T. 31. V. 11 – 15. Jesus: “The Holy Spirit surely does not seek to throw you into panic. So He merely asks if just a little question or two might be raised about your self-concept. Perhaps there is an alternate view about the thing that you must be. You might, for instance, be the thing you have chosen to have your brother be!
This shifts the concept of the self away from what is wholly passive and acted on. It at least admits to the possibility for active choice, and some acknowledgement that interaction must have entered in. There is some understanding that you chose for both of you, and what he represents has meaning that was given it by you. It also shows some glimmering of sight into perception’s law that what you see but reflects the state of the perceiver’s mind.
Yet who was it that did the choosing first? If you are what you chose your brother be, alternatives were there to choose among, and someone must have first decided on the one to choose, and thereby let the other go. Although this step has gains, it does not yet approach a very basic question.
Something must have gone before these concepts of the self! And something must have done the learning which gave rise to them. Nor can this be explained by either view explored so far.
The main advantage of the shifting to the second self-concept from the first, is that you somehow entered in the choice by your decision. But this gain is paid in almost equal loss, for now you stand accused of guilt for what your brother is! And you must share his guilt, because you chose it for him, in what had to be the image of your own. While only he was the treacherous one before, now must you be condemned along with him!
The concept of the self has always been the great preoccupation of those in the world. And everyone believes that he must find the answer to the ‘riddle of himself.’ Yet salvation can be seen as nothing more than the escape from concepts altogether!
Salvation does not concern itself with content of the mind, the thoughts it holds, but with the simple statement that ‘it thinks.’ And what can think must obviously have choice, and can be shown that different thoughts have different consequences. So it can learn that everything it thinks reflects the deep confusion that it feels about how it was made and what it is. And only vaguely does the ‘concept of the self’ appear to answer what it does not know. Seek not your Self in what are merely symbols of a self!
There can be no concept that can stand for what you truly are. What matters it which concept you accept while you perceive a self that interacts with evil, and reacts to ‘wicked’ things? Your concept of yourself will still remain quite meaningless. And you will not perceive that you can interact but with yourself! To see a guilty world ‘out there’ is but the sign your learning has been guided by perception, and you but behold the world as you see yourself.
The concept of the self embraces all you look upon, and nothing is outside of this perception. If you can be hurt by anything, you but see a picture of your secret wishes. Nothing more than this. And in your suffering of any kind, you see your own concealed desire to kill.”