THE THIRD UNIVERSAL TRUTH

What’s the connection between your hat and an ant in the Amazon jungle? For centuries, in our techno-cultures, such an idea has seemed absurd.

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Not any more.

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I once saw a magazine picture of a Papua New Guinean tribesman, with loincloth, feathers in his hair, bones around his neck. His eyes were sparkling, and the words attributed to him were, “We are one person.” For centuries, that idea has also seemed absurd.

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Not any more. We’re entering the age when such understanding will be as natural as breathing.

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The third universal truth is that all things—seen and unseen—are connected. All things are different faces of Consciousness. The Field, the Great Spirit, the Source, the Tao, the

One: these are all names for the same thing. The universe is consciousness: an ocean in motion, a river of eddies, an infinite field of creative works in which the art is the artist, and the artist is the art. Consciousness, longing to experience itself, imagines us into existence, individualized, so that we can interact as if we were separate. What we create in that experience is also consciousness, and whatever object you can name—a mountain, a mouse, a fish or a fowl, a blade of grass or a puff of air—all of it is consciousness.

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Many of us struggle just with the idea that all humans are one being. But try this:

Imagine that you are a tiny island in the sea. Everything above the water is your body and conscious mind. But the island also stretches out under the water, further and further under the surface into the depths of the powerful subconscious, until it levels off. Then in every direction it rises again, towards other islands above the surface. We look at other islands and think we are separate. But we are One. All things are One. All things are Consciousness expressing itself.

 

Here’s an ancient story from the East:

     Two monks argue over a flag waving in the wind. One says ‘It’s the flag that is moving.’  And the other says, ‘It’s the wind that is moving.’ So they put the problem to their teacher.
     ‘You are both wrong,’ the teacher says. ‘It’s only consciousness that is moving.’

 

Imagine this (or really try it!):

Stretch a rope between two fixed objects—tight enough to thrum when you pluck it.  On each pluck, a pulse flashes down the line, bounces off the far end and dies on the way back. If I ask you what it was that went down the line, you’re likely to answer that it was a pulse, or a wave. Fine. Now, attach a peg somewhere on the line and pluck again. How does the peg move?

Sideways, of course. Perhaps only a twitch.

Now, lose the peg—it was only a marker—and ask yourself how every particle of rope moves as the pulse races through. Yes, sideways.

Is the wave the same thing as the rope?

“Of course not,” you’re likely to answer. “The wave is energy. It travels in the rope and moves the rope sideways.”

Where did that energy come from?

“I put it there when I plucked it.”

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Exactly. So, energy arrives from somewhere else, picks up the rope and makes a wave shape. As the wave travels, it takes up bits of rope at the front end, replacing those dropping out the back. And we’ve not said anything to offend a traditional scientist.

 

Okay so far?

Now, instead of a peg on a rope, imagine a dinghy in open water. As a long, slow wave passes through, the dinghy goes up and down. And so do the water particles. The original energy arrives courtesy of the wind, making a wave shape. The wave takes up bits of water at the front end and replaces those dropping out the back. Again, nothing to bother a scientist.

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Let’s get to the really significant part. Here are more facts accepted by traditional science.

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Your stomach lining is replaced every four days, your skin every month, your skeleton every three months. At least ninety-eight per cent of the atoms of your body are replaced every year. You have a completely new physical body at least once every two years—including your brain cells. As the energy travels in you, it picks up bits of earth—food and water—to replace those you excrete.

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The original energy comes from… where exactly?

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Now you’re getting the picture.

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Our essence is not our bodies. We are the energy of consciousness, wearing our bodies like glove puppets, continuously discarding old parts of the puppet and replacing them with new until we withdraw the hands and move on.

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Nonsense, says traditional science, there’s no ghost in the machine. The universe is made of dead things called atoms and, therefore, so are we. It’s like a complex mechanical toy, our paths dictated by the tiny atomic interactions that make up our bodies and environment. In other words, says traditional science, the future is fixed by the past. Michelangelo’s David, Beethoven’s Fifth, Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet, were supposedly all created by blind mechanical process.

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That rigid view has lost steam lately. Modern science, looking for the fundamental building blocks of the universe, has made an astonishing discovery. The behaviour and even the existence of atomic particles is somehow dependent on the mind and the intent of the scientist doing the experiment! Yes, you read that correctly. Some scientists are starting to break ranks and say that this is the first scientific sighting of the universal field of consciousness.

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Not only is there a ghost in the machine, the ghost makes and is the machine. The fundamental building block of the universe is not a boson (sub atomic particle), it’s thought.

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Thought—especially passionate thought—is the cutting tool of consciousness. It acts on the great field like a sculptor’s chisel on a rock which contains all possible shapes. The sculptures move around, and shift in and out of existence according to the rhythms of thought. Scientists say energy can be neither created nor destroyed, it can only change its form. But when they recognize the universal consciousness, they will rewrite that law like this: consciousness can be neither created nor destroyed, it can only change the form of its expression.

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Modern physics is slowly waking to find itself in bed with spiritual thought.

Here’s a question. If we humans turn over a new physical body every two years, how do we explain, for example, a cancer tumour that lasts five years?

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It’s just like the story of King Alfred’s axe, the one that survived for centuries with two new heads and three new handles along the way. The consciousness that formed the tumour keeps replacing those cells, like a mafia family that lasts longer than the lifetime of any of its members. Old science sees DNA as original cause, but DNA is the instruction code, not the instructor. The instructor is consciousness. Which comes first, the happiness or the smile? The sadness or the tears? (For more on how we create our lives, you’ll need to go to the article on the first universal truth here.)

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I can’t claim to be speaking logically. Logic is dispassionate; whereas the universe is a giant passion, and nothing exists that is not an expression of that passion. Logic is a cold line with no branches; whereas the universe is a multitude of cross-connections. The human brain alone has more cross-connections between its neurons than there are grains of sand in all of the beaches of the earth, combined. Einstein understood that. He said that any proposition arrived at by purely logical means is devoid of reality.

 

Think of a word—say, axe—and ask yourself what it means.

Your answer might be, “Something you use to split wood.”

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But what does use mean? What does split mean? What is wood? Each word is defined by all words. Each thought by all thoughts. Each thing by all things. The poet William Blake wrote it in these lines:

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     To see the world in a grain of sand,
     And a heaven in a wild flower,
     Hold infinity in the palm of your hand,
     And eternity in an hour.

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All things are so utterly connected that they are of each other. What is elsewhere has presence here, and if it does not have presence here, it is nowhere. All things are so intimately One, that what you do unto others is precisely what is done unto you. Even if you were to travel in a spaceship further than the most distant galaxy, you cannot be disconnected from Consciousness. Even if you were to inflict deeds too terrible for the imagination on others, you cannot be disconnected from Consciousness.

 

We are already home. We need only remove our blindfolds to see it.