God-Consciousness – Sri Paul Twitchell

 

Dear Friends:

   Faith and knowledge depend upon our experiences in life. Unless we have an opportunity to go through an encounter safely without developing aberrations, we gain nothing that can be called knowledge. Otherwise, we do gain faith in whether we are willing to accept the experience as being either positive or negative in our affairs.

 

   Actually, faith and knowledge do not result from automatic learning or perception, but from the ordeal, the adventure and conditions that we undergo in life. The latter makes up what we call experiences, when extended in time and space by means of language. Faith, knowledge and experience have nothing to do with time and space, but are  definitely concerned with our spiritual life.

 

   This is why Eckankar, as a subject, is more related to experience than with faith or knowledge. The latter aspects are certainly held in high esteem by religions, metaphysics and philosophy. But while we, in our relationships with God, accept faith and knowledge as the workings of the human consciousness, we are more apt to use the term Knowingness. We know that something IS. We know that God IS, and that reality is here and now, and that we can live in the consciousness of God at all times, or whenever we wish. So we learn by experience within reality, and not by books, lectures and teachings.

 

   The whole problem within our experience is that we know so little about spiritual life that we start out by stuffing ourselves with books, listening to lectures and darting from teacher to teacher in order to load ourselves with an awful burden of confusion and bewildering cargo. It weighs itself upon us, and we lose hope; for as much as man writes on the subject of spiritual life, it is of his own experience, and does little good for the rest of us , except perhaps to be used as a measuring rod for our own experiences.

 

   Despite how well one may write about his own experiences, we cannot have any faith unless we have gone through similar ones. Our relationship to whatever we have the experience with brings us into communication with that terminal. Therefore, we have experience and communication, which brings faith, knowledge and understanding. Without the experience we do not have faith, knowledge and understanding. Since we are not concerned with the latter three aspects because they enter into the human consciousness as a result of our contact with something tangible, and experiencing ourselves with it, then we are seeking relationship with the higher states of consciousness.

 

   For example, if we enter into one of the higher planes via Soul Travel and meet a being whom we recognize as one who inhabited the Earth plane and had died, we get in communication whether it is via thought process or telepathy. This is an experience which we can judge as not being a state of dreaming because of the feeling of reality and the perceptions gained during the encounter. The results, of course, when established in the human consciousness via the senses and intellect, are faith, knowledge and understanding. But only on this level of consciousness. They could not be anything else.

 

   This brings us to the point of knowingness. We just know what has happened and nothing can force us to depart from this fact of life. Thus we have faith because we know and have experienced; from that, we have understanding of survival and other facets of life beyond. So this would take us to the point of what happens to anyone who goes into the state of God-Realization.

 

   It means he has established a communication with the Ultimate Reality, and how long he stays in this state depends on his own understanding and acceptance of its reality as part of himself. One cannot reach this state via hope, that quality of the lower mind, for something desired. It is the knowledge of and communication with God by experience. It means that we are not longing for God, nor even having any communication with His lower aspects, but that we have a direct relationship with Him.

 

   Once this is done, who is going to argue with us, the experiencer, that it is a hallucination? Anyone who has been in communication with God has no words to explain his experience. It is beyond all vocal and mental description. It is so great that the human consciousness cannot contain the experience and, therefore, he must either keep it to himself or become a man possessed who overwhelms those who will listen. Certainly it is not possible to part him from his faith and knowingness of his experience. It is for sure that his understanding has reached far beyond the concepts of the human mind, and none will be able to know just what he is talking about. In many cases, very few people will even want to listen, and many who do will be upset by his words and actions.

 

   The example in the Gospels of the impossibility of a camel passing through the needle's eye, shows the difficulty of experiencing the God-Consciousness state. It is proof that the human state can never grasp what the God-state is trying to perform for us. This is why there is a vast difference between the higher and lower states of consciousness and why so few understand what a man speaking from the higher state has to tell the world. Usually he is derided, ridiculed and driven out of their sight for he upsets their little worlds of reality.

 

   What must be pointed out here is that we all go through the lower states, reading of books, studying under various teachers and running from one person to another for Truth. It is the usual route that all people take, but when the ultimate opportunity arrives for each of us to reach out and get into communication, we must have the courage and boldness to seize it. We must step through the door into the golden Light and Sound of the spiritual universes.

   I am always with you.

                                                                                                     Affectionately,