TIS: So you mentioned Arten & Pursah, who are two ascended masters that provide you with the dialogue for your books. Can you talk about your relationship with them and who they are/were?

GR: Sure, I think that the best way for people to think about Arten & Pursah, which took me years to realize, but I finally came to understand that what Arten & Pursah really are, are manifestations of the Holy Spirit. They're kind of like other things in the sense that this is a dream, and the Holy Spirit has to show up for us in some form in the dream. If the Holy Spirit didn't show up in the dream, we'd never be able to hear "It". So the Holy Spirit could take the form of a voice in your mind, which is the way that Helen Schucman (the scribe of A Course in Miracles), wrote down the Course, because she heard the voice in her mind and that's one way the Holy Spirit can show up in the dream. The Holy Spirit will show up however is most appropriate for each person, as whatever they can accept and understand.

For religious people, the Holy Spirit can show up in the dream as the Virgin Mary, and they'd say that's the Virgin Mary, but what it really is, is it's the Holy Spirit showing up in the dream as the Virgin Mary, because that's something they can accept and understand. I've taught in Mexico a number of times and they're really into Our Lady of Guadalupe, which is the Virgin Mary showing up in New Mexico City, and for them that's Our Lady of Guadalupe, but what it really is, is the Holy Spirit showing up that way. For some people, the Holy Spirit can show up as an angel because that's what they can accept and understand without fear. That however, is not really an angel, but a symbol of the Holy Spirit showing up in the dream as an angel.

At one point ACIM is talking about the Holy Spirit and it says "His is the voice for God and is therefore taken form. This form is not his reality." So the reality of the Holy Spirit is spirit, which is exactly the same as God, but then that spirit shows up in the dream, and this is not God, but the Holy Spirit, which you can also think of as your memory of God. You can never really lose it because it's still there in the mind. In fact, you can think of the mind as having three parts. There's what the Course calls "you", it's not the real you, but it's the part that thinks it's separated itself from its source. You could call this part the mind. Then you have two other things in the mind, you have the Holy Spirit and the ego, which are both vying for your attention.

The Holy Spirit of course knows it's going to win eventually, as it's seen everything that's happened from the beginning of time until the end. Then you also have the ego, and it's like you're watching this movie, and you have the Holy Spirit sitting on one side of you, and the ego on the other. The ego is trying to get you to listen to its interpretation of the movie, which consists of judgment, condemnation, and guilt. All you have to do is turn on your TV screen and you'll see a beautiful example of judgment, guilt and condemnation which goes on forever, or you can see a message of love and forgiveness which is often ridiculed by people in the world because they think they are their ego. They're not, but they think they are. So they become confused and think they are their body and an individual person.

So for me, the Holy Spirit showed up as these two people sitting on my living room couch as Arten and Pursah, and it took me a couple of years to realize they are really just symbols, or manifestations of the Holy Spirit showing up in the dream to educate me on how to go home. That's the Holy Spirit's job, it leads you home, literally. So that's what they are doing for many people and that's fine with me. I realized I'm not the teacher in my books. I like to think I've become a good student. They actually had me use a quotation, right at the beginning of The Disappearance of the Universe, from the Course, which explains how they actually show up here, which says, "There are those who have reached God directly, retaining no trace of worldly limits, remembering their own identity perfectly." So that's an explanation of enlightened masters. They become enlightened and remember their own identity perfectly, and the best way to do that is to see it in others.

The Course says about Jesus, "Jesus was the name of the man who saw the face of Christ in all his brothers and remembered God". That's how you remember God, how you remember your true identity, by seeing it in others. Arten and Pursah also did that, not when they were Thomas and Thaddeus, who were two of the original disciples two thousand years ago, though they certainly learned a lot at that time. They achieved their enlightenment in a different lifetime, as "Arten and Pursah", and now they're out of here, because once you're out of here, you're out of here, you never come back. The quote I used earlier from ACIM once again says, "There are those who have reached God directly, retaining no trace of worldly limits, remembering their own identity perfectly." It then says, "These might be called the teachers of teachers, because although they are no longer visible, their image can yet be called upon, and they will appear anywhere it is helpful for them to do so" and that's the Holy Spirit.

So what we're seeing, whether it's Arten or Pursah, or you or me, or our wives and friends, what we're seeing is what the Course would call an image that is there in the dream, but it's not a real person. It's actually something that is totally different. What that person really is, is way beyond that, they are something that is bigger than the universe of time and space. It's something that can't even be contained by the universe of time and space, but the Holy Spirit takes on form in order to communicate with us. The Holy Spirit can even show up in our dreams at night and teach us there. In fact, that's one of the Holy Spirits ways of teaching us.

So whatever way the Holy Spirit shows up, it will be the best way for each individual person. The Holy Spirit does not only speak perfect English like in ACIM. The Holy Spirit will talk to you in whatever language works the best for you. If it's Pig Latin, then it's Pig Latin. It doesn't matter what it is, what matters is that the Holy Spirit is communicating with us. If it didn't, we'd never be able to find our way out of here, but because it does, whether it shows up as Arten and Pursah, or the Virgin Mary, it doesn't really matter. All that matters is that we're being communicated to by the Holy Spirit in such a way that we can be led home.

TIS: Right on. So Arten and Pursah also offer a very different version of Jesus than is most commonly understood, and accepted, by popular society today. Can you talk about Jesus as they knew him?

GR: Well the way that they describe him, that they actually get into more in the third book (which should be out in the spring), but to them, it was surprising how normal he was. Obviously, he had thousands of people at some times who wanted to come and hear him speak, and he was thought of as being very special, but he didn't think of himself as being special. He lived a normal life. He was married, though he didn't have any children like some people think. He knew how to have normal relationships, which is why I encourage people to have normal relationships, even if you are what the world would call "spiritual". It's OK to have normal relationships because that's where you're going to find your forgiveness lessons and opportunities.

The Course isn't about getting away from the world or relationships, the Course is saying that enlightenment can be found by the things that are right in front of your face. All you have to do is forgive them and change the way you look at them. So you don't have to go off and meditate on a mountain in Tibet for twenty years, you can live a normal life and that's what Jesus did. Yes, he traveled a lot. This book will talk about the so-called "lost years", from the time he was twelve to thirty. I think people will enjoy that. There's a lot about two thousand years ago and what it was like then. I think much of the point is that these people were people who had friends and relatives. They were into family, culture, and the Jewish tradition at that time. Jesus was a Rabbi from the time he was twelve. It's true that he was teaching in the temples when he was twelve and the other Rabbis addressed him as a Rabbi, despite the fact that he was twelve, because he knew just as much as hey did.

All these lifetimes are like serial dreams that are going on. At one point, the Course describes it as the serial adventures of the body, and it also says that all you have to recognize is that birth was not the beginning, and death is not the end, because when it comes to incarnation, we never actually incarnate into bodies, it just feels that way. We're never in a body, we're actually seeing with the mind, and the false experience is believing that we're in a body. The Course says it breaks you free, gradually, slowly and surely from that experience and transforms you over into the experience of being spirit, but it doesn't happen all at once. If it happened too fast, we would be afraid.

It's a gradual thing, kind of like a caterpillar becoming a butterfly. First it goes through a cocoon process, and by going through that metamorphosis, it gradually changes from one kind of a being to another kind of a being. It completely changes itself, and its identity, and that's what the Course does for us. It leads us through this cocoon process, which is facilitated by the forgiveness process. It's clear, even in the New Testament, that Jesus two thousand years ago always practiced forgiveness. It may not look the same way that we practice forgiveness, because he was different than most people, and most people didn't understand him. There was that core group of people that did understand him though. There was Jesus and Mary, and Thomas who was married to a woman named Isa. There was also Thaddeus and someone named Stephen and Phillip.

Then you had another group of people who were headed by Jesus' brother James, who was actually the first leader of the church. They used to call him James the Just. James, and especially Peter, wanted a church. It wasn't Jesus' intention to start a religion, but they did, and that's when the apostle Paul came along and they won out eventually. The church became dominant and they destroyed all the other scripture that they didn't agree with, and that's why by 400a.d. there was not one Gospel of Thomas left in the world. Yes, someone buried a copy of it in a place in Egypt, which was dug up in 1945, but it's not a perfect copy. There's a lot of stuff that was added onto it later, but you can still get a glimpse of what Jesus was saying and teaching.

He was more of a Zen master or Wisdom teacher than anything else. He wasn't an apocalyptic figure and wasn't presenting himself as God's only begotten son, the way that religion has presented him to us. He was saying look, you can be like me, this is what worked for me. Try these things, try this kind of forgiveness, try joining with God, because that's real prayer. Being quiet and joining with God, becoming one with God is real prayer. Real prayer isn't about words, it's about an experience. So he tried to lead people to this spiritual experience which is the only thing that will ever make people happy.

Words won't do it, the world won't do it, but an actual experience of what you actually are, and where you actually are, will do it because it's something that is whole, full and complete. It's something that is perfect oneness with God, and that's the great mystical experience that the masters of history have talked about. The beautiful experience of what it's like to suddenly find yourself in the presence of God, so much that you actually are the same as God, that awareness of perfect oneness. It literally blows away anything that this world has to offer. There's nothing in this world that can compare with that experience of the perfect oneness with God, there's nothing even close.

So it is possible, even while you appear to be here, to experience that, and once again, it's the process of forgiveness which helps to facilitate that experience. As you undo the ego and have that experience, it's just so great that you realize it has to be the truth, it has to be reality, and that it's better and beyond anything the universe of time and space has to offer. So it's really that experience that the Course is directed towards. At one point, the Course says "A universal theology is impossible, but a universal experience is not only possible, but necessary". In the workbook of the Course, Jesus is talking about these really heavy questions we all have. For example, when I'm running a workshop, which I do basically every week, we'll have a Q&A session, and someone will get up and ask a question like "How did I get here"? So I'll say that according to ACIM, you're not here. And they'll generally say, well yeah, but how did I get here?

So those kinds of questions are designed to make people be convinced that they are here, but ACIM would say that the full awareness of the atonement, and the truth, would be that separation never occurred. So you're actually at home in God, dreaming of exile, but perfectly capable of awakening to reality, and once again, that awakening is enlightenment. In the workbook, Jesus says the ego will ask many questions this course does not answer. For example, how did the impossible occur, and by the impossible, he means this idea that we can separate ourselves from God, that we can separate ourselves from our source. Then he says something very interesting, he says, "There is no answer, only an experience. Seek only this and do not let theology delay you".

So what he's saying is that the real answer to our most difficult questions in life, the real answer to those things we can't figure out, will come to us not in the form of words, but in the form of an experience. An experience of what you really are, and where you really are, and that is the answer. It's that experience which the Course is directed towards, because it is the answer. When you keep undoing the ego, you're going to have experiences like that, and eventually, it will become your permanent experience, and that's reality. Reality is something that is constant, it's something that doesn't waiver, shift or change. That's why two thousand years ago Jesus talked about building your house upon the rock instead of the sand. The sand is the shifting sands of time, of this world. The rock is reality. It is God, Spirit, the Tao, whatever you want to call it, as long as you understand the Tao is absolute stillness.

The reason it is absolute stillness is because it's not shifting or changing. If it was shifting and changing, it wouldn't be perfect, it would be evolving. And if it was evolving, it would be evolving towards perfection, which would mean that it's not perfect. But it is perfect, it's constant, and it's something that can be experienced which has that underlying feeling of consistency that does not exist in a temporary world of shift and change. The way the Course puts it is, "Whatever is true is eternal and cannot change or be changed". So that narrows it down a little bit.

There's nothing we see in the universe of time and space that doesn't shift or change. Whether it's energy or anything else. People often mistake energy for spirit and it's not, it's just a different form of matter. You can think of matter and energy as two sides of the same coin. And then you have waves and particles, but that's still a function of duality, which is what you see all through the universe of time and space. You have matter and dark matter, and the dark matter cancels out the other matter. I've had physicists tell me the universe can't possibly be here and I'd tell them yes, that's true, it can't possibly be here because it's an illusion based on duality and opposites, and reality is something that is beyond the veil, beyond the universe of time and space.

At one point, there's this beautiful quote in the Course which says, "Beyond the body, beyond everything you see and yet somehow familiar, is reality". So it's somehow familiar because the truth is there in our unconscious mind too. The truth is there because we know everything on some level, somewhere, and it's there to be remembered. The Course says, "Forgiveness is the way we will remember". There are a lot of students and teachers of the Course who don't know this, because they don't really understand the Course, and haven't taken the time to learn it, and instead spend too much time teaching it. I spent a lot of time learning the Course before I ever went out and taught anybody about it. I had some excellent teachers help me along, and I still do.

As you know, Arten and Pursah have given me most of the material for a fourth book and I'm in a transition phase right now. Even though I'm still going to travel and speak, I'm not going to do that quite as much. I'm taking two months off from mid December to mid February, as well as two months off in July & August. So I'm slowly but surely getting back into writing. I think my fourth book will come out pretty quickly after the third one. Cindy and I are also going to write a book about relationships, so I'll be doing more writing and less traveling. I want to get the two more back into balance, because the last couple of years have been mostly about traveling.

TIS: Yeah, you're definitely a very busy man! I saw that you also have a 7-Day Mediterranean Workshopscheduled for next year in May, whichsounds rather nice. Can you talk about this spiritual adventure at sea?

GR: Yeah, I really like the cruises because I've had great experiences with them. Next year will be our fourth year in a row. Our first cruise was to Alaska, the second was to the Caribbean, the third was to the Mexican Riviera, and next May we're going to start off in Venice, and do a cruise of four of the Greek islands, including Santorini which is absolutely fantastic. One of the things I like about the cruises is that it's an intimate group. There may be like a hundred of us and it's kind of like A Course In Miracles or Disappearance of the Universe reunion. Some of us already know each other from other cruises, and new people come from all over the world.

It's a great social and learning experience because we have plenty of time during the course of the week. I'll teach for about thirteen hours and we have our own room to do that in. Then on the days that we go into port somewhere, we go onto shore and there are excursions you can do, though you can also go off on your own, whatever you want. It's just great to see these places. It's a really wonderful social experience and on top of that, it's a great experience of getting deeper into spirituality, accelerating your process, undoing the ego etc. It's a wonderful situation. If anyone wants to know about the acim  , they can go to my website (listed below interview), scroll down and click on the cruise banner.

TIS: Sound like an awesome time. In closing, can you elaborate a little more on your next two books? I know you already did a bit, but there's so much anticipation surrounding them!

GR: Sure. One of the things people will notice in the third book is the very interesting period of Jesus' lost years, from the ages of twelve to thirty, and at one point in the book, both Thomas and Thaddeus, who were two of the original disciples two thousand years ago, well Arten and Pursah leave and Thomas and Thaddeus show up. So I get to have a pretty lengthy conversation with them. There's all kinds of experiences I have that Arten and Pursah lead me to in the third book that I think people will find fascinating.

As far as the fourth book, I've been guided not to say too much about that yet. I think Arten and Pursah want it to be a surprise. I will say one thing though, in the fourth book we'll get to learn about some of the previous incarnations that Jesus had, like, how did he get to be Jesus? How did he learn so much? How did he get to be that man who came back for his final lifetime, who already knew pretty much everything that he had to know? He didn't really have any kind of learning curve, he already knew everything by the time he was twelve and teaching the Rabbis in the temples. How did he get that way?