I was a business consultant and the essence of the work of being a business consultant was to multiply productivity.
As long as I tried to multiply productivity by working first within the physical I was unsuccessful. But the minute I tried to multiply productivity by operating first within the spiritual I was successful.
Our task in the dream was to take a failing company and turn it into a successful company. Most people were operating physically first to do that. As much as we talked things up but operated that way, I knew we were doomed to failure. Our talking things up hid our failures for a time but the lack of results from our efforts ultimately revealed them.
I knew there was another way and unconsciously I was at work on whatever that way was. I could not put into words what it was. And then at some point that way revealed itself to me.
I came to see that the the true manner in which something could be multiplied was to start with that something in the spiritual and bring it into the physical and not to start in the physical and bring more into the physical through merely physical means.
I started in the spiritual and attempted to bring something through to the physical and saw that that indeed set the enterprise on a sound footing. But working that way could not be manipulated. It could not be used for one’s own gain solely. It had to be used spiritually, for the common good. It had to conform to spiritual law and be for spiritual purposes.
To apply that to what I was saying yesterday, I said that after my vision of Feb. 13, 1987, I knew one thing and that, far from multiplying what I knew previously, God had instead taken away from me everything I thought I knew previous to that day.
Previously I thought I knew lots and in the world’s reckoning I did. But God had shown me that I knew nothing and then he had revealed one thing to me and the force of that knowing was to clearly show me what true knowing really was.
Just like the man who found a treasure buried in a field, I sold everything I had and bought the field. I was in the middle of a doctorate. I had finished the exams and done very well indeed. All I had left was to do my doctoral thesis. But I insisted that that thesis be on enlightenment, the subject of my vision. I had to take that vision and mine it. I had to own the treasure buried in the field.
My doctoral adviser would not go along with it and I sold all I had accumulated during my doctoral career and bought the field with it. I quit the doctorate and continued with my study of enlightenment. And now I own the treasure.
God has revealed nothing else to me since that day but look how far I’ve gone with the one thing he showed me! I don’t mean that in a worldly sense. In a worldly sense I’ve gone nowhere at all. In a worldly sense, I’ve lost and lost and lost. If you saw me in a worldly sense, you would say I appear to have gotten nowhere.
But that is not my yardstick. I invested in the spiritual, where one learning is worth a million learnings of a worldly nature.
The one learning God gave me on that day has propelled me and informed my knowing since that day and shown itself to me to be infinitely fruitful. Most fruitful of all is that it has shown me what true learning is.
God has never shown me since that day the spiritual knowing of any other thing. He has shown me a great deal of physical knowing but I know now that that form of knowing is not true knowing and that that form of learning is not true learning. And I no longer look to that as the source of rewarding things. I look to spiritual knowing for that.
I am no longer a collector of facts, though I was before that day. The mere collecting of facts is ultimately worthless. God will reveal one day how worthless all the facts physically collected are. But spiritual knowing. One fact spiritually known is worth a world of facts physically known.
I know one thing. Twenty-four years has passed since he showed me that one thing and I am still benefiting from that one demonstration. How rich it was! How rich am I!
Before that, I walked on a perpetual treadmill and learned nothing of significance. And all the physical learning since that one spiritual knowing has produced all this. But I don’t fool myself that all the physical learning since then is of any importance. Without the spiritual learning that informed it and which it is a mere gloss on, it is worth nothing. Without the string, the pearls are not a necklace. They are a mere collection of pearls, fit only to be carried in the hand.
What a demonstration the Lord made in those eight seconds outside of time!
It is obvious that spiritual learning is the multiplier. It can take one event and turn it into a cornucopeia so that one instance of spiritual learning can produce all this where multiple instances of physical learning, which I thought of as “knowing” and which were not, could produce nothing.
Spiritual learning is the multiplier. Compared to it, physical learning is nothing.
I am left with such a feeling of confidence. At last I have solved the mystery of that event of February 13, 1987, and at last I know what it was designed to show me. I had thought that it was designed to show that enlightenment was the purpose of life. But that lesson was merely the vehicle. It was designed to show me the limitless value of spiritual learning and knowing compared to physical.
Eureka! Eureka! I have found it! I have found it!