Gary Renard Talks About Forgiveness and Healing Our Unconscious Guilt

JANUARY 10, 2012—I was honored to interview Gary Renard, best-selling author of The Disappearance of the Universe and Your Immortal Reality.

Gary has had an amazing spiritual journey. Beginning in the early 90s, two enlightened teachers, Arten and Pursah, suddenly appeared in his living room and began revealing the secrets of our existence and the power of forgiveness, as well as providing valuable insights into the teachings of A Course in Miracles (ACIM). Gary has since traveled the world as a spiritual speaker. Not bad for a shy guitar player.

I started the interview by letting Gary know that I had read his books numerous times and found them fascinating. I was curious about he upcoming book, Love Has Forgotten No One. I asked him to tell me more about it and wondered if the infamous enlightened teachers, Arten and Pursah, were going to appear in the third book, as they had in the previous books.

Gary says, “Yes, Arten and Pursah appeared for a series of visits which resulted in my third book. They first appeared 17 times over nine years in my book, The Disappearance of the Universe. After a few years, they reappeared for 11 visits over two years, which was detailed in the book, Your Immortal Reality. I didn’t see them for several years, before they once again appeared for 11 visits, which is resulting in the third book, Love Has Forgotten No One.”

Many ACIM students have been waiting anxiously for the release of his new book, and he explains why it is taking so long for it to be published.

“A lot of things have happened in the last couple of years. When the book starts, I am living in Maine with Karen [his former wife] and by the time the book ends I am living in California with Cindy [his current wife].

Part of the book is about is the breakup of my marriage, personal relationships and everything that happens along the way, but these events also caused part of the delays. Going through a divorce and moving was very difficult.

On top of that, for the last two years, I have been going through an audit by the IRS, which has consumed a great deal of time and been very distracting.

There has also been all this traveling that I have been doing all over the world, especially for the last few years. I have been to 42 states and 23 countries, many of them multiple times, and I find it very difficult to write on the road.

People don’t know all the things that you go through on the road and what it takes to appear in these different venues. There are so many distractions. But, what I’ve started to do is take time off of traveling. For the next four months, I am not going anywhere, unless I want to, and this will give me time to catch up on my writing.

I must say that I am glad that it was delayed, because I think it’s a better book than it would have been, because I had a lot to process.”

Gary then begins to explain what the new book is about.

“You’ll see in Love Has Forgotten No One that my teachers [Pursah and Arten] really brought in the connections between various lifetimes. They talked about 2,000 years ago, in the time of Jesus, and they talked about 1,000 years ago in Cahokia, which is a great Native Indian settlement and the lifetime that I lived there, as well as the present day and my current lifetime. And, the fourth major time period they talked a lot about is 100 years from now in Chicago, because that is where Arten and Pursah [Gary and Cindy’s next reincarnation] lived their final lifetimes. It shows how everything is connected and how everything fits together as one, like a hologram.”

Gary quotes a passage from A Course In Miracles, “’Trials are but lessons that you failed to learn presented once again, so where you made a faulty choice before you now can make a better one.’”

He expands on this and says, “This shows how we are presented with the same kinds of lessons over and over again, not just in one lifetime, but from lifetime to lifetime over a period of thousands of years. The idea is to learn how to forgive in a certain way, so that you can completely forgive everything. And, that is why we are presented with the same kinds of situations, problems and challenges over and over again. It’s kind of like Ground Hog Day [the movie], you just keep re-doing it over and over until you get it right.”

Gary and I laugh at this simple explanation.

I ask him, “Wouldn’t most people assume that some of their issues have to do with their childhood, when really they could be from a past life?”

He responds, “Absolutely! In fact, the issues that they have are already there before they ever appear here. If you want to go back to the beginning of time, the Big Bang, everything that is going to happen throughout the history of the universe was determined at that moment. Now, people want to believe that they are making this up as they go along, but the truth is it’s already happened. It’s like watching a movie.

Gary quotes from A Course in Miracle, “‘You are reviewing mentally that which has already gone by.’”

He continues by saying, “It’s very much like watching a movie that has already been filmed. It’s just that our experience is linear. We think that we are actually making the choices that make things happen, but the truth is that it has already happened.”

I ask Gary if we can alter our destiny.

“I think my teachers, my books, and A Course in Miracles are very clear as to how we alter that. It’s really by looking at it differently. It’s about taking on a different interpretation of it.

The world is not being done to you. It’s actually done by you. It’s not coming at you, it’s actually from you. And that reverses the whole thing. If the world is being done to you, you’re a victim. If it’s being done by you, then you are not a victim.

A Course In Miracles says, ‘I am not a victim of the world I see.’

What that does is start to put you as the cause, instead of being an effect. It’s kind of like being in a movie theatre. You’re looking at the screen and kind of get sucked into the story. You might even get emotional and talk to the screen. But, let’s say you want to change what’s on the screen. In a movie theatre, it’s not going to do much good to fool around with the screen. There is not really anything happening there, it’s a trick. It’s an illusion, just like this world.

If you really want to have a permanent impact on what is on that screen, then you would have to remember that there is a projector hidden at the back of the theatre.

You would have to find that projector, change what’s in the projector, then the screen will take care of itself. Now, you’re concentrating on the cause instead of the effect.

That’s why the Course in Miracles says, ‘This is a course in cause and not effects.’

It’s also says, ‘Seek not to change the world, but choose to change your mind about the world.’ When you do that you are dealing with the cause instead of the effect.

Instead of looking at things through the ego’s eyes, which says, ‘You’re a victim and that everything is separate.’ Instead, start looking at it with the Holy Spirit, which would say, ‘I am not a victim. It’s being done by me.’

Stop thinking with the ego and stop reacting to it. Start thinking, ‘I am the master, I am the one who is the author of my script, or my hologram, because I am the one who put all these people here. I wanted them to be here for a particular reason. I wanted them to be the guilty party instead of me, because there is something deep in my mind that I am not aware of that can be traced back to that original idea of separation from God, which is the real reason that I am upset.’

Which is also why the Course says, ‘I am never upset for the reason I think.’ I am upset because of what I think I am seeing on that movie screen.

You can stop thinking with the ego, which is a very important part of this whole thing, because you can’t think with both the ego and the Holy Spirit at the same time. You have to choose. You have to make a conscious decision where you say, ‘Okay, I am going to stop reacting to this childish thought and start thinking with the Holy Spirit.’

Once you really understand that you are the cause of the whole thing, you can stop judging people, you can stop making them wrong. You can look past the illusion.

You can say, ‘I am going to forgive this person, not because someone really did something, but because they really haven’t done anything. Because I am the one who made them up in the first place. It’s just a projection. My hologram.’”

Then, Gary goes on to explain the third step which is to look past the illusion and see perfect Oneness.

“Think of people as being pure spirits, exactly the same as their Source. Exactly the same as God. At one point the Course says, ‘Everywhere the Holy Spirit looks, He sees Himself.’

It’s like you are looking past the body, past the illusion, and seeing perfect Oneness. This is very important, because when most people think of the spirit, it’s still the separation idea. They think they have a soul and when they die there is this thing that goes on after them that still looks like their body, which stays with the concept of individuality.

What the Course is teaching is that real Spirit is one. It’s no different than heaven. It’s the awareness of perfect Oneness. The knowledge there is nothing else and everything else is an illusion.

When the Course talks about the ego, it is talking about the one Ego. The Hindus would call it ‘The One appearing as many.’

We look out there and see 7 billion people, when the truth is that there is really just one of us.

There is really just one ego that thinks that it’s here and has separated itself from its Source. And that one ego is you…there is nobody else.

Where the American Indians used to say, ‘Behold the Great Mystery,’ the Course in Miracles says, ‘Behold the Great Projection.’ Because that is all there really is. There is no universe of time and space. Not really. It is a projection of a universe of time and space that we have tried to make real.”

Gary explains that our unconscious mind knows there is just one of us.

He says, “Your unconscious mind knows that there is just one ego appearing as many. The ego that is hidden in your unconscious mind acts as the projector that is projecting the image of this universe, time and space.

If your unconscious Mind knows everything, you have to ask yourself, ‘What am I doing if I go through life judging, condemning and reacting to other people? All that I am really doing is judging and condemning myself.’ Because there really isn’t anyone out there for my judgment to go to. My unconscious mind will interpret anything that I think about another person to be a message from me…to me…about me.

The only way that it can interpret what you are thinking is that it is about you, because it knows everything and one of the things it knows is that there really isn’t anyone out there. There is just one of us.

When you start to grasp it, I think you would want to be very careful how you think of other people. All your thoughts are doing is setting up how you feel about yourself. It ultimately is determining your own identity.

That is articulated in the Course in Miracles in a very important law of the Mind that simply says, ‘As you see him, you will see yourself.’ It must be pretty important, because right after this it says, ‘Never forget this.’

The way the mind works is…if you are thinking others are perfect spirits that are completely innocent and in heaven with God, then, your unconscious Mind will interpret that to mean that you are a perfect spirit in heaven with God. You are completely innocent. You are a perfect spirit.

If you go through life as most people do, you will think bad things about other people, such as that guy’s a jerk, or that person isn’t smart, or curse a person who cuts you off in traffic. What most people will never realize in their lives is that every one of those thoughts and every one of those statements is really going to them.

People wonder why they are depressed. Just think of the thoughts they have been having.

Back in the 70s, there was a study that led to a therapy called Cognitive Therapy. They studied depressed people and they assumed going into the study that all the terrible thoughts these people were having were because they were depressed. But, what they found in the study was something different. Actually, it was quite shocking. These people weren’t having all these terrible thoughts because they were depressed. They were having all these terrible thoughts and it made them depressed. The thoughts came first, the depression followed.”

I jump in and ask Gary, “Have you seen the Bob Newhart comedy skit called Just Stop It?  In the skit, he is a therapist whose only advice to his patients is to ‘Just stop it!’”

Gary responds, “That’s actually the first step. Stop thinking with the ego. You stop thinking these negative thoughts. Unfortunately, that takes discipline, because usually when you get out there in the street and stuff starts going down the tubes, it’s easy to slip back into your old mode of thinking.

What the workbook of A Course In Miracles does and what my teachers try to do is to get people into a frame of mind where they can stop themselves when the going gets tough. To stop themselves from thinking with the ego, then they can start thinking with the Holy Spirit. This is what the Course would call ‘Right-minded ideas about the truth and that you are the cause not the effect.’

I think what made the great masters, such as Jesus and Buddha, who they were was that they realized that the world was not being done to them…that it was being done by them. There is power in that idea. There is no power in being the victim, but there is plenty of power in being a cause instead of an effect. You can start thinking clearly. You can switch to the Holy Spirit instead of the ego.

If you want to return to what you really are…and granted not everyone is ready to do that…but, if you choose to do that, then you want to think like the Holy Spirit.

That’s the difference between Jesus and other people that were of his time. What most people did and have always done is drag God down to their level, so they make up a God who was very much like them. God was wrathful, vengeful and scheming and getting even with people.”

“Isn’t there something in the Course where it talks about how we cannot think of a Creator who is unlike ourselves?”

“That’s true. At one point, the Course says in Lesson 68 that no one can imagine a Creator who is not like them. Jesus however was different. Instead of dragging God down to his level, he realized that if he wanted to go home to God, what he had to do was go up to God’s level. That means thinking with the Holy Spirit. God does not interact with the world. He does not acknowledge it. If He did, He would be just as crazy as we are.

The Holy Spirit, which is the memory of God that we have in our Mind, reminds us of whom we really are, and how we can re-experience that and go home to that. What Jesus did was go up to God’s level by thinking with the Holy Spirit. In the Course, he says at one point that he only listened to one voice. What he means is that he just listened to the Voice of the Holy Spirit.

That actually made him the ultimate follower. People want to think of Jesus as being the ultimate leader and religious icon, but he really was the ultimate follower.”

I later searched through the Course to find the passage I believe Gary is referencing, it says…“The Holy Spirit is in you in a very literal sense. His is the Voice that calls you back to where you were before and will be again. It is possible even in this world to hear only that Voice and no other. It takes effort and great willingness to learn. It is the final lesson that I learned…”

“All he was doing 2,000 years ago, and you see this in the gospel of Thomas in the Bible, was simply pointing people in the right direction. He was saying this worked for me, maybe you should check it out. Maybe it will work for you. He wasn’t trying to start a religion. That is why the Course is not a religion. It’s not something you have to believe in. It’s not something you have to tell anybody about. It is really a self-study course, something that is done between you and the Holy Spirit or Jesus or whoever you look up to, and it doesn’t claim to be the only way. The Course does claim to be a faster way to go home.

At the end of the day, spirituality is a personal thing done between you and God, or you and the Holy Spirit.

There is a recent poll that states that 85% of people describe themselves as spiritual but not as religious, and there was a corollary opinion poll where 85% of people who go to church say that they don’t believe that the church accurately preaches the teachings of Jesus.

Yet, churches are important in the sense that they are social institutions. People have to have a place to bring their kids and get them baptized, have weddings and funerals and those kinds of things. At the same time, even when you go to church, the spiritual part of it is personal…it’s something between you and God. I really see apple and oranges going on there. You have the religious institution, which is embodied by the apoplectic religious figure of Jesus, which isn’t what he was really like, and then you have this personal thing going on between you and the Holy Spirit…and that is what Jesus was really like.

I think Jesus was saying, ‘Look you can be like me. There’s nothing special about me.’

It says in A Course of Miracles, ‘There’s nothing about me that you cannot obtain. I have nothing that does not come from God. The difference between us now is that I have nothing else.’

What Jesus doesn’t have is the ego or the idea of separation. He is completely One. What we want to do is return to that Oneness, and the way to do it is to undo the ego. Which is why the Course says, “Salvation is undoing.’

The approach of the Course and certain aspects of Buddhism is that you don’t have to do anything about the real you. The real you is a perfect spirit. And, because it’s already perfect, you don’t have to do anything about that. That’s what you are. All you have to do is undo the false you, which is the ego.

If you were to eventually completely undo the ego, then, eventually the real you would be all that’s left. So that’s really an approach, because all you have to do is undo. You don’t have to do anything about reality. The reality is already there, all you have to do is remember it. It’s possible to remember it by simply undoing the false you, and removing the blocks to the awareness of love’s presence, which is your natural inheritance.”

I ask Gary, “In the Course, it says that we need do nothing. Does that mean I try to do nothing but listen to the Spirit’s Voice? How do you do nothing?”

“At one point, the Course says forgiveness does nothing. But, it does say the Divine does. Salvation is undoing. The way that you do that is by doing nothing. It means that you are not reacting. You don’t have to respond to the ego. You don’t have to respond to the world.

Now, remember that this is done at the level of the Mind. It doesn’t mean that you don’t go to work or do the things that everyone does in the world. It’s all done at the level of the Mind, which is the cause. It really has nothing to do with the world. It has to do with the way you are looking at the world. As mentioned earlier, ‘Seek not to change the world, but choose to change your mind about the world.’

You do have to change your mind. You do have to make a choice.

You have to go with the big teachings of the Course, such as ‘Choose once again’ in the final section in the text. You do have to choose to look at things with the Holy Spirit instead of the ego. The ego would say, ‘You’ve got do this. You’ve got to do that.’ The Holy Spirit would say, ‘You really don’t have to do anything but forgive.’

This kind of forgiveness is done such a way where you are not making the illusion real. Judgment is making it real. If you are doing that then the Course says you have made it real and so you cannot forgive.

When the Course says do nothing, you don’t have to do anything about the situation except let it go and overlook it. So now, you are not forgiving people because they have done something, you’re forgiving them because they haven’t really done anything. You don’t have to do anything either, except overlook it with the Spirit.

This is really your one responsibility according the Course, which says, ‘The sole responsibility of the miracle worker is to accept the Atonement for himself.’

Atonement is the principle of undoing the idea of separation. You can also think of it as the end game.

The Course says the means of the Atonement is forgiveness. You have to ask yourself, ‘How am I going to get to the end without utilizing the means?’

So that is your one responsibility…that you have to practice forgiveness. You don’t have to worry about anything else. This kind of forgiveness looks past the world, instead of judging it, and thinking in terms of reality, which is Spirit. And that’s really a conscious decision that you do have to make. It doesn’t mean that you won’t do things in the world, it just means that you look at it differently.

The Course says, ‘The freedom to choose is your one remaining power as a prisoner of this world.’

You can decide to see it right. You can decide to see with the Holy Spirit. That’s a decision and it’s a decision that only you can make. That is the basis of the Course. It’s not about changing the world, it’s about changing your perception to that of the Holy Spirit. All the rest is just what you do in the world, which is really the ego’s script.

By practicing forgiveness, it is possible to get through the ego’s script a lot faster because of what the Course calls ‘collapsing time.’ The Holy Spirit will collapse time for you as you practice forgiveness…your sole responsibility. The Holy Spirit will take care of the big part of the job and get you through this whole thing faster.”

I then ask Gary, “You mentioned in your new book that you were taken back to the time of Jesus. Were you shown a lot of scenes of you with Jesus?”

“I have been there many times in visions. Arten and Pursah have shown me a lot of things and taken me to many places and times. They tell me about the time of Jesus and who I was then [Gary discovered from his enlightened teachers that he was St. Thomas and a disciple of Jesus in a previous lifetime], and they transported me to different parts of the country instantly. There’s more of that on a bigger level in the third book, Love Has Forgotten No One.”

Gary goes on to explain that the value of past lives is knowing that we have dealt with the same challenges lifetime after lifetime.

He explains, “At the same time, this is where we have to deal with it. In my second book, my teachers had me name one of the chapters, It’s This Lifetime Stupid, because we have to deal with what’s in front of our face to be able to forgive it.

I don’t want people to think that it is all work, because it can be fun as well. This is a happy form of spirituality.

One of the 10 characteristics of the teacher of God in the Course is joy. It talks about a happy dream. It talks about being a happy learner. There’s a lot of permission to have fun. In fact, at one point, the Course in Miracles says when there is nothing left to forgive, you should celebrate.

The only time you have to forgive is when you start to feel uncomfortable, annoyed, or a lit bit angry. These are red flags that tell you that there is something to forgive.

The focus of the Course In Miracles is not about forgiving the good stuff, the beautiful sunsets, the walks on the beach, or the art and music that you love. It focuses on the negative emotions that you need to forgive because that is where your unconscious guilt is and it’s coming to the surface…it’s a red flag telling you that there is something here that you need to forgive. You don’t have to get in touch with the unconscious part of it, you just have to deal with what’s right in front of your face as a symbol of your unconscious mind.”

I expand on this thought. “When you think about it, if there is just one of us out here, that fear of being apart from our Creator for the first time must have been tremendous.”

Gary responds, “Yeah. It’s beyond comprehension. That first seeming separation from God…and I say seeming, because the Course would say that it really never happened because it’s just a dream.

Now, events in a dream do appear to be real, I am not denying that. I had a dream in bed last night that seemed completely real to me. It was as real as being awake during the day, and when I woke up I was actually surprised that it wasn’t true. The time will come when we wake up from this dream, which is simply appearing on a bigger level.

You dream you’re born, you dream of this lifetime, you dream that you die, and then you dream that you have this in-between time, and then you dream you are born again. It’s a series of dreams until you wake up. You are actually awakening from the universe of time and space to a higher life form, which is spirit.

You can think of us as being caterpillars going through the cocoon phase. We have to go through a transformation…a metamorphosis…in order to be ready to take on a higher life form. We wouldn’t be prepared, if we didn’t go through this phase. And what facilitates that metamorphosis in the Course in Miracles is the process of forgiveness that I have been talking about. It’s really worth doing. It really is better to be a butterfly than a caterpillar. It’s better to be a spirit than a body.”

I interrupt and say, “I have been forgiving, and forgiving, and forgiving. It seems like it never ends. I think most people must feel the same way…that they keep forgiving and wonder, ‘When is it going to get better?'”

I pause to reflect and then say, “I guess maybe it is getting better, a little every day and I don’t realize it. If I were to go back to a time when I first started applying this principle, I would realize how much progress I have actually made. But I am tired of being angry and irritated…even though I keep releasing it to the Spirit every day.

And, I know I am not the only one who feels this way…there are a lot of angry people in the ACIM study groups.”

Gary says, “I know. I get emails from them all the time.”

We both laugh.

He continues, “There are a lot angry people out there. That’s when you should think of Bob Newhart [referencing the video mentioned earlier in this article]. Just stop it! Just stop thinking that way. The anger is definitely the ego. Start thinking with the Holy Spirit.

I am not saying that forgiveness is easy. But, remember that you are getting the benefits on some level, because every single time you practice forgiveness, there is some kind of a healing going on.

Don’t forget that the Course says that a miracle, which is forgiveness, is never lost and can have undreamed of effects of which you are not aware.

So, when you are practicing forgiveness, you are taking on your sole responsibility in this lifetime. The Holy Spirit is taking that forgiveness and using it to heal not just you, but also the universe. The Holy Spirit is shining that forgiveness throughout the whole universe of time and space, and even parallel universes that may exists, including all of your past and future lives.

Every single time you practice forgiveness, it is never lost and there is a healing going on at the sub-atomic level. In fact, you or the other person may be healed of a disease you didn’t even know you had.

At some point, you have to have faith in the Spirit, but I think that trust is earned. As you go along this path, you’ll start to realize that it is working.

If it’s your hologram, the truth is there is nobody in the world that can upset you, unless you let them, because they aren’t even there.

When the Course talks about the kind of forgiveness we’re talking about, it denies the ability of anything not of God to affect you. So now you’re saying, ‘You think can hurt me or upset me, but you can’t, because now I am thinking with the Holy Spirit and what I really am cannot be hurt.’

It goes back to the big teaching of the Course where it says, ‘Nothing real can be threatened…’ We are really spirit, which is immortal…it’s invulnerable. It’s something that can’t be touched by anything in this world.

And when the Course says, ‘Nothing unreal exists…’ it means that anything that isn’t perfect spirit can’t affect us and we are starting to identify with our reality. Once you really start to get the hang of that more and more, then the world affects you less and less.

There is an irony here. You would think that you would enjoy life less and less as this world becomes less real. But, just the opposite happens. As you have this unconscious guilt removed from your mind by the Holy Spirit as you practice forgiveness, eventually, you begin to enjoy your life more, because you don’t have this guilt in your mind. And, yes, you know it’s not real. However, when I go to the movies, I know it’s not real, but that doesn’t stop me from enjoying it.

I saw a great movie last night!”

“What was the movie?”

“It was called the Descendents with George Clooney, who deserves an Oscar for this movie. It’s incredible. It’s a sad movie, but it’s also uplifting at times. I really enjoyed it and was struck by the artistry. I bring this up because I enjoyed it so much and I don’t want people to think that they are not going to enjoy the world or have a good time.”

“I noticed you get flack for having a good time. I was reading comments on blogs and book reviews that gave you negative comments because your book isn’t out yet. They accused you of going to luaus instead of writing.”

He laughs and says, “What’s wrong with going to a luau? The truth is I have so many friends and the overwhelming support of the majority of the Course in Miracles community. The people you sometimes see on the Internet, the ones who make the most noise, are the angry ones who don’t understand forgiveness. And they are making what they see real. That’s fine, but at the end of the day, they are the ones that are unhappy.”

I mention that I was watching the TV show, American Choppers, where they build custom motorcycles. The stars, Senior and Paulie, who are father and son, were having a build-off contest and the bikes would be judged at the end of the show. The third contestant was Sandra Bullock’s ex-husband, Jesse James, who kept saying disparaging remarks about the other two. As I watched, it became very apparent that everything Jesse James said about the other two men was how he felt about himself.

“That is so true, Liz. In fact, that final section of the text, it describes that what we see in other people that we don’t like as the ‘secret sins and hidden hates’ we actually have about ourselves, and have chosen to see in other people. Of course, when people are angry they aren’t seeing that, they just think that they are right. They don’t realize that they are projecting all of this onto other people. If they did, they would stop doing it.”

I interject that if people understood this, they would be embarrassed that they are advertising their own perceived faults.

Gary says, “That’s right. The majority of people in groups or on the Internet who are angry don’t know that they are projecting. I would say to them that they would be a lot happier, and make advances light years above what they are doing, if they would just calm down and try to think with the Spirit. Stop judging and reacting, and start realizing that this is their projection and their hologram. They put it there. It doesn’t have to affect them.

At one point, the Course says, ‘Every response to the ego is a call to war…’ and war does deprive you of peace.

But in this war, there is no opponent. It’s as if you are playing a video game, except you are the only one in the room. There’s nobody else. It’s just you and the video game. This video game is pretending to hurt you…pretending to shoot at you. But, you know it’s just a game and that it’s not true. So you are not going to react to it. That is eventually how the world can be, but it gets easier to do that as you practice forgiveness.

You have to stop judging with the ego, stop reacting, and stop making others wrong. Then, you can start thinking with the Holy Spirit. This is your video game; your hologram and nothing can affect you unless you say that it can.

You can stop being an effect and start being the cause. And start thinking with the Holy Spirit to forgive the whole thing…not because it’s real, but because it isn’t real. Then you can take a big step, which is to look beyond the whole thing.

Remember that everywhere the Holy Spirit looks, He sees Himself, which is this perfect Oneness. A big mistake when people forgive is that they believe, ‘I am forgiving this person over here or over there.’ No. You are forgiving everyone and everything all at once; every single time you forgive somebody.

You are overlooking the illusion and seeing everyone exactly the same as God. Nothing less than God. That is how Jesus got in touch with his own divinity…by seeing it in everybody else to this reality that is actually the same as God…which is bigger than the universe of time and space.

We are bigger than the universe. It’s just that we have made ourselves look and feel small through this device of separation. The truth is there is nothing in this universe that is a big as we are.”

“Jesus has had a profound impact on so many people, regardless of whether they are religious or spiritual. I know many people say the best part of the Bible is where Jesus is quoted. I am wondering if you got any insight into his personal journeys during his lifetime from Pursah and Arten? For instance, was he enlightened when he came into his last lifetime? Or did he have struggles that he had to overcome and forgiveness lessons to make? Many people think of him as being perfect since his birth.”

Gary replies, “The truth is he did have some forgiveness lessons to go through, but not a lot. Usually, if someone comes back for their final lifetime, they don’t have a lot to learn. Jesus was in that position, he didn’t have a big learning curve to go through.

Usually, a master in their final lifetime will have one big lesson that he wants to both teach and learn. In the case of Jesus, he wanted to overcome death. The real message of the crucifixion was that he could not be hurt and not be killed. It was a pretty big lesson.

He didn’t have much to learn, which is why he was such a great teacher. He didn’t have any stake in what people thought about him or what they would say about him, because he did not identify with the body.

The way to not identify with the body is to not make other people bodies in your mind. Don’t ever forget, ‘As you see him, you will see yourself.’

There is stuff about this in my third book, including the travels of Jesus in his lifetime, and it will show more of who he really was. Eventually, there will be a fourth book that shows more about who he was and who he was in his lifetimes before he was Jesus.”

“That will be great! Because that’s closer to where the rest of us are.

Okay, one last question, ‘How did you know Cindy was Arten?’”

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Gary answers, “I just knew. The first time I saw her was at a distance, but I didn’t talk to her. Then, two years later, she came up to me at a book signing. I just knew.

I have a lot of visions, memories, intuitions and feelings that come to me. And sometimes, when I am sleeping or dozing off at night, I have these visions that are almost like watching a movie.

Once in while, when someone who was really important to me in a past lifetime comes into my space, it becomes conscious. It’s such a strong feeling that there is no doubt about it. And there will be visions later to confirm it.

A few months after I met her, the second book came out. There’s this chapter, Who’s Arten?, and she started to put everything together. She realized it for herself and we pretty much ended up saying it at the same time. Which was good, because I wanted her to come to that conclusion on her own. If I had said, ‘Hey baby, you’re Arten,’ it would have sounded like a pick-up line.”

We laugh and I say, “It probably would have worked!”

“Cindy comes to most of the workshops and we do music together as well. It’s fun. There are a lot of connections. It’s just like the Course says, ‘Those that are to meet, shall meet.”

I tell Gary that the reason I had asked him to do this interview was because the thought had come to me during a meditation and I felt it was inspired by the Holy Spirit.

It’s easy to see why I would be open to this interview, since I love his books, but I am wondering why he is spending some of precious time to do this interview and ask him, “Why did you agree to do this interview?”

Gary answers, “I always ask the Holy Spirit whenever anything comes up whether I should do it or not, and the answer was yes. I have a simple way of deciding things.”

I am glad the Holy Spirit was speaking to the both of us.

For more information on Gary Renard, visit his website at GaryRenard.com.