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The Trinity and Oneness

“They are one; as the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit are one.” Having stated this important principle, Cayce, from his deep trance state, then separates the Trinity into three distinct parts (2420-1):

1. God as the Father, Creator, Maker

2. The Son as the Way, the Mind, the Activity, the Preserver

3. The Holy Spirit as the motivative force—or as the destroyer or the maker alive

The first thing that strikes me after reading this is how perfectly it fits with ancient Hinduism, especially as Cayce identifies the Son with “the Preserver,” and the Holy Spirit with “the destroyer.” In classical Hinduism, God’s three parts are:

1. Brahma, the Creator

2. Vishnu, the Preserver

3. Shiva, the Destroyer (of illusion and ignorance)

Shiva is often depicted sitting in meditation, with the water of life flowing from high on the mountaintop to a crescent moon on the crown of his head, a serpent is coiled around his neck (kundalini), a trident in one hand (power over negative forces), and his body is covered in ashes (indicating the need to die to physical gratifications in order to awaken to spiritual resources).

In another reading, Cayce differentiates the Trinity, using the microcosm of our composition: body, mind, and soul (1747-5):

1. Father-God is as the body, or the whole

2. Mind is as the Christ, which is the way

3. The Holy Spirit is as the soul, or—in material interpretation—purposes, hopes, desires

In the macrocosm, these would likely be Father as the Cosmos, Son as the Universal Consciousness, and Holy Spirit as the motivative force driving the Universe.

Returning to the microcosm, Cayce tries to help us grasp the difficult concept that physical life is a shadow of spiritual life. In this next reading, he develops this idea using Genesis (note: “these” refers to the parts of the Trinity):

These, then, in self are a shadow of the spirit of the Creative Force. Thus the Father is as the body, the mind is as the Son, and the Soul is as the Holy Spirit. For it is eternal. It has ever been and ever will be, and it is the soul made in the image of the Creator, not merely the physical or mental being but with the attributes [of the Creator]. For, as is given in the beginning: God moved and said, “Let there be light,” and there was light, not the light of the sun, but rather that of which, through which, in which every soul had, has, and ever has its being. For in truth you live and love and have your being in Him. “These considerations, then, each in analyzing of self, each has its part in your own physical consciousness, yes.”

5246-1

In another reading, he approaches it this way (1158-12):

Material things are the shadows of that which is spiritual in its essence. Now you experience that H₂0 is water—everywhere! Then water is water, and a part of the whole, with all the essential elements that make for the ability of manifestations in bringing life, in quenching the thirst. And it becomes active thus in whatever sphere or phase it finds itself; whether in the frigid, as ice; in the temperate, as water; or in that phase as steam. Yet everywhere—in every phase—its activities are the same!

Our physical bodies are solid matter (ice), our mental and emotional bodies are fluid (liquid), and our soul/spirit bodies are cloud-like (vapor). All three are the same—water in different forms and conditions: solid, liquid, and vapor! The Water of Life is therefore in our bodies, minds, and souls. All are here with us.

In readings 3143-1 and 5657-11, Cayce equates gaseous states with spiritual conditions and realms, noting that we came out of the gaseous condition (vapor) into matter (solid) and are now moving out of matter toward the more ethereal, vaporous, gaseous condition of spirit and soul.

How do we become more conscious of the Spirit’s, the Holy Spirit’s, presence within us, within our little spirits? Cayce gives us the answer, a difficult answer. We may, on occasion, perceive the Spirit through our five physical senses, but the better way and therefore the one we must strive for is through “spiritual intuitive forces”: “It partakes of the spiritual intuitive forces as comes from close communion with the Holy Spirit, the promised Comforter, the consciousness of the Christ.” (262-15)

We need to budget time in our lives for this communion. From such communions come the all-important “spiritual intuitive forces.” But this won’t work if we simply attempt to talk to the Holy Spirit from our outer, conscious mind. We must learn to listen, I prefer feel, from our deep inner mind and heart, the Holy Spirit’s message. That is where true communion occurs.

Here it is important to understand that Cayce taught that “Christ is not a man.” (991-1) Jesus is the man and Christ is the Spirit. The Christ Spirit was within Jesus, and even Jesus credited his gifts and wisdom to this Spirit in John 14 and 15.

God’s spirit with us is the Emmanuel (literally, “God with us”) of the ancient prophecies. According to these prophecies, a messiah (literally, “anointed one”) was to be sent from God into the earth to awaken and bring salvation and resurrection to all souls. The disciple John begins his gospel with a poetic vision into the role and influence of this messiah. It begins, “In the beginning was the Word ….” Actually, in the original Greek, this text reads, “In the beginning was the Logos …” Logos means much more than the English term word. It means the divine, rational principle that governs and develops the universe. There is an incident in John’s gospel in which Jesus actually uses two Greek words for word, giving emphasis to the greater meaning behind logos. Jesus was in an argument with the Pharisees and scribes of the Temple and had made the famous statement, “Before Abraham was, I am.” (8:58). Of course, he is speaking from the perspective of the Logos, through which all was made and to which Jesus is attuned. Here is that statement (8:43): “Why do you not understand my word [lalian]? It is because you cannot hear my word [logon, a form of logos].” It is clear that Jesus is drawing a distinction between words that are in speech and the source of all expression, truth, and understanding, the Logos. Also, in the original Greek text, there is no masculine pronoun in the initial sentences of the passage; therefore the text actually reads:

“In the beginning was the Logos, and the Logos was with God, and the Logos was God. This One was in the beginning with God. All things were made through this One. Without this One was not anything made that has been made. In this One was life; and the life was the light of humanity. And the light shines in the darkness; and the darkness does not apprehend it. There came a man, sent from God, whose name was John [the Baptist]. The same came as a witness, that he might bear witness to the light, that all might believe through him. He was not the light, but came that he might bear witness to the light. This was the true light, even the light that lights every person coming into the world. This One was in the world, and the world was made through this One, and the world knew him not. This One came to his own, and they that were his own did not receive him. But as many as received him, to them gave he the right to become children of God, even to them that believe on his name: who were not born of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God. And the Logos became flesh, and dwelt among us; and we beheld its glory, glory as of the only begotten from the Father, full of grace and truth.”

This is such an inspired opening to the most mystical of the four gospels. But another gem behind this new understanding of “the Word” is in chapter 8:31. Here Jesus informs us that we can abide in the Logos, and thereby receive the truth directly and be made free: “If you abide in my Logos, then you are truly disciples of mine; and you shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free.”

According to many religions, especially ancient Hinduism, the Maker put a little of Him/Herself in each us during the initial creation. This means that at a deep level, we are gods within God, little “I ams” within the great I AM. In this way, Jesus, at a deeper level, was also the “Son of God” and we are sons and daughters of God. As Jesus stated by quoting Psalm 62, “You are gods.” Like Jesus, we are both sons and daughters of “man” while, at the same time, sons and daughters of God. The human and the divine abide together in us. The great challenge is to integrate these two in the proper order. At present, most of us are humans who love spirituality. The goal is to become Spirits, Godly Spirits, who are temporarily manifesting in human form and consciousness. After the resurrection, Jesus withdrew into oneness with the Maker, but he said that we are channels of the Maker’s light and love into this world until he returns to lead a Golden Age.

As Cayce has said in several readings, the flow of life and wisdom begins in the Spirit, flows into the mental, and then makes its presence visible in the physical—not the other way around, as we too often believe. Let’s first get in touch with the Spirit, through the Mind, and then our physical lives will change for the better and we’ll be able to do more good than if we did so on our own without the Spirit.

Cayce makes this clear statement: “The Spirit is the true life.” (262-29)

When we look around, we see multiplicity, diversity, and separateness. You are there. I am here. Your thoughts are yours; mine are mine. Oneness is not evident. Yet, from Edgar Cayce’s trance-like connection to the Universal Consciousness, he saw and taught oneness: “The first lesson … should be One—One—One—One; Oneness of God, oneness of man’s relations, oneness of force, oneness of time, oneness of purpose, Oneness in every effort—Oneness—Oneness!” (900-429) For Cayce, our thoughts are not just ours! In fact, he could tell exactly what others had been thinking, because thoughts leave an impression upon the Universal Consciousness. Cayce could “read” these impressions. Thoughts, for him, were “deeds.” When giving a reading for an individual, Cayce had difficulty determining if he or she had actually manifested a particular behavior or just thought about it, because thoughts make as strong an impression on the Collective Consciousness as actions! That’s a scary thought—oops, I just made another impression on the Collective Consciousness! Cayce was concerned that we all grasp the implications of this unavoidable oneness.

Is it possible that everyone and everything is a part of some unseen Collective, some indivisible Whole, within which all multiplicity exists, and each affects the composition of this Collective? Cayce says yes: “Not only God is God, but self is a part of that oneness.” (900-181) In several readings, Cayce pressed us to simply believe this and live as if it were true! In this way we would come to know that it is indeed true. “Let this, my children, be the lesson for you: The intent in relating to each and every individual should be to bring forth that best element in each, in Oneness of purpose, in oneness of spirit, in oneness of mind, towards each and every one that you contact—for the individuals, in the final analysis, are one.” (288-19) In some manner that we don’t readily perceive, you and I—and all the individuals we meet and interact with each day—are one.

These are hard teachings to understand and harder to live by. We’ve all heard the admonition think before you speak, but this level of oneness would suggest that we should think before we think. Does thinking negative thoughts about another person actually affect that person at some unseen level? Do these negative thoughts make a recording upon a Collective Consciousness, a recording that someone like Cayce can read? Ancient Hinduism included the concept of an Akasha, an etheric film that records all thoughts, all words, and all actions from the first Om of creation until the last Om of silence. Nothing is lost. Nothing is forgotten. Nothing is unknowable. Watching Cayce give readings on the activities of celestial godlings who lived before the Earth even existed certainly suggests that nothing is forgotten or lost or unknowable. While his body was on the couch and his conscious mind was for all intents and purposes asleep, his deeper mind could tell us about a long-forgotten event in one’s early childhood that still had its effect on the present, or an ancient past life that influenced the outer self’s feelings in the present life. In some readings for individuals, he would mention the house they lived in and what they were doing as the reading was about to begin, such as: “Yes, we have the red mail box. We are entering the house. She is in the bedroom praying.”

In the 1960s and ‘70s, when meditation was taking hold in this country, meditators began to speak of experiencing a sense of oneness with all of life when they reached deeper levels in their meditation. When questioned about this, all they could say was that, at some moment in their meditation, all life seemed connected. But the gap between this inner meditative feeling and our outer-sensory perception is a chasm. There is simply no outer-sensory corroboration for such a position. Oneness is an inner perception that defies outer evidence. Apparently, oneness has to be experienced firsthand in order to overcome all the outer contradictions to its existence. And short of rare miraculous epiphanies, meditation appears to be the best way to perceive the unseen oneness. Even Jesus had trouble making the oneness argument with his disciple Philip at the Last Supper, finally conceding that if he could not believe Jesus’ oneness with the Father and that Philip had therefore known the Father by knowing Jesus, then let the outer miracles act as evidence of this oneness with God.

But let’s press this oneness idea a little further. How can selfish or evil people still be in oneness with the Collective? And if they are, simply because there is no way to be outside of the Whole, then why are they allowed to do so much harm to others in the Collective? In a very complex discussion between one of the greatest questioners of Edgar Cayce, Morton Blumenthal, #900, and the “sleeping” Edgar Cayce, attuned to the Collective, we can find some insights into these hard questions. Since the discussion is so complex, I’ll paraphrase here:

Morton: On Oct. 15, Thursday, at home I had this dream: It seemed my mother and I were in a hotel where many people were passing by. Then there was a typewriter with a sheet of blank paper in it, waiting to be used by one of the many applicants for the position of stenographer. The typewriter also seemed to be waiting for my more perfect understanding of something else—some final thing—the first three principles of which I had two. In the midst of all of this, a voice said: ‘All of these are God!’

Cayce: This dream is presenting to the entity the oneness of purpose, of intent, of the whole being as one. For all is of God, see? And as the entity gains knowledge from living the various phases of oneness, he gains that first principle of which the other two he already has. That first principle is this: God is in you, manifesting to other individuals through every phenomenized situation that is presented in a physical world. For, every force which may not be separated or produced by man is of God and of the Universal Forces. These are the three forces in man: (1) Spiritual—of God; (2) Cosmic—the forces made by man; and (3) Subconscious—the force that bridges the Spiritual and the Cosmic, connecting the spiritual with the cosmic.

Morton: It seems to me that this dream imagery tries again and again to drive home to my dense physical mind that God is One …

Cayce: (Interrupting) Correct.

Morton: God is all of these people passing in the hotel and all of the applicants for the stenographer job …

Cayce: (Interrupting) Correct.

Morton: All these people are phenomenized forms of God. Also God is all of these consciousnesses …

Cayce: (Interrupting) Except that God is not the cosmic forces made by free-will man. These are not related to spiritual forces. These are earth made.

(Based on 900-147)

In many of his readings, Cayce explained that evil is man’s misuse of the gift of free will. The Creator allows this because free will is the only way for any soul to reach its original purpose for existence: to know itself to be itself yet choose to be one with the Whole, with the Creator and the creation. If free will is taken away, then the soul no longer has the potential to become an eternal companion with its creator. As the theological concept goes, man was made a little less than the angels but with the potential to judge even the angels. This is why souls misusing free will are allowed more time to discover their true purpose, even if they do much harm along the way. Eventually, as recorded in the Revelation, God will stop time and separate misusers from those who have tried to fulfill their purpose. He/She will then “wipe the tears from everyone’s eyes” and set up “a new heaven and a new earth” for the companionable souls to enjoy with God.

According to Cayce’s readings and many other classic sources, before anything was created there existed something that caused the creation to begin. The potential for the creation—what Cayce often referred to as “the first impulse, the first cause”—was latent in pre-creation emptiness. A good way for us to grasp how there could be anything before the creation is to think of the infinite emptiness as a consciousness, much like our own, except that this consciousness was infinite and perfectly still; no thoughts; quiet. Imagining this with our own minds is one of the states of meditation: a clear, quiet mind—hard to do for even a few minutes. At some moment, this infinite mind began to move, to conceive, and the creation began. Imagine how the idea of light awoke, and playing with this idea, the infinite mind conceived of stars and galaxies of all shapes, sizes, and colors. At some moment in this conception process, Cayce says, the Universal Consciousness conceived of companions to itself, companions made in its own image: minds, with life, creativity, and free will. Countless little minds were conceived in the one, infinite mind.

At first, we all remained consciously connected to the One Mind. But as we began to use our free wills to experience individual consciousness, we focused more on our own consciousness and gradually lost our connection with the Infinite Mind. We did not go anywhere. There was nowhere to go beyond the Whole. We simply lost consistent consciousness of our oneness with the Infinite Consciousness. Today, billions of years after it all began, we struggle to regain and retain conscious awareness of the One Mind within which we all exist and with which we are all destined to consciously companion forever—if we choose to.

Just as this is all getting clearer, Cayce tosses a brick into our thinking when he says such mind-boggling things as “there is no time, no space.” He explains that at a deep level, there actually is no beginning, no end; all time is one. He explains that there actually is no here and no there. As demonstrated by his own readings, he could tell someone what he or she (the deeper self) thought eons ago, as if it were yesterday, and could physically be in Virginia Beach while viewing a person in San Diego! During his readings, there was indeed no time, no space. All was one.

Cayce said it this way: “Learn these lessons well: First, the continuity of life. There is no time; it is one time. There is no space; it is one space. There is no force, other than all force in its various phases and applications. The individual is such a part of God that one’s thoughts may become crimes or miracles, for thoughts are deeds. That that one metes must be met again. That one applies will be applied again and again until that oneness of time, space, force are learned and the individual is one with the whole.” (4341-1)

Fortunately for our three-dimensional selves, he did instruct that time and space are helpful tools for developing souls to use in our day-to-day, step-by-step process of application and enlightenment. But his deeper mind did not want us to get lost in the limitations of time and space, encouraging us to budget some time and space for experiencing the timelessness and spacelessness; in other words, the oneness. He also instructed seekers to “watch the self go by”—watch the self interact with others, watch one’s mind thinking about situations and people—and see if one’s words, actions, and thoughts reflect the truth of the oneness or the illusion of separateness, multiplicity, and diversity.

From Cayce’s trance perspective, the greatest evil in the earth and in the hearts and minds of individuals is contention, faultfinding, lovers of self, and lovers of praise, because these forces separate. The greatest good in the world is love, patience, kindness, forgiveness, and understanding, because these forces unite, for “these are times when every effort should be made to preserve the universality of love.” (877-29) He instructed one person to “study the truths about oneness, whether Jewish, Gentile, Greek, or heathen!” (136-12) Among religions, Cayce said that wherever the principle of one God and one people is taught, there is truth. And that in many of the world’s great religions, the principle of oneness is there, but men have “turned this aside to meet their own immediate needs, as a moralist or the head of any independent power, but ‘Know the Lord thy God is One!’ whether this is directing one of the Confucius thought, Brahman thought, Buddha thought, Mohammedan thought … there is only one. The whole law and gospel of every age has said, ‘There is one God!’” (364-9)

As with all of these concepts, they begin within our individual minds and hearts, and since there is oneness, the more individuals believe in the oneness and live it in their lives, the more it makes an impression upon the Collective Consciousness and finds its way into other individual minds and hearts. We are the leaven that can leaven the whole loaf of humanity. Let’s budget time to experience the oneness in meditation. Let’s practice oneness in our thoughts about others and interactions with others. Ultimately, despite all the indications to the contrary, the world and humanity will be one.