We’ve covered a lot here. Boy, we’ve really covered a lot. Can we make another shift? Are You ready to go on?
Are you?
Yes, I’m rolling now. I’ve finally gotten on a roll. And I want to ask every question I’ve been waiting three years to ask.
I’m okay with that. Go.
Coolness. So I would like now to talk about another of the esoteric mysteries. Will You speak to me about reincarnation?
Sure.
Many religions say that reincarnation is a false doctrine1; that we get only one life here; one chance.
I know. That is not accurate.
How can they be so wrong about something so important? How can they not know the truth about something so basic?
You must understand that humans have many fear-based religions whose teachings surround a doctrine of a God who is to be worshipped and feared.
It was through fear that your entire Earth society re-formed itself from the matriarchy into the patriarchy. It was through fear that the early priests got people to “mend their wicked ways” and “heed the word of the Lord.” It was through fear that churches gained, and controlled, their membership.
One church even insisted that God would punish you if you did not go to church every Sunday. Not going to church was declared a sin.
And not just any church. One had to attend one par-ticular church. If you went to a church of a different de-nomination, that, too, was a sin. This was an attempt at control, pure and simple, using fear. The amazing thing is, it worked. Hell, it still works.
Say, You’re God. Don’t swear.
Who was swearing? I was making a statement of fact. I said, “Hell—it still works.”
People will always believe in hell, and in a God who would send them there, as long as they believe that God is like man—ruthless, self-serving, unforgiving, and vengeful.
In days past, most people could not imagine a God who might rise above all of that. So they accepted the teaching of many churches to “fear the terrible venge-ance of the Lord.”
It was as if people couldn’t trust themselves to be good, to act appropriately, on their own, for their own built-in reasons. So they had to create a religion that taught the doctrine of an angry, retributive God in order to keep themselves in line.
Now the idea of reincarnation threw a monkey wrench2 into all of that.
How so? What made that doctrine so threatening?
The church was proclaiming that you’d better be nice, or else—and along came the reincarnationists, saying: “You’ll have another chance after this, and an-other chance after that. And still more chances. So don’t worry. Do the best you can. Don’t become so paralyzed with fear that you can’t budge3. Promise your-self to do better, and get on with it.”
Naturally, the early church couldn’t hear of such a thing. So it did two things. First, it denounced the doc-trine of reincarnation as heretical. Then it created the sacrament of confession4. Confession could do for the churchgoer what reincarnation promised. That is, give him another chance.
So then we had a setup where God would punish you for your sins, unless you confessed them. In that case you could feel safe, knowing that God had heard your confession and for-given you.
Yes. But there was a catch. This absolution could not come directly from God. It had to flow through the church, whose priests pronounced “penances5” which had to be performed. These were usually prayers which were required of the sinner. So now you had two rea-sons to keep up your membership.
The church found confession to be such a good drawing card that soon it declared it to be a sin not to go to confession. Everybody had to do it at least once a year. If they didn’t, God would have another reason to be angry.
More and more rules—many of them arbitrary and capricious—began to be promulgated6 by the church, each rule having the power of God’s eternal condem-nation behind it, unless, of course, failure was con-fessed. Then the person was forgiven by God, and condemnation7 avoided.
But now there was another problem. People figured out that this must mean they could do anything, as long as they confessed it. The church was in a quandary8. Fear had left the hearts of the people. Church atten-dance and membership dropped. People came to “confess” once a year, said their penances, were ab-solved of their sins, and went on with their lives.
There was no question about it. A way had to be found to strike fear into the heart again.
Purgatory?
Purgatory. This was described as a place something like hell, but not eternal. This new doctrine declared that God would make you suffer for your sins even if you confessed them.
Under the doctrine, a certain amount of suffering was decreed by God for each non perfect soul, based on the number and type of sins committed. There were “mortal” sins and “venial” sins. Mortal sins would send you right to hell if not confessed before death.
Once more, church attendance shot up. Collections were up, too, and especially contributions-for the doctrine of purgatory also included a way one could buy one’s way out of the suffering.
I’m sorry—?
According to the church’s teaching, one could re-ceive a special indulgence—but again, not directly from God—only from an official of the church. These special indulgences freed one from the suffering in purgatory which they had “earned” with their sins—or at least part of it.
Something like “time off for good behavior?”
Yes. But, of course, these reprieves10 were granted to very few. Generally, those who made a conspicuous11 contribution to the church.
For a really huge sum, one could obtain a plenary in-dulgence. This meant no time in purgatory at all. It was a nonstop ticket straight to heaven.
This special favor from God was available for even fewer. Royalty12, perhaps. And the super rich. The amount of money, jewels, and land given to the church in ex-change for these plenary indulgences was enormous. But the exclusivity of all this brought great frustration13 and resentment14 to the masses-no pun intended.
The poorest peasant hadn’t a hope of gaining a bishop’s indulgence-and so the rank and file lost faith in the system, with attendance threatening to drop once again.
Now what did they do?
They brought in the novena candles.
People could come to the church and light a novena candle for the “poor souls in purgatory,” and by saying a novena (a series of prayers in a particular order that took some time to complete), they could knock years off the “sentence” of the dearly departed, extricating15 them from purgatory sooner than God would otherwise have allowed.
They couldn’t do anything for themselves, but at least they could pray for mercy for the departed. Of course, it would be helpful if a coin or two were dropped through the slot for each candle lit.
A lot of little candles were flickering16 behind a lot of red glass, and a lot of pesos and pennies were being dropped into a lot of tin boxes, in an attempt to get Me to “ease up” on the suffering being inflicted17 on the souls in purgatory.
Whew! This is unbelievable. And You mean people could not see right through all that? People did not see it as the des-perate attempt of a desperate church to keep its members des-perate to do anything to protect themselves from this desperado they called God? You mean people actually bought this stuff?
No wonder the church declared reincarnation to be an un-truth.
Yes. Yet when I created you, I did not create you so that you could live one lifetime—an infinitesimal period, really, given the age of the universe-make the mistakes you were inevitably19 going to make, then hope for the best at the end. I’ve tried to imagine setting it up that way, but I can never figure out what My purpose would be.
You could never figure it out either. That’s why you’ve had to keep saying things like, “The Lord works in mysterious ways, His wonders to perform.” But I don’t work in mysterious ways. Everything I do has a reason, and it’s perfectly20 clear. I’ve explained why I cre-ated you, and the purpose of your life, many times now during this trilogy.
Reincarnation fits perfectly into that purpose, which is for Me to create and experience Who I Am through you, lifetime after lifetime, and through the millions of other creatures of consciousness I have placed in the universe.
Then there IS life on other—
Of course there is. Do you really believe that you are alone in this gigantic universe? But that’s another topic we can get to later. . . .
. . . . Promise?
Promise.
So, your purpose as a soul is to experience yourself as All Of It. We are evolving. We are.. . becoming.
Becoming what? We do not know! We cannot know until We get there! But for Us, the journey is the joy. And as soon as We “get there,” as soon as We cre-ate the next highest idea of Who We Are, We’ll create a grander thought, a higher idea, and continue the joy forever.
Are you with Me here?
Yes. By this time I almost could repeat this verbatim.
Good.
So... the point and purpose of your life is to decide
and to be Who You Really Are. You’re doing that every day. With every action, with every thought, with every
word. That’s what you’re doing.
Now, to the degree that you’re pleased with that—pleased with Who You Are in your experi-ence-to that degree you’ll stick, more or less, with the creation, making only minor21 adjustments here and there to get it closer and closer to perfect.
Paramahansa Yogananda is an example of a person who was very close to “perfect” as an out-picturing of what he thought of himself. He had a very clear idea about himself, and about his relationship to Me, and he used his life to “out-picture” that. He wanted to experi-ence his idea about himself in his own reality; to know himself as that, experientially.
Babe Ruth did the same thing. He had a very clear idea about himself, and his relationship to Me, and he used his life to out-picture that; to know himself in his own experience.
Not many people live that level. Now granted, the Master and the Babe had two entirely22 different ideas about themselves, yet they both played them out mag-nificently.
They also both had different ideas about Me, that’s for sure, and were coming from different levels of con-sciousness about Who I Am, and about their true rela-tionship to Me. And those levels of consciousness were reflected in their thoughts, words, and actions.
One was in a place of peace and serenity23 most of his life, and brought deep peace and serenity to others. The other was in a place of anxiousness, turmoil24, and occa-sional anger (particularly when he couldn’t get his way), and brought turmoil to the lives of those around him.
Both were good-hearted, however—there was never a softer touch than the Babe-and the difference between the two is that one had virtually nothing in terms of physical acquisitions, but never wanted more than what he got, while the other “had everything,” and never got what he really wanted.
If that were the end of it for George Herman, I sup-pose we could all feel a little sad about that, but the soul that embodied25 itself as Babe Ruth is far from finished with this process called evolution. It has had an opportu-nity to review the experiences it produced for itself, as well as the experiences it produced for others, and now gets to decide what next it would like to experience as it seeks to create and re-create itself in grander and grander versions.
We’ll drop our narrative26 regarding these two souls here, because both have already made their next choice regarding what they want to now experi-ence—and, in fact, both are now experiencing that.
You mean both have already reincarnated27 into other bod-ies?
It would be a mistake to assume that reincarnat-ing—returning to another physical body—was the only option open to them.
What are the other options?
In truth, whatever they want them to be.
I’ve already explained here what occurs after what you call your death.
Some souls feel that there is a lot more they would like to know, and so they find themselves going to a “school,” whereas other souls—what you call “old souls”—teach them. And what do they teach them? That they have nothing to learn. That they never had anything to learn. That all they ever had to do was re-member. Remember Who and What They Really Are.
They are “taught” that the experience of Who They Are is gained in the acting29 out of it; in being it. They are reminded of this by having it gently shown to them.
Other souls have already remembered this by the time they get to—or soon after they get to—the “other side.” (I’m using language now with which you are fa-miliar, speaking in your vernacular30, to keep, as much as possible, the words out of the way.) These souls may then seek the immediate31 joy of experiencing them-selves as whatever they wish to “be.” They may select from the million, kajillion aspects of Me, and choose to experience that, right then and there. Some may opt28 to return to physical form to do that.
Any physical form?
Any.
Then it’s true that souls could return as animals—that God could be a cow? And that cows really are sacred? Holy cow!
(Ahem.)
Sorry.
You’ve had a whole lifetime to do stand-up com-edy. And, by the way, looking at your life, you’ve done a pretty good job of it.
Cha-boom. That was a rim32 shot. If I had a cymbal33 here, I’d give you a cymbal crash.
Thank you, thank you.
But seriously, folks...
The answer to the question you are basically ask-ing—can a soul return as an animal—is yes, of course. The real question is, would it? The answer is, probably not.
Do animals have souls?
Anyone who has ever stared into the eyes of an ani-mal already knows the answer to that.
Then how do I know it is not my grandmother, come back as my cat?
The Process we are discussing here is evolution. Self-creation and evolution. And evolution proceeds one way. Upward. Ever upward.
The soul’s greatest desire is to experience higher and higher aspects of itself. And so it seeks to move up-ward, not downward, on the evolutionary34 scale, until it experiences what has been called nirvana—total One-ness with the All. That is, with Me.
But if the soul desires higher and higher experiences of it-self, why would it even bother returning as a human being?
Surely that can’t be a step “upward.”
If the soul returns to human form, it is always in an ef-fort to further experience, and thus, further evolve. There are many levels of evolution observable and dem-onstrated in humans. One could come back for many lifetimes-many hundreds of lifetimes-and continue to evolve upward. Yet upward movement, the grandest de-sire of the soul, is not achieved with return to a lower life form. Thus, such a return does not occur. Not until the soul reaches ultimate reunion with All That Is.
That must mean there are “new souls” coming into the system every day, taking lower life forms.
No. Every soul that was ever created was created At Once. We are all here Now. But, as I have explained before, when a soul (a part of Me) reaches ultimate re-alization, it has the option to “start over,” to literally “forget everything,” so that it can remember all over again, and re-create itself anew once more. In this way, God continues to re-experience Itself.
Souls may also choose to “recycle” through a particular life form at a particular level as often as they like.
Without reincarnation—without the ability to re-turn to a physical form—the soul would have to accom-plish everything it seeks to accomplish within one lifetime, which is one billion times shorter than the blink of an eye on the cosmic clock.
So, yes, of course, reincarnation is a fact. It’s real, it’s purposeful, and it’s perfect.
Okay, but there’s one thing I’m confused about. You said there is nothing such as time; that all things are happening right now. Is that correct?
It is.
And then You implied—and in Book 2 You went into depth on this—that we exist “all the time” on different levels, or at various points, in the Space-Time Continuum.
That’s true.
Okay, but now here’s where it gets crazy. If one of the “me’s” on the Space-Time Continuum “dies,” then comes back here as another person . . . . . then . . . . then, who am I? I would have to be existing as two people at once. And if I kept on doing this through all eternity35, which You say I do, then I am being a hun-dred people at once! A thousand. A million. A million versions of a million people at a million points on the Space-Time Con-tinuum.
Yes.
I don’t understand that. My mind can’t grasp that.
Actually, you’ve done well. It’s a very advanced concept, and you’ve done pretty well with it.
But . . . . . but . . . . . if that’s true, then “I”—the part of “me” that is immortal—must be evolving in a billion different ways in a billion different forms at a billion different points on the Cos-mic Wheel in the eternal moment of now.
Right again. That’s exactly what I’m doing. No, no. I said that’s what I must be doing.
Right again. That’s what I just said.
No, no, I said—
I know what you said. You said just what I said you said. The confusion here is that you still think there’s more than one of Us here.
There’s not?
There was never more than one of Us here. Ever. Are you just finding that out?
You mean I’ve just been talking to myself here?
Something like that.
You mean You’re not God?
That’s not what I said.
You mean You are God?
That’s what I said.
But if You’re God, and You’re me, and I’m You—then... then... I’m God!
Thou art God, yes. That is correct. You grok it in fullness.
But I’m not only God—I’m also everyone else.
Yes.
But—does that mean that no one, and nothing else, exists but me?
Have I not said, I and My Father are One?
Yes, but...
And have I not said, We are all One?
Yes. But I didn’t know You meant that literally. I thought You meant that figuratively. I thought it was more of a philo-sophical statement, not a statement of fact.
It’s a statement of fact. We are all One. That is what is meant by “whatsoever ye do unto the least of these.., ye do unto me.”
Do you understand now?
Yes.
Ah, at last. At long last.
But—You’ll forgive me for arguing this, but.., when I’m with another—my spouse36 for instance, or my children—it feels that I am separate from them; that they are other than “me.”
Consciousness is a marvelous thing. It can be di-vided into a thousand pieces. A million. A million times a million.
I have divided Myself into an infinite number of “pieces”—so that each “piece” of Me could look back on Itself and behold37 the wonder of Who and What I Am.
But why do I have to go through this period of forgetful-ness; of disbelief? I’m still not totally believing! I’m still hang-ing out in forgetfulness.
Don’t be so hard on your Self. That’s part of The Process. It’s okay that it’s happening this way.
Then why are You telling me all this now?
Because you were starting not to have fun. Life was beginning not to be a joy anymore. You were starting to get so caught up in The Process that you forgot it was just a process.
And so, you called out to Me. You asked Me to come to you; to help you understand; to show you the divine truth; to reveal to you the greatest secret. The se-cret you’ve kept from yourself. The secret of Who You Are.
Now I have done so. Now, once again, you have been caused to remember. Will it matter? Will it change how you act tomorrow? Will it cause you to see things differently tonight?
Will you now heal the hurts of the wounded, quell38 the anxieties of the fearful, meet the needs of the im-poverished, celebrate the magnificence of the accom-plished, and see the vision of Me everywhere?
Will this latest remembrance of truth change your life, and allow you to change the lives of others?
Or will you return to forgetfulness; fall back into self-ishness; revisit, and reside again in, the smallness of who you imagined yourself to be before this awaken-ing?
Which will it be?
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doctrine
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| n.教义；主义；学说 | |
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wrench
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| v.猛拧；挣脱；使扭伤；n.扳手；痛苦，难受 | |
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budge
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| v.移动一点儿；改变立场 | |
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confession
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| n.自白，供认，承认 | |
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penances
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| n.（赎罪的）苦行，苦修( penance的名词复数 ) | |
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promulgated
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| v.宣扬（某事物）( promulgate的过去式和过去分词 )；传播；公布；颁布（法令、新法律等） | |
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condemnation
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| n.谴责; 定罪 | |
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quandary
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| n.困惑，进迟两难之境 | |
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purgatory
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| n.炼狱；苦难；adj.净化的，清洗的 | |
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reprieves
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| n.（死刑）缓期执行令( reprieve的名词复数 )；暂缓，暂止v.缓期执行（死刑）( reprieve的第三人称单数 ) | |
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11
conspicuous
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| adj.明眼的，惹人注目的；炫耀的，摆阔气的 | |
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12
royalty
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| n.皇家，皇族 | |
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frustration
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| n.挫折，失败，失效，落空 | |
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14
resentment
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| n.怨愤，忿恨 | |
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extricating
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| v.使摆脱困难，脱身( extricate的现在分词 ) | |
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flickering
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| adj.闪烁的，摇曳的，一闪一闪的 | |
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inflicted
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| 把…强加给，使承受，遭受( inflict的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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18
literally
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| adv.照字面意义，逐字地；确实 | |
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inevitably
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| adv.不可避免地；必然发生地 | |
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20
perfectly
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| adv.完美地，无可非议地，彻底地 | |
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minor
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| adj.较小(少)的，较次要的；n.辅修学科；vi.辅修 | |
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entirely
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| ad.全部地，完整地；完全地，彻底地 | |
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serenity
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| n.宁静，沉着，晴朗 | |
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turmoil
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| n.骚乱，混乱，动乱 | |
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embodied
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| v.表现( embody的过去式和过去分词 )；象征；包括；包含 | |
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narrative
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| n.叙述，故事；adj.叙事的，故事体的 | |
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reincarnated
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| v.赋予新形体，使转世化身( reincarnate的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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opt
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| vi.选择，决定做某事 | |
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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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vernacular
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| adj.地方的，用地方语写成的；n.白话；行话；本国语；动植物的俗名 | |
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immediate
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| adj.立即的；直接的，最接近的；紧靠的 | |
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rim
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| n.(圆物的)边，轮缘；边界 | |
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cymbal
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| n.铙钹 | |
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evolutionary
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| adj.进化的；演化的，演变的；[生]进化论的 | |
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eternity
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| n.不朽，来世；永恒，无穷 | |
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spouse
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| n.配偶(指夫或妻) | |
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behold
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| v.看，注视，看到 | |
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quell
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| v.压制，平息，减轻 | |
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