Wednesday 3 October 2018

Three in One

The human being, modeled after its maker, is a three in one, a trinity in which there is unity, and this apparently paradoxical fact, which may perplex the rational mind established in a three-dimensional world but makes complete sense from a higher standpoint, helps us to understand and resolve several conflicts in both religion and politics.  

For example, it explains why there is both oneness (intrinsic if not expressed) and hierarchy, and also how there can be forms of mysticism that deny the reality of self and those that affirm it.

A human being is comprised of spirit, soul and body where spirit is the uncreated aspect of God that is our being, soul the created individual self, our quality, and body the outer form and appearance. Now the point is that these three together comprise the human being just as God is Father, Son and Holy Ghost. You cannot separate them though they are different aspects of the totality. But at the same time there is a hierarchical order from top to bottom, inner to outer, and the totality should be seen in that context. Philosophies that do separate them, such as in their different ways do Buddhism and advaita, are incomplete. They have seen that the root of being is uncreated spirit, God in us, but they don't see that this is only part off the whole of what we are which leads them to deny or undervalue the rest, and particularly individuality. But individuality was the point of creation and why there is something rather than nothing. God is love and he sought to express that in relationship. What he creates is real, totally dependent on him but fully real in itself. Yes, in the context of our being, spirit is the most fundamental and truest part of us but it is not all of what we are, and you should not use its reality as an excuse to reject soul and body which are equally part of the whole. Indeed, without soul we could not individually know spirit, and without body we could not express it.

This is why I regard the Buddhist way as a preparation for the Christian way, or at least the Christian way in its higher sense of union with God. Nowadays many people brought up in our scientific, rationalistic, materialistic age turn to Buddhism or some form of non-theistic religion as the most sensible form of religion. It does away with that rather embarrassing anthropomorphic God. And its doctrine of not self makes a kind of philosophical sense. The ground of everything must be beyond the limitation and boundaries of the individual   which is clearly a veil on the deepest reality. So it is, but it's not that simple. Buddhism is, in fact, only a half truth, as is advaita which derives from it in that it was the Hindu response to the Buddhist challenge.

For reality is not the absolute alone but the absolute and the relative together, and the human being is not spirit only but spirit, soul and body together, a three in one.

Thus our spiritual goal is not to sink into Nirvana, the 'blown out' state, but to reach a full relationship with the living God, and the realisation of uncreated spirit can only be a precursor to this. It sets the scene in which that relationship can take place if one understands that disidentifying with the phenomenal world is not sufficient in itself but a preliminary to finding a union with the Creator. Of course, for that to happen one has to acknowledge him. To rest in Nirvana is, in a way, a refusal of the purpose of creation and birth in this world. I repeat, individuality was the very point of creation and so the rejection of it is a spiritual error even if it might be useful as part of 'skillful means', i.e. as a help to go beyond full identification with self which is also a spiritual error.

Three in one, hierarchy in unity, the one and the many, sameness and difference. This is the truth and isn't it so much more splendid than simply undifferentiated oneness? God is always more.  You cannot restrict him to the impersonal.  That would actually make him less than us. He includes and incorporates all we can conceive and, if a potential mistake of theistic religion is to limit him to existing outside us, as an object to us, the mistake of non-theistic religion is to ignore his personal or concrete aspect by focusing exclusively on the abstract impersonal. 


That mistake arises I think partly because of a confusion between the ego and the self.  The ego is the self as it manifests in three-dimensional consciousness and results from the separation inherent in unresolved duality. It is the self, which is not a phenomenal thing, squeezed into a phenomenal context.  That is why the elaborate Buddhist analysis and ultimate denial of the self is inconclusive. It only proves that the self is not a phenomenal thing. So it successfully dismisses the ego but mistakenly thinks it has also dismissed the self behind it of which the ego is a three-dimensional representation.  It has not done so. However its methods, techniques and philosophical reasoning are highly effective in showing up the emptiness of the ego. It can help us see through the illusions of the ego and detach ourselves from the lower self. The trouble arises when it throws out the baby of soul with the bathwater of ego.

For most Eastern mysticism, the individual is what negates reality, but a more inclusive understanding sees the individual as the whole point of creation. At the same time, the ego, which is that aspect of individuality that restricts itself to itself, is a barrier between us and God. We need to disidentify with that false aspect of our being but not make the mistake of rejecting the real part of us of which it is the shadow. Our spiritual make up is triple and all should be seen as parts of the whole for a full expression of being. This is why there is hierarchy even in heaven as I can attest to from my experience with the Masters.

Spirit, soul and body are the equivalent in the human being of the true, the good and the beautiful, and none of them can be denied. Note that it was the Ascension of the body which marked Christ's final act in this world.

18 comments:

edwin said...

The more I read and contemplate St. John's Gospel, the more it seems to me that immortality is not a property of the soul, but a possibility for it. As individuals, we may not be by nature immortal. The body-soul duality of Greek philosophy seems to have seeped into the early Church and to have moved us away from the Resurrection as the central event of Christianity and more toward an immediate judgment of the soul, separated from the body at death, and our consignment to some place or state in an incorporeal reality. Christ talks about the death of the soul, as though that were indeed the thing he came to prevent. He offers us eternal life through raising us up on the last day. If we were eternal to begin with, there would be no question of our being given eternal life through Christ. The nondualists make much of the idea that we are eternal by nature. They jettison individuality as a passing phenomenon. This is why they conflate Christ and the Buddha, asserting that Jesus came to lead us away from our self into undifferentiated consciousness, which they equate with "The Father." But Christ always speaks of a union, not a dissolution. A husband and wife do not lose their separate identities, no matter how close they become. And it is the marriage metaphor that runs through the Bible to describe our relationship to God - and it is a relationship, not an absolute identity. It may be that in granting immortality to all souls, we miss the point of the Incarnation and the Resurrection, and this leads us into speculations about the afterlife that may be unfounded. You have some communication from the Masters that you say indicates a disembodied hierarchy of beings evolving toward ever greater perfection. I don't know how this fits into the Resurrection of the body, which of course is to be an incorruptible spiritual body, unlike anything we now know. What say the masters about those who decline this upward trajectory? Do they continue in some way? The book of the Apocalypse talks about the second death and the lake of fire, but this is an extinguishing event, not a continuation of life, or so it seems. Thanks for bearing with me as I puzzle out these things.

William Wildblood said...

edwin, all I can say from my particular experience is that the Masters referred to higher Masters, those above them in some kind of spiritual hierarchy. I would place Christ at the top of this but they didn't mention that themselves. I'm afraid I can't really tell you much more because they generally stuck specifically to spiritual training. When I tried to extract some extra esoteric information from them (as I would have loved to have done!) they mostly discouraged that as not being pertinent to the job in hand. Which, of course, is true. It's all too easy to get distracted away from purification of the ego etc.

They did however tell me to meditate on matters that concerned me and they would try to impress the answer, or an answer, on me. So that is what I have done with many of these blog posts. For what it's worth, I think you may be right and that immortality may have to be earned in the sense that the individual soul needs to unite with its divine source to gain true eternal life. But there must surely be a lot longer than one earthly life to achieve this.

I do believe that the soul can be destroyed in the lake of fire and its individual component dissolved but this would be an extreme scenario. There are probably many environments that souls can experience to enable them to grow spiritually. Only those that completely reject this would eventually end up undergoing the second death.

Adil said...

"if a potential mistake of theistic religion is to limit him to existing outside us, as an object to us, the mistake of non-theistic religion is to ignore his personal or concrete aspect by focusing exclusively on the abstract impersonal."


I think you hit the nail on the head here. It's all about reconciling the inner and the outer. Seeing God as an object outside of his creation has always bothered me, because it makes him into a metaphysical idol, or a mental projection of mind matter dualism. Essentially it leaves creation naked, and up for grabs. We see clearly The Luciferian mind seized it and made it a reflection of our rationalistic mental hallways with its blindfolding laws and rules. God's being permeates the world maintains it by habit and will. It's not a mechanical left over. Therefore, we should seek an embodied form of consciousness instead of seeing the world as a ready made package outside of our heads. I think the modern mind is superstitious in this sense, because of its outer one-way form of consciousness. I mean we live in a civilization that is looking for space aliens, as if the outer world just was there, but hasn't bothered to look inside. Our current model reduces humanity and Mother Earth to microscopic significance.

Vytautas said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Vytautas said...

Hi, William. I really enjoy reading your ideas about non-duality. I have question though- have you heard about such thing as kundalini yoga? And what’s your opinion about it? Would you view it incomplete as buddhism and advaita because it’s point basically is denying individual self and realiseing that you’re God?

William Wildblood said...

Hello Vytautas, glad you're enjoying the blog. It's always good to get some appreciation!

In answer to your question, or the last one, basically, yes. I see kundalini yoga as an occult technique that aims to induce changes in consciousness through the mind or will. It may well succeed in this but these changes are largely to do with states of mind and body, and true spirituality is to do with the heart. The practice of kundalini yoga, like any spiritual technique of method, is an attempt to take the kingdom of heaven by force and therefore indicates someone who pursues spirituality for personal reward rather than genuine love of God which ultimately is the only true and proper motive, and the only one that will bring a real union with the divine.

I don't know if you've seen my book, but I asked my teachers about Kundalini and they said to leave it alone and let things unfold naturally. Premature arousal of Kundalini doesn't do anyone any good. It operates on many levels, and many people contact it on a physical (pranic you might call it in Hindu terminology) or mental level and mistake that for something spiritual. It's not though it might seem so to someone lacking guidance. There are many false gurus who are the victims of this.

That's my take on this subject anyway

Vytautas said...

Thanks for your answer! I’ll definitely check out your book. Cheers!

Vytautas said...

By the way, I just recently started my spiritual journey. Would you think it would be a good idea to start it by going to the church and praying?

William Wildblood said...

I can't really advise properly but that certainly couldn't do any harm. It really depends on what you feel. If that brings you closer to God and makes you more aware of yourself as a spiritual being then by all means do it. If your heart responds to the atmosphere in the church then praying there would be very helpful. But it should be meaningful to you. If it's not or seems formulaic there's no point. However I imagine you wouldn't have asked if you didn't feel drawn to it, and if that's the case then I would say, yes.

Prayer is always good. Where you do it is not so important but definitely some environments are more conducive than others. Don't expect miracles but know that God or your spiritual helpers will be aware of you

Vytautas said...

Thanks for informative answer! I have another question though: do you believe that there are other universes besides ours?

William Wildblood said...

I don't know about other universes but I certainly believe there are higher dimensions to this one. We have to stick with what concerns us and if there are other universes that doesn't really concern us at our current state of evolution. But the fact of higher dimensions to this universe certainly does concern us.

Vytautas said...

Thanks once again for your response. Another question popped into my head though: Do you regard ego as a necessary bad thing? In my opinion it is okay to have a healthy ego and accordingly enjoy material things to an extent it doesn’t become sort of addiction. Not only that, isn’t that one of the reasons that there is something and not nothing?

William Wildblood said...

It's probably necessary to distinguish between ego and the sense of self with the former by this definition as the latter gone bad or become self-centred. But if you had no sense of self at all you would be useless. Also, love could not exist. Individuality is the reason for creation in my view so to reject it as Buddhism does is a mistake. But it has gone wrong and needs to be redirected back to God. So, yes, individuality is the reason there is something rather than nothing.

Vytautas said...

Oh, I see it now! Thanks for your response! You are really helping me to get my mind out of this non-duality trap i got into. I really appreciate your insights on these subjects.

William Wildblood said...

My pleasure! I'm glad you find it helpful.

Vytautas said...

By the way, don’t you think that moderately engaging in material aspects of life is okay? In my opinion it’s completely fine if not overdone.

William Wildblood said...

Yes. The material is part of the whole. We just need to have our priorities right, seeing the spiritual as pre-eminent.

Vytautas said...

Thanks a lot again, William. I really like your perspective on these topics. I aswell think that for a person to become whole you need to experience all planes of existence and subsequently, embrace them.