Accessing the ‘universal mind’ requires stillness and simplicity and walking with one foot in eternity

On the spring of 1974, at the tender age of 21, I had my first encounter with “the light.” This encounter came in the form of a Voice which informed me with great authority that I was to radically change the course of my young life. My willingness to follow this “divine guidance” would set the tone for the rest of my days.

Some years later, now in graduate school in San Francisco, I had a second encounter, and this time I saw clearly the destiny I was being called to serve. One of my professors in this school was the physicist Fred Alan Wolf. I had a certain flash of inspiration that I wanted to share with the physicist, and one day I had the opportunity to explain to Dr. Wolf and a colleague of his my “theory” about the nature of light. This would evolve into my first book, “The Great AHA! Genius, Creativity, and God.”

In this book I explored many cases, some famous and some not, where an example of high creativity, what we commonly call genius, expressed itself in a moment of brilliant light. What I had learned was that light is the threshold between the space-time world and the timeless realm. This idea is what I had confirmed by Dr. Wolf and his colleague. And what came to me, expressed in my book, was that you could cultivate this experience. Genius, it appeared, had four distinct stages: preparation, incubation, inspiration and expression.

It was clear to me that in the timeless realm a complete “cosmic” consciousness existed. With the right conditions, one could access this universal Mind, extracting from it what one was prepared to receive. Later in my life this would become more and more evident to me. As a writer, I could cultivate this creative relationship, witnessing regularly how a conduit would open, allowing easy access to ideas. These ideas might express themselves in scientific theories, in poetry, or in spiritual insights. The boundary between the spacetime world and the timeless realm became very fluid, to the point that I would call my experience “walking with one foot in eternity.”

This is exactly what I would call today, enlightenment. Each of us has access to eternity, the timeless realm. We simply have to cultivate the way to make access. Here is the secret that so many practitioners of meditation learn: stillness is the portal.

This takes me back to the 1970’s and quantum physics, particularly the book by Gary Zukav, “The Dancing Wu Li Masters.” An example Zukav used was a swinging pendulum. What happens between each swing? Similarly, with our heartbeat or breath, what happens in the stillness between each beat, each breath? Stillness is the key and would become integral to my OASIS model, using OASIS as an acronym for Oneness Arising from Stillness Inspiring Simplicity.

My third near-death experience came at the age of 40, where I had traveled to India in search of some holy experience. I lay on my death bed for three days with a very high fever, while a celebration of Krishna’s birthday filled the streets of Haridwar below me. In the deep stillness of surrender, my life as I had known it was over. Something new was born, though it would be still many years before this “new life” would fully form. It was again while working on a book that a revelation would reveal a name, Sun King. This name spoke to my willingness at the age of 21, my willingness to have my human life devastated over and over again, so that something new could be born. Sun King referred to my willingness to serve as a messenger, a communication device, for this timeless realm, the cosmic consciousness that wants to express itself in the spacetime world.

In 1999, Eckhart Tolle’s masterpiece, “The Power of Now,” was published. Reading this book was a marker for me. Now close to 50 years of age I was ready to begin fulfilling my destiny, though the process of “undoing” my current life situation (married, business owner, householder), which would take almost another decade. Tolle’s book offered me the “language” to describe what I knew, when he named god as “the unmanifested.” And he stated clearly in the preface to the book: “You are here to enable the divine purpose of the universe to unfold. That is how important you are!”

The body and person cannot be enlightened, but they can serve this holy function. The divine consciousness needs to be channeled into the spacetime world. It requires messengers, communication devices. This is the highest function or purpose a human might fulfill. This is what the Voice that came to me in the stillness of the night some 50 years ago asked me. Are you willing? We are each called in this way, but for most the busyness of life gets in the way. Stillness is required. Interference patterns must be eliminated. This is my work today, as a teacher, simply modeling how to remove interference patterns, so that we might better serve this holy function.

In closing I would like to mention that my Taoist paradise in Ecuador is the best example I know of a place on earth that provides support for the alignment with basic spiritual principles. Oneness Arising from Stillness Inspiring Simplicity. The OASIS Center for Conscious Living welcomes you, should you be ready and willing to answer the call.
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Louis Bourgeois lives outside of Cuenca with his wife and young daughter at the Oasis Center. He teaches courses in Conscious Living and Conscious Dying. He can be contacted at louisb333@hotmail.com