CONVERSATIONS WITH RAJ
Vol. 2, No. 1
January 1985

QUESTION: What is the nature of God, and what is man's relationship to Him?

RAJ: What you call God can best be described as the essential Life-Principle, what has been called the Prime Mover. God is not a thing, but a Movement which is Self-responsible. In other words, It, alone, is responsible for the Movement It is. This Movement is not finite in any way. It is preferable to describe the Nature of God as "not finite" rather than infinite, because immediately, when the word "infinite" is used, one thinks of one's largest conceptualization and makes it infinite, so that it is still an infinity of form or finiteness.

This Life-Principle is pure Intelligence. It could accurately be described as Mind. Therefore, this infinite Movement is a movement of Mind, an intelligent movement of Mind, and because Mind is aware, this movement is a movement, which includes, or brings into being, Self-awareness. Literally, the first chapter of Genesis describes this process of Movement which ends up, in the last verse, with the moment of Self-recognition: "And God saw everything that He had made, and behold, it was very good," or, "and behold, it was, verily, God."

The Nature of this Life-Principle, of this Movement into expression or Self-recognition, is Love; Love, which constitutes the absolute harmony of everything that exists, of every aspect of every movement.

I am not going to go into every aspect of God at this point. We will move on to the relationship Man has with God, and "relationship" is a poor word, because it posits the idea that there is God and something else called Man, who exist in relationship to each other, and this is incorrect. Man is the direct expression of the Life-Principle.

Now, if all expression, when we use this term in reference to God, is Self-expression, then naturally the expression is going to be God expressed. It isn't going to be something else. Therefore, Man, being the direct expression of the Life-Principle, is that Life-Principle infinitely individualized. Your very individuality is the presence of the Life-Principle in expression.

All of the qualities of God, all of the capacities of God constitute your Individuality. In other words, you are the very presence of God fulfilling His purpose, and your nature is Love.

Your Soul is not a little finite, separate human soul that in some way reflects its Maker. Your soul is Soul, the active Presence of God. Your life is not derived from God. It is the very Life-Force that God is which constitutes your life. Your spirit is not a finite spirit. It is the essential activity of God, the force that has set every atom into motion, and there is no personal spirit, no personal life, no personal soul, no personal love, which you may or may not express as you choose.

Spirit, Life, Soul, Love are what you Are before you lift a finger or think a thought. They are what constitute You by Birthright, by virtue of your being the direct expression of the Life-Principle. The Son of God is the Presence OF GOD, and it is only the little human ego that thinks otherwise.

Now, what is the ego? The ego is, for lack of better words, a little, compartmentalized portion of the infinitude of your Being, which is bound by structures which it has formed as a result of gathering data about life from the five physical senses only.

For purposes of simplicity, we will say that upon being apparently "born" humanly, you gathered data from the five physical senses, came to conclusions about yourself based upon that data (which told you that you were "here" and someone else was "there," that you were not that person, therefore you were different, you were separate; you were not that tree, you were not the wood in the floor, therefore they were separate and different) and you bought into a concept of yourself, which was intellectually formed, using incomplete data.

What happened was that as you grew and as you developed a definite sense of separateness, and a definite sense of personality (which is very different from the Individuality we were speaking of), you also developed a certain defensiveness, because all of these different, separate things, not being you, were therefore potentially dangerous. They certainly couldn't be functioning in a way that was totally supportive of you.

The possibility of everyone and everything functioning in harmony with you is incredibly difficult to believe. And, as a result, the Love that You Are begins to be withheld OR given depending upon whether or not your perceptions of your others, or of circumstances, indicate that they warrant it or not. Your Soul, your capacity to sense fully all the Meaning of everything (to connect with it at the level of its divinity) becomes withheld or given . . . and we can carry this on.

As you can see, as the ego develops, it begins interfering with the expression, the natural, spontaneous being of what you Are. It blocks it. It lets it go. It holds onto it. It defends it. It denies it.

Of course, everyone, to one degree or another, is doing this, because they naturally have come to the same basic conclusions you have. So, an artificial sense of life begins to be lived, where everybody learns how to play the games just right so that the greatest degree of harmony can be experienced, or at least enough harmony so that one can go after his personal goals without running into too much difficulty.

As the ego concept has taken precedence, the structures, which it has built to define you, and which you have come to admit are "You," have created a very definite wall or boundary that obstructs your ability to access your greater capacity to be aware AS Mind, the direct expression of the Life-Principle.

Because you have identified yourself as the ego sense of yourself, rather than the Totality that you actually Are, you are constantly living in a state of Self-denial. And, down deep you know it, and down deep the ego knows it, and it, thereby, insinuates into your consciousness the necessity for your feeling fundamental guilt.

This is not because the ego is moralistic. On the contrary, it is because it knows that to the degree that it can keep you bound in conflict, which guilt is, it can keep you from being in that quiet, centered place within yourself where you can begin to access your Self. It knows that to the degree it can involve you in conflict, it has a fair chance of continuing its existence a little longer.

Now, you ask, "If the ego is a false sense of self, where does it seem to be getting the 'personality' or the oomph to 'do' things?" And, the fact is that it gets it from you, because you bring into the ego sense your Individuality and squelch It, narrow It down to a very tiny sense of yourself. And then, having bought into all of the ego structures and their false conclusions, you become the one who is defensive. You become the one who must "do it your way," who must "follow his path," etc.

So, you are then confronted with the necessity of somehow destroying this illusion, of becoming free of it. And every single one of you has felt the need of connecting with Who and What You Are more significantly and have taken steps in various ways to begin to open up to a conscious experience of It.

The essential step is the recognition that You, your essential Self, are more than any of the concepts about yourself which you govern yourself according to, which you bind yourself by, and which you eventually kill yourself with. I say "apparently" kill yourself, because, you see, at no point do you ever stop being anything less than the Totality that You Are as the direct expression of God. This is the reason that in God's eyes, Biblically speaking, He finds no sin in you.

It is only you, having bought into this tiny self-concept and having said, "This is ALL of me," who could believe that you have sinned, and could justify punishing yourself. Again, this is a part of the ego's ploy to keep you in a state of conflict.

In your willingness to assert that you are more than your present concept of yourself, and that you desire to consciously experience your greater capacity to be aware, you will have actually separated yourself from the conceptual structures. The ego will never say that! It will never say, "I am more than what I appear to be." It always insists on the fact that what appears is all there is to the self. However, the moment you desire to lean into a greater awareness of the Totality of your Being, at that moment You have made a self-statement that makes you separate or different from the ego concepts.

Now, the reason the ego is always failing, sooner or later, is first of all because it is not actual, it is a misconcept. Secondly, it is because of the fact that the Totality of your Being, continuing eternally to be What It Is totally, is constantly upsetting the ego's apple cart, constantly insinuating Itself into your tiny self awareness, which you insist so strongly on, and drawing you out, making you say, "What if such and such were true," providing you with moments of insight, inspiration, and enlightenment.

The Totality of your Being is constantly working to dissolve the ego structures, which keep you in bondage. Your Self is always doing this. Its fundamental Intent is to fulfill Itself perfectly; which means, the Intent of YOUR Being is to fulfill Itself perfectly. As long as you are insistent that you are not what you Are, you are going to come face to face with what you Are, because you can't get rid of it, and what you thought you were will be brought into question. When that happens, you say you have a problem, but you are actually faced with the opportunity to observe the inadequacy of the ego concept and say, "I don't want anything more to do with that."

Of course, if the ego concept is very strong, then it will interpret that statement as meaning that you will be throwing yourself off into a void, nothingness. The ego will tell you it is idiotic, stupid, destructive… It will do everything it can to hold you within its boundaries and not allow you to access the Totality of your Being as infinite Conscious Being, or, non-finite Conscious Being; the direct expression of the Prime Mover, the Life-Principle, or God.

As you begin your quest, as you begin leaning outside the structures, the boundaries, and are willing to sense into your greater capacity to be aware, into your clearer conscious experience of Who and What you Really Are, the ego will insist on bringing itself along. But, there must be a point at which you are willing to set it aside, because the ego works only within three dimensional conscious awareness, and your movement into the full conscious experience of your Being is a movement into Fourth-dimensional Awareness.

Your movement back into the full conscious experience of your Being as the direct expression of the Life-Principle is what has been termed a union with God. Now, the ego takes this concept of "union with God" and frightens you with it by suggesting that you will lose your Individuality. And, even though you might be able to rationalize that such an event must have significance beyond what your present mind can understand and therefore there must be value that is not presently understood in giving up your Individuality to become one with the Godhead, you still cannot believe it. And, you cannot believe it because it IS impossible! The infinite Life-Principle, in order to be fully expressed, must be infinitely individualized.

God is not constituted of an amalgamation of all Mankind, because Man, as Individuality, is not the Prime Mover. And yet, when Man is willing to yield up the finite ego concept of self for the conscious experience of what his Individuality really is, he finds himself being aware of being what the Prime Mover IS BEING. And, at that level, one could say that Individuality is creative, and all of the experiences of creativity are available consciously, even though the Prime Mover is still the creative, essential factor.

The release of willfulness, the giving up of free will (which is a device the ego has evolved), puts one in the position of being relaxed enough, quiet enough, and allowing enough to flow with what his Being is already doing. It puts him in the position of not making distinctions, not allowing OR withholding Love, Spirit, Soul, Life. The ego sense is no longer present to interfere with or modify what one's Being is already being perfectly. And, so, Man consciously awakens to his oneness with the Life-Principle without losing Individuality, and the result is constant perfection, constant joy, constant success, the constant conscious experience of his Wholeness.

We could go on for hours, but I will stop at this point and trust that you will have plenty of fun with what I have shared.

QUESTION: I have been devoting a lot of energy lately to making my body more comfortable to live in, physically. I just wonder if I have been pursuing the right course?

RAJ: You certainly are. It is important to understand that the body is the visibility and tangibility of your Individuality.

The expression or Movement, which God is, which moves into expression as Individuality, is not a nebulous expression, nor is it invisible. It is identified and identifiable to Consciousness. In other words, it is visible and tangible to Consciousness.

The visibility and tangibility of Mind occupies what you call three-dimensional space. But the Consciousness, which is thus identified, always remains Fourth-dimensional. You can see from this that the fundamental difference between Fourth-dimensional Consciousness and three-dimensional consciousness is where one places his sense of "I-ness."

The ego says that it exists IN the world, IN the universe, IN the three- dimensional frame of reference as one of many objects or organisms. Fourth-dimensional Conscious Being Knows that It is the Consciousness or Mind IN WHICH all conscious experience takes place, including the conscious experience of form, substance, tangibility, density, weight, etc. All of those are conscious experiences.

All forms are structures of Consciousness. Your body is a structure of Consciousness, or Mind. It therefore deserves your respect and your honor. But, again, it does not exist as the visibility and tangibility of the ego. It exists as the visibility and tangibility of your Individuality. It is therefore an aspect of the direct expression of the Life-Principle and is absolutely, for lack of better words, divine.

As a structure of Consciousness, your body has an intent, as all structures do. Your body's intent is to identify You, your Individuality, perfectly. When you are not functioning from the level of the ego sense, your body, even as you now perceive it, reports back no dysfunction. When you are operating from the level of your ego structures, you are always experiencing anxiety to one degree or another, because anxiety is inherent in the ego frame of reference.

Anxiety, fear, doubt, especially as they relate to your body, introduce, what are, at the bottom line, mental distortions, distorting energies, which seem to interfere with the body's intent to identify You perfectly. Now, again, they cannot actually interfere with a divine structure, but they can interfere with your clear perception of the divinity of that structure. And, so, you experience pain, dysfunction of various sorts, illness, etc.

Your intent to honor your body is excellent. But, I encourage you to move beyond the level of honoring it as an ego, or even an enlightened ego. The ego will take care of the body so as to extend its (the ego's) existence, if possible, even though everything it does is disruptive to the body.

Your ability to honor your body and heal it depends upon your ability to insist on recognizing its divinity; the fact that it is not simply a physical organism, but is the visibility and tangibility of that which God has expressed.

If your body, in all of its perfection, exists at this very moment, then what is it that needs to be healed? Literally, the vision with which you are looking at it. If the vision is clouded with fear and doubt and distrust of the body, if it is filled with a feeling that you are a little pea-brained consciousness encapsulated in a brain that is temporarily occupying a body, you will not be able to get past the sense of doubt and fear and anxiety that you have about the body.

I am going to suggest that as you allow yourself into an enlarged awareness of your Being, you will move into a level of experience where you will not claim this two-legged, two-armed shape as being all there is to your body. You will begin to recognize that everything in your world, and everything in your universe, is some part of the infinitude of your Being, because, in actuality, it is what constitutes the full expression of the Life-Principle, which you are not separate or different from, except in the one essential capacity I mentioned, that the Life-Principle is the Prime Mover.

The appreciation of the intent of your body to identify you perfectly is the healthiest thing you can do. Appreciation! Gratitude! Those are what constitute honoring the body. Fearing it, doubting it, dishonors it. It misses the point. It misconstrues the fundamental intent, which your body has to identify you perfectly.

Your body exists, as do all forms, as Meaning identified. That Meaning is a creation or expression of the Life-Principle, and so, always, the meaning of any form is Love. In universal terms, Love means Harmony. Physical harmony is physical health. But, you cannot access that harmony when you are introducing doubt and fear, whether that fear is occasioned by insecurity or whether the fear is occasioned by medical dictums or pronouncements.

Your appreciation and your honoring of your body is the equivalent of honoring the Life-Principle. It most certainly is an honoring of your Self. It is an activity, which is consistent with and in harmony with the very nature of your Being. It introduces no distortions, and therefore does not stand in the way of your clearer vision or perception of your body, which you call healing.

You should anticipate, in the process of your awakening to your conscious experience of your Self, to see your body get better and better and better, until physically there is no distortion of shape or function. And then, you can expect it to get better and better and better, in terms of its density, its solidity, its weight diminishing and giving place to the direct conscious perception of your body as a Body of Light, a body constituted of formed, living Love, the Love that God is, wherein the illumination, Itself, is the expression of Love, a communication of Love.

There should be no sense entertained of overcoming the body, of rising above the body. There should be no justification for demeaning in any way any function of the body. There should be a greater and greater embracing of the body, and an appreciation of it because of what it Really Is and because of what it is its intent and function to do.

There should also be no inclination to say, "Well, after I die, I will got to that place." The only things that blind you to whatever it is you think you are going to arrive at sometime in the future, are belief systems and belief structures which you are choosing to abide with, and actually be bound by, right now. You do not need to wait to wake up. Again, remember that waking up doesn't mean dealing with every ugly little detail of the dream you're having and bringing it to some state of perfection. It simply means opening your eyes!

What is going to be your vantagepoint? The ego structures, or your Being? One constitutes being asleep. One constitutes being Awake.

When you view any situation or circumstance and you say, "This situation is pacifying, peaceful, harmonizing," and another is "anxiety producing, fearful, scary, upsetting," you mistake. Those qualities are not in the situation or circumstance, but are entirely due to the vantagepoint from which you are viewing them.

In making the choice for viewing them from the level of your Being, you put yourself in the position where the circumstances cannot grab you physically and generate emotions of fear and anxiety. And, if there is some correction or clarification that needs to be brought into play in regard to those circumstances, you will have the perspective, the peaceful perspective, the secure perspective, to know how to deal with them appropriately, so that the Reality can be brought to view in place of the illusion.

QUESTION: For three and a half years my husband and I have been in a state of limbo, due to financial circumstances. We have a large house that we need to sell, and we're living between two places. The financial circumstances are causing deterioration in our marriage.

RAJ: The limbo you find yourself in is due entirely to your ignorance of the fact that you have authority over the situation.

Your authority comes in two stages. The first is: You have the right to say and feel, "I've had enough of this!" Now, this first step is an objection, and if you simply stay in the objection stage, you will experience nothing but frustration and the negative aspect of the objection.

After realizing that you can say, "Thus far and no farther," you then need to move into a recognition that since it is the intent of your Being to fulfill Itself completely, It must, therefore, have the means to fulfill itself completely. This is true of both of you, individually, and since you are together, there is a natural blending of that single intent. Therefore, you could say, as a couple it is the intent of your Being to fulfill Itself, not short-change Itself. If that is Its intent, and It has infinite capacities with which to do so, then your logical next step is to be alert to see how on earth It's going to do it. In other words, there must be an expectation of seeing this limbo resolve into clarity and purpose and ongoing direction, a reasonable form or identity.

If you do not shift from an ego orientation, a personal orientation, to an identification with your Being and Its eternal Intent, if you do not move to this place where the resolution can be brought into view, you will, indeed, in one way or another, bring into play more of the ego's techniques; one of which is to lay a "responsibility trip" either on yourself or on your spouse (and this applies to both of you). And, of course, if things are not going well, then there is the other side of the responsibility trip, which is called the "guilt trip." And, it WILL stress the relationship.

It is essential, regardless of the money, regardless of the conditions, for you and your husband to become very clear that neither one of you is personally responsible. And, both of you should consciously agree not to allow any belief structure to develop that undermines the other's integrity. If you are going to insist on seeing each other as persons, you will not be able to avoid it. But, if you will insist on seeing yourselves as individualities, which, again, are the direct expression of the Life- Principle, then you will know that the Totality of your Being -- yours, your husband's -- IS functioning perfectly, with nothing to be guilty for. And, both of you will begin to open up, to become alert to see the way in which the natural harmony of your Being is going to manifest Itself.

Your Being is not dependent upon economic conditions or world conditions. In fact, It sees no conditions as being capable of being attached to "the world," or "personalities." The fulfillment of your Being, therefore, derives the means for Its fulfillment out of the very God-Source that constitutes Its existence, and, in fact, IS the very expression of the Prime Mover.

"Thy Will be done."

If it is said very, very carefully, you can say, "My Will be done." If you understand that the I that is saying it is not the ego, and if you will be willing to allow your "I," your Individuality to flow in flawless manifestation, you will see the situation being resolved.

What I am describing here is not a complex set of parameters that you must learn how to do perfectly before you will experience what you desire. All that is necessary is for you to have the desire and the intent. You must have the intent to release yourself from the limbo. You must have the intent that says, "No more! You (the problem) do not have authority for existing from the Life-Principle. Therefore, I do not need to honor you by fearing you." Then, you must simply have the desire to observe your Being fulfilling Itself in very practical terms of dollars and cents, of means of moving, and the means of maintaining the new home.

The moment you are able to bring every facet of a situation back to a connectedness with the Life-Principle, you will see evidence of the Reality that IS going on manifesting, becoming clarified. Again, all you need are the intent and the desire.