Final Logic Gate (Page 8)

"Magic" - Yennefer, her eyes fixed on the sky above the hills, rested her hands on the pommel of her saddle - "is, in some people's opinion, the embodiment of Chaos. It is a key capable of opening the forbidden door. The door behind which lurk nightmares, fear and unimaginable horrors, behind which enemies hide and wait, destructive powers, the forces of pure Evil capable of annihilating not only the one who opens the door but with them the entire world. And since there is no lack of those who try to open the door, someone, at some point, is going to make a mistake and then the destruction of the world will be forejudged and inevitable. Magic is, therefore, the revenge and the weapon of Chaos. The fact that, following the Conjunction of the Spheres, people have learned to use magic, is the curse and undoing of the world. The undoing of mankind. And that's how it is, Ciri. Those who believe that magic is Chaos are not mistaken."

Spurred on by its mistress's heels, the magician's black stallion neighed lengthily and slowly made his way into the heather. Ciri hastened her horse, followed in Yennefer's tracks and caught up with her. The heather reached to their stirrups.

"Magic," Yennefer continued after a while, "is, in some people's opinion, art. Great, elitist art, capable of creating beautiful and extraordinary things. Magic is a talent granted to only a chosen few. Others, deprived of talent, can only look at the results of the artist's works with admiration and envy, can admire the finished work while feeling that without these creations and without this talent the world would be a poorer place. The fact that, following the Conjunction of the Spheres, some chosen few discovered talent and magic within themselves, the fact that they found Art within themselves, is the blessing of beauty. And that's how it is. Those who believe that magic is art are also right."

Not much more can be said about the civilizations of these subtle realms, save that individuals who are privileged enough to visit them universally report seeing many vast and celestially beautiful cities there. NDEers, yogic adepts, and ayahuasca-using shamans — all describe these mysterious metropolises with remarkable consistency. The twelfth-century Sufis were so familiar with them that they gave several of them names.

The most notable feature of these great cities is that they are brilliantly luminous. They are also frequently described as foreign in architecture, and so sublimely beautiful that, like all the other features of the implicate dimensions, words fail to convey their grandeur. In describing one such city Swedenborg said that it was a place “of staggering architectural design, so beautiful that you would claim this is the home and source of art itself.”

On the long bare hill which protruded from the heath like the back of some lurking predator lay an enormous boulder supported by a few smaller stones. The magician guided her horse in its direction without pausing her lecture.

"There are also those according to whom magic is a science. In order to master it, talent and innate ability alone are not enough. Years of keen study and arduous work are essential; endurance and self-discipline are necessary. Magic acquired like this is knowledge, learning, the limits of which are constantly stretched by enlightened and rigorous minds, by experience, by experiments and practice. Magic acquired in such a way is progress. It is the plough, the loom, the watermill, the smelting furnace, the winch and the pulley. It is progress, evolution, change. It is constant movement. Upwards. Towards improvement. Towards the stars. The fact that following the Conjunction of the Spheres we discovered magic will, one day, allow us to reach the stars. Dismount, Ciri."

Yennefer approached the monolith, placed her palm on the coarse surface of the stone and carefully brushed away the dust and dry leaves.

"Those who consider magic to be a science," she continued, "are also right. Remember that, Ciri. And now come here, to me."

People who visit these [light realm] cities also frequently assert that they have an unusual number of schools and other buildings associated with the pursuit of knowledge. Most of Whitton’s subjects recalled spending at least some time hard at work in vast halls of learning equipped with libraries and seminar rooms while in the between-life state. Many NDEers also report being shown “schools,” “libraries,” and “institutions of higher learning” during their experiences. And one can even find references to great cities devoted to learning and reachable only by journeying into “the hidden depths of the mind” in eleventh century Tibetan texts.

[...]

The second thing the [light beings] emphasize is knowledge. Frequently NDEers comment that the beings seemed pleased whenever an incident involving knowledge or learning flickered by during their life review. Some are openly counselled to embark on a quest for knowledge after they return to their physical bodies, especially knowledge related to self-growth or that enhances one’s ability to help other people. Others are prodded with statements such as “learning is a continuous process and goes on even after death” and “knowledge is one of the few things you will be able to take with you after you have died.”

The preeminence of knowledge in the afterlife dimension is apparent in another way. Some NDEers discovered that in the presence of the light they suddenly had direct access to all knowledge. This access manifested in several ways. Sometimes it came in response to inquiries. One man said that all he had to do is ask a question, such as what would it be like to be an insect, and instantly the experience was his. Another NDEer described it by saying, "You can think of a question… and immediately know the answer to it. As simple as that. And it can be any question whatsoever. It can be on a subject that you don’t know anything about, that you are not in the proper position to even understand and the light will give you the instantaneous correct answer and make you understand it."

Some NDEers report that they didn’t even have to ask questions in order to access this infinite library of information. Following their life review they just suddenly knew everything, all the knowledge there was to know from the beginning of time to the end. Others came into contact with this knowledge after the being of light made some specific gesture, such as waving its hand. Still others said that instead of acquiring the knowledge, they remembered it, but forgot most of what they recalled as soon as they returned to their physical bodies (an amnesia that seems to be universal among NDEers who are privy to such visions). Whatever the case, it appears that once we are in the world beyond, it is no longer necessary to enter an altered state of consciousness in order to have access to the transpersonal and infinitely interconnected information realm experienced by Grof’s patients.

The more you remember, the more you are able to experience, the more you know, so to speak. And the more you know, the more you remember. It is a circle. [...]

Yet you are always limited by your knowingness — for you — we — are a self-created being.

You cannot be what you do not know your Self to be.

That is why you have been given this life — so that you might know yourself in your own experience. Then you can conceive of yourself as Who You Really Are, and create yourself as that in your experience — and the circle is again complete… only bigger.

And so, you are in the process of growing — or, as I have put it throughout this book, of becoming.

There is no limit to what you can become.

You mean, I can even become — dare I say it? — a God… just like You?

What do you think?

I don’t know.

Until you do, you cannot. [...]

Can you conceive of yourself as one day being a God?

In my wildest moments.

Good, for I tell you this: You are already a God. You simply do not know it.

Have I not said, “Ye are Gods”?

The girl swallowed and came closer. The enchantress put her arm around her.

"Remember," she repeated, "magic is Chaos, Art and Science. It is a curse, a blessing and progress. It all depends on who uses magic, how they use it, and to what purpose. And magic is everywhere. All around us. Easily accessible. It is enough to stretch out one's hand. See? I'm stretching out my hand."

The cromlech trembled perceptibly. Ciri heard a dull, distant noise and a rumble coming from within the earth. The heather undulated, flattened by the gale which suddenly gusted across the hill. The sky abruptly turned dark, covered with clouds scudding across it at incredible speed. The girl felt drops of rain on her face. She narrowed her eyes against the flash of lightning which suddenly flared across the horizon. She automatically huddled up to the enchantress, against her black hair smelling of lilac and gooseberries.

"The earth which we tread. The fire which does not go out within it. The water from which all life is born and without which life is not possible. The air we breathe. It is enough to stretch out one's hand to master them, to subjugate them. Magic is everywhere. It is in air, in water, in earth and in fire. And it is behind the door which the Conjunction of the Spheres has closed on us. From there, from behind the closed door, magic sometimes extends its hand to us. For us. You know that, don't you? You have already felt the touch of that magic, the touch of the hand from behind that door. That touch filled you with fear. Such a touch fills everyone with fear. Because there is Chaos and Order, Good and Evil in all of us. But it is possible and necessary to control it. This has to be learnt. And you will learn it, Ciri."

In the eighteenth century and since, Newton came to be thought of as the first and greatest of the modern age of scientists, a rationalist, one who taught us to think on the lines of cold and untinctured reason.

I do not see him in this light. I do not think that any one who has pored over the contents of that box which he packed up when he finally left Cambridge in 1696 and which, though partly dispersed, have come down to us, can see him like that. Newton was not the first of the age of reason. He was the last of the magicians [...].

Why do I call him a magician? Because he looked on the whole universe and all that is in it as a riddle, as a secret which could be read by applying pure thought to certain evidence, certain mystic clues which God had laid about the world to allow a sort of philosopher's treasure hunt to the esoteric brotherhood. He believed that these clues were to be found partly in the evidence of the heavens and in the constitution of elements (and that is what gives the false suggestion of his being an experimental natural philosopher), but also partly in certain papers and traditions handed down by the brethren in an unbroken chain back to the original cryptic revelation in Babylonia. He regarded the universe as a cryptogram set by the Almighty - just as he himself wrapt the discovery of the calculus in a cryptogram when he communicated with Leibniz. By pure thought, by concentration of mind, the riddle, he believed, would be revealed to the initiate.

He did read the riddle of the heavens. And he believed that by the same powers of his introspective imagination he would read the riddle of the Godhead, the riddle of past and future events divinely fore-ordained, the riddle of the elements and their constitution from an original undifferentiated first matter, the riddle of health and of immortality. All would be revealed to him if only he could persevere to the end, uninterrupted, by himself, no one coming into the room, reading, copying, testing-all by himself, no interruption for God's sake, no disclosure, no discordant breakings in or criticism, with fear and shrinking as he assailed these half-ordained, half-forbidden things, creeping back into the bosom of the Godhead as into his mother's womb. 'Voyaging through strange seas of thought alone', not as Charles Lamb 'a fellow who believed nothing unless it was as clear as the three sides of a triangle'.

And so he continued for some twenty-five years. In 1687, when he was forty-five years old, the Principia was published.

None of this is really "real", is it?

No. You are living an illusion. This is a big magic show. And you are pretending that you don't know the tricks - even though you are the magician.

It is important to remember this, otherwise you will make everything very real.

But what I see, feel, smell, touch, does seem very real. If that isn't "reality", what is?

Keep in mind that what you are looking at, you are not really "seeing."

Your brain is not the source of your intelligence. It is simply a data processor. It takes in data through receptors called your senses. It interprets this energy in formation according to its previous data on the subject. It tells you what it perceives, not what really is. Based on these perceptions, you think you know the truth about something, when, actually, you do not know half of it. In reality, you are creating the truth that you know.

Including this entire dialogue with You.

Most assuredly.

I'm afraid that will only give fuel to those who are saying, "He's not talking to God. He's making it all up."

Tell them gently that they might try thinking "outside the box." They are thinking "either/or." They might try thinking "both/and."

You cannot comprehend God if you are thinking inside your current values, concepts and understandings. If you wish to comprehend God, you must be willing to accept that you currently have limited data, rather than asserting that you know all there is to know on the subject.

I draw your attention to the words of Werner Erhard, who declared that true clarity can come only when someone is willing to notice:

There is something I do not know, the knowing of which could change everything.

It is just possible that you are both "talking to God" and "making it all up."

Indeed, here is the grandest truth: You are making everything up.

Life is The Process by which everything is being created. [...]

God is a process.

God is not a person, place or thing. God is exactly what you have always thought - but not understood.

Again?

You have always thought that God is the Supreme Being.

Yes.

And you have been right about that. I am exactly that. A BEING. Notice that "being" is not a thing, it is a process.

I am the Supreme Being. That is, the Supreme, comma, being.

I am not the result of a process; I am The Process Itself. I am the Creator, and I am The Process by which I am created.

Everything you see in the heavens and the earth is Me, being created.

...[Ficino] saw himself as one member of a venerable sequence of interpreters who added to a store of wisdom that God allowed progressively to unfold. Each of these “prisci theologi,” or “ancient theologians,” had his part to play in discovering, documenting, and elaborating the truth contained in the writings of Plato and other ancient sages, a truth to which these sages may not have been fully privy, acting as they were as vessels of divine truth.

Tis true without lying, certain and most true.
That which is below is like that which is above and that which is above is like that which is below
to do the miracle of one only thing
And as all things have been and arose from one by the mediation of one: so all things have their birth from this one thing by adaptation.
The Sun is its father, the moon its mother,
the wind hath carried it in its belly, the earth is its nurse.
The father of all perfection in the whole world is here.
Its force or power is entire if it be converted into earth.
Separate thou the earth from the fire,
the subtle from the gross
sweetly with great industry.
It ascends from the earth to the heaven and again it descends to the earth
and receives the force of things superior and inferior.
By this means you shall have the glory of the whole world and thereby all obscurity shall fly from you.
Its force is above all force,
for it vanquishes every subtle thing and penetrates every solid thing.
So was the world created.
From this are and do come admirable adaptations where of the means is here in this.
Hence I am called Hermes Trismegist, having the three parts of the philosophy of the whole world.
That which I have said of the operation of the Sun is accomplished and ended.

The Sun is its father, the moon its mother,
the wind hath carried it in its belly, the earth is its nurse.

The father of all perfection in the whole world is here.
Its force or power is entire if it be converted into earth.

Separate thou the earth from the fire,
the subtle from the gross
sweetly with great industry.

It ascends from the earth to the heaven and again it descends to the earth
and receives the force of things superior and inferior.

Love is the ultimate reality. It is the only. The all. The feeling of love is your experience of God.

In highest Truth, love is all there is, all there was, and all there ever will be. When you move into the absolute, you move into love.

Fear is the other end of love. It is the primal polarity. In creating the realm of the relative, I first created the opposite of My Self. Now, in the realm in which you live on the physical plane, there are only two places of being: fear and love. [...]

These are the two points — the Alpha and the Omega — which allow the system you call “relativity” to be. Without these two points, without these two ideas about things, no other idea could exist. [...]

If you knew Who You Are — that you are the most magnificent, the most remarkable, the most splendid being God has ever created — you would never fear. [...] But you do not know Who You Are, and you think you are a great deal less.

Every human thought, and every human action, is based in either love or fear. [...] Decisions affecting business, industry, politics, religion, the education of your young, the social agenda of your nations, the economic goals of your society, choices involving war, peace, attack, defense, aggression, submission; determinations to covet or give away, to save or to share, to unite or to divide — every single free choice you ever undertake arises out of one of the only two possible thoughts there are: a thought of love or a thought of fear.

Fear is the energy which contracts, closes down, draws in, runs, hides, hoards, harms.

Love is the energy which expands, opens up, sends out, stays, reveals, shares, heals.

Fear wraps our bodies in clothing, love allows us to stand naked. Fear clings to and clutches all that we have, love gives all that we have away. Fear holds close, love holds dear. Fear grasps, love lets go. Fear rankles, love soothes. Fear attacks, love amends.

Every human thought, word, or deed is based in one emotion or the other. You have no choice about this, because there is nothing else from which to choose. But you have free choice about which of these to select.

You make it sound so easy, and yet in the moment of decision fear wins more often than not. Why is that?

You have been taught to live in fear. You have been told about the survival of the fittest and the victory of the strongest and the success of the cleverest. Precious little is said about the glory of the most loving. And so you strive to be the fittest, the strongest, the cleverest — in one way or another — and if you see yourself as something less than this in any situation, you fear loss, for you have been told that to be less is to lose.

And so of course you choose the action fear sponsors, for that is what you have been taught. Yet I teach you this: when you choose the action love sponsors, then will you do more than survive, then will you do more than win, then will you do more than succeed. Then will you experience the full glory of Who You Really Are, and who you can be.

Ultimately, the person trying to “do what is right” by the other — to be quick to forgive, to show compassion, to continually look past certain problems and behaviors — becomes resentful, angry, and mistrusting, even of God. For how can a just God demand such unending suffering, joylessness, and sacrifice, even in the name of love?

The answer is, God does not. God asks only that you include yourself among those you love.

God goes further. God suggests — recommends — that you put yourself first.

I do this knowing full well that some of you will call this blasphemy, and therefore not My word, and that others of you will do what might be even worse: accept it as My word and misinterpret or distort it to suit your own purposes; to justify unGodly [fear-based] acts.

I tell you this — putting yourself first in the highest sense never leads to an unGodly act.

If, therefore, you have caught yourself in an unGodly act as a result of doing what is best for you, the confusion is not in having put yourself first, but rather in misunderstanding what is best for you.

Of course, determining what is best for you will require you to also determine what it is you are trying to do. This is an important step that many people ignore. What are you “up to”? What is your purpose in life? Without answers to these questions, the matter of what is “best” in any given circumstances will remain a mystery.

Again and again NDEers use the same adjectives to describe [the life review], referring to it as an incredibly vivid, wrap-around, three-dimensional replay of their entire life. “It’s like climbing right inside a movie of your life,” says one NDEer. “Every moment from every year of your life is played back in complete sensory detail. Total, total recall. And it all happens in an instant.” [...]

During the instantaneous and panoramic remembrance, NDEers reexperience all the emotions, the joys and the sorrows, that accompanied all the events in their life. More than that, they feel all of the emotions of the people with whom they have interacted as well. They feel the happiness of all the individuals to whom they’ve been kind. If they have committed a hurtful act, they became acutely aware of the pain their victim felt as a result of their thoughtlessness. And no event seems too trivial to be exempt. While reliving a moment in her childhood, one woman suddenly experienced all the loss and powerlessness her sister had felt after she (then a child) snatched a toy away from her sister.

Whitton has uncovered evidence that thoughtless acts are not the only things that cause individuals remorse during the life review. Under hypnosis his subjects reported that failed dreams and aspirations — things they had hoped to accomplish during their life but had not — also caused them pangs of sadness.

Thoughts, too, are replayed with exacting fidelity during the life review. Reveries, faces glimpsed once but remembered for years, things that made one laugh, the joy one felt when gazing at a particular painting, childish worries, and long forgotten daydreams — all flit through one’s mind in a second. As one NDEer summarizes, “Not even your thoughts are lost… Every thought was there.” [...]

Like Whitton’s subjects, NDEers universally report that they are never judged by the beings of light, but only feel love and acceptance in their presence. The only judgement that ever takes place is self-judgement and arises solely out of the NDEer’s own feelings of guilt and repentance. Occasionally the beings do assert themselves, but instead of behaving in an authoritarian manner, they act as guides and counselors whose only purpose is to teach. [...]

In NDE after NDE [the light beings] stress two things. One is the importance of love. Over and over they repeat this message, that we must learn to replace anger with love, learn to love more, learn to forgive and love everyone unconditionally, and learn that we in turn are loved. This appears to be the only moral criterion the beings use. Even sexual activity ceases to possess the moral stigma we humans are so fond of attaching to it. One of Whitton’s subjects reported that after living several withdrawn and depressed incarnations he was urged to plan a life as an amorous and sexually active female in order to add balance to the overall development of his soul. It appears that in the minds of the beings of light, compassion is the barometer of grace, and time and time again when NDEers wonder if some act they committed was right or wrong, the beings counter their inquiries only with a question: Did you do it out of love? Was the motivation love?

That is why we have been placed here on earth, say the beings, to learn that love is the key. They acknowledge that it is a difficult undertaking, but intimate that it is crucial to both our biological and spiritual existence in ways that we have perhaps not even begun to fathom. Even children return from the near-death realm with this message firmly impressed in their thoughts. States one little boy who after being hit by a car was guided into the world beyond by two people in “very white” robes: “What I learned there is that the most important thing is loving while you are alive.”

Fear is the opposite of everything you are, and so has an effect of opposition to your mental and physical health. Fear is worry magnified. Worry, hate, fear—together with their offshoots: anxiety, bitterness, impatience, avarice, unkindness, judgmentalness, and condemnation—all attack the body at the cellular level. It is impossible to have a healthy body under these conditions.