In stage six it is no longer necessary to seek God, just as we do not have to seek gravity. God is inescapable and constant. Sometimes he is felt with ecstasy, but just as often there can be pain, anguish, and confusion.

This mixture of feelings reminds us that two entities are coming into conjunction. One is spirit, the other is body. 147

If God is like a force field in stage six, grace is his magnetic pull. Grace adapts itself to each person. We make our choices, some of which are good for us, some bad, and then grace shapes the results. 148

Karma means always wanting more of what won’t get you anywhere in the first place. 166

Your enemy is not evil but lack of attention. The various practices known as prayer, meditation, contemplation, and yoga have been highly valued over the centuries because they sharpen attention and make it easier not to miss the clues to spiritual reality. A spiritual person is a good listener for silent voices, a sharp observer of invisible objects. These traits are more important than trying to act in a way that God would reward with a gold star. 196

What’s the one thing you can do today to grow in spirit? Stop defining yourself. Don’t accept any thought that begins “I am this or that.” You are beyond definition, and therefore any attempt to say “I am X” is wrong. You are in passage. You are in a process of redefining yourself every day. Aid that process, and you cannot help but leap forward on the path. I/ Our love is bound up with hatred, our trust with suspicion, our altruism with selfishness. Because this is so, the only clear path to God is a path of constant self-awareness. You must see through your own mask if you want to take it off. // A belief lies close to the soul. It is like a microchip that keeps sending out the same signal over and over, making the same interpretation of reality until you are ready to pull out the old chip and install a new one. 199

Because the whole notion that you are a fixed entity is a great illusion, and the sooner you see how varied and complex you are, the sooner you will drop the masks of your ego. 202

In order for a packet of energy to appear, to be seen by the eyes as photons, it doesn’t suddenly jump into material existence. Between the void and visible light, between darkness and things you can see and touch, there is the quantum layer. This level is accessible to our brains, which are quantum machines that create thought by manipulating energy into intricate patterns. 205

I used my brain to make this journey, or at least to begin it. But it wasn’t my brain that recalled his telephone number, any more than my radio contains the music I hear in my car. // It is my belief that the brain is the last stop downriver, the end point of impulses that begin on the virtual level, flow through the quantum level, and wind up as flashes of electricity along the trunks and branches of our neurons.

When you remember anything, you move from world to world, maintaining the illusion that you are still here among familiar sights and sounds. 214

Our minds are a vital tool in the search for God. We trust the mind and listen to it; we follow its impulses; we rely on its accuracy. Far more than this, however, the mind interprets the world for us, gives it meaning. To a depressed person the sight of a glowing Tahitian sunset mirrors his sadness, while to someone else the same signals to the retina may invoke wonder and joy. As Penfield would say, the brain is recording the sunset, but only the mind can experience it. As we search for God. we want our interpretations to rise even higher than our minds can take us, so that we might understand birth and death, good and evil, heaven and hell. When this understanding extends to spirit, two invisible fields, mind and soul, need to be connected if we are to have any confidence in them. 218

The problem is always fear of the intense emotions that occur at the mystical level. Experiences so real and profound that we cannot easily comprehend or accept them… Another way to describe our blocks is to say that we don’t want to change our priorities, nor our beliefs about ourselves and God.” [Dr. Valerie Hunt, Infinite Mind, 1989] The mind field, it seems, is a mine field. 219

A person with plantar fascitis, had become increasingly in pain from continued stoicism and only sporadic attempts to do some suggested exercises. In desperation, he limped in to see a Chinese healer. The very unremarkable looking healer felt his foot and then made a few signs in the air behind his spine — without touching him. When he stood up, his pain was completely gone! The healer said that the body was an image projected by the mind, and in a state of health the mind keeps this image intact and balanced. However, injury and pain can cause us to withdraw our attention from the affected spot. In that case the body image starts to deteriorate; its energy patterns become impaired, unhealthy. So the healer restores and corrects the pattern — this is done instantly, on the spot — after which the patient’s own mind takes responsibility for maintaining it that way.. After the person continued to walk around in amazement, the healer told him casually that he could be trained to do the same sort of work. The person asked what would it take to accomplish something like this? The healer answered, “You only have to discard the belief that it is impossible.” 222 [summarized]

Now I realize that it isn’t the miracle that creates the believer. Instead, we are all believers. We believe that the illusion of the material world is completely real. That belief is our only prison. It prevents us from making the journey into the unknown. To date, after many centuries of saints, sages and seers, only a few individuals can open to radical change in their belief system, while most cannot. Even so, our beliefs must eventually shift to conform to reality, since in the quantum world, belief creates reality.

As we will see, our true home is the light, and our true role is to create endlessly from the infinite storehouse of possibilities located at the virtual level. 223

Material level. Quantum level. Virtual level (spirit)