Has anyone read this?

comments?

The disappearance of the universe : straight talk about illusions, past lives, religion, sex, politics, and the miracles of forgiveness

by
    Renard, Gary R.

thank u Lucy!

for turning me onto that book I treat u my dear to my alter ego "the bouncer."

I just ordered it after reading the exerpt you kindly provided. my, the authors language does suit me well (he used the term I don't give a rats a-ss to explain that he doesn't care if J was having sex or not..neither do I frankly!

yes, well, as you know I read ACIM for a full year. every line meditated on that sucker. was what the doctor ordered and here's someone just like me. haven't ordered any books for awhile as too busy trying to get mine all ship shape...nobody said writing a book takes your whole life...guess I'm impatient to start another.
you ask do I believe spirits appear and talk, to Gary the author ? yes, I do, but it's on an altered level of consciousness. you can be completely conscious of your physical surroundings, yet be observing a conversation going on in your mind and the answers to questions seem quite beyond your current experience, so I believe he works with these others, to help get the word out, and so far what I've read is where my present understanding is also.
I doubt if these spirits actually materialized, as that is a rare thing, but I don't know. I think the material is more important to focus on than to be ascertaining whether it was a nonphysical or a physical being who delivered it. there will come a day more and more of us will be able to pick up communications from behind the veil, as I think this could speed up evolution considerably and make this ol world a safer, friendlier habitat. love, alysia
thanks again, I have a dear friend needs to read some of this book.

Also manifestation does happen now and then. we have a forum member here, Vicky, who has a guide who said he is always with her, and he appeared to her as solid flesh in her hospital room during a crisis, not once, but several times. she thought he was an orderly and found out later, he didn't work there. he has not returned in flesh. she posted that story, its in the archives. Vicky is a very trustworthy person my extra senses say. I assume some of us can become aware of guides with us from the start. I think we all have them; nice to make contact. love, alysia

Hi Lucy. I'm on page 129. I like to read slowly, not to miss anything. yea, this planet is the planet of the ego I just read today. also I read that we separated our mind from the heaven area, and this caused a split in consciousness so that now we, as mind, had perception. in order to have perception to percieve something..there must now be created an object to perceive. to perceive is to live within limited consciousness. I'm just mulling it over. guess we can let god off the hook, eh?

hugs, alysia

Lucy, Ricardo has read it and probably hasn't seen this thread. You could pm him and I'm sure he'd be happy to discuss it with you.  I hope to order the book soon too since I'm hearing so much about it. Will have to wait til next month though.

Love, Mairlyn

Hi Lucy, I don't think the point is to get back. at least not personally for me. what I've been thinking on lately is the book is saying our true home is an abstract, non dual state of consciousness. such a mind state would have a nonduality type of viewpoint which means non conflicted (ego) within the mind which must always balance and measure reality as in a ceaseless judgment activity. if you or I didn't always have to be busy with measuring our good or our lack, it would be peaceful there as in a non competitive way.
so whats the point of having a life?  I think thats a personal question because everyone is right. I think it means its the value we give it as creators of it. essentially we're free will beings..free means freedom to do the mistakes also. in the non duality state it doesn't really matter whether you live in a body or out of one, I mean dimensions. both dimensions are there.
hugs, alysia

hi again. hang in Lucy. I think belief system crashes are in the final analysis something that makes u feel freer, like a load is taken off your chest. we could also look at crashes this way; that we will continue on having them ultimately until death and exit of the world we once knew, but personally each crash got less wearisome to bear up under and so I'm thinking thats the reward of doing them, that pain gets less and slowly joy replaces or balances with the grief of it all. like learning to walk a tightrope, u might fall into the net sometimes until the balance occurs from being willing to practice. u said your brain was going back and forth..thats the dual thing of our nature. I still do it now and then..I just forget. the evolution of consciousness as energy in motion appears to me like a pendulum, like it has a ball on it and it swings to and fro until gradually the ball meets in the middle until the next motion of thought begins it swinging to and fro again.
I've been considering all the possibilities of any situation developing. Cozzolino author of the Path calls this learning cognitive thinking. you get your priorities in order from this kind of thinking a little faster and leave conflict behind easier. u start asking a lot of questions which don't get answered quickly but they simmer and thats when I start dreaming the answers.
that very little emotion you speak of Rick..I get in those moods too, but I don't think it's entirely correct to turn the entire afterlife areas or focus levels into a non-emotional area..theres some very strong emotions can be felt out there and holding some very important messages within the emotions. I assume your parents are beyond what they experienced here in emotions and they are trying to communicate this to you as best they can, that they got over the hump. in that nonduality state I've had the emotions suspended for some automatic writing, its a calm place to be in, but I like to experience emotions like fun, humor, enjoyment, love and I wouldn't want to all the time be nonexpressive in that.

hugs, alysia

HAs anyone read any more lately? There's a part of the cosmology discussed that claims we created it all...we the ego that is....simultaneously, in the Big Bang, of course. So it starts sounding like things are predestined. This is making it hard for me to find motivation to do stuff. But the rest of the cosmology is compelling enough that it is hard to drop this part.

Thanks for sharing your thoughts.

Some of the cosmology in "Experience.." is really challenging to me. If we already dreamed the whole thing already, why should I try to do anything to grow or change or improve me or the world? I don't have any motivation.....

hi Lucy. was thinking about what u said about no motivation. so sharing something from my book which may or not be helpful. anyway, I think where you might be at now, is a temporary state. hope you like what I've written. maybe you can give me ideas to follow. feel free if so.

Was there a reason to remain in the body after the children were grown and no ambition was embraced? I felt so finished. I had closure with family and there was no karma to burn. My children, not without their own precognitions picked up that their mother studied life and death issues. They knew I did soul retrievals but didn’t understand them. They had seen me in their vision standing in line awaiting my turn to enter a structure set up for convenience of laying the body down, rather than choosing a messy accident or lengthy illness. Society had sanctified the sovereign choice to be allowed to depart Earth and still be considered sane and the people who stood in line  were not chickening out. Earth had turned into a vacation site where spirit used a body as a vehicle for self expression and experience gathering and when vacation was over you took it off like you would an overcoat. What was the reason for this acceptance of death without fear? The shift in consciousness had occurred massively. We now knew there was no annhiliation of our individuality and no need for heroic efforts to keep blood pumping through a dead brain. The dead sometimes returned to life complaining loudly against it. We just told them to get over it. It was funny; it was like we were saying, “and where do you think you’re going so soon? Give us your insurance card first and ask your family if you can go.”  Daughter Michelle would turn to her sister questioning my decision; “Shall we attempt to change her mind, and does she know what she is doing?” Dana would answer “She knows what she’s doing, let her be, she’s happy.” My girls had learned to release me; no small task is letting go of Earth living. This merging place or shift in consciousness could be what spiritualists called ascension; something I’d thought impractical. It was not what I expected. In the now moment there was nowhere to ascend to. A better word for ascend I decided was to merge or emerge.  I was reminded of a voice speaking within a dream question and answer period regarding ascension as being the purpose of my children and I. We had already agreed upon it in some eternal locale.  I would choose to see the changes I observed as an increase in the frequency of positive thought patterns according to what I wished to focus on...not what was presented to me in my bulk folder. All of life became a commercial and there was not enough time to pay heed. This peace descending might rub off if I could be of service while not disrupting what was already perfection happening for other.

Alysia:

In his third book Robert Monroe speaks of a creator.  This creator created everything according to a plan, and makes adjustments according to need.

My feeling is that the imperfections we experience while in the physical are an intentional part of the grand process that enables us to become the wonderful multifaceted souls we eventually become.  Our experiences enable us to bring gifts when we rejoin God.

ACIM has shades of Vendanta. Vendantic gurus tend to believe that there is the illusion of this physical world, the Self as pure consciousness, and that's about it. Apparently they seem to lack knowledge of the many levels of existence. Don't ask them about the disc theory, because as opposed to trying to explain how the creative process took place, they dismiss it as illusion. It is much easier to explain things in such a way, rather than coming up with the details.

My feeling is that the different levels of existence are all made of the same energy, it is just that at some levels energy vibrates faster and with fewer restrictions. To speak of this energy as nothing more than illusion is comparable to calling consciousness and love illusions.

Just because energy vibrates at a slower rate here in the physical, and resultantly people aren't as aware of the spiritual nature of things, this doesn't mean that God isn't here.

Regarding the unreality of time, as long as the end result is real and wonderful, everything that leads this end serves a purpose and is pervaded by the grace of God.

LaffingRain wrote on Jul 17^th, 2006 at 5:15pm:

yes the issue of how the universe got created is one I wish we could talk about more. I'm not familiar with Vendanta, so this might be a good place for me to start looking to understand this better. Recoverer how much of ACIM have you read to feel that it sounds like Vendanta?

Curious that Cristianity and that migth be tied up together in the COurse.

The problem is that I reject much of current Christianity (and have for years) so I find this book intriguing.

There are parts of the illusion argument that I find compelling.

Also as the person says in the introduction, whether the cosmology is correct is a separate question from whether the use of Forgiveness as described in the Course works.

Of course, the book "DIsappearance..." is intriguing because it is based on the application of something we would normally just find in science fiction...the warping of time as we know it. The author writes a book inspired by someone who wouldn't have influenced him if he didn't write the book in the first place....not possible in time as we know it! pretty interesting proposition.

I think the illusion of linear time is the first allusion to consider in ACIM or Disappearance of the Universe. just this morn was thinking how when you get in a space ship, you can go up there and a few years pass. you come back to earth and your wife has gained 25 years, and you've gained only a fraction of that, if you can call years passing a gain. is linear time passing dependent on the rotations of the planets? if so, then time slowed down for the spaceman or he stepped outside the laws of the Earth into a space where time doesn't matter. maybe matter, substance, only exists in similar planets as this one. thats why ACIM says linear time is an allusion.

been thinking about this a lot. for more than 2 years. about time; how we buy time from each other. time is money..etc...time to do this, to do that..regulated time, stock market timing..we are run by clocks, as in appointments, its all orderly (although me daughter is always a day late and a dollar short   )

all that preoccupation with timeliness and buying other's time and selling our time as well, all that will disappear when we step into the other dimensions of life. we need not fear this transition I say.

hugs, alysia