To go further, we must introduce the three main characters. If you notice, almost any book on non-dualistic philosophy you pick up starts by introducing the three.
Well, One really. … Three-in-One.
It’s a bit confusing.
Let me put it this way. There is the Source of everything, the One. That Source existed in nothingness and wanted to be known and to know itself. As Ibn Arabi put it: “I was a hidden treasure and I loved to be known, and I created the creation so that I be known. (1)
So it determined to create a very long dream for itself. It dreamed it was a Creator of worlds (and so it was).
And, as that Creator of worlds, it created and created and never stopped creating. And it made a delightful game of it.
It determined that the One who was all and filled up the whole room, so to speak, would task all the playmates it had created with the job of realizing who they really, really are. Not name. Not job. Not accomplishments, but really are.
Of course who everyone and everything really, really is is God.
So now, with these playmates, there are three. There is Source and Creator and the Created, a third class of beings tasked with realizing they are God.
And as sentient beings become enlightened, more and more are very much aware of these three beings. And so they begin to name them.
The Source
Hindus name the Source Brahman, Parabrahman, Paramatman, and many other names. Christians call the Source our Father which art in Heaven. Buddhists call it the Buddha essence. (2) Taoists call it the Tao, the Way. Others call it Ahuramazda, the Inner Sun, Father/Mother God, the Void, Nothingness, the One.
I’ve always called the Source the Father.
The Source cannot be “known.” It is beyond the reach of our minds or any other way we have of knowing. Of it nothing positive or negative can be said because no one has seen it or touched it, etc.
That’s why we turn to the second character in this movie to know everything that’s happening – the action, our missions, progress, and everything else.
The Creator
When the Source dreams, it dreams itself as a creator, preserver, and transformer of worlds. The Source Itself is still and silent. The Creator that the Source dreams into existence is active and soundful. (3) The Creator is as close to the Unknowable as we can get. We know what we know of the Source because the Creator has told us.
Hindus call the Creator the Divine Mother, Shakti or Energy. They also know her as Aum, the universal, creative vibration that she is, Prakriti (Latin: Procreatrix), Maya, Kali, Durga, etc.
Christians call her (4) the Holy Spirit. Others have called her Wisdom (Sophia), the Word, the Sound-Brahman, the Womb of God, the voice in the wilderness, the noise of many waters, etc.
I’ve always called the Creator the Mother.
The Created
Every sentient being is essentially like an ice-cream bar. Ice cream dipped in chocolate roughly describes the divine spark of the Father that we all are, dipped in the Mother’s material coating.
The human pro-creative act mimics the divine creative act, I imagine the better to remind us of our origins. The purpose of our lives begins to be fulfilled when we see the light of the divine spark of the Self as the kundalini energy reaches the fourth or heart chakra. This is called by Hindus “spiritual awakening” and by Buddhists “stream-entering.”
It continues to be fulfilled when the kundalini reaches the sixth or brow chakra and we realize the Divine Mother. This is called cosmic consciousness and by Hindus savikalpa samadi (samadhi with form persisting).
It continues when the kundalini reaches the crown or seventh chakra and we realize the Father. This is called by Hindus Brahamajnana or God Consciousness or nirvikalpa samadhi (samadhi wthout form).
This is part of the journey of Ascension.
Once the kundalini reaches the spiritual heart – the end of its journey – we’re liberated from the need to be born back into the Third and Fourth Dimensions of gross materiality.
But there’s much, much more.
This divine spark is known to the religions by many names: as the Self, the Christ, the Atman, our original face. Other names for it are the lamp always burning on the altar (of our hearts), a firebrand plucked from the burning, and Fire the Son of the Lord. It is the messiah, the Prince of peace, the pearl of great price, the treasure buried in a field, etc.
I have sometimes called it the Child of God but more often I call it the Self.
These then are the chief actors in this drama. Two of them exist in a film within a film, a dream that Source is having. Let’s now look at the script for the movie, known as the Divine Plan.
Footnotes
(1) Muhyideen Ibn Arabi, Kernel of the Kernel. trans. Ismail Hakki Bursevi. Sherborne: Beshara, n.d., 3.
(2) “There is but one common essence.” (The Buddha in Dwight Goddard, A Buddhist Bible. Boston: Beacon Press, 1966; c1938, 283.)
(3) I created the word to fill a gap.
(4) She is not a “she”; he is not a “he.” God is beyond gender. The use of gender is for educational purposes.