In a few articles, I’d like to explore the notion that we are all One because I believe it to be the bedrock, the foundation for all of us drawing together and building Nova Earth.
This topic, which cannot be explored without also exploring the topic of the purpose of life, goes beyond simply building Nova Earth. It’s totally basic to a comprehension of what it is we’re doing in life, in form, in this illusion of reality.
On what basis do I, an unenlightened mortal, build my picture? I do so on the basis of a spiritual experience – a vision I had on Feb. 13, 1987 – while driving my car!
The vision is described elsewhere. (1) What it showed me was the entire journey of an individual soul from God to God. And it left me uttering the sentence, “Enlightenment is the purpose of life,” after which the vision disappeared.
What’s the basis for the claim that we are all One? To answer that, let me start from the beginning….
In the beginning was the One – and nothing else. The One existed as a transcendental void in which there was no stirring and no sound.
However, apparently, God determined to enjoy the pleasure of knowing itself. Says Hazrat Inayat Khan:
“The purpose of life … is that the only Being makes his oneness intelligible to Himself. He goes through different planes of evolution … to make clear to Himself His oneness.” (2)
Other sages don’t state the matter as explicitly but imply it:
Ibn Arabi: “I was a hidden treasure and I loved to be known, and I created the creation so that I be known.” (3)
Known unto itself as well as unto the multitude. And known in a moment of our enlightenment, at which point God meets God.
Most other sages don’t talk about God’s purpose (to know itself) but stress our purpose (to know ourselves).
John Ruusbroec: “[For] the rational creature to attain the sublime beauty of God and to possess it in [a] supernatural way … is [the] reason that God created heaven and earth and all that is in them.” (4)
Sri Ramakrishna: “The vision of God is the only goal of human life.” (5)
Sri Aurobindo: “There is no I nor thou, but only one divine Self equal in all embodiments, equal in the individual and the group, and to realize that, to express that, to serve that, to fulfill that is all that matters.” (6)
I particularly like the way Rumi put the matter:
“There is one thing in this world which must never be forgotten. If you were to forget everything else, but did not forget that, then there would be no cause for worry; whereas if you performed and remembered and did not forget every single thing, but forgot that one thing, then you would have done nothing whatsoever.
“It is just as if a king had sent you to the country to carry out a specified task. You go and perform a hundred other tasks; but if you have not performed that particular task on account of which you had gone to the country, it is as if you have performed nothing at all. So man has come into this world for a particular task [enlightenment], and that is his purpose; if he does not perform it, then he will have done nothing. (7)
Hindus call life a leela or divine play. The play has been created simply that God experience itself. And for that to happen, we have to experience ourselves. When we do, we’re delighted to discover that we are – all of us, without exception – God.
God began to go about its purpose by creating a second.
That second became known as the “Divine Mother,” reserving the term “Heavenly Father” for the One.
Here are the sages introducing the Mother:
Lao-Tzu: “It began with a matrix: The world had a mother.” (8)
Lao-Tzu: “Nameless indeed is the source of creation, But things have a mother and she has a name.” (9)
Kabir: “The formless Absolute is my Father, and God with form is my Mother.” (10)
Ramakrishna:” The Divine Mother revealed to me in the Kali temple that it was She who had become everything.” (11)
Now the One has become two though the Mother and Father remain One. When God moves it’s called the God the Mother; when still, the God the Father.
And out of the world-building work of the second – the Mother – came the many. We are the many.
The divine spark that we all are at essence is called by various names – the Self, the Christ, the Atman, the pearl of great price, the mustard seed that grew into a great tree, the treasure buried in the field of the heart, etc.
One could say that all of us are composite beings. We are the spark of the Father encased in matter (mater, Mother). The body is our casing.
As Solomon said: “Wisdom hath builded her house, she hath hewn out her seven pillars.” (12)
Wisdom is Solomon’s name for the Divine Mother. He’s referring to our third-dimensional bodies (“her house”), which have seven chakras (“seven pillars”).
The divine spark of the Father is immersed in the material body of the Mother and we’re to realize that we’re not these bodies – of which there are many since we’re multidimensional beings – but the divine spark within them, in the deepest recess of the heart, to be exact. (13)
Sri Ramakrishna had a non-dualistic guru, Totapuri (who recognized only the Transcendental Absolute). He did not accord reality to the dualistic notion that the Mother represented to him. Until one day.
Tiring of life, one day he decided to end his own. He walked into the Ganges and walked and walked but could not reach water higher than his ankles. Stunned at not being able to submerse himself and take his own life, Totapuri realized the truth:
“Suddenly, in one dazzling moment, [Totapuri] sees on all sides the presence of the Divine Mother. She is in everything; She is everything. She is in the water; She is on land. She is the body; She is the mind. She is pain; She is comfort. She is knowledge; She is ignorance. She is life; She is death. She is everything that one sees, hears, or imagines.
“She turns ‘yea’ into ‘nay’ and ‘nay’ into ‘yay.’ Without Her grace no embodied being can go beyond Her realm. Man has no free will. He is not even free to die. Yet, again, beyond the body and mind She resides in her Transcendental, Absolute aspect. She is the Brahman [the Father] that Totapuri has been worshipping all his life.” (14)
If we combine all these elements, we have the following statement, in Paramahansa Yogananda’s words.
“God so loved the world (or matter) that He gave His only begotten Son to redeem it; that is, God the Father remained hidden as Christ Intelligence [the spark] in all matter [Mother] and in all living beings in order to bring all things, by beautiful evolutional coaxings back to His home of All-Blessedness [the Father] when they should overcome all mortal tests, and should reincarnate in matter no more; i.e., ‘go no more out.'” (15)
Once we achieve complete Self-Realization, we need “go no more out” into the realm of matter, mater, Mother. (16) We are then One again with the Father. We have traveled from God to God over countless lifetimes.
When we’ve transcended all desires that keep the individuated ego alive and surrendered all that we are and have to the One – as was depicted at the end of my vision – we merge again into the Transcendental Absolute, making God All in all again.
When we realize/become that, God meets God, which is the reason for creating this whole realm of matter.
On the basis that all of us are divine sparks of the one Fire, we say we are One.
Let me leave the topic there for the moment and go on to explore our Oneness with this discussion as our foundation.
Footnotes
(1) “The Purpose of Life is Enlightenment – Ch. 13 – Epilogue,” at http://goldenageofgaia.com/2011/08/13/the-purpose-of-life-is-enlightenment-ch-13-epilogue/
(2) Hazrat Inayat Khan, Way of Illumination. Delhi, etc.: Motilal Banarsidass, 1988, 237.
(3) Muhyideen Ibn Arabi, Kernel of the Kernel. trans. Ismail Hakki Bursevi. Sherborne: Beshara, n.d., 3.
(4) John Ruusbroec in James A. Wiseman, John Ruusbroec. The Spiritual Espousals and Other Works. New York, etc.: Paulist Press, 1985, 72.
(5) Sri Ramakrishna in Swami Nikhilananda, trans., The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna. New York: Ramakrishna-Vivekananda Center, 1978; c1942, 331. [Hereafter GSR.]
(6) Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis of Yoga. Pondicherry: Sri Aurobindo Ashram, 1983, 316.
(7) Rumi in A.J. Arberry, trans., Discourses of Rumi. New York; Samuel Weiser, 1977; c1961, 26. Here is the Arcturian Group making the point:
“Evolution is every individual’s journey of learning the reality of who and what they are. It is accepting that God is expressing ITself in and as every living thing because it is the one and only life. It is realizing that ‘I no longer need to keep seeking, searching, begging, praying, and offering up sacrifices for what has always been fully present within.’” (“The Arcturian Group through Marilyn Rafaelle, Nov. 17, 2019” at https://goldenageofgaia.com/2019/11/17/the-arcturian-group-through-marilyn-rafaelle-nov-17-2019/.)
(8) Lao Tzu, The Way of Life. The Tao Te Ching. trans. R.B. Blakney. New York, etc.: Avon, 1975, 105.
(9) Ibid., 53.
(10) Kabir quoted by Paramahansa Ramakrishna in GSR, 150.
(11) Ibid., 15.
(12) Proverbs 9:1.
(13) “From the Bottom of My Heart: Where Does the Phrase Come From?,”
(14) Nikhilananda in GSR, 31
(15) Paramahansa Yogananda, The Second Coming of Christ. Dallas: Amrita Foundation, 1979, 1, 28.
(16) This realization comes in stages. Our entry into the Fifth Dimension means we need go no more out into the gross, physical realm of the Third/Fourth. Once we fully realize that there is only God in all things, we surrender our individuality altogether, leaving only God. We are beyond dimensionality.