1 result for (book:deavf1 AND session:882 AND stemmed:process)
[... 13 paragraphs ...]
The consciousness of each reader of this book existed before the universe was formed—in parentheses: (in your terms)—but that consciousness was unmanifest. Your closest approximation—and it is an approximation only—of the state of being that existed before the universe was formed is the dream state. (Long pause.) In that state before the beginning, your consciousness existed free of space and time, aware of immense probabilities. This is extremely difficult to verbalize, yet it is very important that such an attempt be made. (Long pause.) Your consciousness is a part of an infinitely original creative process.
I will purposely avoid using the word “God” because of the connotations placed upon it by conventional religion. I will make an attempt to explain the characteristics of this divine process throughout this book. I call the process “All That Is.” All That Is is so much a part of its creations that it is almost impossible to separate the “creator from the creations,” for each creation also carries indelibly within it the characteristics of its source.
[... 23 paragraphs ...]
But why, I asked Jane, haven’t our best minds—at least those who have operated throughout the centuries of our recorded history—been able to arrive at some sort of reasonable consensus about the “origin” of our universe (if it had one), its processes, and our human place in it? In their many forms religion and science haven’t provided satisfactory answers, nor have agnosticism or atheism. Why have so many human beings (an estimated 50 billion of them) had to exist along the way before we arrived at our present point—from which point we in our collective wisdom think we might begin to provide meaningful answers to such questions? If true, this proposition means that for all of that time, all of those people lived pretty useless lives as far as having any real understanding of their universe goes—hardly a natural situation, I told Jane. Life can’t really be that way. The whole set of questions must be meaningless in deeper terms.
[... 1 paragraph ...]