As the author of a series of spiritually-themed novels, I am always looking for books that will add to my spiritual understanding.
This is definitely one that did that for me. Kenneth Wapnick was closely associated with the authors of "The Course in Miracles. I have found his books to be much clearer in getting the course principles across. This book has embraced truths that were always within me.
It will help the reader begin to understand the pa As the author of a series of spiritually-themed novels, I am always looking for books that will add to my spiritual understanding. It will help the reader begin to understand the paradox of time as we know it. It helped me affirm what my eternal nature is all about. Whether or not you are a Christian, this book speaks to universal spiritual truths.
A Vast Illusion: Time According to a Course in Miracles by Kenneth Wapnick
Whether or not you are a spiritual seeker, this book is a mind opener. It will help you begin to understand some of the paradoxes concerning the illusion of time. Time as we perceive it, in a linear fashion, is not what eternity is all about. The book will help you understand that the seeming reality which we experience is just an illusion. You may not choose to accept that and that is okay. Even so, it will provide you with food for thought.
It certainly did that for me.
Removing the obstacles to Love as is taught in 'A Course in Miracles'
What it affirmed for me is that the only thing that is real is the moment. What is done is done and the future is for none of us to see. It helped me to remember the importance of remaining present in order to make the most of each moment. That is where I believe my eternity lies. After reading this book, perhaps you will understand that eternity is happening now! Sep 08, Mark rated it it was amazing. This is compulsory reading for anyone interested in the metaphysics of time regardless if you're a student of A Course In Miracles or not.
A VAST ILLUSION: TIME according to A Course in Miracles by Kenneth Wapnick, Ph.D.
Great effort to gather the statements about the metaphysics of time sprinkled throughout A Course In Miracles and then putting them together into a coherent framework. Not quite the conclusion I was expecting or one that I could fully agree with although I could see how Ken could have arrived there, nevertheless it is a fascinating model. I can see common tra This is compulsory reading for anyone interested in the metaphysics of time regardless if you're a student of A Course In Miracles or not. I can see common traces of this model in current Theoretical Physics, particularly how time doesn't exist outside of the universe.
The most useful topics I found was: He doesn't send you people or things rather He just moves you along your time-tree so that you run into people or things favourably. Mar 03, Phil Mullen rated it really liked it. Now I swim around in the Course every morning I'm tremendously grateful to him for all his teaching.
Spacetime is a made-up illusion. All incarnations so to speak occur simultaneously I relish everything he writes nowadays.
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Jul 08, Rick Bechard rated it it was amazing. One of the few books to present an understandable meta-physical discussion regarding the experience of time and it's holographic as well as illusionary nature.
Sandra Yearman rated it it was amazing Jan 14, Catalina Sardi rated it it was amazing Oct 26, Norman Ramos rated it it was amazing May 14, Golie Nabavian rated it it was amazing Feb 06, Mark Delaplane rated it liked it May 08, Bud James rated it it was amazing Jun 28, Their own remembering is quiet now, and what has come to take its place will not be wholly unremembered afterwards. Elsewhere the text talks about our belief that an enormous amount of time is necessary between the time we choose forgiveness and when our minds are finally healed T Thus, Jesus is reiterating that the miracle occurs in an instant.
A Vast Illusion: Time According to a Course in Miracles
It does not take any time because there is no time, but it appears to do so because we are still trapped in the illusion. In reality, however, in the instant that we forgive, all minds are joined and healed with us. Because our minds are already joined, all that we have done is remove the barrier to the awareness of that reality.
That is why it occurs in an instant, when the decision maker makes another choice. Once we have experienced what it feels like to join truly with someone, rather than continually to attack, we can never totally lose that experience. He to Whom [the Holy Spirit] time is given offers thanks for every quiet instant given Him.
How gladly does He offer them unto the one for whom He has been given them! The Holy Spirit is holding all those treasures e. What then remains is the memory of God that has been held in place by the Holy Spirit. This could be seen as the closest the Course comes to an actual formula, succinctly describing the process of forgiveness: Jesus of course is speaking metaphorically about God offering His thanks to us for accepting the truth that we are forever His Effect: God has no dualistic mind that could offer thanks to another. Rather, the passage refers to the gratitude our split minds experience in learning that God is not angry because of what we believe we have done to Him.
For in that instant does the Son of God do nothing that would make himself afraid. We find here a more cosmic sense to its meaning, referring to the one great holy instant when we totally forgive, and then the memory of God dawns upon our minds. This is equivalent to the attainment of the real world, which comes when we cease choosing those thoughts that have kept us afraid.
How instantly the memory of God arises in the mind that has no fear to keep the memory away! Its own remembering has gone. Here, time is spoken about differently from its more common usage in the text. The main point in this passage is that the entire ego world can disappear in one instant. When we totally forgive, all illusions—our veils of guilt—will disappear at the same time. The purpose of all fear, of course, is to prevent this memory from returning to us. Without fear, everything that constitutes ego thinking in the mind has vanished. The trumpets of eternity resound throughout the stillness, yet disturb it not.
And what is now remembered is not fear, but rather is the Cause that fear was made to render unremembered and undone. The stillness speaks in gentle sounds of love the Son of God remembers from before his own remembering came in between the present and the past, to shut them out. What is left, again, is the memory of God. As we have seen, the purpose of fear and guilt is to be a defense, smokescreen, or distraction that keeps from us the memory of our real Cause, God.
The ego tells us that our real cause is the ego itself, and what keeps us believing its lies is the idea that God is to be feared. This is how the ego uses memory, reminding us of our sins and justifying the guilt and fear that keeps the Love of God away from us.
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Now that fear is gone, all that remains is the Love that the Holy Spirit has held for us. Now is the Son of God at last aware of present Cause and Its benign effects. The Cause, our Cause, is in the present. As the Course says in several other places:. The substitute for, and the defense against that present instant are our past memories, whose effects are certainly not benign: The effects of God as Cause are truly benign: Now does he understand what he has made is causeless, having no effects at all.
He has done nothing. And in seeing this, he understands he never had a need for doing anything, and never did. This assertion is based on the cause-effect principle mentioned earlier. If what I believe I did has had no effect, then that shows that I could not have done it in the first place. If sin has no effect, i. Thus, what the ego has made is truly nothing because the effects, i. Since there no longer are effects, their cause must be gone as well, since the cause cannot be a cause unless it produced effects. Once this principle is accepted, we understand that we do not have to solve problems on our own.
God, symbolically speaking, has already solved the problem by showing us through His Holy Spirit that there is nothing that has to be resolved. The ego tells us there is a problem, which ultimately is one of scarcity or guilt. This problem, we are warned by the ego, must be resolved. The basis of this ego approach is the belief that sin, as cause, is real, and therefore has to be atoned for and undone. Jesus is pointing out to us that nothing needs to be done, because there is no problem that has to be solved.