Chapter 1: Heaven and Earth

1Heaven and earth are one. 2Earth becomes heaven when you let God fulfill Himself as your individual Self. Grasp it.

3God fulfills Himself as your individual Self. 4God fulfills his own destiny as your individual Self. Reflect on it.

5God is in every experience: 6Your health, sustenance, harmony. Remember it.

N.B. 7Meditate daily. 8God is love.

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ECHOES & NOTES

Chapter 1: Heaven and Earth

1.1:  Heaven and earth are one.

What is below is like what is above, and what is above is like what is below, that the miracle of the one thing may be accomplished. (Tabula Smaragdina, Hermes Trismegistus, 1st-3rd centuries)

This philosophy, common to all ancient Chinese philosophical trends, is built on the premise that the cosmos and man, in the last analysis, obey the same law; that man is a microcosm and is not separated from the macrocosm by any fixed barriers. The very same laws rule for the one as for the other, and from the one a way leads into the other. The psyche and the cosmos are to each other like the inner world and the outer world. Therefore, man participates by nature in all cosmic events, and is inwardly—as well as outwardly—interwoven with them. The Tao then, the Way, governs man just as it does invisible and visible nature (heaven and earth). (Wilhelm [1931] 1962: 10-11)

You are the Holy Son of God Himself. Remember this, and all the world is free. Remember this, and earth and Heaven are one. (ACIM Lesson 191.7.3 [1975] 1996: W364)

1.2: Earth becomes heaven when you let God fulfill Himself as your individual Self. Grasp it.

“Not only is the primordial Self capable and worthy of direct communion with the Divine: the soul’s co-creation through exalted thought is indispensable to God’s infinite fulfilment in creative and ever ever-expanding cosmic reality. The consummation of the Divine Mind’s grand creative and progressive plan is, in large part, conditional upon humanity’s spiritual fruition. The individual’s higher Self co-creates ‘with the Mind Whose Thought created him.’ The immanent in us—our direct experience of God—urges cooperation with God towards the expansion of the universe as eternal consciousness.” (Kesting 2010)

There is only one way to find your heaven on earth, and that is through inner contact with God. Rest assured that all that humanhood is, is a sense of separation from God. All that divine being is, is conscious oneness with God. … But, in making contact with God so that you feel, so that you actually catch the sense of awareness, you let your humanhood become the transparency through which the Divinity of you is shining. Then, you are no longer living your own life; God is living Its life as you. (Goldsmith 1958: 197-8)

1.3: God fulfills Himself as your individual Self. 

Now is the Son of Man glorified and God is glorified in him. If God is glorified in him, then God will glorify the Son of himself, and will glorify him at once. (Jn 13:31-2)

God enjoys himself. His own inner enjoyment is such that it includes his enjoyment of all creatures not as creatures, but as God. His own inner enjoyment includes everything. Even the sun sheds its rays on everything and they are absorbed by all they fall upon, and yet the sun does not lose its radiant power. (Eckhart, Sermon 27 [c1260-1327/8] 1941: 225)

1.4: God fulfills his own destiny as your individual Self. Reflect on it.

In the beginning was He alone, sufficient unto Himself: the formless, colourless, and unconditional Being. Then was there neither beginning, middle, nor end; Then were no eyes, no darkness, no light; Then were there no ground, air, nor sky; no fire, water, nor earth; no rivers like the Ganges and Jumna, no seas, oceans, and waves. Then was neither vice nor virtue; scriptures there were not, as the Vedas, and Puranas, nor as the Koran. Kabir ponders in his mind and says: ‘Then was there no activity: the Supreme Being remained merged in the unknown depths of His own Self.’ (Kabir 81 [1440-1518/1915] 1973: 73-4)

1.5: God is in every experience:

God’s laws are changeless, the same as they have ever been. While they are immutable, they are beneficent, for they are good. When we live in conformity with them, they become the very foundation stones on which we build our health, our happiness, our peace and poise, our success and attainment. If we fully abide in God’s law, no evil can befall us. We do not need to be healed. We are every whit whole (Spalding [1924/1937] 1964: 1.121)

1.6: ...your health, sustenance, harmony. Remember it.

God is not a being apart from man. He is the life that constitutes him, the power flowing through him, the spiritual ideas that he, not God, has to release before they can bring forth his good for him. It is an hour-to-hour effort that is required of us. From the instant we awaken in the morning to the time when we go to bed at night, our mind must be filled with spiritual verities; and, until the moment when it works, we must repeat and repeat the Truth to ourselves, ‘God is my love, my health, my happiness, my protection, my supply, at this present, in this very now!’ Ultimately, subconsciously it becomes an unshakable realization that it is so. That is what ‘practising the presence of God’ means. (Nicol Campbell 1994: 716)

1.7: Meditate daily.

Granted that consciousness can actually be modified by yoga, self-hypnotism or whatever else one may choose to call it, what evidence is there that the new consciousness has any advantage over the old? The Quietists, whether Chinese, Indian, German, or Spanish, have always made the same reply: by such practices three things are attained: truth, happiness, and power. (Waley [1934] 1977: 43 in Tao Tê Ching, 6th-4th century BC)

1.8: God is love.

God is present by love alone. By love alone He lives and feels in other persons. By love alone He enjoys all the creatures, by love alone He is pleasing to Himself, by love alone He is rich and blessed. O why do you not by love alone seek to achieve all these, by love alone attain another self, by love alone live in others, by love attain your glory? The Soul is shrivelled up and buried in a grave that does not love. But that which does love wisely and truly is the joy and end of all the world, the King of Heaven, and the Friend of God, the shining Light and Temple of Eternity: the Brother of Christ Jesus, and one Spirit with the Holy Ghost. (Thomas Traherne [c1637-74] Centuries of meditations 1908 2:50)