“I cannot blame You, my God, if  You have turned your back on men, for they have deserted the path of righteousness shown them by the men of olden times. Truth is with us no more, and men choose the pleasant paths of ignorance in preference to the more austere and profitable one. The pure worship which once filled this land and guided its people has fallen prey to greedy and ambitious men. … Its centerpiece is no longer the dark chamber of austerity where great spirits sought the light, but the pomp of elaborate but empty ceremonial and futile sacrifice. It is a thing of well-organized, but barren ritual, the perverted tool of unscrupulous priests. The temples have become refuges for those who seek to avoid the trials of life. How can such as they ever be true servants of God?

“I do not erase the words I have inscribed with heavy heart and a spirit overburdened with grief and perplexity, for through the enveloping mists of sorrow, I perceive a Light dimly. This is my message to those who follow and who may be tossed on the turbulent waters of despondency and despair, my pitiful contribution to the great total of inherited wisdom: If you seek God and find Him not, then the blame lies with men and not with God. I know for in declaring my trust by setting forth these things, my heart has suddenly been filled with an indescribable Light of Spiritual Illumination, and now I know things beyond any hint of doubt, I too am awakened” ~The Kolbrin Bible (Man:18:6-7)

The Deserted Path

The speaker says he cannot blame God for turning His back on those who have turned away from the path of righteousness. Actually, God doesn’t turn His back on us. It is we who turn our backs on God. We do this either by deserting the whole idea of God, or by making false gods in our own image rather than learning of the true God. We do it by listening to preachers who teach what they learned from other preachers who also taught what they learned for other preachers, etc. None of them have ever had a real revelation or a real vision, none have actually spoken to God, or even an Angel. Then there are other ministers who know that what they are preaching is false, but it is what the congregation wants to hear and what they will pay to hear, so it is what they preach. The path of truth is followed by few these days.

Austere and Profitable Path

Many choose the path of ignorance and convenience over what the author of the quote calls the “austere and profitable” path. Austere and profitable? That seems like an odd combination, but it really isn’t. It only seems like an odd combination because we think of profitable in terms of money only, while the austere path of spiritual growth is one that is profitable in another way: it leads to eternal life, which is far more valuable than money. There are foolish people who have amassed huge piles of money, who spend fortunes seeking ways to extend their lives by a few years. If they turned to the spiritual path of truth and righteousness, they would extend their lives by an infinite amount, yet few will even try that path.

Light of Spiritual Illumination

The author of the quote says that if you turn to God, you will find your heart filled with the “indescribable Light of Illumination”. This, of course, means spiritual Illumination, not any material kind of light. He adds that when you have that Illumination, you know beyond any doubt what is true and what is real, and you are then “Awakened.” That is what it means to truly be spiritually awakened. Simply recognizing that there is more to life than material pursuits is the first step on the path to Awakening, but it isn’t the whole thing.

From the SUN TALK collection by Harold Boulette

“It is very difficult for us to speak intelligently of the phenomena coming under the heading of Clairvoyance without getting into the subject of the Astral Plane, as Clairvoyance is an incident of the Astral Plane and belongs to that subject. But we cannot go into details regarding the Astral Plane, as we intend to devote an entire lesson to that subject, so we must go on with the subject before us, with the understanding that the student will be given an explanation of the nature and incidents of the Astral Plane in due time. For the purpose of this lesson, however, we must ask the student to accept the statement that man has within him faculties which enable him to ‘sense’ vibrations which are not responded to by his ordinary physical organs of sense. Each physical sense has its corresponding astral sense, which is open to the vibrations alluded to and which interpret such vibrations and pass them on to the consciousness of man.

“Thus, the astral sight enables man to receive astral light-vibrations from an enormous distance; to receive these rays through solid objects; to perceive thought-forms in the ether, etc. … The other astral senses correspond to the other physical senses.” ~William Walker Atkinson

Astral Senses

As with other things, Atkinson often mixes the mental and spiritual levels of human nature and this is probably no exception. Still, he is correct in saying that we have “astral senses,” as he calls them. Where he, like many others, get confused, is in thinking that the astral level is the same as the spiritual, and therefore the astral senses are the spiritual senses. They are not. We have three levels of being, and three bodies, each with its own senses. We have a physical body with well-known physical senses. Above that, we have the psychic body that Atkinson calls the astral, and it has its own senses which are associated with psychic powers. But there is an even higher body which is the spiritual body, or simply the spirit. It has senses also, and they are the highest level of such.

Clairvoyance

Clairvoyance is probably the most discussed of the psychic abilities. It is the ability to see, or at least discern things, with abilities other than the physical senses. Telepathy, remote viewing, and clairaudience are some of the others. The first thing to know is that these psychic abilities are real, although many who claim to have them are faking. The second is to recognize that psychic abilities are not spiritual abilities. They lie at a level midway between the physical and spiritual. Now there is nothing wrong with having psychic abilities and using them to benefit yourself and others (in certain ways), but the danger is that many think they have developed their spiritual self when they have done so, and never move beyond the psychic. If you get too caught up in the psychic, you will probably never move on to the spiritual; so while it is interesting to develop those astral senses, you need to move beyond them to the spiritual. The physical and mental/psychic levels of being are temporary. Only the spiritual is permanent.

Spiritual Senses

Spiritual senses are not the same as astral senses, although awakening the psychic (astral) senses is often the first step to awakening the spiritual ones. The psychic senses are associated with the mind, so it is simply a matter of developing certain parts of the mind to awaken them. The spiritual senses are all connected to the spirit and soul, and so the spirit must be awakened as the first step of the process. This is best done with the use of the Spiritual Light originating with God, which flows to us from the Spiritual Sun. Some people find that odd. They say they have never heard of people practicing a form of sun gazing to awaken the spirit. The ancient Essenes, however, were known to go to a mountain top every morning to observe the sunrise. That wasn’t because they worshiped the sun, but because they wanted to get the Spiritual Light from the Spiritual Sun. St. Francis had his spiritual awakening while watching a sunrise and Jacob Boehme had his when the sun reflected into his eyes off a silver bowl. So there is plenty of evidence about the power of the Spiritual Sun if you know where to look for it.

From the SUN TALK collection by Harold Boulette

“How long must I sink between worlds? In the name of a better life, may light be everywhere. I am happy, very happy, though I am hurt in the house of the wicked. In my heart, I will be pleased by the works I have created in this world. How much longer must I sink between worlds? How long should I pour light into the world? How long shall I raise treasure to the house of the leaders? I will be happy! My soul looks to the father. I will be pleased by working with the poor and the young. I will quiet my heart and be calm. How long must I nourish powerful light world messengers and the leaders’ rhetoric? How long should I combat demons and murder rebels? Will one of you release me from Abathur the high judge? How long must I walk with weights on my neck? How long will I tramp on Sunday, our holy day, and expel it from existence? When will I bring authority to the tollhouses?

“How long must I restrain the living water and throw it into still water? How long must the messengers of light claw through pollution and wrongdoing? How long can they stand it? When will darkness end and light come? When will I not waste pearls on transitory life? How many will hang in my fishing nets, and when can I cease dragging up the poor and the hurt? How long will I punch mountains? How long will I dress the perishable in darkness? When will I stop hanging chains on earthly adulterers and thieves? When will I stop waving my fists, killing, stomping on the bad and the liars? How soon will I give up disorienting them? When will they give up killing? When will combat fade, my heart heal? When will Tibil’s earthly world end, so I can conceal my nets?”
~HIBIL’S LAMENT from the Book of John

Who is Hibil?

It is not clear who Hibil is. At times, he speaks as if he is the creator of the material world, the Demiurge. At other times, as an ordinary human. It could be either, but we can empathize with his dilemma. Wikipedia says Hibil is an “angel or guardian from the world of light” in Mandaeism. Nonetheless, we can see ourselves in Hibil’s lament.

Sink Between Worlds

This is another thing that is not made clear. When Hibil says he is between worlds, what does he mean? A being must be in one “world” or dimension at a time. One way of interpreting this is that he is that his spirit is not in Hell or Heaven, but caught between them in the realm of matter. It could also be that he is saying that his material body and mind are in one world, the third dimension, while his spirit is in a higher dimension (hopefully the fifth, and not the fourth dimension where demons dwell).

Pour Light Into the World

This is another place where we can relate to what Hibil is saying. As spiritual students and adepts, it is our duty to help bring more light into the dark realm of matter (dark being a relative term here). At one time or another, perhaps more than once, we have asked ourselves how long must we bring light into the world before it transforms, how long must we be trapped in a world of death and disease, pain and anger, a world of darkness. We all want it to end, to change, to transform as God wishes it to. We must be patient, though, because God is not going to complete the process so quickly that most of us will die like fish out of water because we will be in a world we are not prepared to function in. So keep bringing light down from the sun and pouring it into the world to aid in the process of transformation, and try not to question the speed of the change. Just rest in the comfort that the change is happening.

Punching Mountains

Another of Hibil’s complaints is, “How long must I punch mountains?” This is a phrase I loved when I read it. It is not meant to be literal, of course, but allegorical. Hibil is complaining about trying to awaken the spiritual in people who have become so materialistic, they are as hard-headed as rock, as unmovable as mountains. He thinks it is a waste of time for him to have to keep doing this until his fists are sore and bloody (again, allegorical). In fact, it isn’t. Even if only one in ten thousand of the mountain-headed people are awakened, that is a move forward. And as more and more are awakened, it becomes easier to awaken others. And now we are in the age of the Sun of Righteousness which is sending more spiritual Light into the world than before, so that also aids the process.

From the SUN TALK collection by Harold Boulette

“When Man will enter with repentance and with his prayers turn to God, he should, before he begins to pray, seriously consider the fate of his own Soul. How is it wholly and altogether turned away from God, become faithless to Him, and only bent upon this temporary, frail, and earthly life; bearing no sincere Love towards God and his neighbors, lusting and walking contrary to the commandments of God, and seeking itself only, in the temporal and transitory lusts of the flesh?

“In the next place, he should consider that all this is an utter enmity against God, which Satan hath raised and wrought in him, by his deceit in our first parents; for which abomination’s sake we must suffer death, and undergo corruption with our bodies.

“He should consider the three horrible chains wherewith our Souls are bound during the time of our earthly life. The first is the anger of God, the Abyss, and Dark world, which is the center, root, or principle of the Soul’s life. The second is the desire of the Devil against the Soul, whereby he tempts it, and without intermission strives to throw it from the Truth of God into his own evil Nature, viz. into pride, covetousness, envy, and anger; and with his desire, blows up and kindles those evil properties in the Soul, whereby it turns away from God, and enters into Self.”  ~Jacob Boehme

When We Pray

Many believe that if we pray to God, God listens to our prayers no matter what. Boehme is telling us, and rightfully so, that such is not the case. If we spend most of our life doing things that violate the Laws of God, and further the goals of Satan (or the Dark Forces, if you prefer), God isn’t listening to our prayers. It is like the sacrifice of Cain, where the smoke curled down to the ground instead of rising you toward Heaven (not that God wants burnt offerings anyway, but that is another tale for another day). We need to prepare ourselves to pray to God by doing the best we can to obey God’s Law and follow the Way of God and Light. We won’t always succeed, but we must do our best if we expect God to listen to us and help us.

Fate of His Soul

I think Boehme has it wrong here. It is not the soul that has turned from God, but the mind—which is definitely not the same thing. The Soul, in most cases, has remained in the dormant state it was in when that person was born into the material world with a material body. The mind is easily tempted by the “temporary, frail, and earthly” pleasures, not the Soul. The Soul, once awakened, seeks only God, good, Truth, and Light. That is why awakening the soul is so important for the spiritual adept.

Enmity Against God

Enmity is defined as hatred, ill-will, or strong dislike. It is not likely that a person who feels enmity toward God would be praying to Him at all. I think Boehm may be exaggerating to make a point. What he really means is that if we don’t truly believe in God, don’t truly love God, and don’t truly want God to take over and reform the fallen realm of matter into a peaceful and loving place of spirit, then our prayers are not likely to be answered. It is hard to say for sure, though, because God may see the potential in the person before it clearly manifests.

Souls Are Bound

First and foremost, God has no anger toward us regarding the Great Fall from Heaven to earth. He feels sorrow for us, pity perhaps, but not anger. Anger is for the false god, the Demiurge who created the realm of matter.

It is also not accurate to refer to this realm of matter as the abyss. This is the third dimension of reality. The Abyss is the first and lowest. In it, nothing can live, nothing can exist, so the Soul cannot be there, but it can fear that we will fall in that direction if we don’t turn to God, and the Soul wants us to turn to God more than anything else.

The Devil’s Temptations

The Devil does tempt us with the temporary pleasures of the world. Wealth, comfort, fine food, a new car, and so on. In the past, many believed that we had to give up all earthly pleasures and live in total poverty to follow the Way of God. Fortunately, that is not true. We can enjoy the comforts of the world, within reason, as long as we don’t get attached to those things. That is the danger. When we become too attached to worldly things, we stop growing spiritually. So we need to walk that razor’s edge with care and concern.

From the SUN TALK collection by Harold Boulette

“The soul in me yearned for life. Knowledge blossomed in my eyes. The soul in me yearned for life. I floated and wandered up till I reached the first planet. Her slaves came to meet me. ‘Seize him, seize that man. He will keep us company. Seize him, seize that man, and ask where he is from.’ ‘Friend, where are you from and where are you going?’ ‘I come from earth, the Tibil, the house the planets built. The soul in me yearned for life and aimed for the place of life.’ ‘This is the house of life. This is the way! Where are you going?’ When you go among enemies they will perform anything imaginable against you. ‘That is not what I desire and not what my soul wants.’ The soul in me yearned for life. Knowledge blossomed in my eyes. The soul in me yearned for life. I floated and wandered up till I reached the second planet, and the third and the fourth. When you go among them, they will shout the name of death, and chain and torment you. I floated and wandered up the fifth, sixth, and seventh planets till I reach the house of life. When I reach the house of life, life came out to meet me. Life came out to meet me “and dressed me in radiance and covered me with light. He counted me, gave me his number. The good came out of his midst. Among the lamps of light your lamps will float and shine. Soul, if you hear what I say and do not oppose my word, for you I will throw a bridge over the great sea. For you I will lay a dam and guide you to the watchtower where the rebels hold out. I will guide you past the fire and smoke touching the sky. I will take you past the double pits where Ruha has dug her way. And over that high mountain I will smooth the path for you. In this wall, this wall of iron, I will hack a breach for you, hug you with all my strength, and take you to the place of light.” ~Soul Songs

The Soul In Me

Most of us think of our soul as being inside us. It is a natural thing to do. It is not entirely accurate, though, since the soul is spirit, and therefore occupies no space and all space at the same time. It is within us, but it is just as much outside of us if we think of “us” as our physical bodies and brain-minds.

The Soul Yearned for Life

How can the soul yearn for life? Isn’t it alive already? Yes, it is, but the sentence has a deeper meaning. The soul is alive, but when we enter the physical world, it is in a dormant state that is somewhat like being in a coma. It needs to be awakened, to be activated. And once awakened, it needs to be nourished and nurtured so that it grows in strength and awareness. Also, to the soul, life means life in Heaven, not on earth. Once the soul is awakened, it years to be in Heave and not trapped on earth in the realm of matter.

Reached the First Planet

The soul reaching for Heaven does not travel to “the first planet” or any other planet. It doesn’t travel in the physical sense at all, and if it did, it would not go to the planets on its way to heaven. Heaven is a higher dimension of being and consciousness, not a physical place located somewhere in space. This talk of traveling to planets, therefore, must be taken allegorically. One way it may be used allegorically is that planets all represent our energy centers (chakras). Just as each primary energy center is associated with a color, some also associate them with certain planets in the solar system. It may also be an allegorical way of saying the soul heads towards the sun since the Spiritual Sun is a portal between Heaven and Earth, between matter and spirit.

Among Enemies

The enemies of the soul are the forces of Darkness: the Devils and Demons of matter. That want to keep the soul trapped in the material world and keep it from knowing its true nature and power, to keep it from Gnosis. They have many ways of doing this. They may whisper doubts to our minds. They may hit us with physical ailments to distract us from the spiritual. They may hit us with floods, earthquakes, hurricanes, and other disasters to get our minds back on the physical and away from the spiritual. Take such efforts as a sign that you are on the right track and continue your spiritual journey. When we give in to Darkness, we lose our immortality.

From the SUN TALK collection by Harold Boulette

“If the Mystic Way be considered as an organic process of transcendence, this illuminated apprehension of things, this cleansing of the doors of perception, is surely what we might expect to occur as man moves towards higher centers of consciousness. It marks the self’s growth towards free and conscious participation in the Absolute Life; its progressive appropriation of that life by means of the contact which exists in the deeps of man’s being—the ground or spark of the Soul—between the subject and the trancendental world. The surface intelligence, purified from the domination of the senses, is invaded more and more by the transcendent personality; the ‘New Person’ who is by nature a denizen of the independent spiritual world, and whose destiny, in mystical language, is a ‘return to the Origin.’ Hence an inflow of new vitality, a deeper and wider apprehension of the mysterious world in which man finds himself, an exaltation of our intuitive powers.

“In such moments of clear sight and enhanced perception as that which Blake and Boehme describe, the mystic and the artist do really see the Four-fold River of Life—that World of Becoming in which, as Erigena says, ‘Every visible and invisible creature is a theophany or appearance of God’—as all perhaps might see it, if prejudice, selfhood, or other illusion did not distort our sight.” ~Evelyn Underhill

Organic Process of Transcendence

The Mystic Way is an “organic process of transcendence” because it is a natural one. It doesn’t involve drugs or hypnosis. Those things produce fantasies, not transcendence. And simple meditation, while it can be one step in the process of transcendence, is not the complete process as believed by many. Underhill mentions Jacob Boeme in the quote above. Jacob Boeme had his transcendence when the sun reflected off a metal bowl and into his eyes. Now that is not a recommendation that we all go out and try to repeat what happened to Boehme. He was fortunate that he wasn’t blinded by that “accident.” St. Francis was watching the sunrise when he had his awakening. While they don’t often mention it, those in mystical schools know that many others were practicing some form of spiritual sun gazing to awaken their spiritual Self. The Essenes did it, as did the Pythagoreans, just to name a few. It is an important part of the Mystic Way in any real spiritual school.

Illuminated Apprehension

Today, apprehension generally refers to a fear of something unpleasant coming, but I think that when Ms. Underhill wrote about mystical apprehension, she meant it in a more general way as having some knowledge or insight into the future, whether pleasant or not. She further defines it as a “cleansing of the doors of perception” meaning that the veils of materialism and materialistic beliefs are removed for the mystics, allowing them to see the reality of a thing or being. In addition, their spiritual senses are functioning and reveal things hidden to the physical senses.

As Man Moves Forward

We have gone through centuries when religion and spirituality have slowly been reduced to a very small part of our lives, or worse yet, religions teaching material things rather than spiritual ones. Thankfully, that trend seems to be ending and more people every day are rediscovering the need for a spiritual life as well as a physical and mental one. It is not easy when we and our governments are so much under the control of the big multinational corporations that emphasize the material. Fortunately, we have the power of the promised Sun of Righteousness shining down upon us now and helping people to awaken their spiritual Selves. There will, of course, be resistance from the forces of darkness, but the Light will prevail.

From the SUN TALK collection by Harold Boulette

THE HUMAN DESCENDS INTO THE WORLD OF NATURE

“Then the primal person, who possessed all authority over the world of mortal creatures and irrational animals, leaned down through the harmony and, having broken the vault, showed lower nature the beautiful form of God. When nature saw the beautiful form of God, it smiled on the human with love, for it had seen the wondrous beauty of the human reflected in the water and its shadow on the earth. And the human too, on seeing this form, a form similar to his own reflected in the water, loved it and wanted to live in it. And his wish was immediately realized, and he began to inhabit a form devoid of reason. And nature received its loved one, embraced him, and they mingled, for they were lovers.”

HUMANKIND IS MORTAL AND IMMORTAL

“And this is why the human, of all creatures on the earth, is twofold: mortal in his body but immortal through the eternal human. Though he is immortal and has power over all things, he also suffers mortality, since he is subject to destiny. Though above the world of the spheres, he is a slave of destiny. Though he is male and female, being born of a father who contains male and female, and is sleepless as his father is sleepless, he is vanquished by love and oblivion.”

SEVEN EARTHLY HUMANS ARE BORN

“And after this I said, ‘O mind, tell me the rest. I too love your teaching.’ And Poimandres answered, ‘Here is the mystery that has been hidden until this day. Nature, intimately mingled with the primal person, produced a most wondrous miracle. The human had in himself the world of spheres of the seven rulers, which, as I told you, was made of fire and air. Nature immediately made seven humans corresponding to the natures of the seven rulers, and they were androgynous and sublime.” ~Poimanders

Man Descends Into Nature

What Poimanders means by saying that Man descended into the world of nature is that Man, being originally pure spirit as created by God, descended into the realm of matter that was created by the Demiurge, meaning that we took on a physical body. Exactly how we ended up here is open to conjecture. The story of Adam and Eve is one variation, but we must remember that most stories in scripture are allegorical, and the story of the fall of Adam and Eve is no exception. The most important allegorical reference in that story is that of the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil that Eve ate from and then convinced Adam to do the same. The result of their action was that they “fell” into the lower-level realm of matter.

Form of God

Nature looked upon Man and saw the beautiful form of God. That is because it was looking at man in the original form as a spirit, not a material being. That nature “ached for Man” and loved his form is definitely an allegory. Poimanders makes it sound as if Nature grabbed Man and pulled humanity down into matter, thereby releasing Man of all blame for what happened. Most other tales of The Fall, however, have Man sharing, along with Satan, much of the responsibility for what happened to them. The Bible tells us that when man gained a certain type of intelligence through the fall, Adam and Eve realized they were naked and covered themselves with fig leaves. Most paintings and drawings of this even have Adam and Eve hiding only the sex organs with the fig leaves. This idea is based on a later concept that sex was somehow evil, even though it is necessary for the procreation of most physical beings. If you read the Gnostic “First Book of Adam and Eve,” also known as the “Conflict of Adam and Eve,” you will read that they were not embarrassed about having their sex organ uncovered, but about having a physical body, period. It was the entire physical body they found embarrassing, if not outright disgusting, not because of its shape or form, but because it was dense matter and they were used to being in bodies of Spiritual Light. So the paintings like this one have it wrong:

The reality was more like this one, where they are hiding as much of their physical bodies as possible:

Mortal and Immortal

Humans are mortal and immortal because we have an immortal spirit in a mortal physical body and mind. In order for us to become truly immortal beings, we must awaken our spirits while we are still alive on the mortal plane and become one with it. Then that which we think of as our Self will survive physical death.

From the SUN TALK collection by Harold Boulette

“‘But what kind of sin do the ignorant commit that they should be deprived of immortality?’ I asked. ‘You do not seem to have thought about what I told you. Did I not tell you to pay attention?’ ‘I understand and remember, and at the same time I thank you.’ ‘If you understand, tell me why those who are ignorant deserve death.’ ‘Because the material body has its source in the abhorrent darkness, from which came the watery substance of which the body is composed in the sensible world, and from this body, death slakes its thirst.’ ‘You have understood correctly. But why is it, as the word of God has it, that whoever recognizes and knows himself enters into the good?’ I answered, ‘Because the father of all consists of light and life, and from him human beings were born.’ ‘You are right. Light and life are God and father, out of which humans came. And if you learn that you are also made of light and life, you will return to light and life.’” ~Poimandres

Ignorant Sin

Some spiritual teachers say that only ignorant people commit sin because only the ignorant don’t know that the one they hurt the most when they do so is themselves. Of course, there is also the problem of knowing what is sin and what isn’t. Some things are obvious, like murder is always a sin. Some are not so obvious; and different religions, and even different churches or sects within the same religion have different teachings about them. In the Catholic Church, it is a sin to fail to attend their church service (mass) every Sunday. At one time, they also said it was a sin for a woman to attend mass without a hat or other type of head covering, but that rule was dropped due to changes in the roles of women in society as a whole. I know an Evangelical Christian who thought it was a serious sin that women were wearing workout suits at the gym that showed their naval. Most other churches laugh at that idea.

The one way to truly know is to awaken your spiritual faculties and end your spiritual ignorance. Without spiritual ignorance, you no longer sin because you know what God wants, and you want to please God once you are spiritually awake.

The Ignorant Deserve Death

Poimandres tells the student asking him questions that the ignorant “deserve death.” There are two reasons why he says this. One is that the spiritually ignorant, which is the type of ignorance he is talking about, think only of the physical body as life. Since the physical body is temporary and must die, to those people, that loss means death. The other reason is that those who fail to make use of their time on earth to awaken and develop their spiritual faculties will be as good as dead also, even though they have an eternal spirit.

Know Yourself

When Poimandres adds that those who know themselves “enter into the good,” he is saying that those who have awakened and developed their spiritual Self will, after physical death, keep climbing to higher and higher levels of reality or levels of consciousness until they reach the highest level that most call Heaven, the place of the Good, the place where we know God and we know all of creation.

Light and Life

God is not just the creator of Light and Life, God is Light and Life. The form of God is Light; the Being of God is Life. We can access that Great Light to a limited degree while on earth and in a physical body. We do it by practicing spiritual sun gazing, which means not only gazing at the spiritual sun rather than the physical (never stare at the physical sun!) but also doing it with humility and right thinking; in other words, doing it with the guidance of teachers from a reputable spiritual school like Cosolargy.

From the SUN TALK collection by Harold Boulette

Advancing the Evidence for Survival of Consciousness
Arnaud Delorme, Dean Radin, Helané Wahbeh
Institute of Noetic Sciences Petaluma, CA 94952 USA

ABSTRACT
Throughout history and across all cultures, many people have believed in some sort of afterlife. Recent surveys show that 60{1fa2ef75e2e78439128d99df03acfe1d8ee3047374abe3d4676fe3470ff8b909} to 70{1fa2ef75e2e78439128d99df03acfe1d8ee3047374abe3d4676fe3470ff8b909} of adults in the United States believe they will survive after bodily death. Such beliefs are often motivated by the loss of a loved one, cultural expectations, religious faith, or existential angst. However, the strongest reason for belief in survival after bodily death is based on personal experience, like a near-death experience or afterdeath communication. Those who do not believe, roughly 40{1fa2ef75e2e78439128d99df03acfe1d8ee3047374abe3d4676fe3470ff8b909} of the population, either have not had such experiences or they are not concerned about the question of an afterlife. These people would require persuasive evidence to shift their skepticism. To assess the existing evidence, we adapted a method used in medical research to gauge whether a drug or treatment is effective. We established credibility criteria and then applied the criteria to assign a letter grade, from A to F, to each of nine main categories of evidence suggestive of survival. That exercise found that none of the categories achieved an A level, which is undoubtedly why the question of survival remains unresolved for many. Then we proposed ten new experiments and surveyed over 400 academic scientists and scholars to see which of those studies, if successful, they would find most persuasive. The most frequently selected study was a controlled, prospective experiment that would result in veridical out-of-body perceptions during a near-death experience, followed by experiments involving mediumship and reincarnation. We discuss the implications of these choices and conclude with some thoughts about why improved evidence for survival is important and could benefit individuals and society.

Read the entire essay online here.

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link submitted by Michael McIntyre

“When the darkness stirred, the light of the spirit appeared to him. When he saw it he was astonished. He did not know that another power was above him. And when he saw that his likeness was dark compared with the spirit, he felt hurt. And in his pain he lifted up, above the height of the members of darkness, his mind, which was the eye of the bitterness of evil. He caused his mind to take shape in a member of the portions of the spirit, thinking that, by staring down at his evil, he would be able to equal the spirit. But he was not able, for he wanted to do an impossible thing, and it did not take place. But in order that the mind of darkness, which is the eye of the bitterness of evil, might not be destroyed, since he was made partially similar, he arose and shone with a fiery light upon all of Hades, that the equality of the faultless light might become apparent. For the spirit benefited from every form of darkness because he appeared in his majesty. “And the exalted, infinite light appeared, for he was very joyful. He wished to reveal himself to the spirit. And the likeness of the exalted light appeared to the unconceived spirit.” ~Paraphrase of Shem

When Darkness Stirred

This is an allegorical tale. The Darkness is the egotism that infected a few angels who became the Fallen, the Darkness, or the Demiurge in Gnostic terms. It wasn’t so much that the light of Spirit appeared to them—it was always there—but that they noticed it and, in their egotism, decided they were as great as God and could create a realm of Darkness as God had created the realm of Light.

He Did Not Know

Shem says that the Dark One, the Demiurge “did not know that another power was above him.” This cannot possibly be true! It is only because the Demiurge, full of egotism, became jealous of God, that the Demiurge decided to create a universe of Darkness, a universe where he would rule by pretending to be God. He (or they, as the Demiurge represents all the fallen angels) succeeded by turning a large amount of spirit into the Darkness called matter. This doesn’t make the material universe something evil that must be destroyed, but it is something created in error that must be repaired.

Shone With a Fiery Light

Lucifer, Satan, and other Dark Beings are capable of shining with a light that is nonetheless Darkness when compared with the overwhelmingly bright and loving Light of God. Over the centuries, many have been tricked into believing that this shining of a Dark Being meant that it was an angel of God, or God Himself. As a result, they listened too and did what these beings asked. This is why Earth is such a mess.

Exalted Infinite Light

The Exalted Infinite Light which is the Light of God did appear in the world of matter. God took pity on the material beings created by the Demiurge and gave us humans a Divine Soul of Light that, when awakened, can help us escape from the Darkness of matter and help in the Great Plan to turn the realm of matter back into spirit. Fortunately for us, we live in the time when the promised Sun of Righteousness is now shining down on us. This special Spiritual Sun shines down on us with a much greater amount of God’s Light than previously. This makes it easier for us to tap into the Spiritual Light and awaken our dormant spiritual faculties. But we still have to make the effort to do so.

From the SOLAR WIND collection by Harold Boulette