Chapter 19: On Everlasting Life
I HERE SHALL speak of living Light : the everlasting Life that nothing can destroy in all eternity and which imbues all Being that is human.
I want to make you see the light that shines within your heart, which lives in you and can illuminate your being.
All of you that sought the meaning of this mortal life have far too long already followed ways that only lead to error.
You now shall find what you were seeking, if you will trust the words of someone who has found.
You are like royalty who live in ignorance of their own realm.
In yourselves alone you find the timeless realm your eyes shall seek in vain as long as you expect to see it in the world outside.
ALL YOUR questions go unanswered, but you continue asking, “Where is the kingdom we were promised?”
“Shall our being simply disappear the day we leave this present life, or shall our consciousness survive when our mortal life has ended?”
Comprehend that those who in their day had asked the selfsame questions are alive within you, present in your inner realm, and that they here could answer what you ask if you had not grown deaf from all the noise in your external world.
Your own eternal soul is, finally, the kingdom of the spirits who shall live within and with you through eternity.
Within your timeless self you comprehend Infinity.
Within you lives what is, what was, and what is yet to be.
Your very self is timeless presence within all dimensions, but you are still confined to being present only here and now, within the physical domain, where you keep waiting for events that never come.
You still believe the kingdom of eternal peace is far away, a realm beyond the stars, while in reality that kingdom lives within you, and you yourself are living in it even now.
WHOEVER has attained that kingdom within becomes its sovereign forever.
As you shall there encounter human life of every kind in its eternal essence, so too, shall you be found within that realm: in all the others who possess it in themselves.
It is a single realm encompassing all spirits, but each among the countless souls who found this realm within will own it undiminished. Each one becomes its sole, unchallenged sovereign whose reign shall last forever; as if, indeed, no other ruled this inner realm, which all among the multitudes rule also as the kingdom of their own soul alone.
You cannot find the Spirits’ realm outside of your own selves.
For only in yourselves can you indeed attain it.
Your searching in the world outside would needs subject you to illusions; for everything outside the timeless world of your own inmost self is no more than a fleeting image—experience enduring but a little while—as is this life on earth, which is cut short by death.
Where the eternal soul abides within itself, integrated with and guided by a conscious self, there at last we find the kingdom that shall never end.
There alone one is secure from all illusions.
Only there eternity becomes our very own.
It is your timeless self that is alone the all-possessing sovereign of this eternal realm.
THE sovereigns within this timeless realm are infinite in number, and all who gained that kingdom as their own become united in themselves with all the others who rightfully here wear their crown; for each remains the one and only sovereign, through whom all others rule.
All those that here have found eternal life dwell with and within one another; not separated or apart.
Just as here on earth it may be said of people that they live their life fully if they actively enjoy it, whether for good or otherwise, so too, all life within the Spirit’s world is an activity, a doing, and not merely a state of being.
“Life” here is the light that shines within the conscious human spirit: the very light by which that spirit lives.
You are yourselves entwined within the timeless world of spirits, and through your being flows all everlasting spirits’ life, but you are not aware of it.
In what you call your “self,” which you at present only sense as a mirror-like reflection imparted by a reflex of the brain, you think you are distinct and isolated individuals.
Everything imbued with Life, however, is constantly united with all living forms.
Neither here on earth, nor anywhere within the universe, and nowhere in the Spirit’s world could anything have Life, could anything exist in isolation, merely on its own.
Every individuated form of being is, ultimately, all of Being.
Even if that being lacks the faculty of comprehending that reality.
The individuated being can attain salvation— liberation—only when it shall experience its existence as a part united with All-Being, freed from every other form of separated life.
You thus will find salvation only if you learn to sense in your own self—within the timeless self which shall be yours forever—that all the other selves will only give themselves to you in this, your own eternal self: united with themselves for all eternity.
Within the self in you that is eternal you embody all of Life, and only in that Life you find the beings who, in truth, are called eternal, because their life is without end.
You might have found them long ago if prejudice and stubbornness had not misguided you to seek them only where they never shall be found.
In vain you try to force your way into the unseen realms within the world of matter.
More easily, indeed, could one of the Eternals appear before you in broad daylight, in visible, material form, than that you might encounter him in nature’s hidden realms.
You must descend into the depths of that which in your own self is eternal if you would consciously unite yourself with those who have already entered everlasting Life.