How To Know God by Dr. Deepak Chopra – Book Summary – CoManifesting

Book Summary of How To Know God – The Soul’s Journey Into The Mystery Of Mysteries by Deepak Chopra

A Real And Useful God

Deepak Chopra states at the beginning of his book “God has managed the amazing feat of being worshiped and invisible at the same time”

Statistics reveal that over ninety-six percent of people believe in God and that many consider him to be sitting on a throne in the sky, and imagine his form as father like with a white beard. This shows a gap between everyday reality and belief and there is a need to heal this gap.

Our whole idea of reality is actually upside down. God is the only thing that is real, and the whole universe, regardless of its vastness and solidness, is an extension of God’s nature.

We characterize God as a useful way of making him more like ourselves. He would be a very perverse and unkind human, however, to stay out of our sight while demanding our love.

What could possibly give us belief in any kind of compassionate spiritual Being after thousands of years wars and bloodshed in the name of religion?

God < > Transition Zone < > Material world

In the above three-part scheme, God is placed above the material world. The middle part is the transition zone, which implies that we can meet with God on common ground. This is the place of enlightenment, holy visions, angels and speaking with God.

This place is the bridge between the two worlds. When we cling to material reality our disbelief of God is completely reasonable. Materialistic points of view against God linger because they are centered on facts, but they crumble when you look beyond the material world.

There is little difference between saints, mystics and the rest of us. The transition zone is subjective and must engage the brain, given that it takes millions of neurons to experience anything.

This means that God’s light and presence becomes real once our brain understands it. This is the “God Response”

These seven responses form the steadfast basis of religion

Fight-or-flight response: We turn to this God because we need to survive.
Reactive response: We turn to this God because we need to achieve, accomplish, and compete.
Restful awareness response we turn to this God because we need to feel that the outer world isn’t going to swallow us up in its endless turmoil.
Intuitive response: The God that matches this response is understanding and forgiving. We need him to validate that our inner world is good.
Creative response: We call this inspiration, and its mirror is a Creator who made the whole world from nothing. We turn to him out of our wonder at the beauty and formal complexity of nature.
Visionary response: We need such a God to explain why magic can exist side by side with ordinary mundane reality.
Sacred response: We need him because without a source, our existence has no foundation at all.

Without the brain, the mind is as improvable and as invisible as God. When we peel away our layers, in the center is the seed of God.

You can know God by looking in the mirror e.g. when you are afraid, yours in a God of fight or flight and when you are centered and calm, yours is a God of restful awareness etc for all the seven responses.

The brain cannot reach a divinity outside the seven senses.

Within the three-part scheme above there are also three levels:

Material reality
Quantum reality
Virtual reality

When we enter the transition zone and become closer to God:

The body becomes lighter.
You feel as if you are floating or looking down from above.
Your breathing becomes lighter and more even.
You experience less physical pain.
You sense energy in your body.
You experience heightened sensitivity.

It is extremely difficult to stay in the transition zone as you continually pulled back by material reality. When your brain responds to God you may experience:

When in danger, you all of a sudden feel protected. (Fight or flight)
You feel a sudden rush of love for a stranger. (Visionary response)
When someone is dying, you feel the passing of wings.
When looking into your eyes, you believe for a second that an old soul is looking at you. (Intuition)
A beautiful scene makes you forget for a second who you are.
Until you find God, you will not know who you are and that God is always there for you

Getting What You Want – The Seven Levels of Fulfillment

Each level of fulfillment proves God’s reality at that level.

At level 1 (fight or flight response)
You accomplish your life through community, family, material comforts and a sense of belonging.

At level 2 (reactive response)
You accomplish your life through ego satisfactions such as influence, power, status and success.

At level 3 (restful awareness response)
You accomplish your life through self-acceptance, centeredness, inner silence and peace.

At level 4 (intuitive response)
You accomplish your life through forgiveness, empathy, insight, and tolerance.

At level 5 (creative response)
You accomplish your life through inspiration and unlimited discovery by expanded creativity in science or art.

At level 6 (visionary response)
You accomplish your life through compassion, universal love, devoted service and reverence.

At level 7 (sacred response)
You accomplish your life because of wholeness and unity with the divine.

Prayer is a striking example that there is a place you can reach beyond material reality. Research has shown that those who are ill have rates of recover, if someone prays for them.

When you pray for someone you are joined together in a place where the limits of the body no longer matter.

Your intention to make this person better has an effect over the time/space boundary.

Our brains respond on the same seven levels that apply to our experience. The one thing you cannot survive is chaos. The most surprising conclusion of our new model (three part scheme) is that God is as we are.

The whole universe is as we are, because without the human mind, there would be only quantum soup, billions of haphazard sensory impressions.

The Seven Levels of Miracles

A miracle is an exhibit of power from outside the five senses. Although all miracles happen in the transition zone, they vary from level to level.

Generally, miracles become more “supernatural” after the fourth or fifth brain response, but each and every miracle concerns direct contact with spirit.

Level I (Fight-or-Flight Response) Example: A mother running into a burning house to rescue her child, or lifting a car with a child trapped under it.
Level 2 (Reactive Response) Example, child geniuses with unexplainable gifts in music or mathematics.
Level 3 (Restful Awareness Response) Example: visitation by a guardian angel.
Level 4 (Intuitive Response) Example: psychic predictions.
Level 5 (Creative Response) Example: having a thought that suddenly manifests.
Level 6 (Visionary Response) Example: healing incurable diseases through touch.
Level 7 (Sacred Response) Example: Lives of the great prophets and teachers Jesus, Buddha, Lao- Tze

We hear two voices in out heads every day one believes in light, the other dark. The model of the reality sandwich solves this puzzle and gives seven variations of God, with a path full of signposts to pursue each day.

All of your time is spent acting out seven basic choices about the kind of world you are familiar with:

You choose fear if you want to labor and hardly survive.
You choose power if you want to battle and conquer.
You choose to reflect inwards if you want peace.
You choose to know yourself if you want insight.
You choose to create if you want to find out how nature works.
You choose love if you want to heal yourself and others.
You choose to be if you want understand the endless possibilities of Gods creation.

Many people only activate the first few responses and limit their view of spirit. This is probably why finding God is called an awakening and you should make the seventh stage your goal.

Mystery Of Mysteries

God wouldn’t be a mystery if the world weren’t also a mystery. Here again we use a three-layer reality sandwich.

Material Reality < > Quantum Domain < > Virtual Domain

Anyone could be pardoned for believing that God can’t be found here.

Everyday reality is only the top layer of our sandwich. The material world is full of recognizable objects that we can feel, see, taste, touch, and smell. As large items become very small, reducing to the size of atoms, our senses fail us.

Beyond the atom an amazing transformation happens, everything solid disappears. This is a new level of reality, the quantum level, here nothing of the material world is left whole.

This means that the whole universe is a quantum illusion, and the whole cosmos is like a blinking light. All that exists are only vibrating energy fields.

When you go beyond energy, this pre-quantum level is known as virtual. This is where the power of creation lies. God can only be found in a virtual state.

This is where all the energy is stored before creation. When we look at the two reality sandwiches the transition zone is quantum and virtual is God.

Virtual domain = the field of spirit Quantum domain = the field of mind
Material reality = the field of physical existence
This unseen power is sacred and mythic but present all the time.

Before proceeding further, the following three lists will summarize where we are.

Virtual Domain = Spirit

No energy
No time
Wholeness exists at every point.
Infinite silence
Unbounded – every point in space is every other point.
Eternal
Infinitely correlated
Infinite dynamism
Infinite creative potential
Infinite organizing power
Unmeasurable
Acausal
Immortal, beyond birth and death.

Quantum Domain = Mind

Creation manifests.
Energy exists.
Time begins.
Events are uncertain.
Waves and particles alternate with one another.
Only probabilities can be measured.
Space expands from its source.
Information is embedded in energy.
Cause and effect are fluid.
Birth and death occur at the speed of light.

Material Reality = Visible Universe

Events are definite.
Objects have firm boundaries.
Three-dimensional
Matter dominates over energy.
Predictable
Knowable by the five senses
Organisms are born and die.
Subject to decay
Changeable
Cause and effect are fixed.
Time flows in a straight line.

Seven Stages Of God

We are all entitled to a version of God which seems real, however many versions disagree with one another. We are now prepared to answer the easiest, yet most intense question:

Who is God?

He cannot just be remote – a belief, a field or a level of reality. All religions describe God as unbounded and infinite, which creates an enormous problem.

This gives us no option but to replace infinity with something that retains God, so much so that we feel his presence.

There are seven versions of God, which can be associated with set faiths:

Stage one: God the Protector
Stage two: God the Almighty
Stage three: God of Peace
Stage four: God the Redeemer
Stage five: God the Creator
Stage six: God of Miracles
Stage seven: God of Pure Being – “I Am”

Each stage meets a specific human need. In the steps forward from stage one to stage seven, the extensive gap between God and his worshipers becomes slighter and in the end closes.

Unless we see ourselves in the mirror, we will in no way see God there.

We don’t use our entire brain at once but select from a series of seven in built mechanisms that relate to spiritual experience:

These are the Fight-or-flight, Reactive, Restful awareness, and Intuitive, Creative, Visionary and Sacred responses.

All of these are natural responses of the human nervous system, and we all have the innate ability to experience the whole range.

The world is as we are: To a person living in a world of danger, the need for fight-or-flight is absolute. Even though the nervous system is extremely flexible, we fall into habits and repetitive patterns because of our dependence on old imprints.

If you do not appreciate that you are multidimensional, then the whole idea of God runs off the rails.

“When I was a child, I spoke and saw things like a child. When I grew up, I had finished with childish things.

Right now, we all see puzzling reflections, as in a clouded mirror, but then (when we meet God), we shall see face to face. My knowledge now is partial; then it will be whole, the way God knows me already”.

Stage One:
God The Protector (Fight-or-Flight Response)

The God of stage one is: vengeful, capricious, quick to anger, jealous, judgmental – meting out reward and punishment, unfathomable and sometimes merciful.

God is very precarious in stage one; he uses nature to chastise even his most special children through storms, earthquakes, floods, and disease. Since his role is to protect, the God of stage one fails when the weak fall victim to illness, disaster, or violence. He succeeds whenever we escape danger and survive crisis.

At each stage the fundamental question “Who is God?” instantly raises other questions.

The first question is “Who am I?

Our identity in stage one is based on the environment and the physical body and survival is the principal consideration here.

It is not necessary to view the God of stage one unsympathetically, but we need to understand how realistic he is. Many of you have had difficult live and deep psychological wounds are imposed in family life.

We all remember how difficult growing up was and at any time, we can feel old childish fears. The survivalist and the guilty child lurk under the surface.

The God of stage one comforts these wounds and gives us cause to believe we will survive. As long as we need a guardian, we will stick to the role of children.

In crisis people seek ways to cope, and in this stage, God is a coping mechanism. Horrible situations stretch our coping skills beyond their limits; people will project away from hopelessness, finding comfort in a God who wants to protect them.

Good is safety, shelter, comfort, food, and family. Evil is abandonment and physical danger.

In this stage you find God through fear and loving devotion. You have to grow up before one can live with ambivalence and its continuous coming together of dark and light, love and hate.

This is the road not in effect in stage one. In this stage God has to be right. If he isn’t, the world becomes too perilous to live in.

Each stage of God involves a life challenge. God exists to motivate us, and we express this through the goals we set for ourselves. A goal is the perimeter of the possible. In stage one, the boundary is set by physical circumstances. If you are delimited by threats, to survive is to aim high.

In order to survive in a cruel world, you have to be courageous in harsh conditions. The courage to fight must sooner or later turn into the courage to resist him.

For example, if you are afraid of your father’s violent and volatile temper, then confronting him provokes even more fear. Thus the reason to keep quiet gets reinforced. Regrettably, keeping quiet only increases the fear, since it has no release.

The only way out is to prevail over the hurdle and to move on to a higher stage, is to say, “I am tired of being afraid.

You are not my God if I have to hide from your wrath”

God wants you to obey; consequently he must make defiance a wrongful act. The real temptation lies on God’s side, God’s temptation is to become the oppressor.

Tyranny is excessive protection. It exists in families where the parents cannot maintain the equilibrium of rules with freedom

Stage Two:
God The Almighty (Reactive Response)

Whereas stage one is about survival, stage two is about power. Undoubtedly God has all the power, which he jealously protects.

The kind of God obscured by the drive to power is treacherous, but more sophisticated than the God of stage one.

This God is sovereign, omnipotent, the answerer of prayers, impartial, rational, just and organized into rules.

From its early days, the ego finds that getting your own way isn’t automatic. Parents say no, and more significant, have their own lives, which means that a child cannot commandeer every moment of their attention.

These are awful findings, but as a young child becomes accustomed to them, he gets ready for the bigger shock ahead – that there are other children who want to grab the love and attention that used to be yours by right.

This contest of opposing egos creates and the ego is always tempted to return to the infant paradise in which food and love came routinely, without Stage two is subject to a God who validates strength and competition, with no thought that being a loser is possible.

The subject matter of stage two can be summed up as “Winning is next to godliness.” Those who work the hardest will get rewarded the greatest.

However, this poses inconsistency for we who follow the demands of our egos, which want to feel that we can be good and win at the same time.

Some sort of work ethic is to be expected in stage two, yet it will always be troubled by the fear that God doesn’t really endorse the things society rewards so extravagantly.

Stage two God punishes by the rules. Most of his rules roughly make sense; every society orders against lying, murder, theft, and desiring property that belongs to someone else.

Yet God doesn’t have to make sense. In this stage you ask “Can God really make good on his threats?” God needs to ensure no one is tempted to find out, by exhibiting his strength.

In stage two God allows you to accomplish your desires, and he makes you feel good in the bargain. In his role as Almighty, the God now starts to answer prayers.

In this system, the rich can clothe themselves in goodness while the poor are morally suspect and seem dishonorable.

Stage two brings a sense of hopefulness to life. The world exists to be discovered and dominated. Ego gives you power, although its lessons are often agonizing.

If you are happy being a talented, skilled worker you will find stage two a very attractive place to rest on the spiritual journey. Often the only ones who cut loose to a higher stage have had some far-reaching failure in their lives.

Regardless of its external rewards, stage two is linked with the birth of guilt. This is a form of judgment that needs no all-seeing authority, apart from at the beginning.

Stage two is founded on pleasure, and when desire becomes obsessive, the result is addiction. If a source of pleasure is truly fulfilling, there is a natural cycle that begins with desire and ends in satiation. Addiction never ends the circle.

The God of stage two is envious of his power over us because it satisfies him. He is addicted to control.

???? Get Dr. Deepak Chopra’s How To Know God Audio Book – Click Here To Get It FREE

Stage Three:
God Of Peace (Restful Awareness Response)

At stage one and two, God was not interested in peace and our compliance to him was far more important than our own needs.

The God at stage three is detached, calm, offering consolation, undemanding, conciliatory, silent and meditative.

Only by finding that peace lies within does the disciple find a place that divine punishment and justice cannot touch. The God of peace is meditative.

The God of stage three is a God of peace because he shows the way out of crisis. People who try to control their environment e.g. perfectionists and others caught up in compulsive behavior have turned down the invitation to find an inner solution.

A dangerous God was just appropriate for a dangerous world. The God of peace has made a world of inner solitude and thoughts so he is no longer dangerous. Discovering your center is the great reward of stage three, and the God of peace exists to give surety to you that there is a safe haven from fear and chaos.

Stage three is self-centered and the Bible reiterates this with phrases such as “Seek ye the kingdom of heaven within” and “in silence shall you possess your soul”.

The problem here is that most people reject the idea of God being an inner experience and stay dedicated to stages one and two. Another problem is that going within is not a revelation it is just a beginning.

God, the angels, and all the saints take utmost pleasure when a person starts to do inner work. On the other hand, none of this is obvious at first.

The value of stage three lies more in potential than in gratification, because it is a lonely road. The inner work is done for only one purpose and that is to feel the love of God. This is the only way to get it.

When you look around the world at all the fighting and suffering, you may wonder how many actually ever develops to stage three. It is tough to win at each stage of inner growth.

At stage three good and evil are no longer considered by what takes place outside oneself; the compass is twisted inward. Good is gauged by being centered in the self, which causes clarity and calm. Evil is gauged by disturbance to that clarity; it brings bewilderment, chaos, and failure to see the truth.

If you take your direction from outside of you, this causes you to wonder what others think because you long for approval. If you take your direction from within you are free from wanting others to approve of you and this is the belief at stage three.

This is why Jesus told his disciples to be “in the world but not of it” as he wanted them to be both engaged and detached at the same time.

Detached in the sense that no one could capture their souls, engaged in the sense that they stayed motivated to live a valuable life. This is the difficult to achieve, balancing act, of stage three.

In stage three you discover that you are autonomous and free of social pressures, can be yourself. However there is the risk of fatalism, a feeling that being free is just a form of separation with no hope of influencing others.

Stage three is not about becoming an introvert and introversion is not a spiritual state.

However there is great temptation, especially for those who get the wrong idea about the words going inward and inner silence. Someone who characteristically wants to shrink from the world can use as his

Stage Four:
God The Redeemer (Intuitive Response)

You cannot go beyond silence but have to observe what silence can become, which is wisdom. Wisdom is a point of view applied to any situation. Stage four sees the birth of a wise God.

He does not want to act on his vengeful impulses The qualities of God the Redeemer are all positive understanding, tolerant, forgiving, nonjudgmental, inclusive and accepting. Wisdom softens the loneliness of the inner world.

God changes from all-powerful to all-knowing.

Before you can trust your intuition you need to be able to identify with it. The knower provides a new source of self-esteem founded upon things that cannot be known any other way.

Stage four renders the emptiness of outward life irrelevant as a new journey has begun. The knower within just knows.

In stage four the inner world comes alive and calmness and peace bring functionality. You begin to understand there are no victims; all is well organized, things happen as they should and chance events are guided by a higher wisdom.

You experience happenings when “an invisible hand” must be at work. When you pay attention you will begin to see that events form pattern and hold messages, signs or lessons and that the outer world is trying to be in touch.

You cannot get very far in stage four if there is self-doubt as outside support has lost its comfort and the self is all there is to depend on.

In stage four all moorings are loosed and you are left to get support internally from the self and self-acceptance becomes the way to God.

From the outside somebody in stage four seems to have dropped out. Good and evil are still differ but not as stark as before. Good is clarity of mind, which brings the talent to see the truth.

Evil is blindness or unawareness, which makes the truth impossible to see. The truth becomes a mission from which no one can discourage you. Goodness means staying true to your quest, evil is being drawn away from it.

Sin is an inflexible issue. Because no one was perfect in childhood, we all carry the marks of guilt and humiliation. In stage four right and wrong become less harsh and you desire to be free of both.

The God of stage four, aim is on redemption and sees sinners and saints in the same light, and all actions as the same. By this stage there is enough insight to know that all past actions have a way of coming home to roost. This dynamic appears to be more important than recognizing sin.

The inner mission is all about undoing attachments. This doesn’t happen all at once and each attachment is not equal. You may arrive at deep and intense insights; yet still feel shame and guilt.

This is perfectly normal and is because not all our past actions leave equal tracks. No one outside yourself can forgive you.

Each stage of inner growth has more freedom than the previous and a person in stage four really is free of outside values. Breaking free from sin is a great accomplishment in stage four but the price of salvation is continuous attention.

This is difficult all the time and a voice inside often wants you to be easier on yourself and act the same as everyone else. Yet total self-acceptance has to be met.

Stage Five:
God The Creator (Creative Response)

At this stage intuition becomes so powerful it must break out into the environment. This “super-intuition” organizes events and makes wishes come true.

Events no longer happen “out there” but are directed by one’s own intentions.

Stage five links you to God in a joint venture as co-creators. When you are ready to form this partnership, the God you meet is or has, unlimited creative potential, control over space and time, abundant, open, generous, willing to be known and inspired.

As Gods co-creator, you are required to do more than just live and have casual desires, as most people do. A co-creator takes a certain direction toward his desires.

This doesn’t mean scheming or influencing what you wish for. Those are choices made at the ego level. In stage five, you write your destiny script.

The act of creation boils down to one ingredient, intention. You just intend a thing and it happens. All events take place in the mind field first and then show their outward manifestation.

As far as you are concerned, the intention and the result of it are one; all the steps in-between remain invisible.

Follow your bliss; this in stage five becomes better defined as inspiration. Instead of having intentions that begin with your ego, you feel that you are called to do something highly significant.

Self-indulgence is still intense, but it is no longer narrow and the sense of being outside yourself is often present and, as God takes over, the realization of your desires feels blissful, whereas the fulfillment of ego desires often surprises us by feeling very flat.

In stage five to fall by the wayside becomes an individual threat. This fear may or may not be groundless. It is to be expected that no one in stage five can make all their wishes come true, and pain and failure can happen. Stage five is not a safe harbor.

On the other hand, these impediments are only temporary and nearly everyone who attempts spiritually must become his own guide.

There is more than one way to arrive at any goal, and not all are revered. In stage five, we are guided to increase bliss, love, charity to others, and peaceful existence on the planet.

An inner sense of appropriateness must be developed; you must detract from an inner sense of ego.

If you align with the creator, the path through this period is smooth; if you don’t, there are many ups and downs, and your ability to manifest your desires can run into as many hurdles as it overpowers.

In stage five the imagination is your greatest strength, yet the merging isn’t complete and co-creators will still suffer uncertainty and lack of inspiration. Self-importance can stop progress for a long time.

The God of stage five is more forgiving; no one is ever deprived of the evolutionary impulse. Struggles with pride can last a long time but the way to power is to give up power.

This is the great lesson the ego has to learn in this stage.

One of the dangerous in stage five is the fear of the new power you have to make your wishes come true.

What’s much more hazardous here is solipsism, considering that only your mind is real, while all things out there in the world are illusions that depend upon you, the perceiver, and without you they would disappear.

In stage five the pull is to stay locked in your self. Stage five isn’t really measured by how much you can achieve, yet there is a frequent feeling of being blessed.

Stage Six:
God Of Miracles (Visionary Response)

In stage six you are without hindrance or limitation. The existence of miracles announces the God of stage six, whose qualities are transformative, mystical, enlightened, beyond all causes, existing, healing and magical alchemist.

You discover the source.

Visionary response is marked by the ability to alter energy states outside the body, causing objects and events to be changed. Someone in stage six finds that miracles are as easy as any other mental process.

We have come a great length with the question “Who am I?” First with the physical body in stage one and progressively moving to less physical planes, now you reach your destination at nothing but awareness. “I” am not even the mind, only the light.

You are not even troubled by having no permanent home. It is sufficient to be bathed in the light.

When a miracle worker realizes that he is bathed in light, he is overcome with a feeling of intense love.

This happens because he has absorbed the qualities of spirit contained in the light. In stage six all gods and goddesses are characteristics of oneself expressed as subtle energy states.

In the early stages of spiritual growth, the force field of love is weak and it is easy for us to be thrown off in other directions.

When you reach stage six, it is no longer essential to look for God, in the same way that we don’t have to look for gravity. God is inevitable and faithful. Sometimes you will feel him with ecstasy but frequently there will be anguish, pain and confusion.

This is the body and spirit combining and the body can only recognize spirit through the nervous system.

The nervous system is besieged as the force of God increases and the only option is to adapt, yet this can cause blackouts, tremors, fainting, feelings of intense burning, semi psychotic states and fear.

If God is like a force field in stage six, grace is his magnetic pull. Grace adjusts itself to each person. We make our choices, some good for us, some bad, and then grace forms the results.

When you feel you have been affected by grace, that is your clue that God exists. Grace is the element that saves karma from being callously mechanical. Grace is thus related to free will.

It is so hard to be good that in the end a person has to give up. This is an awareness that appears in stage six.

Being good seems simple at first, when it is just a matter of complying with the rules and keeping out of trouble. It becomes more difficult once the conscience enters in, because our conscience is frequently at odds with desire.

In stage six a person is visionary enough to see that since the body breaks down over time, and even the galaxies are going in the direction of “heat death” when the stars have exhausted their supply of energy, the universe must have a mechanism for renewal.

Death is the escape route it has developed. But the working out of the soul stands to one side, and at some point the dance of good and evil becomes one.

The purposes of your life changes with the dawn of stage six. In place of striving for goodness you aim to escape bondage.. The real escape of stage six is karmic. Karma is endless and ongoing.

Cause and effect never ends; its entanglement is so devastating that you could not end even a fraction of your personal karma.

In stage six the alchemy of turning evil into a blessing is an obscurity that is resolved by longing for liberation.

In stage six little room is left for any kind of misdemeanor, but in the tiny gap that is left, a person could lose the division between holiness and false idealism.

There is no need for words or thoughts on happiness because the moment you begin to say “ I am happy” the virtue is lost.

In stage six the saint may sing about God and even talk about him, but the holy relationship is so clandestine that nothing can break in on it.

As long as suffering holds any attraction, there is some trace of sin, and in that the last tiny separation between God and the devotee take place. The ego keeps hold of sufficient power to say that “I” am providing evidence my holiness to God.

In the next stage there will be nothing left to prove and therefore no ”I” at all. Getting to that point is the last struggle of the saint.

Stage Seven:
God Of Pure Being-“I Am” (Sacred Response)

There is a God who can only be experienced by going beyond experience. The God of stage seven is holistic – he includes everything. To know him, you would have to have a mind to match.

To find God in an empty room is to find the void, with no activity.

This is God and this is the understanding that miracle workers give up all their powers for. In place of the highest ecstasy, one gets emptiness.

The God of stage seven is so intangible that he can be defined by no qualities. In stage seven God is unborn, undying, unchanging, unmoving, unmanifest, immeasurable, invisible, intangible and infinite. The empty void contains the potential for all life and all experience.

The mystery of stage seven is that oblivion can mask infinity. At this stage you need no support not even the mind. In stage seven you no longer project God but everything.

At stage seven you are so free of attachment that when asked who you are, the answer is “I am.” As you go behind the screen and join whoever is there.

This is the source.

The spiritual journey takes you where you began as a soul, a meager point of consciousness, stripped of qualities. This source is your self.

In stage seven there is a swing in the balance and you start to notice the unchanging much more than the changing. Stage seven isn’t a trophy or recompense for making right choices; it is the understanding of what you always have been.

Transcending is going beyond. In spiritual terms this also means growing up. The soul’s journey isn’t a pastime, a pursuit, or a risk. It follows a predestined course toward the instant of waking up.

The shadow of evil will shadow goodness right up to the last moment. Only when it is completely absorbed into unity does the risk of evil end once and for all.

On the individual level, you can’t afford to have the last laugh until stage seven.

Here you realize that it isn’t up to you to balance the scales; if we hand our choices over to God, we are liberated to act as the impulse moves us, knowing its source is divine unity.

Before stage seven the full importance of being your self isn’t known. To be really free, there is no alternative except to be yourself. You are the living center around which every event takes place, yet no event is so valuable that you willingly give yourself up to it.

By being yourself you open the door to what is, the boundless play of cosmic intelligence coming back to know itself again and again. In this way life stays fresh and completes its need to renew itself at every moment.

Many people have had moments of unity, but that isn’t the same as living there permanently. Stage seven brings the greatest form of empathy. The opposite of unity is duality and reality has two versions.

The first where there is only the material world and the second where there is the earthly

You can’t be tempted when you have it all and it can’t be taken away from you. The material world is what you created from your consciousness, so is heaven.

You have every right, therefore, to try to know the mind of God. A journey that begins in mystery and silence ends with your self.

REMEMBER: GOD IS AS WE ARE

A Manual For Saints

There are a wide variety of viewpoints from different religions on how to know God. Yet it does not matter which path you walk as long as you have a vision of the goal and trust that you have the inner resources to get there.

Evolution cannot be stopped and spiritual growth is certain.

God continually notices deeds and nothing goes unheeded. Reality changes at various stages of growth. At some level we all know the highest truth and are doing the best we can at our own level of consciousness.

Suffering is fleeting but enlightenment is forever.

The spiritual journey is ninety nine percent repetition, because we are all accustomed to obeying the ego needs, to hold on to old habits.

We have our ways of doing things and most of them totally reliant on the past. Sheer disinterest would defeat the soul were it not for its magnetic pull.

That is why it is useful to not hinder your own awakening. Your only enemy is lack of attention.

Prayer, meditation, reflection, and yoga hone your attention and make it easier not to miss the dues to spiritual reality. A spiritual person listens well for silent voice and is a keen observer of invisible objects.

If you want to grow in spirit, stop defining yourself, you are not this or that but beyond definition. The only clear path to God is a path of continuous self-awareness.

This is because if you want to take your mask off, you have to be able to see through it first.

Masking The Soul

Our thoughts hide deeper spiritual beliefs, and when we see through them, beliefs can be changed.

Mask = nonbeliever, pessimist, or failed seeker
Attitude = Doubt, opposition, ironical detachment, suspicion.
Coping mechanism = anxiety.
Belief = God cannot be proved; I am alone.

Mask = leader, high flier, or disbeliever
Attitude = Certainty, confidence, self-reliance, in the habit of demanding rational explanations.
Coping mechanism = anger or stubbornness.
Belief = I control my own life, if God demands surrender, my power is greater and I will ignore him.

Mask = thinker or dreamer
Attitude = Reflective, appeasing, calm.
Coping mechanism = depression or resignation.
Belief = I am confused but I will get the message soon. God prefers inward-looking action to outward action.

Mask = idealist or rescuer
Attitude = Self-aware, nonjudgmental.
Coping mechanism = detachment.
Belief = I accept God to the degree that I accept my self and he doesn’t think I am wrong or sinful; forgiveness is real.

Mask = artist, entrepreneur, or explorer
Attitude =Playful, emotionally resilient, highly sensitive.
Coping mechanism = fantasy.
Belief = God has made a fun universe and I God approves of me.

Mask = prophet or rescuer
Attitude = Modest, deeply forgiving and tolerant of others.
Coping mechanism = love.
Belief = There are no miracles until you see that all of life is a miracle; my greatest joy is to be of service to God and he works through me.

Mask = no mask
Attitude = Immersion in bliss, wisdom, and peace, with no personal attitudes – the viewpoint is universal.
Coping mechanism = compassion.
Belief = No personal beliefs; every action and word comes directly from the divine source; a certainty that being human is a blessed state.

Spiritual Awakening

The only thing, which separates a spiritual person from a disbeliever, is clarity. An awakening can be very bewildering if the brain suddenly has to make sense of desires not of this world.

New feelings arise.

Perhaps the most eerie feeling is that of pure awareness: one is awake, alive, but without thoughts, and free from the confines of the body. The important point is that our minds can open to the unexpected surge of light.

The Mind Field

“Light” in scriptures means awareness and Christians look upon Jesus as “the light of the world” because of his state of higher consciousness.

The “way”, means following the light. To clarify this we have to modify our picture of the world from a reality sandwich with three layers into something more dynamic – a flow chart.

Material < > Quantum < > Virtual

Reality is continually flowing from the virtual level to the quantum to the material.

In mystical terms, this steady movement is called “the river of life;’ because to the mystic the whole thing begins in the mind of God before it becomes visible on the surface as an event or object.

But the river is more than a figure of speech and with every thought, memory and desire we take a voyage upriver, from our invisible source to our material destination.

Our minds are a very important tool in the search for God. We trust the mind and listen to it; we follow its drives; we

Inspiration And Insight

It seems that some intelligence unknown to us, knows how and when to transform us and this is often when we least expect it. Inspiration is transforming by its nature and it brings in spirit.

Inspiration is the ideal example of how the unseen level of reality works.

Whatever is needed is provided.

A person may not be ready to accept the insight, and consequently a chance for transformation will be missed.

Insight and inspiration must be wanted and then accepted.

Memory Of Former Lifetimes

The possibility of an afterlife is widely debated in the West, but the existence of a before-life is just as probable.

If you believe only in an afterlife, you are limited to a dualistic view of time. There is only “here” and “after:’

But if life is unbroken, if the soul never stops making its, a totally different worldview opens up.

It is very valid that the terms former life and expanded life are the matching. All of the quantum and virtual levels are open to us continually.

Synchronicity

Science believes events are not controlled by any kind of outside force. A coincidence says otherwise and Carl Jung called this synchronicity and it is like a passing reprieve from chaos.

An example is when two strangers meet and find out unexpectedly that they have the same name or phone number or when someone makes a decision at the eleventh-hour not to board a plane those later crashes.

These communications come from a level of mind that knows life as a whole, and in the end we would have to say that we are really in touch with ourselves and the whole is talking to its parts.

At synchronous moments, you get a glance at just how a linked your life is, how totally woven into the never-ending tapestry of existence.

Contacting God

Our quantum model shows us three is already contacting us from a level of reality beyond the five senses that is the source of our being and that he is sending us messages or signs into the physical world and God is inviting you to notice through “second attention,” the deepest intuitive

The State Of Union

If you look at the soul as a type of force field progressively pulling the mind toward it, each of the seven stages can be portrayed as the closing of separation.

Stage One:
There is a deep sense of fear inside because I am so separated.

Stage Two:
I am gaining a sense of power so don’t feel so separate, there is something larger than me is drawing near and feel much more peaceful.

Stage Three:
I feel much more peaceful and there is something larger than me is drawing near.

Stage Four:
my intuition tells me this larger thing is God.

Stage Five:
My actions and thoughts are drawing on Gods force field, as if we are both concerned in everything.

Stage Six:
I feel no separation as God and I are almost together now.

Here are the horizons that limit our vision in the seven stages:

Stage One:
Horizon of Fear-Bounded by nervousness, insecurity, dependence.

Stage Two:
Horizon of Control-Bounded by guilt, responsibility, persecution.

Stage Three:
Horizon of Fatalism-Bounded by karma, timidity, lack of power.

Stage Four:
Horizon of Self-deception-Bounded by hidden secrets, past habituation, ego needs.

Stage Five:
Horizon of Fantasy-Bounded by self-absorption, ostentation, playing God.

Stage six:
Horizon of Identity -Bounded by thought, personal ego, traces of old habituation.

Stage Seven:
Infinity – No Horizon-Boundless.

The Power Of Intention

The aim of spirituality is to learn to work together with God. Most of us have been brought up to do the opposite. It is important to realize that God doesn’t judge against these things – when people feel that they owe their Success to God, they are right.

When wrongdoing goes without punishment and good deeds are unnoticed, God smiles on both. There is only one reality, which is spiritual, and nothing lies outside God’s mind.

We tap into the source of creativity and intelligence with every thought. You are responsible for setting your own intentions.

Here are the ground rules that have proved effective for me personally and which I feel will work for many people:

Know your intentions.
Set your intentions high.
See yourself in the light.
See everyone else in the light.
Reinforce your intentions every day.
Learn to forgive yourself.
Learn to let go.
Revere what is holy
Allow God to take over.
Embrace the unknown.

Your general outlook should be that the unknown is pending, and mystery that has nothing to do with the “I” you already know. God lives in the unknown, and when you can accept it fully, you will be home free.