CONVERSATIONS WITH RAJ
MAY 1985
Vol. 2, No. 5

QUESTION: I feel so limited by my three-dimensional awareness now. I have a really hard time resolving this thing about time. I don't know whether time exists in the three dimensions or whether it really doesn't exist in the three dimensions. I don't believe it exists at all in reality beyond physical reality. Anything that involves change to me implies time, like growing as an entity and learning and getting knowledge. It baffles my imagination as to how this makes sense beyond the concept of time in the three dimensions.

RAJ: You are correct in your perception that time exists only in the three-dimensional frame of reference. It is very much like your lap, in that your lap is not a physical object, but is caused by the relative position of your legs and body. (Where does your lap go when you stand up?)

Time is an experience relative to objective events, but has no actual, tangible, physical, measurable existence. Fourth-dimensionally speaking there is no experience of time.

What you call the three-dimensional frame of reference is constituted of the perception of your conscious experience, which is based entirely upon the data gained through the five physical senses and the conclusions drawn therefrom. But, the fact is that there is more to you and your world than the five physical senses can register.

The more of You that is available to you is available to you as direct conscious experience, but not through the five physical senses. This level of experience is accessed through, first of all, a willingness to doubt the evidence, which the five physical senses present you with, as though it were ultimate fact. Secondly, a willingness to sense into data or information beyond what the five physical senses provide you with.

At the point where you move beyond the perceptual realm of the physical senses, you move into a realm of MEANING. Every single object in what you call the physical universe is the visibility and tangibility of MEANING as some aspect of your infinite conscious experience of Being. Your Self is not finite in any way, even though that is what your senses tell you.

After first being willing to doubt that things are the way they appear to be, you can best put yourself in the position of beginning to experience your world at the level of MEANING by allowing yourself to become quiet through any method of meditation, which you desire, or any method of becoming quiet and inwardly attentive.

It is my suggestion that you not utilize any form of posturing, such as yoga, for meditative technique, because the amount of time it takes to get into a quiet space is a great deal longer due to the attention, which is given to the physical posture.

Once you are in this quiet and apparently "inner" space, you can pick any problem, any question, any object and desire to understand the underlying meaning. Once having desired it, be still and listen. Be attentive for information and answers to present themselves at the point of your conscious perception, without being aggressively pushy about it.

At this level, you have guidance available to you if you choose to ask for it. And if you do not choose to ask for it, you will nevertheless find yourself in a position of beginning to discover new levels of perception and perspective that you did not realize you had available to you.

As you move into this realm of your Being, which has heretofore not been consciously available to you, you will put yourself in the position of experiencing a great deal of growth, a great deal of new understanding. And I will suggest to you that some of it will challenge your present concepts of things. But, of course, you have been willing in the first place to doubt your present certain way of perceiving your world, and thereby have put yourself in the position of expanding your perspective, enlarging your boundaries of consciousness. This certainly puts you in the position of growth and change into a fuller, more wholizing
experience of life.

I mention this because if you were not aware that this was going to happen, it might be misinterpreted as a destructive influence or an unsettling and unnerving experience. When, in actuality, all that would be happening would be your excursion into areas of your Being with which you are not presently familiar-perspectives, which are new to you, and which simply require you to allow yourself enough time in that space to become familiar with the territory.

I have already described a great deal of what opportunities you have before you in terms of delimiting your conscious experience and expanding from a three-dimensional-only level of consciousness into the Fourth-dimensional Conscious Experience of Being. To continue beyond this would serve no purpose because there would be no way of your being
able to make practical sense out of the information until you had begun to make small excursions of the sort I have been talking about.

This Fourth-dimensional territory does not include within it the binding sense of time. As you gain more experience in this Fourth-dimensional frame of reference, your perceptions of time and the degree to which you honor its apparently binding structures will change. Your manner of dealing with situations in your everyday life will begin to change and become apparently more successful because you are not as likely to bind yourself by your educated concepts as well as your present physical
perceptions of the world.

The guidance that I mentioned would be available to you is guidance of a sort that is always compatible with your willingness and ability to deal with new information and is fundamentally loving and supportive in its nature. You may experience it as insight. You may experience it clearly as an individuality speaking with you, willing to converse with you. This is an experience, which is totally natural and which need not be frightening in any way because of the advanced nature of the individualities who are involved in this type of activity.

I encourage you to view everything, which I have shared with you, up to this point, in the light of it being a process of enlarging the boundaries with which you presently define yourself. So that more of the Totality of You is consciously available to you, rather than existing as a totally functioning but totally unconscious portion of your Being. I encourage you in this perspective because if you realize that this process is a matter of enlarging the borders of your conscious experience of YOUR Being, then you will realize that you are not expanding into what is actually foreign territory.

The simple fact is that at this very moment, you exist as Fourth-dimensional Conscious Being, but are simply utilizing only the
five physical senses to experience It. This locks you into a three-dimensional-only experience of your Totality. There need be no fear that you will leave yourself open to negative, destructive influences, because the fact is that it is impossible for you to get
outside of your Self, being as infinite as It is. Therefore it is impossible to get into a condition or place, which is unlike You and
therefore capable of being able to function to your disadvantage.

Although the well-established ego concepts, which you are familiar with WILL seem to block your way, because they are comfortable and familiar to you, the fact is that your entire Being works with you in total harmony and support as you begin the path of expanding your borders, of being willing to sense into a higher conscious level of experiencing your Being. Therefore, you will find available to you a tremendous amount of loving support, which will sustain you at times when your very urgent, strong ego sense of things seems to block your progress.

It is important to understand the unified nature of your Being, even though from the partial view of the ego, it seems to you that you are at times at odds with yourself and split up into inner factions. I assure you that this only appears to be this way from the standpoint of the ego's frame of reference, but not from the standpoint of your Being. The process of expansion that we are talking about is a process of becoming more totally connected with and consciously aware of the Infinity, the infinite conscious experience of Being, that constitutes Who and What You Are.

I will share with you also that as you indulge in expanding your borders, you will begin to find that there is no part of your world, which actually can exist outside of your conscious experience of Being, and therefore constitutes some aspect of the infinitude of your Being. As this process of Wholizing occurs, you will find yourself confronted with the opportunity to experience your world as being more and more in harmony with you, because it is at this inner level of expanded perception that the Oneness of everything can be experienced.

I do not mean to oversimplify in anything that I am saying here. But in order for you to be willing to venture forth along these lines, it is necessary for you to have a general idea of what you are doing, what can be the result, and what is the nature of the environment in which you will be doing it. The simple fact is that you can read forever and tantalize yourself with the ideas you read about, but for any of it to have value for you, it must relate to you in a practical way. In order for it to relate to you in a practical way it has to be reduced to the level of EXPERIENCE.

What I have been sharing with you is a means of allowing yourself into an experience of your Being rather than a study of a theoretical knowledge ABOUT what your Being could be. I am not suggesting that you venture forth along these lines until you feel convinced and comfortable with the idea of doing so. There is no schedule that you must meet. There is no deadline facing you.

Although the process of growing, of expanding, is not always easy, it is not, in itself, designed to be difficult. It is only the reluctance of the ego to let go of its precious concepts that makes the process of unfoldment seem trying or difficult. The process of expansion, the process of Awakening to the fuller experience of your Being, is not, in itself, difficult or strenuous, but always supportive and never overwhelming.

QUESTION: For two weeks now I have been suffering from bronchitis, and just maybe today, I feel somewhat normal. I thought, maybe you could help me understand right now what I should be doing to take care of myself.

RAJ: The actual facts are much simpler than you have been imagining, and simply boil down to the idea that you are a physical organism subject to various other organisms—included in which is the belief of contagion.

To be more specific, it is a belief of solely being a physical organism. The fact is, however, that you are totally mental. Your total being, including your body, is mental, and the body is simply the manifestation or evidence of the Individuality that you are. It is, therefore, not existing in a "physical realm." This is a significant point to understand.

It is inaccurate to think that you are made up of two parts—a mentality, and a physicality—as though they can both exist in two different realms and yet somehow be connected. It needs to be clear that as long as there is a distinct conceptual separation between mind and body, together with the belief that they both function in different realms, the body can then SEEM to be subject to viruses, germs, and untoward physical incidents, such as accidents.

When one sees oneself solely as a physical organism, which somehow has developed a brain, which allows that physical organism to perceive itself and think, one places the Totality of himself in a physical realm, and this is the grossest of the belief levels. I say that because the belief doesn't make it a fact.

What you are dealing with here is simply a belief in contagion, rather than any more sophisticated arrangement of mind/body wherein the body is manifesting some imbalance, mentally, or inappropriate destructive mental tendencies that you might be indulging in. Your resolution of this situation, therefore, lies in your willingness to embrace your body in your thought.

In other words, conceptually lift it out of the physical realm. See that it is the visibility and tangibility of mind, your mind. Once you do this simple thing, you will have, so to speak, shifted belief structures, except, there is very little belief to the understanding that your body is a mental manifestation. Accepting the premise of yourbody being mental puts you in the position of being able to assert that it cannot be subject to a physical virus because it does not exist as an independent physical entity in a "physical universe." The only Universe there is, is the Universe of Mind in Its infinite manifestation.

What I am saying may seem naively simplistic, but I assure you that it is most practical and most effective. If you are not a physical organism and if your body is not a physical object, then there is nothing present to react to a supposed physical virus.

Logic would suggest, then, "Isn't it possible that the virus might also be mental, and therefore just as real as it seemed to be when the body was accepted as being a physical object?" The answer is NO, because at the level of Mind, Oneness (and therefore, infinite Harmony) is the foundation upon which all forms arise and none can be inimical to another.

It is only at the level of the misperception of the ego (which bases its views on the evidence of the five physical senses) that there can seem to be separateness and potential hostility between the separate parts. Put in a nutshell, I want you to acknowledge the idea that because the body is a mental manifestation, it functions and exists entirely outside the realm of, or the reach of, viruses, bacteria and all other antagonistic physical organisms.

For clarification, I do not mean to suggest that there really are physical bacteria, viruses, et cetera. But for purposes of illustrating this to you, it is helpful for you to see that there cannot be any contiguousness between something, which is totally mental and something, which is totally physical, even in belief.

QUESTION: You have said, "If enlightenment doesn't pertain to your life, then it isn't worth a hill of beans," and in a lot of books that I have read, there was this big idea of "renunciation." I wonder about that idea for myself. Whenever I start thinking about getting things or about living better, or buying a new dress, I think about people who are starving.

As I begin to move toward this new awareness, one of the knots in my mind that keeps getting in the way is this idea of renunciation, which in a religious sense means to let go of all of this worldly stuff and concentrate on God and helping people. Could you clarify that for me?

RAJ: As I have indicated before, it is the whole Universe, which is to be redeemed, not risen above. What ends up being renounced are the theories and conclusions, which have been arrived at ABOUT this Universe on the basis of the partial information of the five physical senses, which we have verbalized as being the ego sense of self and world.

There is very definitely a renunciation, but it is a renunciation of ignorance about the Kingdom of Heaven, or the Universe which the Life-Principle is manifesting as Its infinite manifestation. This is not a theoretical renunciation, but an experiential renunciation, so that when you ultimately look at any object, it will not even APPEAR to be dense and dark, but subtle and constituted of Light, together with the actual experience of that Light substance as Love.

So you see, the only thing that will be renounced will be the misperception, the misinterpretation, the ignorance of what everything actually is. And, it will be renounced or given up in preference to the experience of it with all accuracy. Thus, everything will truly be seen in its true light.

Once you realize that any and every object is some part of the total completeness of your Being, your approach to it will be unpossessive. And thus, being in a constant conscious state of experiencing your completeness, there will be no sense of "getting" or even "having," but instead, of BEING everything that you see.

Thus, the whole concept of possessions will become obsolete, together with the fighting and wars over gaining possession, which fundamentally, all wars are based upon. The ultimate reason is because there is a feeling, a misconception, that there is not a sufficient amount of everything for everyone to have. This is the kind of belief that will be renounced.

Once this point is arrived at, each individuality will find that he will HAVE, by virtue of his Being, everything that manifests fulfillment at any given time. This will be without any sense of not being able to have it for long enough or not being able to have it until someone else is through with it. But always with the Knowing that equals confidence that each one, by virtue of his Being, has and will have all that he needs for the fulfillment of Purpose at any given moment.

QUESTION: The situation seems to be not just my ignorance, but also my impatience, because when you say that as soon as I see everything as light—I just kind of go into myself and say, "Oh, my God, I'll never get there. It's too far away," and it feels like there's an awful long time to go.

RAJ: This is not unusual. What compounds or intensifies the feeling that it will be a long time is the great intensity of your desire to experience it NOW. I am going to suggest that you are in a far better position to experience it, even in terms of momentary glimpses, now that YOU are aware that all forms have as their substance, Light. At least you are not walking around thinking that it is something made of cardboard, wood, or plastic. Intellectually and theoretically, at least, you can conceive that maybe there is more to it than presently meets the eye, and that what it is, is Light, and that the Light is living Love. Being aware of this opens the door for you to experience it, whereas the individual walking around seeing it as concrete and plastic and asphalt
and other forms of matter is simply locked into or stuck with his limited definition.

Be careful to be patient and loving with yourself in terms of how much of Reality you are presently able to see. The ego certainly would want you to be discouraged, but the fact is that at any moment it is possible for you to see it, because it is going on in all of its purity right now. It is not a matter of an evolutionary process of some kind whereby matter becomes rarified and refined into Light.

Now, another facet that is important is to realize that your desire is the VEHICLE by means of which you will arrive at experiencing whatever it is you desire, as long as that desire is in harmony with your Being. The key is not to be frustrated into attempting to manipulate yourself forward faster, but rather to remain calm and relaxed with your desire, and let IT move you to your destination. This is a marvelous lesson to grasp, and an enjoyable process to participate in.

This other urgency to hurry up and somehow do something better, in order to get into the Kingdom of Heaven—the perception of Reality—is frustrating, energy-depleting, and generally nonproductive. Be alert for the difference between these two approaches, so that you may, when you get sucked into the "urgent" approach, recognize it for what it is and decide to lay that down and get in touch again with your simple desire to see things as they Truly Are.