Introduction
At the heart of every pure mysticism is the advaita or nondualist teaching* of “Oneness.”    Oneness is the road on which every true mystic treads as he traverses the path to spiritual enlightenment.  (The book The Foundation of Mysticism shown at the right is a wonderful resource for studying mystical Oneness; it is also a comprehensive presentation of the Infinite Way teachings of Joel S. Goldsmith. We highly recommend the book for ongoing study and reference.)

The Absolute Principle is One, however you name It — Truth, God, Yahweh, Allah, Spirit, Consciousness, the Ultimate Cause, the Infinite Invisible, the “Nothingness” from which everything arises, Divine or Infinite Intelligence, etc.  There is none else apart from It or other than It in all of existence.  It constitutes the totality of existence — the One that is the All, in all.

__________________
*As opposed to dualism:   (a) a doctrine that the universe is under the dominion of two opposing principles one of   which is good and the other evil, or   (b) a view of human beings as constituted of two irreducible elements (as   matter and spirit)   [Merriam-Webster]

---

 
Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God is one Lord: And thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thine heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy might.  
(Deuteronomy 6:4-5, KJV; emphasis supplied.)
 

And your God is One God; there is no god except He, The All-Merciful, The Ever-Merciful.   (Qur’an 2:163, Shakir; emphasis supplied.)
 

 

This One is the only thing there really is.  As such it is infinite, and it is absolute in its infinity! The One is also eternally UNmanifest.  It is the essence, character, quality, nature, law, and activity of every form.  All forms or effects (anything that can be objectified as a thing in the human mind by our awareness) are expressions or manifestations of the One.

. . . Just as the glass is greater than the form it takes and can be molded into a tumbler, a sauce-dish, or a pepper shaker, with the glass always retaining the quality, essence, character and nature of whatever form it takes, so is God the nature, essence, activity, and the law unto every form, including man, animal, plant, and mineral.
(Joel S. Goldsmith, from Realization of Oneness, Chapter: “Pure Being,” p. 7)

 

The totality of all forms and effects in this and in any other universe(s) reflects the embodiment of all that this One is and can be.  Forms may be visible or invisible to our five bodily senses, that is, forms may or may not be perceptible by our senses.  But all forms are “manifest” and, in this regard, are finite, owing their existence to the One as their common source.

[Acknowledgment: Thanks to haisch (Bernard Haisch, author of The God Theory) for publishing his video above on YouTube.]

 
 
Oneness is a “Nothingness,” Paradoxically Speaking
There is a strange paradox in the mystical teaching of Oneness: Oneness necessarily connotes nothingness. To be the All in all, this Oneness cannot be a thing in the manifest world of forms. It would become separate and apart from all other things. It would not be true to its nature of oneness. Hence, it has to be no particular thing, a no-thing. Here is its paradox: It exists as no-thing in a state of nothingness.

Paradox and mystery are aspects of Oneness which Truth seekers usually become familiar with early on in their spiritual journey, in almost the same time and manner that they come to experience Oneness whether as an inner realization of Truth or as a mystical experience beyond words and ideas.  No one at home, at school or in church ever explained those two concepts to me: paradox and mystery.  I was told to simply believe and have faith in a God out there.  

When I started to have mystical experiences, I began to grow into the understanding of paradox and mystery. The actual experience unlocked the door to deep spiritual understanding and to my “withinness.”  No wonder Joel Goldsmith was insistent and emphatic that a student show work hard toward having that initial experience of God. The God-experience hooks you in and draws you deeper and deeper into its divine mystery.

The experience of Oneness unlocks the door to deep spiritual understanding and to our “withinness.”

Listen to writer and teacher Alan Watts talk about nothingness in his video below.

[Acknowledgment: Thanks to markwatts02 for publishing the video above of Alan Watts on YouTube.com.]

 
 
Only One Self
This Oneness is indivisible and so is Its presence.  This means that you, your Self — that divine center of Beingness within which is your true Selfhood (not the ego self of your human nature) — are one with It, in It, as the living expression of It.  You are one with It now, you have always been one with It, and you will always be one with It forever.

You are not just connected to It nor are you a mere part of It like a drop of water is to the ocean (as some other teachings and their teachers erroneously proclaim), for that would make It divisible. Many pseudo-mystical teachings within the so-called New Age circle or movement, are misleading spiritual seekers by teaching that one has to connect or re-connect with God, or that one has to become God.  Such teachings imply that there is a “you here” and a “God there” that need connecting — duality arising from a human sense of separation from God.  An individual cannot connect or re-connect with God because the individual is always one with God: We are never unconnected or disconnected from God except in our human sense of separation from God, by believing, thinking and feeling that we have an existence that is separate and apart from God or by entertaining the notion of duality vis-a-vis our being and God’s being.

By the same token, we cannot become God or become more of God than we already are.  It would be foolish and an exercise in futility in the light of our existing oneness with God. It is like telling me to become Marc or to become more of Marc, when I already am Marc in my humanness.  What more of Marc am I not humanly, or how much more of Marc could I become humanly than I already am now?

In a similar vein, you and I do not have a lower self and a Higher Self. That would be duality, too. There is only one Self, and you are It even as I am It. And, all that It is, you are and I am, we already are. There is only one being and that is God-being.

There is only one being and that is God-being.  There is only one Self, and you are It:  And all that It is, you are.

 
I and the Father are one.   (Yeshua, The Gospel according to John 10:30, NASB; emphasis supplied.)
 

I am the Self, O Gudekesa, seated in the hearts of all creatures.   I am the beginning, the middle, and the end of all beings.   (Krishna, Bhagavad Gita; emphasis supplied.)

 
 
Absolutely No Separation from God
Your oneness with God is absolute such that nothing can ever separate you from God.

Where can I go from Your Spirit? Or where can I flee from Your presence?
If I ascend into heaven, You are there; If I make my bed in hell, behold, You are there. (Psalms 139:7-8, NKJV)

 

And I am convinced that nothing can ever separate us from his love.  Death can’t, and life can’t.  The angels can’t, and the demons can’t. Our fears for today, our worries about tomorrow, and even the powers of hell can’t keep God’s love away.  Whether we are high above the sky or in the deepest ocean, nothing in all creation will ever be able to separate us from the love of God that is revealed in Christ Jesus our Lord.  
(St. Paul’s Letter to the Romans 8:38-39, NLT; emphasis supplied.)

 
 
Absolutely nothing — I repeat,
absolutely NOTHING — separates you from God.

 
The life you live is God’s life — perfect, infinite, good in all aspects, whole, complete, and fulfilled.  The life essence of The Infinite animates you and constitutes your very being.

Then the Lord God formed the man out of the dust from the ground and breathed the breath of life into his nostrils, and the man became a living being.
(Genesis 2:7, HCSB; emphasis supplied.)

 

 

Many people lose the way because they think ‘I’ lived as the man Jesus and as nobody else, not realizing that ‘I’ lives as you and ‘I’ lives as me, and that ‘I’ is the true identity of every individual.  There is only one ‘I’, and we shall someday discover that that ‘I’ is your being and my being and that It is ours in order that we might have life and that we might have it more abundantly.
(Joel S. Goldsmith; emphasis supplied.)

 

The nature of man, then, is the nature of God expressed individually, and this man, therefore, must be the image and likeness of God, the showing forth of God. For man to be holy, God must be holy; for man to love his enemies, God must have no other feeling than love; for man to be forgiving, God must express no condemnation, no judgment, no punishment.

. . . The goodness that is in God is innate in the goodness of His creation.

But if we claim that God is wholly good, that still has no effect on our life as long as we are separate and apart from God. God may be wholly good, but we do not share in that goodness until we can perceive our oneness with God as heir of God and joint-heir to all the heavenly riches, and accept the promise, “Son . . . all that I have is thine.” Unless we can see that oneness, it will be like believing that Jesus was wholly good, that he was the son of God, but that we are not. . . .

But we are not something separate and apart from God. “I and my Father are one,” and in that relationship of oneness the perfection of God is our perfection, and God’s freedom from the capacity to sin or to suffer disease, lack or limitation is also our freedom. Whatever goodness is being made manifest through us is God’s goodness; whatever immortality is the immortality; of God; whatever of love or of justice is the love or the justice of God; whatever of intelligence is God’s.
(Joel S. Goldsmith, from Realization of Oneness, p. 8; emphasis supplied.)

 

As Its individuation in you, God is intimately the very life of you (as well as that of every other individual human being) because there cannot be a life existing separately and apart from God.  Underlying this intimacy with God is your oneness with God, your identity in God.   For this reason, you must learn to genuinely honor and love your Self first and foremost.

[Acknowledgment: Thanks to worldofoneness for the YouTube video above featuring Sri Bhagavan.]

As a further result of our oneness in God, we are all truly brothers, forming one common family in God.  This is the basis for the brotherhood of all mankind.

 
 
Duality in Human Consciousness
If you are not experiencing the divine nature of your life, it is because of a sense of separation from God which you entertain in your dualistic human state of consciousness. There is actually no separation from God.  This sense of separation from God is illusory, existing only as a perception — a notion — in the mind, arising out of the material sense of life and reality which you humanly entertain at this physical plane of existence and life experience.

The pressure of this world is a sense of separation.  Divide and conquer is the way of the world.  But in spiritual oneness, in spiritual union, there is strength.  In our union with God, not in the union of men and women but in our union with God, is the source, the supply, and the infinite nature of our good.
(Joel S. Goldsmith; emphasis supplied.) 

The duality in human consciousness also fosters the belief in two opposite or contradictory powers held by the human mind.  This belief in two powers perpetuates a state of “dividedness” in the mind, further preventing you from realizing the Truth of Oneness.  It keeps you bound to the human condition and subject to the suffering and misery that go with it.

Now just as it is possible to hypnotize you into believing that there are snakes in the room, so is it possible to hypnotize you into believing that there is a selfhood other than God in any place where you happen to be.  As soon as you have been hypnotized into believing in a selfhood apart from God, you then logically accept all the beliefs regarding this selfhood: birth, growth, maturity, and ultimately death. There is only one way to be rid of the human picture, and that is to understand that there is no person and there is no selfhood other than God in the room or in any other place. But the hypnotized person will at once counter with, “How can you say that there is only God in the room?” And the answer is simple: there is only one Life, and that Life is God; there is only one Soul, and that Soul is God; there is only one Spirit; there is only one Law; there is only one creative Principle: God. What then can be present except God? Nothing!

The moment you see God and, you are hypnotized. The moment you see a mortal, material world, you are hypnotized; and from then on, there is no possible way to get rid of the appearance. That is the reason that even if you kill the snake over there in the flowerpot, two more will rise up to take its place. That is why with all the advances made in materia medica everybody still dies because everybody who is born must die. They do and they will. At best they may live a few more years, but that is all. People still die of pneumonia; people still die of tuberculosis; they still die of cancer; they still die of heart failure, and were a cure found for these something else would immediately replace them.
(Joel S. Goldsmith, from Realization of Oneness, pp. 59-60; emphasis supplied.)

 
Admittedly it is very difficult to break free from this human belief in two powers.  Many people, including spiritual seekers and even well-meaning teachers of Oneness, fall prey to the duality fostered by the physical senses and the intellect mind.  It taints their vision of life and the world, and, failing to realize the purity and integrity of God’s mystical oneness, they unwittingly misdirect and funnel their mental energies into fueling the mass or collective human consciousness of the world: They end up reinforcing and perpetuating the very human condition they seek to change in the outer world.  They do not realize that they are adding more life and staying-power to the conditioned human mind, which in turn continues the misery of the human condition.  They are mentally operating under erroneous spiritual paradigms that can only be counterproductive or destructive in the final analysis, because the conditioned mind, being steeped in error, does not have a way of rectifying itself except by the de-conditioning of the mind, which only illumined consciousness — a consciousness truly awakened to Truth or Oneness — is capable of doing.

 

Our belief in duality binds us to the human condition and to all its ills.

 

No man can serve two masters: for either he will hate the one, and love the other; or else he will hold to the one, and despise the other.  Ye cannot serve God and mammon.
(Yeshua, The Gospel According to Matthew 6:24, KJV; emphasis supplied.)

 

 
You cannot embrace the Truth of Oneness (God) and, at the same time, pander to the material sense of reality (mammon), i.e., the sense of separation from God and the human belief in two powers.  Materialism as a belief system is a myth.

Throughout our known human civilization, humanity has lived and functioned on the basis of a human sense of separation from God and under the dualistic belief of two powers: good and evil, moral and immoral, sick and healthy, rich and poor, etc.  As a result, our human civilization has never really entered into an era of lasting peace among men and total harmony with nature. At best, we experience only brief periods of seeming peace between wars.  It is time we heeded the Master Yeshua’s wisdom teaching: “No man can serve two masters: for either he will hate the one, and love the other; or else he will hold to the one, and despise the other.  Ye cannot serve God and mammon.”  

If we are to see and experience the enlightenment of our species and our planet, it is time that we learn from the errors of a past which has done nothing but perpetuate the human state of consciousness. We have to cease insisting on and persisting with paradigms and belief systems that do not work and will never work for us due to their inherent flaws and shortcomings.  As Albert Einstein once said: Insanity is when you keep on repeating the same thing over and over again while expecting different results.  Our human civilization is indeed insane because we keep repeating the same mistakes or errors in consciousness while expecting to experience different results in the hope of creating a truly better world.  If we are to change our world, we must begin with the inner change or shift in our state of consciousness, both individually and collectively.

Human civilization is insane because we keep expecting to create a truly better world and life for ourselves, yet, at the same time, we continue functioning with and laboring under the same self-limiting, self-defeating human state of consciousness. We thereby keep repeating the same mistakes in our world and in our relations with one another over and over again.

[Acknowledgment: Thanks to globaloneness for publishing the video above of Fr. Thomas Keating on YouTube.com.]

 
 
Awakening to Mystical Oneness
When you awaken to Oneness and personally experience the absolute reality that God is within you as your true Self, you will see through the illusoriness of the sense of separation and discern the error in the belief in two powers.  This spiritual awakening to the Truth of Oneness is what mystics refer to as enlightenment or spiritual illumination.

But I, when I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all men to myself.
(Yeshua, The Gospel According to John 12:32, NIV)
 

[Acknowledgment: Thanks to worldofoneness for the YouTube video above featuring Sri Bhagavan.]

 
The book pictured at the left, Awakening Mystical Consciousness by Joel S. Goldsmith, is a good study reference for awakening mystical consciousness in you. I recommend it to all serious students of mysticism and the mystical life.

Awaken to Oneness and take flight like a soaring eagle in what will be your Ascension. Ascension is transcendence over the human condition, transcendence over the illusoriness of a human sense of reality, transcendence over the sense of duality and the sense of separation from God. It is transcendence over our humanness — the human, personal sense of self.

The grace of the Ascension enables us to perceive the irresistible power of the Spirit transforming everything into Christ despite any and all appearances to the contrary.   In the misery of the ghetto, the battlefield, the concentration camp; in the family torn by dissension; in the loneliness of the orphanage, old-age home, or hospital ward — whatever we see that seems to be disintegrating into grosser forms of evil — the light of the Ascension is burning with irresistible power.   This is one of the greatest intuitions of faith.    This faith finds Christ not only in the beauty of nature, art, human friendship and the service of others, but also in the malice and injustice of people or institutions, and in the inexplicable suffering of the innocent.   Even there it finds the same infinite love expressing the hunger of God for humanity, a hunger that he intends to satisfy.
(Fr. Thomas Keating, OCSO, The Mystery of Christ; emphasis supplied.) 

 
 
The True Message of Jesus
Here is a sermon by Episcopal Bishop John Shelby Spong given at Renaissance Unity on the true message of Jesus. He echoes the sentiment that nothing — absolutely NOTHING — separates you from God’s love.  Even if you kill the love of God, he says, the love of God still loves you.

 
Here is another video of Bishop Spong. It is an excerpt from his lecture “Jesus for the Non-Religious” where Bishop Spong discusses what it means to follow Jesus.

[Acknowledgments: To simpleutahboi and to livingthequestions for publishing the videos on YouTube.com.]

What a wonderful message he gives us!

 

 

Yeshua (Hebrew: יֵשׁוּעַ) or Jesus (Greek: Ἰησοῦς Latin: Iēsous) of Nazareth,
Jewish Rabbi, Mystic and Healer,
Who Realized The Christ or The Messiah

 
“I am not alone, because the Father is with Me.  I have told you these things so that in Me you may have peace.  You will have suffering in this world.  Be courageous!  I have conquered the world.”
(Yeshua, The Gospel According
to John 16:32-33, HCSB)

 

________________________________________________________________
What do you wish to do next on the path?

• Let me begin the journey.
• Take me back to The Mystical Life.
• Feed my soul.
• Let me start all over.