'A Parenthesis In Eternity' Unofficial Study Guide - Part 2

Rising Out Of The Parenthesis
Attaining The Mystical Consciousness


XIII. THE UNILLUMINED AND THE ILLUMINED

1. Removing the parenthesis means unseeing the human picture and becoming consciously aware of our spiritual Selfhood.

2. There is but one Life and we are living that Life.

3. If we were willing to surrender each day what we had yesterday, we would find something better tomorrow, but our very attempts to hold on to what we have takes it away from us by force.

XIV. "AND THEY SHALL BE TAUGHT OF GOD"

1. No spiritual teaching can be imparted intellectually.

2. Through an invisible bond, we are instantly at-one with the spiritual consciousness of those who have lived throughout all time.

3. Everyone exists here and now.
Everything exists in Consciousness.
You are never alone.

4. If I wish to commune with you, I have  to close my eyes, shut out the appearance, and go deep down within my Consciousness. There I find the 'I' that you really are.

5. Everything that is lives and breathes, and everything there is has a soul.

XV. Self-Surrender

1. The spiritual path is a way of sacrifice; it is a giving up, a surrender.

2. The first year or two of study nearly always results in a greater sense of peace.
A year or so later is a period when physical difficulties may arise as students realise the ego has to be released.

3. We must surrender all desire to the 'one' desire: to let Consciousness fulfill Itself in us in accordance with 'It's' will, not with ours.

4. Certainly in the early stages it may be painful when the Spirit is breaking up the humanness in us; certainly there will be disturbances in our existence.

XVI. THE SECRET OF THE WORD MADE FLESH

1. Nothing can come into our experience except through an activity of our consciousness.

2. It is through our consciousness that we entertain a sense of separation, but it is also through our consciousness, when we consciously make ourselves one with Source, that we are restored to this realized oneness.

3. The realization of Consciousness as One, not a power over some other powers, but as the only Power.

4. There is a Presence within us greater than anything in the world that is incoporeal and is only known as we experience It, through an awareness of Its Presence.

XVII. THE MYSTICAL LIFE THROUGH THE TWO GREAT COMMANDMENTS

1. When we love our neighbour as ourselves, we bring about a state of being in which we watch ourselves more closely to see that what we do and think gives offense to no one.

2. • What we have to do is to love all our neighbours by knowing their true nature, in spite of what outward appearance may temporarily be evident.
• In the loving of our neighbour there is an unselfedness which creates something of a vacuum, an absence of the awareness of the little 'I'.

3. Our path is to live in that point of self-surrender, that point of vacuum where we make way for grace to establish the Presence within us.

XVIII. THE FUNCTION OF THE MiND

1. We begin to realize that we ourselves are responsible for the harmonies or discords that are coming into our experience.

2. The human mind is not Consciousness.

3. The universe that we know with the physical senses is not a material universe: it is a mental universe.

4. The substance of the body is mind.

5. In Consciousness, not a material or physical structures, do we live, and move, and have our being.

6. Consciousness is the cement of our human relationships.

7. By dwelling in Consciousness as our being and nature, gradually all hate, fear, and love of the outer world disappears, and their place is taken by a realization of the Spirit within.

8. Originally, the mind was an instrument of awareness and knowledge.

9. When the mind is used for the purpose of knowing the truth, that truth then becomes the law of harmony unto our experience.

10. Every time we turn within, we have enriched the state of consciousness of the world.

11. We can fill our mind with truth, or we can let it be filled with mesmerism of the world.

12. This involves a surrender of the little self and the ability to be still and let Consciousness illumine the mind.

XIX ATTAINING DIVINE SONSHIP

1. Consciousness is the very substance of our outer experience.

2. Spirit is the substance that appears outwardly as form, not as the form we perceive through our senses but as spiritual form.

3. Our only responsibility is to consciously live in Awareness.

XX. THE MEANING OF INITIATION

1. We have to come to a point where life is living the body, not the body living the life.

2. When all personal sense has been eliminated, when there is no 'I', 'me' or 'mine', there is only the Light Itself.

3. Whenever an individual realizes in some measure the I-ness of his being, he is then the divine Consciousness  expressing Itself.

XXI. "THE SPIRIT OF THE LORD GOD ... HATH ANOINTED ME"

1. The form that we think if as our body is not externalized reality, nor is it outside of our being: it is a mental concept or image in thought.

2. Instead of noticing the physical appearance of a person we meet, we quickly look into his eyes because behind those eyes sits the 'I'.

3. It is in meeting the eyes that we meet the person.

4. No-one else can see that body of light until he himself has attained the degree of spiritual illumination that makes it possible to witness what is there.

5. An indication of the degree of spiritual light that has come to anyone is his willingness to be anonymous, to stay away from the activities of the world, and to be drawn only where he can be of service.

6. If we have the light, if we are the light, we shall never need to announce it: the world will seek us out.


XXII. THE MYSTICAL MARRIAGE

1. There must inevitably come a time in our spiritual journey when we realize our I-ness, and then we are that one , and the other one has disappeared from view.

2. The ultimate of the mystical experience is conscious union with Life. It is a state of Inner communion so intense that the person disappears and exists then only as the Infinite I, while at the same time maintaining his individuality as a person.