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.They use the power of thought much as a burglar usessteel.There are such things as pain, disease, age, discomfort and poverty; they arevery real to one who feels them.Even when they are known to be illusions they arereal as illusions.To see them as they are and see what they are is legitimate.To forceoneself to think they are not what and where they are, is untrue and wrong.A human is beset, surrounded, submerged by illusions.All outside things areillusions.So are his appetites, pains and pleasures, dislikes and hatreds.They areelementals.His own feelings and desires, aside from these illusions, he does notknow.He does not see the people he thinks he sees; he sees only the thoughts whichhe creates of them.Therefore if a thousand see a man, no two would see him alike,because no two out of the thousand thoughts would be alike.Each one creates a thought of himself, as which he sees himself, yet no one elsesees him or thinks of him as the person he sees and thinks himself to be.The thoughtof himself which he has created is an illusion, because he does not know himself to bethat reality which he is.He thinks of himself as an identity, as "I", whereas he ismerely that portion of himself which feels the presence of his identity or "I".He isunder the illusion that he does the thinking and reasoning, whereas these are done byone of the three minds which he may have the use of, but of which he is notconscious.Man believes he is conscious of time and of the passage of time.This is anillusion.Time is the passage of events in the field of the Eternal; the passage is notedas the past, the present and that which is to come.But the Eternal is unchanging, asrelated to time, and in the Eternal the past, the present and the future are a Now, without a past and without a future.Eternity has many varieties of time; among themis the variety ticked off by the celestial clock, with the sun and moon as its hands andthe planets in its works.Every act, object and event that exists in physical time existsalso in the Eternal, but it does not exist there in the same manner or in sequence.Inthe Eternal it is not an act, an object or an event, with a beginning, a middle and anend, but it is one, cause and result are one.Time is ever devouring itself.It consumes itself and arises anew out of itself.Beginning, origin, first cause and end are only markers on the flow of time.In reality,the end is as much the beginning as the beginning is the end, but to humans they areopposites.Human beings cannot know the nature of time as long as their bodies arepart of time and are the means by which they measure time, and as long as feeling-and-desire alternately dominate each other.For not until then will the doer be freedfrom the illusion of time.In this mass of illusions the human exists as a combination that is drawn togetherfor a time.He is conscious as an entity, but that is an illusion.To be conscious asanything is an illusion, though it is a reality relatively.To be conscious is a realityabsolutely, but to be conscious as any being is only relatively real.When a human is conscious as himself it means merely that he is conscious asfeeling-and-desire.The grossest illusions are his supreme realities--the objects of hisfeelings and desires.The visible world in which he lives is the type in which heconceives his world after death.His own body is the type of his God and of his Devil.The things which he abhors and which terrify him, make up his hell, and the things helikes, his heaven.But his own doer appears fanciful, doubtful, unreal, except in so faras it is feelings and desires.Yet under these unfavorable conditions man is being educated.He is beingeducated by doer-memories.Notwithstanding that he does not remember his pastlives, that only a portion of the doer is in his body and that the highest conception ofhimself as a being, is an illusion, the false "I", and notwithstanding that the world inwhich he exists is an illusion and all the objects he sees and the people he meets areillusions, he is being educated.The illusions educate him by doer-memories of themas realities, until he sees them as illusions.The essential thing in life is to preserve, reclaim and free his Light and to thinkwithout creating thoughts, that is, without attachment.He must find out what he isnot.He must find out what and who he is.He must rebuild his body into one that isdeathless.He cannot be lost.He is never forgotten, never forsaken, never without thecare and protection which he will allow himself to receive.He can feel and think ofhimself through all discomforts and troubles as being guarded and judged by hisadministrator, the thinker, known by his knower, guided by the Light of theIntelligence, and loved, cared for and supported by the Supreme Triune Self of theworlds under the Light of Supreme Intelligence. CHAPTER XGODS AND THEIR RELIGIONSSECTION 1Religions; on what they are founded.Why belief in a personal God.Problems areligion must meet.Any religion is better than none.eligions must be considered because they deal with the conscious doer-in-the-body and with Gods.Religions are founded on the belief in a relation betweenR human beings and a superior being or beings to whom the humans are subject.Sickness, accident, death, unavoidable destiny, things that do not depend on or thatovercome the action of the human, are ascribed to the presence and power of asuperior being.Religions and religious teachings must have and do have a certainfoundation in facts, else they could not last for any length of time.Here are some truths that are fundamentals of religions and their teachings, andfor the belief in religions.In every human body there is a deathless conscioussomething that is not the body but that makes the animal body human.Because of pastmistakes the conscious something has hidden itself in the coils of flesh and the fleshprevents it from understanding that it is a small integral and inseparable part of its all-knowing Great Self that is not in the body.One's own feeling-and-desire is theconscious something in the body, which is here called the doer-in-the-body.The doer-in-the-body feels that it belongs to or is a part of a superior being on whom it mustdepend and to whom it must appeal for guidance.Like a child who depends on itsparent, it desires the recognition and protection and guidance of a superior being.Thedoer-in-the-body feels and desires and thinks, but it is by its body-mind compelled tothink and feel and desire through the body senses; and, it thinks in terms of seeing,hearing, tasting and smelling.The doer is therefore limited by the body-mind to thesenses, and is prevented from thinking of its relation to its Great Self that is not in thebody.It is led to think of a superior being of nature that is above and beyond the body,and which is all-powerful and all-wise--to whom it must appeal and on whom it mustdepend.The need for a religion comes from weakness and helplessness.The humanseeking support and refuge wants to feel that there is a superior being to whom onecan appeal for help and for protection.Consolation and hope are needed at some timeby everybody.Man wants to feel that he is not abandoned and alone.The fear and feeling of abandonment in life and at death are dreadful [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]