Discourse
5. The true key to salvation
Jesus: Beloved hearts, in the previous discourses I have laid
a solid foundation, and we must now begin to build upon that foundation.
Therefore, let us consider the question: “What does it take to
be saved?”
If you accept that life has a spiritual side, then you probably also
realize that there is a difference between this world and the spiritual
world. People from every religion share an almost universal belief that
there is a difference between the spiritual world and the material world.
They also share the belief that earth is not the permanent home for
human beings. The goal of life is to ascend beyond planet earth and
enter into the spiritual world. Most people also realize that before
you can enter the spiritual world, you must fulfill certain requirements.
Take a look at planet earth as you see it today. I think everyone would
agree that the atrocities happening on this planet simply could not
be tolerated in the spiritual world. Most people realize that the beings
who inhabit the spiritual world do not treat each other the way human
beings treat each other.
I have tried to make you understand that there is no fundamental difference
between the heaven world and planet earth. The only difference is a
difference in vibration. Therefore, you do have the capacity to ascend
to the spiritual world. However, before you can enter into our Father’s
kingdom, you must meet certain requirements.
The key requirement is that you must rise above the lower consciousness
of the carnal mind. The atrocities you see taking place on planet earth,
and many other actions that people do not necessarily consider to be
wrong, are the results of the lower state of consciousness.
Flesh and blood, the flesh and blood of the lower consciousness, simply
cannot inherit the kingdom. Therefore, the only way that you could possibly
ascend into our Father’s kingdom is by leaving behind the lower
state of consciousness or the carnal mind.
Let me make it clear that there is absolutely no possibility of a compromise.
The vibrations of the carnal mind can never cross the threshold and
enter in through the straight and narrow gate that leads to our Father’s
kingdom. Even if these vibrations are disguised as what one might call
human goodness, they still cannot enter into our Father’s kingdom.
You cannot enter into the kingdom by becoming a good human being. In
the eyes of God, there is no such thing as a good or perfect human being.
You can enter into the kingdom only by overcoming the sense of identity
which causes you to believe that you are a mortal human being who is
separated from God. You can enter into the kingdom only by putting off
the old human of mortality and putting on the new human, the spiritual
being, the spiritual sense of identity. You can enter in only by putting
on the Christ consciousness and by fully uniting with that Christ consciousness
so that you see yourself as a spiritual being. Your sense of identity
must be built upon the rock of Christ instead of the shifting sands
of the lower consciousness.
It is absolutely vital that you come to a conscious, inner realization
of the truth behind these ideas. You must realize and accept that you
cannot put the round peg of the carnal mind into the square hole that
leads to the City Foursquare.
The goal of life
When you come to an inner realization of this essential truth, you can
quickly develop an entirely new perspective on life as a human being.
You now see that the very goal of life is your salvation, your ascension
into the spiritual world. You also see that the key to realizing this
goal is that you must go through a gradual process, which I have called
the spiritual path. You must gradually put off the lower consciousness
and put on the new human, the Christ consciousness.
For centuries, nay for thousands upon thousands of years, human beings
have believed that salvation is an outer process over which they have
no control.
I am telling you that this is not so.
Salvation is not a matter of passively waiting for an outer savior who
will suddenly arrive and do the work for you.
I stated earlier that you do indeed need an outer savior. However, that
outer savior serves only as the open door through which God can pass
on to you a morsel of the universal Christ consciousness. This morsel
then acts as a leaven to raise the whole loaf of your consciousness.
The passing on of the living word, the bread of life, is only one side
of the coin. The other side of the coin is that you have free will and
that the law of free will is the ultimate law of the material universe.
You know my parable about the sower whose seeds fall on barren ground.
A savior can appear and give you a morsel of the Christ consciousness.
Yet, if you do not make the free-will choice to accept that Christ consciousness,
your salvation simply cannot happen.
I can offer you the bread of life, but I cannot force you to accept
that bread of life. I can lead you to the living waters, but I cannot
make you drink. I can impart to you my Christ consciousness, as I am
doing in the lines of these teachings, but I cannot force you to allow
that Christ consciousness to raise your consciousness to a higher level.
The raising of your consciousness can only take place if you make the
decision to let it happen. In fact, you need to make many decisions.
You need to make daily decisions to put off the old human and put on
the new, spiritual “human.”
The lower consciousness has a very deep belief that there is an easy
way out, that there is some kind of quick fix or a form of automatic
salvation. This belief has given rise to the idea that I am the only
son of God and that by simply believing on me and declaring that I am
your Lord and Savior, you will automatically be saved.
I am Jesus Christ, and I am telling you that there is no such thing
as an automatic salvation.
Salvation is offered to every human being as a gift from God. Yet, the
key to salvation is not the offering of the gift, because it truly rains
upon the just and the unjust.
The key to salvation is the acceptance of the gift.
Without that acceptance, God cannot save you. God must simply wait until
you make a decision to accept his grace.
The path to salvation
Salvation is a process, not an instantaneous miracle.
The process of salvation has several stages.
I earlier stated that the Law of Moses was given to people in a very
low and immature state of consciousness. These people needed a set of
rules that could not easily be misinterpreted. They also needed an incentive
to follow those rules, and because of their state of consciousness,
the only practical incentive was the fear of punishment.
God is not an angry God. In reality, God does not punish human beings;
human beings punish themselves, as I will explain elsewhere. Yet, at
a certain level of consciousness the fear of punishment is the only
way to make people abstain from self-destructive actions. Therefore,
the Law of Moses was focused on changing people’s actions; their
outer behavior.
When the time came for my Galilean mission, things had changed. Humankind
had ascended to a higher level of consciousness. Therefore, I was able
to give forth a higher law, namely the Sermon on the Mount and some
of my other teachings. This law was still focused on getting people
to abstain from self-destructive actions, but it went one step further.
My new law identified the source of self-destructive actions as a state
of consciousness. One might say that whereas the law of Moses was focused
on changing people’s outer behavior, my teachings were focused
on changing people’s inner behavior.
My teachings were aimed at helping people realize that the most effective
key to changing outer behavior is to change the state of consciousness
that is the cause of that behavior. My teachings were adapted to the
level of consciousness that people had 2,000 years ago. Therefore, I
described a direct relationship between an outer act and a particular
state of consciousness. In other words, I stated that it was wrong to
sleep with another man’s wife. Yet, to avoid committing that act,
one had to escape the inner desire for the other man’s wife.
For the past 2,000 years, many devout Christians have made great spiritual
progress by contemplating and absorbing my teachings, even the fragmented
and incomplete teachings found in the scriptures.
Because of this progress, the consciousness of humankind has now risen
to a new level. At this new level, you must attain at deeper understanding
of the relationship between outer actions and your state of consciousness.
It is not enough to say that killing is wrong, and that to avoid killing
you must overcome the desire to kill. You must realize that the desire
to kill is only one small facet of a larger whole, a larger state of
consciousness. That state of consciousness is what I have called the
lower consciousness or the carnal mind. In other words, the desire to
kill is simply the effect, and the underlying cause is the carnal mind;
the lower consciousness.
It is simply not enough to overcome the desire to kill, the desire for
fornication, the desire to steal, the desire for mammon and an almost
unlimited number of other behaviors or attitudes. Overcoming such imperfect
actions and beliefs is a step in the right direction, but it is only
a step. To go all the way, you must go to the root of the problem which
is the lower consciousness itself. You must rise above the very consciousness
that causes you to commit acts, think thoughts and feel feelings that
are impure, meaning that they are not the acceptable offering.
In the Garden of Eden
To begin the process of overcoming the lower consciousness, you must
come to a conscious realization of what this lower consciousness is
and how it affects you. To explain the lower consciousness, let us take
a mental journey back to the Garden of Eden.
I desire you to understand that the Biblical account of the Garden of
Eden is based on a very old oral tradition. This tradition was handed
down from generation to generation for so many thousands of years that
most people, be they followers of orthodox Christianity or the religion
called scientific materialism, would scarcely be able to accept the
true time frame. Because of this long process, some of the original
meaning has been lost. I will later give you a more detailed account
of what truly happened in the Garden of Eden. However, for now I desire
to focus on the fact that the cause of the fall of human beings was
that they partook of the forbidden fruit.
The forbidden fruit is said to be the fruit of the knowledge of good
and evil. In reality, it was the fruit of the knowledge of relative
good and evil. The concept of a fruit is simply an illustration of a
deeper reality. That deeper reality is a state of consciousness. Human
beings fell into a lower state of consciousness, a state of consciousness
that was dominated by the concepts of relative good and evil.
I have told you that everything in God’s creation is created from
God’s light, and that the only difference between different levels
of creation is a difference in vibration. In the higher realms of the
spiritual world, everything is made from light of a very high vibration.
Therefore, the beings living in one of the spiritual realms, even the
lower spiritual realm, find it easy to see that everything is an expression
of a deeper reality, namely God. When you are in the spiritual realm,
you directly perceive that everything is made from God’s light.
Therefore, you realize that there is something beyond the realm in which
you live; there is a deeper reality. You cannot fail to see that your
world is not an isolated world, but simply one part of a larger continuum
of vibrations.
Because you clearly see that everything in your world is the expression
of the deeper reality, you could never fall pray to an illusion that
makes you think you are separated from the rest of God’s creation
or separated from God himself. You know that you, like everything and
everyone around you, is simply an expression of the deeper reality of
God. You know and accept that you are a son or daughter of God, and
you could never lose this sense of identity.
When you are in the spiritual world, you have an absolute guiding rod
which clearly tells you what is constructive and destructive behavior.
It is easy for you to see what is of God (what is in accordance with
God’s law and vision) and what is not of God (what is outside
of God’s law and vision). Therefore, you clearly see what is in
your own best interest, what is enlightened self interest. Obviously,
if you know that a particular act is harmful to yourself, you will naturally
choose not to commit such an act.
The cosmic schoolroom
The material universe is made from energy of a lower vibration than
the energies in the spiritual realm. In fact, the energies of the material
realm are so much denser that it is not immediately obvious that the
things of this world are a manifestation of a deeper reality. It is
not immediately obvious that this world in simply one pocket in a continuum
of vibrations.
When the soul desires to descend into the material world, it is necessary
that the soul go through a process of preparation and learning.
The soul must learn how to operate a physical body and how to perceive
the material world through the senses of that body. The physical senses
are not able to perceive the higher vibrations of the spiritual realm;
they can only perceive the vibrations of the material universe. Therefore,
when the soul descends into the physical body, the soul no longer has
the direct perception that the energies around it are simply an expression
of a deeper reality. The soul cannot see that there are spiritual realms
beyond the material universe.
To further complicate matters, the physical body is a very complex creation.
If a soul had to make conscious decisions to maintain the vital functions
of the physical body, such as breathing and the beating of the heart,
the soul would quickly be overwhelmed. It would have no attention left
over to actually do something with the physical body or even enjoy life
in the material world. Obviously, this would defeat the very purpose
for the soul’s descent into the material world.
Therefore, the human body was originally designed with a mind of its
own. We might compare this mind to a computer and say that this carnal
mind is simply a computer that runs the physical body.
The physical body is created from the energies of the material universe.
That is why the physical senses cannot see beyond those energies. Likewise,
the body computer is created from the energies of the material world.
Therefore, the body computer cannot fathom the concept of spiritual
worlds or a deeper spiritual reality. The carnal mind simply cannot
fathom the idea of God and God’s law. Therefore, to the carnal
mind there is no such thing as an absolute truth. There is no such thing
as an absolute law. In other words, the carnal mind itself has no concept
of absolute right and wrong; it has no concept of enlightened self interest.
It sees only its immediate self-interest, and it defines this self-interest
based on a relative standard.
The carnal mind is a state of consciousness that is dominated by relativity
and separation. The carnal mind does not see itself as an extension
of a deeper spiritual reality. Although it is created from God’s
energy, it does not see itself as a son or daughter of God (and it is
not a true son or daughter; as is the soul). The carnal mind cannot
make the distinction between ideas that are of God and ideas that are
not of God. It cannot fathom that something could be outside of God’s
law and God’s vision, because it cannot fathom God’s law
and vision.
To the carnal mind, everything is relative. Good is a concept that only
has meaning as the opposite of evil. Right only has meaning as the opposite
of wrong. In reality, God is good. The goodness of God has no opposite.
Evil, as it is perceived by human beings, has no ultimate reality. Evil
is not the opposite of God. Evil is simply the opposite of relative
good, a concept of good that exists only in the material world.
The fall
The Garden of Eden was a cosmic schoolroom. It was designed to teach
your soul how to operate the physical body without losing your sense
of identity as a spiritual being. As all schools, the Garden of Eden
had graded lessons. The younger students took the easy lessons, and
only the graduate students, those who were almost ready to descend into
the material world, were allowed to take the most difficult lessons.
The most difficult lesson of all was to learn how to operate the body
computer without losing your sense of identity as a spiritual being.
Therefore, to the younger students this lesson was forbidden. The reason
being, that if an unprepared student were to partake of this lesson,
the student would almost certainly be overwhelmed by the density of
the physical body and the relativity of the carnal mind. In other words,
an unprepared student would almost certainly lose its sense of identity
as a spiritual being.
This is exactly what happened. A group of students decided to partake
of the forbidden fruit before they were ready to deal with this initiation.
Thereby, they fell into the lower state of consciousness in which their
souls began to identify themselves with the physical body and the carnal
mind. Instead of seeing themselves as sons and daughters of God, they
saw themselves as mortal beings who were separated from God.
In reality, the students who had fallen into this lower state of consciousness
were not forcefully cast out of the Garden of Eden. The Garden of Eden
existed in the spiritual realm that is right above the material world.
In fact, this realm is almost congruent with the material world. Therefore,
when the students fell into the lower state of consciousness, they could
no longer see the Garden of Eden; they could see only the material world.
In the beginning, most souls still had some memory of their spiritual
origin. Yet, over time this memory was gradually lost. Therefore, you
now have a situation on planet earth in which billions of people have
lost the conscious memory of their spiritual origin and their true identity
as sons and daughters of God. Instead of seeing themselves as immortal
spiritual beings, they identify themselves as mortal human beings.
You must understand that you are not here on earth because God decided
to punish you for your sins. You were never forced to come here. Got
did not create you as a sinner, and God did not send you here as an
act of punishment.
You are here because you made two choices. The first choice was to partake
of the forbidden fruit, to experiment with the lower consciousness of
relativity and separation. The second choice was to hide from your spiritual
teacher.
You might recall from the Bible that after Adam and Eve (who represent
the masculine and feminine aspects of every soul; not man and woman)
had partaken of the forbidden fruit, they hid from God. The God of the
Garden was actually a spiritual teacher, a representative of God. There
were many souls in the garden of Eden who partook of the forbidden fruit.
Some of them went back to the teacher, confessed their mistake and asked
for forgiveness. They received that forgiveness, and they received further
training in how to overcome the relativity of the carnal mind.
Now consider what happened to those who did not go back and ask for
forgiveness. God has given everyone free will. If you decide to hide
from your spiritual teacher, the teacher cannot confront you without
violating your free will. God does not violate his own laws. If you
decide to turn your back upon the teacher and decide that you either
do not want to go back to God or that you are not worthy to go back
to God, then the teacher can only wait until you make a better decision.
The essential point that I am trying to communicate here is that you
are here because you made the decision to turn away from God, or rather
your spiritual teacher. The only way that you could possibly be saved
is by undoing that original decision. How do you undo a bad decision?
You simply make a better decision!
Decide to be saved
I have said that salvation is a process that takes time. However, until
you make a fully conscious decision that you are willing to come back
to God, you cannot even begin to walk the path to salvation. As long
as you are upholding your original decision to turn away from God, you
cannot begin the spiritual path. How could you possibly begin the process
of climbing back to God’s kingdom if you are still running away
from that kingdom? It should be obvious that this simply isn’t
possible.
You cannot serve two masters. You cannot enter a house as long as you
are running away from that house. You cannot move forward by walking
backwards. You cannot follow me as long is you are kicking against the
pricks.
What I am trying to make you see here is that many human beings presently
find themselves at an impasse. They have maneuvered themselves into
a blind alley, a dead end or what one might call a spiritual Catch-22.
So many people are unhappy with their present situation and feel that
life is just a continuous stream of suffering. Yet, they are not willing
to make the one decision that will get them started on the process whereby
they can escape the misery and suffering of the lower consciousness.
The situation is simple. If you truly want to improve your life, you
must make a decision. You must choose which master you will serve. Will
you serve the master, the tyrant, of the carnal mind? Or will you serve
the true master of the Christ consciousness? Will you choose the death
of the carnal mind or the life of the Christ mind?
I, Jesus, say as did Moses before me: “Choose life!”
Choose the true life of the Christ consciousness. Choose to focus your
attention on me and accept the bread of life that I give to you, the
bread of the Christ consciousness that I am. Take, eat - this is my
body (the body of the Christ mind) which is broken for you.
Go to the next discourse:
The problem on earth.
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© 2003 by Kim Michaels |
