2002-5-20 12:16:00
Hello my friends. It's good to talk with you again. I figured it was time to comment on your postings again.
Somebody was talking about reincarnation awhile back. They said something to the effect that it doesn't really make any difference whether or not it's true. We pretty much live our lives the same whether we believe or not.
I don't think that's exactly true. For one thing here's a principle. The principle is this: every piece of knowledge, every piece of truth you discover does make a difference. It adds one more puzzle piece to the whole scheme of things and makes the whole picture a little clearer. When we come to the point where we can see the whole picture, then our life will change dramatically. Whenever a significant piece of the picture is added, our life undergoes a significant change. Reincarnation is a significant piece of the puzzle.
When I discovered it, it turned my belief system upside down and made me look at every possible belief I had internally with an open mind, as if I were a little child again. A new truth, whether it be reincarnation or any other spiritual truth, can have a tremendous impact on us.
One of the criticisms of the belief in reincarnation is that if you're going to have another life, you can screw around in this one and make up for it in the next. As a matter of fact, some of the common people in the East do think this way to some degree. But when one matures a bit, spiritually, the truth about reincarnation is a very positive thing.
For instance, when I found out about it, it didn't make me want to take the attitude that if I get another chance in the next life I can be lazy in this one. When you think about it, it's really silly reasoning. It's like saying, "I'll go rob a bank and go to jail for five years because I'll get out in five years and have another chance." Five years in jail is a tremendous inconvenience. If you screw up your life and have to come back and live another entire life undergoing tremendous suffering and trial and error you're wasting an enormous amount of time. That's time that could be well spent enjoying yourself. Once a person sees reincarnation with the true view of things, it actually makes him want to try harder; not try less.
One thing I find interesting is that many of the average believers have little concept of time. For example, many Christians believe if they commit certain sins they'll go to hell and be there for all eternity and burn with fire and be with the devil and pitchforks and tremendous suffering is envisioned. Yet many times when someone with such a belief system sees a gal that attracts him, he'll sacrifice all eternity for a night of pleasure with the wrong person. Now, if this person really had a concept of what eternity was and if he really believed he was going to suffer in some fiery brimstone area for all eternity, he would never sacrifice all eternity for a day. Many people don't have a perspective on what an eternity might be or they would re-examine the whole idea of burning in hell forever.
So when is a person ready to believe in reincarnation so it is a positive thing in his life? The answer is when his mind has a true perspective on what time is plus what cause and effect are. For instance, in this life a person doesn't want to go to jail for even one year and he would probably avoid a night of pleasure to avoid a year in jail. Others who don't have a perspective on what eternity is would yield a night of pleasure and spend an eternity in the fires of hell, so to speak. That doesn't make any sense at all.
Some people can put things into perspective and live their lives accordingly and others cannot and don't have any idea of what burning in hell for eternity would entail. Those who are willing to give up eternity in hell for a night of pleasure are probably not ready for a lot of truths, including reincarnation. If a person does have a little perspective on cause and effect and what can happen to him in reality, then the belief in reincarnation or the knowledge of it is a very positive thing.
When I began to believe in reincarnation it made me adjust my life so the cause and effect in my life was projected into the future. So the things I'm doing now, in this life, are not just for the effects for a year or two down the road. I'm looking at maybe hundreds or thousands of years down the road because it makes you live your life from a much broader perspective when you know you're going to have effects that are going to take place in the future that will either be to your advantage or disadvantage.
Dennis poses an interesting question:
"Before I even heard of JJ, Christ (God) gave me the knowledge thru the Baptism of Fire and the Holy Ghost, that all my sins are forgiven past, present and future), my guilt was swept away (like Enos in the BM), and He gave me peace (understanding that I AM) in my heart. I have not doubted that knowledge since that great day 10 years ago.
"The problem I'm experiencing now is JJ's metaphysics. I'm having a hard time believing white magic, DK, Alice Bailey, molecular structure, 12 Masters, the 7 Rays, etc.
"Why go thru all that when I already have the peace Christ promises those who come unto Him? I guess what I'm saying is that I'm having a hard time jumping from the Book Of Mormon which states that Christ is the only name, way and path to the tree of Life."
JJ:
So let's throw this out. Dennis is in a state of peace and contentment in his relationship with Christ. Why do anything else? First of all let me ask you, "Is all you want for all eternity - just peace?" I have peace and that's not enough. I want more than peace. What more could you want besides peace? How about knowledge?
Joseph Smith said, "It is impossible to be saved in ignorance." [Doctrine & Covenants (D&C) 131:6] He also said, ""A man is saved no faster than he gets knowledge, for if he does not get knowledge, he will be brought into captivity by some evil power in the other world." (Teachings of the Prophet Joseph Smith, Pg 217)
For those of you who don't have a LDS [Latter-Day Saint -- Mormon] background, bear with me. I'm going to try to answer his questions steering towards concepts that are interesting to everyone and cover basic metaphysical principles.
The metaphysical principle here is that knowledge does indeed save us. Save us from what? For one thing, it saves us from ignorance. It saves us from being in a state where we don't know what's going on; of what true salvation is or what it isn't, we don't know what true atonement is or what it isn't. There may be a lot of things we think we know. We may think we're ready for the highest heaven but we may not be. Knowledge of what is and the knowledge of worlds to come and the worlds past, the principle of reincarnation, the principle of cause and effect, all these things can add to the quality of your salvation.
Joseph Smith once said that man is not saved until he overcomes all of his enemies. If a person has peace of mind but hasn't overcome all of his enemies then he is not saved. He said this, "You have got to learn how to be Gods yourselves, and to be kings and priests to God, the same as all Gods have done before you, namely by going from one small degree to another, and from a small capacity to a great one; from grace to grace, FROM EXALTATION TO EXALTATION, UNTIL YOU ATTAIN TO THE RESURRECTION OF THE DEAD." [Documentary History of the Church (DHC) 6:306]
Now in typical Mormon thinking, you attain some type of salvation here on Earth and go to the temple and different things and you become exalted. But here he says you have to go from not one exaltation, but from exaltation to exaltation. The Mormons think that you are raised from the dead then you are exalted but here Joseph Smith says, you go "FROM EXALTATION TO EXALTATION, UNTIL YOU ATTAIN TO THE RESURRECTION OF THE DEAD." So you attain the resurrection of the dead after you go through a number of exaltations according to him. An exaltation is far beyond attaining peace of mind through your relationship with the Christ.
Here is Joseph's interesting definition of salvation. "Salvation is nothing more or less than to triumph over all our enemies and put them under our feet IN THIS WORLD, and a knowledge to triumph over all evil spirits in the world to come, THEN we are saved." (DHC 5:387)
What does this mean? He's really saying the same thing DK talks about when he talks about overcoming illusion. Unless we can overcome illusion, we can be tricked to believe many things that are untrue and see through a distorted vision until we attain a high degree of knowledge. When we obtain the knowledge we can triumph over all those who are masters of illusion and try to deceive us.
Another interesting scripture given though Joseph Smith is this. "The glory of God is intelligence." It doesn't say the glory of God is peace but the glory of God is intelligence. So if you have obtained the peace of God the next step is to obtain the intelligence of God.
Remember one of the core doctrines Joseph taught was eternal progression; there is no end to our progression. So suppose we have obtained a peaceful state. Why would we want to stop and rest? The question is then, what is our next step? Is our next step to work on perfecting ourselves in the image of God, by obtaining the intelligence of God, by obtaining the glory of God, by understanding His intelligence and incorporating God within our own lives? How do we do that? We do that by obtaining the Holy Spirit. When we obtain the Holy Spirit and obtain greater and greater communion with it, then our intelligence grows and our knowledge grows and our power of discernment grows also. As Blayne keeps saying, "By your fruits you shall know them." When you have recognized the Holy Spirit within you can recognize where the true fruit is so you can find where the true knowledge is.
Isaiah gives a good example:
"Doth the plowman plow all day to sow? doth he not open and break the clods of his ground? When he hath made plain the face thereof, doth he not cast abroad the fitches, and scatter the cumin, and cast in the principal wheat and the appointed barley and the rye in their place?" (Isa 28:24-25)
Isaiah tells us that Ephraim and many other religious leaders in the last days will be like the plowman. He just plows his field over and over and he later tells us about the person who grinds corn. The religious leaders in our day will be like people who just grind corn over and over and over. Isaiah asks, "Why would you want to do that?" Why would the plowman want to just plow and plow and plow and the grinder just want to grin and grind and grind? Does he not eventually plant his seeds in the fields and cover it over grow the principle fruit? Yes. And does not the person who grinds the corn eventually make something of it? Wouldn't he make bread or cornmeal or something?
In other words, Isaiah tells us the religious people of this age will be like the plowman who just wants to plow and plow and plow, doing the same thing over but then he says precept must be added to precept. We must add precepts and thinking and intelligence within our life so that we can reflect the intelligence of God and work toward the glory of God.
Again and again in almost all the scriptures of the world, we're promised to know the mysteries of God, we're told to seek the mysteries of God and find them out. Study the scriptures, the scriptures tell us that in them you think you have eternal life. Jesus said, "Seek and ye shall find." He didn't say, "Find some inner peace then relax and cease seeking." He said seek and you shall find.
Once you find what you're seeking -- if you're seeking peace, if you're seeking understanding, if you're seeking a good relationship -- should we then relax? Did He say seek, find, then don't seek? No, He didn't say that. He said seek and you shall find. It's a constant thing that we must do. We seek then find then seek another goal and when we find that then we keep on going. We do this (with cycles of rest) for all eternity. This is eternal progression; to continue to stretch ourselves and become what we've never been before.
Dennis says:
"I guess what I'm saying is that I'm having a hard time jumping from the Book Of Mormon which states that Christ is the only name, way and path to the tree of Life. He is the only name under heaven to whom we should seek. We should progress to a point in this life where we should be taught by Christ alone and not flesh alive or dead. That doesn't mean we should close our minds to other teachings but should be very careful to not look away from Christ in any degree."
JJ:
Let me present a thought. All the hundreds of Christian religions have this same philosophy yet many of them are under tremendous error, from your point of view and mine. Where does this error come from? The error comes from not understanding the principle and this is the principle taught oftentimes in the scripture. "Cursed is he who putteth his trust in flesh or maketh flesh his arm." What does this mean? It means that instead of putting ourselves, our attention, our trust in an outward authority we put it on the Holy Spirit within. If we put it on an outward authority we are relying on the arm of flesh. The Bible says you're cursed if you do that.
So the interesting thing I see is that many people are relying on the man, Jesus. When the person relies on the man Jesus, or the figure of Jesus they have in their mind, they are relying on the arm of flesh. Jesus Himself acknowledged when one time a man came to Him with a question. He said, "Good Master." Jesus responded and chewed the man out, "Why callest thou me good? There is only one good. That is your father which is in heaven. Worship Him." So Jesus didn't like the idea of this man relying on Him as a person of flesh and bone, as an individual entity above the spirit of God which you can find within yourself. As great as He was, He tried to direct this man's attention away from Him as an individual to the universal God.
The problem with many of the Christian religions is that they want to have a personal savior. They use that word again and again. In having a personal savior they have a flesh and blood, individual man they can rely on rather than merely relying on the spirit of God within.
So how do we take upon ourselves the name of Christ and rely on the name of Christ as the scriptures say? Do we just say I accept the name of Christ? If I accept Baptism, will that do it? No, these are just symbolic gestures. They don't really do anything. What really does it is when you take upon yourself the actual meaning of the name of Christ. The name of Christ, or Jesus Christ, means "anointed to save." To take upon yourself the name of Christ you must be anointed to save.
What does it mean to be anointed to save? In the old days, in the Old Testament Bible you'd have oil poured on your head and you were anointed to be like a king or have a certain position. The oil is symbolic of the Holy Spirit.
The name Jesus means to save or to lift up or to deliver. So what the name basically tells us is that if we take upon ourselves the name of Christ we are anointed by the Holy Spirit and it will come within us to the degree that we will reach out to our brethren who need help and seek with all of our power and strength to deliver them and pull them up to where we are. For those who have not progressed to where we are, we reach out a helping hand and pull them up and help them.
Jesus once said, "Who will be found on my right hand? He who will be found on my right hand are those, who, when I was in prison, came to me. They gave me drink. They gave me food and they gave me help when I was in need. These are they who will be found on my right hand. Those who are on my left hand are those who refused to deliver such a person."
When we take upon ourselves the name of Christ, we reach out and we help those less fortunate or less advanced than ourselves and we pull them up to where we are. If we say that we have the name of Christ, that we have taken upon us the name of Christ, but then we pass by those who need help, or we do not strengthen ourselves so that we can help, then we have not really taken upon ourselves the name of Christ. Perhaps I should say Jesus Christ because the whole name implies this meaning that I'm talking about.
After Dennis says he must put his whole trust in Christ he says, "That's what I'll do for awhile until He tells me otherwise. I will still read and keep an open mind." Well He's actually told you otherwise already. He once said, "What type of man should you be, even as I am." And what kind of man was Jesus? He had a tremendous thirst for knowledge. He knew a lot more than anyone else around Him. So, if we're supposed to be as He is, we're should seek the glory of God which is intelligence and learn everything that we can about true principles.
As Joseph said, "We must go from one small degree to another; from a small capacity to a great one, from grace to grace, from exaltation to exaltation until you obtain the resurrection of the dead." One small capacity to a great one - wherever we are right now it's a small capacity compared to what we will be sometime in the future. So we need to go from where we are now to a greater capacity, to a greater knowledge, to a greater understanding of principles and not be as a plowman who just plows over and over.
The scriptures given to us in the Bible, the Mormon scriptures and all the other scriptures in the world are good but if we do nothing but read them over and over and over we're like the plowman. We must move on and not ignore what we've learned but to take what we've learned then move on to greater things. From a small capacity to a great one, from a small knowledge to a greater knowledge and this we do as long as we are in the three worlds of human endeavor.
Jesus, Himself says, "Does a man light a candle and put it under a bushel? Let your light so shine." Light is, of course, knowledge. Not being negative toward Dennis but there many people who put down the principle of learning more knowledge. Why do they do this? Because it takes a lot of effort to gain knowledge and understanding. You must go from a small capacity to a great one to do this. On the whole, people are kind of lazy. We want to do things the easy way. We want to do one thing and have everything taken care of so we don't have to do anything anymore.
So the religious leaders of the world have salvation come in just one big lump. When you're there you don't have to do anything anymore. You just have it made. This is the lazy man's way to salvation. The true seeker will go from a small capacity to a great one and continue in the process of eternal progression. It's a struggle and there is no end to it, but there are tremendous rewards. We reach our reward, we reach our goal then we can rest for a period of time and savor our victory and our strengths. Then we begin a new project with new learning.
John Z asks some good questions and to his credit he did some research and found answers. For example, the three kingdoms in the LDS doctrine correspond to the three worlds as taught in metaphysics. The world of physical reality is the same as the Telestial. The astral world or the feeling world is the same as the Terrestrial. Then the Celestial is the world of the mind which is the highest of the worlds of form as we know it.
Next, John asks:
"When you say the astral world is not real, are you saying it is not real in the physical sense?"
JJ:
Basically, it seems very real. Even this world is not real as we understand reality. We have two physical worlds. One is called the dense physical that we see around us. Then there is the etheric which is the true physical world. It's an exact double of the world we have here. The physical realm that we have is merely like a projection of the etheric double. DK [Djwhal Khul] tells us that this dense physical is not built upon a true principle as the etheric matter is. It's because the etheric world is capable of extension and creation and regular physical matter is not. Physical matter must be governed by a higher principle in order to take any part in creation.
Now, the astral world is not real in the sense that it is a projection or an interplay between the mental world and the etheric world. It's caused by the evolution of desire. The astral world didn't really exist until humanity came on the scene and desire entered in. When desire and attachment to form became a human quality, then this power of desire -- through the power which originates in the mind and projected down into desire -- created the astral world. So the astral world was built upon a desire for form which really has its cause in illusion because form itself, gives no eternal joy. Because it gives no eternal joy it is founded on an illusory principle.
When humanity loses or lets go of his attachment to form and begins to understand the qualities of the eternal self more and what is really important in the entire scheme of things then the astral or desire world will eventually disappear and be no more because it's illusion. That which is illusion is always temporary and it comes and goes. The astral world then is created by interplay between mind and the etheric world of form. As I said, this interplay creates the desire world. The astral world is called the desire world because on the astral realm is where all of our desires are eventually filled until we reach a point where we find that that which we thought we desired did not bring eternal satisfaction so we go to something higher.
John asks me:
"What does it mean when you say an octave up or a world is an octave higher than another?"
JJ:
You're familiar with music and how one set of notes is an octave higher than another. By an octave higher we must remember that the mental world vibrates at a higher vibration than the astral. The astral vibrates at a higher vibration than the physical and/or etheric. That's what an octave is. When you move up an octave, you merely move up to a higher but similar vibration. At the higher vibration the notes sound similar. They're just a higher multiple. That's how it is when we move up from the physical to the astral to the mental. In the astral world the matter is created and controlled by desire but it is a temporary matter which is a reflection of a higher matter from the mental worlds (or the celestial world as you're used to calling it).
A higher correspondence where the true feelings are is above the mind, which in esoteric writings is called the Buddhic plane, the plane of the Buddha. In Christian literature this could be called the plane of the Christ which is a similar concept. This plane which is above the plane of the mind is where intuition comes from. Our inspiration comes from here and our higher feelings come from here. So we have feelings that are temporary and passing and ephemeral and feelings which are true and eternal.
Considering love, for instance, we have the selfish love which is the astral plane love, and we have the spiritual or divine love which is the plane of the Christ, the plane above the world of the mind. This is where the real feelings are. What each of us must do is find out where our real feelings lie to eventually replace our temporary selfish attached feelings with real feelings of the spirit. When we discover the real person within ourselves then we discover the real feelings of God. When these are discovered the temporary feelings pass away and the astral plane will pass away as far as the person is concerned. Then he moves up into the higher planes in consciousness.
Now John asks where we were before we were born. The scriptures call it our first estate. What does this mean? As I've said many times before, most scriptures have at least three interpretations and so it is with our pre-birth life. There are several correspondences which can fit. Before this world was created as it is now many of us upon the Earth lived upon what DK calls the moon chain. This was billions of years ago. During this time period we evolved in a significant degree. Then came a time when we had to leave and the life of the moon chain, as it was called, gave birth to the life on this planet. So, according to esoteric teachings, that which we now call the moon was once a living body that was deserted by all life upon it and that life came to earth. When it did the moon began to die. The life force of the moon was then transferred to the Earth.
Now, even before this there was a previous solar system where the form aspect was perfected. He tells us that within this first solar system our goal was the perfection of form. In our current system, billions of years later, the goal is the perfection of consciousness. That which is evil goes back to trying to perfect the form rather than consciousness. This is why Hitler was evil. He tried to do all his experiments trying to perfect the form and trying to create the super race and so on. Whereas DK tells us that if we perfect consciousness, form unfolds automatically into perfection because the perfection of form occurred in the previous solar system billions of years ago.
The perfection of form is built in our consciousness. As we stimulate our consciousness the form that is necessary for us to use unfolds automatically because it's already reached its perfection. It's like a seed. When it's nurtured and planted grows up to perfection almost beyond what you could imagine from just a simple seed. We have all the seeds of perfected form within us as individuals and as every life form does. So, the key to current perfection is to work on consciousness.
Then in addition to these physical worlds there were spiritual, more refined ones. Each planet goes through a descent of and then an ascent. We are on the fourth and densest globe in descent. There were three earths of higher vibration before this dense physical materialized and there will be three higher on the path of ascent until the earth becomes as a "sea of glass" as predicted in the scriptures.
John asks if there is such a thing as an entity that only has an astral form and is totally without any mental form. Yes and no. All of us have mental, astral and physical ingredients within us. But, they're not unfolded within all of us. All of us have a mental body but not all of us use or have developed the mental body. Many of us think with our feelings rather than with our minds or our true mental bodies. When the person begins to unfold or stimulate his mental body then he begins to use logic and reason and begins to reflect the Holy Spirit down to the physical level. This is what happens when the mental body is truly awakened.
For at least two-thirds of humanity the mental body is pretty much asleep and the thinking is done with their physical brain and with their feelings rather than with their true mind.
-- End Of Lesson 8 --
False Christs & More
Unity Of Words = Unity Of Power
Universe - Authority Seed Thoughts
Becoming What We've Never Been
Going Where We've Never Gone Before
True Authority
Illusion And Self Correction
The Desire To Gather
Compiler's Note:
Because of a change in circumstances, the original content which was found here preceding the lesson has been modified to reflect those changes. However using the title, date, the original content can be located and read in the Keys Of Knowledge (KOK) Digest Archives here at FreeRead.Com.
Despite the success of using an audio/MP3 podcast presentation of lessons prepared by JJ Dewey on a wide variety of metaphysics, spirituality and esoteric topics, the experiment was discontinued due to increased demands on his time to continue to write the next book in "The Immortal" series.
Also, continued technical problems with the cross-platform recording and playback of the audio files, caused a decision to remove the files from the website.
However, as the MP3 files were voluntarily transcribed from the original audio/MP3 versions of the lessons by members of The Keys Of Knowledge spiritual discussion group, these lessons can be accessed and read using the links at the end of this article -- which is "Lesson One" in a series of "Nine Lessons."
The above lesson is the transcription of the third lesson in the series of "Nine Lessons."
There are collections of other audio podcasts entitled "Teachings For The New Age" which are "lessons" covering a variety of popular metaphysical, spiritual, and esoteric topics. They are all recorded by JJ Dewey -- in his own voice -- in MP3 format, and have been made available for you to listen to them online, and/or you can be download them for free onto your computer hard drive and listen to them when and as you choose. These collections of audio podcast lessons, retreats, seminars, lectures & workshops can be found in the Podcast Index feature here at FreeRead.Com
Copyright 2002 by J.J. Dewey, All Rights Reserved