The selves have a very specific mission, namely to prevent the conscious self from rediscovering and then abandoning the original choice to turn away from your higher self—the decision that gave birth to the selves. This decision was made by the conscious self, but it was not made in the full clarity of higher awareness. 

It was made because the conscious self had started experimenting with the duality consciousness, the consciousness of separation. The conscious self did not clearly see what the decision entailed, and it did not fully understand that its reasoning was based on dualistic thinking. The selves will do anything in their power to prevent you from overcoming this blindness; they will do anything to prevent the conscious self from projecting itself outside the illusions of the selves.

The conscious self made its fateful decision because it did not see the absolute reality of higher awareness and had become blinded by the veil created by the duality consciousness. The conscious self believed its reasoning was sound, and it felt that the decision to turn away from the teacher was either justifiable, necessary, beneficial or its only option. 

Because the conscious self had already been partially blinded – meaning divided – by the dualistic logic – as Eve was divided in her mind by the serpent’s statement that she would not surely die – it did not see that its reasoning was relative. It did not understand that the relative logic seems reasonable only when viewed through the filter of duality, a state of mind in which everything is relative—meaning that anything can be justified.

The conscious self is an extension of your higher self. You are not a bad or evil person and you are not stupid. If the conscious self knew better, it would do better. The problem is that as long as the conscious self looks at the world through the filter of dualistic logic, it cannot fully know better. It cannot see beyond the relative logic of separation to see the absolute reality of higher awareness.

Why the universe seems to confirm the dualistic illusions

The essence of the duality consciousness is that the conscious self – guided by the false teachers of this world and the selves – creates its own “reality,” a world view that is centered around the illusion that created the selves. Everything in this world view is born from the central illusion that created the selves, and thus everything seems to support that illusion. 

As long as you look at the world through this filter, everything you see will confirm that the dualistic illusion is right. If you wear yellow glasses, the world will appear to have a yellow tint, and it will do so until you take off the glasses and see the world without a filter.

There is an even deeper reality in the sense that the world not only appears to be colored. The reality you experience in the material universe is shaped by the illusions of the selves. The material universe acts like a mirror that reflects back to you whatever you send out. 

That is why most religions tell people to do onto others what you want them to do to you. The reality being that the universe will do to you what you do to others. This is a safety mechanism that aims as serving as a substitute teacher for those co-creators who have turned away from the spiritual teachers assigned to humankind. When you have no contact with the teacher, your only way to learn is to see the consequences of your actions, and thus the universe mirrors back to you what you send out.

The Law of Free Will mandates that if you turn away from higher awareness and your spiritual teacher, you must be allowed to learn from your own actions. A spiritual teacher cannot interfere with your learning process until you decide to seek the teacher’s help. 

The teacher is not trapped in your personal illusions, your selves’ house of mirrors, so he clearly sees through the veil that blinds you. He cannot explain this to you until you rise to the level of the path where you are open to this explanation. The teacher must wait until the conscious self begins to question the illusions created by the selves.

The teacher is fully aware of the essential problem, yet only a student with a certain amount of maturity can even begin to grasp this problem. What is the essence of the problem? Your selves have used the duality consciousness to create a mental image of what they think the world is like—or rather what they want the world to be like so that it can uphold the basic illusion that created your specific selves. 

The conscious self has partially identified itself with this world view and is therefore seeing the world through the colored glasses represented by the selves’ illusion. At the same time, the conscious self – as the director of your attention, which is your creative force – is projecting this world view into the cosmic mirror. Guess what the mirror is reflecting back.

The conscious self is using its creative faculties to project a dualistic image into the material universe, and the cosmic mirror is reflecting it back, meaning that what comes back to you seems to affirm the selves’ world view. If your selves have created the image that God is an angry and unjust being in the sky who has abandoned you, then the material universe will reflect back to you conditions that seem to affirm this image. 

You simply will not be able to experience higher awareness directly as long as you identify with the illusion of separation, and thus the material universe will hide the reality that higher awareness is in everything. Everything you experience in this world will seem to confirm the belief that God is not here, and thus you have been abandoned by God. Likewise, if you believe life is a struggle, the cosmic mirror will reflect back to you physical conditions that make your life a struggle.

You are a co-creator with higher awareness, and you can never stop co-creating. You will inevitably create your own circumstances, and the choice is whether you create through the dualistic sense of identity defined by the selves or through your real identity that is anchored in your higher self. 

The conscious self has the ability to identify itself as anything it conceives and accepts as real. If the conscious self identifies with the mortal identity defined by the selves, you will believe you are a mortal, human being living in a limited world that makes your life a struggle. Because you have identified with this world view, your soul will gravitate towards a planet where these conditions are physically manifest—because they have been created by the collective consciousness of the lifestreams living on that planet.

Starting to question the selves’ identity

As long as you identify fully with the world view created by the selves, everything you see must be forced into the framework of that world view. Until the conscious self begins to suspect that it is more than the selves, you will be unable to question the world view of the selves. 

You cannot bear to lose your sense of identity so if you think the selves’ mortal identity is all there is, you will be unwilling to question it, and thus you are unreachable to higher awareness. Instead, you will try to interpret everything that happens to you in a way that reaffirms the selves’ world view. Because the mind of separation uses relative logic, you can twist almost anything in such a way that it proves what you want to believe. This is what is commonly called circular logic.

How can you ever escape the illusions created by the selves? Because higher awareness has built a safety mechanism into the material universe. That mechanism is the base energy’s tendency to return to its ground state, to equilibrium. If you use your co-creative abilities to create something that is out of alignment with the design principles and the creative intent of higher awareness, your creation will not be sustainable. It will exist only in time and space, meaning that the base eneregy will inevitably break it down.

The consequence is that your life becomes a constant struggle to uphold the selves’ illusions. The more you seek to hold on to the illusions, the more you create a counter-force that seeks to break them down. Your life truly does become a struggle because you are fighting against the basic force of the material universe. The base energy is designed to break down every structure that is not in alignment with the design principles. In order to uphold your selves’ illusions, you must seek to force the entire universe to conform to the selves’ world view.

A group of co-creators can force a localized part of the universe to conform to their world view for a time. That is why humans beings have managed to force the base energy that makes up planet Earth to conform to their collective world view. No matter how strongly the co-creators believe in their illusions, they cannot force the energy to maintain them forever. They will inevitably create a counter-force that will break down the world they have created. You clearly see this in human society today in the form of diseases, lack, poverty, short life-span, lack of food, pollution and natural disasters and imbalances.

The consequence is simple. One way or the other, you must learn that the selves’ world view is false. If you will not listen to a higher awareness, you must learn by hitting your head against the concrete wall of the universe—until you finally break down and start to wonder whether there might be a better way. 

It is always a challenge for a higher awareness to watch people who refuse to question the illusions of their selves and thus create increasingly severe crises in their lives, until they finally break under the strain and cry out for help. Higher awareness is bound by the Law of Free Will to let people run their course until they ask for help. The ascended masters can only watch as people box themselves in until they can no longer move.

Once the conscious self has identified itself with the selves’ dualistic world view, it is very difficult to break the spell of that illusion. The universe itself will actually seem to confirm the selves’ world view by complying with it for a time. This is why you see so many people who are absolutely convinced that their world view is correct. 

You also see that the basic world view shared by most people progresses over time. Centuries ago, many people believed the Earth and the universe were very small. They believed the Earth was flat and that the sky was a dome covering the planet.

This world view has changed because in every generation a few people dared to question the world view of their society and their selves. In this age, there is a crop of people who are ready to once again reconnecting to their spiritual teachers and be lifted – fully and finally – out of the dualistic illusions of their personal selves and the collective selves of this planet. 

There are forces that will do anything they can to prevent your personal awakening, and they have a very powerful weapon to use against you, namely the subtlety of the duality consciousness. Let us take a closer look at exactly how subtle things can be in the world where everything is relative.

When everything is relative, who is right?

The selves are born out of your separation from higher awareness, and thus they can only see themselves as being separated from oneness. For the selves, the reality of higher awareness remains mental concepts that can be conceptualized but never experienced directly. The conscious self can experience oneness directly, but only through higher awareness. 

As long as you look through the filter of the selves, you cannot experience oneness directly, meaning that you must settle for a description over the direct experience. If you cannot know reality through direct experience, you must “know” reality through a description and that description will inevitably be affected by the consciousness of separation. If you were not affected by the consciousness of separation, you would not need the description.

The reality is that everything was created out of higher awareness. Nothing can be separated from oneness in reality. Something can be separated from oneness only through a mental illusion created in the mind of a self-conscious co-creator. The consciousness of the selves is born out of separation, meaning that it has a fundamental, built-in duality. You are here, but God is somewhere else. There is a division between you and God.

The result is that instead of experiencing God directly, the selves can only conceptualize God, but this conceptualization also has a built-in duality. To the selves there is no such thing as an absolute truth, a truth that cannot be debated or has no opposite. The selves see only duality, and thus when the selves conceptualize God, it can do so only by putting God on a relative scale, meaning that God must have an opposite.

The conscious self can never quite lose its memory of its origin. The conscious self knows that God exists and that God is entirely good. The selves would prefer to have the conscious self forget everything about God, which indeed has happened to some people on a temporary basis. A seeker cannot forget God’s existence, and thus the selves must incorporate the existence of God into its world view—or the conscious self will no longer accept the selves’ view.

When the selves conceptualize God, they do so in a relative way. The conscious self knows God is good, but as long as it is affected by the selves’ logic, it cannot fully experience the goodness of God, meaning that it cannot see that it has no opposite. The conscious self is likely to be ensnared by the selves’ logic, namely that the goodness of God is on a relative scale where it has an opposite. 

The opposite of good is evil, and life on this planet provides plenty of evidence that seems to prove that evil is real. It is tempting to believe that God’s supposed opposite – call it the devil or whatever you like – is as real as God and possibly necessary in order to complete the balance of creation.

The selves – through the consciousness of separation – create a mental image that portrays God as not being a self-sufficient, independent reality that has no opposite. Instead, it portrays God as an incomplete being and God’s goodness is defined only in relation to its opposite. Goodness is no longer absolute; it is defined as the opposite of evil.

Why you can never win a dualistic argument

Take note of the subtlety overlooked by many religious people. They assume that even if good is defined as the opposite of evil, what they define as good is still in alignment with God’s absolute goodness. However, this is the great illusion of the ages that has led to virtually all of the religious conflicts and wars seen on this planet. 

When you look through the consciousness of separation, you can never see God’s absolute reality and goodness. You see only a relative goodness, and it now becomes possible – even inevitable – that you define goodness in a way that is relative to – and thus seems to affirm – the basic illusion that created your selves!

Throughout the ages, individuals and societies have had different definitions of what is good. Even though God gave Moses the command not to kill, those who claimed to represent God to the Israelites often defined it as good to kill their enemies. This is an obvious example of the fact that the selves cannot see the absolute goodness of God but inevitably turns it into a relative concept that can be defined according to what seems to give the selves a temporary advantage.

Once the conscious self puts on the colored glasses of the selves’ dualistic logic, it sees the world through a filter that defines two opposites. The selves can see nothing beyond these relative opposites and thus they will claim – to their dying day – that there is nothing beyond relativity. In this relative world view, there are no absolutes, thus there is no way to determine what is in alignment with God’s goodness and what is out of alignment with absolute reality. This can be determined only through the clarity of higher awareness. That is why Jesus said:

The light of the body is the eye: therefore when thine eye is single, thy whole body also is full of light; but when thine eye is evil, thy body also is full of darkness. (Luke 11:34)

When your eye is single – meaning that the conscious self sees the one, undivided truth of higher awareness – your lower being is an open door for the light of higher awareness to shine into this world. When your vision is divided – meaning that the conscious self sees through the dualistic filter – your being if filled with the darkness of the duality consciousness. The light from your higher self simply cannot shine through your mind in its pure form, but is colored by your selves’ beliefs and thus turned into darkness.

The essence of the relative logic is that when everything is relative, nothing can be proved or disproved in an absolute sense. It is not a matter of what is right and wrong; it is only a matter of who is “right and wrong,” meaning who is able to convince others. This gives a clear advantage to the beings who are most skilled in using the relative logic of the mind of separation and who are the most willing to manipulate, lie and coerce in order to control others.

The story of the Serpent in the Garden of Eden is meant to illustrate that once you start partaking of the duality consciousness – the tree of the knowledge of relative good and evil – you are easily manipulated by those who have spent lifetimes in this frame of mind and have no scruples about lying in order to control you. 

There is only one way out. You cannot use the mind of separation to escape the consciousness of separation. You must realize that the selves have created a giant illusion in which everything appears to be relative. As long as you stay within the framework of this illusion, you can never escape the grip of the selves.

Many sincere seekers have fallen prey to the illusion that they can use the intellect to outsmart their selves and the forces of duality. Some even think it is their job to convince their own selves, the selves of other people or the forces of duality that they are wrong. 

This will inevitably cause you to engage in the dualistic struggle created by the selves, and thus you will only become more involved with that struggle. If you try to use the mind of separation to outsmart the forces of separation, how can you avoid becoming more involved with the mind of separation?

Take note that when we say that to the selves everything is relative, this is said from the perspective of higher awareness. The selves obviously do not see their viewpoints as relative; they see them as absolute truths and they declare this to the world. You will see many examples of one group of people who proclaim an absolute truth and another group of people who see that this claim is wrong. 

They now seek to disprove the “absolute” truth of the first group and often promote their own “absolute” truth. You now have a classical dualistic struggle and many spiritual people have been pulled into it, thinking it is their duty to promote the one truth that they think really is absolute.

This is the illusion that caused many co-creators to fall in the first place. Many co-creators fell for the illusion that they should turn off the light of their higher selves until certain conditions were met in this world. We might also say that some co-creators began to believe that instead of letting the light of their higher selves consume the darkness in this world, they needed to engage in a debate with the darkness and seek to persuade those trapped in it to come back to oneness. 

When you try to catch the greased pig, you inevitably end up covered in mud. When it comes to dealing with the duality consciousness of the selves, there is only one approach that will work. You cannot out-reason the consciousness of separation, for when everything is relative, there can be no final argument. 

The devil loves to have you engage him in an attempt to outsmart him, and he will even allow you to feel that you have won the argument. The devil is not trying to prove himself right; he is only trying to keep you engaged in the consciousness of separation. Likewise, your selves are not concerned about you winning one battle, as long as they win the war by keeping you trapped in the dualistic struggle so that you do not see the forest behind the trees.

This is an essential point that too many seekers have not understood. You simply cannot win by engaging in the dualistic arguments of the selves. You cannot convince or convert your selves because they can never experience higher awareness but will always see only a dualistic description. You can never make the selves see absolute truth, and instead you get pulled into a senseless argument of trying to prove the superiority of one dualistic description over another dualistic description. 

You must learn from the example of how Jesus dealt with the devil after his fasting in the wilderness (Luke, Chapter 3) or how the Buddha dealt with the temptations of Mara as he was ready to enter Nirvana. They both remained non-attached. Jesus rebuked the devil and the Buddha stated his right to be the Buddha on Earth. They did not engage the forces of duality at the level of duality.

You can never win by engaging in a dualistic argument, nor can you further a higher cause by fighting dualistic battles. Ponder the saying: “You have to quit to win.” The meaning is that you have to quit the dualistic struggle in order to win higher awareness. 

You can only be right with higher awareness when you stop trying to be right among men. You can win only by rising above the consciousness of duality, simply leaving behind the dualistic arguments and struggles of your selves. In order to do that, you must reach for the undivided truth of higher awareness that empowers you to see the fallacy of the selves’ dualistic form of thinking.

In the coming discourses, we will look at some examples of how the selves seek to keep you trapped in the dualistic struggle by setting up various belief systems that are based on duality. The purpose is to keep you fighting the dualistic battle that allows both your selves and the forces of separation to steal your life force in order to survive.