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The Key To Enlightenment
Excerpt from the book entitled, Your Immortal Reality, by Gary R. Renard
(author of The Disappearance of the Universe)

As a rabbi and a mystic, J (Jesus) understood well the teachings of ancient Jewish mysticism. Among those would be the idea that Heaven is closeness to God, and hell is distance from God. But J, being an uncompromising kind of guy, didn't stop there. For him, Heaven wouldn't just be closeness to God, it would be Oneness with God. In fact, it would be perfect Oneness with God. And hell wouldn't just be distance from God; it would be anything that is separate from God. That narrows it down to two distinct choices, and only one of them is real, because perfect Oneness cannot have a counterpart, or else it wouldn't be perfect.

So to J, God is changeless, perfect, and eternal. And God is synonymous with spirit, because nothing He makes would be any different from Him, or else it wouldn't be perfect. And besides, if God could make anything that wasn't perfect, then He Himself wouldn't be perfect either, would He? And spirit doesn't have to evolve, or else it wouldn't be perfect.

Of course, God is not a He or a She, and I'm using biblical language like the Course. I could call God an It, but that wouldn't exactly turn anybody on either. So right off the bat we notice a couple of things about our friend J. First, he's uncompromising. Second, no matter how complicated things may appear to be, there are always only two things to choose from, and only one of them is real. The other choice would be an illusion, which was taught by the Hindus and Buddhists long before J, but he elevated the alternative to a flawless version of a God who really is Perfect Love, rather than a God who is conflicted and imperfect.

Next, you have to remember that J was from the Middle East. He would have had more of an Eastern slant than a Western one. So he certainly was familiar with the teachings of Buddhism. He would know about the Buddhist concept of ego. He would understand and experience that there is only one ego appearing as many, in what the Hindus call the world of multiplicity and the Buddhists call impermanence. So there's only one of us that thinks that it's here, and I'm it. There isn't really anybody else. There's nobody out there. It only looks that way. It's a trick. The conscious part of the mind looks out and sees all kinds of separation, different bodies and forms, but that's an illusion. And the unconscious part of the mind, almost all of which is hidden, just the way most of an iceberg is hidden underneath the surface of the water, knows that there's really only one of us.

Time and space and differences turn out to all be untrue, despite appearances. The reason everthing is connected is because there's only one illusion, just like there's only one God. But God has nothing to do with the illusion. That was a false assumption on the part of people. People than made up a God in their image, who was like what they believed themselves to be. But God made us originally in His image: perfect, innocent, and One. The oneness that exists in the illusion is an imitation oneness, because the ego attempts to mimic God.

Today, quantum physicists are confirming that time and space are just illusions, also. Past, present, and future all occur simultaneously. We are actually non-local beings having a local experience. It may look like you're over there and I'm over here, but it's a lie. Space is just a separation idea, as is time. We divided up time and space to make it look like different intervals of time and different places, when it's really all made up and everything's the same, even though it looks different, because it's all an illusion that's based on the thought of separation. Except the physicists don't know that part yet. They just know that our experience is an illusion compared to the way things really are when you look closer! They don't have the whole picture yet, but they're getting there.

For example, they know that if I look at a star that's 20 billion light years away, I cause it to change instantaneously at the subatomic level. How is that possible? It's because the star isn't really 20 billion light years away; it's really in my mind. Or more accurately, it's a projection of my mind. I made it up, and it's coming from me, not at me, like most people think. And it's not even matter until I look at it or touch it. It's energy, which is really thought, which is why energy can't be destroyed. And matter is just a different form of energy, returning to energy and then recycling.

J figured out something that people still don't understand, even today with all these advances in knowledge, including psychology, and it's this: If there's really only one of us here, and if the unconscious part of the mind knows that, then what are we doing when we go around judging and condemning other people? All we're really doing is sending a message directly into our own unconscious mind that we are worthy of being judged and condemned. Whatever we think about others is really like sending a message about ourselves to our self. So J decided that if there's really only one of us who thinks it's here, and if the unconscious mind knows that, then he was going to go through life seeing everyone as being what they really are, which is perfect spirit, instead of seeing them as bodies, which is really just a false idea of separation. He would see everyone as being Christ, pure and innocent. He would think of them as being what they really are: immortal, invulnerable, and something that cannot even be touched by this world.

Thus, the key to enlightenment lies in a secret that very few people have ever known, but which J knew well. The way you will experience and feel about yourself is not determined by how other people look at and think about you. The way that you will experience and feel about yourself is actually determined by how you look at and think about them. Ultimately, this determines your identity. You will identify yourself either as a body or as a perfect spirit, as either divided or whole, depending on how you see others. And once you understand that, I would think you'd want to get pretty damn careful how you think about other people!

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