"A Parenthesis in Eternity" by Joel S. Goldsmith

"A Parenthesis in Eternity" pdf file

Chapter 9 - An Interval in Eternity

Life, has frequently been depicted as a circle, representing eternity, without beginning and without end. If we visualize life in that way and realize that our immediate human span of life is confined within a segment of that circle and that all the other segments of the circle are yet to be encompassed, we can see that within the confinement of that circle, there is a past as well as a future.

One mystic described this life as "a parenthesis in eternity." This life! Observing life objectively and using the circle as symbolic of a life, it is obvious that we have come from the past into a parenthesis in the circle, and when this parenthesis is removed — the one marking birth and the other marking death — we will be on our way into another parenthesis, or what is called the future.

This should help us to understand that our present life on earth is only an interval in eternity. We have come from somewhere and we are going somewhere, but because life is an unending circle, we are again going to come from a somewhere, and we are again going to go to a somewhere, and this will go on, and on, and on. Will it ever end? Who knows?

The ancients tell us that when we are perfected, that is, when we live this life as God lives life, in that degree of purity, we will not enter the parenthesis again: we will just live in the circle, outside, beyond, and above all human experience.

Even though the unillumined and uninitiated may claim that all this is only speculative, I can tell you that there are those who have completed their cycle of life on earth, and therefore would not have to return to this-world experience. Nevertheless, they do reincarnate, in some cases voluntarily and in others under instructions from those who likewise have been graduated and who perhaps act as spiritual influences behind this earth-plane.

That there is an evolutionary life process going on in this human picture, surely few can deny. That human consciousness is unfolding on a progressively upward spiral is bom out by the fact that years ago when nations had conflicts of interest, they seldom sat down to discuss their problems, but settled them by going to war. The very horrors of the wars that have been fought in the twentieth century, however, have forced such an evolution in consciousness that nations are now trying to work out their problems without warfare, even though here and there, there is still a desire to return to the old way. On the whole, the trend is away from war, perhaps because the realization is dawning that war as it would be fought in this nuclear age would completely annihilate the human species.

In other areas as well, a significant change has been taking place in consciousness. Those of us whose memory goes back far enough can recall that during the strikes in the ready-to-wear industry of New York, in the coal mines of Pennsylvania, and in the automobile industry of Detroit, it was not an unheard of occurrence for management and labor to engage in what at times amounted almost to a shooting war. There is little of that today, and more and more of arbitration and mediation, all of which represents an evolution in consciousness. In legal disputes, too, there is a greater attempt today to settle lawsuits outside of court rather than to force every case into court.

If such a tremendous evolution has taken place in the past fifty years, how much greater has been the evolution over the past thousand years! Cannibalism is now practically extinct; tribal wars which often resulted in the defeated men and women being pressed into slavery have been almost completely wiped out.

Thinking of the progress and changes that have been made must cause one to speculate as to how and why such an evolution has taken place, inasmuch as every generation eventually leaves the human scene, and a new one follows. Is each new generation better than the one of twenty, thirty, forty, fifty, or two hundred years ago? Are these men and women better, or could they conceivably be the same men and women who learned lessons in their previous experiences and are now profiting from them?

Is not everything that we leam in this lifetime transmitted to the next generation? Will not the new generation take up where we leave off? Will it not accept unquestioningly the mechanical and material progress made by preceding generations?

Today we do not use whale-oil lamps, we do not study by candlelight, we do not have to go out and hunt or fish for our food. And why? Because we were not born at the same state of development as our ancestors. Had we been compelled to begin where our great-grandparents began, we would have had to go through the same process of life as they, but we are the beneficiaries of an evolutionary state of consciousness. We have come into this world more highly civilized than our predecessors, but that would have been impossible if they and we, too, had been bom from a standing start.

How can anyone fail to recognize that there is an evolutionary process of consciousness going on constantly? This means that regardless of what conditions of evil we may behold they are transitory and temporary. The next generation will have less of them, and the following generation still less of them, and so on, and on, and on.

This does not mean that individuals in every succeeding generation will avoid problems characteristic of its particular time or resulting from catastrophic upheavals like world wars and economic disasters which often bring on waves of juvenile delinquency, alcoholism, drug addiction, and crime. With maturity and an exposure to a better and higher way of life, many problems harassing the world today will disappear.

Is it not possible that those engaged in crime may have carried some of this over from a previous still lower state of consciousness in a former life, just as very young children who give evidence of great musical skill or of an artistic or religious nature must have lived before, been on the Path, returned, and brought with them a developed state of consciousness? Is it possible to believe that they could have learned all these things from birth to three or four years of age? Is a mathematical skill or an inventive tum of mind inherited, or is it the embodied development that was attained in a former life?

Probably nature has wisely decreed that we carry with us into this present experience no memory of specific hardships endured, or the sordid aspects of former lives, but that we carry only the attained, developed consciousness, whether it be of music, literature, art, science, or spiritual wisdom, and probably not even a memory of the particular form it took.

If we could see this life as a parenthesis in eternity, we would realize that each one comes into this parenthesis to advance himself beyond what he was before, and therefore, there must be a going on from this experience in order to evolve into the next.

There is no denying that in the consciousness of most people there is a natural reluctance to leave the human scene, a reluctance to pass on, make the transition, or whatever we may choose to call the change. There is also a reluctance and resistance to having our friends and relatives leave this experience. Strangely enough, there is no resistance to birth which ushers in most of mankind's troubles. Then, why should there be a resistance to death, which in most cases is an end to many of our problems? True, we have formed the habit of being with certain people and have become attached to them, and when they are gone, a void is left which causes grief.

But even from a common-sense standpoint, how dull and monotonous life would eventually become if we had nothing to do but go to sleep at night, wake up in the moming, and unendingly go through a round of doing the same things that we have been doing for sixty, seventy, or eighty years! There has to be a break in that. What would happen to men who today retire at sixty-five and sometimes are frantic by the time they are seventy or seventy-five, if they were to go on forever and ever living that same kind of useless, monotonous existence? There must be an escape from this kind of "vegetating."

The beginning, then, of overcoming this dread and fear of death is to realize that our human span here is but a preparation for another experience, and we should bid Godspeed to those who have finished this cycle and are ready for the next. This very overcoming of the fear and dread of death would prepare us for a more harmonious experience on earth and undoubtedly prolong our life, because many of the passings are unnecessary and are brought on by the very clutching to ourselves of a material sense of life which often works in reverse and hastens us out of this experience.

To understand, however, that we cannot be moved outside of our cycle, that we are part of an eternal destiny, and that as we were moved into this parenthesis, so we will be moved on out of it — but only in accord with the unfolding of consciousness and not by being pushed out of it—would expand consciousness and contribute to a more satisfying human experience.

When we realize that we are a part of a circle, we no longer fear what mortal conditions can do to us because we are under a divine destiny, and nobody, no thing, and no condition can push us out of this body until our time has come. Our time does not necessarily mean the commonly accepted human span of years: it means the time required to reach the individual development of consciousness that is possible to each one of us on this plane, a development which cannot expand any further until it has made the transition into another experience.

Instead of pitying those who have reached advanced years and are not functioning vitally and actively, let us realize that they, too, are a part of a cycle, not acted upon by the human belief of threescore years and ten or by the belief of deteriorating matter, but that they are a part of this circle of eternity. With that realization, one of two things happens: they either revive and lose ten, twenty, or thirty years from off their shoulders, or if they have arrived at the fulfillment of time, they will be released into their ultimate attainment. Whichever it may be, they will no longer be victims of fear or dread, or of the loneliness of those who hold them here because they want their companionship.

From the standpoint of our spiritual development, it is important for us to leam that when we came from that unknown somewhere, we brought with us an attained state of consciousness, and that while we are here, we are expanding that consciousness. The period in which we live on this earth is like a school. If we go through life wasting our time and not availing ourselves of the opportunities for spiritual unfoldment provided here, when we leave this plane we will have to return and go through the entire experience again, just as children who do not leam the lessons of one grade in school must repeat the grade in order to be ready for the next one. If we go out on a down cycle and come in on another down cycle, it will just keep on, and on, and on, until eventually every knee bends to God, to the spiritual life. So, if we have to come back a thousand times—experience a thousand or more parentheses — it is because we have brought it on ourselves.

This is a hard saying, and it is especially hard for those who are afraid to face up to themselves, who are reluctant to admit that they have brought all their problems on themselves. "Whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap. For he that soweth to his flesh shall of the flesh reap corruption" — not only in this world, but in the worlds to come.

As we visualize the circle and move around it, it is apparent that everything we do at any given point of the circle determines what and who we are at the next point of that circle. We either stay a mortal material being and keep on going around and around, repeating the same life-experience and reaping the same karma over and over and over, or we are an expanding consciousness, and with every time around we are a bigger, better, more spiritual consciousness with greater dominion.

As we sow in this lifetime, so will we reap in the next. Many persons have thought of the doctrine of karma and reincarnation as being primarily an Oriental teaching, and while it is true that it did originate in the Far East, this doctrine has been accepted and acknowledged the world over by mystics, poets, and philosophers to whose attention it has been brought and who have seen the rightness of it. Many of these very people, however, are unaware of the Christian teaching of repentance and do not understand that the Christ-teaching, unlike the Oriental teaching of karma, does not doom a person to his karma until it has been exhausted, but rather wipes out the past in the moment of real repentance. With the recognition of the Christ, with repentance and with turning, karma is instantly erased.

The approach of The Infinite Way to the concept of karma and reincarnation, however, is different from that of other teachings which embrace this doctrine. The Orientals teach that every bit of sowing creates a corresponding karmic debt which must be paid off in this lifetime or in subsequent lifetimes, and that regardless of any change of consciousness in us, we must pay to the uttermost farthing, whereas The Infinite Way teaches that irrespective of what sin of karma has been stored up, in any second of repentance, in a breath, we are as pure and white as snow. In a moment of real repentance, in an awakening which brings the realization that sin is no part of us and has no right to be, in that second, karma is wiped out, and we are on the spiritual cycle.

From there on, the sowing not only results in reaping while we are still here, but it results in an ever-greater reaping as we go on. Every bit of metaphysical or spiritual wisdom that we have attained in this lifetime is of value to us on this plane as well as hereafter, so that we cannot separate karma from reincarnation, any more than we can separate karma from our next year. Our next year is being built this year. The degree of spiritual consciousness we can attain this year will be evidenced in our outer life next year. An expanding and evolutionary consciousness will continue to operate forever — inside the parenthesis and beyond.

This must be true if there is any reason to life or any purpose in living. Were the millions of people of India, China, and Russia bom to know nothing but the suffering and horror of their lives for the past hundreds of years? Are they only living out the destiny of the karma they have built up in preceding lives, or are they struggling for freedom from hunger, exploitation, and oppression because they are the very ones who will return to enjoy the better conditions they are helping to create?

Are the efforts that parents make to educate their children, even though it may involve such a life of sacrifice that they themselves are never free from backbreaking labor or household drudgery, made only for their children, or are they building their own karma? Their children may not even benefit by their sacrifices, and it would make no difference if they did not because no one can build another's karma, not even that of his own children. Each one builds his own, and whatever form this present life takes, even if it is a complete cycle of sacrifice upon sacrifice, struggle upon struggle, it is for the development of his own consciousness and will come back to him in the form of education, freedom, and opportunity—whatever it is that he has given to others.

There again is a wider application of the truth that the bread we cast upon the waters will return to us. Some persons complain that they have gone through their whole lifetime without having any bread return. No, they have only gone through this parenthesis. This present parenthesis eventually is rubbed out; and then when the next parenthesis comes into being, there is a higher experience, which is the evolutionary fruitage of the one before.

It really is a form of ignorance and egotism to say that we have laid down our lives for our country or for our children. We never did; we never did! We have been building our own karma, and it would be impossible to sow to the Spirit and not reap life everlasting, to sow to freedom and not reap freedom, to sow to love and not reap love, to sow to friendship and not reap friendship. Even if every friend on earth betrayed us, that is only inside this parenthesis.

There is no need to feel sad or discouraged, therefore, about those closest to us who have never touched the spiritual path because this condition exists only within the limits of the parenthesis. Everyone is free while he is here, and he is just as free to find his way when he is no longer here. He has not wasted his life: he has merely wasted a parenthesis. He will still have his awakening, and the fruition and the fullness, because undoubtedly each one of us has lived the same stupid life that the majority of mankind lives—the life of the walking dead, the Soulless life—and probably lived it dozens of times.

Just as in this particular experience we are beginning to awaken, so as we witness those who are living this experience or passing from it still unawakened, we can look at them with the realization that it rcallv does not matter. This parenthesis is only a period of threescore years and ten, twenty, or thirty, but they have all of eternity in which to awaken, and will.

If we are not building for eternity, of what benefit is sacrifice? Why not live today because tomorrow we die? Why not enjoy it while we are here? No, that we cannot do because we would be reaping a negative and selfish karma, an ingrown self. If that is what we sow, that is what we shall have to reap.

Many persons have never been exposed to the as-ye-sow-so-shall-ye-reap teaching, nor to the teaching that the bread they cast on the waters returns to them. These ideas have not been taught because they are not popular subjects. Few persons want to be faced with the truth that they are manufacturing their experience of next year right now, and furthermore that at this moment they are manufacturing what their life will be ten years from now. It takes only one step of the imagination to see that karma really means that we are building not only for the next ten or twenty years: we are building for eternity.

The only persons who are willing to face that are those who can turn their backs on the past and determine to sow to the Spirit, determine to have an end to this human bickering, greed, jealousy, and fear, to stop worrying whether they pass on at thirty or at a hundred and thirty, and to be willing to live each day as if they were building tomorrow, and consciously to realize when they think or do wrong that it has to be undone and cannot be left to accumulate.

It takes spiritual courage to face the teaching contained in the Bible because when its true meaning is understood, it compels us to live in the now, repent, and to begin sowing the right kind of seeds.

Our life-expression within the parenthesis need not be limited to threescore years and ten or twenty, but on the other hand, it would not make any difference if it ended at twoscore years or less because it is not the number of years that develops us: it is the intensity of the experience that expands consciousness. There may be those who complete this earth-cycle within the parenthesis at thirty, forty, or fifty, and there may be others who will go on to seventy, eighty, ninety, or a hundred; but whether early or late, the life-span can be completed in health if it is done in the understanding of life as expanding consciousness, not as finite time.

It is possible and highly desirable to reach a place of recognizing that our present state of consciousness embodies the spiritual progress of every life-experience wc have had since the very beginning—not that there ever was a beginning to the circle or to what we call coexistence with God. Every time that we meditate, we can realize that our consciousness embodies the fruitage of our spiritual development for a million years. It embodies every bit of spiritual development and attainment that we have been accumulating throughout all time, and it is present here and now as the degree of maturity that we have attained. If it were actually the full maturity itself, we would no longer incarnate except either voluntarily or under orders to perform a specific mission.

In each parenthesis within the circle, we draw to ourselves the atmosphere and environment in which we can best unfold: the particular parents who can give us the lessons we need whether they be harsh or gentle ones, and the companionship needed for our development. If we look back on our life now, many of us can recognize that we would not be where we are except for some of the experiences that we have gone through, even some that we would like to have avoided.

But whether we have or have not the courage to admit it, to face up to ourselves, the truth is that we have drawn unto ourselves our own state of consciousness, and so, too, as we enter the Path, we are drawn into a spiritual atmosphere and companionship which have no relationship whatsoever to racial, national, geographic, or religious roots.

Let us carry this a step further and realize that as we pass from this experience and leave this plane of consciousness, we will be drawn into the very atmosphere necessary to leam the lessons important to our unfoldment, whether intellectual, emotional, or spiritual.

If we are on the spiritual path, are we not then going to be drawn into an atmosphere of service where we will be companioning with those of our spiritual household? If that does not include husband or wife, parents, brothers, or sisters, it is because they are not a part of our life. As long as we are on this earth-plane we do not disown husband, wife, mother, father, sisters, or brothers. We have a human obligation to them which we fulfill, but aside from that, we follow the Master's teaching, "Who is my mother? and who are my brethren?" recognizing our companions on the spiritual way as mother and brethren.

There are persons who are greatly concerned for fear that they not rejoin their mother or father, their sister or brother, or their husband or wife. They will rejoin them if that is their state of consciousness; and, if that is what represents heaven to them, that will be the heaven, even though it really is hell. But to them it will be heaven to be tied.

The moment that we are spiritually endowed, however, and having attained the correct sense of who our mother and brother really are, then we find ourselves tabernacling with those of our spiritual household. We fulfill ourselves spiritually among the spiritual lights who have gone before us, and we are drawn higher, and higher, and higher and then we do not have to fulfill ourselves humanly, even if we return to earth.

The higher our spiritual development here, the higher we attain there and the more quickly we attain even greater spiritual heights because we are now free of the fetters of fear, ambition, lust, greed, and hate. So our unfoldment is increasingly progressive after we have been drawn into a spiritual atmosphere, just as our spiritual growth so much greater because we have been drawn to one another here, each one of us were trying to work out his spiritual salvation alone he would not make the progress that can be made in a unit spiritual atmosphere.

As we leave this plane and are drawn to those who have attain spiritual wisdom, our development continues. Then, even if we do reincarnate on earth, we will be fulfilling ourselves in a sphere most closely akin to a spiritual activity. Those who have not gone far enough spiritually will fulfill themselves culturally, educationally, artistically, or musically, but if they are developed spiritually, there will be a spiritual function for them to perform, even before they incarnate because there are influences working behind the scenes that animate those who are on the spiritual path here.

Nobody who is in a position of leadership in a spiritual activity here is dependent entirely on his own state of consciousness. He has attracted to himself a spiritual atmosphere, a spiritual support and guidance, because on the spiritual level there are no such barriers as heaven and earth, as over there and over here: they are one. Once they are in some measure spiritually attuned, we are in the consciousness of all those who are so attuned, whether they are here or there. In other words, we are in and of the household of God.

The household of God is composed not only of people who are here on earth, or of those who have passed: the household of God encompasses the universe. The household of God is embodied in our consciousness, and we are embodied in the consciousness of the household of God.

Those who love God are brought into one household, one family, one companionship, into a sharing with one another; and just as we are sharing with those coming into the Light, so somebody with an even higher consciousness is sharing with us.

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