Greater Is The Inside

 

There is a passage in I John 4:3-4 that says the spirit of antichrist is everywhere in the world, but that you, as a child of God, have overcome it because "greater is He that is in you, than he that is in the world."

At first glance, this looks like a discussion of two separate things: an evil external spirit versus a good internal one. But what if we've misunderstood the architecture of reality? What if Christ is actually your personal, creative human imagination, and the "outside" world is simply what has already been imagined?

Understood this way, the antichrist isn’t a bad spirit moving around the earth apart from you. It is your own limited perception of reality.

As neuroscientist Anil Seth puts it:

“We're all hallucinating all the time; when we agree about our hallucinations, we call it 'reality'.”

Philosopher Alan Watts described our skin not as a barrier, but as a bridge:

“The world outside your skin is just as much you as the world inside: they move together inseparably...”

What good could come of accepting this idea of reality?

Your imagination is your creative hallucination; the phenomenal, objectified world you observe is your created imagination. The stronger of these two sides is the creative one, and it lives entirely within you. It is your "inside."

Consider these scriptures in a new light:

·        “The Kingdom of God [Infinite Potential in Superposition] is within you.” ~ Luke 17:21 MCV

·        “Test this for yourself and see if you believe it. Do you know that Christ [Your creative imagination] is within you?” ~ II Corinthians 13:5  MCV

·        “I can do all things through Christ which strengtheneth me.” ~ Philippians 4:13 KJV

If you discover this for yourself, it will change your life. Henry David Thoreau touched on this same truth when he wrote, "This world is but canvas to our imaginations."

To say Christ is the human imagination does not mean Christ is imaginary. In fact, it means the exact opposite. William Blake wrote:

“The imagination is not a state: it is the human existence itself... The Eternal Body of Man is The Imagination, that is God himself, The Divine Body, Jesus.”

The mystic Neville Goddard concluded:

“If all things were made by Him and without Him was not anything made that was made, I can’t come to any conclusion other than the fact that Christ of scripture is my Imagination.”

This is why Hebrews 11:15 notes that if the patriarchs had kept imagining the country they left, they would have inevitably returned to it.

This is the most powerful fact you will ever discover in the human experience: reality is not as fixed as it seems. However, the collapsed reality of the objectified world is extremely hard to unsee. Eggs are hard to unscramble. Once you begin to perceive this, you will see it literally everywhere.

Life itself behaves like a line of dominoes. We carefully place our best ideas one after another, and alongside the ticking of clock-time, we measure the falling into place of each idea. It is very difficult to get back to a fallen tile, and it is even harder to stand it up. Yet, even if you can return to an earlier tile and right it, its influence on your past doesn’t do anything to collapse the tiles of your future.

We need to know what we are doing while we are doing it.

The imagination is the living part of your story where nothing is impossible. The objectified imagination, however, sets up like concrete and becomes our observable reality. It takes immense time and effort to undo "concrete" reality—but before it hardens, you only need to imagine.

So many people give up on their dreams, which is the ultimate surrender of an outcome. Whenever you accept things strictly as they appear to be, the way things could have been becomes a powerless regret.

Think of a martial artist: if your goal is to chop through a block of wood, bringing your hand down with doubt will only cause immense pain. Reality sets up almost instantly. No one who is hyper-focused on the solidity of a wall can ever hope to walk through it; but if you are entirely certain that the space in front of you is open, you can walk through walls unknowingly.

 

P.S. For those following my fiction, this essay serves as the underlying metaphysical framework behind the world of The Eidolon Shift.