Questions of Mystery
Allow me to ask readers to raise your thoughts to the possibility of a higher understanding. You cannot acquire higher knowledge by reiterating anything you have read in a book or have been told by any teacher. All your stimulation by being a student of books and teachers is to serve one purpose — to get you to think for yourself and to get you to be able to put your understanding into your own words.
Let us take a common thought about oneself. “I am Consciousness, or Higher Consciousness.”
Have you ever thought about what you are saying? What is consciousness anyway? What is the principle that produces it?
If you say I am Soul — have you thought about what Soul or Spirit is? Is it higher vibration? What is Vibration? What is the difference between higher vibration and lower vibration? Or has it occurred to you that the difference between the worlds may not be the speed of the vibration at all, but the type of vibration? If it was speed only then science may be able to discover the higher worlds using present methods.
Perhaps the higher vibration is hidden within the lower just as the spirit is hidden within the body.
The key to knowledge with understanding is to ask questions of yourself — to reflect — to contemplate. Memorizing the words of others is good if reflected upon, but if not, then this merely creates an illusion of understanding and is actually a detriment to understanding. This is where “the mind slays the real.”
If you look within yourself and observe how your consciousness works it will help your understanding.
Let me elaborate some more on what YOU are not.
You are not your body. Most readers seem to understand this pretty well. However, many people identify too much with physical impulses.
A few teachers have also said you are not your feelings. We have tossed this around the forum and I do not recall any elaboration on it. Perhaps it is because it is hard to imagine the fact that we are not our feelings because they seem to be such an integral part of ourselves.
What are the feelings? There are positive ones like love, aspiration, happiness and joy. Then there are negative like hate, anger, jealously, possessiveness. We like to identify with the positive and ignore or suppress the negative, but the truth is that we are not either of them. We like to say that we are love, but what we normally call love is felt by one of our vehicles which we are not. The astral or emotional body feels love, hate and all the emotions. Just as when our physical body dies, we no longer feel physical pain, even so, if our astral body were to die we would no longer have a vehicle to feel the standard emotions.
Therefore, we feel emotion, but we are not emotion.
If we drop the physical and astral body then what is left? The only body in the world of form we have left is the mental. This is the vehicle that thinks on the level of form, but do not get it confused with the physical brain. The physical brain is like a great computer. It calculates and runs computer programs, but it does not have living thoughts any more than the computer. On the other hand, the mental body is a vehicle for the intelligent comparing of data. It has discernment, logic and can follow a series of events to its logical conclusion. It is able to assign value to things. It has power of interpretation and is very useful in interpreting the feelings sent to it from the astral.
The beginner in human evolution identifies with the physical body and instinct. The average person identifies with feelings. The advanced human identifies with the mind. All three are in illusion because they identify to some extent with their vehicles.
They use the body, emotions and mind, but all these have a beginning and an end. What is left? “Who and/or What Are We?” What were we before we acquired these vehicles and what will we be when we leave them behind?
This part of you has certain attributes. It has one thing in particular that it can participate in while occupying the three vehicles simultaneously. You use that participation every day and there is even a common name for it. If I were to have told you this keyword in the beginning it would have meant little, but now after reflection — hopefully it will mean something.
Still, the keyword by itself is only the first step. The final step is the realization behind this attribute, which is responsible for life itself and consciousness as we know it.
Don’t be discouraged about the Bible. It contains many mysteries that the religions of the world have glossed over and would prefer you did not know about. Some important principles came to me while I was reading it.
However, to get the full meaning out of it you have to empty yourself of all religious teaching you have ever received and “become as a little child.” In this state you can truly understand the Bible and other inspired writings.
A reader asks what the following Biblical quotes mean:
“The heart is desperately wicked, who can know it?”
Answer: The writer here was not referring to the heart here as a source of spiritual love, but to the solar plexus, the seat of desire. When desire (of the heart or lower self) runs unchecked by the spiritual self then the person does become “desperately wicked,” like a Hitler or Charles Manson.
“All of your righteousness is filthy rags.”
Answer: The lower self without the guidance of the higher self is incapable of doing anything that is truly “good.” Compared to one who has soul contact his righteousness has little or no effect and is an illusion. “Filthy rags” is strong language, but it puts the point across.
The reader asks if we are separate from the One? The answer is yes and no. Your mouth, for instance, has an identity apart from you, yet it often says “I Am Carole.” It doesn’t say “I am the mouth,” but because it is a part of you, instead it says “I Am Carole.”
Your higher self is one, but many; just as your body is. There is an individual part and a group part. A part of the higher self shares your consciousness and participates with you to make you what you are.
O Lord, help me not to despise or oppose what I do not understand. —William Penn
Nov 3, 2008
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