2012-07-05-What is a Human Being?
Marin #216
Contents
• 1 Heading
o 1.1 Topic: What is a Human Being?
o 1.2 Group: Marin TeaM
• 2 Facilitators
o 2.1 Teacher: Michael
o 2.2 TR: JL
• 3 Session
o 3.1 Opening
o 3.2 Lesson
3.2.1 Humanity
o 3.3 Dialogue
3.3.1 Psychedelics, Consciousness
3.3.2 Experience, Understanding
3.3.3 Psychedelics
3.3.4 Inner Life, Presence
3.3.5 Drugs
3.3.6 Flexibility, Freedom
3.3.7 Reincarnation, History
3.3.8 Animals
3.3.9 Urantia Book
3.3.10 Sexuality
3.3.11 Free will
o 3.4 Closing
Topic: What is a Human Being?
Group: Marin TeaM
Facilitators
Teacher: Michael
TR: JL
Session
Opening
Dear Michael and Mother Spirit, and dear friends; in her last lesson Mother Spirit mentioned about keeping our beginner’s minds, that, after a million years and how many thousands of worlds of experience we have under our belts, we will still be just beginning. And so it’s good to keep our beginner’s mind and really tune in to this eternal now that will always be with us.
It’s nice to have a group here. We’re celebrating just one month’s shy of the eighth anniversary of this particular group, and it’s good to have some of the original students here tonight. Also, thank you Michael and Mother Spirit for your keeping in mind that I am still a beginner. I really appreciated that, when I first started doing this, you two had to be careful not to simply over-amp me with so much love I couldn’t go on. Tonight we revisit all the times you’ve been welcome to come and give us your lessons, give us your take on Reality from your point of view. We do appreciate it so much. Amen.
MICHAEL: Good evening, this is Michael. Indeed, Mother Spirit and I are so happy to be with you once again in this particular way, always teasing and reminding you that we are with you always. And we will be with you always, even in those times many, many, many millions of years from now when you return from Paradise to visit us.
Lesson
We feel your love. We feel your attention. We feel your wondering and curiosity. From our point of view this is one of the dearest things you were blessed with–just this openness, this wondering about: what is it? What is all this out there?–from the time your little eyes could see it and your little hands could grasp hold of it. And then wondering: what is this in here? What am I? What kind of living being am I? Am I alone in here for the very uniqueness of my being? Or is it true that the two of us, Mother Spirit and I, are actually part of you, part of your mentality, part of your spiritual nature just as human beings? And what is this presence of God himself within you? What are these spiritual presences and what is your own spiritual nature?
Humanity
(What is a human being?)
There’s that wonderful chapter that we love to refer you to in The Urantia Book: Personality Survival. As we’ve teased you with before, this is one of the most comprehensive definitions of what a human being is; and that’s your very core, your unique identity of all beings in existence. You are unchanging, yet, if after all those millions of years from now you are still you but with an unfathomable soul of experience that is also yours–your one and only necessary possession–what exactly are you?
This is the wonderful thing about wondering, about curiosity–this hunger for experience, this hunger for knowing not only who but what you are. There’s no bottom to this, my children. But you have to take my word for it that this is deliberately so. At your very core, at your essence, your unchanging personality is a spiritual being because all the rest of you, all the rest of your body, mind, and soul, are constantly changing. Life is something so similar to spirit that most of you cannot distinguish between what is spirit and what is life. What is it to be alive? What is to be a living, experiencing being whose very essence and core and persistence is created and sustained by God?
And so you are a bit of mystery to yourself in all the dimensions and all the realms that you will encounter. You can be especially thankful to Mother Spirit, and if you want to, think about her parent–the Holy Spirit of the Trinity–for coming up with these dimensions that you enjoy. There’s your basic intuition, your ability to experience. Then there’re all the dimensions of knowledge, your ability to store that experience, all that you can know because you did it, and equally, for your order of being just starting out, all that has happened to you starting with your parents, your family, your friends, your home, and broadening out into the universe. This is your ability to store experience consciously, not only in your rather gigantic souls that you still have a kind-of come-and-go relationship with, but in your conscious self, your self-awareness.
So this is what you are. You’re this nodule of experience, and you’re growing. This is that aspect of your life that, as your Urantia Book says, if you cease growing, if your soul stops growing, if you stop experiencing, your very experiential kind of being would cease. This is what you are out here in time and space on this particular world, in your particular situation. This is almost a command, yet one that you can, and so many terribly stricken folks do, try to limit their experience—a kind of a death right in life–sometimes with some notion they can only hold so much, that their mind and their spirit and their soul will just fold up: no more–especially with an ungodly physical pain, or sorrow, or suffering that goes beyond their conscious ability to take any more. This is a part of some folks’ life.
But far shy of that there is the terrible, terrible affliction called boredom, called “killing time,” called “getting blithered,” or “out of it,” or “spaced,” or however you want to refer to it. It’s settling into the “same old, same old” routine every evening, and so all of a sudden—seemingly–a life has gone by and it’s been so terribly stunted just from this lack of experience. And this is real. This falls on that borderline of “just happening” to folks, but also their accepting it. Sometimes there’s no feeling of choice, no feeling of freedom. It’s “let’s just get through one more dreary, terrible day.”
But this points up at the same time, my children, it points up your freedom. It points up your determination to live, to keep experiencing, knowing that you have an eternity in front of you. And while this might seem like some kind of terrible prison to some–you just have to keep on experiencing–it is for others the greatest glory they can imagine. And even beyond their imagination, they give thanks and credit to God.
You are an infinitely expandable kind of being. True enough, you have a physical being with air all around it and are, in a purely physical sense, extremely limited. Your life here has a time limit: you will all die some day. But you have eternity as a promise if you yourselves choose it, because it is not forced upon anyone.
You do have that ultimate choice, not here on earth because this is still, in a sense, you’re still in the womb of your first physical experience here. But over on the other side, once you’ve had a taste of another illimitable glory, you still have that choice of to be or not to be. This is your freedom. This is the ultimate gift of God’s that puts your own being, your own potentially eternal being, in your own hands once you have a clear choice of what that future can hold–not all the pain and the suffering of this life, but those next few stages to come.
This is the enormous wholeness of what you are. This is that humanly indistinguishable demarcation between spirit and life. They are not exactly the same but if you want to, just think of life being a condition of being a spiritual being. Spirit includes everything.
I hope I’ve deepened the wonder and teased your curiosity, so when in your stillness practice–just being still of everything you can think of being still about, and away from–there’s still this imperishable you. You absolutely are, and it’s your choice to continue to be. Just keep experiencing, my dear ones. Try to be aware of those creeping habits that do limit you. And accept all the responsibility and wonder of being a beginner forever. You’re never going to exhaust God’s creation. You might as well get used to that and enjoy it. Now if you have any questions or comments this evening, let’s do that.
Dialogue
Psychedelics, Consciousness
Student: Well, twice this year I’ve taken strong medicine in the form of LSD after forty years of not having anything like that. And it feels like both times, especially this recent one on the Solstice, were very profound in the sense that I saw parts of myself that were chronically tense, or became tense easily. It was almost like some kind of little bodies, groups of symptoms like that. I was able to release them, and felt clarity and lightness. I could see where any tensions were in my body and release them. It was a wonderful experience, but in the days that followed I felt all those tensions creeping back into my life. So it’s becoming a battle that I feel I’m losing. I wonder if there’s any comments you could make that would help me with that.
MICHAEL: Yes, my son. Well, I salute your courage in going to some rather extreme limits here. They do show you, however–when you’re talking about a drug that is measured in millionths of a gram—micrograms–which can trigger experiences that last, intensely, not only for hours but for days and days later; this is a kind of empirical, scientific, experimental proof, if you will, my son, of the nature of just how delicately your consciousness is balanced on the electrochemical reactions within your body.
Experience, Understanding
Original experience V.S. understanding it
It is good that you reflect a lot on all these experiences because you have not only the knowledge of what you have gained, what you have learned, but you have your understanding as well. That’s where the real work begins. You have your experiences, you have what you’ve known, but then how do you understand that? This is the bigger part of the experience: how do you take it?
In your case it has given you an experience of what you call tension, so think of these as ways of grasping what is happening to you, but then experiencing anew how that grasp in a sense becomes a bit of a cramp. Something persists. You can feel it, as you say, coming back, maybe a lack of flexibility, a certain anxiety, a certain uncertainty.
Now’s the time, my son, to, as much as you can, meditate deeply and think about things; take this full experience into you. Think about it a lot. What were these insights you had? To what degree were they not only initiated and influenced by taking a very powerful chemical into your body, but to what degree then did that itself color the experience? The very enormity of some of these experiences means they provide enough food for thought for quite a while, to get to the bottom of what that experience was and to really use it, to really grow from it.
So I do believe you’ve bitten off quite a lot, and it’s not something you can easily digest. Yet as much as you can, my son, keep it open. Don’t be judgmental against yourself, but really use it. What is this tension creeping back? What does it say about the way you are living your life?
Again, I salute your courage to try your best to open yourself to great experiences. Now you’ve got your work cut out for you just in welcoming all that experience and learning from it. And wondering: what is this kind of cramping coming back? What are the limitations of such an enormous experience, and what limitations do they show of your so-called everyday life? There’re very few people who want to live in a continuous state of LSD-induced consciousness. But there is your understanding, my son. You’ve had that experience: what you can make of it? That is your good work, so carry on. Keep wondering.
Student: Thank you.
MICHAEL: And if you have no other questions, be in my peace.
Psychedelics
Student: There is another sort of question. Somebody said to me that the sense of clarity I had represented a consciousness level that, if we all had that same experience at the same time, we would all be in the same place; and that is the part of us that’s universal. I found myself responding that I thought the sense of clarity was only the ability to see this little room that we’re in. But there is even much more mystery in the world beyond that high level where we could all meet in clarity. We’d only be clear as to this little realm that we were in, and there’s much more out there. I don’t know what prompted me to say that, but it occurred to me. I was just wondering if that’s got some truth, or what?
MICHAEL: My son, you have to keep in mind that with extremely powerful so-called mind-manifesting drugs–psychedelic drugs: the stronger they get and the more effect they have upon you, the less and less can you predict what’s going to happen. This is both their danger and their value. And so in your reviewing this—and it is good you’re thinking about these things–I would suggest you think about the uniqueness of personality and decide–evaluate within yourself: to what degree that clarity is a function, shall we say, of having this enormous mentality released, because some of these powerful drugs are so close to your own body’s reaction to the most extreme kinds of situations. It’s why, after taking these drugs, there’s so much of the byproducts of adrenalin in your system.
Also there’s the fact that, for so many people, the great danger of these drugs is what you call a “bad trip” because there’ve been few other times in their lives when they’ve been in this kind of consciousness without being in some extremely stressful situation such as enormous suffering, or pain, or threat that released so much adrenalin that their minds were suddenly expanded so enormously to handle the threat facing them. By the mind’s very ability to identify and associate experiences, this is what causes so many bad trips. It’s that the only other times in their life they were at this level of consciousness was at times of extreme stress.
And so the clarity you experienced was a very fortunate happenstance, but it is still unavoidably conditioned by how you got there. You could be at that same level of clarity and enormity of experience in a kind of glory simply by realizing your own spiritual nature. That’s why these experiences are so similar in a way to profound religious experiences.
As Mother Spirit and I have taught so many times, it is your ability to experience and understand your own uniqueness and your own infinite spiritual core, and then being able to experience that in everyone you meet, that is what will eventually lead to, shall we say, more peaceful, openly sharing kinds of relationship between peoples.
It is very rare you can live at this level because it is something that is brought about by an extraordinary happening. For those who earn this kind of consciousness through a long and humble study of their own selves in stillness and other religious practices, it’s much more sustainable. That is where you can actually live day-to-day and not just visit. So by no means, my son, do I belittle or overly characterize your experience. It is what it is for you. Yet the way to get a lot of people there is more of a spiritual quest on a day-to-day basis. It is not visiting a mountain top from time to time; it is how you live with your fellows down in the valleys. Does this make sense?
Student: Yes. I went to a group that very night with some people who were involved in personal growth, and even with them I felt like they were kind-of asleep in a sense because I had, I guess, the adrenalin and the consciousness of being very awake. I realized that that’s where I live most of the time, kind-of half-asleep. I felt like I was the only one breathing deeply that night, you know, just calmly, because everyone seemed to control their feelings by breathing shallowly. All of these issues I’ve been dealing with and seeing in the daytime, during the trip, I felt were very beneficial. I see that we’re all in the same boat, kind-of, that people just can’t be that awake day-to-day. They’re not, at least. I don’t know why I said that.
MICHAEL: Again, my son, from my point of view, that’s true. People cannot be awake in that particular kind of way. But hopefully you will someday achieve that exact same kind of consciousness, only it will be a much more stable, much more open experience. It’ll be one in which you are not so liable to project your own inner feelings in an evaluation of others, but actually see that they, at least part of them, maybe not so self-consciously as you were, but all of them does exist at that same state of consciousness. I know this may not make sense to you, but all of them, even that kind of consciousness, is there. That is another marvelous insight in observation.
Student: Yeah. I saw some old people, and saw that they’re still the same as they were when they were young. You know, part of them is the same, but they might be a little more depressed about being old. They’re the same people that they were before, but they aren’t treated that way in society. They don’t let themselves be that same person that they really are, sort-of. I don’t know.
MICHAEL: Well, anything that helps you see the totality of another person, that’s the way to go. It’s very humbling–very exciting and very fulfilling. Be in my peace.
Student: Good evening, Michael. I’m so delighted to be with you again. You know, of course, a book based on these transmissions is out, and you know we want to get the message of this book out as well. I’ll be on a radio show in a few days, and it’s a big show with a lot of people on it. I wondered if you might give some guidance to me about what message would be the priority one to give about this phenomenon, about the book of your transmissions and the transmissions of Mother Spirit. What would you like to see me get across? There’s just so much to talk about. There’s cosmology; there’s spirituality. There’s just so much that’s in this work and these teachings. So just give me some guidance and I’ll take it all to heart, whatever you have.
MICHAEL: My son, there’s always the fatherhood of God and the brotherhood of man. In addition to that I think there’s something that might be new to some of your readers. It’s what Mother Spirit and I have talked about so often, and that is: all that a human being is–the personality, spirit, body, mind, and soul. This is what we’re doing all the time–introducing you to yourselves and encouraging you to see all of these dimensions, all these parts are alive and, moment by moment, are only half decided upon, and half just happening to you. For in this sense, it is all you are as a person–all that you are and all that I was, once upon a time.
Inner Life, Presence
Inner spiritual presences
Yet beyond what I think are the greatest fears within people–being alone, and death, and pain and suffering–these things I touched on this evening–is the nature of Mother Spirit, and myself, and our Father being in them, being a part of their inner life. Again, as your Urantia Book says and I think so many of you can attest, you can have a wonderful, very general sense of our presence within you. And that’s okay. You don’t need to distinguish always: that was Mother Spirit–that thing there, but this other thing–and on and on. And: “Doggone, I can’t tell if that was Michael, or Mother Spirit, or maybe even our Father”–when all of a sudden an idea came through that rang a bell, and touched on everything, and so perfectly satisfied your curiosity at that moment: that had to be from the Father. It probably was.
So all that people are, and the fact that they do have these spiritual presences within them; if they would just be still a bit and kind-of settle down out of their own busyness, they’d discover not only that they still are–they’re still there in all the aspects of them–they might slowly get a sense of our presence, this very, very subtle presence. It’s what I felt myself as a young man, just a presence there keeping me company. In a funny kind of way it gave me myself, that I too had a life to live.
As I mentioned before, this presence was so comforting, so supporting, so powerful and kind that I associated it with Joseph and thought it was more of a fatherly presence than a motherly one. I still had lot to learn. But just that sense of presence, that sense of sharing—of not only having my life, but sharing it–that, of course–as you know–is the deepest truth. That’s sensing the co-author of your souls, your life experience. So all these are true, my son. There’s that within your radio listeners that can ring a bell, a quality of recognition. So kind-of tease them a bit with all that they are. Get them to wondering.
Student: That’s interesting because one of the titles of the book was “All That We Are,” which I thought was a great title. Somehow we moved away from that. But that is the message, one of the key messages. So thank you so much for outlining that.
MICHAEL: And have fun
Student: I will.
MICHAEL: Don’t forget that Mother Spirit and I–as we’ve said–we exist in a realm that to a human being is some kind of pure spontaneity, you know?–so many dimensions inter-playing? It’s a good way to lean in that direction.
Student: Spontaneity?
MICHAEL:Just trust yourself.
Student: Thank you. Thank you. Thank you, Michael.
MICHAEL: And continue to be in my peace, my son.
Student: I shall.
MICHAEL: Are there any other questions or comments this evening?
Drugs
Student: Yes, Michael, just a lot of things kind-of percolating within me, as always. One thing, in response to earlier comments: there are no shortcuts to reality, to truth, to love. They’re already within us. We have a natural proclivity to be all that we are and more, to evolve in a sense. One can take drugs, or psychedelics, or peyote or whatever–and they may serve a purpose–but if one is not stable within one’s self, they can do great harm. We have psychiatric wards to prove that, and I’ve known people in the past whose lives have not ended well because of taking such drugs and other things.
The reality is: you proclaim the truth that is already within us. It’s already here and it’s already a reality. As you and Mother and others have said: all we need to do is be still, and be silent, and rest in that awareness–allow it. That’s what evolution is. I use the word expansiveness because when we allow our minds, our awareness, our consciousness to expand beyond what we are now, in a sense we allow our awareness to expand into the reality that is already the case–as you showed us when you were here upon this planet. Somehow we miss that point; we miss that. We’re seeking something outside ourselves. We’re seeking nirvana when it’s already here, right here and now.
I was driving the other day, a couple weeks ago, to Calistoga. And I was thinking how fortunate I was, how blessed my life was. And it’s just an ordinary life. You know, I do gardening; I’m outside. I have two beautiful grandchildren who live with me, and another one on the way–not my daughter’s. Plus I have the presence, the reality, the understanding of who I am growing to be, more and more. And I’m seeing that within other people, as you mentioned, that totality. I’m not getting stuck on the subjective viewpoint of how I see them, but I’m seeing the totality of who they really are.
So I felt so much gratitude. Then, as I was going through that feeling and experiencing that gratitude, I also contemplated the Law of Impermanence, of how things like: an hour from now I will not be in this chair any more. I’ll be somewhere else. Another year from now this place, this meeting group will not exist here. It will be somewhere else. There’s nothing to hold on to, but only life and love to expand into and become. So that’s what I’ve kind-of been feeling and experiencing and opening up to. So that’s my spiel.
MICHAEL: Yes, my son. I do have to echo what you say about some of the most powerful drugs that mankind has yet come across, measured in millionths of a gram, which, as a pure white crystal, would hardly visible on a piece of blued steel. That is the biochemical essence of your consciousness, that you can take something physical into the physical part of your being and it triggers a profoundly different experience that can not only last for hours and hours and hours, but actually be felt for days and days afterwards.
When you head off into such an experience, you are literally stepping off the world. And there are those who are not capable of handling such an experience. It has truly destroyed a lot of lives as well as been a blessing to others who were capable of it. But who can determine such a thing once you step off in that way.
Flexibility, Freedom
Giving up flexibility
I would say the greatest danger is in giving up the ability of flexibility. In other words, you are on your way come hell or high water, come glory or terror. This is the danger. You are on your way into a realm that is characterized by profound difference. Some can use that and some can be destroyed by it.
So definitely, as the very suffering and pain you go through gives meaning to your life, and you have to trust that God set human life up this way with these dangers of suffering that are so real for so many folks; you really have to appreciate this freedom you have–to make such choices, that such choices are available now in your cornucopia of pharmacology. Hundreds of new synthetic drugs are coming on line all the time. This is an enormous, enormous freedom that most of mankind, stuck with only a little wine–some fermented grapes, you know, that was about the wildest thing they had–a little alcohol, or for those in their cups, maybe too much alcohol—a freedom they didn’t have.
So this is another great, expanding freedom that you folks and your children have in front of you now as real choices to make. I encourage everybody to be as honest as you can be about all your experiences, whatever they are. Be true to your experience. Say what things are, and have been for you. This inner self-honesty is your greatest gift to each other, to grasp and relate as best you can the wholeness of an experience. Keep that somewhat distinct from your understanding of it. There’s the pure experience, and then there’s your understanding of it.
Do your best to share this wholeness with each other. It’s your greatest gift to each other. It’s why you don’t have to experience everything on your own. You’ve got a whole world’s literature out there to bring inside. And as you’ve found out, my son, you can touch on these peek experiences just driving to Calistoga, and be overwhelmed with gratitude that our Father has made you the way he did, capable of so much. And keep finding my peace.
Student: Thank you.
MICHAEL: I have a feeling there’s still a few questions out there. My daughter . . .
Reincarnation, History
Student: I have several. I don’t know which one to begin with. Thank you. I don’t know a lot about the Urantia cosmology, but I had some exposure to it through B. and a few others. One of the things I’m wondering about is the concept of reincarnation. I’m actually interested a lot in when you leave the form–whether you’re an animal or a human. My Urantia understanding was that you don’t reincarnate back here on earth. But I find that to be challenging to embrace because then we’d be left with a lot of one-time people here on the planet without a lot of guidance of experience and wisdom that comes through walking the path as an earth human. So I’d like an understanding of that if possible.
Virgin personalities and souls
MICHAEL: Yes, my dear, you just perfectly described the reason for what you call human history. You perfectly described why there is so much pain and suffering, why there is the necessity for the evolution of culture and civilization. The Urantia Book does have a wonderful recapitulation of human history, right from the very first human beings, that gives you an enormous appreciation of all the little steps it took from these first human beings who were themselves just one little step, one little self-conscious step above their immediate primate ancestors. And that was a million years ago. For almost 500,000 years before the advent of a celestial being coming here to this world to help speed things up and get things moving along, you just described exactly the case of beings who are with no previous experience whatsoever–starting out from scratch, as you say.
People are totally brand new souls, brand new personalities. God in all his omniscience, all his omnipresence, creates a personality that perfectly fits that meeting of a human egg and sperm, a unique conception like no other. I don’t care if you have thirty brothers and sisters who look very much like you, you’re all physically somewhat unique. So when an egg and sperm meet, and a unique living being is created there, there is a perfectly unique personality to fit.
It doesn’t come from anywhere else. God is omnipresent and omniscient.–all knowing, all experiencing. Everything you experience, and everything every personal being in all of creation experiences, is part of God’s experience. There’s no limit whatsoever to his creativity and this is the finest example of it.
At the same time, my dear, you are this unique personality most intimately associated with a living physical being, and then, as you know, you get a mind. All you have to do is wiggle your fingers to realize the intimacy that you have with this physical part of you. And this is unique. It doesn’t come from anywhere else. It has no previous existence because that previous existence would not fit in, if you will–as one way of looking at it, with this unique body and mind you have. And so you start out as this squalling, bloody little bundle of life and slowly learn how to see. Then you have little hands out there to play with things. Slowly, slowly you get some language and ideas start to happen. This is all in your soul. You can visit this in deep mediation to re-experience what that was–what that was when the door knobs were way up there and you were just so excited to be standing up.
Also in this body of yours you have inherited a recapitulation of the human race. In that sense, reincarnation is so totally, totally true. You are associated with this human body of yours that started out as one cell and recapitulated the whole evolution of life as an embryo. And then from the moment you were born until you got a certain amount of self-consciousness and maturity, you recapitulated the evolution of culture and civilization. There is so much about reincarnation as it’s traditionally known that has truth in it. It was their way of expressing all that I’m talking to you about now. You are in one way totally unique, you had no previous existence, and yet you are so very closely associated with something that recapitulates the whole evolution of life. Does that make sense?
Student: Yes.
MICHAEL: So you had no previous existence, my dear. God created your personality out of his all-powerful, all-knowing, all-present being. As
Mother Spirit has said, this is why every little baby has to be civilized and, at a certain point, you resist this. It’s like Tom Sawyer and Huck Finn: you resist this being civilized. And as you look around the world you can see almost all stages of civilization, and the lack of it. You still have—relatively speaking–almost near Stone Age folks on the earth.
Animals
Student: So when animals leave their form, where do they go, the animal beings?
MICHAEL: They don’t go anywhere, my dear. They do not have true personalities. They do not have souls. There is no persistence. It’s like blowing out a flame. If you have a candle burning, when that particular flame for that particular time and space goes out, when the conditions for that cease, just like when an animal dies, there’s nothing persisting. They persist in your memory, of course, but there is no personality there. There is no soul there.
Student: I used to believe that. But I don’t any more.
MICHAEL: What are your notions about their afterlife?
Student: Well, I don’t really have an experience of what their afterlife is. This friend of mine’s dog died the other day, and I was kind of curious about it. My dog’s pretty old. So I’m kind of dealing with that.
But the individuation of a soul and the mental unit, I believe, begins in the animal experience–from my understanding, which is limited. But I believe that there’s an astral component and there’s the mental facility that one can do. I can understand that the material of the being, whether it’s a human, or an insect, or a dog or a cat–whatever, that it dissolves and the material goes back to where it came from on the levels that I can’t really talk about a whole lot, like physics. But I believe that there is something begun and it doesn’t just scatter or go back.
MICHAEL: Well, my dear, just keep an open mind. You might find it interesting to read The Urantia Book because it goes into this in enormous great detail. That’s why Mother Spirit and I have taught on this so much; it’s so much a part of our lessons. We hope that our listeners and readers are not getting bored with this constant emphasis on what personality is, what spirit is, what soul is, and why it is unique in its continuing.
Even the most intelligent of your primates do not have the same self-awareness as a human being. We’ve used the example of people who train the primates, the great apes, to respond to over three hundred word and body-language kind of signals, right? I mean, they can respond when you initiate that. But no animal has that initiation. No animal has that creativity, that creative spirit, because you can take two highly trained primates that respond to so much, so many verbal things and hand signals and all of that–they do have that enormous intelligence–but when they are by themselves they don’t start signaling and talking.
(Animals and humans)
An animal is purely reactive. There is nothing in an animal’s mental reality that can initiate anything. They have learned responses and, obviously, in the most highly trained animals, it’s fantastic what they can learn and respond to. But that’s it. They do not have creative spirit in the sense that even the most primitive human being has. It’s a big dividing line.
Student: I agree. I agree. I think it’s interesting that primates now are being able to use their iPads and different things, and their cognitive abilities are growing beyond what science saw. There is an experience that happens on earth where sometimes your animals friends are not with you, but you can feel them. And people report–I haven’t had an animal die so I’m not referring to my personal experience here—well, current present experience–but they experience visitations and sensing of the animal. What is that then? Is that just a shell of a thought-form rattling around in some human’s mind?
MICHAEL: Well, yes and no. I mean yes in the sense these are truly spiritual, deeply emotional experiences for them, right?
Student: Right.
MICHAEL: Yes, but its origin is in their own creativity. There is no telepathy that an animal can produce that can send out any kind of experience like that.
People are co-creative. As you sit here right now you are co-creating your reality as well what is real all around you. They’re not figments of your imagination, all these folks. But animals do not have that. Animals are totally, totally reactive. As you say, they can learn to play around with an iPad or watch a fellow chimpanzee on television. They can respond to things like that. But as to a response of their own initiation–immediately, devoid of the stimuli–they immediately fall back into their own nature.
Just keep an open mind about all this. Keep exploring. Keeping wondering within yourself. Try some experiment. See if you can have these experiences yourself. It’s like what I said earlier: you have an experience, and then you have to stay open to understand it.
Student: Well, I do have experiences with my dog when I’m not with her, of her feeling the presence of my . . . wherever I’m at; and that’s distinct. I have that with people, and I have it with people in and out of bodies. So I’m kind of curious.
There seems to be a lot of death happening on our planet right now. I mean, it’s happening all the time but there seems to be more waves of it in the world, where I’m at from my vantage point. And so I’m curious to know when people leave the body, what your interpretation of the ascension process is in, say, like the first year. Being that there is no time and space, and each individual has their own consciousness, and when some people die they’re very aware and they can communicate, and then other times people are more asleep. Or they go out on some of the drugs that take a lot of people out of their body because they’re in such pain. Is there a pathway that’s clear, or is it individual and each one is different?
MICHAEL: Yes, my daughter. Here again I can only recommend The Urantia Book because it goes into hundreds of pages of very small print delineating the next several phases of your human life. It’s a combination. There is a generality of the mansion worlds that you will reawaken on, and you have a nearly physical body as you know it now. You will be on a physical world, not any kind of purely mental or spiritual kind of world as some people visualize Paradise. You will continue your life there only as a much more glorious kind of being in all aspects of you–personality, body, mind, spirit, and soul. All of this will be more complete to you. You’ll be a more spiritually sensitive kind of being.
So that is the general thing, right? That is the generality. But then it’s also how you react to that reality, how you take that reality, how quickly you learn it, how quickly you encompass that reality because there are endless, endless stages to go in which you keep getting more and more spiritual–hundreds of them on hundreds of ever more progressive worlds. This is there to be studied in the book, right down to the kind of houses you’ll be in, and the dew point that happens during the night time. It’s so enormous that’s about all I can say about it this evening, my daughter, and it will fill many blanks in your mind as to what the next stage is.
Urantia Book
Student: The only material that you’re referring to here is the Urantia material. Is that the only material that you’re aligned with–you believe is the truth on this planet?
The Urantia book
MICHAEL: No. Every so-called religion that has evolved on your planet has all kinds of, grains of, truth in it. I’m just saying, before The Urantia Book there was nothing so comprehensive–on orders and orders of magnitude. That is why it’s quite a challenge to read through the enormity that exists between the covers of that book. It’s hard to give you some feeling of this because it’s something you have to earn yourself–such an enormity of thousands of new concepts–that do all tie together though. The one thing you can say about The Urantia Book is: it is comprehensive and cohesive within itself. Some people take years and years to finish it. It is enormous in there.
Student: Thank you.
MICHAEL: Certainly. It is interesting because you have to keep in mind, my daughter, that for a million years you’ve had human beings with a presence of God within them. This presence is doing the best it can to present ever greater enlightened ideas and comprehensions and understandings. So all through human history there has been this presence of God trying to help each individual understand more and more. But it is only recently with The Urantia Book, with such an enormity of detail all tied together, all perfectly comprehensive and coherent and consistent, that the human race is now, as we say, in a fifth stage of revelation.
Student: Are you familiar with the materials that Helena Blavatsky brought through theosophy and the ancient wisdom that was revealed from India and Tibet? What’s your take on that?
MICHAEL: What I just said.
Student: They’ve got a chunk of reality, a chuck of truth, but that the Urantia material has it all?
MICHAEL: Nothing has it all. Nothing that can be put in print has it all. Inside you is where it all is. And it’s by being open within yourself and taking in all these things, right? Let them sort themselves out. Wonder about them. That’s where it has its real existence.
Student: True. That’s kind-of what I’ve been doing my whole life, and that’s probably what everyone in this room has been doing their whole life, because that’s why we’re all in this room–because we’re seekers.
MICHAEL: Truth is God’s alone. As soon as it finds expression it’s limited. Right now I’m talking in English and using this transmitter/receiver’s background to express things, so every expression is limited by the language, by the time, and by the comprehension of not only the person who is expressing, but also who is reading or understanding it. Everything is time-and-space limited that has expression. The theosophists were doing the best they could to express what their deepest truth was. There’s a lot of sincerity there.
Student: Well, I have one last question. Thanks for allowing me the space. I’m working on a project that is about human sexuality and the reason for homosexuals and heterosexuals, and the differences. I was wondering if you had a cosmic perspective on that.
Sexuality
Human sexuality
Michael: Well of course; yes, my daughter. Human sexuality is—again you seem to be getting at things tonight with which there’s the enormous blending of a total generality–that people come in two separate sexes–and then, equally unfathomable, have their own individuality. It is part personality, part physical body, and part mind; and when I say mind I’m calling your attention to a million years of civilization and culture. Every different culture in the world, every nation-state, every organization of people in the world sees these things somewhat differently.
It’s how every man and every woman discovers their own sexuality and how it relates to all the people around them. So it’s something that is a general condition–with few exceptions people are sexual beings–and at the same time it’s just so unique. It’s what you yourself and each person makes of it. This is partly a discovery, and not only of your own sexuality but also: what are all these kinds of sexually beautifully people? So it’s partly a discovery, and it’s partly your own creative spirit–what do you make of yourself and all these others? I hope that satisfies, in a few sentences this—again–really unfathomable part of human existence, human sexuality.
Student: Well, I think here we’ve got ideas as whether it’s genetic, environmental, or some brain hemisphere dominance. There’re a lot of different factors. Some would even say, as a spiritual path, that it is corrective in adjusting karma. There are not as many theories as there are expressions of sexuality. But are there any dominating factors that make a person gay–a homosexual, or straight?
MICHAEL: Again, my daughter, as you just said, it is all of the above. It is all of the above. It is the personality; it is the body; it is the mind. It is how people are raised. There could be a person raised in a culture very accepting of sexual variety, or by contrast, one raised in a culture with obscenely cruel consequences of being discovered. It runs the entire, full gambit. That’s why the culture is: what is a man’s role?–what is a woman’s role?–what is a homosexual’s role? Keep in mind you still have men and women of courage right within all of that negativity to make up their own minds; and at the same time you have millions of lives that are severely warped because of cruelty. It’s an enormously cultural thing the way the races of the world relate to human sexuality. What you call hetero- and homosexual are just naturally occurring options. But it is getting late, my dear, we probably should wrap it up soon. Is there somebody else who has some questions–possibly?
Student: I would like to ask about situations such as the people of North Korea. Why would God want to experience that on such a massive scale? The people there can’t change it, and it’s such a strange experience it’s actually demoralizing to me to watch that going on. Can you say anything about the goodness of why God would have so many people suffering, malnourished, living under a system of hate all their lives?
MICHAEL: Where such a small group of people have such enormous power over all their countrymen? Think about the Roman empire putting to death over 5000 people in a certain small town when they revolted; which is also what your Christians did on one of their Crusades, taking several days to kill them all. So what you see persisting on the earth is the general trend–excuse me–that was the general pattern up until very recent times. Empires were created by the sword, and people who were inconvenient, or even a slight nuisance, were put to the sword. Think of how long it’s taken–from Andon and Fonta, the first two human beings a million years ago—and get some feeling of the enormity of how things progress step by step.
If they get too far ahead of themselves they just regress. Get some sense of the recent growth of democracies with fairly honest elections–which still don’t exist in a lot of places in the world. As one of your great dictators said, it’s who counts the votes. Think of all the ways devoted to cruelty to intimidate people–one called crucifixion—to prolong the agony of people dying to where, in the Middle Ages, you had experts in this, my son. This should give you some feeling what the human race has come through in its seemingly slow evolution toward representative democracy. This is the price paid for that–for God to endow people with free will.
Free will
The Urantia Book puts it in one sentence: “The endowing of an immature, imperfect being with even a relative free will leads inevitably to tragedy.” That’s the price, if you will, of free will—individuality–if you are capable of seeing it. There it is. Some people are born into it. On the other hand, think of the most unbelievably obscene dictators and realize how they themselves were the most perverted and tortured people who ever lived. Think of the fear the Roman emperors lived in. Keep wondering about this thing call free will. Keep wondering about God endowing people with this kind of choice to do these things, while others are giving their lives for another, of which there are millions and millions and millions.
I don’t know if that’s sufficient answer, something to think about as you look around the world. Only by having a real true sense of what the human race has come through can you even begin to appreciate the enormous freedom that people are now willing to grant each other, and yet still be only the beginning. And be in my peace.
Closing
Michael’s and Mother Spirit’s faith
Dear folks, thank you. I thank you for your pure sincerity, of being, in a way, so naked in these sessions, of opening your hearts and bringing forth what you really want to know, want to share. It is very humbling for Mother Spirit and me, and so we remind you and tease you that humility is just the awareness of something enormous, something beyond even our comprehension of the Infinite Spirit–for we do grant the Trinity and joyfully acknowledge how they are even so far beyond us. God is truly incomprehensible, yet understanding and loving with a wisdom that surpasses all of us. This is why we too are required to have faith, to carry on for all of you. So thank you, my dears, for your freedom, for your choices. Thank you for when you give to us, and thank you, Father, for endowing them with such freedom. Now be in my peace. Good evening.
