.
The truth is that there is no journey. You are right now what you are attempting to be. You are right now where you are attempting to go.
It is the master who knows this, and thus ends the struggle. And then does the master seek to assist you in ending your struggle, even as you will seek to end the struggle of others when you reach mastery.
Yet this process-this Cosmic Wheel—is not a de-pressing treadmill. It is a glorious and continual reaf-firmation of the utter magnificence of God, and all life—and there is nothing depressing about that at all.
Still seems depressing to me.
Let Me see if I can change your mind. Do you like sex?
I love it.
Most people do, except those with really weird26 ideas about it. So, what if I told you that beginning to-morrow you can have sex with every single person for whom you felt attraction and love. Would that make you happy?
Would this have to be against their will?
No. I would arrange it so that every one you wish to celebrate the human experience of love with in this way also wishes to do so with you. They would feel great at-traction and love for you.
Wow! Hey—okaaay!
There’s just one condition: You have to stop be-tween each one. You can’t just go from one to the other without interruption.
You’re telling me.
So, in order to experience the ecstasy of this kind of physical union, you have to also experience not being united sexually with someone, if only for a while.
I think I see where you’re going.
Yes. Even the ecstasy would not be ecstasy were there not a time when there was no ecstasy. This is as true with spiritual ecstasy as it is with physical.
There is nothing depressing about the cycle of life, there is only joy. Simply joy and more joy.
True masters are never less than joyful27. This staying at the level of mastery is what you may now find desir-able. Then you can move in and out of the ecstasy and still be joyful always. You do not need the ecstasy to be joyful. You are joyful simply knowing that ecstasy is.
收听单词发音 |
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worthy
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| adj.(of)值得的，配得上的；有价值的 | |
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yearns
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| 渴望，切盼，向往( yearn的第三人称单数 ) | |
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worthiness
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| 价值，值得 | |
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humbly
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| adv. 恭顺地，谦卑地 | |
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awareness
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| n.意识，觉悟，懂事，明智 | |
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blasphemy
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| n.亵渎，渎神 | |
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precisely
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| adv.恰好，正好，精确地，细致地 | |
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wondrous
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| adj.令人惊奇的，奇妙的；adv.惊人地；异乎寻常地；令人惊叹地 | |
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joyous
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| adj.充满快乐的；令人高兴的 | |
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briefly
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| adv.简单地，简短地 | |
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meditation
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| n.熟虑，（尤指宗教的）默想，沉思，（pl.）冥想录 | |
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ecstasy
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| n.狂喜，心醉神怡，入迷 | |
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bliss
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| n.狂喜，福佑，天赐的福 | |
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literally
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| adv.照字面意义，逐字地；确实 | |
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genie
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| n.妖怪，神怪 | |
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revert
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| v.恢复，复归，回到 | |
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acting
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| n.演戏，行为，假装；adj.代理的，临时的，演出用的 | |
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sublime
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| adj.崇高的，伟大的；极度的，不顾后果的 | |
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merged
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| （使）混合( merge的过去式和过去分词 )； 相融； 融入； 渐渐消失在某物中 | |
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dilemma
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| n.困境，进退两难的局面 | |
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lesser
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| adj.次要的，较小的；adv.较小地，较少地 | |
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begotten
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| v.为…之生父( beget的过去分词 )；产生，引起 | |
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apparently
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| adv.显然地；表面上，似乎 | |
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doomed
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| 命定的 | |
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treadmill
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| n.踏车；单调的工作 | |
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weird
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| adj.古怪的，离奇的；怪诞的，神秘而可怕的 | |
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joyful
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| adj.欢乐的，令人欢欣的 | |
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