From the Archives: Step out of the Stream

[First posted 7/21/10]  -- Please be sure to read the Comments as well!

[image by Kagaya]

Although there's enough material of such great diversity and challenge in The Risen to keep anyone occupied for years (as it has August) there are particular elements and ideas that appear to be especially intriguing to many. One that comes up fairly frequently, especially in reviews and interviews, is the comment about "Risen Skeptics":

"Not everyone is necessarily interested in contacting those left behind on the terrestrial plane after their transition to the Risen state. For one thing, it’s very difficult. And for another, the heightened reality of the Risen experience is so intense that many individuals quickly lose interest in earth and even forget they ever had a life there. Tim and others have told me that there are Risen who believe that their earth experience was all a dream—or a nightmare—from which they simply woke up. There are groups of Risen, including those who were once scientists on the earth, who maintain adamant skepticism that such a place as earth ever existed. When compared with their present reality, it simply doesn’t make sense to them and so they challenge others there to prove the existence of such a crazy-sounding place as 'Earth.'

"Because relatively few Risen individuals are able to connect and communicate with those of us here on the earth plane, our terrestrial existence becomes supposition and theory to many there. In a similar way, as a mother can completely forget the pain of giving birth to her child, we may quickly forget the suffering endured during our earthly existence, once we are secure in the knowledge that we have permanently moved to a far better state of existence. The past and all the suffering it contained fades very quickly when there is no linear time and only awareness of the Eternal Present." (pp 46-47)

I (August) have no trouble understanding the suggestion that there are Risen who refuse to believe in "such a crazy-sounding place as Earth" — probably because I was practically in near-constant and conscious awareness of Risen folks throughout my life — so I understand what could be called their psychology of light — although barely. I've had the privilege of spending a great deal of "time" in various Risen geographies while in deep but conscious states of trance, so I also have a hard time believing in the world I actually am in right now.

But this morning, while checking for weather updates on the television while getting ready for work, it shouldn't be all that difficult for anyone else to understand the Risen skepticism. All one has to do is about three minutes of channel-surfing; only 15 seconds on any channel provides a picture of life on Earth that can only be described as a chaotic quilt of insanity —

"... car bomb kills 13 in Iraqui village. .." *click* "...job loss & unemployment continue to rise..." *click* "Leonardo DiCaprio on dating: I had better success meeting girls before Titanic..."*click* ...wildlife toll grows as more oil washes ashore..." *click* "songbirds are being decimated in the Mediterranean for fun and profit..." *click* ".... I mean would you say what came out of Mel Gibson's mouth, drunk or sober? ..."

Behold a dark world run by ego-mind.

It was with deep gratefulness that later on in the day some words from Krishnamurti came my way, that validated my believing less and less in "Earth":

How can a mind that is always in conflict within itself find that which has never been in conflict? So in inquiring, the search has no meaning. What has meaning and significance is whether the mind can be free, free from fear, free from all its petty little egotistic struggles, free from violence, and so on. Can the mind—your mind—be free of that? That is the real inquiry. And when the mind is really free, then only is it capable without any delusion of asking if there is, or if there is not, something that is absolutely true, that is timeless, immeasurable. You know, it is really quite important to find this out for yourself, because you have to be a light to yourself, you cannot possibly take the light of another, or be illumined by another. You have to find out for yourself this whole movement of life with all its ugliness and beauty and the pleasures and the misery and the confusion, and step out of that stream. A mind must be capable of standing alone, of being a light to itself.