The Philosopher's Stone (Page 27)

I will do nothing for you that you will not do for your Self. That is the law and the prophets. [...]

Life will “take off” for you, then, when you choose for it to. You have not so chosen as yet. You have procrastinated, prolonged, protracted, protested. Now it is time that you promulgated and produced what you have been promised. To do this, you must believe the promise, and live it. You must live the promise of God.

The promise of God is that you are His son. Her offspring. Its likeness. His equal.

Ah… here is where you get hung up. You can accept “His son,” “offspring,” “likeness,” but you recoil at being called “His equal.” It is too much to accept. Too much bigness, too much wonderment — too much responsibility. For if you are God’s equal, that means nothing is being done to you — and all things are created by you. There can be no more victims and no more villains — only outcomes of your thought about a thing.

I tell you this: all you see in your world is the outcome of your idea about it.

Do you want your life to truly “take off”? Then change your idea about it. About you. Think, speak, and act as the God You Are.

"You may choose to be any Part of God you wish to be," I said to Jamal's Soul. "You are Absolute Divinity, experiencing Itself. What Aspect of Divinity do you now wish to experience as You?"

"Okay," said Jamal's Soul, "then I choose deep, unwavering, romantic love. I want to experience my Self in a soulmate connection. Who, then, shall be my soulmate?"

Just then, another soul stepped forward from the crowd. "I will be your soulmate," said Simone's Soul. "Besides, you've done the same for me."

"I have?" asked Jamal's Soul.

"Of course. Don't you remember? We've been All Of It, you and I. We've been the Up and the Down of it, and the Left and the Right of it. We've been the Here and the There of it, and the Now and the Then of it. We've been the Big and the Small of it, the Male and the Female of it, the Good and the Bad of it. We've all been the All of It.

And we've done it by agreement, so that each of us might experience ourselves as The Grandest Part of God. For we have understood that...

If you choose to be a thing, something or someone opposite to that has to show up somewhere in your universe to make that possible."

Jamal's Soul was excited now to know that he could experience every Divine Aspect of God. He understood, now, The Plan.

Do not forsake Me when you need Me most. Now is the hour of your greatest testing. Now is the time of your greatest chance. It is the chance to prove everything that has been written here.

When I say “don’t forsake Me,” I sound like that needy, neurotic God we talked about. But I’m not. You can “forsake Me” all you want. I don’t care, and it won’t change a thing between us. I merely say this in answer to your questions. It is when the going gets tough that you so often forget Who You Are, and the tools I have given you for creating the life that you would choose. [...]

You can define these present conditions and circumstances as what they truly are: temporary and temporal. You may then use them as tools — for that is what they are, temporary, temporal tools — in the creation of present experience.

Just who do you think you are? In relationship to the experience called lose-a-job, who do you think you are? And, perhaps more to the point, who do you think I am? Do you imagine this is too big a problem for Me to solve? Is getting out of this jam too big a miracle for Me to handle? I understand that you may think it’s too big for you to handle, even with all the tools I have given you — but do you really think it’s too big for Me? [...]

The first thing to understand about the universe is that no condition is “good” or “bad.” It just is. So stop making value judgments. The second thing to know is that all conditions are temporary. Nothing stays the same, nothing remains static. Which way a thing changes depends on you. [...]

There is nothing you can’t have if you choose it. Even before you ask, I will have given it to you. Do you believe this?

No. I’m sorry. I’ve seen too many prayers go unanswered. [...] I don’t believe that whatever I ask, I get. My life has not been a testimony to that. In fact, I rarely get what I ask for. When I do, I consider myself damned lucky.

That’s an interesting choice of words. You have an option, it seems. In your life, you can either be damned lucky, or you can be blessing lucky. I’d rather you be blessing lucky — but, of course, I’ll never interfere with your decisions.

I tell you this: You always get what you create, and you are always creating.

I do not make a judgment about the creations that you conjure, I simply empower you to conjure more — and more and more and more. If you don’t like what you’ve just created, choose again. My job, as God, is to always give you that opportunity.

Now you are telling Me that you haven’t always gotten what you’ve wanted. Yet I am here to tell you that you’ve always gotten what you called forth.

Your Life is always a result of your thoughts about it — including your obviously creative thought that you seldom get what you choose. Now in this present instance you see yourself as the victim of the situation in the losing of your job. Yet the truth is that you no longer chose that job. You stopped getting up in the morning in anticipation, and began getting up with dread. You stopped feeling happy about your work and began feeling resentment. You even began fantasizing about doing something else. You think these things mean nothing? You misunderstand your power. I tell you this: Your Life proceeds out of your intentions for it. So what is your intention now? Do you intend to prove your theory that life seldom brings you what you choose? Or do you intend to demonstrate Who You Really Are and Who I Am?

I am honored to be with you today at your commencement from one of the finest universities in the world. I never graduated from college. Truth be told, this is the closest I’ve ever gotten to a college graduation. Today I want to tell you three stories from my life. That’s it. No big deal. Just three stories.

The first story is about connecting the dots.

I dropped out of Reed College after the first 6 months, but then stayed around as a drop-in for another 18 months or so before I really quit. So why did I drop out?

It started before I was born. My biological mother was a young, unwed college graduate student, and she decided to put me up for adoption. She felt very strongly that I should be adopted by college graduates, so everything was all set for me to be adopted at birth by a lawyer and his wife. Except that when I popped out they decided at the last minute that they really wanted a girl. So my parents, who were on a waiting list, got a call in the middle of the night asking: “We have an unexpected baby boy; do you want him?” They said: “Of course.” My biological mother later found out that my mother had never graduated from college and that my father had never graduated from high school. She refused to sign the final adoption papers. She only relented a few months later when my parents promised that I would someday go to college.

And 17 years later I did go to college. But I naively chose a college that was almost as expensive as Stanford, and all of my working-class parents’ savings were being spent on my college tuition. After six months, I couldn’t see the value in it. I had no idea what I wanted to do with my life and no idea how college was going to help me figure it out. And here I was spending all of the money my parents had saved their entire life. So I decided to drop out and trust that it would all work out OK. It was pretty scary at the time, but looking back it was one of the best decisions I ever made. The minute I dropped out I could stop taking the required classes that didn’t interest me, and begin dropping in on the ones that looked interesting.

It wasn’t all romantic. I didn’t have a dorm room, so I slept on the floor in friends’ rooms, I returned Coke bottles for the 5¢ deposits to buy food with, and I would walk the 7 miles across town every Sunday night to get one good meal a week at the Hare Krishna temple. I loved it. And much of what I stumbled into by following my curiosity and intuition turned out to be priceless later on. Let me give you one example:

Reed College at that time offered perhaps the best calligraphy instruction in the country. Throughout the campus every poster, every label on every drawer, was beautifully hand calligraphed. Because I had dropped out and didn’t have to take the normal classes, I decided to take a calligraphy class to learn how to do this. I learned about serif and sans serif typefaces, about varying the amount of space between different letter combinations, about what makes great typography great. It was beautiful, historical, artistically subtle in a way that science can’t capture, and I found it fascinating.

None of this had even a hope of any practical application in my life. But 10 years later, when we were designing the first Macintosh computer, it all came back to me. And we designed it all into the Mac. It was the first computer with beautiful typography. If I had never dropped in on that single course in college, the Mac would have never had multiple typefaces or proportionally spaced fonts. And since Windows just copied the Mac, it’s likely that no personal computer would have them. If I had never dropped out, I would have never dropped in on this calligraphy class, and personal computers might not have the wonderful typography that they do. Of course it was impossible to connect the dots looking forward when I was in college. But it was very, very clear looking backward 10 years later.

Again, you can’t connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backward. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future. You have to trust in something — your gut, destiny, life, karma, whatever. This approach has never let me down, and it has made all the difference in my life.

Austrian physicist, Erwin Schrödinger, is one of the founders of quantum mechanics. But he's most famous for something he never actually did: a thought experiment involving a cat.

He imagined taking a cat and placing it in a sealed box with a device that had a 50% chance of killing the cat in the next hour. At the end of that hour he asked, "What is the state of the cat?"

Common sense suggests that the cat is either alive or dead. But Schrödinger pointed out that, according to quantum physics, the cat is equal parts alive and dead at the same time. It's only when the box is opened that we see a single definite state. Until then, the cat is a blur of probability: half one thing and half the other.

Naval: Does probability actually exist in the physical universe, or is it a function of our ignorance? If I’m rolling a die, I don’t know which way it’s going to land; so therefore I put in a probability. But does that mean there’s an actual probabilistic unknowable thing in the universe? Is the universe rolling a die somewhere, or is it always deterministic?

Brett: All probability is actually subjective. Uncertainty and randomness are subjective. You don’t know what the outcome’s going to be, so you roll a die. That’s because you individually do not know; it’s not because there is uncertainty there deeply in the universe. What we know about quantum theory is that all physically possible things occur.

This leads to the concept of the multiverse. Rather than refute all of the failed ways of trying to understand quantum theory, we’re going to take seriously what the equations of quantum theory say. What we’re compelled to think about quantum theory, given the experiments, is that every single possible thing that can happen does happen. This means that there is no inherent uncertainty in the universe because everything that can happen actually will happen. It’s not like some things will happen and some things won’t happen. Everything happens.

Have you ever asked yourself how the computer knows how to respond to every move the child makes with the joystick?

Yes, actually, I have wondered that.

It's all on the disc. The computer knows how to respond to every move the child makes because every possible move has already been placed on the disc, along with its appropriate response.

That's spooky. Almost surreal.

What, that every ending, and every twist and turn producing that ending, is already programmed on the disc? There's nothing "spooky" about it. It's just technology. And if you think that technology of video games is something, wait 'til you see the technology of the universe!

Think of the Cosmic Wheel as that CD-ROM. All the endings already exist. The universe is just waiting to see which one you choose this time. And when the game is over, whether you win, lose, or draw, the universe will say, "Want to play again?"

But… if everything has already happened, then it follows that I am powerless to change my future. Is this predestination?

No! Don’t buy into that! That is not true. In fact, this “set up” should serve you, not disserve you!

You are always at a place of free will and total choice. Being able to see into the “future” (or get others to do it for you) should enhance your ability to live the life you want, not limit it.

How? I need help here.

If you “see” a future event or experience you do not like, don’t choose it! Choose again! Select another! Change or alter your behavior so as to avoid the undesired outcome.

But how can I avoid that which has already happened?

It has not happened to you — yet! You are at a place in the Space-Time Continuum where you are not consciously aware of the occurrence. You do not “know” it has “happened.” You have not “remembered” your future!

(This forgetfulness is the secret of all time. It is what makes it possible for you to “play” the great game of life!)

What you do not “know” is not “so.” Since “you” do not “remember” your future, it has not “happened” to “you” yet! A thing “happens” only when it is “experienced.” A thing is “experienced” only when it is “known.”

Now let’s say you’ve been blessed with a brief glimpse, a split-second “knowing,” of your “future.” What’s happened is that your Spirit — the nonphysical part of you — has simply sped to another place on the Space-Time Continuum and brought back some residual energy — some images or impressions — of that moment or event.

These you can “feel” — or sometimes another who has developed a metaphysical gift can “feel” or “see” these images and energies that are swirling about you.

If you don’t like what you “sense” about your “future,” step away from that! Just step away from it! In that instant you change your experience — and everyone of You breathes a sigh of relief!

Wait a minute! Whoaaaa—?

You must know — you are now ready to be told — that you exist at every level of the Space-Time Continuum simultaneously.

That is, your soul Always Was, Always Is, and Always Will Be — world without end — amen.

I “exist” more places than one?

Of course! You exist everywhere — and at all times!

There is a “me” in the future and a “me” in the past?

Well, “future” and “past” do not exist, as we’ve just taken pains to understand — but, using those words as you have been using them, yes.

There is more than one of me?

There is only one of you, but you are much larger than you think!

So when the “me” that exists “now” changes something he doesn’t like about his “future,” the “me” that exists in the “future” no longer has that as part of his experience?

Essentially yes. The whole mosaic changes. But he never loses the experience he’s given himself. He’s just relieved and happy that “you” don’t have to go through that.

But the “me” in the “past” has yet to “experience” this, so he walks right into it?

In a sense, yes. But, of course, “you” can help “him.”

I can?

Sure. First, by changing what the “you” in front of you experienced, the “you” behind you may never have to experience it! It is by this device that your soul evolves.

In the same way, the future “you” got help from his own future self, thus helping you avoid what he did not.

There is only one way for you to know yourself as Me, and that is for you first to know yourself as not Me. [...]

Upon entering the physical universe, you relinquished your remembrance of yourself. This allows you to choose to be Who You Are, rather than simply wake up in the castle, so to speak. [...]

Your job on Earth, therefore, is not to learn (because you already know), but to re-member Who You Are. And to re-member who everyone else is. That is why a big part of your job is to remind others (that is, to re-mind them), so that they can re-member also.

All the wonderful spiritual teachers have been doing just that. It is your sole purpose. That is to say, your soul purpose.

Know this: there is no such thing as an incorrect path — for on this journey you cannot “not get” where you are going.

It is simply a matter of speed — merely a question of when you will get there — yet even that is an illusion, for there is no “when,” neither is there a “before” or “after.” There is only now; an eternal moment of always in which you are experiencing yourself.

Then what is the point? If there is no way not to “get there,” what is the point of life? Why should we worry at all about anything we do?

Well, of course, you shouldn’t. But you would do well to be observant. Simply notice who and what you are being, doing, and having, and see whether it serves you.

The point of life is not to get anywhere — it is to notice that you are, and have always been, already there. You are, always and forever, in the moment of pure creation. The point of life is therefore to create — who and what you are, and then to experience that.

To conduct his research, Whitton gathered together a core group of roughly thirty people. These included individuals from all walks of life, from truck drivers to computer scientists, some of whom believed in reincarnation and some of whom did not. He then hypnotized them individually and spent literally thousands of hours recording everything they had to say about their alleged previous existences.

Even in its broad strokes the information was fascinating. One striking aspect was the degree of agreement between the subjects' experiences. All reported numerous past lives, some as many as twenty to twenty-five, although a practical limit was reached when Whitton regressed them to what he calls their "caveman existences," when one lifetime became indistinguishable from the next. All reported that gender was not specific to the soul, and many had lived at least one life as the opposite sex. And all reported that the purpose of life was to evolve and learn, and that multiple existences facilitated this process. [...]

Many of the subjects also experienced profound psychological and physical healings as a result of the traumatic past-life memories they unearthed, and gave uncannily accurate historical details about the times in which they had lived. Some even spoke languages unknown to them. While reliving an apparent past life as a Viking, one man, a thirty-seven-year-old behavioral scientist, shouted words that linguistic authorities later identified as Old Norse. After being regressed to an ancient Persian lifetime, the same man began to write in a spidery, Arabic-style script that an expert in Near Eastern languages identified as an authentic representation of Sassanid Pahlavi, a longextinct Mesopotamian tongue that flourished between A. D. 226 and 651. [...]

[Dr. Ian Stevenson, a professor of psychiatry at the University of Virginia Medical School] interviews young children who have spontaneously remembered apparent previous existences. He has spent more than thirty years in this pursuit and has collected and analyzed thousands of cases from all over the globe.

According to Stevenson, spontaneous past-life recall is relatively common among children, so common that the number of cases that seem worth considering far exceeds his staff's ability to investigate them. Generally children are between the ages of two and four when they start talking about their "other life, " and frequently they remember dozens of particulars, including their name, the names of family members and friends, where they lived, what their house looked like, what they did for a living, how they died, and even obscure information such as where they hid money before they died and, in cases involving murder, sometimes even who killed them.

Indeed, frequently their memories are so detailed Stevenson is able to track down the identity of their previous personality and verify virtually everything they have said. He has even taken children to the area in which their past incarnation lived, and watched as they navigated effortlessly through strange neighborhoods and correctly identified their former house, belongings, and past-life relatives and friends. [...]

[Stevenson] has also found instances in which distinctive facial features, foot deformities, and other characteristics have carried over from one life to the next. Most numerous among these are physical injuries carrying over as scars or birthmarks. In one case, a boy who remembered being murdered in his former life by having his throat slit still had a long reddish mark resembling a scar across his neck. In another, a boy who remembered committing suicide by shooting himself in the head in his past incarnation still had two scarlike birthmarks that lined up perfectly along the bullet's trajectory, one where the bullet had entered and one where it had exited. And in another, a boy had a birthmark resembling a surgical scar complete with a line of red marks resembling stitch wounds, in the exact location where his previous personality had had surgery.

In fact, Stevenson has gathered hundreds of such cases and is currently compiling a four-volume study of the phenomenon. In some of the cases he has even been able to obtain hospital and/or autopsy reports of the deceased personality and show that such injuries not only occurred, but were in the exact location of the present birthmark or deformity.

Is there such a thing as reincarnation? How many past lives have I had? [...]

It is difficult to believe there is still a question about this. I find it hard to imagine. There have been so many reports from thoroughly reliable sources of past life experiences. Some of these people have brought back strikingly detailed descriptions of events, and such completely verifiable data as to eliminate any possibility that they were making it up or had contrived to somehow deceive researchers and loved ones. [...]

Do you think this is your first attempt at this?

I have no idea.

It doesn’t seem as if you’ve been here before?

Sometimes.

Well, you have. Many times.

How many times?

Many times. [...]

You were everything in [those lives]. A king, a queen, a serf. A teacher, a student, a master. A male, a female. A warrior, a pacifist. A hero, a coward. A killer, a savior. A sage, a fool. You have been all of it! [...]

That’s supposed to encourage me?

It’s supposed to inspire you.

How so?

First, it takes the worry out of it. It brings in the “can’t fail” element you just talked about. It assures you that the intention is for you not to fail. That you’ll get as many chances as you want and need. You can come back again and again and again. If you do get to the next step, if you evolve to the next level, it’s because you want to, not because you have to. [...]

And so you ask a very good question. Why go on? Why even start off on such a path? What is to be gained from embarking on such a journey? Where is the incentive? What is the reason?

The reason is ridiculously simple.

THERE IS NOTHING ELSE TO DO.

What do You mean?

I mean this is the only game in town. There is nothing else to do. In fact, there is nothing else you can do. You are going to be doing what you are doing for the rest of your life — just as you have been doing it since birth. The only question is whether you’ll be doing it consciously, or unconsciously. [...]

But remember, none of it has been exactly a drudge. I mean, you’ve loved all of it! Every last minute! Oh, it’s delicious, this thing called life! It’s a scrumptious experience, no?

Well, yes, I suppose.

You suppose? How much more scrumptious could I have made it? Are you not being allowed to experience everything? The tears, the joy, the pain, the gladness, the exaltation, the massive depression, the win, the lose, the draw? What more is there?

A little less pain, perhaps.

Less pain without more wisdom defeats your purpose; does not allow you to experience infinite joy — which is What I Am.

Be patient. You are gaining wisdom. And your joys are now increasingly available without pain. That, too, is a very good sign.

I tell you this: You always get what you create, and you are always creating.

Now you are telling Me that you haven’t always gotten what you’ve wanted. Yet I am here to tell you that you’ve always gotten what you called forth.

Do not forsake Me when you need Me most. Now is the hour of your greatest testing. Now is the time of your greatest chance. It is the chance to prove everything that has been written here.

I tell you this: You always get what you create, and you are always creating.

Now you are telling Me that you haven’t always gotten what you’ve wanted. Yet I am here to tell you that you’ve always gotten what you called forth.

The first story is about connecting the dots.

I dropped out of Reed College after the first 6 months, but then stayed around as a drop-in for another 18 months or so before I really quit. So why did I drop out?

But Whitton's most remarkable discovery came when he [hypnotically] regressed subjects to the interim between lives, a dazzling, light-filled realm in which there was "no such thing as time or space as we know it." According to his subjects, part of the purpose of this realm was to allow them to plan their next life, to literally sketch out the important events and circumstances that would befall them in the future. But this process was not simply some fairy-tale exercise in wish fulfillment. Whitton found that when individuals were in the between-life realm, they entered an unusual state of consciousness in which they were acutely self-aware and had a heightened moral and ethical sense. In addition, they no longer possessed the ability to rationalize away any of their faults and misdeeds, and saw themselves with total honesty. To distinguish it from our normal everyday consciousness, Whitton calls this intensely conscientious state of mind "metaconsciousness."

Thus, when subjects planned their next life, they did so with a sense of moral obligation. They would choose to be reborn with people whom they had wronged in a previous life so they would have the opportunity to make amends for their actions. They planned pleasant encounters with "soul mates," individuals with whom they had built a loving and mutually beneficial relationship over many lifetimes; and they scheduled "accidental" events to fulfill still other lessons and purposes. One man said that as he planned his next life he visualized "a sort of clockwork instrument into which you could insert certain parts in order for specific consequences to follow."

These consequences were not always pleasant. After being regressed to a metaconscious state, a woman who had been raped when she was thirty-seven revealed that she had actually planned the event before she had come into this incarnation. As she explained, it had been necessary for her to experience a tragedy at that age in order to force her to change her "entire soul complexion" and thus break through to a deeper and more positive understanding of the meaning of life.

Another subject, a man afflicted with a serious and lifethreatening kidney disease, disclosed that he had chosen the illness to punish himself for a past-life transgression. However, he also revealed that dying from the kidney disease was not part of his script, and before he had come into this life he had also arranged to encounter someone or something that would help him remember this fact and hence enable him to heal both his guilt and his body. True to his word, after he started his sessions with Whitton he experienced a nearmiraculous complete recovery.

Not all of Whitton's subjects were so eager to learn about the future their metaconscious selves had laid out for them. Several censored their own memories and asked Whitton to please give them posthypnotic instructions not to remember anything that they had said during trance. As they explained, they did not want to be tempted to tamper with the script their metaconscious selves had written for them.

This is an astounding idea. Is it possible that our unconscious mind is not only aware of the rough outline of our destiny, but actually steers us toward its fulfillment?

Do you imagine that a human soul encounters life challenges — whatever they may be — by accident? Is this your imagining?

Do you mean a soul chooses what kind of life it will experience ahead of time?

No, that would defeat the purpose of the encounter. The purpose is to create your experience — and thus, create your Self — in the glorious moment of Now. You do not, therefore, choose the life you will experience ahead of time.

You may, however, select the persons, places, and events — the conditions and circumstances, the challenges and obstacles, the opportunities and options with which to create your experience. You may select the colors for your palette, the tools for your chest, the machinery for your shop. What you create with these is your business. That is the business of life.

You are using all of Life — all of many lives — to be and decide Who You Really Are; to choose and to create Who You Really Are; to experience and to fulfill your current idea about yourself.

You are in an Eternal Moment of Self creation and Self fulfillment through the process of Self expression. You have drawn the people, events, and circumstances of your life to you as tools with which to fashion the Grandest Version of the Greatest Vision you ever had about yourself. This process of creation and recreation is ongoing, never ending, and multi-layered. It is all happening “right now” and on many levels.

In your linear reality you see the experience as one of Past, Present, and Future. You imagine yourself to have one life, or perhaps many, but surely only one at a time.

But what if there were no “time”? Then you’d be having all your “lives” at once!

You are!

You are living this life, your presently realized life, in your Past, your Present, your Future, all at once! Have you ever had a “strange foreboding” about some future event — so powerful that it made you turn away from it?

In your language you call that premonition. From My viewpoint it is simply an awareness you suddenly have of something you’ve just experienced in your “future.”

Your “future you” is saying, “Hey, this was no fun. Don’t do this!”

You are also living other lives — what you call “past lives” — right now as well — although you experience them as having been in your “past” (if you experience them at all), and that is just as well. It would be very difficult for you to play this wonderful game of life if you had full awareness of what is going on. Even this description offered here cannot give you that. If it did, the “game” would be over! The Process depends on the Process being complete, as it is — including your lack of total awareness at this stage.

So bless the Process, and accept it as the greatest gift of the Kindest Creator. Embrace the Process, and move through it with peace and wisdom and joy. Use the Process, and transform it from something you endure to something you engage as a tool in the creation of the most magnificent experience of All Time: the fulfillment of your Divine Self.