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Guy Spiro: What was your metaphysical background before the events leading up to your book, The Disappearance of the Universe?

Gary Renard: I wasn’t the kind of person you would think of as being spiritual. I was a professional musician—a guitar player. I did that for about twenty years, from the time that I got out of high school to the time I moved to Maine in the ’90s. I slowly got into spirituality and metaphysics in my late twenties and early thirties. It really started when I did the EST training. That was a powerful experience for me and I started to experiment with meditation and reading books about Buddhism and Hinduism. Then I started to realize that I already knew these things and that I was being reintroduced to them. That surprised me.

     In experimenting with meditation, I didn’t really do other people’s things; I intuitively felt like I already knew how to do it. One of the results was I decided that I wanted to get away from the fast life that I was living in Eastern Massachusetts and find someplace peaceful and quiet where I could think. So I moved to Northern Maine. Even though Maine isn’t that far from Massachusetts, it’s a totally different world. It’s very peaceful and quiet. It’s ninety percent wooded and has the lowest crime rate in America. I moved in the beginning of the 1990s to sort out my life and decide what I wanted to do with the rest of my life.

     I found that in meditation I could get to the point of absolute stillness with no interfering thoughts at all. When I did that, I felt as though I was getting in touch with the deeper part of the mind. Almost all of the mind is unconscious to us. We’re only aware of the tip of the iceberg which is peeking up above the surface. Everything we see with the mind’s eye, everything we’re aware of consciously, is just a small part of it. In meditation I felt like I was starting to get in touch with and experience that. It was really quite an experience. The magnitude of it was really beyond anything I could previously imagine. I didn’t really understand it but I did feel as though I was making progress.

GS: When you silence the mind, you find that awareness remains. That’s when you begin to discover who you really are.

GR: Right. After I was up here almost three years, something interesting happened. I was in my living room meditating and as I came out of meditation I looked across the room at my couch and there were two people sitting there. There was this really beautiful, wonderful, exquisite looking woman sitting there with some guy. I didn’t focus so much on him. I was looking at her. She started talking to me and that was the first of seventeen times that these two teachers appeared to me over a nine year period. They had a lot to say and I listened.

     It was strange the first time. I was a little bit nervous because it was such an unusual experience. I knew the doors were locked, so they couldn’t have snuck in. It was apparent that they had materialized from out of nowhere. I think the reason I wasn’t really afraid was that the look on their faces was very peaceful and they were very non-threatening. Fear didn’t seem like an appropriate response. They inspired peace with their attitude. The sound of their voices kind of relaxed me. Of course, looking back on it, I wasn’t afraid of them because in my unconscious mind, I already knew who they were. Later they explained that I had this relationship with them going back through previous lifetimes.

     They had a lot of interesting things to say. Not least of which was that the woman, Pursah, two-thousand years ago in a previous lifetime was actually Saint Thomas, who was not only one of the original disciples, but also the author of the now famous Gospel of Thomas. For those who don’t know the Gospel of Thomas, it was a gospel that was destroyed by the church.

GS: The Church suppressed it because the teachings tend to empower people and that works against using religion as a tool of social control.

GR: It disappeared from the face of the earth for sixteen hundred years. Fortunately, someone had the presence of mind to bury a copy of it in Egypt and it was found in 1945. At first the church said it was a phony, but as biblical scholars studied it, they came to a different conclusion. The conclusion was that it was actually phrased in a much more original and realistic manner and it didn’t look to be written like many of the gospels that followed. So that is an intriguing piece of evidence that, as my teachers said, the Jesus that has been given to us by history is not the original version, not the authentic Jesus. One of the reasons that my two teachers appeared to me is because they wanted to set the record straight. They wanted to point out the difference between the Jesus they knew two-thousand years ago and what he was really all about, as opposed to the story about him that has been given to us by organized religion.

GS: Modified to suit the desires of those in power at the time.

GR: Especially to give power to the church.

GS: When Christianity became a tool of social control, not much Jesus was left.

GR: That’s true. I should point out that the other teacher, Arten, said that two-thousand years ago he was actually Thaddeus, one of the original disciples. He and Thomas eventually went out and started the first group based on the teachings of Jesus. They used the Gospel of Thomas and went to a lot of different places. So they were actually the original group. As things go, there were all kinds of splits and the message got lost. One of the things that they did over these seventeen visits was to give me the message again, clarify it, and explain what Jesus was all about. They spoke to me from a Jewish perspective because there was literally no such thing as Christianity at the time that they knew Jesus.

GS: Of course not.

GR: They said that it was never Jesus’ intention to start a religion. What he was really all about was teaching people by example so that they could eventually have the same experience, their perfect oneness with God, which is the experience he was having. It is the reality of what we really are, which is perfect oneness, as opposed to all the separation that we see when we look out with the conscious mind and with the body’s eyes. He was bringing people home, back to the oneness and their wholeness with God, and undoing the ego. They explained to me a lot of distinctions between what people think today, not only about Jesus, but also about spirituality and the difference between that, and to them, what real spirituality is and what it’s all about.

     Interestingly they had a very Eastern approach. They explained to me that Jesus was from the Middle East, you know he wasn’t from Mississippi, and he had a much more mindful and Eastern, kind of like Zen and Buddhist, approach to things which would have fit right in there at the time. If you look at some of the sayings of the Gospel of Thomas, they are almost like Zen koans. What he was doing was undoing the ego, very much like Buddha. Jesus’ great contribution was that he was able to put things together in a way that nobody really had before. He understood the teachings of Buddhism. He understood there is really only ego appearing as many and then you have the world of multiplicity, that you look out and see with the body’s eyes and the conscious mind, but there is really only One.

GS: It’s not impossible that Jesus was influenced by Buddhism. It is five-hundred years older.

GR: Yes, that’s true. On top of that, he was a Jewish mystic and a rabbi, and he was a spiritual genius. He would, of course, put together with Buddhism the kind of things that you would learn today in the Kabbalah. One of the fundamental ideas of Jewish mysticism is that heaven is closeness to God and that hell is distance from God. But Jesus, being an uncompromising kind of guy, didn’t stop there. For Jesus, heaven wouldn’t just be closeness to God; heaven would be oneness with God. In fact, it would be perfect oneness with God, which is why he liked to use the original prayer so much, “Lord our God is One.” Also, for Jesus, hell wouldn’t just be distance from God, hell would be anything that appears separate from God. What that does is narrow it down to two very clear things to choose from.

     To Jesus’ way of thinking, there are only two things. Instead of this whole world of multiplicity and the smoke screen and the billions of different choices that we appear to have, there are really only two things. You have perfect oneness with God or you have everything else. This is why he says in the Gospel of Thomas, “I am the one who comes from what is whole, therefore I say if you’re whole then you’ll be filled with light and if you’re divided then you’ll be in darkness.” You can’t have it both ways, there are just really two things to choose from. There is perfect oneness with God and there is everything else.

     So people concerned with going to hell don’t realize that they’re already there, because anything that is not perfect oneness with God, to Jesus’ way of thinking, would be hell. It really simplifies the choice and is really what you would call a perfectly nondualist approach to God. It’s our job to undo the ego and undo the state of separation and illusion and return to our experience of perfect oneness with God.

     Once the ego is completely undone, the truth is all that’s left. The reason that exists in the mind for reincarnation and coming back to a body disappear and there is no longer a need to come back to this world. That’s quite a different approach than what was given in Jesus’ name later on. On top of that, because of the idea that there is really only one of us, really only one ego appearing as many, Jesus would know that the unconscious mind is aware of that fact.

     If you equate the unconconscious mind, which can see everything, to Jung’s collective unconscious, then the unconscious mind knows and sees everything, whereas the conscious mind does not. The conscious mind is aware of the tip of the iceberg, but the unconscious mind is aware of everything.

     If that’s true, then what are we doing, as conscious minds, is going through life judging and condemning other people. All that we’re really doing is sending a message directly into our own unconscious mind that we are guilty, that we are worthy of being judged and condemned, and that we’re not worthy of being with God.

GS: “Judge not lest ye be judged.”

GR: Exactly. That would be a much better interpretation of what Jesus meant by that. Because whatever we put out there, we’re actually doing it to ourselves. We’re sending it directly into our own unconscious mind. If we go through life and get upset at someone and call them a “son of a bitch,” all that we’re really doing is calling ourselves a “son of a bitch.”

GS: We can only hurt ourselves.

GR: Jesus decided that he would go through life and see everybody as being what they really are instead of what they thought they were. He decided to look past the illusion of the body and see them as perfect, see them as Christ, which is immortal and invulnerable and something that can’t be threatened in any way by the world. He knew that if he went through life seeing everybody as Christ and seeing everybody as perfect and innocent and what they really are then that was the message that would be going into his own unconscious mind. That is how he would come experience himself.

     This was a very important part of the message that he was not only giving them, but which he is giving now in even more detail through the modern spiritual guide called A Course in Miracles. It is a teaching that my teachers eventually go into in The Disappearance of the Universe. We talked about religion, sex, politics, and money, mainly because they talked about whatever I was interested in. Eventually they would always bring the conversation full circle to this certain kind of forgiveness that is not the way that the world normally thinks of forgiveness. It is the kind of forgiveness that they said that Jesus practiced, which was an accelerated method of undoing the ego and returning the mind to a condition of wholeness and oneness.

     One of the interesting things to me is that this kind of forgiveness, as it turns out, is very much in harmony with the new physics. New physics teaches us that nothing is really separate from anything else and that everything is connected and that everything is one. So what we’re really doing when we’re judging someone is judging ourselves. What we’re really doing when we’re forgiving someone is forgiving ourselves.

GS: Clearly.

GR: The normal kind of forgiveness is where you’re forgiving someone because they’ve really done something and so you’re kind of better than them and you’re letting them off the hook. All that really does is keep the whole system intact because you’re actually reinforcing the idea of separation in the mind. There is a very important distinction to be made. That is that we’re actually forgiving people, not because they’ve really done something, but because they haven’t really done anything. We’re the ones who made them up because what we think of as being the world is actually the projection that is coming from our own unconscious mind. We’re the ones who made it up. It’s almost as though the conscious mind is watching a movie that is being projected by our unconscious mind. Once we realize that, then we realize that we’re the ones who did it.

     Even though that may seem at first as kind of a bad idea because that would imply that we’re responsible for the bad things that we see in the world, the truth is that it’s a very powerful idea. It puts you in the position of being a cause instead of being an effect. As Miracles would put it, this is a course in “cause” and not “effect.” It brings you back to the source, the mind, which is where the power is, instead of being an effect out there in the world which is where no power is.

     That is like trying to fix the problem in the wrong place. If you try to fix up the world it is like rearranging the furniture in a burning house. It may have a temporary impact, but it doesn’t have a lasting impact because you haven’t gone to the source of the problem, the mind. But if you go back to the position of being the cause, then you’re doing something like what Buddha did when he said, “I am awake.” He realized that he was not one of these figures in the dream, not a body in the illusion, he was actually the maker of the entire illusion. Now he was totally a cause. He realized that the entire thing was coming from him.

     One thing you can say about masters like Jesus and Buddha is that they are not taken in by appearances, the world of multiplicity. They realize that what they are seeing is not true. They undo the ego in the mind by looking at the world of multiplicity in a different way. They have a totally different way of looking at things. That is a lot of the message in The Disappearance of the Universe: we can go through life looking at things differently, and by doing that, we undo the ego instead of staying stuck in the system. We undo the ego, return to perfect oneness, and ultimately break the cycle of birth and death. It’s about ending reincarnating and returning to that condition of oneness which is what we really are.

GS: Don’t you think that once you realize that, then you can reincarnate or not, as you choose?

GR: I think their message is a little bit different. Their message would be that once you end the need to reincarnate, then you don’t. The masters and other great beings who do return are actually what we would call the Holy Spirit. They are out of the dream, out of the illusion, back to what they really are. I explain this in more detail in the book. I think that probably what my teachers would ask and what A Course in Miracles would ask is, why would anyone want to stay here? They present an alternative, a very lofty, wonderful and beautiful vision of God, a God who really is perfect love. A lot of religion has given us a God who they say is perfect love, but then through their interpretation of scripture and their behavior, they’re really giving us a God who is anything but perfect love. What A Course in Miracles teaches and what Jesus teaches is a God who really is perfect love. If he is perfect love, then he is so perfect that he himself would not be able to create anything that wasn’t perfect, because if he would create anything that wasn’t perfect, then he himself wouldn’t be perfect. It’s a real vision of a perfect God, and what we really are is the same as God.

     The Miracles’ definition of sprit would be something that would be full, whole, perfect, and complete. It would be something that would not have to evolve because it would already be perfect. Our job would be, not so much to evolve, but to undo the ego. By undoing the ego, you actually remove the block to awareness of what you really are. You’re undoing the false you, and once the false you is undone, then the truth is all that is left. So you return to the condition of what you really are, which is already perfect.

GS: There is very little to actually attain. There is only to realize.

GR: That is very true.

GS: How do you say that your teachings are different from other commentators on A Course in Miracles?

GR: The common mistake that people make is to put their focus on the effect instead of the cause. It’s like A Course says, people have a tendency to want to give truth to the illusion. In other words, make what’s happening in the world real and address it there. A Course in Miracles says, no. Our job is not to give truth to the illusion; our job is to bring our illusions to the truth. So it’s not about fixing up the world. It’s not about making a better life or making a better dream. What it’s really about is waking up from the dream.

     That’s not just a minor distinction. In fact, it’s everything. When Buddha said, “I’m awake,” he didn’t mean that he felt amazingly alert and ready to manifest. What he meant was that he realized that he was not in the dream, instead he was the dreamer and that the whole thing was coming from him.

     My teachers, and A Course, are going back to where the problem really is, in the mind, instead of trying to fix it out there in the world. The ironic thing is that if you do that, then you can still be inspired, the word inspired meaning “in spirit.” You can still be inspired as to what you should do while you appear to be in the world, but now you’re coming from a different place. Now you’re coming from a position of power because you’re coming from a position of cause. I think the mistake of the teachers of A Course in Miracles during its first thirty years has been that they have not really listened and understood where the real power is. They seem to always end up making it about doing things in world, fixing up the world and trying to solve the problem where the problem cannot be solved.

     What my teachers did, and I think in a very interesting way, because I’m not the teacher in the book and I realize that I couldn’t have done this, is take A Course in Miracles into the vernacular. They took these very advanced and wonderful spiritual principles and put them in a way that everyone can accept and understand. I think ultimately that that’s the reason why my teachers appeared to me as people, because they wanted the conversations we had in the book to be human. They wanted them to be the kinds of things that people could sink their teeth into and really understand. A lot of the spiritual teachings that we have seem to come from above, even if they are scholarly and not biblical.

     What my teachers did was to be right in my face., We talked about everyday life, and they took these things and applied them to the kind of everyday situations that confront  people. So, not only do you have a metaphysical explanation of the entire universe, how and why the universe was made and where it came from, and an explanation of what is being done for us on a much higher and bigger level, but we ourselves can contribute to the undoing of the ego by performing the act of forgiveness, which they also explain in the book.

     As someone who hadn’t even read A Course in Miracles until they introduced me to it, I’m very aware that I did not accomplish what they did in the book, which was to really clarify the teaching and bring it to a whole new generation. I hear from people all over the world and it’s really been a great experience for me to see the difference that The Disappearance of the Universe is making in people’s lives. Not just students of A Course in Miracles, but people who are being introduced to these ideas through the book. I’m really very excited about it.

GS: It’s fortunate indeed to be a person who receives things at this level. You’re going to have a blast.

GR: It is a blessing and it is a challenge. At first I had a tendency to feel that there was something special going on for me. Then I realized as I went along that it doesn’t matter what appears to happen to you in your life, in fact, it doesn’t matter at all. All that matters is what you do with it, what you use it for. If you use if for forgiveness, then it’s a blessing, but if you don’t use it for forgiveness, then it’s not a blessing, because then all it’s doing is contributing to keeping you stuck.

GS: That comes from many directions. The Tao says, “pursue an offender only to show him the way.”

GR: That’s a good one.

GS: Punishment makes no sense. It compounds the error.

GR: My teachers really go into to A Course in Miracles, because according to them the voice of A Course in Miracles is the same voice that you find in the Gospel of Thomas. It’s the message that Jesus was giving all along and there is no difference. The distinction is that now, because of the way we understand the world and the way that we understand the mind so much more, the message can be given in much more detail. It can be given in such a way that we can accept and understand it on a much deeper level than we could two thousand years ago.

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Spend a fascinating day with Gary Renard, bestselling author of “The Disappearance of the Universe,” in a day long seminar on True Perception and Spiritual Sight, Saturday, March 18. For information and to register to attend, contact Infinity Foundation at 847-831-8828 or email infinfound@aol.com. Visit Gary Renard at www.garyrenard.com.

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