Michael Cocks, Afterlife Teaching From Stephen the Martyr |344|

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Michael Cocks, Afterlife Teaching From Stephen the Martyr |344|
by Alex Tsakiris | Mar 28 | Consciousness Science, Spirituality

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Michael Cocks, has been an Anglican Priest for 60 years, so what’s he doing talking to channeled spirits?

photo by: Skeptiko
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I’ve been wanting to do a show about channeling for quite some time because between this crazy scientific atheism, “I wouldn’t believe it even it was true” mindset, and the gullible, “I’ll believe anything as long as I don’t have to think too hard and it doesn’t conflict with my existing beliefs”… between those two, there’s a huge amount of stuff that claims to be channeled material from ascended beings — whatever that means — that purports to communicate the real truth.

So when Michael Cocks, an 88-year-old Anglican priest from New Zealand, contacted me about his book, Afterlife Teaching from Stephen the Martyr, I thought, “Wow, here’s a great opportunity, I’m not sure that Stephen the Martyr is even a real being let alone that he’s channeled this book for this guy, great stuff.”

So I did, and I have to tell you, I hit Michael with everything: why we should believe it, what he did to verify whether he was really having communication with this historical figure from 2,000 years ago, how he went about verifying that — which turns out to be quite amazing, I mean he really did the kind of research that you would expect a historian or a biblical scholar to do to find out if there’s anything to it — so [I’ve] got to give him kudos for that. I also asked him about a bunch of other strange things, synchronicities and other pretty amazing things that happened surrounding this whole experience that he had, for 40 years….

Alex Tsakiris: There’s all these idiosyncrasies to the tradition [the channeler] has this deep knowledge of that it is just impossible to believe that this guy from Kent, just, you know, rolls out of bed…

Michael Cocks: He couldn’t have known it, it took me 30 years of research before I finally got it right and a lot of coincidences. I considered the Dead Sea Scrolls, everything. It couldn’t have come out of his head.

Alex Tsakiris: I think that’s one of the things that people have a hard time wrapping their heads around is — what the heck is Stephen doing coming back and writing books?

Michael Cocks: Stephen’s message is very similar to that of the Franciscans: the higher we go, the more we are each other, the lower we go, the more separate we are…

Michael Cocks: It starts off [with] a Catholic lady called Olive Ashman, in bed with her husband Tom. Tom, who’s not previously been a medium, but he starts to talk in his sleep and Olive hears a voice say, “Sic Ecclesia, Spiritus, Sanctus,” “thus in the church is the Holy Spirit,” and she found that Tom was able to go into trance and the spirit continued to talk and then identified him with Stephen.

Stephen lives in Sevenoaks in Kent. I, here in New Zealand, although about that same day received a book of prophecies — from a lady I didn’t know called Mrs. Cropinger in North Island — about me and what was about to happen to me.

Alex Tsakiris: Okay, so let me get this straight, first of all, what year is this about?

Michael Cocks: 1973.

Alex Tsakiris: Okay, so this is 1973, so now that’s what 44 years ago and later you discover… you just get the book of prophecies, you don’t know anything about this other experience going on in Kent, but later you find that it happened at exactly the same time?

Michael Cocks: That’s right. Then three months later, Olive and Tom Ashman are here in Christchurch, New Zealand, and by a curious coincidence I met them and they invited me to talk to Stephen. So I joined them and heard several other people talking.

(MORE BELOW)
 
"What are the pitfalls and opportunities regarding channeled material and to what extent has Michael distinguished himself above the crowd and delivered to us something significant?"

The channeler should routinely bring through material that he would have no ordinary way of knowing but which can be verified.

However, when an incarnated human philosopher writes, his statements are judged by whether they stand up to scrutiny. Are they logically valid, does he provide references to back up his statements? If channeled material stands on its own in this way, the source - spirit or human - is irrelevant.

You should use the same caution when you meet a spirit for the first time as you do when you meet an incarnated person for the first time.

The simulation hypothesis is not crazy, it is correct. However, the "simulation" is not running on a computer, it is running in consciousness.
http://ncu9nc.blogspot.com/p/occasionally-i-post-something-to.html#misc_universe_sim_god

This is exactly what Michael Cocks is talking about when he says, "I think together we are God" and "...the higher we go, the more we are each other ..."

If you want to crack open the mind of a materialist atheist about the possibility of psi, the simulation hypothesis is a good place to start because it provides a theoretical explanation for psi. I would not ridicule it. I would point out that quantum mechanics provides evidence that the "simulation" is running in consciousness.


http://ncu9nc.blogspot.com/2015/03/realizing-ultimate.html
According to wikipedia

Panentheism (meaning "all-in-God"...) is a belief system which posits that the divine ... interpenetrates every part of the universe and extends, timelessly (and, presumably, spacelessly) beyond it.
Palamite Panentheism is explained in the video Christianity and Panentheism on youtube. This philosophy is a form of monism or idealism that holds that consciousness is fundamental. Here are some quotes from the video that support this view:

Acts 17:28: "'In him we live and move and have our being.'"

Colossians 1:17: "And he is before all things, and in him all things hold together."

John 14:20: "In that day you will know that I am in my Father, and you in me, and I in you."

Athanasius the Great (writing about Jesus): "In creation He is present everywhere, yet is distinct in being from it; ordering, directing, giving life to all, containing all, yet is He Himself the Uncontained, existing solely in His Father. As with the whole, so also is it with the part. Existing in a human body, to which He Himself gives life, He is still Source of life to all the universe, present in every part of it, yet outside the whole; and He is revealed both through the works of His body and through His activity in the world." On the Incarnation, 3.17

Martin Luther: "God must be present in every single creature in its innermost and outermost being, on all sides, through and through, below and above, before and behind, so that nothing can be truly present and within all creature than God himself with his power." Weimarer Ausgabe 32.134.34-136.36

Larry L. Rasmussen: Nature could not exist if the spirit of God was removed.​
 
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Alex's question at the end of the podcast:

What are the pitfalls and opportunities regarding channelled material and to what extent has Michael distinguished himself above the crowd and delivered to us something significant here?
 
Yay! This is where I come in. Michael Cocks is a personal friend of mine (I've known him over 12 years). I've read both of his books ("Afterlife Teachings from Stephen the Martyr" and "Into the Wider Dream") in two separate editions plus his web journal ("The Ground of Faith") and I've had several discussions with him about the Stephen experience and the interaction of theology/psi.

The Stephen channelling via Thomas Ashman happened back in the 1970s; I was a kid then and wasn't involved (I was a member of another church in the same city that very much didn't believe in such things, although I do remember gossip spreading around the church grapevines about 'that Stephen stuff').

I'd like to say that Michael and his wife as I've known them since the mid-2000s are a wonderful, down-to-earth retired couple who are very warm and gentle and generous to all they meet. They are deeply involved in the little local Anglican church we're both members of.

I can give translations of some of the difficult words from the transcript, eg:

Michael Cocks: Well before I met Stephen, this is an example of how he affected me. I remember a group called [unknown phrase], which is a mystical Islamic group, where they offer you the chance to commit God without the benefit of bible or clergy, and that attracted me, that idea. In the end I found myself falling in a crying heap because I’d given away something and I felt I was dying. I didn’t die of course, but it literally felt like it in the moment.
The [unknown phrase] group he's talking about is Subud. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Subud

Michael is, as he says, a liberal Christian. On the other hand I was brought up a strongly conservative Evangelical/Pentecostal Christian, I came to the Anglican church by quite a long faith journey, and despite a lifelong interest in science and the paranormal it took me a while to get to the point of reading the Stephen book because the EPC community has very strong taboos against direct communication with spirits. (Generally EPCs believe strongly that spirits exist and that spirit communication via mediums is a real phenomenon; they just don't believe it's a HEALTHY one; they think all mediums channel deceptive spirits).

But when I did read the first edition of Michael's book, and this was around 2005/2006, I found myself agreeing with quite a lot of it. Around the same time I also discovered A Course In Miracles, as it came out of copyright around then, and I was struck by a lot of similarities of philosophy between Ashman's "Stephen" and ACIM's "Jesus". As well as similar themes running through other channelled books I've read before and since (eg "Emmanuel" and others).

Both Stephen and ACIM, for instance, have the idea that "the world is an illusion" but that it's a sort of "healing or teaching" illusion; that we don't have to force our way to escape from it but that forgiveness and acceptance are our best response to the world, since it's controlled by a loving intelligence rather than being random and cold as physicalist science believes.

My personal opinion is that there isn't much in Stephen which conflicts with Christian theology as Jesus taught - but that many churches do have quite a restricted or distorted idea of what Jesus actually taught.

An interesting idea I've seen in Stephen which may be elsewhere but was new to me was his treatment of reincarnation. As I understand it, his approach is not that we necessarily live sequential lives (though Michael may correct me on this; the Stephen book is a short summary of more extensive recorded transcripts from around 10 years of meetings) but that we are somehow related in 'soul clusters'; that we can somehow pick up on the experiences that souls 'close' to us have lived or are living.

There was also, oddly enough for a group focused on a Christian saint, quite a lot of UFO synchronicity tied up with the Stephen group, culminating in what Michael calls the 'Five Fives' set of synchronicities shared by five people around 1978; this coincided with or referenced the release of the movie Close Encounters and its famous five-note theme. Other than the 1970s being a time of deep interest in UFOs and the Kaikoura UFOs being a big deal in New Zealand around this time, I'm not sure what other connection there is; I don't think either Michael or myself has ever seen a UFO. I believe when "Stephen" was asked by the group what UFOs were, he gave the answer that they were real, some of them were people from other worlds, but that they weren't something to particularly marvel about.

I hope Michael can join this discussion himself as he's very Internet capable but if he doesn't, you can ask me questions and I should be able to pass them on to him.

Regards, Nate
 
The simulation hypothesis is not crazy, it is correct. However, the "simulation" is not running on a computer, it is running in consciousness.

I agree. At least the universe described by mystics, channels, ancient religions and NDE experiencers appears to be like this: nested layers of 'simulation' or illusion, with a single core intelligence 'running' it.

With the balancing idea (that I see in Stephen and other communicators claiming to be from a higher level of the simulation) that because this core intelligence is, in fact, everywhere, it doesn't actually matter what level of the simulation stack we're currently at; our only goal and our only means of progression at all levels is basically just to be trustful, kind and loving to the world we see around us. We don't need to pour billions of dollars into 'smashing the hypervisor' as some of the Silicon Valley people think; we're here to learn life lessons and develop our inner being through empathy, and actually living in such a restricted world of matter as we find ourselves at the moment somehow HELPS us to learn and advance faster.

At least that's the recurring idea in a lot of this material that happens to resonate with me personally. But it feels 'balanced' (in a sort of physical-symmetry or game-design way) - as in, if the universe were structured otherwise, those living at the 'lower levels' would be hugely disadvantaged and preyed on by those at higher level, and the whole universe would fall apart. And while maybe that occurs in a very tiny and limited way (eg cases of 'spirit possession' - and even human group social tragedies like cults and wars that seem to have a propaganda / 'psychic contagion' / spiritual abuse aspect to them may involve something like this), it seems to be very limited and not something that happens everywhere. The foundations of the cosmos are solid, I believe, and we don't have to stress ourselves deeply trying to protect ourselves from vastly superior forces. Eg H G Wells' 'War of the Worlds' materialist alien invaders and H P Lovecraft's bleak vision of a universe filled with fundamentally inhuman forces - a vision that's worryingly popular with the Generation X STEM (Science-Technology-Engineering-Maths) people I mix with on the Internet - are both blessedly wrong. As Doctor Who would put it 'This planet is protected'.

Regards, Nate
 
Yay! This is where I come in. Michael Cocks is a personal friend of mine (I've known him over 12 years). I've read both of his books ("Afterlife Teachings from Stephen the Martyr" and "Into the Wider Dream") in two separate editions plus his web journal ("The Ground of Faith") and I've had several discussions with him about the Stephen experience and the interaction of theology/psi.

The Stephen channelling via Thomas Ashman happened back in the 1970s; I was a kid then and wasn't involved (I was a member of another church in the same city that very much didn't believe in such things, although I do remember gossip spreading around the church grapevines about 'that Stephen stuff').

I'd like to say that Michael and his wife as I've known them since the mid-2000s are a wonderful, down-to-earth retired couple who are very warm and gentle and generous to all they meet. They are deeply involved in the little local Anglican church we're both members of.

I can give translations of some of the difficult words from the transcript, eg:

Michael Cocks: Well before I met Stephen, this is an example of how he affected me. I remember a group called [unknown phrase], which is a mystical Islamic group, where they offer you the chance to commit God without the benefit of bible or clergy, and that attracted me, that idea. In the end I found myself falling in a crying heap because I’d given away something and I felt I was dying. I didn’t die of course, but it literally felt like it in the moment.
The [unknown phrase] group he's talking about is Subud. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Subud

Michael is, as he says, a liberal Christian. On the other hand I was brought up a strongly conservative Evangelical/Pentecostal Christian, I came to the Anglican church by quite a long faith journey, and despite a lifelong interest in science and the paranormal it took me a while to get to the point of reading the Stephen book because the EPC community has very strong taboos against direct communication with spirits. (Generally EPCs believe strongly that spirits exist and that spirit communication via mediums is a real phenomenon; they just don't believe it's a HEALTHY one; they think all mediums channel deceptive spirits).

But when I did read the first edition of Michael's book, and this was around 2005/2006, I found myself agreeing with quite a lot of it. Around the same time I also discovered A Course In Miracles, as it came out of copyright around then, and I was struck by a lot of similarities of philosophy between Ashman's "Stephen" and ACIM's "Jesus". As well as similar themes running through other channelled books I've read before and since (eg "Emmanuel" and others).

Both Stephen and ACIM, for instance, have the idea that "the world is an illusion" but that it's a sort of "healing or teaching" illusion; that we don't have to force our way to escape from it but that forgiveness and acceptance are our best response to the world, since it's controlled by a loving intelligence rather than being random and cold as physicalist science believes.

My personal opinion is that there isn't much in Stephen which conflicts with Christian theology as Jesus taught - but that many churches do have quite a restricted or distorted idea of what Jesus actually taught.

An interesting idea I've seen in Stephen which may be elsewhere but was new to me was his treatment of reincarnation. As I understand it, his approach is not that we necessarily live sequential lives (though Michael may correct me on this; the Stephen book is a short summary of more extensive recorded transcripts from around 10 years of meetings) but that we are somehow related in 'soul clusters'; that we can somehow pick up on the experiences that souls 'close' to us have lived or are living.

There was also, oddly enough for a group focused on a Christian saint, quite a lot of UFO synchronicity tied up with the Stephen group, culminating in what Michael calls the 'Five Fives' set of synchronicities shared by five people around 1978; this coincided with or referenced the release of the movie Close Encounters and its famous five-note theme. Other than the 1970s being a time of deep interest in UFOs and the Kaikoura UFOs being a big deal in New Zealand around this time, I'm not sure what other connection there is; I don't think either Michael or myself has ever seen a UFO. I believe when "Stephen" was asked by the group what UFOs were, he gave the answer that they were real, some of them were people from other worlds, but that they weren't something to particularly marvel about.

I hope Michael can join this discussion himself as he's very Internet capable but if he doesn't, you can ask me questions and I should be able to pass them on to him.

Regards, Nate
thx Nate... I too have invited Michael to join us here. thx for yr offer as well.
 
The simulation hypothesis is not crazy, it is correct.
Probably this depends on which metaphor one feel most comfortable using. It doesn't work at all for me. The biggest problem I have is that using the language of current technology is almost certain to be wrong, in the same way that describing the world in the language of the steam engine or the mechanical clock are wrong. The description of the world needs to be more timeless and less tied up up fashion.

On the other hand, I feel comfortable using the idea of a theatre, a stage performance. This metaphor does work for me.
 
With the balancing idea (that I see in Stephen and other communicators claiming to be from a higher level of the simulation) that because this core intelligence is, in fact, everywhere, it doesn't actually matter what level of the simulation stack we're currently at; our only goal and our only means of progression at all levels is basically just to be trustful, kind and loving to the world we see around us.

Can you explain what the "balancing idea" is. I haven't read Michael's books.
 
The biggest problem I have is that using the language of current technology is almost certain to be wrong, in the same way that describing the world in the language of the steam engine or the mechanical clock are wrong. The description of the world needs to be more timeless and less tied up up fashion.

On the other hand, I feel comfortable using the idea of a theatre, a stage performance. This metaphor does work for me.

For me, when I think of theatre and stage, I think of the rigorous training that artists and actors have to undergo to keep even the smallest illusion alive, and of the gaps where the props fall apart and the illusion breaks down, and then I look at our world and for the most part don't see evidence for such training and such gaps. The gaps ARE there (synchronicities, NDEs, psi effects, miracles - even something as 'ordinary' as romantic love) - but they tend to be easy to overlook if you don't WANT to see. Sometimes there are huge ones, but mostly, you have to have 'faith' of some kind to see them. Whatever the nature of the illusion, it feels more subtle and all-pervading than a stage play to me.

But perhaps that is the right direction to think. It's interesting to look at the development of plays, novels, films and then computers and the Internet, videogames and virtual reality - which have the ability to build whole new worlds starting from new physics - and see how interested humans are in the idea of 'creating a new reality and taking on roles in it'. We've poured literally trillions of dollars into the pursuit of making ever-more-real illusions and it never seems to get old for us. So it seems like there's something in human nature that makes us deeply desire to construct simulations of life.

Not just human nature - even animal nature seems to revolve around simulation, play and teaching young ones to interact with simplified forms of the world.

Does our subconscious operate in a similar way, I wonder? Constructing teaching realities for us to learn lessons? We humans seem to have all sorts of weird 'glitches' in our psychological makeup, but I can at least vaguely imagine a Mind which doesn't, which is perfectly at ease and also able to operate with something like the 'perfection' and dispassionate justice that we think of when we think of machines.

If the universe is 'running' (for want of a better word.. I agree that both computer and clock metaphors are broken at some level) on some kind of Mind, I feel that Mind must have at least *something* of the nature of a machine. Not in that it's without feeling, but in that it has the ability to do a vast number of of tiny repetitive things, each one perfectly, without getting tired or distracted.

It would make sense to me if both the physical world, with its machine-like arrays of identical tiny particles, and our mental/social world of chaotic dreams and feelings and archetypes that transform into each other, were both just reflections of a deeper Mind that has aspects of both but is deeper and more unified than either.

Regards, Nate
 
Probably this depends on which metaphor one feel most comfortable using. ...

If you click on the links in my previous comment above and click through to the references, they explains why "simulation in consciousness" is the best explanation for the current scientific description of reality - using the language of current technology. If you don't agree, perhaps you could provide a better explanation for the same data? Why is the speed of light constant? Why does gravity bend space-time? Why does "quantum" mechanics seem to be digitized?

Here are the main references:

This explains why the simulation hypothesis is the best explanation for the data: it explains things about, for example, relativity and quantum mechanics, that mainstream science cannot explain.
The Physical World as a Virtual Reality by Brian Whitworth
http://arxiv.org/ftp/arxiv/papers/0801/0801.0337.pdf

This explains why consciousness is the best explanation of what is running the simulation:
Digital Physics Argument for God's Existence

How could the big bang come from nothing? It didn't. It happened when God thought, "Hmm what whould happen if this and this and this happened" ... and he kept thinking and calculating, "what would happen next" etc etc. Physical "reality" isn't physical, it is all and only thought. Since our consciousness is part of God's consciousness (see where I mentioned panentheism above), we perceive the "simulation" too.
 
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Can you explain what the "balancing idea" is. I haven't read Michael's books.

Sorry, that's probably not from Stephen, it's just my interpretation.

I mean that there are two repeating ideas expressed in the channelled works I find the most personally compelling:
1) "the physical world is an illusion, and especially the idea of separation does not really exist at higher levels"
2) "although the physical world is an illusion, we should be at ease and relaxed within it - even the illusion of separation does not separate us from True Reality"

These two ideas sort of "balance" or contrast each other (in my interpretation).

There are some channelled works out there which express idea 1 (illusion) but not 2, and then leave me with a sort of desperation, feeling as if I have to escape from infinite layers of illusion before I can achieve anything spiritually. That, I think, is an unbalanced idea, and ultimately not very healthy. But 1 with 2 feels more healthy, to me.

#2, the idea of being at ease in ordinary life even though it's an illusion, comes across quite strongly in the Stephen chapters I've read.

Regards, Nate
 
Here's some extracts from the online Amazon version of the book (since I don't have it in front of me right now) that give some sense of Stephen's flavour:
https://www.amazon.com/Afterlife-Teaching-Stephen-Martyr-Michael/dp/1907661921#reader_1907661921

Then you say, "Would it not be easier if the Lord our God were to make it very clear to us what our purpose is and what the working of that purpose is, and why and how and when and whom?" You have asked questions like this, Olive.

But think how a surgeon would act if, when he had to operate, he had to keep the patient conscious, adjust mirrors so the patient could see the operation that would be beyond his understanding in any case. Should he perhaps have each patient undergo advanced studies before an operation? Or would it perhaps not be better only to operate on a surgeon?

In actual practice the patient is treated and bathed and is given what medication he may need. He is clothed in a gown most suitable for access, and put in a place most suitable for the operation. He is kept in a state so that no pain more than he can bear will be administered to him. When the operation is completed and the wound is healed and the disorder is corrected then the patient may arise and even discuss the disorder and sickness with the surgeon and learn from him.

This must be the order of things, therefore, that the patient must trust his surgeon and carry out his instructions regarding what the patient must know or do, or rather, not do. Likewise the patient must love his Lord God with all his heart and all his soul; he must trust his God as he trusts his surgeon, for when he comes to the operating table he is by his own choice unconscious of the things that are about to happen. Even if he were a surgeon himself he would choose the unconsciousness, for he would know that without this the operation would not be possible. So, therefore, you must trust your surgeon, have faith in his skill, place yourself in his hands and love him.

Furthermore we must all love one another for we are all part of the one body; there is no separateness.To hate someone, dislike someone, is to hate and dislike yourself and to hate and dislike your God. There is no one, no soul beneath your love; for there is not one soul that should not give you love and not one soul that you should not receive love from. Therefore, the second of your duties is to love yourselves, for you are a part of God and He of you. Love each other; give to each other, for in giving you are receiving.

The physical is only temporary; providing you do these two things then no state of mind or physical welfare is material to your progress. Your true reward for loving each other is to receive the love of each other, and of God.

Understand and give only this, and you will find that each time that you do this, the wound of your operation will heal a little more; each time that you do this, consciousness which you lack now will begin to return. This is the way that the answers will come to you, to heal the wound and return to the consciousness. Therefore love much.

When you are gone from this place, when you are done with these bodies, physical, mental, ethereal and all others, then you will be back with the Source, and it will be of no mind.​

I understand this as repeating the teaching of Jesus, at least the feeling of Gospel of John and the Sermon on the Mount. It also to me strongly echoes with A Course in Miracle's insistence on 'forgiveness' and the requirement to love and accept everything as love. It also seems to me to parallel a lot of teachings from other religions, including Buddhism/Hinduism, with the image of ordinary material life as a state of unconsciousness and the ultimate destination of life being reunion with God and perhaps a state of non-mind? - but it has a very Jewish flavour too, with the two great commandments of 'love God and love your neighbour'.

In short, I recognise this as what I'd consider orthodox Christian teaching - but it's sure hard to actually *do*! Both the 'trust God' part and the 'love everybody' thing. I get angry and fearful and depressed easily at what I perceive to be deep injustices in the world. But I still would *like* to be able to face the world as calmly as Stephen seems to do based on this passage.

*grumble grumble* Stephen, are you saying I have to love even Donald Trump? And Valdimir Putin? And Theresa May? The billionaires who are crushing the poor and the pesticide executives whose products are killing all the bees and the industrialists who are melting the icecaps? It feels like being asked to love fire when your house is on fire. I'd rather get a bucket of water and put the fire out! But I guess even people deliberately (or out of ignorance) doing terrible, civilisation-ending, planet-destroying, billions-of-people-killing things are still people and hate doesn't extinguish hate.


Regards, Nate
 
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I mean that there are two repeating ideas expressed in the channelled works I find the most personally compelling:
1) "the physical world is an illusion, and especially the idea of separation does not really exist at higher levels"
2) "although the physical world is an illusion, we should be at ease and relaxed within it - even the illusion of separation does not separate us from True Reality"

These two ideas sort of "balance" or contrast each other (in my interpretation).

Good! I would say we have to keep a balance of these ideas within our own mind to live spiritually within the physical world.

When "reality" is an "illusion" what does it mean to have "your feet on the ground" or "your head in the clouds"? It reverses the meanings of those sayings but both sets of meanings are still valid. Don't be too focused on here or too focused on there - be balanced.

Many quotes from various traditions advocating oneness:
http://ncu9nc.blogspot.com/2015/03/realizing-ultimate.html

Oneness and individuality are not in conflict:
http://ncu9nc.blogspot.com/p/occasionally-i-post-something-to.html#misc_oneness_individuality
 
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In actual practice the patient is treated and bathed and is given what medication he may need. He is clothed in a gown most suitable for access, and put in a place most suitable for the operation. He is kept in a state so that no pain more than he can bear will be administered to him. When the operation is completed and the wound is healed and the disorder is corrected then the patient may arise and even discuss the disorder and sickness with the surgeon and learn from him.
Does this include unpleasant consequences arising from bad actions? Not as punishment but for learning. Such as experiencing how you influenced other people from their point of view, reincarnating to experience for youself the harm you might have caused other peope, or some actions in the physical or spiritual realms to atone for or mitigate any harm you might have done? Is that what the "pain ... administered" is about?
In short, I recognise this as what I'd consider orthodox Christian teaching - but it's sure hard to actually *do*! Both the 'trust God' part and the 'love everybody' thing. I get angry and fearful and depressed easily at what I perceive to be deep injustices in the world. But I still would *like* to be able to face the world as calmly as Stephen seems to do based on this passage.

I have found this type of meditation to be very helpful.
https://sites.google.com/site/chs4o8pt/meditation-1#meditation_serenity

It produces feelings of love as well as selflessness.

But you really don't have to do anything, life does it to you. You quoted: "When the operation is completed and the wound is healed and the disorder is corrected then the patient may arise and even discuss the disorder and sickness with the surgeon and learn from him."

*grumble grumble* Stephen, are you saying I have to love even Donald Trump? And Valdimir Putin? And Theresa May? And the pesticide executives whose products are killing all the bees and the industrialists who are melting the icecaps? It feels like being asked to love fire when your house is on fire. I'd rather get a bucket of water and put the fire out! But I guess even people deliberately (or out of ignorance) doing terrible, civilisation-ending, planet-destroying, billions-of-people-killing things are still people and hate doesn't extinguish hate.

I think there is good in most people, but many do foolish things because they are ignorant. You can love the person (think of the child inside) but deplore and respond appropriately to their foolishness and ignorance. Aren't they just victims of the illusion of this physical reality?

A major cause of these problems are the people, journalists and politicians, who are trying to spread fear and hate for their own personal gain. When we can see through the illusions they spin, we will be able to solve these problems through democratic processes.
http://ncu9nc.blogspot.com/2017/03/most-news-stories-are-crafted-to.html
 
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I like this quote from the above:

Some people object to the belief in oneness because it seems to contradict our ordinary experience of individuality and it seems to imply that we would cease to exist in the afterlife. However, there is no contradiction between individuality and oneness. Oneness is not oblivion. We are already one and it doesn't seem to be a problem for most people. The confusion arises because it is impossible to understand something that is non-physical like consciousness by analogy to the physical things we know about.
I often wonder if our growing familiarity with the behaviour of 'information' (via mass public use of computers) isn't maybe a stepping stone towards understanding oneness. A lot of declarations made about spirit that seem unintuitive when we think about matter, become much more understandable when we think about how information behaves.

Information has an interesting property: unlike matter, it can be in many places at once. You can't get rid of information by giving it away. If you give it away, you only make more of it.

I feel like mind or spirit maybe behaves similarly: it can be everywhere and everything at once without losing its 'is-ness' in a way that matter can't, but information sort-of can. (Information still is a bit matter-like, in that it's rigidly structured and relies on matter to exist - that's why I think it's a pointer towards the behaviour of mind rather than being mind itself.)

It makes me wonder whether Millennials and even some of us GenX-ers, who've grown up with an intuitive understanding of the Internet, will maybe one day take a fresh look at some of these spiritual ideas and react with 'oh, I understand this!' instead of 'but how could a clockwork universe made out of atoms work like this'.

Regards, Nate
 
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For me, when I think of theatre and stage, I think of the rigorous training that artists and actors have to undergo to keep even the smallest illusion alive, and of the gaps where the props fall apart and the illusion breaks down, and then I look at our world and for the most part don't see evidence for such training and such gaps. The gaps ARE there (synchronicities, NDEs, psi effects, miracles - even something as 'ordinary' as romantic love) - but they tend to be easy to overlook if you don't WANT to see. Sometimes there are huge ones, but mostly, you have to have 'faith' of some kind to see them. Whatever the nature of the illusion, it feels more subtle and all-pervading than a stage play to me.
Of course there are problems with the metaphor. I don't care to spend time picking holes in other suggested metaphors, I'll just suggest a couple of ways in which the stage play idea is useful. This is not to say that this means it is true, only that it has some merits as one possible way of looking at the world, not as the only way of doing so.

First, when considering reincarnation, it allows us to distinguish between the actor and the role. The role doesn't get propagated from one life to another, the actor does. Second, from my own experience there have been a number of times in my life where events seem to have been planned, in some way things are outside my control. However, once arriving at centre-stage within a particular scene, then I have full scope to play my part in any way I wish. The theatre seems exactly how life feels to me, some of the time. It does mean I am able to step outside of my current role at any given moment and look at things from the actor's viewpoint, rather than getting entrapped in believing that the role is itself real.

My apologies for this divergence from the topic of this podcast.

I found the discussion between Alex and Michael Cocks very interesting and I'd like to thank them both. I expect to respond in a more relevant way in a later post. Sorry about the distraction.
 
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An interesting idea I've seen in Stephen which may be elsewhere but was new to me was his treatment of reincarnation. As I understand it, his approach is not that we necessarily live sequential lives (though Michael may correct me on this; the Stephen book is a short summary of more extensive recorded transcripts from around 10 years of meetings) but that we are somehow related in 'soul clusters'; that we can somehow pick up on the experiences that souls 'close' to us have lived or are living​

Regards, Nate
From an informational process point of view, this make more sense. Communication of experiences between emotionally connected individuals; rather than a non-biological migration of self.
 
I read the Stephen book a few years ago. I found it to be a good read. Some of it was helpful, such as the passage quoted above. Some of it seemed unnecessarily vague and kind of dodgy: for instance, his answer when asked about the channeler's encounter with the UFO. Maybe I'm expecting too much from these "beings" but there's not much information there.

A couple interesting areas the interview didn't go into; at one point the group supposedly channeled Christ. Also, as I understood it, Stephen insinuated there will be a Second Coming at some point in the future; but again, was not very clear on what he meant.
 
An interesting idea I've seen in Stephen which may be elsewhere but was new to me was his treatment of reincarnation. As I understand it, his approach is not that we necessarily live sequential lives (though Michael may correct me on this; the Stephen book is a short summary of more extensive recorded transcripts from around 10 years of meetings) but that we are somehow related in 'soul clusters'; that we can somehow pick up on the experiences that souls 'close' to us have lived or are living.
The concept of a 'soul cluster' also figures in Michael Newton's book, "Journey of souls", but there the idea is that we do reincarnate but that we have a cluster of other souls that tend to populate key roles in our lives.

Newton obtained his information from hypnotic regression.

David
 
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