Concerning Immortality

There is so much talk of and about immortality in the Bible. Jesus emphasized the idea by repetition: “This is life eternal that they might know thee, the only true God” – and “If a man keep my saying, he shall never see death.” Yet all religions seem to end at the crucifixion. The space between immortality and the thing called life on this planet is called death. In other words, while we are repeating the words of Jesus Christ and professing to follow him, we only go as far as the crucifixion.

A man may insist that he is living only with the idea of going to heaven, and that only when he arrives there will be happy … yet, point a loaded gun at that man which if fired would cause him to enter the Kingdom of Heaven, and he will scream for help and protection. Would Jesus have been speaking the truth when he said, “For the wisdom of this world is foolishness with God”? – just as man says that the wisdom of God is foolishness.

Why do we stop at the crucifixion if we believe in Jesus and his revelation? He was and is the way-shower, and said very definitely, “… the works that I do shall he do also; and greater works … ” Do we believe, or are we just saying words?

And then the host of questions:

Have you ever seen an immortal?

Answer: “No” – the reason is because you do not believe. You cannot see anything you do not believe, regardless. A thousand angels and immortals could stand in your presence and you would see nothing, because you have nothing with which to see. You do not see with thought and argument; you see by recognition, and without that, nothing happens but a repetition of the ancestor teaching.

Nothing is gained by human reason, for the minute it touches inspiration, inspiration disappears. The disciples could not sustain the visible Presence of Jesus Christ because they could not believe. They wanted to make him a “spirit” or apparition concocted by human thought. So he disappeared from their sight without going anywhere; it being beyond their capacity to grasp the reality of LIFE eternal.

No one can prove it as long as he is trying to show it to another. If you are doing it to see whether it is true or not, it will not happen for it is not something that results from taking thought, but something that already is; a merging into the one thing called LIFE – which is indivisible and eternal. Nothing really happens but SELF discovery as the mystification of the “self” fades away. Self-discovery is fraught with light and with the ability to understand some of the things called miracles – such as the telescoping of time, “you say it is four months until the harvest…” There is no explaining it, and no way to prove it to satisfy the curiosity of unbelieving man. There are many other dimensions that will be revealed when the pure BELIEF is established.

The man “whose breath is in his nostrils” is behind the iron curtain of ancestor teaching – he runs through the gamut of birth, growth, maturity, and decay. There is nothing else for him, so he concocts a sort of goldeneeted heaven to which he is going and where he will have his food and lodging without working, and imagines he will be divinely happy with nothing to do all day; he fights off disease and accident, both of which would make a quick end of his misery here on earth.

This can only take place as you BELIEVE – not believe in the human sense of the word, but a pure unconscious acceptance of the Presence. I sayunconscious advisedly, because until you actually become unconscious of a thing you are not fully aware of it. When you are unconscious of the air you breathe you pay no attention to it – the moment you become conscious of it, you begin to have difficulties with it – and so is it with anything. To be absent from the body and present with the LAW, or the Lord, is exactly this thing.

The discovery of LIFE is not something to be talked about. It is something to experience. Interesting about Lazarus; I think often of him. He was Jesus’ best friend. He was not a disciple – yet it is recorded that Jesus spent most of his leisure time with the Lazarus family. Why? Then came the news that Lazarus was sick. Jesus tarried two days. Why? When the Centurion asked for help for his servant, whom Jesus did not know, he said, “I will” and healed the servant lying ill at a great distance in the self-same hour.

Why did he not say: “I will” in the case of Lazarus? – but he tarried. Why? Could it have been that some experiment was going on? And then two more days and the word came that “Lazarus is dead,” but even that did not disturb him. Why? And then he raised him up. The moment the WORD of LIFE touched the decaying flesh, it was instantly back to life.

What became of Lazarus? Where did he go? Why did not Lazarus stay at the time of the crucifixion? He disappeared. Why? Because he was functioning on a level of immortality that men do not believe in. They know they must die or break life in order to gain immortality – and so Lazarus did the same thing as Jesus did when he resurrected himself; he almost instantly disappeared. Jesus only appeared when the belief of his disciples was stimulated to a point of recognition sufficient to see him.

The law is so simple you stumble over it. The Law is “BELIEVE” and until this takes place, you cannot see an immortal. You will have to go around the stupid pattern of reincarnation until you have exhausted the ancestor teaching and discovered you are right back where you were before you listened to the old Adam word, and started a creation of a universe that was already created and called “good.” Ever since then, you have been superimposing this illusion on the real, and every time you discover the permanent identity under the layers of human teaching and belief, you have what the world calls a miracle or a sudden healing.

There are signs all over the place, but there are no signs given to the curious one.

 

Walter C. Lanyon