Who Else Believes Spirit is Consciousness?
What, in the World, is Holy Spirit?
Part Three
What comes to your mind when you see, hear, or say the word "spirit"? Spirit personified as a shadowy, mystical presence? A vague, mysterious force in the universe? God at work everywhere? The third person of the Trinity?
What comes to my mind after considering this for several years is the amazing, still mysterious, single word: "consciousness." God's spirit as Consciousness Beyond Us, Beside Us, and Being Us. We are that divine consciousness, localized and encased in a human body.
Arrow # 10: Others speak of God and spirit as infinite consciousness
I hesitate to embrace a theological understanding of which I am its only proponent. It's not that I'm theologically timid, but I feel I owe it to my readers to show some communal validation from other mystics and theologians. Here are others who affirm God and the divine spirit as infinite awareness.
Fourth-century church leader Gregory of Nyssa, according to Eastern Orthodox theologian David Bentley Hart's interpretation, describes the divine life as "an eternal act of knowledge and love, in which the God who is infinite being is also an infinite act of consciousness."
Carl McColman is an internationally known author and teacher on mystical spirituality and contemplative living. He says, "It's very radical to say that God is Consciousness, or Consciousness is God. It's radical because it takes you to the root of things. Go beyond the root of your thoughts, your need to control your experience with your running internal commentary on it. Go to the root and then beyond the root. Let go of the thoughts. Free fall into unbounded silence. And then behold. You won't be alone."
Theosophist I. M. Oderberg says that Meister Eckhart sees the Godhead as "the all-permeating consciousness of the universe;" Meister Eckhart wrote of God as Consciousness in contemporary translation from the German: "God alone truly is, and . . . He is Consciousness, Only in God are being and Consciousness identical. Therefore only God calls things into being through Consciousness for only in Him are Consciousness and being identical."
Philosopher Joseph Politella (1910– 1975) writes, "The conception of the creation, cosmic and personal, of which Eckhart speaks sounds like a consciousness which, like the Logos of St. John, is "in the beginning in God and with God." In this light, we can read the words about Logos or Word in the first chapter of the Gospel of John this way:
In the beginning was Consciousness. And this Consciousness was with God and was God. What has come into being in Consciousness was life, and this life was the light of Consciousness of all people. John came to testify to the light. The true light of Consciousness shines in the deepest night, and the night did not overcome it. True awakened Consciousness, which enlightens everyone, was coming into the world. The Consciousness became flesh and lived among us, and we have seen his glory. (John 1:1-14)
Bede Griffiths was a British-born priest and Benedictine monk who lived in ashrams in South India and became a noted yogi. Griffiths was a prolific writer and part of the Christian Ashram Movement. In The Marriage of East and West, he wrote, "Every human being is a unique center of consciousness in the universal consciousness."
St Teresa of Avila talked in the Interior Castle about the seventh dwelling place of the spiritual marriage as a permanent state of union beyond rapture. Modern mystics understand this as Unity Consciousness.
God as Consciousness finds resonance in other ancient religions such as Hinduism. Noted scholar and author of over 30 books on mysticism, Yoga, Tantra, and Hinduism, Georg Feuerstein summarizes the Advaita realization, an ancient Hindu tradition of scriptural exegesis and religious practice centered in the concept of unity, as follows: "The manifold universe is, in truth, a Single Reality. There is only one Great Being, which the sages call Brahman, in which all the countless forms of existence reside. That Great Being is utter Consciousness, and It is the very Essence or Self (Atman) of all beings."
Nisargadatta Maharaj was an Indian guru of nondualism and the author of the spiritual classic I Am That. He wrote, "When I say 'I am,' I do not mean a separate entity with a body as its nucleus. I mean the totality of being, the ocean of Consciousness, the entire universe of all that is and knows."
My favorite Eastern Orthodox Christian theologian, David Bentley Hart, writes, "For to say that God is being, consciousness, and bliss is also to say that he is the one reality in which all our existence, knowledge, and love subsist, from which they come and to which they go, and that therefore he is somehow present in even our simplest experience of the world, and is approachable by way of a contemplative and moral refinement of that experience. That is to say, these three words are not only a metaphysical explanation of God, but also a phenomenological explanation of the human encounter with God."
Peter Russell is a leading thinker, futurist, and author on Consciousness and contemporary spirituality. In Consciousness as God, he says, "Unlike the God I rejected as a youth, God as the light of Consciousness neither conflicts with my scientific leanings nor does it run counter to my intuition and reason. This concept of God is not of a separate superior being, existing in some other realm, overlooking human affairs and loving or judging us according to our deeds. God is in each and every one of us, the most intimate and undeniable aspect of ourselves. God is the light of Consciousness that shines in every mind.
"Identifying God with the light of Consciousness brings new meaning and significance to many traditional descriptions of God. Whatever is taking place in my mind, whatever I may be thinking, believing, feeling, or sensing, the one thing I cannot doubt is Consciousness. Consciousness is my only absolute, unquestionable truth. If the faculty of Consciousness is God, then God is the truth."
Larry Dossey is a medical doctor, worldwide lecturer, and author of nine books on spirituality, health, and science. He says the prominent Nobel Prize winner in physics Erwin Schrödinger "painstakingly built a concept of a single mind, in which consciousness is transpersonal, universal, collective, and infinite in space and time, therefore immortal and eternal." He adds, "Scientists such as Schrödinger, Arthur Eddington, James Jeans, Kurt Gödel, Gregory Bateson, Bohn, and others all support a unified view of consciousness." Dossey calls infinite, universal Consciousness by the term "one mind" in his book One Mind. "The collective One Mind does not need to be tweeted or Facebooked into being. It already is— an overarching dimension of Consciousness of which we are already a part."
Noted Israeli physicist Gerald Schroeder in The Hidden Face of God: How Science Reveals the Ultimate Truth, says, "A single consciousness, an all-encompassing wisdom, pervades the universe. When we see through the camouflage haze that at times convinces us that only the material exists, when we touch that Consciousness, we know it. A joyful rush of emotion sweeps over the entire self. This emotional response— some might call it a religious experience— is reported in every culture, from every period. It tells us that we've come home. We've discovered the essence of being. . . . If we dared, we'd call this experience spiritual, even Godly. . . . The age-old theological view of the universe is that all existence is the manifestation of a transcendent wisdom, with a universal consciousness being its manifestation. If I substitute the word information for wisdom, theology begins to sound like quantum physics. Science itself has rediscovered the confluence between the physical and the spiritual."
Human beings have emerged from the evolutionary process awakened to be not only highly conscious but able to access expanded states of consciousness
Researcher, sociologist, futurist, and author of critically acclaimed books, Dennis Kingsley, says, "Neuroscience, quantum biology, and quantum physics are now beginning to converge to reveal that our bodies are not only biochemical systems but also sophisticated resonating quantum systems. These new discoveries show that a form of nonlocal connected Consciousness has a physical-scientific basis. Further, it demonstrates that certain spiritual or transcendental states of collective Oneness have a valid basis within the new scientific paradigm. I believe this universal or nonlocal Consciousness is infinite spirit, the mind or the Consciousness of God."
Finally, and most significantly, my friend Richard Rohr says holy spirit is consciousness (using traditional capitalization and "the" since he obviously didn't get my memo). He writes, "On one level, soul, consciousness, and the Holy Spirit can all be thought of as one and the same. That's what Jesus means when he speaks of "giving" us the Spirit or sharing his consciousness with us. " Rohr points out that "Mature believers eventually move toward a transpersonal notion of God as presence itself, consciousness itself, pure Being, the very ground of Being, the force field of the Holy Spirit."
Contemporary pioneers in exploring consciousness and its stages include integral's Ken Wilber, Susanne Cook-Greuter, Terri O'Fallon, as well as metamodernism's John Vervaeke and Brendan Graham Dempsey with his focus on spirituality.
The Three Faces of Spirit
The All-Seeing Loving Eye of Divine Spirit
Spirit Beyond Us as infinite Consciousness, accessed in expanded, transcendent states of awareness.
The Fiery Energy and Warming Personal Love of Spirit Beside Us
This is consciousness personified, accessed in deep prayer and awakened states of consciousness. This is the Intimate Face of God Beside Us, the perspective most often seen throughout the Bible and in common use today.
Embodied Conscious as Us in Ordinary Awareness and Expanded Awareness
Spirit Being Us is Consciousness As Us, the Inner Face of Spirit Being Us in two states. Ordinary, everyday mindfulness and expanded awareness are accessed in embodied meditative prayer such as Whole-Body-Mystical Awakening practice.
Consciousness in Three States
We can be conscious in ordinary, everyday mindfulness.
We can be conscious in expanded, awakened consciousness that allows us to see, hear, sense, and feel spiritual realities.
We can be conscious in expanded transcendent consciousness that allows us to go beyond forms to pure awareness, being aware of being aware.
Fifteen statements summarizing God's spirit as consciousness.
1. Spirit is the biblical word for both divine and human consciousness.
2. Spirit is the face of God that is pure awareness making itself conscious in humankind through the long process of evolution.
3. Infinite Consciousness created the universe, and it is necessary for things to go the way they have in order to bring about us— personal beings who can be conscious that they are conscious, aware that they are aware.
4. God, as the radiance of Consciousness, brings new meaning and significance to all traditional descriptions of God.
5. There is no separation between our mind and Infinite Consciousness, the Mind of God.
6. Spirit, as the universal Divine Light of Consciousness, shines in every mind and heart and reveals the Oneness of all reality.
7. Infinite Consciousness is eternal, intelligent, loving, all-knowing, and creative. It is present across all dimensions of space and time and beyond.
8. The face of God that is a personal being and personal consciousness created a transpersonal universe that could evolve into our being conscious of Infinite Consciousness — God, the Ultimate Source and Mystery.
9. You are not here to awaken your spirit consciousness. This awakening is to live your spirit's intention for this life. For the followers of Jesus, this intention is to embrace your own divine identity and Oneness with all creation.
10. You are localized Infinite Consciousness
11. The question "Is there a God?" is actually asking, "Is the universe conscious?"
12. I include secular meditators and consciousness practitioners as travelers on the evolutionary path, even if they do not think of consciousness in a spiritual framework. As a Christian, I find that Jesus and his life give exquisite depth and meaning to the realities that emerge through him.
13. When we become aware of being aware, we are resting in spirit.
14. How does spirit feel? It feels like being aware. It especially feels like expanded consciousness.
15. God's spirit breath awareness knows your name.
Does God really know your name?
In The Crossing, American novelist Cormac McCarthy wrote, "Deep in each person is the knowledge that something knows of their existence. Something knows, and cannot be fled nor hid from."
Is God conscious of you? We have said that God is not a super being. Rather, God is being itself. That's a rather abstract way to think about God. So here's a question to help take it out of the conceptual, intellectual realm. Is Being, which is not a being, ever conscious of us? We all want to be in touch with what is real. We want to see reality, especially Ultimate Reality or what we call the Infinite Face of God. Does the Ultimate Reality, Source, or Mystery know your name?
I understand that Jesus came to let us know that God does know our name. That's a major reason why I continue to be a follower of Jesus. Jesus vividly demonstrated that God does not love us only impersonally but also personally, just as his Abba loved him. Even more than just understanding, I can say, after years of transforming experience, I know that God loves you and me in an intimate and caring way.
When we wake up, we know that, yes, God knows our name!
In the final article of this four-part series we will explore the transmission of spirit-intensified awareness.
Questions for further reflection . . .
1. Did the number of others who see God's spirit as consciousness surprise you?
2. Did any of these others stand out to you? Which quote resonated the most?
3. Is your own description of spirit evolving?
All images are copyright free unless otherwise noted.