Posted by Roberta Grimes • April 23, 2022 • 57 Comments
Afterlife Research, Death, Jesus
Oh Lord, my God, When I, in awesome wonder
Consider all the worlds Thy hands have made.
I see the stars, I hear the rolling thunder.
Thy power throughout the universe displayed.
Then sings my soul, my Savior God to Thee,
How great Thou art! How great Thou art!
Then sings my soul, my Savior God to Thee,
How great Thou art! How great Thou art!
– Carl Boberg (1859-1940) & Stuart K. Hine (1899-1989), from “How Great Thou Art” (1885)
Christian apologetics is a branch of theology that defends Christianity against objections to Christian thought. And the concept is well-named! If there is any area of thought that ought to be apologizing profusely at this point, and to everyone involved, it is Christian theology. I say this, having lived for most of my life as a devout traditional Christian. I learned Protestant Christian dogmas as a child, and then began to read the Bible over and over again at the age of twelve, and continued that practice until the age of fifty. I also studied Christian history in college before I fell in love with a Catholic in my twenties, and then I proceeded to try my best to convert myself into enough of a Catholic to pass sufficient muster, with the help of a confused but patient priest, to just barely squeeze through the Cathedral doors and manage a straight-faced Catholic conversion. So I have been around the apologetical barn a time or two! My husband is a cradle Catholic, parochial schools from kindergarten through Providence College, and so rigorous in his religion that if I had not converted, he would not have married me. And I was in love. We do crazy things when we are in love. In the end, the priest told me that I would have to accept a lot of Catholicism as “a sacred mystery.” Or, you know, I could marry someone else.
Well, okay. I converted. And for twenty-five years I tried my best to be a Catholic because I love my husband. So I didn’t just go through the Catholic motions. I was a Lector, and I sent my children to parochial schools because that was what the man I love wanted. And also, because I reasoned that any faith was better than no faith. The priest who converted me didn’t give our marriage much of a chance, but the joke is on him. We will be married for fifty years in August.
There comes a time, though, when enough is enough. For me, that time came when I was turning fifty, and I finally got it through my thick head that Jesus had told the woman at the well that He could give her living water (JN 4:11).
I had read the Gospel story of the woman at the well dozens of times before that day. I used to read the Bible repeatedly, from Genesis through Revelation, and then I would go back to Matthew and read just the New Testament over again before I started back in with Genesis. In later life I confess that I cheated a lot, and after Revelation I would re-read maybe the Psalms, and then the New Testament sometimes two or three times before I started over again with Genesis. Anything, to delay having to read the Begats even one more time! So I had read that story of the woman at the well repeatedly without seeing how it related to the afterlife evidence until one very significant day that literally rocked my world.
I have talked about this problem before. When you are a devout traditional Christian, and you also are pursuing as a hobby the obsessive sifting through of a couple of centuries of afterlife evidence, not yet having met your spirit guide so you still don’t realize that you have a purpose in this particular lifetime that requires that you be doing both of these things simultaneously, you fully expect that you will start to find that your beloved religion matches up with what the afterlife evidence tells you actually happens after death. But by the time I was turning fifty, I was forced to admit that Christianity was actually wrong about pretty much everything. In all that afterlife evidence, no matter how hard I looked for it, I could find no evidence at all for a throne room, or a judgmental God, or a fiery hell. And worst of all, I could find no evidence that the crucifixion of Jesus had ever made an afterlife difference for a single human being. And I had seen plenty of good communications from the dead by then. If it ever had happened, I would have found it.
When I was fifty, I stopped my daily Bible reading in what felt like a bought of existential despair. It was two years before I dared to pick up a Bible again. Then one rainy day I swallowed hard, and I trusted Jesus enough to read just the Gospels. I discovered then that while the big Christian dogmas like substitutionary atonement are altogether without foundation in the words of Jesus, His teachings on things like love and forgiveness and so much else agree so precisely with what I had been learning about the afterlife from communications with the dead that it took my breath away. I kept waiting to catch Him in some mistake. Perhaps He talked about a fiery hell? Or He might have mentioned a judgmental God? But no, don’t forget that He said, “For not even the Father judges anyone, but He has given all judgment to the Son” (JN 5:22). Except for a few anachronistic spots at the back of each Book that I had learned in college had been added by the Council of Nicaea in 325, the Gospels could have been taken right from my dusty old books of early-twentieth-century afterlife communications. On that glorious day, I was already sold on the certainty that Jesus knew whereof He spoke! Then I came to Chapter Four of John, where Jesus tells the woman at the well that if only she had asked Him, He could have given her living water. And my jaw hit the floor.
My dear friends, what got me on that greatest day of my life was that passage in John where Jesus offers the woman at the well “living water.” Christians think He was talking about baptism. Silly them! I knew from the afterlife literature that the water in the afterlife has peculiar qualities. It is oddly dry and life-giving. And when I visited Jesus two weeks ago, and we had our bare feet in the river while we fed the fish, I didn’t think to mention to you the fact that the water was the odd, dry “living water” that He talked about to the woman at the well. The water in the astral plane is in fact dry, it feels like silk, it doesn’t wet your clothes. And it is alive. I wasn’t focused on the water at the time because I was so overwhelmed by the nearness of Jesus and His luscious personal energy, but my mind keeps bringing back these details!
As I suspected might happen, those moments that Thomas and I spent with Jesus have remained vivid in my mind. I think they always will feel like an event that occurred just last night. And the problem has become that at this stage, I am beginning to feel an inappropriate rage. The fact that the Romans co-opted the name of Jesus and distorted His spiritual movement into one of power and control has done such tremendous harm to the world! So I have just this morning turned to Thomas, and I have early on the Saturday morning before this post is due to go to you had the last answer that I would have expected from him. When I told him how angry I was at Christianity, he simply and calmly said, “Welcome to my world.”
I blurted, “What? That’s all you have to say?” There is an army of discarnates supporting Jesus, including even the Apostle John, who have incarnated repeatedly for two thousand years while they protect the Master’s teachings, and meanwhile Christianity continues to teach a bunch of bogus nonsense? And that is all just fine with you, Thomas? He is smiling at me now. And actually, he shows me that Jesus is smiling, too. What I find incomprehensible is that the whole blinking lot of them are smiling at me, as if I am somehow just naïve and cute to be discovering this only now? My dear Thomas is telling me that I am actually meant to discover this now, and please stop being so dramatic about it? Jesus is weary after two thousand years of having to make the sign of death on millions of Catholics’ foreheads when they come home to Him. Thomas is reminding me of that now. So it is time to go out and spread the Lord’s Way on earth, and I know that, so just go out and do it now, for heaven’s sake? Omigod, he is showing me a whole crowd of people smiling at me! Oh. I get it. I do.
–We are nearing the end of a very long process. In this case, one that has lasted for two thousand years. Each of us has a role to play, and Thomas has promised me that once the SRO website is finished, and the one that I have promised to do for Jesus, I can go home if I want to go home. We have worked out a compromise age. It’s okay. I am realizing that finding out so late in life that I have a tiny role to play in something that is apparently very large is comfortable. And in not telling me what was ahead until that was necessary, Thomas has given me the carefree gift of a full and happy earthly life.
Any honest person who knows much about Christian history must take it as a given that none of the forty-two thousand versions of the religion that modern Christians follow has much of anything to do with Jesus. The Lord has been seen to be just a pure sacrifice with a virgin mother, with no role in the religion that carried His name except to die. Which was an idea that came from old Roman and Hebrew religious customs. And everyone of every religion and of no religion goes to the selfsame afterlife anyway, so the death of Jesus on the cross really doesn’t seem to make any afterlife difference. His death on the cross has been irrelevant to Christian believers since at least the early 1800s, and probably for a great deal longer than that, which I guess is just something we are not supposed to be noticing? And I am still turning over in my mind the revelation that Jesus gave to Thomas and me that He had decided to be born from out of the Celestial Collective two thousand years ago as Jesus, having discovered how Consciousness physics works, so He could learn how best to raise people’s consciousness vibrations, and then teach that process to all of humankind. All of this is brand-new and amazing to me! So the religion is nothing anymore, if ever it even was anything. It is only His teachings that matter. His teachings are the miraculous wealth that the Gospels contain! Those teachings will give rise to the kingdom of God within each of us, which now is about to overspread the earth!
What angers me – and it enrages me! – is that fear-based Christianity, with its wars and hatreds, its Inquisitions and its baseless horrors, has delayed this beautiful moment for two thousand years. But where the Lord is, there is no time. A thousand years is not even the momentary flutter of a butterfly’s wings. Thomas is telling me again that we each have our part to play. My having been briefly so angry concerns him, since my part is a beautiful one, and since those who have imposed Christianity on the world also have their own part to play. And he tells me now that they have played it well. Incarnations are not linear, so Christianity has laid down for humankind twenty difficult and stressful centuries in which people can now plan lives of spiritual growth into the far future. Okay. I will try to let it go.
And now, the chrysalis that has been Roman Christianity is crumbling before our eyes. And Thomas tells me that soon on earth it will fall away altogether. He tells me, too, that the butterflies that are the perfect teachings of Jesus then will overspread the earth. But I do feel a little bit sad for those who are still trying to apologize for two thousand years of the fear-based Roman Christian ideas that have done so much harm to so many lives. I don’t see how they can still find much to say.
When Christ shall come, with shout of acclamation,
And take me home, what joy shall fill my heart.
Then I shall bow, in humble adoration
And then proclaim, my God, how great Thou art.
Then sings my soul, my Savior God to Thee,
How great Thou art, how great Thou art.
Then sings my soul, my Savior God to Thee,
How great Thou art, how great Thou art!
– Carl Boberg (1859-1940) & Stuart K. Hine (1899-1989), from “How Great Thou Art” (1885)
Thank you Roberta.
Perhaps I can learn to trust Jesus by searching for Him somewhere away from the church dogma that has built a huge fortress around him.
Anita
Oh my dear beloved Anita, you have just condensed in one sentence all the rage and pain of the past two thousand years! You can have no idea how many thousands of people have contacted me in the past ten years, just since The Fun of Dying was first published and since I started doing Seek Reality podcasts, and said some variant of the same thing! So many people hunger for Jesus, but are afraid of Christianity’s scary God and scary ideas about the Lord!
My dear beautiful friend, please know that no religion can keep you from the perfect love of Jesus. I couldn’t find Him inside Christianity any better than you could, but once I was free of the religion, He easily found me. If you will send me an email, I will send you a PDF of Liberating Jesus, to help you better understand His point of view.
And we were going to give Him a section of Seek Reality Online, but He has asked us instead to give Him His own website. I have asked Thomas to explain to Him that you can’t build a website for a religion without making it at least a little bit scary. Can we put a little hell or something in there, Jesus? But He says No hell. Just love. We’ll see how that goes! But meanwhile, please accept my hug. And His.
Dear Roberta, How does Islam fit into the scenario to be played out? As I understand it, Islam regards Jesus as a human prophet only, with Muhammad the messenger of God’s true laws, and converion to such law in the Koran as required by God.
My dear Jack, on Thomas’s instruction I have no answer to give you. Thomas has specifically directed me to have nothing to do with researching any religion other than Christianity, so I won’t confuse my research with other traditions.
I would add, though, that even though there seems to be no religion practiced in the afterlife, the afterlife portals and the astral plane in general all seem to be remarkably culturally specific. I recall, for example, coming across someone around the turn of the 20th century who had died in an accident in China and been confused to arrive in an afterlife full of pagodas and so on. And understandably, he called for help! Almost at once, advanced beings from the English afterlife (his homeland) showed up and escorted him home. I found that fascinating.
I wonder why no contact, as far as I know, has yet been made with the Prophet himself, who must be present somewhere up there.
My dear Loren, do we know when this prophet would have transitioned? And as we advance spiritually, we are more and more inclined to unite with others in collectives, to reincarnate until we reach the upper part of level five, eventually to join the Godhead Collective, or to advance above it. Or since the astral plane is vast and culturally specific, if he would have followers to welcome, perhaps he might be doing that? it isn’t at all surprising that he wouldn’t be local to us. And perhaps in other parts of the world there might be cultural taboos to attempting to contact their prophet as well? Who knows?
I have heard of this many times. Places on earth have astral counterparts where the belief systems they had while alive still exist in the astral counterpart, and people can stay there until they acquire a desire to move on from their old beliefs. It is a consensual reality but isn’t meant to trap anyone. They are perfectly free to leave when they choose to go.
As far as “living water,” Bruce Moen (now deceased) was an instructor at the Monroe Institute and was flabbergasted to find that on one of his visits, he walked into a beautiful lake and did some swimming, which was a hobby of his for years, but found that when he walked out of the lake, he was just as dry as he was before he walked into it. This was a great surprise to him and he wrote extensively about it in his book.
Oh my dear Lola, I have spent my afternoon trying to persuade Thomas to let me talk about the phenomenon of other religious figures in people’s reported astral encounters. He is allowing it, but looking over my shoulder.
He agrees with me that a lot of it might be cultural differences. Southern England and the Eastern US were really into afterlife communication through deep-trance mediums and physical mediums from the 1850s onward, and books were even written to try to get scientists’ attention. There were also lots of efforts made to help soldiers who had been freed from their bodies in WWI. And we had Robert Monroe’s adventurers at mid-century (the lovely Bruce Moen was one of his acolytes). But for whatever reason, lots of reports exist in the early literature from these two English-speaking countries from the mid-1800s to the mid-1900s of encounters with Jesus! And I can’t recall ever finding any reports at all, in hundreds of examples, of astral or afterlife encounters with any other religious figures at all.
That’s because there are no actual religious figures to read about with these people. Their consensual realities exist because of their minds being focused on what they strongly feel is the “real” religion. Eventually, they tire of this and move on, but there are no actual religious figures walking among them. I am not talking about Jesus encounters, as he did not “belong” to any religious affiliations. The encounters with Jesus have nothing to do with the manmade religions these people so strongly identified with when they were in a physical body. I was much more interested in the fact that the water over there seems to have a consciousness of some sort – what Jesus called “living water” By the way, I have never heard of any Jesus encounters where he advocated any religion at all, including Christianity.
Research I conducted on the most recent NDE reports (68 of them) documented on NDERF has relevance ( https://scigod.com/index.php/sgj/article/view/730 ). ” There were four Muslims in this sample [68]. Two experienced only a mystical light, and the other two had an OBE without contact with God experienced. Muhammad was not experienced.
There was one Buddhist and his experience was in category 5 of immersion in a huge zone of light that produced “incredible joy.” He did not see any image of Buddha, but decided it was apt to label this light as Buddha.
Jesus was reported to have been experienced by 13 %, while God was experienced (from categories 5 [God as light] and 6[God with personality]) by 29%, with two experiences as personal (6). There were two hellish experiences reported. “
Oh my dear Jack, as you know, you and I have lovingly agreed to disagree where NDEs are concerned! And especially concerning hellish NDEs, since of course there is no actual hell.
Interesting that Muslim and Buddhist NDE-ers didn’t seem to experience their preferred religious figures. Do we know how they reacted to that? Perhaps it was consistent with their religions’ teachings, which might simply be less personal.
I have reviewed on the order of 6000 NDEs now and only Jesus and God show up.
Re the ultimate meaning of the NDE, the same research I reported above found that a substantially greater frequency of having the NDE occurred for folks who were agnostic, previously believers who lost faith, or outright atheists. I interpreted that to imply that the NDE was not random but instead being used for guidance, as a “wake up” for a needed life course change (Ken Ring told me he also came to that conclusion in his own research). A demonstration of a Dante’s Inferno type experience would support that purpose for the NDE.
(ROBERTA’S RESPONSE)
And I agree!
When I studied NDEs extensively in the 1980s and early 1990s, my conclusion was that they were in the nature of dream experiences produced by the experiencer’s spirt guides as OBEs. None of the supernatural beings – God, Jesus, etc. – were real beings (God never appears as a being anywhere BTW), but all the NDEs I had studied were instead produced by the experiencer’s mind with the assistance of his spirit guides. And in all cases, the purpose was, as you say, to nudge the experiencer along his spiritual journey.
Since I attended a fundamentalist Christian College I missed the part on the additions created by the Council of Nicaea in 325, although, many years later, I read literature stating that. Where might one find that information?
Oh my goodness, my dear Loren, I’m not sure. I graduated in 1968, and I was taught by a rather heretical lady who was old at the time, and on a personal tear against First Nicaea’s changes to the Gospels. When you read the Gospels, you can see the changes in a little bunch at the back of the Synoptics especially: church-building, sheep-and-goats, etc. But I got them from her classroom lectures!
I don’t blame the elderly teacher to be angry at the changes in the gospel by the Council of Nicaea, and when I heard that Constantine encouraged these changes, I became suspicious, as I am certain that he did this because of some type of agenda that he had – perhaps to generate fear.
Yes, my dear. She said a lot more at the time – I wish I had been paying closer attention. And I think now that the wonder is that the Councilors didn’t do even a lot more damage!
As you may remember Roberta, I am an ordained and now retired for 14 years a pastor in the United Methodist Church. I thought that maybe I could escape the system and help others as well. It maybe worked for a while, so now here is my way of seeing things.
A deity constructed by humans with superpowers and demands for obedience to the “rules” upheld by gruesome punishment is a complete farce.
A theistic concept (a theist believes in a separate God that created the universe and participates in the universe). An atheist believes there is no God that created or participates. Both are illusions.
We (consciousness) are the creators and sustainers. We make the rules and break the rules for different kinds of fun, experience suffering, learning, and awakening of the true self. Conscious beings occupy the lowest levels of consciousness. Such as pain, fear, and suffering and we also are the blissful omnipotent, omniscient, and omnipresent infinite aspects of consciousness. Those of us that are sincerely motivated searchers, are like dedicated seekers… riding on an ox looking for… an ox. (A Buddhist expression to ponder upon)
We can look, search, read, pray, meditate and listen to a guru, or a priest, or a scientist, or a skeptic, or become a dedicated devout true believer of a great faith. All Religions (each one the true and only valid one) have sacred books, dogmas, rules, rights of passage, priests, preachers, mantras, prayers, creeds and pledges of loyalty, membership for the worthy and cast out the unworthy, … etc.
Wow so exhausting and confusing!!Then, if we are finally able to stop, and surrender, the gift may be realized…….There is nothing to find, we are already what we have been looking for. There is nothing to do. There is nothing to claim. There is nothing to proclaim. (Zen saying… those who say don’t know, those who know don’t say)
If we can be quiet long enough, often enough, we can begin to see through sleepy eyes that there is an infinite beingness ready to be realized.
Over the rainbow, Dorothy always had the power to go home, but just a click of the heels makes for a mighty poor movie; with no obstacles to overcome, no lessons learned, no fears to overcome, no new friends made, no loves to embrace. The dream was a great teacher and an amazing way for Self to find the way home.
Oh my dear lovely Michael, how wonderful it is to see you here! How have you been? I hope you’re doing well!! And I do so completely understand your impulse – those who say don’t know, and those who know don’t say – but my darling friend, the world is starving now for want of simple, basic, definitive knowledge. And those who know must share now what they know, or Dorothy perishes for simple lack of understanding! How many people are there in the world who know bits of the one gigantic truth at this point, and still there is no single place where we can send those who hunger and thirst to find the truth?
Dear Roberta, I read your post every Sunday and always benefited, supported, and brightened by the amazing journey you are experiencing and sharing with so many others. A way will open for me when the time is right. Christianity as created by the Romans, Catholic Church, Protestants, etc. is indeed in steep decline and none to soon.
Thank You! Peace and Love!
Oh my dear Michael, if my current journey has been amazing you, then I wish you could actually have been living it with me! At Thomas’s prompting, I made a promise to my friends here years ago that since we are an intimate group, I would make my own spiritual journey an open book. Since people keep asking me how to do this, and since I am trying to find easier and easier ways to grow spiritually while we are still living our lives – life-hacks, if you will..
Please tell me again what has just happened? Out of the blue, I have just actually met Jesus, our beloved God on earth, for real? And He has just told me His life story? And it turns out that He has a whole different life story from what the world has always believed. And wait, there’s more! My spirit guide and eternal best friend is also kind of also His friend too, from kind of a long time ago (and also Thomas Jefferson, but forget that), and my role now at the age of 75, for which I have spent my life preparing, is to teach the world that there is no death, and also to begin the Lord’s actual mission on earth, and I’m supposed to be okay about all of this because they have everything under control?
You’ve been following along with this week to week, my dear Michael. Is this really what has just happened?
But oddly, I really am okay with it. Even more than okay. I am joyous. I have just been through my blog posts of the past eight years and found that they were literally written for the planned segments of Seek Reality Online, before I even knew that there would be such a website. And yesterday I went through the most recent six years of the Seek Reality podcast catalog and found almost a hundred that are perfectly suited to be SRO evidence. I’m sure there are at least fifty more in the four years that I will review tomorrow. Thomas is right: He and I have been preparing for this launch for the past fifty years.
And my dear lovely Michael, best of all, now I really know Jesus. In churches all over the world they talk about “knowing Jesus.” Well, I thought I knew Him, too, after having read His words about a zillion times. But it never occurred to me that He could have a sense of humor! although He would have to have one, wouldn’t He, to let Himself be used as He has been used by religionists for two thousand years and not lose His mind? But His turn is coming. He has asked us to build Him a website in the fall and link it to SRO. Don’t say anything now. But think about it. And talk with Him about it.
Roberta, reviewing old blogs and re-listening to old postcasts is my favorite way of learning. Just like you have found. It’s like taking a college course a second time around. You have given us a wealth of invaluable information. Dave
ROBERTA’S REPLY
My dear David, you are the sweetest person I know. Well, apart from Thomas’s Friend. 🙂 Thank you for being always the dear friend that you are!
Michael,
Thank you! Eloquently said! I’ve rode the “Ox” for so long, it was so very freeing to realize that I and my Father are One.
Thanks to you Karry for your comment. Jesus said in many different ways in the Gospels that there is but One and we are expressions within the one. Be at peace and look within.
Michael, so well said. Re, ” riding on an ox looking for… an ox, ” while I became extremely frustrted with my inability to conceptualize how the world came into being, and who to grasp the nature of consciousness, I realized a principle that appears to be similar to your quote.
The problem about scientifically approaching the question concerning how the world came into being is that we cannot position ourselves as independent outside observers to acquire the relevant observational data. By analogy, we are like fish born in a fish tank who beging to wonder about where the water came from and how the tank was constructed– who cannot ever in principle make the required observations. I termed this limitation the Principle of Interior Unknowability (PIU). Likewise, as I studied consciousness, the OBE reports led me to infer that we own an individual discarnate consciousnes (a soul when attached to the body, and spirit when freed of it) and that it functions in a Universal Field of Consciousness; here too, we are unable to locate outside of the UFC to observe how it originated and how it functions.
My dear lovely Jack, simply know that there is only Consciousness and nothing else, and go on from there. Consciousness has no container. And it has a bottom, but it has no top. This, at least, is what Thomas has told me to assume. He tells me that I can then try to better understand what is inside. But if I try to think beyond it, I waste my mind on what it is not yet mine to know.
Dear Jack, I enjoy reading your post. You do a remarkable job of trying to explain the unexplainable. Your words and thoughts point in the right direction and what we may possibly find. However, until one Experiences, even a tiny flicker…..
I had a realization several years ago that lead me where I am now. That Rome never really fell…it just moved/morphed into a world dominate religion stealing wealth and freedom. Roberta; one of the first few podcast I listed to of yours you stated that Jesus did not come to save us from our sin but from our belief in sin. This statement was another step towards my understanding of Jesus becoming the Christ as an example for us all to follow we all are to follow the Christ inside us and become Christ as I and my Father are one.
Oh my dear Kerry, I love that! Rome never really fell – it just turned into the Roman Catholic Church! And did I really say that Jesus came to save us from our belief in sin? I can’t imagine I’ve ever said anything quite so clever 🙂 But yes, how wonderfully freeing it is to realize the perfect love that Jesus actually is, and to know in your deepest heart how deeply and completely you are loved!
My dear beloved friends, I am realizing as I think about this that you still don’t understand the earth-shaking and absolutely, altogether life-transforming effect of John 4:11 for me. It is the entire reason why, at an age when I should be long-since retired, I am instead joyously working ten hours a day, seven days a week!
And why, you might ask, does that one tiny phrase in John matter so much to me?
Two thousand years ago Jesus said “living water.” He knew about that odd living water in the astral plane which the dead also had been talking about in those turn of the 20th century communications I had much more recently been reading. So on that rainy day in the 1990s, I suddenly realized to my profound wonder that (a) JESUS IS REAL! and (b) HUMAN LIFE IS ETERNAL! Don’t you see that each source of information had just validated the other source? Because people at all those different times had actually, personally witnessed that living water in the astral plane for us! And of course later astral travelers, like Bruce Moen (I knew him, by the way – lovely man) further validated the living water. And so did I, when I actually met Jesus myself three weeks ago.
And that is why I feel so urgent about now doing Seek Reality Online, and creating a website where people can teach themselves that their own lives also are eternal. And another website, where people can meet Jesus for themselves since that is what He wants. Knowing the truth is remarkably energizing!
Hi Roberta,
Loved this post. Have you read the book Urantia? There is a whole section about Jesus that gives detailed information on why he came to earth, what his life was like from birth, childhood, and adulthood, his relationships with his disciples and so much more. As you know so much of Christian teaching is based on fear and not even true. This book gives so much information I had never read anywhere else.
Have a blessed day
Joyce Stewart
Hello dear Joyce! Alas, that’s one of many books that my dear Thomas won’t allow me to read. Quite a hard taskmaster is my spirit guide! But as compensation, he does tell me quite a lot. His contacts are extensive! You are right, of course, about Christianity, but many other teachings are bogus as well, as I’m sure you realize.
Hi Roberta. It really is amazing just how ahead of his time Jesus was, and how impeccable is his timing of the renewal of the Way, as we come up to the 2000 year anniversary of his crucifixion. I’ve been drawn as of late to delve into his “greatest commandment” such as in Mt 22.35-40, but also Mk 12.28-34, and Lk 10:25-28 (interesting how it made it into all three) since the first message I got from my guides was basically a thumbnail, cliff notes version of it, unbeknownst to me until I did the research. It really seems like the key, or litmus test, to guage everyhing else he is said to have taught or done during his ministry. I did not know that the first part, that God is One, and we should love Him with all our heart, soul, and strength, is a quote of the most central prayer in Judaism, called the Shema, from Deuteronomy 6.4-5, which many observant Jews say several times per day and at the moment of death, and some even wear on their foreheads in phylacteries as a reminder to keep God on their minds, as well as placing them on their hands and on doorposts, also deeply symbolic. When looked at in a deep way, such as the Kabbalists do, it is a statement that consciousness is fundamental, and everything is part of that one consciousness, and this idea has only become common parlance in recent years, such as with Bernardo Kastro! Then I learned that the 2nd part, about loving your neighbor as yourself, was also a quote, this time from Leviticus 19.18. What really blew my mind is that the quote is only the end of the sentence. The first part says, “You shall not take vengeance or bear a grudge against any of your people,” so with that part added (Did he leave it out because it was too far over the heads of those around him?) we basically have a “greatest commandment” stating something like “We’re all part of the same Cosciusness, so you should practice unconditional love and perfect forgiveness for all, because it’s all basically you” and he was able to so quickly boil all the “Law and the Prophets” down to these two short quotes as if to say “Ta da! This is all you need as a key to judge what is useful and what isnt” not just in the Old Testament, but also to sniff out any alterations or interpolations in the four Gospels that would come later. It really is pretty mind boggling to me how succinctly and stealthily he did this, and how prescient he was – and it is only due to the very recent work of folks like you and Thomas that his teachings are becoming clear, and all those old apologetics can go into the dust bin of history. The living water quote is really amazing too, since that information about astral water was not around back then. No wonder they were all smiling at you. It does seem like a grand plan has been playing out for quite some time.
Hey Scott 👋
Your explanation of how advanced Jesus’ teachings were for his time – and place – is beautifully expressed. I couldn’t dovetail the relevant sources you have chosen nearly as well.
There is one interesting thing I can mention though. Moses’ declaration in Deuteronomy 6.4-5 became the key Jewish prayer, the Shema. The relevant verse went something like this:
“And you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul and all your might.”
Jesus key commandment was:
“You shall love the Lord Your God with all your heart, with all your soul and all your MIND.”
It is clear that this turning of this key verse indicated that Our Jesus was indeed teaching the transformation of human consciousness. ‘Might’ or strength is one thing, but the power of the transformed and enlightened mind is quite another. It is the transformed mind of high vibration that makes all the difference to becoming one with God.
🙏🏼🌅
Hi Efrem. I like that emphasis you put on Mind, which re- minds 😉 me of the Greek word metanoia, which was generally translated as to repent, but as Roberta taught in an earlier blog, should really be thought of as transforming one’s mind.
I can’t take credit for the insights on the Shema. A lot comes from a great talk I found online by a rabbi and spiritual teacher at Naropa University named Tsvi Ish-Shalom on it’s deeper mystical meanings. I highly recommend it. If you’re intersted, it is on YouTube under “From Quarks to Love in Ancient Hebrew Mysticism: Tsvi Ish-Shalom”
My dear lovely Scott, you are such a wonderful scholar. It’s good that you have a profession that gives you the time to do all this studying! I don’t have the time to do any studying of anything. They have just sent me the 90-minute finished free SRO podcast for me to proof, and can’t get over how glorious it sounds! Omigod! But I can’t find the time to listen to all of it.
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Thank you Scott.
I will certainly look at Rabbi Tsvi Ish-Shalom’s video.
👌🏼🕊🙏🏼
Fascinating, my dear Efrem. This all feels so very odd to me, as if I’m in the middle of something enormous that I should be able to understand – it should be really obvious! – but I can’t understand it. I have worried in recent days that I might be either stupid or insane. Thomas says that I am trying too hard. It’s simple, but I am making it complicated.
Dearest Roberta,
This must be a uniquely inspiring and demanding time for you. All this and the blog posts that Thomas and your good self write, remain so beautiful and inspiring!
I can only guess at the magnitude and complexity of the forthcoming Seek Reality Online. When it comes out (June, maybe?) I’ll be able to get some idea of how much work has been put into it.
And you are right when you say that people just want to KNOW about the purpose of life, the afterlife and the eternal nature of human consciousness. Many people really, really, really would love to know the essential nature and teachings of Our Jesus.
I have a feeling that when people read and ‘walk around in’ the website dedicated to Jesus – they are going to feel moved at core. The Spirit in each of us will experience that deep recognition. They may well feel the dawning ‘recognition-joy’ that some people have talked about oft and on.
Anticipation is a fine thing, Roberta. I reckon I will approach my first look at SRO by clearing my mind of all expectations and just enjoy the ride, as it were.
Somehow though, I feel safe to predict that there is going to be nothing like SRO anywhere else. 😉🎇🌅
But that is precisely it, my dear precious Efrem! The question is WHY is there nothing else like it, when the worldwide need is so tremendous?? Although I guess I am kind of abandoning asking that question at this point. There aren’t more that half a dozen people in the world who have a sufficient range of knowledge to do this, and Craig and I are two of them and most of the rest are involved with us. And it is a TON of work. So I guess that’s why.
The next website is starting to obsess me now. I don’t even really understand what Jesus wants! I thought we were going to have a section of SRO devoted to His teachings, but it is my understanding now that He wants His own website. If I am understanding this correctly. And He is right, of course! He deserves to be much more than an afterthought to a website devoted to teaching about death and the afterlife!
What I cannot get out of my mind is watching Him bless that first man in line. There were, like seven or eight after him, but that first man was quite tall and he was overwhelmed to be so close to the genuine Jesus and he expected to have to kneel, and Jesus didn’t want him to kneel and He was trying to hold him up. and get him to stand and be an equal. Such a simple, good and perfectly loving Man! So patient, so kind to that one man, when He likely was having to do that for the fifteen millionth time. Literally!
I wish it were in some way possible for Jesus really to come back to earth right now, as He really is!! Not a conqueror on a white horse, but the ultimate Teacher! But Thomas says it’s impossible. We’ve been talking about it. Impossible. The Apostle John, who remains very close to Jesus and hasn’t much incarnated might come back, but for the Lord to be believed He would have to create too much disruption.
In any event, and so it goes….
Oh my dear Scott, you so often make me smile! Thank you so much for sharing this!! I have read the Old Testament repeatedly, but scorned it in recent years, and I shouldn’t have done that since of course the Lord certainly didn’t. He used it in His work with the Hebrew scholars around Him, and often!
I have thought a lot about Jesus’s timing in all of this. Ever since I first met Thomas face to face in early 2015, I have been asking him questions, and a lot of them! But it is first now that he has begun to give me answers. I don’t much like those answers, of course. Nobody likes to feel as if we all of a sudden have a bull’s eye on our forehead! But he always hastens to add that if I refuse to actually carry out any of these tasks that I agreed a long time ago that I would carry out now then there are others who will step forward and do them in my place. Which of course is a challenge even worse than the forehead bull’s eye!
And my dear friends, I have come to realize sadly and rather belatedly that it is time for me to say far less here. I really am sorry! I have loved sharing my personal experiences so freely with you, but some folks who are far less advanced spiritually than many of you are beginning to go on tilt, my dear precious friends, and I am beginning to hear from them. It has been fun, though, hasn’t it? My Thomas has enjoyed it, too! He rather thinks of our community here as his own community, and when I read your comments he also is reading them. Oh! And Scott, he tells me that his Friend thinks your comment here is insightful. Wow, that is a first.
Although perhaps we are going to be hearing more often from Thomas’s Friend, who is indeed also our Friend. I am becoming used to that idea, because we do intend to begin the website that He has asked us to begin for Him. I don’t know anything about it yet, but I expect that we will be told what it will be. For now, though, we will respect the neuroses of those who are not yet ready to think outside their own small boxes.
Wow Roberta. It is a bit intimidating to think of Thomas’s Friend checking out our comments, but also inspiring and heart warming, since he is, as you say, also our Friend, and I certainly hope we will be hearing more from Him. We really do have a beautiful little community here. I imagine you must find the idea of being tasked to do His website a bit daunting, but also very exciting. As Thomas says, don’t overthink it or stress on it too much, just roll with it and enjoy. They have your back, and they’ve obviously been preparing you for this your whole life, maybe even more than one life. Such intetesting times!
Oh my dear Scott, I don’t imagine for a moment that Jesus reads this blog’s comments! But Thomas does seem to read them when I do. And something that I have come to understand only extremely recently is that my spirit guide isn’t only my spirit guide. And his having lived an incarnation as an American Founding Father is, as he has been telling me all along, really not a big deal at all. Because he is also apparently in the close inner circle of Jesus, for heaven’s sale, which is a bit like finding out that your best friend is also the best bud of the Queen of England. And while he has been guiding me, he also has been hanging out with the King of Kings, and you’re right that there are plans here that go back for hundreds of years. This is fun for you to watch, perhaps, but you have no idea how unworthy I feel to be in the middle of it!
Thank you for your last reply to me above. Thank you for all your generous responses, and for the last one particularly.
Since you have relayed your experience of Jesus blessing the first man in the line, I now have such an image too. 🙂 It is a wonderful image for many reasons if one thinks about it. It is particularly resonant for me. Yet due to this image I now see my mistake in life.
In the tradition in which I was raised, and as my dad taught me, a person does not bow down to any human being. Even bowing low and kneeling to God the Father / Holy Spirit is only expressed on fewer, more sacred occasions in Synagogue. However as a late teen, when I chose to integrate into an Eastern meditation-yoga tradition, I found that the guru is all. And it is practice to bow down very low and even touch the feet of the chief guru. Once I broke my own understanding and did this, things slowly went awry from that point.
As Lord Jesus doesn’t want us to even kneel before Him, how unseemly it is to kneel and bow to feet-level of any human guru! I see my mistake now. I see my mistake.
And I won’t ask you what Thomas and your good self think of those group leaders, those gurus, who insist upon their followers bowing right down low before them.
(NB: Not all Eastern teachers ask for more than basic eastern tradition allows, but some do. Some make it more than compulsory.)
Now, many years after my yoga experience, I am elated to realize that Our Jesus is all about love! He is found when and where we love. He is found in the midst of sacred Agape. He is not met in cold, disinterested rationality, nor is he interested in slavish, guilt ridden worship. He is present every time we love God and each other.
And He just wants to place His hands on our heads in blessing. 🙏🏼 🦋🌅
Oh yes, my dear beautiful Efrem! Thomas is approving of what you have said here. Roman Christianity has really gone haywire with all the bowing and genuflecting, and from what I saw, Jesus is trying very lovingly to help newcomers to understand that He loves them and He is happy to give them a simple laying on of hands.
There is a subtle change in the way that Thomas is treating me now, and I am understanding things much more than I ever have understood them before. I am trying to put myself in Thomas’s shoes. From before Jesus was Jesus, they were friends, and his Friend was the purer and the stronger one. But what a voyage they have had together! And Thomas has always had me on a need-to-know basis, primarily because there was so much that I didn’t know, and shouldn’t know, but he and I go back a long way as well, and now that apparently they have decided that the time is right to begin the Second Coming of the Lord’s Teachings, Thomas has spent my life preparing me for my planned role in that. But what a feeble and cracked vessel he is contending with! It’s no wonder the poor man has been so worried about whether he could adequately control me. And he was really creeped-out about my gender-switch – he is becoming a bit more comfortable with that only now. I wish he had trusted me with more information, sooner! But my dear Efrem, for the first time in my lifetime of working with Thomas, I really do feel for the guy!
Dearest Roberta, thank you for saying that what I’ve said here is approved. 🙏🏼 I’m realizing that Our Jesus is really that – our Jesus.
It is wonderful that the Godhead is so loving and approachable. I now feel that there really is no obstacle to being with Him, unless our minds believe there is an obstacle. Should we but ditch the false notion that we are not good enough, then there would simply be no obstacle at all. 🙏🏼🌅❣️
Oh my dear Efrem, the realization that stuns me most, and seems most to be almost literally beyond belief, is how much each of us is loved individually. That was what hit me hardest when Thomas took me to meet with Jesus. OMG, what, JESUS? Are you kidding me? And He was treating me as if this was, like, no big deal? There He was, telling me the story of His life, and it was a very different story from what we always have been taught to believe, and He was treating me as an equal. It was an overwhelming experience. I still haven’t really gotten over it! But in talking with Thomas, I have come to understand that he really is Jesus’s friend for real, and Jesus really does treat everyone as He treated me. He would treat you that way Efrem, if you happened along. He just treats everyone that way. He is at this point the Highest-vibration individual Being in existence. He is infinitely powerful. And yet He genuinely loves each of us individually. that much. I still am trying to get my mind around it. But, as you say, if He inhabits His website, He will treat everyone there just as He treated me. And reality is very different, and much more loving and intimate than we always had thought it was!
I’m feeling this wonderment and it is beyond words, my dear.
🙏🏼❣️🌅
Well said Efrem. He would never want anyone to feel unworthy. That is just another false human concept.
Dear Lola, I agree. Jesus wouldn’t want anyone to feel low in self esteem; unworthiness is such a corrosive mindset is it not? He just wants to take all kinds of hurt away, including this one. 🙂
What do you reckon my dear?
Do you think that once people start to spend time in Jesus’ forthcoming website, it is going to take on a life of its own?
It’s kind of fun waiting for the ‘certain uncertainty’ of what is yet to unfold. The waiting and subsequent reveals of the wondrous unknown is a thing that doesn’t gain much traction in modern society, yet it is so much fun, eh?
Yep. Well said and profound!
I REALLY wish you all could have seen that scene! It was church-Jesus – you know, the blond picture from everyone’s childhood with hair to His shoulders and the neat mustache and beard. That night I saw Him morph from the older guy that He had been to comfort me at first to the younger, darker guy with curly hair that He normally looks like now to church-Jesus, and He did it so smoothly. And there He was, respectfully urging that guy to stand and be a man as no doubt He has done a million times so He could lay both hands on his head and bless him.
So I have been wondering ever since how we can inject THAT MAN into the website they want us to build for Him. That sweet and loving and effortlessly powerful yet easily other-focused personality that is the real Jesus impossible to describe in words. I cannot convey Him to you. I want Him to BE there. But Thomas says, Impossible.
So I’ve just now thought, Hey, maybe a hologram?
And Thomas laughed. And then I heard a second laugh, farther away.
I give up. I have just now told them that it’s up to them to figure it out!
… Okay, so my Thomas wasn’t happy with my comment here. I’ve tried to ignore him. Hard to do. And, he says, impolite.
His position is that the Gospel words speak for themselves. He thinks that once people understand that the entire religion has been a mistake – literally, every bit of it – they will embrace the Lord’s teachings. And he thinks the teachings all by themselves will produce a world full of people who are like Jesus. He just literally said “No need for a hologram. You’ll have a world full of holograms.”
My dear friends, he is a man of strong opinions!
And I guess that is the experiment, isn’t it?
Jesus told us He had been trying to determine how He had achieved ascended Master status, and He had designed those Gospel teachings to produce that level of spiritual growth, and thereby to achieve the kingdom of God on earth. So I guess now we’ll see, won’t we?
Dear Efrem. I hope you won’t feel that bowing was a mistake. You were doing what the leader of the discipline you were following at the time required. It’s great that Jesus doesn’t require such antics.
Hey Ray 👋
You are kind and reassuring my friend. You have also been reassuring with me before, when I’ve felt in a somewhat self-deprecating mood. Thank you. 🙏🏼
I have realized one thing though –
After going through so much pointless antics in my youth, I can really begin to appreciate just how truly great Jesus’ abiding love actually is. By contrast, my experience of yoga pecking-order absurdity, clearly shows the love of the actual Son of God to be astonishingly wonderful. 🌅
Hey Efrem. I often lament over “wasted” time. Our dear Roberta has wished she could have come to this point sooner. I’m so glad we are all here now. I’m glad to have been helpful to you.
P. S. Exposure to Eastern teachings probably made it possible for many of us to accept reincarnation. Thank you Efrem for the positive things that you post here. 🙏
My dear, Efrem, I have been reading some of my favorite Christian thinkers and talking with Thomas, trying to get my mind around all of this. One thing that Thomas has been pointing out to me – and it’s true! – is that no Christian thinker would get Jesus now, at all. They are all permanently into Christ suffering, and Christ crucified, frozen in time with Christian theology, and He is eons beyond that religious figure at this point. Thomas tells me that Jesus has been remaking the kingdom of God – what you might call the midlevels of the astral plane – for the past thousand years at least, and He is far beyond the Suffering Servant mode, and deep into teaching love and forgiveness even much more than He ever did in the Gospels. He will want our website to teach where he is now! He will want us to focus on bringing the kingdom of God on earth. If we teach where He is now, we can prepare people to make this their last necessary incarnation, almost no matter where they were when they were born into this lifetime. Which is a real selling point 🙂
“What do you reckon my dear?
Do you think that once people start to spend time in Jesus’ forthcoming website, it is going to take on a life of its own?”
Efrem: That would depend on the nature of the website, as if it includes a Q & A section, it would require a very good channeler and even then, any answers would be colored by the channeler’s subconscious beliefs. It would be a lot like reading Neale Walsch’s book “Conversations With God.” It would take a lot to convince people that Jesus Christ has his own website