The Temple Menorah (Part 1): Zechariah's Vision

Let's begin our multi-post discussion of the Temple Menorah with another prophecy from the Old Testament Book of the Twelve. This one, recorded by a prophet named Zechariah around 500 BCE, also concerns Zerubbabel and the Second Temple of Jerusalem. In this account, Zechariah actually sees and describes the symbolic Menorah. In the King James translation, his account reads as follows:

Then the Angel who talked with me returned and woke me up, like someone awakened from sleep. He asked me, “What do you see?”

I answered, “I see a solid gold lampstand with a bowl at the top and seven lamps on it, with seven channels to the lamps. Also there are two olive trees by it, one on the right of the bowl and the other on its left.”

I asked the Angel who talked with me, “What are these, my lord?”

He answered, “Do you not know what these are?”

“No, my lord,” I replied.

So he said to me, “This is the word of the Lord to Zerubbabel: ‘Not by might nor by power, but by my Spirit,’ says the Lord Almighty.

“What are you, mighty mountain? Before Zerubbabel you will become level ground. Then he will bring out the capstone to shouts of ‘God bless it! God bless it!’”

Then the word of the Lord came to me: “The hands of Zerubbabel have laid the foundation of this temple; his hands will also complete it. Then you will know that the Lord Almighty has sent me to you.

“Who dares despise the day of small things, since the seven eyes of the Lord that range throughout the earth will rejoice when they see the chosen capstone in the hand of Zerubbabel?”

Then I asked the Angel, “What are these two olive trees on the right and the left of the lampstand?”

Again I asked him, “What are these two olive branches beside the two gold pipes that pour out golden oil?”

He replied, “Do you not know what these are?”

“No, my lord,” I said.

So he said, “These are the two who are anointed to serve the Lord of all the earth.”

Like all Holy Visions, Zechariah’s is riven with symbolism. If we read those symbols literally, we miss the deeper meaning of the message. Let me, therefore, interpret Zechariah's through a mixed bag of etymological archeology and illuminated insight.

Let’s start with the word translated into English as "bowl." The Hebrew word Zechariah recorded was "gullah," which CAN mean "bowl," "reservoir," "spring," or even "the orb atop a column." But these are all SECONDARY definitions of the word.

According to both Strong's and Brown-Driver-Briggs, the FIRST definition of "gullah" is REDEMPTION, including the right and the object of redemption and, by implication, the relationship between the redeemer and the redeemed. And, as it so happens, this more accurate definition of "gullah" is the key to solving the Great Menorah Mystery.

This new understanding affirms that what the Angel of the Presence showed Zechariah wasn't merely a "golden bowl" feeding olive oil into a hollow menorah; it was a symbolic representation of the Chalice of the Atonement. And through that symbolic "vessel," the "two who are anointed to serve the Lord of all the earth" fuel the Temple Menorah's seven lamps or "spirits."

When Zechariah asks what the two trees represent, the Angel answers indirectly. He also frames the answer as God addressing Zerubbabel. To save you scrolling back, the answer he gives is, "Not by might nor by power, but by my Spirit."

This seemingly amorphous response is actually quite illuminating on more than one level. On the most basic level, the Angel makes known that the Temple will not be finished through physical effort, because it's not an actual building. On a somewhat higher level, he conveys that God has divined that the Spirit of Grace will gently and gradually awaken the Souls dreaming on the earthly plane, rather than ending the dream abruptly through "power" and "might" -- i.e., the immediate application of God's Almighty Will. And on yet another level, he shows Zechariah (and us through him) that the Spirit of Grace will work through TWO partnering forces "anointed" by the True Father to carry out His Great Plan to end the dream of earthly existence gently and gradually.

The two trees or branches are meant to symbolize those two "anointed ones," while the "oils" represent the illusion-dissolving "substances" they dispense to do God's Will.

We can safely presume the two "oils" are the Blood and Water Rays -- the Yod and Mem powers of Elohim. In New Testament vernacular, those two Great Rays are the Blood of Christ and the Living Water -- the "twin" elixirs of redemption Jesus "brought forth" when he became the first earth-assigned Soul to complete his part in the Atonement Plan. As I understand it, a big part of his assignment was to activate God's Plan by opening the communications channel between the awake Christ Mind and its dream-bound brothers.

As Jesus told Sister (now Saint) Faustina in the early 1930s, the Blood Ray restores the Soul's memory of the everlasting life with which God endowed His One Son, while the Water Ray restores the Soul to "righteousness," "right-mindedness," "spiritual sanity," or upright Purusha perception.

And these two Great Rays do indeed grease the whole redemption "machine." But which Holy Power supplies which of these Rays? The answer is staring us right in the face, actually -- but may be blocked from awareness by some of the false beliefs and faulty denials we still cherish and defend.

For me, those blinders weren't so much cherished beliefs as unconscious presumptions. When I started writing this post (several months ago), I knew the Temple Menorah represented the Inner Instrument of the Spiritual Body, but couldn't say for sure what the seven lamps signified. I presumed they represented the Seven Spirits before the throne described in the Book of Revelations -- which is correct, as far as it goes. But I also mistook those Seven Spirits or LAMPS for the Seven Rays much discussed in Theosophy, Esoteric Astrology, and the modern-day wizardry dubbed "Occult Science." And, as I now realize, so have the misguided proponents of those ego-perpetuated teachings.

I might be wrong about this, but I don't think so.

Even as I read, wrote, and rewrote, day after day and week after week, I struggled to see through my egoic blinders. And then, I did see -- but only AFTER I opened my mind to the possibility that my presumptions about certain foundational concepts might be leading me astray. All the while, Jesus kept showing me the image above (which is displayed on candles all over my house). He even guided me to read the diary of Sister Faustina Kowalska, which describes his many appearances and messages to the Polish nun over the course of her 33 years in that blessed persona. The manuscript was, unfortunately, "Catholicized" by a panel of priests prior to its Vatican-endorsed publication. Interestingly, they retained the part where Jesus tells Sister Faustina she will teach the world about the Great Rays in her next life, too. The editors must have assumed he meant her "next life" in Heaven, as an Ascended Saint. What he actually meant, I'm almost certain, is her next life as ME.

Okay, yes ... it's taken me awhile to fulfill my teaching role in that regard, but better late than never, eh? 

Returning to the subject at hand, let me share something from the Course that provides more clues about the two trees flanking the "bowl of redemption" in Zechariah's vision:

My brother, you are part of God and part of me [the Christ]. When you have at last looked at the ego's foundation without shrinking, you will also have looked upon ours. I come to you from our Father, to offer you everything again. Do not refuse it to keep a dark cornerstone hidden, for ITS protection will not save you. I GIVE you the lamp, and I will go with you. You will not take this journey alone. I will lead you to your true Father, Who hath need of you, as I have. Will you not answer the call of love with joy?

In this revealing paragraph, we learn all of the following: 1) We are part of God and part of the Christ; 2) The Christ comes to us from the Father, to give us back the Holy Inheritance we threw away; 3) The Christ gives us the lamp and goes with us on the journey the lamp illuminates; 4) The journey leads back to our True Father -- the Father of the FIRST Covenant, Temple, and/or Trinity; and 5) We begin our journey back to the True Father by answering the Call to Awaken.

What has all this got to do with the two trees -- or the Menorah, for that matter? EVERYTHING, actually. BUT we can't see those trees through the shadows of deception until we open our minds to the possibility that our engrained beliefs about the Holy Trinity might be getting in our way. So, let's begin the "undoing" process on this particular subject by exploring what the Holy Trinity is and  is not.

Christian theology tells us there is one Holy Trinity, which resides in Heaven -- the place "good" Souls go after death. That Trinity consists of a bi-polar Father, who is loving and merciful one moment and wrathful and punishing the next; Jesus Christ, the ONLY Son of God, whose cruel, torturous, and excruciatingly unjust crucifixion was somehow our fault; and the Holy Spirit, a mercurial "dove" who flies around bestowing gifts on the very few Souls that God and Jesus deem worthy of salvation.

Not a pretty picture, is it? Nor is it an accurate one. When evaluated rationally, the "father figure" of the Christian Trinity is a Frankenstein's monster-esque compilation of aspects of the True Father and his would-be and completely insane usurper, the Great Deceiver. True to form, the Ego Mind and its dark agents have waged a distressingly successful campaign since the dawn of time to replace the True Father as the object of human worship.

This is as true in Hinduism as it is in Christianity -- with one notable proviso. Hindus don't worship Brahma, despite his designation as "the creator" and his puzzling inclusion in the Trimuti. Hindus also recognize two "trinities" -- the Trimurti and the Tridevi -- neither of which is the True Trinity headed by Param-Brahman. Based on what I've read and currently understand, the Trimurti (Brahma, Shiva, and Vishnu) operates within the dream in partnership with the Tridevi (Sarasvati, Parvati, and Lakshmi). This model is partly right and partly erroneous.

What, then, are the two Trinities? And what role does each play in the salvation process? Let's explore those questions, starting with the First Trinity -- the True Trinity, which dwells eternally in Heaven proper, the formless and timeless realm of Perfect Creation. That Trinity consists of  the Holy Powers variously identified as 1) the God Mind, God the Father, the Uncreated Creator, the Causeless Cause, the Almighty Absolute, or Param-Brahman; 2) the Christ Mind, God the Son, the Created Effect, Creation, or Param-Shiva; and 3) the Creative Force of Agape, Holy Creative Spirit, or Param-Shakti.

As Hinduism correctly espouses, the Absolute God of the First or True Trinity -- Param-Brahman -- plays no part in anything going on inside Brahma's Egg. He doesn't even know Brahma's Egg exists. He only senses a logjam of sorts in the Wholeness of His Infinitely Extending Being, which He "wills" to remove.

As Hinduism also gets right, Param-Shiva doesn't act directly within Brahma's Egg, either. He does, however, work inside our egg-bound consciousness NOW through his emanated "agent," the Primordial Shiva. That "primordial" or "time-born" agent, emanation, or "spirit" of Param-Shiva is the "sacred dancer" whose choreographed movements destroy the illusion of duality. Rightly perceived, that "sacred dancer" is the Purusha Consciousness or "Holy Spirit" of the awake Christ Mind. That "spirit" works inside the dream-realm to urge us to choose God's Plan for us over the world's allurements. Rightly perceived, that "dancing" Purusha Consciousness is the Spiritual Light, Life, and Truth that both underlays and dissolves the illusion of form. In the celestial chain-of-command, Primordial Shiva ranks above and also directs the Second Trinity powers.

Primordial Shiva, the upright Purusha dancing inside Brahma's Egg

The Second or Atonement Trinity works exclusively in the dream-realm to make our return to Heaven possible, as well as to encourage us to "choose right" by answering God's Call to Awaken. Manifested by Elohim (rather than God), this dream-ending triune force consists of the Aleph, Lamed, and Hey "aspects" of the Creative Force of Grace. In Hinduism, those three "devas" are typically personified as Indra (Aleph), Sadashiva and/or Krishna (Lamed), and Vishnu (Hey). BUT, as stated earlier, Hinduism assigns many different personas to the various invisible forces present in the universe. These Second Trinity powers are, therefore, known by various other names as well.

The images below show a few recognizable personifications of the Lamed power of the Second Trinity.

Sadashiva, whose five heads represent either the Holy Powers of Elohim
or the five attributes the Soul must reclaim to awaken (as per Judaism).

Krishna, whose flute sounds the Call to Awaken in the lower waters of perception

Jesus as "the good shepherd," the Risen Son of God watching over his desert-wandering flock

Okay, so ... a couple of paragraphs back, I stated that Param-Shiva -- the True Christ of the First Trinity -- works inside the dream-realm NOW through his emanated "agent," the Primordial Shiva. Before the ascension of Jesus, Elohim (the Spirit of God) governed the divine aspects of the dream-realm from the "Throne of God" on the Seventh Plane. Afterward, Primordial Shiva (the Spirit of Christ) assumed the reins of power from his posting on the Sixth Plane.

Stated another way, the Spirit of Grace or God (Elohim) directed the yet-to-be-activated Salvation Plan until the Primordial Christ's scheduled succession. This is what Jesus means when he says (in the Course), "I am in charge of the process of Atonement, which I undertook to begin." 

This is also what he tries to convey in John 14 by stating: "I am the Way, the Truth, and the Life. No man cometh unto the Father but by me."

Or, as he clarifies in the URText:

"No man cometh to the Father but by me" is among the most misunderstood statements in the Bible. It DOES NOT mean that I am in anyway separate (or different) from you, EXCEPT IN TIME. Now, we know that time does not exist. Actually, the statement is much more meaningful if it is considered on a vertical rather than a horizontal axis. Regarded along the vertical, man stands below me, and I stand below God. In the process of "rising up," I AM higher. This is because without me the distance between God and man is too great for man to encompass. I bridge the distance as an Elder Brother to man, on the one hand, and a Son of God on the other. My devotion to my brothers has placed me in charge of the Sonship, which I can render complete only to the extent I can SHARE it.

This appears to contradict another statement: "I and my Father are one." It doesn't. There are still separate parts in the statement, in recognition of the fact that the Father is GREATER. Actually, the original statement was "are of one KIND."

Let me rephrase what he says in simpler language: On the return journey to Heaven proper, we must join minds with the Primordial Shiva on the Sixth Plane of Consciousness (Miraculous or True Perception, in Course terms) before "graduating" to the Seventh Plane of Grace Consciousness. And it is from that "peak" or "capstone" of the upright Purusha Triangle that God reaches across the "tiny gap" between the Pure Grace Consciousness needed for Perfect Atonement (the Second Covenant between Father and Son) and the Pure Agape Consciousness required for Perfect Creation (the First Covenant between the Creator and His Creation).

The Primordial Christ in the form of Lord Shiva

The Primordial Shiva in the form of Jesus Christ

In the Course, Jesus refers to the Primordial Christ as our "Appointed Friend." In a section of the URText devoted to this God-appointed "amigo," he says:

Lead not your little lives in solitude, with one illusion as your only friend. This is no friendship worthy of God's Son, nor one with which he could remain content. But God has given him a better Friend, in whom all power in earth and Heaven rests. The one illusion that you THINK is friend obscures HIS grace and majesty from you, and keeps his friendship and forgiveness from your welcoming embrace. Without him you are friendless. Seek not another friend to take his place. There IS no other friend. What God appointed HAS no substitute, and what illusion CAN replace the truth?

Who dwells with shadows is alone indeed, and loneliness is NOT the Will of God. Would you allow one shadow to usurp the throne that God appointed for your Friend, if you but realized ITS emptiness has left YOURS empty and unoccupied? Make NO illusion friend, for if you do, it CAN but take the place of him whom God has called your Friend. And it is he who is your ONLY Friend in truth. He brings you gifts that are not of this world, and only he to whom they have been given, CAN make sure that you receive them. He will place them on YOUR throne, when you make room for him on his.

To clarify:

The Appointed Friend = the Primordial Shiva =
the "Holy Spirit" of Param-Shiva devoted to our awakening

Got it? Good, because this can be quite confusing. And part of the reason it is so confusing is that Jesus aimed the Course at disenchanted Christians. To make the teachings relatable, he presents them through the distorted lens of one hybrid Holy Trinity, which doesn't really work.  And that's why I'm bringing Hinduism and Judaism into the picture in these discussions. While neither is 100 percent accurate, they both acknowledge aspects of the "elephant" of Spiritual Truth missed, ignored, or denied by Christianity's ego-inspired blinders.

Before we move on, let's briefly review the chain of events discussed in earlier posts. The dream started with the Great Projection -- the thrusting outward of our Creative Will to be independent from God. For some time thereafter, we still saw the Inner Light of God in ourselves and others and still heard the Father's vibratory communications. We shut out those two memory sustaining "feeds" by projecting them outward as physically manifested fire and ice. Agreeing something must be done to repair the incommunicado split this caused, the First Trinity projected the Creative Force of Agape (dialed down to "Grace") into the void to repurpose the dream, construct the at-one-ment infrastructure, and share the Great Plan with a select few human prophets and scribes.

To get the ball rolling, the Spirit of God's Grace (Elohim) produced the first two "aspects" of the Second Trinity and the Temple Menorah/Inner Instrument. Like the Great Plan itself, these devices existed only in principle until Jesus's ascension reopened the channel between the awake and sleeping portions of the Christ Mind. Once the channel reopened, the Primordial Christ entered the dreamscape (as planned all along) to finish the job Elohim started.

Speaking as the Primordial Christ or "Christ Presence" (in Course terms), Jesus explains what he did (and still does) in the following excerpt from the URText:

You WERE in darkness until God's Will was done completely by any part of the Sonship. When it was, it was perfectly accomplished by ALL. How else could it BE perfectly accomplished? My mission was simply to UNITE the Will of the Sonship WITH the Will of the Father by being aware of the Father's Will myself. This is the awareness I came to give YOU, and YOUR problem in accepting it IS the problem of this world. Dispelling it is salvation, and in this sense I AM the salvation of the world.

Remember this, because (as you'll see) it's the key to unlocking the Great Menorah Mystery.

Pop Quiz question: Which of the two Trinities do we see here?

Most Christians would probably identify the figures above as the First Trinity. They are, in fact, neither the First nor Second, in their entirety. The dove in this image represents Elohim, whose first two "atonement" emanations were Lamed (depicted as Jesus) and Aleph (depicted as God). This is suggested by the two beams radiating from the "Spirit of God," as well as by the upright triangle of Purusha Consciousness behind the Aleph figure's head.

Interpreted correctly, the image depicts Elohim on the Seventh Plane of Grace Consciousness, extending the Blood and Water Rays down to the Sixth Plane of Christ Consciousness, where they "live and reign" as the Lamed and Aleph powers. The absent Hey Power, meanwhile, operates just below them, from the Fifth Plane of Soul Consciousness. From that position, the Hey Power extends the Great Rays into the lower-waters of Ego Consciousness (via the Inner Instrument), more or less as illustrated below./div>

The seven beams radiating from the "capstone" of the upright Purusha Triangle are the seven emanations of those two Rays. And these are the "spirits" that light the lamps of the Temple Menorah (as seen and described by John the Elder in the New Testament Book of Revelations).

It took me ages to figure out what these seven emanations represent -- and to finally discard, once and for all, the various esoteric teachings about the Seven Rays. As I now conceive them, these seven "spirits" are divided into two groups of three "teaching" powers and one "pupil," which moves upward as it advances through the Atonement Academy's seven grade levels (the seven planes of perception represented by the chakras).

The three lamps on the right represent the Father's Will for our return, which calls to us (magnetically) from the EAST side of the Menorah. The three lamps on the left represent the Son's Will -- or, more accurately, the CHOICES we must make to align our will with the Father's, with the help of the Holy Spirit of Primordial Shiva. The lamp in the middle represents the Divine Spark or Soul, whose learning goal is to UNITE the powers on both sides of the Menorah within its Self.

While drifting in the lower waters of perception, our Souls hang upside-down in the dark cocoon of Prakriti ignorance, unaware of their True Identity. To "undo" the sticky layers of that ego-spun chrysalis, the Seven Rays "teach" the Buddhi or Witness Consciousness to "see reason" -- i.e., see things God's way -- on the four levels of "ignorance" the lower-water "chakras" represent. Once the Soul sheds those layers, it "graduates" to the Spiritual Triad, where the Second Trinity powers take over as its teachers.

Right-mindedly interpreted, the Menorah is a blueprint for the atonement mechanism in the "lower-water" half of the Dharmachakra -- the "wheel" or "single-eye" through which we perceive the Light of God in all things.

In the Hindu Vedas, the Dharmachakra is associated with Surya, the god of the Spiritual Sun and its maya-melting Holy Rays (as we'll discuss later on). Like Elohim, Lord Surya sits on his "Chariot Throne" atop this single "wheel," disc, or chakra. In the Vedas, the Dharmachakra is described as "the eye of the world" that illuminates and perceives the world. That "wheel" or "eye" belongs to Mitra -- an early Vedic personification of the Blood Ray.

In Buddhism, the Dharmachakra is commonly associated with the Bhavacakra -- the Wheel of Earthly Existence or Samsara. A pictorial representation of the Buddhist worldview, the Bhavacakra is displayed on or near the entrances of most (if not all) Buddhist Temples. 

Known in esoteric and occult circles as Ezekiel's Wheel, the Dharmachakra is depicted, along with various other intriguing symbols, on THE WHEEL OF FORTUNE card in the Rider-Waite Tarot.

The process through which the seven "spirits" or "lamps" work together through the Menorah might look something like the image below, which I borrowed from Rick Ireton's interesting-but-not-altogether-accurate book, Chakra Key: A Key for Humanity. Mr. Ireton is correct that the Menorah and the chakras play pivotal roles in the ego-undoing process. He errs by confusing the lamps with the chakras and by accepting the "prevailing wisdom" that the spiritual and physical bodies operate on the same plane of perception. They are both, in fact, manifestations arising from two wholly SEPARATE minds, only one of which is REAL.

We'll talk more about Mr. Ireton's ideas, the Dharmachakra, and the WHEEL OF FORTUNE card in future posts. For now, just know that the lamps across the top are NOT the chakras. They represent the Holy Powers working through the Temple Menorah to help unblock the four "epicenters of perception" that run up the "spine" or "stem" of the lampstand, in the manner shown below.

We've jumped too far ahead, so let's circle back to the two "anointing oils" that grease the whole Atonement Machine. As Jesus implies, those two "oils" represent the "twin" aspects of the WILL shared by the True Father (Param-Brahman) and the True Son (Param-Shiva) to end the dream of separation, whilst still honoring the Sonship's free and freely given Creative Will. 

The Blood Ray represents both the Light and Life of God within us AND the Father's Will to wake us up, while the Water Ray represents both the inner Christ-Self AND the Son's will to be awakened in accordance with the Second Covenant. That "covenant" between Father and Son was forged in Heaven long ago, but is yet to be fully realized on earth. This "contract" was, however, "signed" by Jesus, while his Soul yet dwelled in the realm of earthly existence. And by signing that contract HERE, he opened the door back into Heaven for the rest of us.

If we add the Menorah to Mr. Ireton's illustration, we can see the push-pull dynamic of the undoing process in action. The God-Will part of the Blood Ray calls us to awaken from the EAST side of the Menorah. As Jesus says, that Call to Awaken is not only powerfully magnetic; it's also IRRESISTIBLE to the Soul. As stated earlier, the Soul or Divine Spark is (I believe) BOTH the part of us that's God, and an atonement device programmed to respond to its Creator's Call at the appointed time (with our prior unconscious consent).

Thus, the Blood Ray is the source of BOTH the Call to Awaken and the internal Divine Spark of Eternal Light and Life that answers the Call at a pre-determined time. We answer the Call by inviting the Holy Spirit (of the Christ-Self) to show us a better way to perceive the world and its occupants.

Or, as Jesus explains in his usual lyrical way:

The Holy Spirit is the light in which Christ stands revealed. And all who would behold Him can see Him, for they have ASKED for light. Nor will they see Him ALONE, for He is no more alone than THEY are. Because they SAW the son, they have risen IN HIM to the Father. And all this will they understand, because they looked within, and saw, beyond the darkness, the Christ in them, and RECOGNIZED Him. In the sanity of His vision, they looked upon themselves with love, seeing themselves as the Holy Spirit sees them. And WITH this vision of truth in THEM, came all the beauty of the world to shine upon them.

As the Blood Ray pulls on its own Holy Seed from the East, the Water Ray gently "pushes" us from the West to "choose right." One of the ways the Water Ray applies this gentle pressure is by presenting us with cyclical "forgiveness lessons." Those lessons, Jesus tells us, grow more painful each time we ignore them, thereby ensuring our eventual submission. Or, as stated in the Course's introduction, "Free will does not mean that you can establish the curriculum. It means only that you can elect what you want to take at a given time."

We can, in other words, choose not to learn the lessons presented to us, but only until our self-inflicted suffering grows so unbearable we FINALLY turn to God for help. But why put ourselves through all that unnecessary pain and anguish when we can answer the Call right now?

Elsewhere in the Course, Jesus makes clear that free will isn't the carte-blanche hall-pass we might presume it to be. God, who created free will, also placed limits on how much and how long we can abuse this "gift" on the earthly plane. As Masters Pursah and Arten told Gary Renard (in The Disappearance of the Universe), the dream is a "closed system," meaning we can only push the boundaries so far before built-in restrictions come into play.

And yes, I've veered off-topic again, so let's swing all the way back to Zechariah's vision of the Menorah. In that vision, the prophet saw two pipes filling a golden bowl with "oils." On either side of the bowl stood two olive trees symbolizing the source of those oils.

In my usual circuitous and meandering way, I have solved the mystery of what those symbols represent. In case I lost you along the way, the symbols and their meanings are these:

The Menorah = the Inner Instrument through which we navigate our way back to Heaven or Superconsciousness

The Golden Bowl = the Chalice of the Atonement

The Two Oils = the Blood and Water Rays

The Two Trees = the shared will of Param-Brahma and Param-Shiva at work in the dream-realm through Elohim (the Holy Spirit of God) and the Primordial Shiva (the Holy Spirit of Christ)

Okay so ... this concludes the first segment of our discussion of the Temple Menorah, BUT there is much more to share and discuss, so do come back for my next post -- whenever that might be.

Until we meet again outside the Golden Circle,

Namaste and God Bless 

Genesis Reinterpreted

Now that we've dispensed with the preliminaries, let's decode the symbolism used in the first chapter of the Old Testament Book of Genesis. Does it really say that God created the world and everything in it in seven short days? No, because God's Will is done all at once, from Alpha to Omega, in the Holy Instant of Milta. More to the point, our Heavenly Father didn't DO anything Genesis describes directly, because the word "God" was an erroneous substitution for "Elohim," a plural Hebrew word meaning "Divine Grace."

I explained all of this -- and a whole lot more -- in Part 1 of this series. If you're coming late to the party, I strongly suggest you read that post before this one -- or, better yet, start from the very beginning with my post dated January 6, 2023.

Okay, so ... with the correct wording restored, the opening lines of Genesis read as follows:

In the beginning Elohim created the heaven and the earth. And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of Elohim moved upon the face of the waters.

Based on all we've established thus far, the Elohim powers could NOT have created Heaven and the planet we call "Earth" in literal terms for two indisputable reasons. The first of these is that Heaven, being eternal, has always existed. The second is that the dream-universe was, according to Genesis, “without form, and void” at this point in time. There were, in other words, no perceived galaxies, solar system, planets, or other astral objects -- and wouldn’t be for thousands (if not millions) more dream-years.

If, then, this description is valid, it must mean something OTHER than what it APPEARS to mean (which it absolutely does). That Elohim created “heaven” and “earth” when the void was “without form” tells us the Spirit of Grace re-engineered the dream-realm to serve the Shared Will of Father and Son BEFORE we imagined the drifting clouds of matter consolidating into solid forms. Thus, that “darkness was upon the face of the deep” indicates that, even before "the intrusion of fire and ice" blocked God's tonal transmissions of Agape, the Ego Mind's fear-based thought-system had jammed the channel through which God speaks to our Souls.

Moving “upon the face of the waters” does NOT mean Elohim flew over the oceans, as many Biblical interpreters (both scholarly and clerical) wrongly presume. If there were no planets, how could there be oceans?

The obvious answer is: There could NOT be. 

The "waters" in Genesis aren't the wet stuff; rather, they symbolize thought vibrations. Luminously interpreted, “Moved upon the face of the waters” simply means the Spirit of Grace acted in the formless void to change its purpose from miscreating through fear-based thinking to learning or remembering how to create again in accordance with the Law of Love.

As you contemplate these events, keep in mind that Elohim changed the world's purpose NOT by tinkering with the structure of matter, as many occult "scientists" falsely report, but by tinkering with the vibratory "wiring" within our image-projecting minds.

To confirm the accuracy of what I’ve just explained, let’s consult the Gospel of Mary, another of the early Christian texts unearthed at Nag Hammadi, Egypt, in 1945. Written by Mary the Magdala, the "beloved disciple" and wedded wife of Jesus, the Gospel of Mary first resurfaced in 1896, but events conspired to keep its discovery secret until two more copies were found many decades later.

In Mary’s gospel, Jesus says the following about the nature of matter: 

All nature, all formations, all creatures exist in and with one another, and they will be resolved again into their own roots. For the nature of matter is resolved into the roots of its own nature alone. He who has ears to hear, let him hear.

Here’s what he means: Matter consists of vibratory thought-waves, projected outward in image-forms symbolizing the underlying idea. Although fear-based, that underlying idea is still creative thought or “spirit.” Thus, matter and spirit share a cause-effect relationship. They are not two separate things, but ONE idea in different stages of manifestation. To dissolve matter, therefore, we must purify our minds of the dense fear-based thoughts through which we project the illusion of form in collusion with the Ego Mind.

When we stop projecting the dark and dense emotions of fear and guilt, in other words, the illusion of solid matter will simply disappear. What will then remain is the only thing that’s REAL: The Great Light of God's Mind in which “all nature, all formations, all creatures exist in and with one another.” 

Got it? Good. Let’s get back to Genesis.

Here’s what happened next, according to the Old Testament account:

And Elohim said, “Let there be light,” and there was light. And Elohim saw the light, that it was good, and divided the light from the darkness. And they called the light Day, and the darkness they called Night.

Did the Spirit of Grace create visible light at this point in time? No, because the Ego Mind projected the image of suns much later to support the illusion of physicality. What Elohim ACTUALLY did was shine Holy Light into the "dark void" of fear-dominated perception. Like most things in the Bible, “Day” and “Night” are symbolic references. “Day” represented the Light of God the Spirit of Grace brought into the dream to change its purpose, while "Night" symbolized the dark deceptions or unreal opposites the Ego Mind manifested to block the Higher Mind "receivers" of the Separated Ones.

The ancient Chinese Yin-Yang symbol represents this duality of this concept of Day (mind-awake) and Night (mind-asleep). Like everything else the Ego Mind touches, the symbol's real meaning has been distorted over time. Yin and Yang are NOT two opposing forces (such as male and female) working in harmony, as modern philosophers erroneously profess. They are two opposing forces, only one of which is REAL.

Originally, the word "Yin" meant "firm," while "Yang" meant "yielding." The "Yin" aspect of the universe encompassed, therefore, the perfect, eternal, and unchanging aspects of Creation, while "Yang" symbolized the ever-shifting dark opposites that blocked the "Yin" from our awareness. To see the truth of our being, early Chinese sages RIGHTLY advised, we must seek and honor only the "firm," "light," or "eternal" components of being. 

Thus, in the story of Genesis:

Day = Yin = the "firm" or "light" creations of God (mind-awake/knowing/Agape-inspired)
Night = Yang = the "yielding" or "dark" manifestations of the Ego Mind (mind-asleep/perceiving/fear-inspired)

Genesis continues as follows:

And Elohim said, “Let there be a firmament in the midst of the waters, and let it divide the waters from the waters.” And [the] Elohim made the firmament, and divided the waters which were under the firmament from the waters which were above the firmament: and it was so. And [the] Elohim called the [upper] firmament Heaven.

Most ego-deceived Biblical interpreters take this to mean Elohim (or God) divided the sky from the oceans on Day Two of the (Re) Building Cycle. That is NOT, however, what it says at all. “Firmament” means “sphere” or “realm,” while the “waters,” as explained, were the two opposing thought-systems (Day/Light/Yin or Night/Darkness/Yang) the Separated Ones would be able to choose between after the Atonement Plan was activated.

To divide the Higher Mind “waters” or thought-vibrations from the lower-mind “waters” or thought-vibrations, Elohim established a “realm” in-between Heaven (Superconsciousness) and “earth” (Ego Consciousness). The Spiritual Triad is that middle “realm.” To return to Heaven-proper, we must first pass through that middle-firmament. This is what Jesus means in the New Testament AND the Course when he says, "Nobody can reach the Father except through me." Nobody can, in other words, restore their mind to Superconsciousness or Knowledge without first passing through the corrected perceptual state of Christ Consciousness.

Throughout the Course, Jesus calls this middle-firmament or Spiritual Triad the Inner-Altar.

To verify the accuracy of my interpretation, let’s look more closely at the Hebrew word translated into English as "Heaven." The word was Shamayin, which (like Elohim) is PLURAL. Etymologically, Shamayin combines two smaller words: sham or samu, meaning “sky” or “lofty,” and mayim, meaning “water.” What Shamayin means, therefore, is “lofty-water,” Higher Mind, or Higher Thought.

In Jewish theology, Shamayin has three levels. The highest is the dwelling place of the Lord of Hosts; the middle level houses “the living”; and the lowest tier is “the realm of the dead.” Most Jewish scholars and teachers understand these three levels as Heaven, Earth, and the Underworld. In actuality, they are the three “planes” or “kingdoms” governed by the Trinity Powers of Elohim, which are:

Throne of the Lord of Hosts = Seventh Plane, the dwelling place of the Spirit of Grace, who represents the Father part of the Will to liberate the Sonship from Ego-enslavement;

Land of the Living = Sixth Plane, the dwelling place of the Christ and Christ-Realized Souls (the “living” who’ve overcome “death” through "resurrection");

Land of the Dead = The Fifth Kingdom, the dwelling place of the Atman or Soul-Self and awakening Souls who’ve not yet "resurrected" -- i.e., “realized” their shared Christ Identities or Wholeness.

Let’s proceed to the third symbolic “day,” on which the Spirit of Grace reportedly did the following:

And Elohim said, “Let the waters under the heaven be gathered together unto one place, and let the dry land appear”: and it was so. And Elohim called the dry land earth; and the gathering together of the waters they called seas: and they saw that it was good.

The meaning of this passage suffers greatly from unilluminated translation and interpretations. We now know that the “waters under heaven” are the lower-mind planes of Ego Consciousness. To gather them together in one place, Elohim organized the drifting and divided Souls into orders or "kingdoms" below the Spiritual Triad, but still in the “waters” of perception. Based on various things I’ve read, these orders are roughly as follows:

Fourth Kingdom = Humans
Third Kingdom = Non-Human Animals
Second Kingdom = Plants
First Kingdom = Minerals or Protoplasm (depending on source)

In the passage under discussion, the Hebrew word translated as “seas” was yammin or yamin, which means right hand, right-mind, or Higher Mind. The word translated as “dry land” was hey-yabbasah. Hey means “to reveal” or “true revelation comes from Heaven alone.” It refers, therefore, to the third power of Elohim: the illuminating Light of God within all living things. Yabbasah, meanwhile, means “dry,” “withered,” or “ashamed.” The word translated as Earth was Adamah, which has come to mean earth, soil, or ground, but didn’t at first. Originally, Adamah was the name of the allegorical Garden of Eden, the paradise God created for His Souls to practice creating.

Similarly, the Hebrew word adam has come to mean “man” or “humankind.” Originally, the word meant “red,” while its root (dam) meant “blood.” Adam, therefore, symbolized the Souls in Adamah. In the dream, Adam is represented by the Atman -- the Divine Spark or Christ-fragment in all lifeforms. In the dream-realm, that Spark is a chip off the old block, so to speak. As such, it's the same color as its Source: the One on the Ruby Throne referenced in the Book of Revelations.

This particular Genesis passage is, in fact, a great example of how off-base literal or unilluminated interpretations of the Scriptures can be. This confusing description has nothing to do with the land and water we perceive on Planet Earth. Rather, it echoes the allegory of Adam and Eve AND the Course, both of which describe how, under the Ego Mind’s corrupting influence, the Separated Ones believed they had shamed themselves in the eyes of God. To escape their disgrace, they fled (projected their split minds) into a lower realm devoid of the “waters” or "graces" of the Higher Mind. They descended, in other words, into the denser plane of ego-body consciousness. And it was then that they jammed their communications with God.

That Elohim gathered together the waters of yamin (the Soul’s repressed Higher Mind memories) means the Trinity Powers extended the Inner-Instrument into the lower realms of Persona and Matter. In so doing, they equipped the Separated Ones with an internal mechanism that would 1) restore their direct communication with God and 2) gently and gradually bring them back up the six levels they fell down.

On the proverbial third day, Elohim transformed the Ego Mind's barren worlds into habitable learning environments for the sanity-restoring At-one-ment curriculum. Shrouded in fear, guilt, and physical bodies, the Souls shared the belief they required food to survive, and thus made the need real in the dream. In Truth, they only needed the manna of God's Saving Grace, which the Christ Mind provided through its vibratory "Song of Heaven."

On the fourth day, according to Genesis, the following occurred:

And [the] Elohim said, “Let there be lights in the firmament of the heaven to divide the Day from the Night; and let them be for signs, and for seasons, and for days, and years: And let them be for lights in the firmament of the heaven to give light upon the earth”: and it was so. And [the] Elohim made two great lights; the greater light to rule the Day, and the lesser light to rule the Night: they made the stars also. And Elohim set them in the firmament of the heaven to give light upon the earth, and to rule over the Day and over the Night, and to divide the light from the darkness: and Elohim saw that it was good.

This passage SEEMS to describe Elohim creating suns, stars, and moons; but we know that can’t be right because, like God, the Spirit of Grace creates through Divine Will. The two great lights Elohim "made" were the Christ Light and the Divine Spark or Atman, which "gave light upon the earth" from the Spiritual Triad or Inner-Altar. Being within us, these two lights divide the light (Spiritual Truth) from the darkness (Ego-manifested deception).

The next section of Genesis reads:

And Elohim said, “Let the waters bring forth abundantly the moving creature that hath life, and fowl that [they] may fly above the earth in the open firmament of heaven.” And they created great whales, and every living creature that moveth, which the waters brought forth abundantly, after their kind, and every winged fowl after his kind: and Elohim saw that it was good … [and] blessed them, saying, “Be fruitful, and multiply, and fill the waters in the seas, and let fowl multiply in the earth.”

In the Course, Jesus tells us unequivocally that the Ego Mind made our physical bodies to perceive separation and the sense of limitation and littleness it engendered. Thus, Elohim could NOT have created birds and sea creatures, as this passage SEEMS to suggest. To decipher the real meaning, let’s again consider the symbolism.

Waters = the vibratory levels of thought, now organized into seven planes

Open firmament of heaven = the three higher planes of the Trinity Powers

Because this Biblical passage mentions whales and birds, we can infer that the Souls from the Third Kingdom (non-human animals) were now “falling” into bodies on the denser physical plane. So, Elohim said, more or less: “Let the corrective devices we’ve provided bring the fallen Souls back to the Spiritual Triad in great numbers.” They also encouraged the body-clad Souls to “be fruitful and multiply” so more of them could enter the new Atonement Academy they’d reengineered the dream-world to be.

“The whole [reproductive] process was set up as a learning experience in gaining Grace,” Jesus explains in the Course's URText. He also says that procreative sex was introduced as “a creative tool” for two primary purposes. The first was to enable Souls to make new homes for other Souls and lovingly “parent” them, as God parents us. The second was to allow Souls to “live” many lives with the goal of improving their "Records."

On the symbolic sixth and final day, Elohim did the same for the remaining Souls from the Third Kingdom, as well as for the human Souls in the Fourth Kingdom. Regarding human Souls, Elohim said:

“Let us make man in our image, after our likeness: and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth.” So [the] Elohim created man in their own image, in the image of the Elohim created they him; male and female created they them. And [the] Elohim blessed them, and said unto them, “Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth, and subdue it: and have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over every living thing that moveth upon the earth.”

Let's stop here for a sec, because I need to explain that the Hebrew word translated as "dominion" in the passage above actually means "to lower oneself." Contrary to popular presumption, Elohim did NOT command human Souls to rule over the lower orders of body-clad Souls; they commanded us to right-mindedly perceive ourselves as EQUAL with all the other orders of Creation.

This is what Jesus attempts to express in Matthew 35:40, when he says, "Verily I say unto you, Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me." What we do to ANY lifeform, in other words, we do unto our own CHRIST-SELF (and will receive as we gave).

In the Course, Jesus also explains that we can't get back to Heaven until we RIGHTLY perceive that we are one with and equal to the Souls in ALL lifeforms. This is, in fact, how we "save" the lower orders of Creation. In the Manuel for Teachers, Jesus also lists "Gentleness" as a characteristic of Advanced or Enlightened Teachers of God. Gentleness, as defined by Jesus in this section, is identical to the Yogic "yama" or virtuous discipline of Ahimsa, non-violence, or harmlessness -- the guru-prescribed moral practice of not harming any living thing.

In case you're still on the fence about God's position on our treatment, consumption, and/or extermination of His Sons in the bodies of animals, fishes, and insects, read the rest of Genesis. In what is arguably the least cited passage in Biblical history, Elohim specifically instructs the Souls on earth to EAT ONLY PLANTS!!! 

The passage regarding the final day of the building cycle is also the one from which we got the crazy idea that God made human bodies in His mirror image. Since Elohim is a divine thought-force, the above CANNOT mean she/they made human bodies like theirs or that we physically resemble them or God (as we've already established). It has to mean, therefore, that the Graces did something to remind us of our resemblance to God in terms of our shared Holiness, Will, and Creative Powers -- the aspects and attributes of divinity we elected to forget when we chose earth over Heaven.

What did Elohim do to help us remember these aspects and attributes? The answer is: She/they installed an ingenious mechanism within us to accomplish God’s Plan over time and within the parameters of free will. In Course terms, that inner-instrument consists of the “Temple” (the lower four chakras or planes) and the "Inner-Altar" (the upper three chakras or planes).

Based on what Jesus explains in the Course, the Inner-Instrument also is equipped with the "tools" or components listed below. For ease in cross-referencing, I've added the now more familiar Hindu/Yoga terms for each of these elements in parenthesis where applicable. 

—An ever-sounding Call to Awaken (the Aum or Cosmic vibration)
—An embedded compulsion to return to God (Atman)
—A reasoning part of the mind that can learn Spiritual Truth, up to a point (Buddhi)
—A pre-set time (chosen by us) for the Shared Will to activate within our dreaming minds;
—A gentle force to uncoil that Will, once activated (Kundalini);
—An upward path for that Holy Will to follow as it uncoils over time (Sushumna);
—An inward-looking "eye" to enable correction (the Spiritual Eye);
—Two curative powers to “grease” the whole machine (the Great Rays within the Ida and Pingala nadis).

An invisible “body” sheathes these elements within us. That “body” is known by many names. Some call it the Astral or Subtle Body; others call it the Soma Pneumatikos. In the Course and the New Testament, as I’ve said, Jesus calls this Inner-Instrument "the Temple." He also states in no uncertain terms that the Temple to which he refers is NOT the physical body.

As I understand it, this Inner-Instrument and the physical body have nothing to do with each other, as each is projected by a different part of our dreaming minds. The Temple is projected by the Christ Mind, while the physical body is projected by the Ego Mind.

In the simplest possible terms:

Physical Body = instrument to enable lower-mind perception

Spiritual Body = instrument to restore Higher Mind perception

While experiencing ourselves in the world, we seem to wear this invisible Spiritual Body under our flesh-and-bone perceiving instruments. In reality, our "being" extends everywhere. With the addition of the Spiritual Body, Elohim made it possible for us to hear God again. We could not, however, hear God’s Voice yet. Before the Elohim powers could activate the plan, they had to wake up the Great Rays, which still slept in the Christ Mind. And that, in a nutshell, is how Jesus saved the world.

I'll describe all that Jesus did to earn the title "Savior" in a future post. For now, just know that even after Jesus awoke the Atonement Rays, the Christ Mind couldn’t communicate with its Soul-fragments unless invited to do so. The Elohim powers had erected the cell tower, so to speak, but we still had to turn on our phones to receive Christ's calls. Giving us this choice preserved free will -- or appeared to, at least. 

Other devices built into the Great Plan would eventually force the surrender of even the most stubborn hold-outs. I won’t go into what all of those devices are. Just know that nothing occurs by accident. Absolutely nothing. And all things work together for the greater good or accelerated awakening of everyone involved. To judge events without understanding the complex tapestry of whys, whatnots, and wherefores is to perceive them without context.

Okay, so ... that's my spiel on Genesis, but there's more to tell about the Elohim powers. Lots more. So, be sure to come back for the next installment in my "Who or What is Elohim?" series.

The Great Projection

Now that we’ve established a baseline understanding of God and Creation, let’s turn our attention to the samsara-maya that mortal existence actually is. How did the dream begin? Why did we choose material unreality, separation, and miscreation over Divine Reality, Oneness, and Perfect Creation? And, more importantly, how do we reverse that insane decision and wake up? To answer that monumental hat-trick of questions, let’s begin at the beginning, when God willed into "being" another Creative Mind like His own.

To perform that miraculous feat, our Heavenly Father simply held in His Mind the Divine Idea that His Creation would be as pure and holy as He was. He then used the proverbial "magic word" to activate the Creative Force of Divine Will and "make it so."

That "magic word," btw, is "Amen," which means "So Be It," among other things we'll get to later. 

Deeming what He’d created as “good,” God then projected onto His new “Son” all His own Creative Powers and Will.

Through this process, “God the Father” created “God the Son” in “his own image," the real meaning of which Jesus clarifies in the following passage from the Course's URText:

“God created man in his own image and likeness” is correct in meaning, but the words are open to considerable misinterpretation. This is avoided, however, if “image” is understood to mean “thought,” and “likeness” is taken as “of a like quality.” God DID create the Son in His own Thought, and of a quality like to His own. There IS nothing else.

That "thought" and "like-quality" are Agape -- the only concept-packet, state of being, and/or creative power that exists in Divine Reality.

Because God made His Son "in his image," the Son also received the Father's free and loving creative will. Without it, the Son couldn't fulfill his purpose of creating like the Father through loving extension or generational replication.

Or, as Jesus says in the Course:

The creation of the Soul itself has already been perfectly accomplished, but the creation BY Souls has not. God created Souls so He could depend on them BECAUSE He created them perfectly.

Giving the Son free will before he could be trusted not to abuse it was a gamble, but the Father chose to take that risk, knowing all would be well in the end (because it already was, owing to the Alpha to Omega nature of Perfect Creation). 

To give the Son a chance to practice creating, the Father established a "kingdom" for this purpose within the larger God-Mind Bubble. In that "kingdom," the Son could play around with ideas all he wanted, but he couldn't "flip the switch" to create anything REAL and ETERNAL without sharing the Father's Creative Will or following the established protocols for Perfect Creation.

To create anything REAL and ETERNAL the Son's will had to be "in tune" with the Father's. It had to, in other words, vibrate at the frequency of Perfect Love emitted by the Spirit of Creative Will within the God-Mind Bubble.

When the Sonship entered its "kingdom," the Father divided the one into many. How, why, or when this occurred isn’t explained in the Course or any other source I’ve consulted. Jesus does, however, specify that there were no “orders” of Souls at this point in Timeless Eternity. There was, in other words, no designation between humans, animals, birds, insects, single-cell organisms, or plants. There was only “one continuous line of creation” proceeding from God to His Souls, and then onward to their creations.

Okay, so ... to guide their experimentation, God gave His Souls assignments to complete. The first and foremost of these “assignments” (not commandments, according to Jesus) was to love, honor, and value their Creator more than the effects of their creative experiments. The second most important was to love and treat each other as they would wish to be loved and treated themselves, because the other Souls were all their “brothers” in the Sonship.

This second directive is known by various names, including the Golden Rule, the Law of Love, the Ethic of Reciprocity, and the Law of Giving and Receiving. While Jesus discusses this incredibly important rule in the Course and the New Testament, the ethos of treating others as we wish to be treated is not exclusive to Christianity. The same idea has, in fact, been articulated in almost every religion and culture since the beginning of recorded history.

The Golden Rule isn’t just about playing nice with other people -- although that’s certainly a major goal of this sacred maxim. God exhorted His Souls to follow the Golden Rule because breaking it could have disastrous consequences FOR THEM.

How so? I answered that question in part when I briefly discussed the Law of Love in my last post. To recap, the Golden Rule or Law of Love mandates that we receive (manifest for ourselves) what we give to others at the level of thoughts and ideas. Like God, we create with our minds, which never lose their creative power, even when we’re dreaming we’re somewhere other than Heaven (which we aren't). Also like God, the actuating force we extend or project to manifest our desires is WILL -- or, more specifically, the Spirit of Creative Will. In accordance with the Law of Love, we activate that Force of Will -- or flip the "Amen" switch, so to speak -- by giving to another what we desire for ourselves.

As I said before, we communicate our desire to have what we gave through every thought-gift we give to a brother. And, according to Jesus, the Great Amen, Spirit of Creative Will, or Holy Spirit ALWAYS replies, "Thy will be done."

We get what we give, in other words -- quid pro quo -- because that's how God engineered the creative process to work.

We’ll talk more about this later. For now, just KNOW that our minds create according to God’s Laws, even in the dream-realm -- whether or not we’re aware of this unassailable FACT. What we desire for others, we receive in kind, because that’s what we willed to have under the Law of Love. What we don’t receive right away goes down in the Karmic Ledger, to be delivered sometime in the dream-future. That time might be a day, week, month, year, century, or millennium from now -- but our thought-gifts WILL return to us eventually (unless we clear them from the Record first through True Forgiveness).

Okay, so ... understanding and following the Golden Rule/Law of Love is a colossally big deal. So colossal, in fact, that breaking or reversing the Golden Rule is, according to Jesus, one of the first errors that imprisoned us in the Ego Mind's Kingdom of Darkness. As I'll explain later, we reversed that rule when we began to cherish our miscreated possessions more than our brothers in Christ.

While the Souls obeyed God’s Laws, Heaven was a happy and peaceful domain. This was when we lived in the allegorical Garden of Eden, which wasn’t a garden or a place at all. Eden was “paradise” because the Souls enjoyed the Perfect Peace, Joy, Love, Harmony, Abundance, and Knowledge God “bequeathed” them when He created the Sonship.

Then, something changed. One or more of the Souls entertained a fleeting thought they didn’t share with the others or God. That thought was a seemingly innocuous rumination along the lines of, “What would happen if we left Heaven and tried creating on our own for a while?”

This was the "tiny mad idea," Jesus refers to in the following excerpt from the Course:

Into eternity, where all is one, there crept a tiny mad idea, at which the Son of God forgot to laugh. In his forgetting did the thought become a serious idea, and possible of both accomplishment and real effects.

As ludicrous as this inclination was, the idea could still accomplish what the Souls wished. They did not, however, have the power to usurp God’s Will, change His Laws, or alter their reality or destiny in the slightest way (because of Milta). Had they laughed the notion off, all would have remained as it was. But rather than dismiss the idea, the Souls gave it serious consideration. This split their mind, because only by PERCEIVING or IMAGINING themselves as separate from God could they manifest such an impossible idea. This “tiny, mad idea” was the “original error” or “first substitution” that brought the dream of separation into being, as Jesus explains below:

You who believe that God is fear made but ONE substitution. It has taken many forms, because it was the substitution of fragmentation for wholeness. It has become so splintered and subdivided and divided again, over and over, that it is now almost impossible to perceive it once was one, and still IS what it was. That ONE error, which brought truth to illusion, infinity to time, and life to death, was all you ever made. Your whole world rests upon it. Everything you see reflects it. And every special relationship which you have ever made is PART of it.

Desiring to leave Heaven may have been sheer madness, but it was still an idea with creative potential. And because God gave His Souls free will, He wouldn’t stop them from manifesting their desires. He did, however, try to warn them that, being His Milta, they couldn’t really leave His Mind. They could only imagine they’d left, by projecting a non-existent part of their mind into a realm of nothingness wherein everything they perceived would be the reverse of what was Real and True.

Or, as Jesus says,

The meaning of the Son of God lies solely in his relationship with his Creator. If it were elsewhere, it would rest upon contingency, but there IS nothing else. And this is wholly loving and forever. Yet has the Son of God invented an unholy relationship between him and his Father. His real relationship is one of perfect union, and unbroken continuity. The one he made is partial, self-centered, broken into fragments and full of fear. The one created by his Father is wholly self-encompassing and self-extending. The one he made is wholly self-destructive and self-LIMITING.

Since the idea that spawned “perception” was both insane and UNreal, so was the thought-system supporting it. That thought-system had an equally insane and UNreal “voice.” That voice belonged to the Ego Mind, the architect of separation, fear, guilt, and the God-opposing ideas of “fear,” “sin,” and “evil.”

“The ego cannot OPPOSE the laws of God, any more than YOU can,” Jesus explains in the Course. “But it can INTERPRET them according to what it wants, just as YOU can. That is why the question ‘What DO you want?’ must be answered. You ARE answering it every minute and every second, and each moment of decision is a judgment which is anything BUT ineffectual. Its effects will follow automatically UNTIL THE DECISION IS CHANGED. This is a redundant statement, because you have NOT learned it. But again, any decision can be UNmade as well as made.”

As the Great Deceiver of humankind, the Ego Mind is the symbolic serpent in the Old Testament allegory of Adam and Eve. The first lie the serpent told to “tempt” the Souls into leaving paradise went something like this:

You’ve ruined Creation, my friends. You’ve sinned against God. And if you think God will forgive what you’ve done, you’re more insane than I am. God pretends to be a loving father, but it’s only an act. He’s actually wrathful and punishing. If you stay, He’ll make you pay for what you’ve done—and dearly.

Believing the serpent's fear-inducing manipulations, the rebel Souls experienced such harrowing shame and guilt their only perceived hope was to run away and hide somewhere God couldn’t find them. Capitalizing on their terror, the Evil One offered them the perfect way out:

Project yourself out of this sphere into a universe of your own making. If you make it without your Father, He can’t see it, or see you in it. You’ll be safe there—and also free to do whatever you want. Plus, if you make your own world, you can be “special.” You can be your own person, make your own decisions, and experience your own individual glory, instead of always having to share everything with everything.

Desperate to escape their guilt and avoid God’s non-existent wrath -- and also intrigued by the idea of experiencing themselves as “special” -- the Souls chose to listen to the serpent and ignore God, who did NOT cast them out of Heaven, as the story of Adam and Eve erroneously reports; they left Heaven of their own free will -- by CHOOSING miscreation, personal autonomy, perception, and separation over Perfect Creation, Loving Cooperation, Knowledge, and Oneness.

What they chose was "concupiesence," which the Catholic Church correctly identifies as "the original sin." The Vatican errs by defining "concupiesence" as "sexual lust" or "worldly desires." These definitions aren't wrong, per se; they just don't quite hit the nail on the head. What "concupiesence" actually means is the desire for self-creation -- or, more specifically, the desire to create a "self-identity" apart from the God-created Christ-Self.

Or, as Jesus explains:

Eating of the tree of knowledge is a symbolic expression for incorporating into the self the ability for self-creation. This is the ONLY sense in which God and His souls are NOT co-creators. The belief that they ARE is implicit in the “self-concept,” a concept now made acceptable by its WEAKNESS, and explained by a tendency of the self to create an IMAGE of itself. Its fear aspect is usually ascribed to the “father figure,” a particularly interesting idea, in view of the fact that nobody means the physical father by the term. It refers to an IMAGE of a father in relation to an IMAGE of the self.

When the Souls made this insane choice, the Ego Mind hurled the split-off image-projecting part of their minds into a “void” of its own making -- a dream-realm of time, space, and matter over which it would rule as their "father" or “creator.” The Souls only appeared to be in this new realm, however, because they couldn’t really leave the God-Mind Bubble or withdraw from God's Eternal and Unchanging Covenant of Agape. By joining with the Prince of Darkness, the errant Souls simply manifested a new and illusory level of mind called "consciousness" or “perception.” 

In this new perceived "reality," the Souls could experience themselves as separate beings with separate minds and interests. This wasn't the case, of course, but it seemed very real to "the Separated Ones." This is because, as Jesus explains, whenever the mind divides, its new condition becomes real to it -- and the former condition is forgotten.

Psychologists call these habits of mind repression, dissociation, and denial. Remember this, because the process also works in reverse and is, in fact, the key to waking up from the Dream of Duality.

The “great projection” or “detour into fear” was, according to Jesus, violently explosive and lasted millions of years. It would, he told Helen Schucman (his scribe for the Course), take as long to undo as it did to evolve. 

The Tower card in the Rider-Waite Tarot deck strikingly illustrates our explosive (yet imaginary) projection out of Heaven or Superconsciousness. The blown-off crown at the top symbolizes the choice to forfeit our status as the Prince of Heaven. The figures on the card also depict the formerly genderless Souls dividing into male and female bodies as they plummet from the Heavenly "tower" of Higher Mind to the solid bedrock of material existence.

With this plunge into fear-inspired fantasies came the illusion-supporting perceptions of space and time. Like most other things in the dream-universe, both are symbols of separation. Space represents the false dualistic constructs of subject/object, opposites, and polarities, while time symbolizes the three predominant thought-errors that block the memories of God and Heaven.

Those thought-errors are:

Past = Sin
Present = Guilt
Future = Fear

More specifically, the past represents the “sin” the Separated Ones believed they committed against God by choosing to usurp His Will and Laws; the present represents the deep, unconscious guilt they felt (and projected outward) for what they imagined they did (but really didn’t); and the future represents the ego-inspired fear of the Divine Wrath and Punishment they feared they would incur if God ever discovered their hiding place.

The Souls also needed “bodies” of some sort to experience the dream as if it were real. Encasing the Souls in gross physical bodies was, in fact, the Ego Mind’s crowning achievement. Why? Because it affirmed the pretense they were separate from God and each other.

More importantly, having bodies allowed them to project the fearful concepts of sin, guilt, and fear onto other bodies. They then could perceive these projections as EXTERAL threats to defend themselves against, rather than the deceptive God-blocking thoughts and beliefs they actually were. The body was, however, just as UNreal as everything else NOT OF GOD in the Ego Mind’s dream-universe.

As Jesus says in the Course:

The body is the ego’s idol; the belief in it made flesh and then projected outward. This produces what seems to be a wall of flesh around the mind, keeping it prisoner in a tiny spot of space and time, beholden unto death, and given but an instant in which to sigh and grieve and die in honor of its master. And this unholy instant seems to be life; an instant of despair, a tiny island of dry sand, bereft of water and set uncertainly upon oblivion.

Like the Souls themselves, these first “bodies” were genderless and, therefore, non-reproductive. These first bodies still received God's direct transmissions, however, until the Ego Mind manifested the first pair of material opposites. Those first two opposites were, according to Jesus, fire and ice.

Thereafter, the Separated Souls received ONLY the Ego Mind’s transmissions, through which he tricked them into flinging the unconscious fear, guilt, and hatred they felt toward themselves (for leaving Heaven) onto their brothers, where it could NEVER be healed or defeated. As long as they perceived "the enemy" as outside their "bodies" (rather than inside their own minds), they would keep fighting battles they could never win and remain under Satan's evil sleeping spell.

“Not being in their Right Minds, they turned their defenses from protection to assault, and acted literally insanely,” Jesus explains in the Course.

Bewitched by the Evil One's lies, the Souls soon forgot God’s Laws, forgot they were supposed to love and help each other, and forgot that God’s Abundance provided more than enough for all of them to thrive. Erroneously perceiving scarcity and lack, they grew competitive, envious, and covetous. They horded resources and formed “special” ego-body relationships as allies and enemies. They also made possessions and currency -- meaningless miscreations they valued more than God and their brothers. By and by, they started fighting and killing each other to protect these UNreal and, therefore, WORTHLESS false-idols.

The Biblical allegory of Cain’s murder of his brother Abel symbolizes this period in the dream-drama. When we kill anyone or anything, we are killing a brother because we are all brothers in the Christ Mind.

Up to this point, God tolerated what was happening. But, according to Jesus, murder He could NOT abide. Something had to be done, but how to intervene without limiting free will?

“Many Souls offered their efforts on behalf of the Separated Ones but they could not withstand the strength of the attack, and had to be brought back,” Jesus says of God’s first attempts to fix the problem. “Angels came, too, but their protection was not enough, because the Separated Ones were not interested in peace. They had already split themselves, and were bent on dividing rather than reintegrating. The levels they introduced into themselves turned against each other, and they, in turn, turned against each other. They established differences, divisions, cleavages, dispersion, and all the other concepts related to the increasing splits they produced.”

Things only got worse. Forming into tribes, the Separated Ones began making war on each other to gain greater personal power and territory, committing murder en masse, sometimes (insanely) in the name of God. All these destructive thought-projections turned the dream into a seemingly inescapable nightmare of adversity, suffering, and death.

To address the problem, God needed a split-proof device that could be used ONLY to heal. The solution had to be optional (within limits), because the Separated Ones still had free will, which He would neither oppose nor revoke.

“It became increasingly apparent that all of the defenses which man can choose to use constructively or destructively were not enough to save him,” Jesus explains in the URText. “It was therefore decided that he needed a defense which was so splendid that he could not misuse it, although he COULD refuse it. His will could not turn it into a weapon of attack, which is the inherent characteristic of all other defenses. The Atonement thus becomes the only defense which was NOT a two-edged sword.”

The only defense which was NOT a two-edged sword was GRACE -- or, more specifically, Saving Grace -- a slightly less potent "aspect" of the Creative Force of Divine Will. Had God projected the pure vibratory power of Agape into the dream-dimension, He would have healed the separation right then and there. He also would have acted against the wishes of the Separated Ones, thereby retracting the free will He gave the whole Sonship. And without free will, the Souls comprising the Christ Mind could not expand Creation as God had already divined.

It was, in fact, the mother of all conundrums. To solve it, God hatched a plan that was at once ingenious and foolproof. Our Heavenly Father then projected the vibratory force of Grace, which He gave a teaching function, into the dream-dimension to implement the Great Reawakening Plan in stages over time. That Force of Grace is what Jesus calls the Holy Spirit, the Voice for God, the Mind of the Atonement, the Comforter and Guide, the Teacher, and the Holy Guest, among other descriptors.

The first thing the Holy Spirit did was to change the dream-world's purpose from insanely perceiving our selves and our brothers as sinful and separate to sanely perceiving the holiness and creative will we shared with each other and God. 

Or, as Jesus explains:

Only two purposes are possible. And one is sin, the other holiness. Nothing is in between, and which you choose determines what you see. For what you see is merely how you elect to meet your goal. Hallucinations serve the goal of madness. They are the means by which the outside world, projected from within, adjusts to sin and seem to witness to its reality. It still is true that nothing is without. Yet upon nothing are ALL projections made. For it is the projection which gives the "nothing" all the meaning that it holds.

The Spirit of Grace then played out the dream to its happy conclusion in a Holy Instant, recorded everything that went down, dropped us into a virtual-reality training simulator, and pressed the replay button. And that's what we experience as earthly life -- the instant replay or memory of a dream that both never happened and ended long ago.

But let's not talk about all that just yet. Let's talk instead about the infrastructure the Spirit of Grace and her pals installed in our dreaming minds to guarantee the Atonement Plan would reach its foregone conclusion in the time-warp memory earthly existence actually is. The construction of this atonement infrastructure is, in fact, what the opening chapter of the Old Testament Book of Genesis describes -- NOT the creation of Heaven and Earth by God.

As I keep saying, most things in the Bible are allegories that can only be understood through the gift of illumination. To interpret these allegories literally, is to misconstrue their meaning entirely. In the case of the first book of Genesis, the meaning of the so-called "story of creation" has been further eroded and obscured by multiple mistranslations and the evolution of various word-meanings over time. Up next, I'm going to cut through all that obfuscating crap and explain what Genesis actually says happened "in the beginning" -- of the DREAM, my dozing brother, NOT when God created the material universe (because He didn't).