The Disappearance of the Universe

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The Disappearance of the Universe is a book written by Gary Renard and originally published by Fearless Books (2003), and later by Hay House (2004).[1][2]

This book purports to record seventeen recorded and later destroyed contacts between Renard and two Ascended Masters from the future named Arten and Pursah[3], over the course of nine years beginning in 1992. It gives an interpretation of A Course in Miracles together with additional fantastic elements. A sequel called Your Immortal Reality appeared in 2006. In a podcast around late 2006 or early 2007 Renard indicated he had been visited once again, intimating a third book would follow focused on the subject of love.

Contents

[edit] About the author

Gary R. Renard, the author, was born in Massachusetts and worked there as a professional guitar player. During the Harmonic Convergence of 1987 he heard a calling and began to take his life in a different direction. At the beginning of the 1990s he moved to Maine, where he claims he underwent a powerful spiritual awakening.[4]

[edit] Promotion and sales

Traditional promotion was not originally used. Through a consulting company the book was heavily promoted through online advertising, including the sending of unsolicited promotional offers to 2.3 million email addresses.[5] Bestselling author Wayne Dyer endorsed the book, stating that it is "destined to be one of the most significant contributions to spiritual literature in this century."[6].

[edit] Message

The Disappearance of the Universe is a mix of commentary narrative and edited dialog transcripts over Pursah and Arten's reported appearances to Renard. Endorsing the Course in Miracles teaching, it claims to elucidate the latter's teaching that categoric forgiveness is the key to ontological understanding and escape of a birth-death-reincarnation cycle. Like earlier teachings such as Christian Science DU inculcates that the world is fundamentally an illusion of human ego outside, as it were, of an unbroken perfect spiritual reality in unity with God. Rather than stressing understanding as such as the tool to return or put off the illusion, however, DU stresses forgiveness itself as the critical linchpin, based on the idea that all human identities are really one, divided only by a belief in separation, and that all sin and wrong is an outward projection of a subconscious inward guilt at having "left" perfection in sin against God. To forgive others from this basis is therefore actually to forgive oneself, undo the ego and its seeming separation, achieve atonement, and put off an unreal universe. Unlike some similar teachings, it argues all individuated human identity is also illusory.

Most of the content revolves around the detail and practice of this teaching, combined with Renard's response to it in friendly casual dialog, but during the course of which Arten and Pursah also touch on related matter such as Gnosticism, biblical texts and the Q document, celibacy, sex, the virgin birth, Mary Magdalene, and the details of Jesus' life, the Holy Spirit, the Gospel of Thomas and its 3-verse missing apocryphon, Paul of Tarsus and Christian church history, Buddhism, Sigmund Freud and Georg Groddeck, the panspermia theory, the Oxfordian theory of Shakespeare's identity, Mary Baker Eddy, the 2000 U.S. Presidential election, Stanislav Petrov's probable aversion of nuclear holocaust, and reincarnation, time and metaphysics, though Arten and Pursah contend the earthly details they discuss are illustrative but potential distractions to their primary ontological focus. Worth note in passing is also the claim that his visitors instantly teleported Renard a distance of some 30 miles to illustrate a point of their discussion, a paranormality of the same order as their instant materialization on and disappearance from his couch during the course of their visits, and that Thomas the Apostle was a Renard past life and Pursah his next and final future human identity.

Your Immortal Reality picks up from DU with a reappearance by Pursah and Arten and similar expansions on the praxis of forgiveness, the history and ur-text questions surrounding the Course, Helen Shucman, William Thetford, and Kenneth Wapnick; election fraud and the 2004 U.S. Presidential election, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad (not named), the future of the Dow Jones Industrial Average, a future nuclear terror attack and retaliation, the future of the Course in Miracles teaching and religion over time, and the Cahokia culture. Renard also amplifies more on the evolutions of his own spiritual path and recounts being transported, as an illustration of the phenomenon of fate and the unreality of time, into an incident in his own future, which he would live through later in identical detail but unable to alter his path. In addition to discussing her own future forgiveness trials, Pursah additionally narrates the full text of the Gospel of Thomas, corrected and excising the existing 114-verse version down to what she says is the original Thomasine version of 70 sayings. As in DU, however, the focus remains on the message of ACIM and escaping the reincarnation cycle.

[edit] Reviews

The Disappearance of the Universe has been received with reviewer reactions ranging from great scorn and disbelief to predictions of one day becoming a "spiritual classic". Some reviewers regard it as a hoax on both stylistic and factual grounds,[7][8] such as for its non-mainstream claim that human beings originally came from Mars.

Internationally renowned trance channel Kevin Ryerson (made famous in Shirley Maclaine's Out on a Limb) stated Renard's experiences were real. Unusual appearances are inherent to the paranormal; the late psychiatrist Elizabeth Kubler-Ross even reported a dead patient's appearing to her and handing her a letter to 'prove' the validity of the experience, which Kubler-Ross forwarded to a colleague who struggles with it to this day. Renard himself responded to several criticisms at http://www.garyrenard.com/Response.htm , and one of the critical article authors subsequently apologized to him at http://www.miraclesmagazine.org/Articles/Nature.pdf.

The book has also been critically acclaimed by such reviewers as Venture Inward Magazine, Richard Smoley, the former editor of Gnosis Magazine, Sam Menehem, Ph.D, psychotherapist and President of the Association for Spirituality and Psychotherapy in New York City, Bob Olsen, ofspirit.com editor, Karen Bentley, spiritualreviewer.com editor, the editors of the Midwest Book Review, Geoff Rotunno in The Boox Review, Doreen Virtue, Ph.D, and Will Arnst, the director of the movie, "What the Bleep Do We Know?" in the publication "The Bleepin' Herald,".

[edit] See also

[edit] References

  1. ^ Gary Renard (May 2003). The Disappearance of the Universe. Berkeley CA: Hay House. ISBN 0-9656809-5-9. Retrieved during 2006. 
  2. ^ D. Patrick Miller. Fearless Literary Consultations. Fearless Books. Retrieved on 29 June, 2006.
  3. ^ Excerpts from The Disappearance of the Universe [1]
  4. ^ Authors - Gary R. Renard. Hay House, Inc. (2004). Retrieved on 29 June, 2006.
  5. ^ Garrett, Lynn (7 March 2005). 'Disappearance' Appears Big Time. Publisher's Weekly. Retrieved on 29 June, 2006.
  6. ^ Gary Renard Official Web site
  7. ^ Articles on A Course in Miracles: Entities Should Not Be Multiplied Beyond Necessity
  8. ^ Articles on A Course in Miracles: Why Don't the Masters Have an Original Thought?

[edit] External links

[edit] Reviews

For in-depth review and criticism of "Disappearance of the Universe" by Course teachers, see:

Dr. Michael Mirdad, a long time Course teacher, wrote and distributed an independent article about some of the reviewers, which can be read at the following link: www.GaryRenard.com/wicki.htm

[edit] Other

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