Michael Teachings for Curious Christians

By JOHN ROTH

Michael on Jesus and Christianity
(The Michael Teachings)

General

Introduction

There's a continuing low-level interest in Jesus from people who are just discovering the Michael Teaching. Consequently, there's been a lot of channeling on Jesus over the years, beginning with some tidbits in the Original Michael Group, reported in the Messages books and now in the transcripts.

Even more, though, there's been a lot of channeling on Michael's cosmology that directly contradicts some of the core Christian teachings, and makes others look like they're being seen through a cracked fun house mirror.

In this article, I'm going to cover a number of topics from the point of view of Christian beliefs and theology. I'm going to keep as close to what the average person in the pew understands, rather than getting into high-falutin' theology. For most of it, I'm going to be using the Michael Teaching as I understand it. For parts where I don't know of any Michael channeling, I'm going to fill in from magical practice or polytheism.

Is this a Religion?

The short answer is: no.

To give a longer answer goes into the rather thorny question of what constitutes a religion. There are a lot of different ways of looking at that, some of which are quite self-serving to the religion promulgating them.

One distinction is between religions that have a creed and religions that are oriented around practice. Christianity has the Apostles Creed, Nicene Creed or the Athanasian Creed. Islam has the Declaration of Faith.

One of Michael's more famous sayings is: "Faith is silly. Why should anyone accept anything on the provision that the thing must never in any way be questioned or doubted? Two-year-old infants do not accept such tyranny fro their parents, yet those parents often will insist on such blindness for themselves."

Judaism, as well as all other religions, are matters of membership and practice. Belief is secondary. In Classical Greece and Rome, you were expected to perform the appropriate rituals to the gods at the appropriate times and in the appropriate situations. In Islam, you pray five times a day, facing Mecca.

The Michael Teaching has no rituals and nothing that one is expected or required to do, although people who apply the teachings can derive substantial benefit from them.

One of the keys to the Teaching is that nothing is to be taken on faith just because Michael supposedly says it through a channel. Another of the key sayings is: "On a good day, our best channels are 80% accurate." Personal validation is a key part of applying the teachings. If it works, use it, if it doesn't, discard it.

Another way to look at religion is worship. All religions have a divine being or beings that are considered worthy of worship. In Christianity, it's God, Jesus, the Holy Spirit or some combination, depending on the sect. A polytheist would say that veneration of Mary or the saints also constitutes worshiping a god, but Christians would disagree.

The act of worship, if a real god is involved, shapes the worshiper's personality to be closer to that god's archetype. This is readily apparent to anyone who knows what they're seeing, in Christianity as elsewhere.

In the Michael Teaching, there is nothing to worship. Michael is what we will become in the fullness of time. Do we worship our parents or our elders? We ought to respect them for their wisdom and experience, but worship them? No.

Scripture and the Bible

Michael has said: "When the teacher dies, the teaching passes into literature and should be regarded as such." This means there is no place in the Michael Teaching for the Inviolable and Eternal Word of God. They've said that Scripture has been changed many times for the advantage of one religious faction or another.

Michael has not made very much comment on specific pieces of the Bible, because it's not part of what they intend to teach, and because most students of the teaching simply don't care.

As far as modern Bible scholarship goes, there are two broad groups: scholars who subscribe to the notion that the Bible is the Inviolable, Eternal Word of God, and those who treat the Bible as literature and ask the usual questions literary scholars would ask: who wrote it, when did they write it, who was their intended audience, what message were they trying to communicate. The latter range from committed Christians to hard-core atheists, some of whom seem to think that Christianity is the work of the Devil. Anything I say about "Bible scholars" or "biblical scholarship" presumes the literary viewpoint.

The consensus seems to be that the core of the Old Testament was written down in the period from approximately a century before the Exile to about two centuries after the beginning of the 2nd Temple period, under Persian sponsorship. That core consists of three great collections. The first is Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus and Numbers. The second is Deuteronomy, Joshua, Judges, Samuel and Kings. The final collection is the Psalms. All of the collections contain much earlier material, both oral and written. It's also organized and spun to advance several theological and political objectives; most of it should not be looked on as history.

I understand from a number of Bible scholars that one of the objectives in writing down the legends, etc. was to emphasize that their ancestors were real bad-ass warriors, sponsored by an even more bad-ass god, and that their present subjection to the Persian Empire was strictly a temporary event. I gather that their Persian overlords pretty much said: "eh, so what."

Another object was to centralize worship as a tax-gathering mechanism for the Persian Empire.

Something that most people do not know is that the entire Old Testament, not just the Psalms, was intended to be sung. Jewish worship has several different methods of putting the words to music. A more recent, and still controversial, system is due to Suzanne Haïk-Vantoura. Complete scores are available for the Hebrew, and translation into English to fit the music is ongoing.

Revelation

Revelation is any communication from the spiritual world to someone. The Michael Teaching is revelation. So are large parts of the Christian and Jewish scriptures. No revelation is perfect, without some distortion introduced by the person receiving the revelation. Michael has said: "On a good day, our best channels are 80% accurate."

Any statement that some prophet or other has the "final revelation" is simply self-serving hogwash.

The final book of the New Testament, the Apocalypse of John, is a highly symbolic dream that was deliberately constructed to say something in the symbology of the time. Today it's somewhat of a spiritual Rorschach test: one can read almost anything into it that one wants.

God

In Christian theology, God is supposed to be this remote being who is all-powerful, all-wise, all-knowing, all-good, simple, impassable, eternal and a couple of other attributes.  God created the universe and will, in the fullness of time, destroy it and replace it with a more perfect universe. He is also supposed to be a personal God.

The Michael Teaching has a completely different view of the spiritual universe. Michael doesn't refer to God, Michael refers to The Tao. Michael's cosmology fits in with pantheism (God is in everything) rather than either classical monotheism or polytheism.

Michael's view is that The Tao is everything. It operates by fragmenting itself. Then the fragments fragment themselves, etc. They gain whatever experience they can as independent fragments and then merge back together, bringing all that experience back to the Tao.

In this sense, The Tao, which I regard as ineffable (the word means inherently incomprehensible) doesn't care about the details of your experience. Nothing will be thrown away. It's all good. This is probably not what someone wants to hear who is dying in the embers of their village as a raiding party has just looted it, burned it and carried off the women for the slave markets.

The Tao is thus not a personal god. In any way, shape, manner or form. For a personal god, one needs to look to the being that your Incarnational Self is a fragment of, which we call Essence. That's the being that created your spiritual part, and that's the being which you will, in the fullness of time, merge with to recreate the divine unity.

The fragment of Essence that forms a symbiotic relationship with a human body is called the Incarnational Self, although most people would call it the soul. (Soul has a different meaning in the Michael Teaching, which I won't get into here.) When a mystic makes contact with "God" and feels that sense of limitless, overflowing love, he is actually contacting the Essence which created his soul.

People have free will in how much or how little contact they want to maintain with Essence. More or less doesn't matter in the larger view: after death someone who rejects Essence contact will have the same experience as someone who fully embraces Essence contact. They'll just be a lot more surprised at what happens.

Reincarnation

Reincarnation is a contentious topic. Michael's view of reincarnation is not at all similar to Hindu and Buddhist beliefs, nor is it all that similar to the rather simplistic view in many New Age teachings.

When an Essence wants another incarnation, it creates a fragment of itself and programs that fragment with a number of factors, including spiritual personality characteristics (the overleaves), life plans and agreements, and a complete copy of past lives (the Soul). The life plans and agreements could be compared to an airplane's autopilot. Everything that happens in the life is sent back to Essence.

It then forms a symbiotic bond with a newly developing fetus. That bond will be maintained through the life, and will dissolve with the body's death.

At the end of the life, that fragment refocuses its attention to the Astral Plane, which it never really left. It will continue to exist on the Astral Plane until it fully understands that its separation from Essence is an illusion.

Each lifetime is thus a different fragment of Essence. One of these fragments, which we call True Personality, can have multiple incarnations, but it usually doesn't. The situations where a fragment can reincarnate are beyond the scope of this writing.

Hindu, Buddhist and occult teachings manage to confuse whether someone can reincarnate as an animal. The short answer is no. When an Essence commits to having a series of lifetimes  as a sentient being in the physical world, it will always use the same species for all of the lifetimes. The exceptions have to do with planets that have more than one sentient species which interact in the same culture, which does not apply to Earth. (The long answer, having to do with Grand Cycles, is outside of scope for this article.)

Hindu and Buddhist teachings also confuse whether a soul can progress or regress. In the Michael Teaching, Essence can only progress. This happens through a series of seven major stages (Soul Ages), each of which has seven levels. Only five of the Soul Ages happens on the physical plane, however.

The Infinite Soul

I mentioned that the Tao operates by fragmenting itself and then merging the fragments, in a fashion somewhat similar to a zipper opening and closing. The last few divisions on the way down have names: Design, Harmony, Sphere, Energy Ring, Cadre, Entity, Essence and Incarnational Self. (There will not be a quiz.)

The Infinite Soul is what happens after the process of merging gets back up to the Cadre level. It's the seventh Soul Age that I mentioned in the Reincarnation article. A reunited Cadre is a being that's composed of 8 to 9 thousand Essences and has the completely integrated experience of several million human lifetimes. Since it exists on the Mental plane, it has a much wider understanding of how the universe actually works than we do, and can do things we'd regard as miraculous.

When the Infinite Soul manifests, it's usually a sign that things are going horribly wrong and Divine Intervention is needed. It can also be intended to kick things up to a higher level.

When the Infinite Soul manifested through Jesus, the intent was to stop the descent into a completely materialistic world-view that would give most people no reason to continue to live. While the message itself was rejected, the intervention was still moderately successful, and the eventual triumph of Christianity ended the materialistic crash.

The Infinite Soul also manifested through Buddha for a period of one week while he was meditating and attempting to reach enlightenment. The result was the Four Noble Truths. the remainder of Buddhism is a later accretion.

Will the Infinite Soul manifest in the near future? Most Michael channeling on the subject suggests the 2030s, however there is a recent channeling that says 2020. There's somewhat more on this under the topic Second Coming.

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The Old Testament

Jehovah

Archeology in the Holy Land suggests that the early Hebrews, before the Second Temple period, had a fairly conventional polytheistic pantheon. El was the head of the pantheon, and El had a consort who has been completely written out of the scriptures.

The word Jehovah is a misunderstanding of the Tetragramaton, or the Four letters, Yod, He, Vau, He, that are the consonants to the Holy Name, which Orthodox Jews regard as too holy to pronounce. In the Old Testament, this has the vowel points for a different word: Lord. "Jehovah" is the pronunciation as if the composite was actually a word.

When the major parts of the Old Testament were written, the polytheistic back story was laundered out as far as possible. It's still there if you look, but the story was written as if monotheism was the preferred option all the way back, which is not historically correct. Monotheism is no older than the middle of the 1st millennium BC, and was probably created by Zoroaster.

It's possible that monotheism is a manifestation of a historical period where there are more Young souls (the third Soul Age of seven) than other soul ages. As this morphs into a historical period where the Mature soul age (the fourth of seven) dominates, hierarchical religions will fall into the background and eventually vanish.

Creation

The notion that any writing can be the Word of God is totally foreign to the Michael Teaching. They have said: "When the teacher dies, the teaching passes into literature ans should be treated as such." Thus the creation stories in the Bible, as well as any other religious teaching, should be read as the product of whatever culture created them, and studied (or not) for whatever mythic or symbolic meaning the reader can find.

Michael has also commented that we know about 2% of what can be known about the universe. They seem to be on board with what we currently think we know - the big bang, evolution, etc., to some extent. Humility is definitely called for here.

Adam and Eve

All cultures have stories about the First Man and the First Woman. See the comment on Creation, above. Michael is on board with something similar to the standard story of human evolution. They say that the first incarnations occurred about 6 million years ago.

The Fall

The Fall is what happened when Adam and Eve ate the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil. What this was originally supposed to mean is lost in the mists of time: the story comes from Mesopotamia before it landed in Genesis and it's probably been changed several times since to emphasize whatever theological points the author wanted to make.

One fairly mundane interpretation is that it represents the transition from the paradise of the foraging societies to agriculture. It may also represent the rise of self-consciousness in the transition from societies that were majority "Infant Soul" (first of seven soul ages) to societies that were majority "Baby Soul" (second of seven soul ages).

One could also say that it represents the process of Incarnation. It could also indicate the fruits of thinking in polarities: Good and Evil are a polarity. It may represent the flooding of the Persian Gulf basin after the end of the last glacial period.

The Flood

There are flood stories in most cultures that lived near coastlines. Michael says that many of these derive from tsunamis after a meteor strike in the Indian Ocean. The crater is still there, but hasn't been discovered yet.

An alternative theory is that some of them derive from the flooding of the Persian Gulf after the end of the last glacial period, when the ocean level rose and forced the people living there north into what's known as the Fertile Crescent. Archaeologists are understandably reluctant to discuss this because of the entanglement with powerful religious beliefs.

The Patriarchs

From Abraham to Joseph, as well as the Matriarchs of course. The story appears to be two separate stories that were intertwined when the legends were collated into Genesis. A close examination indicates that each of the Patriarchs headed a clan of several tribes each; the order of the Patriarchs indicates their status rather than their genealogy.

What did Moses see?

Would it bother you if I said that Moses was talking to a space alien? That's what Michael says.

Hard to believe? Well, I'm suspending judgment on that one too.

Which, however, brings up the question of the authenticity of the Moses story. Most of it is, of course, fictional. Stories grow in the telling, and the Moses story was probably not written down until the two great collections that form the beginning of the Hebrew bible were written, in the period from about a century before the Exile to maybe a couple of centuries into the Second Temple period. This was well over a thousand years after the events happened, at the earliest.

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The Gospels and Paul

Jesus

Christianity begins with Jesus, right? Well, some scholars think it actually begins with Paul, and a few fringe radicals think it began with a 2nd century heretic named Marcion, or at least that Marcion wrote Paul's letters and the Gospel of Luke. So what does Michael have to say?

Well, one thing is that Michael channeling on the subject of Jesus has been wildly inconsistent over the last 40 plus years. Part of the reason for the difference is that Jesus life happened differently in different parallel realities. Since then, those realities have merged, split and reemerged so many times that there literally isn't a "real historical Jesus." What follows is one recent channeling from one major current channel. The story told in the original Michael Group was quite different.

Jesus' family was a member of one of the Essene communities. He was born in a perfectly normal manner, no "virgin birth," angelic messengers, foreign priests or whatever.

Wikipedia: "The Essenes (in Modern Hebrew: אִסִּיִים, Isiyim; Greek: Ἐσσηνοί, Ἐσσαῖοι, or Ὀσσαῖοι, Essenoi, Essaioi, Ossaioi) were a sect of Second Temple Judaism that flourished from the 2nd century BC to the 1st century AD which some scholars claim seceded from the Zadokite priests.[1] Being much fewer in number than the Pharisees and the Sadducees (the other two major sects at the time), the Essenes lived in various cities but congregated in communal life dedicated to asceticism (some groups practiced celibacy), voluntary poverty, and daily immersion. Many separate but related religious groups of that era shared similar mystic, eschatological, messianic, and ascetic beliefs. These groups are collectively referred to by various scholars as the "Essenes." Josephus records that Essenes existed in large numbers, and thousands lived throughout Roman Judaea."

Jesus was a 7th level Old King on his last lifetime. Outside of Jewish teachings, he was apparently rather impressed by the Greek Epicurean philosophical school. He was also proficient in magical techniques for healing and therapy, that is, "casting out demons."

His teaching centered around "love one another," both in the sense of human relationships and in the way people treated animals and plants. He was very much against the way the upper class was mistreating and exploiting the common people.

As a King, he naturally gathered a group of disciples --- that's how the King energy works. While they worked closely together, they unfortunately created somewhat of a bubble around Jesus so that he wasn't fully aware of the reaction he was creating. That reaction culminated in an assassination attempt, which fortunately failed.

During that time period, the Infinite Soul manifested for a period of 30 days. I suspect that the trace of that in the Gospels is the Transfiguration scene in the Gospel accounts, which are heavily fictionalized to push the theological points Mark wanted to make. (The other gospels copy Mark, with their own unique spin on things.)

Jesus was not crucified and he was not resurrected. The Passion story in the canonical gospels as well as the non-canonical Gospel of Peter was written to tell the story of how the message of the Infinite Soul came to be rejected, using fictional and symbolic events to illustrate the forces that were arrayed against it.

In counterpoint, both Seth and Michael in the original Michael group say Jesus didn't die on the cross. Michael implies that the Infinite Soul faked his death, which was quite possible. They also say the Shroud of Turin is the actual winding sheet used for the body, with was in a deep catatonic state. This apparently corresponds to one of the many alternate Christianities that existed before the proto-orthodox in Rome became orthodoxy.

After the Infinite Soul manifestation, Jesus retired to one of the Essene communities, taught, raised a family and eventually died of old age in his late 50s or early 60s. (Hosting the Infinite Soul is really hard on the body.)

He did not travel widely outside of the Jewish lands of Judea, Samaria and Galilee.

Mary Magdalene

It may surprise a lot of people to know that Mary Magdalene is not mentioned all that often in the Gospels. Her name is actually Mary (or Miriam) of Magdala, a small town known and named for its tower. (Her name might also be translated as Miriam the Tower.)

Mary was an early teacher of the Church; there are a number of portraits of her with the two-fingered gesture that indicated a teacher. Some of them have the gesture obliterated. This happened when the early church abandoned the radical egalitarianism of the authentic Paul for the male-superior society of contemporary Greek and Roman culture.

The notion that Mary was a prostitute apparently only appeared sometime around the 10th century. The notion that she was mentally ill (7 demons cast out) is not supported by the Gospels, except by proximity of two passages that very coyly suggest but do not come right out and say so.

The first channeling about Jesus in the original Michael group said he was married with two children, all of whom had died before he began his ministry. This rules Mary out as his wife.

More recent channeling says he raised a family after he retired to one of the Essene communities to teach; this leaves open the possibility that Mary may have been his wife.

"The disciple who Jesus loved" in the Gospel of John is never named. The presumption is that it is the disciple John, son of Zebedee. There have been any number of proposals, including Mary. It may also be a symbolic figure representing the "ideal disciple" to which Christians should aspire.

Mary is the main actor in the Gnostic Gospel of Mary, where there is an extensive discussion with Peter and several other disciples about the fitness of women as teachers.

Paul

Paul of Tarsus is the second most important figure in creating Christianity. Most scholars are confident that Paul's authentic letters date to the 50s AD.

Of the 13 letters ascribed to Paul in the New Testament, the consensus is that only seven of them are authentic, and even those have some disputed and clearly added passages. The authentic letters are: 1 Thessalonians, 1 and 2 Corinthians, Galatians, Philippians, Philemon and Romans. The authenticity of Colossians is disputed. 2nd Thessalonians and Ephesians are 1st century forgeries, while the Pastorals: 1 and 2 Timothy and Titus, are 2nd century books written under Paul's name at a time when the radical egalitarianism of Paul was being replaced by the male-dominant Classical civilization, and when the early church had grown large enough to need a more formal organization than scattered house churches.

Michael has said of Paul (in 1974): "The Fragment that was Saul has not been reborn yet, but will be soon. This time maybe he will listen."

The Birth Stories

There are four birth stories, in Matthew, Luke, the Infancy Gospel of James and the Infancy Gospel of Thomas. They pretty much don't agree on anything other than the bare facts of Jesus, Joseph and Mary. The common Christmas story is a composite of the stories in Matthew and Luke, with enough additions that people who actually read them closely are sometimes troubled.

All of the literary scholars dismiss the birth stories as fiction. There is a rather strong case to be made that the birth story in Luke was added later.

One interesting point here is that, while the Infancy Gospel of James is not canon, it heavily influenced the Catholic church's vision of Jesus' parents. This is the origin of the idea that Joseph was an old man, and Mary was his ward, not his wife.

The Infancy Gospel of Thomas is a collection of stories about Jesus' childhood. One scholar characterizes it as "Dennis the Menace with divine super-powers." Most of the stories are (or were) quite well known.

The Early Church

Not much is known about the early church after Jesus and Paul. The one thing that's known is that there were a wide varieties of Christianities with very different beliefs. Catholicism's claim that they have the true teaching, passed down from Jesus and Paul via an unbroken line of Apostolic Succession, and that the various heresies were offshoots of the main trunk, simply cannot be sustained. The first person who claimed apostolic succession was the heretic Marcion in the early 2nd century, while it wasn't until Irenaeus of Leon in about 180 that the apostolic succession became an issue for the church in Rome. He wrote extensively against various heresies, including Marcion, Gnosticism and Valentenism. His work, and the work of other writers against what they saw as heresies, became the basis of orthodoxy.

The version of Christianity in Rome gradually won out over the others, partly because it was in the political power center.

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Christian Beliefs and Theology

Will there be a Second Coming?

Short answer: no. At least in the sense of Jesus returning in clouds of glory to judge the quick and the dead and bring the current universe to its end.

In the Michael Teaching, the actual question is whether the Infinite Soul will manifest in the near future. One way of answering this is: nobody knows. The Infinite Soul is like the fabled 800 pound gorilla that escaped from its cage in a zoo, wandered around a bit and then went to sleep.

"Where does an 800 pound gorilla sleep?"

"Wherever it wants to."

The Infinite Soul will not be a media event. Its presence won't be obvious to anyone outside of a small circle. The ripples of its influence will, however, cause massive changes. In retrospect, history will have appeared to have changed. It's possible that a small religious sect somewhere will begin to grow into the next great world religion.

When will this happen? The original expectation was some time in the 2030s. That's gradually gotten nearer to 2027. There's an outlying prediction that says 2020. I'm taking a wait and see attitude to this: there have been too many predictions, none of which have happened. The track record for predictions of the Second Coming is not good.

The Trinity

The Trinity does not appear in the Bible. For mainline Christians of all varieties, the question of the relationship of God, Jesus and the Holy Spirit was settled at the council of Nicaea in 325.

It may startle people to know that the Council of Nicaea was completely correct: Jesus was both completely human and completely divine. It would certainly have startled the bishops gathered at Nicaea to know that so is everyone else.

This has to do with how (re)incarnation works. When an Essence wants another lifetime on Earth, it creates a fragment of itself that forms a symbiotic bond with the fetus. This bond matures from conception and is fully established by the time the child is seven. Jesus the man was perfectly normal in this respect: he was a composite of a physical body and a spiritual soul. He was still perfectly normal in this respect during the manifestation of the Infinite Soul: it's just that the fragment of the Infinite Soul which incarnated in Jesus compares to a fragment of an Essence like a mountain range compares to a boulder.

The Holy Spirit, in Christian thought, is the agent that confers power on a Christian, and also oversees the gradual transformation of the Christian's personality to becoming more godly and so forth. Michael does not deal with this. From a polytheistic view, the "holy spirit" is no different from any god, which can confer blessings on its worshipers, create miracles and reshape its worshipers into its preferred archetype. It's simply one of the gods of the Christian pantheon.

Hell

Hell, as a place of eternal punishment, doesn't exist. Since the Incarnational Self's destiny is to rejoin and merge with its creator, the concept of an eternal  punishment, or eternal anything else, doesn't make sense.

The Medieval Christian idea of Hell was the state of maximum separation from God. There's a good deal of truth in the idea that someone can be closer or farther from the source of their being, that is Essence. What's wrong is the idea that the Incarnational Self can remain separate. Won't happen.

The Michael Teaching also doesn't incorporate the idea of punishment meted out by some divine Higher Authority. There is the idea of Karma, of course, but Karma isn't punishment; it's much closer to a balancing of accounts.

It may come as a surprise to find that there are two rather different situations that are hellish, though.

The first is something that happens on the Astral Plane (the next level up from Physical Reality, and the first level of Heaven for people whose theology has multiple levels of Heaven). This has to do with creation: anything that a person imagines with enough intensity happens. The many millions of people who have imagined Hell have created Hell on the Astral Plane. In fact, they've created a number of Hells. Anyone who thinks they deserve to be in Hell will wind up there after they die. They won't stay there, though. Quite a few will start looking for the door marked "Exit." (It's right in front of them.) Others have to be led out, and a few have to be picked up and drop-kicked out.

The second situation is similar. Since creation on the Astral Plane is much easier than on the Physical Plane, sometimes an Incarnational Self gets caught in a creation loop that they can't get out of by themselves. That can be a miserable experience until they accept help.

Heaven

Heaven, as a place of eternal reward, doesn't exist, and for the same reason that Hell doesn't exist. Since an Incarnational Self's destiny is to rejoin and merge with its creator, the concept simply doesn't make sense. An eternity in Heaven means the Incarnational Self would be separate forever.

Of course, there are some who would say that joining with the Source of their being is Heaven. Who am I to argue?

Like Hell, there are many Heavens on the Astral Plane. Like Hell, if someone thinks they're going to Heaven, they will. Heaven is basically boring. It's as easy to get out of as Hell, but it's also a lot easier to ease one's way out.

Whether someone goes to Heaven, Hell or bypasses the entire experience and gets on with the rest of their afterlife is their own decision: there is nobody that is going to make that choice for them, on the basis of their morality, actions, religious affiliation or anything else. If a suicide bomber fervently believes that he'll go to Heaven to enjoy the 70 virgins due to a martyr to the cause, that's where he'll go. (I don't envy him: if I was faced by 70 virgins who wanted me to cure them of their virginity, I'd head for the horizon. At warp speed.)

Of course, if their belief system is that there is someone at the Gate who will judge them, they'll meet St. Peter, but the scene is simply going to confirm what they already know.

Original Sin

Original Sin is not a Jewish concept. It was invented, or at least introduced into orthodox Christian doctrine, by St. Augustine. Some scholars trace it to St. Paul's Letter to the Romans, but other scholars think that's quite a stretch.

The concept of Original Sin is completely foreign to the Michael Teaching.

The Seven Deadly Sins

Wikipedia: "The seven deadly sins, also known as the capital vices or cardinal sins, is a grouping and classification of vices. Behaviors or habits are classified under this category if they directly engender other immoralities. According the standard list, they are hubristic pride, greed, lust, malicious envy, gluttony, wrath and sloth, which are also contrary to the seven virtues."

While Michael doesn't use the concepts of sins that will damn someone to Hell or Purgatory, the Michael Teaching has a somewhat similar list of seven Chief Features, Obstacles or Dragons (the exact term depends on the channel). These are Self-Destruction, Greed, Self-Deprecation, Arrogance, Martyrdom, Impatience and Stubbornness.

A student of the Michael Teaching who is applying the teachings will usually be working with various techniques to minimize and possibly eliminate the Chief Features. The latter is very rarely accomplished.

The Seven Virtues

Wikipedia: In the Catholic catechism, the seven Christian virtues or heavenly virtues refers to the union of two sets of virtues: the four cardinal virtues, from ancient Greek philosophy, are prudence, justice, temperance (meaning restriction or restraint), and courage (or fortitude); and the three theological virtues, from the letters of Saint Paul of Tarsus, are faith, hope, and charity (or love). These were adopted by the Church Fathers as the seven virtues.

The Michael Teaching has no corresponding concept. Michael has commented that what is virtuous to someone at one stage of reincarnation or one set of spiritual characteristics (overleaves, Roles, etc.) may be irrelevant or useless or in some cases counterproductive to someone elsewhere on the path.

Forgiveness

Both Jesus and St. Paul mention the benefits of forgiveness. Forgiveness is, of course, part of the inner work of releasing negative experiences so that one can experience a more loving existence. Forgiveness benefits oneself; it does not require allowing someone to harass you a second time, nor does it require you to allow someone to avoid societally-mandated punishment for the misdeeds.

Agape

I've sat through what seemed to be an interminable number of sermons that began with "The Greeks had three words for love."

In the Michael Teaching, Agape or unconditional love, is the fullest expression of accepting everything that exists or occurs as an expression of the Tao. It is not something that can be completely achieved while still incarnate. Getting to a position where one exemplifies the most love that can exist on the physical plane usually takes substantial effort over several lifetimes.

Grace

Grace is one of the central concepts of Christianity: you cannot be Saved except by God's Grace. It is not possible to earn Salvation by your own efforts.

In the Michael Teaching, there is nothing to Save, and there is nothing that requires divine intervention, by God or any other being. This does not rule out the possibility of divine intervention being helpful, and there are lots of stories that suggest that it does occur, with quite startling and beneficial effects.

Sacraments

The Sacraments were originally magical rituals.

The Sacrament of baptism is intended to confer the Holy Spirit and to seal the candidate against outside influences. If it's done after a period of study and preparation, and by a priest who knows what he's doing, it can be quite effective. For someone who knows what ce's seeing, it's fairly obvious if it took.

From this viewpoint, infant baptism is meaningless.

Communion is what it sounds like: it's a ritual that seeks communion either with the Holy Spirit or with the Church, which is an actual entity that a polytheist would call a god. Again, a communion ritual that actually worked would be rather obvious to the participants. Otherwise it's simply going through the motions and confers the same sense of community as any shared ritual, if that.

The triad of Confession, Penance and Absolution work to cleanse the supplicant of sin. In this case, "sin" means ingrained behavior patterns that can benefit from some outside help in resolving. A Penance, to be effective, should address the core of the supplicant's issue; the Absolution should clear up problems that still exist but are no longer anchored by the resolved issue. Ten Hale Mary's and memorizing a bible verse seldom works.

Salvation

"Have you been saved, brother?"
"I've been saved, hallelujah!

Question: “What is the meaning in the Scriptures that Christ died to save our sins?  It makes no sense to me.”

Michael: "It does not make sense to us, either. In the literal sense, it is meaningless. He did not say that. That was perpetuated by zealots."

Suicide

Christianity, as with most religions, regards suicide with horror. Dante placed suicides in the 7th circle of Hell, with the violent.

To Michael, suicide is simply something that happens. They state the usual arguments against suicide: there is more life to live; there are lessons to learn that may alleviate the reason to contemplate suicide, and similar. Since the Michael Teaching does not include Hell or anything similar, suicide is not the overwhelmingly negative fact that it is in Christianity.

It's still not a good idea. If you're alive, there is more to learn.

This does not apply to deliberate termination of life in the face of an incurable illness, especially when the person has accepted the fact of imminent death and has made preparations for it, including settling with their loved ones.

Ghosts

Ghosts are the remains of a person's "energy body" after the physical body dies. If the Incarnational Self remains attached, it can persist for quite some time, otherwise it tends to dissolve fairly rapidly.

It's quite possible for a ghost to remain "stuck" on the physical plane for quite some time, for any of a number of reasons. There are any number of ways of helping a ghost to the next phase of their existence. Classical exorcism may or may not work - most exorcists don't know how to handle things. Some New Age or classical occult practitioners have a better track record. I've heard of one case where a ghost was exorcised by a lawyer who got a legal writ to expel the ghost from the house.

Angels

Michael does not talk about angels unless asked. In the Michael Teaching, the function of angels is performed by various levels of humans, from the Incarnational Self after death on up through the Infinite Soul and beyond.

Each person has several "guides," which are what many Christians call guardian angels. They are discarnate souls who are helping individuals who are still incarnate. It's good work to learn how to talk to them, although they may not be as helpful as one could wish.

Omniscience

Omniscience is one of the attributes of the creator in Medieval Christian theology. It depends on the creator being outside of the universe, and hence being able to "see" the universe, from beginning to end, as a single event.

The Tao is not apart from creation. In a sense, The Tao is creation.

If the concept means anything at all in the Michael Teaching, it's that the process of integration will bring everything that was hidden into the light for examination. Nothing is ever lost, even things that you might prefer to never see again. 

 

About John Roth

John Roth is a sixth level old scholar with scholar casting, a goal of growth, in the observation mode sliding to caution, and an idealist sliding to skeptic on occasion. He's in the emotional part of intellectual center with a chief feature of stubbornness. He's a wild card in the third entity of the first cadre of the 14th energy ring (which is the same ring most of the rest of us are in.) Interestingly, John walked-in during the late 70's; before that the essence running his body was a fourth level old king with a goal of discrimination. On a more mundane level, John is a computer programmer (currently unemployed) and an astrologer. He got interested in Michael during the early '80s, and gets most of his Michael fixes through JP van Hulle's group.

 

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