My nature, the true nature of the universe, of Being, and My relation to human beings, to their role and destiny, is complex. Einstein’s theory of relativity is child’s play by comparison. An adequate understanding cuts across some of the categories human beings find most natural, though they are really profoundly “unnatural” (and I mean that in the eerie sense). They are warped; they often represent disorders of the soul, distortions of Being.
Karma is the Hindu idea that actions, both good and bad, have consequences for a person’s character and fate.
Human beings must learn a lesson. They are not in this life to sit in the lap of luxury. It is a challenge, a test. They can only grow through suffering. I too can only grow through suffering. The main suffering is through the consequences of their own actions. That is the most intense suffering, the kind of suffering that leads to suicide.
“Lord, Pherecydes also says the world was composed of opposites.”
There can be no love without difference, no harmony or balance without opposing items or forces, no magnetism without the magnet and its object, and so on.
Mystic merging is not quite right. You (people) need to live out your lives in relation to, in concert with Me, but it would serve no purpose, karmic or otherwise, for you to get lost in Me, like a drop of water in the sea.
I knew that I wanted to love Abigail, not to merge into her, or to have her merge into me. There is not just unity, but creative tension as well.
“Lord, what was there before? What motivates the act of creation?”
I received the following words and images which I recorded in my notes.
“A feeling of loneliness, of searching, reaching—not yet a Person. Expanding into the great emptiness of Nothing, which is ‘infinitely empty’ far beyond (far more empty than) empty spaces. ‘Who am I? What am I? Am I an I? What is an I?’ A chaotic feeling of the infinite rushing at the edges.”
“Lord, why did eternity ‘shatter’ in this way? Did the still, self-sufficient stuff explode?”
I received the sense: “Brittle, crystalline, too perfect, static, isolated, removed, alone, bored, incomplete. The eternal already had the potential to be a Person but could not do so without creating time.”
And I also got the feeling that God desperately wants to be understood.
I remembered Abraham Lincoln’s story about the man who was tarred and feathered and run out of town on a rail. “If it weren’t for the honor of the thing,” the man said, “I would rather have walked.” And I had seen the war movies, “You will have the honor of leading the assault.” Some honors aren’t worth it.
I did feel the honor. God was about to put His seal on this role for me, a role more suitable for a real Elijah. I felt a swell of pride, as I was being told this, and immediately the line went dead. Ego had broken the connection.
What I had been told about Creation still bothered me and I was relieved when God started talking about the process of evolution.
“Lord, do You have to will creatures to evolve into homo sapiens or does it just happen by natural processes?”
That’s not a well-conceived question. It rests on a false dichotomy. Remember that nature is itself teleological, except it is much more complicated than that apparently simple statement. I provide—I am—the telos or purpose, and I follow the telos as well. However, I draw man forward to greater development in the very process of interacting with men (people). At the time of early man, I am not yet sure what is missing. I am not fully developed Myself yet, since I have not encountered beings who can call forth My full latent nature. For the moment, call it a dialectical evolution responding to My need for development.
Here and elsewhere, “man” has the older sense inclusive of both women and men.
“So I should read the scriptures of the major religions?”
Yes, I want you to read the early spiritual history of mankind. I will lead you to which readings. I would like you to pray as you read them and take notes as directed.
I grew up at a time when “man” and “mankind” referred to both men and women, and God spoke to me in my own vernacular.
“Lord, You said I was to tell Your story ‘from the inside out.’ But reading the scriptures is ‘from the outside in.’”
Yes, tell My story as I tell it to you. The only purpose for reading is to give you reference points for understanding My story.
The procedure went smoothly and I was able to watch the monitor as the surgeon snaked a catheter up from my groin to a major coronary artery. The blocked place was easy to spot, and he inserted a stent to keep it open.
Opening an artery is a very serious matter. If it starts bleeding, it can be life-threatening. The patient has to lie flat on his back and absolutely still for twenty-four hours. Nurses at my first hospital had been wonderful, but here I was attended by a woman who was Nurse Ratched without the charm. She seemed to resent the fact that patients needed her help. Finding it difficult to manage the bedpan flat on my back, I asked for her help. She acted as if it were a dirty-minded request and responded by threatening me, “If you can’t manage the bedpan, we will catheterize you.” Finally, I did manage, and the twenty-four hours were up.
Another patient had told me that closing up the artery can be painful as well as dangerous.
“Who is to perform this delicate operation?”
Nurse Ratched gave me the grim news: young Mr. Sizzorhands, the very technician whose previous efforts to hurt me had been foiled, would now have a really good shot at it. I told her I wanted someone else to do it. She made it a battle of wills. “He is the only technician available.”
“I am not going to let that guy lay another hand on me.”
We went back and forth. Finally I said, “Let me speak to the doctor.”
She said she would see what she could do and, after a time, she returned with a young Asian-American attendant. He had the hands of an angel. I didn’t feel a thing.
Mankind does not live in a period for a Great Prophet. There can be no new Moses or other Deliverer. There can at best be Elijahs—prophets and seers—people who explain My story in a form that can be understood by this age.
A time of mending is needed, but the nature of the world today prevents the presentation of a single, unitary vision. The best I can do is to share visions with particular individuals and let them articulate these visions in their own voices.