Christianity from a Spiritual Perspective: Real Spirituality in a Quantum World - Version 3.0

By Mark Hunter Brooks

A SPIRITUALLY ORIENTED JUSTIFICATION FOR A BELIEF IN CHRISTIANITY

For decades, Christians have had difficulties providing tangible evidence to support what they believe in faith. In response to that challenge, this book lays out a justification for the existence of Christianity, showing how it and other world religions promote humanity&rsq

• Language: English
• Publisher: SPARK Publications
• Release date: Jun 19, 2019
• ISBN: 9781943070589

Mark Hunter Brooks

Mark H. Brooks has had hundreds of spiritual experiences since 2003, which profoundly changed his worldview. Today, he writes and speaks about the mechanics of the non-physical world, helping make what many consider to be mystical easier to understand. Professionally, Mark Brooks has worked as an IT program and project manager in the financial services industry since 1998. He received an MBA from New York University's Stern School of Business and a BS from North Carolina State University. Mark Brooks worked in Manhattan for eighteen years before returning to his native North Carolina in 2001.

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Dedication

This book is dedicated to:

Brady H. Brooks

who loved others as he loved himself

Abraham J. Malherbe

who loved God with all his heart, soul, and strength

Mary Ann Brooks

and

Phyllis M. Malherbe

who nurtured and matured the spirits

entrusted to them, both young and old

About the Cover Art

I commissioned Stand in the Mandorla from artist Gaylene A. Barnes of Christchurch, New Zealand. Painted in a traditional iconic style using egg tempera on gesso board with 23-karat burnished gold, this piece depicts humanity’s earthly challenge to mature its spirit. The icon consists of one mandorla (the almond-shaped golden intersection of the two circles) between two overlapping mandalas (the two circles).

The Icon’s Symbolism (from bottom to top):

The gilded background reflects the power and presence of our ultimate creator.

The lower mandala, or circle, represents earthly life.

The two angels supporting the earth represent the spiritual beings ever-present to help humanity.

The number of stars in the sky is three sets of seven. (The spacing places some under the mandorla.) In Jewish numerology, this signifies the completeness of creation and humanity’s spiritual journey.

The sun and moon represent the cyclical processes that govern the world’s natural functions.

The four intersecting rivers represent the four rivers in the Garden of Eden (Genesis 2:10-14).

The birds of the air and fish in the sea represent the plethora of life placed on the earth.

The wolf and lamb symbolize humanity’s challenge to learn to selflessly love others. The temporal notion of living is that life consumes other life, but the spiritual understanding is that all life is sacred (Isaiah 11:6 and 65:25). Humanity must learn to love and live peacefully with all life, respecting the spirit within each life form and not trying to dominate or consume it.

The serpent, whose job it is to challenge and strengthen humanity’s beliefs, represents doubt and temptation. To overcome doubt and temptation, humans must demonstrate strength in their resolve to love others.

The tree represents the Tree of Life found in the Garden of Eden (Genesis 2:9, 17). It connects the two mandalas by going through the mandorla and represents the path to eternal life. Humanity transcends earthly life in the lower mandala and enters eternal or spiritual life in the upper mandala by passing through the mandorla.

The almond-shaped mandorla is the bridge between earthly and spiritual life. It represents a spiritual test similar to the one described in the book of Revelation. Written within the mandorla is the Greek word for fish, an ancient acrostic for Jesus of Nazareth. Jesus stood in the mandorla during his crucifixion, where everything was stripped from him except his ability to choose how to respond to the actions of his persecutors. Even after being wrongfully accused, unjustly beaten, and nailed to a cross to die, in his heart he continued to love those who hated him, thus passing the test. Jesus’s resurrection was humanity’s confirmation that those who pass this test will receive eternal life (Revelation 2:10, 2:26-27 and 3:21).

The upper mandala, or circle, represents spiritual life.

The design in the upper mandala, the Flower of Life, represents heaven or the spirit world. The design is ancient and can be found in many of the world’s religions. In Judaism, the points of the two-dimensional Flower of Life align with the points found on the Kabbalah’s Tree of Life. In a three-dimensional form, the flower’s intersection points align with the edges of a three-dimensional Star of David or star tetrahedron.¹

The twelve different colors found in the Flower of Life represent the twelve foundations of the New Jerusalem (Revelation 21:19-20). The red and yellow colors in the middle represent light from our creator, who will dwell in the New Jerusalem with those whose names are written in the Book of Life (Revelation 21:23-27, 3:4-5, and 3:10-12).

The people above the mandala represent the multitude from every nation, tribe, people, and language that came out of the great tribulation (Revelation 7:9-17). They are beckoning the rest of humanity to join them by standing in the mandorla and passing the spiritual test for eternal life.

Acknowledgments

First Edition

This book was written on nights, weekends, and during vacations over three and a half years while working a full-time job. It is the result of twelve years of reading, five years of journaling, and the support of many friends along the way.

Michael, my spiritual mentor, counseled me through my spiritual experiences. I am thankful I had someone with his depth of knowledge and understanding to guide me through this period in my life, and I continue to enjoy our spirited conversations to this day.

Jennifer Knapp, whose music played (and replayed) during the writing of at least a third of this book, has maintained a warm and loving heart after having endured years of hardship and trial since her announcement that she was gay. She is an example of a spirit who has persevered in love in the truest sense, when her heart so easily could have grown cold.

April, David, and the members of the Consciousness Café meet-up group in Charlotte, North Carolina, provided me with a non-judgmental forum where I could discuss my ideas, and they helped me appreciate the many aspects of spirituality.

The members of Queen City Church of Christ and the Torah study group at Temple Beth-El in Charlotte, North Carolina, helped keep me spiritually grounded.

Gaylene Barnes created the Stand in the Mandorla icon, and Jon Silla photographed and photo-edited the icon so well.

My editors, Simon Abbott and Joan McCall, helped shape my earlier manuscripts into the form that now exists.

Jim Denk, Melisa Graham, and Fabi Preslar at SPARK Publications illustrated, edited, and formatted this book for publication.

And finally thanks to the people who read and commented on drafts of this book, including Annette Batycki, Dr. Alexandra Brown, Greg Drusdow, Glenn Dulken, Frank Kiker, Kent Massey, Dr. Anujit Mukherjee, Andrew Preslar, and Olga Zhitomirshaya-Muller.

Second Edition

Feedback from the first edition led me to add more science-related material to the book, which I was fortunate to have the time to do. This update contains two new sections on multiple dimensions and paranormal abilities and adds content to the sections on spiritual development and the thought exercises. This edition presents a more science-oriented justification for belief in Christianity while still maintaining an internally consistent explanation.

As with the first edition, special thanks to people who provided significant

assistance to this project:

William Buhlman, Dr. Edward Close and Jurgen Ziewe for reviewing the portions of section 2 in which I mention their work, and to the person who reviewed the paranormal abilities portion of section 3.

A special thank you to Jim Denk at SPARK Publications, who has a talent for simplifying complex illustrations. Jim’s creative ideas and suggestions helped

transform my initial concept drawings into the final products found in these pages.

And finally to the people who read and commented on drafts of the update to this book.

Third Edition

Looking back at the first two editions, I see them as plateaus from which I could stop and observe the remaining climb up the mountain that is the objective I set out to address in this book. Feedback from the second edition led me to completely revamp the science section, which was based on the premise that we live in a wave-based reality. This edition’s science section builds upon the premise that humans are already eternal beings, which reviewers are finding to be more relevant and easier to understand.

Additionally, as I spoke to skeptics about the book, I realized that I needed to identify what was different about it, hence the title change. The book’s justification has morphed too, relying more on spiritual things, so it is appropriate. For those so inclined, there are huge differences across the three editions of the book, which documents how my thinking has grown and changed over these past three years. You might find comparing them an interesting exercise, because I literally worked full-time updating the second and third versions after the first edition came out.

I also updated and added some chapters. The chart in chapter 3, titled the Infrastructure of the Afterlife, is a significant update of an earlier version of the chart that appeared in the book’s second edition. I also rewrote the chapter on mediums, incorporating information and feedback from my medium friends. As with the earlier editions, there was a significant amount of material that I removed to get this book ready for publishing. I anticipate that it will end up in separate books that will be expansions of individual sections from this edition.

First, a shout out to a friend who wants to remain nameless. This person gave me significant assistance with editing the book’s completely revised science section – reading and commenting on its multiple versions and spending afternoons with me discussing concepts that helped mature the content. This person also came up with the name and the concept behind the title of the book’s first chapter, The Total Eclipse of the Soul, which I greatly appreciate. Thanks for everything you have done!

Second, a special thank you to my medium friends (in alphabetical order):

Keli Adamswho provided input and critiques of various sections.

Sherry Avitan who helped develop my metaphysical understanding through her highly informative series of classes.

Maura Geist who commented on my update to the mediumship chapter.

Tamara Caulder Richardson who also commented on the mediumship chapter and helped create the Mediums versus Prophets illustration that appears in it.

Third, my deepest appreciation to the people who reviewed and commented on the book’s new and rewritten chapters. I appreciated your constructive criticism and feedback because it is only when we are honest with each other that we can make true spiritual progress and build lasting relationships as a community.

And as always, thanks to Jim Denk and Melisa Graham at SPARK Publications. They have made a significant difference in the readability and appearance of all three editions of this book, in both its paper and electronic forms. I cannot thank them enough for their ideas, input, and support!

Finally, I’d like to acknowledge something I noticed while preparing this edition. Itzhak Bentov, the author of Stalking the Wild Pendulum, died in a tragic plane crash in 1979. His wife Mirtala, a sculptor, poet, and painter, finished his uncompleted second book, titled A Cosmic Book, in 1988 and also recorded the video From Atom to Cosmos where she spoke at length on camera about his work. Her love for her husband is quite evident, and if it was not for her desire to preserve his legacy through the video she recorded, I would have missed the unique contribution that her husband has made in the area of consciousness research. Thank you, Mirtala, for your steadfast love for Ben and his thoughts!

Table of Contents

Dedication

About the Cover Art

Acknowledgments

Table of Figures

Introduction: Changing Our Perspectives of Reality

Section 1: A Different Perspective on Reality

Chapter 1: The Total Eclipse of the Soul – Why Christianity Exists

Chapter 2: Aspects of the Non-Physical World

Chapter 3: The Infrastructure of the Non-Physical World

Section 2: A Different Perspective on the Paranormal

Chapter 4: We Already Are Eternal Beings

Chapter 5: A Review of Research into Paranormal Abilities

Chapter 6: Paranormal Abilities Are Biblical

Chapter 7: Practice Discernment and Ethics with Spiritual Abilities

Section 3: A Different Perspective on Spiritual Development

Chapter 8: Setting Standards for Spiritual Development

Chapter 9: Components of a Spiritual Development Framework

Chapter 10: A Spiritual Development Framework – Steps

Chapter 11: A Spiritual Development Framework – Processes

Chapter 12: Putting It All Together – Building Moral Courage

Chapter 13: Revelation: An Individual Spiritual Test

Section 4: A Different Perspective on Eternal Life

Chapter 14: Imagining an Eternal Spiritual Existence

Chapter 15: Supporting Earth’s Spiritual Development Process

Chapter 16: Parent and Child Spirits

Chapter 17: Explaining Multiple Physical Realities

Chapter 18: Explaining God in a Multidimensional Reality

Section 5: A Different Perspective on Our Earthly Life

Chapter 19: Lessons Learned

Appendices

Appendix A: My Spiritual Experiences

Appendix B: The Consistency of the Spiritual Education Message

Appendix C: Earth Life Training Project Deliverables

Appendix D: Dipoles and Quadrupoles in the Atomic Nucleus

Appendix E: Experiments to Address Concepts Presented in this Book

Glossary

Bibliography

Endnotes

Table of Figures

Figure 1 – Three dimensional rotation of a sphere

Figure 2 – Proposed fourth dimensional rotation, nosce

Figure 3 – 3D cube with two different perspectives

Figure 4 – A two-dimensional reflection of an image

Figure 5 – Relating a 4D bridge (in blue) between two 3D realities (top) with a tesseract (bottom), which also consists of two interpenetrated 3D realities

Figure 6 – An interpenetrating ten-dimensional reality using common dimension names

Figure 7 – Multidimensional thought experiment

Figure 8 – The human aura is similar to the sun’s corona shining around the moon during a total solar eclipse

Figure 9 – The layers of the human aura span multiple dimensions

Figure 10 – Paranormal (spiritual) abilities are accessed through the human aura

Figure 11 – Dimensional densities can be thought of in terms of the different thicknesses and tensions of strings on a guitar.

Figure 12 – The infrastructure of the afterlife

Figure 13 – Theosophical Society thumbnail chart

Figure 14 – William Buhlman thumbnail chart

Figure 15 – Buhlman’s dimensions, redrawn from his book, with OBE and CE travel explanations

Figure 16 – Jurgen Ziewe thumbnail chart

Figure 17 – Ziewe’s depiction of the non-physical dimensions, redrawn from his book

Figure 18 – Monroe thumbnail chart

Figure 19 – Buddhist thumbnail chart

Figure 20 – Spiritual abilities in the non-physical dimensions can be accessed from the physical body

Figure 21 – Both prophets and mediums use their chakra energy centers for spiritual communication

Figure 22 – Earth’s spiritual development process

Figure 23 – A spiritual development rubric, based on the beatitudes

Figure 24 – A spiritual development framework can help you better understand your spiritual journey

Figure 25 – Step one – the spiritual on-ramp

Figure 26 – Step two – develop an intellectual understanding of faith

Figure 27 – Step three – reconcile your faith and life experiences

Figure 28 – Step four – mature a unique spirituality

Figure 29 – Process B – evil spirits are not evil

Figure 30 – Process C – experiences and questions wheel

Figure 31 – Process C - trials and tests wheel

Figure 32 – Process C – the golden mean

Figure 33 – Process C – emotions and ego wheel

Figure 34 – Process D – community’s support role

Figure 35 – The role of juxtapositions in spiritual development

Figure 36 – Moral courage – the integration of faith, hope, and love

Figure 37 – the Z axis

Figure 38 – How to build spiritual strength

Figure 39 – The path of spiritual development

Figure 40 – Revelation’s horsemen and their effects

Figure 41 – Achieving God-like traits over time

Figure 42 – A spiritual cycle of life

Figure 43 – Multiple dimensions

Figure 44 – Responsibility increases with your increasing spiritual maturity

Figure 45 – Steps in the cycle of spiritual life

Figure 46 – Parent and child spirits in a multidimensional environment

Figure 47 – The anu

Figure 48 – The secret to creating matter is twist

Figure 49 – How subatomic particles are twisted together to create matter

Figure 50 – Defining male and female anu using clifford displacement-based, fourth-dimensional spinning

Figure 51 - Standing wave nodes and antinodes

Figure 52 - A Chladni plate

Figure 53 - Schumann resonance frequencies surround the earth

Figure 54 – Components of a cathode ray tube

Figure 55 – The positioning of quarks in the atomic nucleus can facilitate electron orbital shell development

Figure 56 – How a quark-based F-shell electron orbital can be created within an atomic nucleus

Figure 57 – A donut-shaped torus

Figure 58 – Matter exists in the center of a torus, which is nested within other tori at various scale orders of magnitude.

Figure 59 – Your spiritual existence progresses through multiple physical and non-physical environments.

Figure 60 – The proposed four levels of formless existence

Figure 61 – How the physical and non-physical universe iterates in eternal existence

Figure 62 – Humanity’s Spiritual Evolution – from animal to human to spiritual being.

Figure 63 – The blind men and the elephant parable

Figure 64 – Rubric and arrow

Figure 65 – Spiritual cycle of life – stage one / fourth eon

Figure 66 – Spiritual cycle of life – stage two / first eon – planetary, plant and animal creation

Figure 67 – Spiritual cycle of life – stage two / first eon – humanoid creation

Figure 68 – Spiritual cycle of life – stage three / second eon

Figure 69 – Spiritual cycle of life – stage four / third eon

Figure 70 – The location of electron orbital shells within the periodic table of elements

Figure 71 – The placement of quarks within the S- and P-shell of the atomic nucleus

Figure 72 – The placement of quarks within the D- and F-shell of the atomic nucleus

Figure 73 – Building out the P-shell in the atomic nucleus across multiple atomic elements

Figure 74 – How quarks create the electron orbital shell in a neon atom

The Eternal Cycle of Material Existence with Bibliographic References

The Eternal Cycle of Spiritual Existence with Bibliographic References

Introduction:

Changing Our Perspectives of Reality

When my daughter was young, we played a game in which we looked at things from different perspectives. She would take a clean sheet of paper and draw random lines, curves, and spirals on it. We would then look for objects on the sheet, just as if we were lying outside on the ground looking for objects in puffy white clouds. After sharing what we each saw, we would give the page a quarter turn and look at it again. We did this four times, viewing the page from four different perspectives, and we invariably saw something different each time.

Some skeptics consider the supernatural events found in the Hebrew (Old Testament) and Greek (New Testament) Bibles to be modern mythology, but they are reading scripture from a literal perspective. When scripture is read from a different perspective, that of the spiritual world, the Bible’s teachings and its supernatural events can be explained. Furthermore, religious acts that some skeptics would dismiss as unbelievable, such as prophecy, prayer, and healing, are explained as precognition (prophecy), telepathy (prayer), and psychokinesis (healing) in the field of parapsychology, which studies anomalous human interactions with their environments. As these examples demonstrate, a key factor affecting how information is received and interpreted is the perspective in which it is presented to the receivers.

Over fifty years ago, in an attempt to provide a different perspective, Dr. J. B. Rhine, one of the pioneers in the field of parapsychology, proposed the creation of a new area of study that he called The Parapsychology of Religion.² Just as the techniques of sociology helped theologians better understand cultural and social influences present in earlier times, Dr. Rhine reasoned that parapsychology could help theologians better understand the spiritual aspects of the Bible, with the objective of bringing a science-oriented focus into an area that has traditionally resisted it.

It is enough for the present to say that parapsychology has in a real sense confirmed the spiritual (i.e., extra-physical) nature of man.

– Dr. J. B. Rhine, Founder of the Rhine Research Center

This book also looks at Christianity from a different perspective, showing why it is a necessary component of humanity’s earth-life experience. It was written to address calls from skeptics who for decades have asked the religious to provide evidence that supports what they believe in faith. It does this by taking a more spiritual approach to justify religious belief, with a minimal use of doctrine, referencing books and peer-reviewed journal articles to help make its points. To do this, it utilizes concepts from the area of theosophy, which maintains that an inner knowledge can be attained through spiritual experiences, intuition, or mystical insight, because theosophy and parapsychology deal with the paranormal or spiritual aspects of humanity’s existence on earth. Both science and theology consider the paranormal to be taboo. What I found while writing this book, and what I hope you will see when you read it, is that the seemingly strange practices performed in these areas can be explained, and the concepts they espouse can shed light on many unanswerable questions found in both science and theology.

When Jesus taught His followers 2000 years ago, why did He tell them to accept in faith aspects of a spiritual reality that He knew to be true? I believe it was because He knew that the predominant view of reality at the time was incorrect, and these inconsistencies still exist today because the supernatural feats Jesus performed two thousand years ago are still unexplainable. Theologians would have us accept these anomalies as a mystery, and scientists would have us dismiss them as myth, but we do both theology and science a disservice if we comply. Every miracle Jesus performed obeys the laws of physics – they just have yet to be discovered by modern science.

Supernatural events in the Bible were not specific to Jesus – they predated Him by at least a thousand years. One of the oldest sets of anomalies can be found in the Hebrew Bible book of Exodus, in which Moses confronts the Egyptian pharaoh to let the Israelite people leave Egypt. A number of supernatural events occurred during their meetings, including:

Moses’s staff turning into a snake (Exodus 7:8-12)

The water of the Nile river turning into blood (Exodus 7:19-22)

A plague of frogs being brought upon the land (Exodus 8:5-7)

But these specific events are relevant for another reason. The Bible says that the pharaoh’s magicians could also perform these things! Other people, aside from the saints, could perform the miraculous. This underscores the point made above – supernatural