4 The time of testing 

4.1 The unifying power of karma (below contents).

4.2 Intuition and karma.

4.3 How karma operates.

4.4 Why you are tested.

4.5 The successful outcome of the tests.

4.6 The unconditioned state.

4.1 In what way is reality a unity?

We can only understand and live our lives fully when we experience reality as a unity. No one is exempt from this. Anything less is a life unfulfilled, except by illusory satisfaction in transient attainments.

It is beyond the scope of this book on implicate technology to guide you along the path to the final stage of enlightenment, the understanding through experience of the unity that is reality. But although this book is primarily aimed at guiding you towards the first stage of enlightenment, the basic skills it teaches, when fully developed under careful guidance, will take you all the way to the final stage of enlightenment. This chapter teaches the unity of reality from a perspective accessible to an ordinary intelligent person.

In reality, everything which happens to you, every set of circumstances you experience, forms an infinitesimal part of an inconceivable, unified whole. From the viewpoint of ordinary, everyday awareness, the conditions of life are not experienced as part of an organically unified and meaningful whole. The first step in going beyond the relatively illusory sense of individual separateness is to understand the all-embracing and unifying power of karma.

In our late-twentieth-century secular culture, we are well used to analysing everyday situations in terms of seven of the ten conditions already mentioned – physical, emotional, intellectual, moral, social, political and economic. The full teachings on space and time, understood through experience as inseparable parts of a unified whole, lie outside the scope of this book. When you understand through your everyday experience these teachings on karma, you will have gained a new way of realising the inherent richness and unity of your ordinary life.

The unified process that is reality, always unfolding now, configures each circumstance of your life with absolute love and compassion. At every moment, you are tested by karma to aid you in your development along the path towards the final enlightenment. Through these tests, karma guides you towards the next step on the path ahead.

From the perspective of ordinary day-to-day awareness, reality cannot be experienced as a coherent unity. The machine that is reality devours the works of the component personalities. These personalities operate together, according to the inherent, implacable, implicate laws, to experience the process that is reality. Within each personality this is experienced as the suffering caused by life’s difficulties.

In reality, there is only, ever, the here and now. Life is, and each moment contains infinite potential. In reality, your life is infinite in its potential for fulness.