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"There is One only. You are that One...Each droplet of the ocean is totally individual from all others, yet they make one body of water. Each is the ocean. You are the ocean. Even in the depths, there are no levels...That which appears to be a diminishing of the Self is in reality a greater realization of the Self. The ocean has been dumped into one who says "I have been thrown into the sea."" This is from The Word of One, ed. Sharpe & Cooke, Tarnhelm Press, Lakemont, GA 1975. Good luck in finding a copy! Fortunately, it is available free online, and you can use it like a reference book, just looking up a major arcana when you come to it in the study of the New Tarot. Or you can print the whole thing out and read it as a single book. Only experts at symbolism will be able to make any sense out of it.
If there is One only, i.e., if divinity and the droplets of divinity that are our individual sparks of consciousness are all that truly exist, then what is nature? An illusion of some sort? Or Maya (the setting for a stage-play) as the Yogis say? Or is it as some medieval Christian mystics said, "Nature is a thought in the Mind of divinity?" Or are these various ways of saying the same thing? Perhaps it is the content of consciousness, placing nature in the soul, rather than the soul in nature. This is a radical thought for Western man.
We have long believed in the absolute reality of nature, while for the past 500 years, we have had difficulty believing in the reality of consciousness. It is merely a useless "ghost in the machine," which Western academics try to wish away, since they cannot explain it, and cannot explain it away. Empirical metaphysics gives us an alternative worldview, an alternate theory of reality.
If the Nameless One is the ultimate reality, capable of creating or destroying universes, then the One must be immortal. There is nothing outside of it to destroy it. This is the teaching of The Word of One. It is also a common finding among mystics, and even forms the "perennial philosophy" of Aldous Huxley.
Speaking of Aldous Huxley, he discovered the immanence of divinity in all things, with a little help from mescalin. What he saw was simply the glow of the divine light in flowers, crystals, trees, streams, everything. And I don't think he was deluded. This is my view too. I am a dualist. No, I am more than that, I am a triadist. I believe in the separate and independent reality of matter, mind and soul, where soul is the seat of consciousness as well as being a droplet of divinity. We are all gods, or at least droplets of divinity. In our innermost soul, which may be overlain with matter and mind, so that the divine purpose in each of us becomes lost and obscured. We cannot lose our souls. We ARE souls. But, as souls, we may become lost and it may take some effort to find our way and see our purpose and our power.
You don't think souls have power? Well, before we were people, we were prairies and bogs and oceans and lakes. Before that we were an infant Earth, bombarded by planetisimals. Before that we were stars, and before that galaxies. Did god create this universe? You created this universe, as god, with a small "g." Don't get carried away. It is the collective totality of all souls that is divinity. As I interpret the idea of ONE, it means the nameless one is the ocean and we are the ocean spray or a snowflake. From the ocean we came, and to it we will return. But in the meantime, minds and bodys are real too, just not eternal. And spiritual evolution involves all three, the physical world (technology and civilization and ecology), the mental world (as we develop the power to travel the stars by levitation and apports) and soul, as we see the divinity in all things, and as we embody the divine purpose in all our actions, an act of joy, an act of beauty. May you walk in beauty, and forever know joy.
Copyright © Dr.H 2001
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