Part One – The Bible and Holy Spirit

For the vast majority of Christian groups in the word, the "Holy Spirit" is considered the third person of the Trinity of God consisting of "God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit." Holy Spirit is referred to as "the Lord, the Giver of Life" in the Nicene Creed, summarizing several key beliefs held by many Christian denominations.

When Jesus was baptized, he saw "the spirit of God descending upon him like a dove." Christian artists throughout the centuries have used this symbol to represent the holy spirit, though it has little connection to the experience it is meant to describe.

Influenced by biblical and traditional thinking and speaking of holy spirit, Christians may say things like, "The spirit moved me" or "I felt the holy spirit leading me." Pentecostals talk about being "filled the spirit" and the "spirit-filled life." Traditional Christians tend to think of the Holy Spirit as the Third Person of the Trinity, staying within the narrow bounds of orthodoxy and perhaps image it as a dove or mystical spirit. Modern progressive Christians tend to talk about an impersonal and undefined spirit. Spirit can also be used more generally in the sense of an atmosphere.

What really is this "spirit" or "holy spirit"? In our actual earthly world experience, not in some far off heavenly realm, although it is quite heavenly!

Let's start with the Bible's take on "spirit."

I am going to suggest that in today's understanding;
Spirit is the life force and energy of divine consciousness
present in and as the consciousness of finite humankind

SPIRIT IN THE BIBLE

Spirit in the Bible is not defined primarily by concepts but by mystical actions and dramatic experiences. The Bible mentions spirit" and "holy spirit" over six hundred times.

The term in my writing, "holy spirit," may look strange since it is normally capitalized. This is usually done for names referring to God, although there was no such distinction in the original Greek. The early copies of the Greek New Testament were written in all uppercase letters with no spaces and, at first, with no punctuation. Translators added capitalization to words if they thought a word referred to divinity. This put a linguistic barrier between human spirit and divine spirit, which is not justified in the Bible. I make that point when I do not capitalize "holy spirit."

A Detective Story: Solving the Bible's Mystery of Spirit

Okay, that's an exaggeration. I don't really solve the mystery of spirit, but I do think I have moved closer to what spirit is and how spirit works in the biblical accounts and our lives today. I discovered something I had not seen for most of my religious and scholarly life:

In this four-part series are my ten discoveries as I explored the Bible, the writings of mystics, scientists, and my own evolving mystical consciousness. These are arrows pointing to orienting generalizations from biblical, theological, ancient, and contemporary sources. They help in moving from a traditional theological understanding of spirit as up in "the third person of the Trinity" to a "down where we live in the mystery of experienced reality" understanding of spirit as divine-human consciousness.

Arrow #1: In the Bible, everyone alive has spirit as ordinary, everyday consciousness

The Hebrew word translated as breath is also connected to spirit and being alive. A more comprehensive translation would be "spirit-breath-consciousness." God breathed spirit-breath-consciousness into humankind to bring us to life. Spirit-breath-consciousness is the difference between being alive and conscious and a dead body with no consciousness.

"In his hand is the life of every living thing and the breath [rûach=spirit, breath] of every human being (Job 12:10). Spirit-breath-consciousness is in every living person. Speaking of life itself, Job phrased it, "As long as my breath [neshamah = soul or spirit] is in me and the spirit-breath-consciousness (rûach) of God is in my nostrils." (Job 27:3). The breath in everyone is spirit-breath-consciousness.

Spirit-breath is not just given to Christians or even human beings but to all living creatures. "The earth is full of your creatures . . . when you take away their spirit-breath (rûach), they die and return to their dust" (Psalm 104:24, 29). If your spirit-breath-consciousness leaves your body, your body dies and returns to the earth.

Right now, every human is breathing not just air but God's living awareness. Every time you breathe, you are a living demonstration that divine-human breath is your very life and the life of all humankind.

Reformer, Roman Catholic saint, and priest, St. John of the Cross (1542– 1591), said, "One should not think it impossible that the soul be capable of so sublime an activity as this breathing in God, through participation as God breathes in her." Take a breath of divine-spirit breath right now!

In New Testament Greek, the word pneuma has the same meaning – breath, wind, and spirit. We also see this everyday, ordinary, spirit-breath-consciousness Jesus raised a little girl from the dead, and Luke says, "Her spirit (pneuma)returned, and at once she stood up" (Luke 8:55). Spirit-breath is that which makes the human being a living person. When Jesus was dying on the cross, he "gave up his spirit" (pneuma) (Matt. 27:50) and died because "the body without the spirit (pneuma) is dead" (James 2:26).

Arrow #2: Some people in the Old Testament had a beyond-the-ordinary level of spirit-breath consciousness.

Spirit in non-ordinary consciousness in the heroes of the Old Testament is different from spirit as life in everyone. Spirit sometimes did more than just make a body alive. Something more than basic, ordinary life and awareness took place. I call this something more, "awakened spirit-breath" or "expanded consciousness." Notice the dramatic effects of this awakening.

"The Lord took some of the spirit that was upon Moses, and put it upon the seventy elders, and when the spirit rested upon them they prophesied" (Num. 11:25).

At this point in their evolutionary journey, the Israelites evidently thought of spirit as a literal, tangible substance. Now, over 3000 years later, we are finding that, indeed, these energy fields seem to be substantial and identifiable at a quantum level, which refers to a particular packet of substance or energy in chemistry and physics.

Spirit included higher intelligence and delicate craftsmanship: "I have called by name Bezalel . . . and I have filled him with the spirit of God, with ability and intelligence, with knowledge and all craftsmanship, to devise artistic designs, to work in gold, silver, and bronze" (Ex. 31:2-4).

We know from the Hebrew scriptures that all these people already had the divine spirit-breath-consciousness that was a part of their being human. So what was this "came mightily, stirring, rushing, filling" spirit-breath business? It was a stronger, more intensified version of spirit-breath. By virtue of being alive, we all have the life force and energy of divine consciousness present in and as our consciousness. This is different from spirit-breath that stirs and rushes so mightily. This was not just basic spirit or life force, but elevated or super life force. It was awakened, expanded, intensified spirit-breath.

Eventually, the prophet Joel channels God, saying, "I will pour out my spirit [divine consciousness] on all flesh; your sons and your daughters shall speak messages from God, your elders shall dream dreams, and your young people shall see visions. (Joel 2:28, my translation) This beyond-ordinary awakened spirit– breath will be poured out on everyone!

Arrow #3: Beyond ordinary, awakened, intensified consciousness becomes the dominant form of spirit in the New Testament.

The awakened, expanded spirit that came to a few leaders in the Old Testament now becomes the entire focus of the realm of spirit in the New Testament. The New Testament almost exclusively speaks of divine-human spirit as this more saturated and intensified spirit-breath within us. My friend Jack Levison is Chair of Old Testament Interpretation and Biblical Hebrew at Perkins School of Theology and author of over a dozen books focusing on spirit. He says that in Israel and the early church, "One word, rûach or pneuma, could communicate both the spirit or breath of God within all human beings and [also] the divine spirit or breath that God gives as a special endowment."

Arrow #4: Jesus

It appears that Jesus lived with ordinary everyday consciousness until his baptism. In the four canonical Gospels and Thomas, we see no healings, nature miracles, visions, or super knowing before his baptism. Yet, he grew in wisdom (Luke 2:52). This encourages me to see that a wise person can evolve and grow deeply, even with ordinary awareness.

When Jesus began his public ministry, he knew he needed the "more." So he was baptized by John in the river Jordan. As he emerged from the water, he saw holy spirit descending on him "like a dove." He hears a voice that says, "You are my Son, the Beloved; with you I am well pleased" (Mark 1:11). The first result of this spiritual awakening was that he went into the desert for forty days and nights, Bible-speak for a really long time. He faces his shadow, framed as a temptation, with evil personified by the writers as Satan. Then Jesus begins a public ministry of profound teaching, healing, visions, nature miracles, and spiritual knowing. If Jesus, as a fully realized human being, needed this, how about us?

After his resurrection and now in his spiritual body, Jesus imparts this intensified consciousness to his close friends. "As Abba has sent me, even so I am sending you. And when he had said this, he breathed on them and said to them, 'Receive holy spirit.'" (John 20:22).

Arrow #5: The first followers of Jesus

Later when 120 of Jesus' followers were gathered together, "Suddenly from heaven there came a sound like the rush of a violent wind, and it filled the entire house where they were sitting. Divided tongues, as of fire, appeared among them, and a tongue rested on each of them. All of them were filled with holy spirit" (Acts 2:1-4). As is often the case, there is no "the" here before "holy spirit" in biblical Greek.

Notice the auditory, somatic, and visionary phenomena of wind and fire. This is only apprehended in a subtle or intensified state of consciousness. They were so ecstatic in their awakened-spirit-breath-induced mystical trance states that they were accused by on-lookers of being drunk (2:13).

This initial activation of an elevated spiritual awareness continued to be passed on down to new followers of Jesus, such as with the Samaritans. In Acts 19:2– 6, "Now when the apostles at Jerusalem heard that Samaria had accepted the word of God, they sent Peter and John to them. The two went down and prayed for them that they might receive holy spirit, for as yet the spirit had not come upon any of them. Then Peter and John laid their hands on them, and they received holy spirit" (Acts 8:14– 17).

After Paul had a vision of Jesus and dedicated himself to following him, Ananias laid his hands on Saul [his Jewish name] and said, "Brother Saul, the Lord Jesus, who appeared to you on your way here, has sent me so that you may regain your sight and be filled with holy spirit" (Acts 9:17).

Next, we find Paul asking the new believers in Ephesus, "Did you receive holy spirit when you became believers?" They replied, "No, we have not even heard that there is holy spirit. When Paul had laid his hands on them, holy spirit came upon them, and they spoke in prayer languages and words they were hearing from God. (Acts 19:2– 6, my translation).

Spirit transmission was nourished in the meetings of the house churches, such as described in 1 Corinthians 11:17– 14:37 which was filled with manifestations of mystical consciousness. This is seen in such phenomena as channeled words from God ("prophecy") and mystical state devotion to God and Jesus expressed in transrational languages of prayer and praise ("tongues"— glōssais). This was all in the form of "more" expanded spirit.

Reflections on the Bible and holy spirit

The dramatic experiences of intensified holy spirit reported in the Bible were the unusual and the most easily observable phenomena. While these still occur, they are not the norm.

Spirit, by whatever name, is at work in the mystical dimensions of all the religious and non-religious practices of the world. As an integral, evolution-oriented Christian, I look for expanded spirit consciousness in all Christian and non-Christian mystical practices. Theologian Bruce Epperly points out these exist "in Pentecostal speaking in tongues, in Reiki healing touch, in Quaker silence, in the hospitality of strangers, in dancing Sufis, and barrier-breaking acts of justice and shalom."

We can see spontaneous awakenings, gradual meditative awakenings, and other expressions in many different paths. In ICN, we find that Whole-Body-Mystical-Awakening, our basic meditative prayer practice, is a collective embodied awakening that brings new and deep dimensions to expanded consciousness.

I feel intensified, awakened consciousness when my body shakes, and also in silence when I experience bliss, waves of love, visionary images, transcendence, emptiness, and Oneness. I also am aware of this at times in the middle of the night, on my morning treadmill, and at other more "ordinary" times. Then I become aware of transcendence space even as I also observe finite space around me.

I have prayed with and observed transmission prayer for hundreds of people for the last fifty years. In my experience, only a small percentage have a dramatic, overwhelming, or especially defining experience when they ask to be "baptized in the Spirit."

Moving from the dramatic in the Bible to a more expansive, gentler, progressive, and integrated view of spirit as awakened consciousness opens us to see many varied manifestations. We begin to see similar expressions in other traditions that transmit this awakening, such as Hinduism, Sufism, some forms of Buddhism, and non-religious transmission which we explore in Part Four.

When we define the spirit as awakened consciousness, we can then see there are many avenues to it. A sudden transforming experience as we see in Acts. The slow work of contemplative prayer we see in mystics down through the ages. In the Enlightenment found in Eastern traditions. Some Eastern traditions transmit spirit-awakening similarly to what Jesus, Paul, and Peter did.

At ICN, we affirm all paths to authentic waking up. We have found the practice of WeSpace Whole-Body Mystical Awakening to be especially geared to the embodied transmission of awakened consciousness in the group collective energy field for those that follow the Jesus path.

Questions for reflection . . .

How have you understood and experienced holy spirit in the past?
What is the most compelling biblical case for you in this article for spirit as the life force and energy of consciousness so far?
What questions do you have about this new understanding?

All images are AI-generated unless otherwise noted.

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