Paradise of Presence:
Conversations in the Mindscape of Eternity
by Alison Elizabeth Marshall
coming in 2022
This book focuses on the fundamental task each person is asked to carry out in life – to undergo a spiritual journey into the inner self in order to connect to the Divine. The starting point is the physical world; the destination is Paradise in the realm of mysteries. The vehicle for the journey is the soul, spirit, heart, mind and imagination.
Broadly speaking, the journey can be broken down into three stages: the passage out of the physical world, the passage through the world of one’s ego-self, and the passage into the world of mysteries. This set-up of interconnecting worlds hints at the astonishing idea that a person’s inner world is seamlessly connected to the timeless, eternal worlds.
The control centre of the journey is the person’s soul, which is a tiny spark of the divine light of existence. If a person climbs up into the driver seat of the soul, they can enjoy a panoramic view over the three worlds within them. The viewer can shift perspective between all three worlds at will or take in all three worlds at once.
From this vantage point, it becomes clear that the physical world is just a stepping stone to other marvellous things in the eternal realm. The struggle for a person in the physical world is to accept that the primary journey of life is not the one taking place around them, but the one taking place in the eternal worlds. People are defined by their experiences in the physical world. Coming to see all of that as a temporary identity story, is a struggle over realities.
The way to get past limited perspectives and make progress on life’s important journey is to rely on the transformational powers hidden in Baha’u’llah’s words. The magical way that Baha’u’llah writes is designed to help people see themselves from the perspective of the soul, so that a vision of who they really are can gradually come into view and they can identify with their eternal destination and purpose.