The Four Major Stepping Stones on the Path to Higher Consciousness

HJ: In this article, the path of higher consciousness is substituted with the word ‘God’.  Many of you will have no issue with this, but I imagine the religious connotations associated with this word might be off-putting to many others.  And yet, this article and concept is so powerful that it is important for the sincere seeker to move beyond their personal associations with this word.  One could just as easily substitute the terms consciousness, creator, universe, or divine with God without altering the meaning whatsoever as these all refer to the same thing — the source of all being/existence.

We tend to think of things in terms of consciousness, of which the development is endless.  These stepping stones refer to the primary concepts that we must master in human form.  Beyond human form, there are even more advanced concepts, but that is not the focus of this article.  In many ways the mastery of these four steps is more than enough focus for people in a given lifetime or lifetime(s).

– Truth

By Gary Renard | Gary Renard

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Excerpt from ‘The Disappearance of the Universe’, Pg. 29-33

… there are four major attitudes of learning you will go through during your return to God. Everyone will go through all four of them, and everyone who progresses will occasionally and unexpectedly bounce back and forth from one to the other. Each level bring with it different thoughts and resulting experiences, and you will interpret the exact same scripture differently depending on which attitude of learning you are currently engaged in.

1. Dualism

Dualism is the condition of almost all of the universe. The mind believes in the domain of subject and object. Conceptually, it would appear to those who believe in God that there are two world that are both true: the world of God and the world of man. In the world of man you believe, very practically and objectively, that there is in fact a subject – you – and an object, namely, anything else. This attitude was well expressed through the model of Newtonian physics. The objects that make up a human’s universe, which until the last few hundred years was simply called the world and referred to all of manifestation, are believed to exist apart from you and can be manipulated by you – “you” meaning the body and the brain that seems to be run by it. In fact, as we have already touched upon, the body and brain that you think are you appear to have been caused by the world. As we will see, this idea is exactly backwards.

By necessity, the attitude toward God that accompanies this attitude of learning is that He is somewhere outside of you. There is you and there is God, seemingly separated from one another. God, Who is actually real, seems distant and illusory. The world, which is actually illusory, seems immediate and real. For reasons that will be described later, your split mind, which split from the house like the prodigal Son, has unconsciously assigned to God the same qualities that you seemingly separated mind itself possesses. Thus God and the messages that seem to come from Him are conflicted.

Keep in mind that most of this is unconscious – meaning that it seems to exist out there in the world rather than in your own split mind. So God is considered to be both forgiving and wrathful. He is both loving and a killer, apparently depending on what kind of a mood He’s in. This may be a good description of the conflict of a dualistic mind, but it is hardly a description of God. Almost needless to say, all of this leads to countless oddities, including the bizarre notion that God would somehow play a role in instructing people to kill other people in order to acquire certain lands and possessions, or bring a certain version of justice or the right religion to everyone. The nonsensical tragedy of duality is considered to be normal by all modern societies, which are themselves mad as a hatter.

2. Semi-dualism

The next attitude of learning you will go through your return to God is sometimes referred to as semi-dualism. This could be described as a kinder, gentler form of dualism because certain true ideas have begun to be accepted by the mind. Once again, it makes no difference what your religion is, which is just one reason why all religions have some very nice, gentle, and relatively non-judgemental people. One such idea that the mind would be accepting at this time is the simple concept that God is Love. A simple notion like this, however, if it is truly believed,would bring along with it some very difficult questions. For example, if God is Love, can He also be hate? If God is really perfect Love, then can He also be flawed? If God is a Creator, could He then be vengeful against which He Himself had created?

Once again the answer to such questions is clearly seen to be of course not, a long closed door has been nudged open. In the state of semi-dualism, your mind has begun to lose some of the hidden but terrible fear of God. Now God is less threatening to you, as you yourself have already expressed to us. A primitive form of forgiveness has taken root within you. You still think of yourself as a body, and both god and the world still seem to be outside of you, but now you sense that God is not the cause of your situation. Perhaps the one person who was always there when things appeared to be going down the toilet was you. Perfect Love can only be responsible for good. So everything else must come fromsomewhere else. But, as we will see in our next attitude of learning, there is nowhere else.

3. Non-dualism

Pursah: So now we come to the subject of non-dualism. Keep in mind that whether we are talking about an attitude of learning or spiritual sight, we are always referring to a state of mind – an inner attitude and not something that is seen with the body’s eyes in the world. We’ll begin with a simple idea. Do you remember the old riddle, that if a tree falls in the middle of the forest and there’s nobody there to hear it, does it still make a sound?

Gary: I sure do. You can’t prove it, so people always end up arguing about it.

Pursah: What would you say the answer is? I promise not to argue with you.

Gary: I’d say the tree always makes a sound, whether there’s someone there to hear it or not.

Pursah: And you’d be enormously wrong, even on the level of form. What the tree does is send out sound waves. Sound waves, like radio waves – and for that matter, energy waves – require a receiver to pick them up. There are many radio waves going through this room right now, but there is no sound because there’s no receiver tuned into them. The human or animal ear is a receiver. If a tree falls in the middle of the forest and there’s nobody there to hear it, then it does not make a sound. Sound isn’t sound until you hear it, just as a wave of energy does not appear to be matter until you see or touch it.

To make a long story short, it should be evident from this that is takes two to tango. In order for anything to interact, you must have duality. Indeed, without duality there is nothing to interact with. There can be nothing in a mirror without an image that appears to be opposite it, attached to an observer to see it. Without duality there is no tree in the forest. As some of your scientists of quantum physics know, duality is a myth. And if duality is a myth, then not only is there no tree, but there is also no universe. Without you to perceive it, the universe is not here, but logic would have to dictate that if the universe is not here, then you are also not here. In order to make the illusion of existence, you must take oneness and seemingly divide it, which is precisely what you’ve done. It’s all a trick.

The concept of oneness is hardly an original one. However, the question few people ever ask is: What am I really one with? Although most of those who do ask this question would say the answer is God, they then make the error of assumingthey and this universe were created in their present form by the Divine. That is not true, and it leaves the seeker in a position where even if he masters the mind, as the Buddha certainly did, he will still not reach God in a permanent way. Yes, he will achieve oneness with the mind that made the duality waves. This mind, in a non-place that transcends all of your dimensions, is completely outside the system of time, space, and form. This is the logical and proper extension of non-duality, yet it is still not God. It is, in fact, a dead end. Or better yet, a dead beginning. This explains why Buddhism, which is obviously the world’s most psychologically sophisticated religion, does not handle the issue of God. It’s because Buddha didn’t handle the issue of God while he was still in the body you call Buddha. It’s also the reason we’ll be making distinctions between non-dualism and pure non-dualism. When Buddha said, “I am awake,” he meant he realized that he was not actually a participant in the illusion, but the maker of the entire illusion.

4. Pure non-dualism

Still, there is another step required, where the mind that is the maker of the illusion chooses completely against itself in favor of God. Of course someone of Buddha’s tremendous accomplishment had a snap of it, quickly going on to the exact same awareness as J. But this was done by Buddha in a lifetime the world doesn’t even know about. It’s not unheard of for people to achieve J’s level of enlightenment in obscurity, and for the world to think they achieved it in a more famous lifetime when they really didn’t. Most people who approach true spiritual mastery are not interested in being leaders. At the same time, there are people who are highly visible when, rather than being true masters of spirituality and metaphysics, they are merely exhibiting the symptoms of an extroverted personality.

Gary: So how did J experience his oneness with God?

Arten: That’s coming. One of the reasons we’re telling you these things is so we can put some of his statements into context for you. One of the things he had to realize was not only that the universe doesn’t exist, but that he didn’t exist on any level other than pure spirit. That’s something that practically no one really wants to learn. It’s terrifying to all people on an unconscious level because it means the relinquishment of any individuality or personal identity, now and forever.