all tic W alis eri at M e th g in h c a e r B The Third Path Grow in Spiritual Awareness of Life Here and Hereafter Bud Carroll PUBLISHING HOUSE 151 Howe Street, Victoria BC Canada V8V 4K5 Copyright © 2001, 2013, Bud Carroll. All rights reserved. Portions of this book were included in an earlier edition published under the title “The Materialistic Wall” Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise), without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the publisher of this book. For information and bulk orders, please contact us through www.agiopublishing.com Bud Carroll may be contacted at [email protected] Cover design by Marsha Batchelor, with illustration licensed from Bigstock.com ISBN 978-1-897435-98-4 (trade paperback) ISBN 978-1-897435-99-1 (ebook) Cataloguing information available from Library and Archives Canada. 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 For all my children Acknowledgments I am in debt to the many wonderful helpful souls who kindly read the original manuscript and for their thoughtful critiques. Some readers sailed through the book as though the wind was always at their backs while others who had little previous exposure to one or two subjects were tacking headwinds from time to time. The feedback I received from all who partici- pated helped me in the final completion of this book and I am truly grateful for their support. Many thanks to a few very special friends who have helped and encouraged me all along the way. The believers, the doubters and the seekers have all contributed in more ways than they realize. God bless them all. A world of gratitude goes out to Betty Greene and George Woods for their long hours of dedicated work and for gifting to the world the spirit voice recordings received through the independent direct voice mediumship of Leslie Flint. Much appreciation goes out to my brilliant friend, Jean Kirkoff, a true spiritual seeker, for her professional help edit- ing the original manuscript. Jean has since crossed over to the spirit world, but I still hear from her from time to time. She now knows how deeply indebted I am to her. I owe everything to my spirit guides for their never-ending leadership, nudging me along year after year, always steering me in the right direction. Without their omnipresent guidance I could not have written a book with the hopeful potential to expand the spiritual awareness of humankind. CONTENTS Meaning ....................................... 2 Foreword ...................................... 3 Prologue ....................................... 5 1 Three Score and Ten ..................... 13 PART ONE - Beings of Light ............... 19 2 Behind the Wall ............................. 21 3 Life ................................................ 29 4 Vision ........................................... 33 5 Simplicity ...................................... 37 6 The Inner Limits ............................ 43 7 The Outer Limits ............................ 51 8 Matter …….…................................ 59 PART TWO - Human Beings ……….... 65 9 Seeds of Logic ............................... 67 10 The Brain ...................................... 77 11 Memory ........................................ 85 12 Evolution ...................................... 93 13 Project Earth ................................. 107 14 Angels or Aliens ........................... 115 15 Gods of Heaven and Earth ............ 123 16 Perfection ...................................... 135 CONTENTS PART THREE - Spiritual Beings ......... 143 17 Beyond the Wall ............................ 145 18 Reincarnation ................................. 153 19 Character .........................….......... 163 20 Home ..................................…....... 169 21 Consciousness ............................... 177 22 Free Will ...............................…..... 183 23 Spiritual Growth ............................ 187 PART FOUR - Beings of God …...….... 195 24 Awareness ..................................... 197 25 Service ...........................……....... 207 26 Life Goes On ...….......................... 213 Enlightenment ............................... 218 Epilogue ........................................ 219 Afterword ...................................... 223 APPENDIX I - A Natural Structure of the Universe ... 231 APPENDIX II - A Natural Structure of the Atom …... 255 Bibliography .................................. 273 Index ............................................. 277 Our present level of awareness is merely a steppingstone, so never be afraid to challenge your most cherished beliefs. Visionaries are forever reaching out for more lucid answers to timeworn questions. Truth is illusive only if we give in to life’s materialistic mirage and stop seeking. 1 Meaning A lifetime goes by in a single breath, A fleeting moment from birth till death. So many we’ve known now lie with the dead, Their few diamond days darkened by dread. Scaled by the endless eons of time; Why… Their lives went by in the blink of an eye. What good’s the toil, the hope, the dreaming, For a mundane life of little meaning? What purpose lies in Earth’s testing quests, If we’re no more than accidental guests? 2 THE third path 3 Foreword OZYMANDIAS I met a traveller from an antique land Who said: Two vast and trunkless legs of stone Stand in the desert. Near them on the sand Half sunk, a shatter’d visage lies, whose frown And wrinkled lip and sneer of cold command Tell that its sculptor well those passions read Which yet survive, stamp’d on these lifeless things. The hand that mock’d them and the heart that fed: And on the pedestal these words appear: “My name is Ozymandias, king of kings: Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!” Nothing beside remains. Round the decay Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare, The lone and level sands stretch far away. Percy Bysshe Shelley - 1818 Ozymandias is the Greek corruption of User-maat-re, one of the many names of Ramses II. In the time of Moses he was known sim- ply as Pharaoh. The Egyptians called him Ramesses al-Akbar— Ramesses the Greatest. On the west bank of the Nile at Thebes is Ramesseum, the funerary temple of Ramses II. Here a colossal 62- foot statue of Ramses II had been erected over three thousand years before. Ironically only fragments remain. The following inscription taken from the Egyptian temple was recorded by the Greek historian Diodous Siculus and became the inspiration for Shelley’s poem: I am Ozymandias, King of kings. If anyone would know How great I am And where I lie, Let him surpass any of my works. 4 THE third path In Ozymandias, Shelley exemplifies the futility of material pos- sessions and the arrogance of erecting monuments to ourselves, for matter is impermanent and human memory is short-lived. Still, our bodies are physical machines that require material resources for nourishment, clothing and shelter so we can easily justify the quest for monetary security for the comfort it brings. But such materialistic pursuits are not what this book is all about. We become so involved in maintaining our pain-avoiding life- styles we overlook the other more deadly form of materialism: We are born, we live, we die—The End. Too many of us go to our graves arrogantly caged by our finite ways of thinking, believing only fools reach out for eternity. To expand our spiritual awareness of life here and hereafter we must first come to know there is infinitely more than what our five senses reveal, that beyond these physical bounda- ries—this materialistic wall—there are many spiritual planes of con- sciousness. Although this book may resonate more with those already search- ing for meaning, my wish has always been to strike a spark in the hearts and minds of those who seem content to exist in darkness so, hopefully, it will kindle an awakening. The Third Path leads beyond the world of matter to a greater spiritual awareness. Our quest is to walk that path with a questioning mind so we can breach our own personal materialistic wall: our five physical senses. Do not doubt your innate capacity to communicate with spirit. We all have a sixth sense, we are all psychic. With every step we take along The Third Path we become more spiritually aware. We eventually come to realize Earth would be as lifeless as Mars if there were no spiritual presence. Where there is life, there is spirit. Where there is spirit, there is life. When we fail to recognize this, everything under the Sun must be explained within the finite realm of molecules and compounds, every form of physical existence must be accounted for by an endless string of fortuitous accidents, and every condition of human behavior must be deter- mined by genes and events—and all within that fleeting speck of time between birth and death. Materialistically, it can’t be done. And that is what this book is all about. THE third path 5 Prologue Groping through life Ignoring the signs, Viewing perfection With glassy-eyed minds. My goal is to write a book that will significantly expand the reader’s awareness simply by reading it. For the materialists who view life with blunt senses and the religious who view the afterlife with blind faith I know I am shooting for the stars. There is a wide gap, as Ar- thur Conan Doyle proclaimed, between “the humility of wisdom and the arrogance of ignorance.” But for