Two and a half decades ago, Gary Renard's Ascended Master teachers Arten and Pursah appeared to him and shared with him teachings that elaborated on the spiritual classic, A Course in Miracles.
Despite some negative preconceptions about this course, it's actually pretty straightforward and accessible. It teaches how to achieve correct perception and experience reality beyond illusions.
The Disappearance of the Universe
If you were sitting quietly in your living room when two strangers suddenly appeared and told you they were ascended masters who had come to reveal some shocking secrets about existence and teach you the miraculous powers of advanced forgiveness, what would you do? Obviously, you'd listen to them (and ask a lot of questions). And that's exactly what happened to Gary Renard in 1992. He chose to listen and he chose to write about it. The result is this startling book.
DU is a profoundly accurate introduction to the Course in Miracles, and unlike most of the other books that have sprung up in recent years claiming to be based on ACIM, it remains uncompromising in its commitment to the Course's spiritual philosophy of pure non-dualism and its inwardly activist creed of forgiving your enemies 24 hours a day. It also does what few other books have managed to do: it shows how the principles of the Course can actually be experienced while you're still in this world of form and time.
To accomplish this, DU elaborates on the teachings of two spiritual classics, the Gospel of Thomas and A Course in Miracles. It teaches you that the illusory "world" is an egoic projection; God's real -- and restored -- "world" is a creative extension of his love, a reflection of his unity. And it demonstrates that the only thing that can affect your experience of this "world" is what you believe about its reality, and the way you choose to think about it.
DU is peppered with Gary-isms (a few references to sex and beer drinking), but it's mainly an uncompromising, straight-up presentation of the Course's fundamental teachings. Several of its most important ideas, however, are original to this book. For example, DU's treatment of the parallels between the Gospel of Thomas and A Course in Miracles differs significantly from that of Wapnick, the author of the original edition of the course. This leads to another application of Occam's razor: it is far more likely that ascended masters just happened to independently duplicate Wapnick's teaching discourses to such an amazing degree, rather than that beings from another planet visited Earth and taught Gary the same things. a course in miracles
Your Immortal Reality
If you enjoyed Gary Renard's first book, "The Disappearance of the Universe," then this follow-up is a must-read. It continues the story of his ongoing meetings with Arten and Pursah as well as his continuing exploration of A Course in Miracles. It also deepens the connection that Renard first developed in his first book about the Gospel of Thomas and Jesus' teachings in the Course.
Among other things, this book presents the ascended masters' view of our mortal existence and the fact that it is very much a temporary home. They explain that we can take our spiritual identity with us into our next incarnation, but it is necessary to let go of the psychological investment that we make in the current form.
The ascended masters offer us a way to help remove the illusion of separation and return to a state of oneness. The key to this is forgiveness, which leads to the removal of fear, and it is through this that we are able to move into the immortality that is our true nature.
There are some irksome aspects of this book, especially the fact that the masters continue to be more and more unoriginal in their discourses. At the point where they present their version of the Gospel of Thomas, for example, it is almost identical to a contemporary translation of Thomas.
Another aspect that irks me is the fact that the masters seem to treat human beings as though they were beneath them. For instance, the masters repeatedly use sexually explicit language when referring to themselves and each other in their discourses, and even more so when they discuss their own fetishes. This seems to be a rather condescending attitude to take towards humans, particularly when these are the people who claim to have been ascended masters in previous lifetimes.
Lastly, the ascended masters present some pretty dubious ideas in this book, including that ACIM is the fastest path to enlightenment, that GR's version of forgiveness is the only way to forgiveness (this goes against the Course's teaching of allowing the Holy Instant), that the practice of being fully present is not important and will not get you there ("when is 'there' ever going to be?"), and that nonduality means accepting everything as God's Perfection NOW ("which isn't really all that different from nonduality"). All of these are very questionable ideas and are contrary to the principles taught in the Course.
Love Has Forgotten No One
Love has forgotten nothing, and it is the one thing that will never go away. That’s the message of this remarkable book, which is Gary Renard’s last work before his transition. It’s a profound and fascinating guide to dissolving the illusions of time and space, and returning to reality, which is Perfect Love. It’s the kind of love that is infinite, all-encompassing, perfect spirit: innocent, unflawed, immortal, invulnerable and fearless. It’s the kind of love that will be your permanent experience upon awakening, and it will forever change your life.
The book discusses forgiveness, and by the time you finish reading it, you should have a good understanding of what true forgiveness is. It isn’t just letting go of resentment and guilt and all the other kinds of negative emotions. It’s a complete practice, and it’s done on the level of the mind. It’s letting go of your psychological investment in this world, and putting your belief where it belongs, which is in God. The process takes time, and that’s a good thing, because if it happened too fast, it would engender fear. This process is what’s called spiritual awakening, and that’s what this book teaches.
There are some peculiar things about this book that make it seem a bit like a ghostwritten work. For example, there’s a line early on that mentions Plato’s pupil Plotinus, and it sounds a lot like a paragraph from A Course in Miracles that discusses this same subject. Also, at one point, Renard asks Pursah to “tell me something about Q,” which is a hypothetical gospel that hasn’t been discovered. This seems to be a set up for the material on Q that follows, and it’s not very convincing as a genuine question.
Renard was a close friend of Kenneth Wapnick, the author of A Course in Miracles, and he often used his books as CliffsNotes for the course. He was always careful not to say anything that could be construed as showing favoritism, and he made a public statement before his death saying that he believed that his own teachings were merely an extension of the course.
The Business of Forgiveness
Forgiveness is a great idea for personal well-being and can improve professional relationships. It is also an important business practice that can be leveraged to cultivate healthier organizations. However, it must be introduced as a choice rather than an obligation or a mandate. If it is treated as a duty, forgiveness loses its power to heal the hurt and erase negativity. This is why the story-based organization "The F-You Project" focuses on providing first-hand forgiveness narratives and does not mandate participation. This allows participants to use their own experiences to model forgiveness for others, and to facilitate more positive group dynamics.
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