Zingdad: J-D, you said in our last chat that we should talk about oneness.
Joy-Divine: Hello. Yes. I want to more-or-less prove to you that all is one and then, when we've established that, then I want to talk about what that means for you.
Z: Great. Why "more-or-less" prove it?
J-D: Well, let me first tell you about the reality you inhabit and then I shall get to my main arguments. Primarily your reality was created for the purpose of experiencing individuality. In order for this to be possible, a consciousness-construct was set in place to sort-of "filter" the information that might be available to you. This has often been called "the Veil", or more specifically, "the Veil of Unknowing" and I am happy to keep using that term. What the Veil essentially does is to guarantee that you cannot prove that all is one. Anything that approaches true, irrefutable proof of oneness will always come with sufficient cause for doubt that each individual will simply have to make up their own mind.
Z: Okay. Doesn't the Veil also hide other knowing and information from us, though?
J-D: No. All it does is hide from you your essential oneness with All That Is. But you need to think about this for a moment. If all is truly one, if the most essential truth about everything is its inherent oneness, and if the Veil hides the oneness from you, then I'm sure you can logically see that the Veil will hide the most essential nature of everything from you. It will mean that you cannot know the deepest truth about anything at all. Because, as you approach the deepest truth of anything you'd approach proof that all is one. And the Veil forbids this. Do you see the circular nature of the problem? The essential nature of everything is that it is all one with everything else. But this is hidden from you.
Z: So you mean we can't know the true nature of anything?
J-D: It's a fact. What is remarkable to me is how few people on Earth are concerned about the fact that nothing is known down to its root. Nowhere can you look and say, "We really understand that and can therefore build upon a solid foundation of knowledge." You can know about the surface, about the characteristics or about the effect, but you cannot know about the true cause.
Z: Uh. I'm not sure that I know this to be true. Our science has surely gotten to the root of something?
J-D: All right. I'll go there with you. What is your world and all the animals and plants and so forth made of?
Z: Matter.
J-D: What is matter made of?
Z: Um. Molecules. And they are made of atoms. And they are made of sub-atomic particles.
J-D: Good. Carry on. What are sub-atomic particles made of?
Z: Energy, I think?
J-D: And what is the nature of that energy?
Z: Uhh...
J-D: What is this energy made of? Where does it come from? Was it created? If so, when and how? And if it wasn't created, how does it come to be?
Z: I don't know. I don't know any of those answers.
J-D: Well don't feel bad. Neither does science. There are, of course, a number of postulates and theories, but other than simple observations about what occurs when particles interact, your planet's science knows next to nothing about the nature of this energy that they say all matter is created of. And if everything you can observe and engage with, including your own body, is made of this energy about which you know nothing, then it can be seen that you really know nothing about everything!
All scientists, but for the few, most enlightened of the species, generally make the mistake of saying that there is nothing, but that which can be observed... that there is nothing but the material world. But the problem is that the material world does not exist! It is a function of this ephemeral world of rapidly shifting energy. And this energy is an impenetrable mystery to those self-same scientists. They do not know what it is, where it comes from, or really anything about it other than a few observations of how it might behave under particular circumstances – and even then there are mystifying incongruities that they cannot explain. So they fail utterly to comprehend or explain the very root of that which they say is real.
It is my contention that you will never truly begin to comprehend the fundamental energy of the universe without first understanding the nature of consciousness and, specifically, that all energy and matter that springs forth from consciousness is one single thing.
Z: All matter is the same thing?
J-D: As above, so below, and as below, so above. Everything is one. This is mirrored everywhere you look if you only know how to see. But the problem for you is that you are restricted from being able to prove this by the Veil.
Z: Okay, that's pretty interesting to me and I want to discuss this with you, but before I do, could you perhaps give me another example or two of things that we only know the surface of? Other than energy and matter, I mean.
J-D: Sure. I could give you countless examples. I could use the example of anything you could name to prove it to you. But some examples are more time-consuming than others. So I shall choose a simple one: light. You know next to nothing about it. And yet it is actually the most fundamental constituent of your reality. You know how fast it goes, but not why it travels at that specific speed. You know it has some highly curious properties – for example that it seems to have both a particulate and a wave-like nature – but again, you don't know why this should be. And so on. As with all things, science understands, at a surface level, what light does but not why it behaves as it does, nor what it actually is, nor where it truly comes from. Why, for example, is the speed of light the speed limit for other things? You can, if you try, describe these phenomena, but you have very little clue as to how it comes to be as it is. Until you understand that light (or rather all electromagnetic radiation) is really just a function of the particular dimension in which you reside, you will remain baffled by it. But you need to be willing to concede that your whole reality is just one little piece of the picture. Your whole universe is like a single key on one piano keyboard in an orchestra of an infinite number of musical instruments. And all those instruments together are playing the same one symphony.
And here's another example of something which your scientists don't really understand, another fundamental force of your reality: gravity. It is a constant force upon your body. Not a waking second goes by that you are not affected by it. But you haven't a clue about how it works.
Z: Wait a minute? Isn't it due to the warp in space-time caused by mass or some such?
J-D: No. I didn't say there were no theories about this. There are plenty of those. But they all have some flaws in them and remain unproven. Go read about it, if you like. Your science does not know where gravity comes from, why it is there or how it propagates. The theory that comes closest is a new one that presupposes the existence of other dimensions. But scientists will need to greatly expand their view of what those other dimensions might be before it will all begin to come together.
I'll give you another example. More philosophical than scientific, maybe. It is this: what, truly, are you?
Z: Let's see... I am a human being?
J-D: And if you had another incarnation as something other than that which you would currently define as a human? Would you cease to be you?
Z: No. Then I'd be a Zorg from the planet Zug. Or whatever (laughs). Okay, I get your point. What am I really? I mean I know I have a body. But I am not my body. How about I use Descartes famous quote: "I think, therefore I am." And then I will say that I am my thoughts. How about that?
J-D: That's cute. But wrong. What happens if you stop thinking? Do you stop existing? For example, one of the goals of meditation is to cease all thought. What happens if you attain that goal? Do you pop out of existence?
Z: Hmm. No. I know that it is true for me (and for other meditators to whom I have spoken) that such moments bring with them the most amazing expansion of consciousness.
J-D: That is interesting then. So the less you do and the less you try and think, the more your consciousness expands. This is because doing and being are opposite states. And the nature of your being is... consciousness.
Z: Ah. So then the answer to your question is... I am consciousness?
J-D: Yes. But then, what is consciousness? I mean every single human being is this (or at the least has it), but can you explain it? Can you tell me where to find it?
Z: I'm not sure. Could it not be argued that consciousness is produced by the brain?
J-D: Not very convincingly. Some have tried, but there are always holes in the theory. For example: what happens when someone is declared "brain dead" and then, by some miracle, later they are resuscitated? How do you explain the fact that they sometimes recall events occurring in their consciousness at a time when the brain had ceased to function? And, even more amazingly, those who have experienced this often tell of events that didn't even occur in the proximity of the body housing the apparently dead brain. And what of the fact that in various neurosurgical operations on various people, pretty much every part of the brain has been removed. This one loses eye-sight. That one certain emotional responses. And so on. But everyone retains their consciousness. Unless the body dies, in which case they still have consciousness but, of course, you can usually no longer engage with a physical form in order to determine this.
So, no, there are too many anomalies for consciousness to arise from the brain. The point is this: your most essential and fundamental attribute, your very consciousness, is something that you know nothing about at all. Why? My contention is that this is because your consciousness is the very stuff of the oneness. But people just accept that they know nothing about themselves and go about paying the mortgage, watching sport and news on the television and arguing vociferously about religion and politics. Or whatever else keeps them entertained enough so that they don't have to confront the fact that nothing is truly known. The miracle of the mystery should overwhelm you constantly. But it doesn't. You declare life to be boring and mundane. "No miracles or mysteries in my life," you all say. But this is only because you mesmerise yourselves into not looking at anything deeply enough to see the unending mystery of everything.
Now, I could go on and on with this because, literally in every direction you look, you run into an edge which is unexplained and undefined. Essentially what I am saying is that the simple directive of the Veil of Unknowing, that it should shield you from knowing the oneness of all, has profound implications. It means that you really know nothing about anything at all. And of course this effect doesn't only extend to that which is physically around you. It means that you cannot, beyond all doubt, prove the existence of God. Which is quite an amazing thought. The Prime Creator, which is in everything, contains everything, creates everything and of which you are an inseparable part, cannot be proven to even exist! I'll tell you something: spirit beings that have not experienced this reality directly find it nearly impossible to believe that this effect has been achieved over here. Often they come and have a look, just to marvel. The deepest, most essential and most undeniable truth of all has been hidden in plain sight! What a wonder and a miracle!
Z: Are you sure it isn't possible to prove God's existence? I vaguely recall reading some philosophical treatise, which presented a set of proofs. Are such things not valid?
J-D: Let me answer it like this. If just one of those proofs were infallible then there would not be any clear-thinking atheists or agnostics on the planet. You'd show them the proof, they'd fail to find the inconsistency and they'd have to concede that there is a God after all. And you can say what you like about atheists, but amongst their number are some very clear, rational and logical thinkers. So my point stands. Despite some concerted effort by some very lucid spiritual philosophers over the ages of your history, not one person has ever been able to prove the existence of God beyond all doubt. Or even the existence of spirit. Which is bizarre. Every single one of you is spirit and yet it is quite a reasonable and defensible position to claim that there is no spirit!
So, it really does become apparent that, in whatever direction you might look, be it science, religion, philosophy or any other discipline, when you try to understand anything at all, you will find a few steps of understanding based upon tried and tested hypotheses, followed by the fuzziness and darkness of ignorance. Nothing is known to its core. And if you don't know what the fundamentals are, you cannot really claim to understand their effects. And all of this is so because you cannot know that you and everything else are all one.
Z: Phew! That's wild. So why would we do this to ourselves? Why would we choose to come here and be stupid for a number of lifetimes?
J-D: Oh no, not stupid. Just forgetful. Why you have chosen to enter so deeply into separation will be addressed in due course in some careful detail as it is a very large subject on its own and time will not now permit me to do this justice. It will have to suffice for me to say that each and every spirit being that decided to manifest an incarnation here had a reason to do so. There is profound value to be found in this experience. But your perspective is, perforce, very limited. You can only see things from where you stand, inside of your reality. But I shall state, in my truth, that for the beings that are your "Inner-Selves", this experience is one of the most valuable that can possibly be had. All who manifest a set of incarnations here gain a vastly deeper understanding of the Self, massively evolve their consciousness and can find complete healing for any blockages they might bear in their consciousness.
The very forgetting itself is a wonderfully useful tool for self-discovery and healing.
Z: I know you don't want to dwell on this point now but could you please give me just the briefest explanation why?
J-D: All right. Let me try a little story:
Once there was a rich and powerful king of a vast kingdom. He was known to be quite wise and knowledgeable. One of his duties was to be the final judge and jury for all legal disputes in his land. But this was not something he enjoyed because he just didn't understand what it was like to be a poor, destitute, starving peasant. He could not understand some of the peasants' motivations and actions and felt, therefore, ill-equipped to pass judgement on them. But how would he come to truly understand the life of the peasant? He took his problem to his most valued advisor: his court wizard. The solution the wizard came up with was to cast a spell on the king such that the king would forget absolutely everything he knew. Then they would dress the king in the clothes of a peasant and leave him somewhere with just a few coins in his purse. In a year's time the spell would lift itself and the king would remember who he was. This way, for a full year, the king would have lived as a peasant so that he would know what that life was like. The king agreed to this plan and so it was. He was dressed as a poor man and left under the influence of the spell at an inn. When he awoke he did not know who he was. Some locals took pity on the poor confused stranger and helped him out for a day or two. But he didn't seem to have any practical skills with which to repay them. And he had a haughty, ungrateful attitude that they did not like. So, soon he was out on his own. Hungry, miserable and desperate he turned to theft. But he was caught and flung into jail.
Or was he?
Perhaps instead, he saw the kindness of the people to a stranger and decided to try and return their good favour? Maybe he found within himself the resourcefulness of a natural leader which, combined with a well-tuned and educated mind, allowed to him be valued and appreciated by all whom he encountered? Perhaps he became a celebrated leader anyway?
How will we ever know what happened to him? The only way, of course, is for the story to be played out and observed. And that is exactly the point. The king wanted to know about the experience of poverty but, by going though this experience of forgetfulness, the king would actually find out far more about who he really was. Not who he was set up to be by his circumstances, but rather his true, essential nature.
If we extend this metaphor and allow the king not just a year of forgetfulness, but as many lifetimes as it takes before he awakens himself by remembering who he really is through a process of self-discovery, then this would be similar to what is happening to you on Earth.
You have placed yourself under your own forgetfulness spell and you journey in the world of forgetting until you are ready to remember. And in this twilight world of forgetting, you discover the most amazing things about yourself and life and All That Is. And you remain there until you yourself discover and create your path out of there. Until you remember who you really are. And all such paths of discovery, creation and remembering inevitably lead to the same destination: that all is one. That is what the Veil is hiding, so, logically, knowing that to be the truth is the path out. Not just knowing it intellectually of course; knowing it in your every thought, word and deed. Knowing it to the core of your being.
But we will have a good many opportunities for you to gain a far deeper understanding of this concept. For now, even though this is a very simplistic illustration, I'm sure you can see that there is value to be had from the Veil?
Z: Yes, I found that quite enlightening, thank you. As you were relating that story I had an “aha!” moment or two. I can see that there is much to learn from deep forgetting.
J-D: And something else to consider is that there is protection inherent in the ignorance of forgetting.
Z: There is?
J-D: Sure! The further up the dimensional ladder you move, the more powerfully you can create. The more powerful a creator-being you are, it stands to reason, the more powerfully you could potentially do harm. Let us hypothesise a very powerful creator being that has yet to deeply plumb its own nature. It has yet to discover what it is capable of and how it would react to various circumstances. But it has great power at its disposal. That would be like putting a child in charge of the world's munitions. And, from one perspective, this is what happens. Spirit beings with limitless power find themselves playing together, creating realities together, not knowing or understanding the consequences of their own choices, actions or abilities. At this level of creation, when things go “wrong” it is usually a simple matter of taking the learning and then re-working the creation with the greater awareness in place. But, every now and then one of the creator beings will come to hurt Itself in such a way that there cannot simply be a “re-do”. A fairly regular example would arise from one of the creator beings becoming self-destructive. When this happens then more drastic steps are required.
One very powerful way to resolve such a problem is to place the self-destructive being beyond the Veil so that it might find its way to self-healing by incarnating in your reality. Since all beings there have deeply forgotten who they are, they have also, perforce, utterly forgotten their own gifts and abilities. If you do not know your true power, then you cannot express it! It is locked away from you. And so that becomes a perfect fail-safe while that being finds Its way back to self-love and self-healing. And when the being does find its way back to full self-healing that, by definition, also includes a full remembering of its connection to the oneness. And in that remembering there is also a full remembering of all that being's inherent gifts, talents and abilities – since of course those abilities always derive from the oneness. And as this being recovers Its own true, greatest, most magnificent nature, It does so with the wisdom, compassion and insight not to fall once again to self-destructiveness.
Z: So we are punished for being self destructive by being sent beyond the Veil?
J-D: That would be a very flawed understanding of what I have just offered you.
There is no punishment involved. No one stands in judgement of you. It works like this: all is one. If you seek to harm yourself or to harm some other, then you are seeking to harm the ONE. And this is not actually possible. You cannot actually harm the infinite and eternal. But the desire to do so creates an impossible dichotomy. The only resolution of that dichotomy is fragmentation: to immediately create the very powerful illusion of separation so that there is a “self” to hurt and another “self” to be hurt.
This is the very simplest way I can explain this.
What I am sharing with you is that it is not a punishment. You do this to yourself. When a creator being enacts a self-destructive urge, it creates separation within Itself. It lowers its consciousness to a deeper density. If its attempts are quite concerted; if it wishes to utterly destroy Itself, then it will find Itself at this very deepest level of separation called “duality” where it has completely forgotten all of its God-given gifts and abilities. A handy by-product of this is that Its capacity for self-destruction is also nullified.
Z: I do understand. Thank you.
J-D: Now, these are just two little illustrative sketches. Please understand that this doesn't even begin to represent all the perspectives of the value that can be obtained from going into this reality as you have. It is an amazing, wondrous system and to experience it is something beyond comparison. And the heart of this system is the Veil of Unknowing. In fact, this might come as a surprise, but another way to look at the Veil is that it is an agent of the law of free will, or, as our esteemed colleagues of The Ra Material called it, the law of confusion.
Z: How is that?
J-D: You will have noticed that on Earth there are a great many different religious and philosophical systems of belief. Each one claims for itself the exclusivity of truth and damns all others as lies. And then each religion has so many schisms and sub-sects within it that one can never keep up with who really believes what. And that is just the organised religions. What of all the variations of agnostics and atheists? And then there are more and more people all the time who regard themselves as deeply spiritual but not religious. They look for their own truth in their heart. But each heart is different. So there are just more and more different "truths" all the time. And every view is slightly different! If anyone is to look carefully enough and is to be honest enough, they will be forced to admit that there is not one other human being who precisely and exactly shares their beliefs, their view of “what is true”, with them. And so? What to make of that? Either everyone but you is confused, wrong or cracked – or there really is a valid reason to believe almost anything under the sun.
And there is. It is this: if you combine the Veil with the fact that you create your own reality, then we get to the understanding that, firstly, you do not know that you create your reality. And secondly, as you believe, so you shall conceive. Which is just a pretty way of saying that you will always find more and more evidence for the stuff you believe to be true. And because you find evidence, you get re-affirmed in your belief. But because of the Veil you cannot prove that belief to anyone else. And since they too are just seeing more and more evidence for their beliefs... well... it becomes a recipe for disaster for the dogmatic. Anyone can see that there will be plenty of opportunity for conflict for anyone who wants to experience that! But that's not the point I wish to really make here. The point I wish to make is that you have the free will option to believe whatever you want about your reality. And, as you believe it, so you'll get evidence to prove yourself right to yourself. And, no matter what anyone else says, they will not be able to prove you wrong unless you are open to seeing things their way. You have nothing less than free will to believe anything you want. And to pretty much do anything you want as well. Certainly, there are human laws and societal norms which attempt to govern your activities, but there are precious few God-made laws that stop you from doing whatever you want.
Z: Whoa! What about... like holy scriptures and so on? What about, "Thou shalt not kill"?
J-D: No. No disrespect to those rules. But they are man-made. If God made the law, "Thou shalt not kill," then you would not be able to kill. Period. Either you would not be able to formulate the thought to kill someone else, or it would be physically impossible, as it is in higher dimensional realms. Where I am, it is totally and utterly impossible for a being to "cease to be". There is no death. From certain perspectives you could say that we have a great deal less free will than you do.
Z: That's amazing. But can't you create more powerfully than we can?
J-D: Yes. But we are constrained. I mean, I can create very powerfully but I cannot create with the belief that I am not a part of the oneness. Not unless I send a part of my consciousness to beyond the Veil. Which is exactly what I have done, of course.
Z: You have?
J-D: Yes. (smiles) You are it, remember.
Z: Oh right! (laughs)
So, you are saying that we have a lot of free will over here. And that means we have very few God-made laws.
J-D: Yes.
Z: What about the law of gravity, for example? Or the law of the speed of light?
J-D: Those are not laws. They are suggestions. You can beat gravity with a rocket. You can beat the speed of light with other, slightly more advanced, technology. If you believe in UFOs coming from other solar systems, then you pretty much have to concede a belief in faster-than-light travel. I am saying, believe it or not, that this is not just possible but, technologically, not that far off. The speed limit set by light can be beaten and it is done so all the time by races only a little more advanced than your own. These are not God's laws. They are simply constructs of the mechanics of your reality.
Z: So, do we have any great spiritual laws then?
J-D: Yes. How do you like this one: "Thou shalt do as thou pleaseth but thou shalt get the consequences-eth of thine choices-eth".
Z: (laughs) No, seriously?
J-D: (laughs) Imitation-archaic phrasing aside, I actually am serious. That is my humorous way of stating the law of free will.
You know, in some places in the universe there is a curse that some beings fling at each other when they feel the other is doing wrong. They say, "May you get exactly what you are creating!"
This is interesting because there are other parts of the universe where beings offer each other a great benediction when they feel the other is doing great things. They then say, "May you get exactly what you are creating!"
Isn't that strange? Especially since there is really no point in wishing such a thing on anyone else because, of course, everyone always gets exactly what they are creating. That's the point of free will. You can create whatever you like. And you do so by making choices. The outcome is your life.
So, you can do whatever you want, think whatever you want and believe whatever you want. These are your choices. But your choices will always create results and you will get precisely the results of your choices. That way you can see if you like what you are doing, thinking, believing and choosing. If you do, then you can continue to make more of the same choices and if you don't, then you can change your mind and make