THE VISION OF THE BEGINNING

Chris: How would you describe the origins of things?

Tony:

The passions of my early life — I suppose that’s what were — led me in the past to read an enormous amount of books. But gradually over the years certain things have happened to me that I have drawn a tremendous amount of information from. For instance I had an incredible experience during which I felt as if I had gone back to the beginning of things.During my life I have been blessed with a reasonable amount of human pain. But a greater blessing still has been that at times I have been given visions of such wonder the pain has been washed from me.

I had been wondering about difficulties in my life. I could see that they were causal. They had arisen from relationships with, for instance, my mother. But those events in themselves had been caused by things previous to them. So I was asking myself what was behind those events.

During the experience in question I felt I was at the very beginning of the universe. I knew and experienced that beginning of things as a huge awareness. There was no separation in it at all. I had the impression that prior to it a whole universe had existed that had gradually sunk back, melted, or synthesised into this single great ocean of substance and awareness. Although to be more precise I guess I should describe it as a whole condensed universe that was also consciousness.

The vision I describe here came about when, after many years of trying to heal an agony of soul connected with my sexuality, I held onto the question of why had this occurred to me. Having seen that the events of early childhood had been the instigators of much of the pain, I felt that if my pain had a causal explanation, why shouldn’t the events that produced it also have a cause.

I therefore asked the question as to why these events had arisen in my life. All of what happened is not relevant in connection with Genesis, so I will describe only the major feature of the vision.

Christ stood before me. Not as it were in a body, but I was overwhelmed by the presence of a great being which appeared to be a part of all things and all time. Christ lifted up my consciousness, causing me to feel as if my awareness also spread over the immensity of time, and from this condition I was shown the beginning of things.

I cannot say I saw this, more that I experienced the condition of the beginning. And this condition was the gathering together of what I understood to be a whole universe that had previously existed. All that had existed had come to such unity that although this was physical, it was also, in its unity, a being.

As I experienced this I felt at last as if a resolution between science and religion had taken place in me. For here was something like the cosmic egg science suggests preceded the ‘big bang’. But what had been left out, I realised, was this consciousness, this immense being. In retrospect, it also suggests to me the difficult question of Elohim being many beings and yet one. For all life had here found a unity in one immense being beyond my comprehension. It was, in fact, difficult to grasp because I was overcome by emotion as I witnessed this.

As I opened to this enormous perception, there was a deepening of understanding, in which Christ aided my comprehension. For I realised that the oneness or unity of this being was unbroken. It was everything. Nothing could exist outside of it. Even if it were to create something, that thing would not have existence outside of the one.

This condition of ‘all-one’ had led to a form of al-one-ness. This was as near as my human understanding could grasp. Christ in fact said to me – “You must understand, this is your perception of it.”

Out of this aloneness, this great being had longed that other beings might exist. But in its present form this was impossible. Then I understood something that tore my heart to pieces, as it still does today when I dwell on the memory of the experience. This Being purposefully went about destroying itself so that our present universe – we – might have existence. It was such a wondrous action, for it was done in such a way, with such skill, with such love and self sacrifice, that its very death was a magnificent creative act. In other words its death struck into action forces and effects that created the universe in all its variety. This death is what we know as the ‘Big Bang’.

As I experienced this, I realised that everything that exists is a part of that wondrous being. There is nothing that is not of its love. So that whatever arises in the universe arises out of, and as, THAT. The human sense of God is a realisation of the very substance of our own being. The awe we might feel is from an intuition of what has been given us as our own existence.

And as that being died, its very last impulse was for those new beings who might arise from its death. That impulse we call love. It flashed through the universe and still permeates every particle in a way that we cannot yet perceive, but which is like a touch upon the pulsating chaotic movements of particles and lives.

We are the seeds of that love. We are God. And in our small portion of the universe, we face a particular lesson through the shortness of our bodily lives. We face death. Yet that is the greatest of things. For that is the heart of everything, the very act of love out of which our lives have been formed. If we discover the secret of that, we discover our creator and eternal nature.