What Is Life to You?

Recently I commented on a discussion between Christopher Hitchens and Frank Turek. The question was: "Does God exist?" Following the link you can see them both on video. Frank from a Christian Evangelical and Christopher from an atheistic viewpoint offered their ideas. Both ask some valid questions, I think, but both do not go far enough in looking at their implications of what they say. I liked Hitchens for his passionate and eloquent statement that this place cannot possibly have anything to do with love or a loving God, but because he does not doubt the reality of this world, there can be no God in his mind. Frank asks the question of mind and consciousness to reject the idea of "there is no God", but then does not see mind and matter as mutually exclusive which devalues his objection completely.

My initial response was that they both completely avoid the idea and possibility of happiness, of true happiness, and I presented some ideas that should really challenge someone looking at this debate. I had fun with it and liked to clarify my ideas. Rich, who posted the video on his blog, is willing and open to learn of differing viewpoints. But regardless of that, and because our concepts of reality are so different, there seemed to be no communication possible. While we all know about the lack of communication in this world, the actual experience that we literally do not communicate through concepts is still stunning to me. It is not possible to do it. Amazing. It has to be a miracle.

It reminded me of lesson 132 from A Course In Miracles, "I loose the world from all I thought it was", where Jesus says,

The thoughts you hold are mighty, and illusions are as strong in their effects as is the truth. A madman thinks the world he sees is real, and does not doubt it. Nor can he be swayed by questioning his thoughts' effects. It is but when their source is raised to question that the hope of freedom comes to him at last.

What we experience is the effect of what we think. To let someone see that this is so is not possible unless there is an allowance of questioning the source of his thoughts which would indicate that there is another way to think, a different kind of thought, because there is a different mind. Obviously God does not think like we do in a body identity. Jesus in communicating A Course In Miracles did not come from a conceptual frame of mind. Definitely, from a conceptual frame of mind the declaration and expression of Jesus, or of any enlightened mind are not understandable. That is the whole dilemma. The source of thought needs to be questioned before there can be something else, because it has to be something entirely different to be meaningful.



We obviously need help, help of a different kind or light that gives us a completely new understanding and perception of ourselves and everyone in this world. This is what A Course In Miracles is about. It lets us train our minds to a new perception to really change and heal our minds.

There is a light in you the world can not perceive. And with its eyes you will not see this light, for you are blinded by the world. Yet you have eyes to see it. It is there for you to look upon. It was not placed in you to be kept hidden from your sight. (A Course In Miracles, Lesson 189)

Here is an excerpt from a transcript of a video that Master Teacher did many years ago. I think his statements question our human assumptions about life in a beautiful and challenging way. This is necessary. Until one reaches the point where he says and truly means that there has to be something other than this, there is no hope. What is the relevance of that to my daily life, one might ask. There is none. This is an offering of a complete alternative. Is that why the world doesn't want anything to have to do with Jesus Christ? Yes.

Let’s look at what you define life is, just for a moment. Say to me, “Life is a nitrogen fixation.” Say that to me. [Life is a nitrogen fixation] Yes. If you stand back with a map, even of the galaxy – never mind the galaxy; just go to the solar system – and you look at the containment of the world, of the earth, you can see that it’s surrounded by a nitrogen cloud. I know all of you are aware of the inevitable statistical fact that the constitution of your atmosphere is 79.7 percent nitrogen. The vast majority, the other 20 percent of it, is the poison called oxygen, which is needed as a fix to justify the associations of your body form.

Now, obviously, that’s what you believe life is, but if you’d care to look at it with me, it would seem fairly ridiculous that you would be a nitrogen-oxygen fixation. It has to be a molecular association of form somewhere that the variations are the number of protons contained within the nucleus. So after you get to six, which is nitrogen, you add on seven and you’ve got carbon, or the reverse of that, and you’ve got oxygen. So your entire constitution is a molecular association of nitrogen and oxygen? That’s it? That’s 99.1 percent. Thankfully, we’ve got a little argon in there. Argon, another .8 percent. A little krypton, maybe. A little krypton and argon might help you facilitate yourself.

Can I say this to you? If you believe that that’s the constitution of reality in your mind, you’re ridiculous. What you’re saying to me is, if I’m mostly nitrogen – I am fixed in nitrogen – literally, what you’re saying is “I’m either going to crap on myself or blow myself up.” Laugh. This is the carbon cycle, guys. Everything I do either turns to crap or dynamite. It’s either nitrogen or oxygen. And that remains the fact of the matter. But why that would possibly constitute the formulations of your association with the innovative factor that you employ in order to demonstrate your creative purpose is a complete mystery to my illuminate mind and will be to yours in just a moment, this entire teaching, that you are a captive within the body form within this ridiculously contained idea that doesn’t even represent light in any true sense.

So you’ve been representing darkness. So I’m offering you a new idea, and along with this new idea will be the necessity for you to escape from the confines that you have defined within your own objective reference. Is this true? [Yes] I must offer you a manner by which your mind can expand its consciousness identity into a realization that transcends the lock of the nitrogen fixation that you are using to identify your molecular association.

I’m talking to some of you out there, who, on the experience of the joy of self-reality, that is, the idea in a moment of revelation that you are indeed free as God created you, only to have it reduced to the idea of, let’s call it, “practical application,” if you want to stay with me just for a moment... The idea of practical application, the idea that we would take this revelatory association of your mind that constitutes the joy of your creative purpose – I’m speaking of my mind here now or your mind as you come into this new facility – and we would have to reduce it to an exchange factor that would justify motivations for remaining in the stricture of your conceptual mind are meaningless and very depressing. They’re very depressing. If you’d look at it, what in the hell would be more depressing than the idea of a practical application of a revelation that showed you an entire reference of the association of eternal life, only to be reduced to some sort of exchange?

Are you aware that that’s how it works? Are you aware that you can constitute all of the innovative ideas expressed in the certainty of research that will give you surprising alternatives based on accumulative thought processes that your innovating mind can express, only to have them simply thrown out because they have no application? Are you aware why you don’t like the mind training of A Course in Miracles? Very simply because it’s the offering of direct contact with God and actually it has no practical application in regard to your necessity to stay in a nitrogen fixation and die. Is that so? Do you see that?

So, what is life to you? Do you still believe in the story you tell yourself? Or did it become absurd enough to allow for the possibility of something else altogether?


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