3 Pillars of Conscious Spiritual Living
Photo by Praveen Thirumurugan
1. God is All and God is Good.
This means there is no evil.
In 9 1/2 Half Mystics, “the story is told of some students who came to visit a nineteenth-century Hasidic master in the hope that he could explain the enigma of evil in a world created by a good God…
"‘How, Reb Zusya, do you explain evil?’ the students asked.
"‘What evil?’ said the rabbi with wide, wondering eyes...”
“The point,” says the author, “is that Zusya had tasted a level of reality where good and evil lost the distinctions so apparent to surface vision.
“Zusya was a saint, a man so flooded by the yesh [existence or presence] of an inner reality as to be incapable of feeling [or seeing] evil.”¹
We often hear it said that God creates evil and sends suffering. After all, isn’t God the only creator?
The Lubavitcher Rebbe, Menachem Mendel Schneerson, offers an enlightened view when he says:
Evil does not descend from above.
The transmission from above is pure and coherent.
Evil is distortion and noise, an artifact of our reception.
If we would only adjust our reception devices,—
our attitude and our ability to receive—
the signal would become clear.
This is all of life—adjusting reception.²
In short, then, we can say as the Rebbe does:
When life is full of noise,
adjust your reception!³
But how? Richard Booker, a spiritual healing practitioner in the mid 20th century, reveals precisely how. He says,
Going through to the absolute
is the way to handle every appearance of
evil, limitation, [or suffering]...
Infinite good, appearing infinitely,
is the remedy for every ill.⁴
His instruction to go “through to the absolute” is what Vedic sage Maharishi Mahesh Yogi calls transcendental prayer. Maharishi explains that “prayer on the verbal level has its effectiveness; prayer on the mental level is more effective; prayer from the transcendental area of life has maximum effectiveness.”⁵ This is because, as Maharishi says:
[In transcendental prayer]
thought has a frictionless flow—
it ‘travels’ instantly throughout Nature…
[Transcendental prayer]
is instantly heard
and instantly responded [to]…⁶
Teacher and practitioner of Non-duality, Rupert Spira, agrees when he says:
If you want relief
from your suffering
you have to go back
deeply into yourself
to find that place that
is inherently free of suffering.⁷
The Hasidic Masters say,
In such [pure] prayer,
you may come to transcend time…
There all things are as one;
Distinctions between [opposites]
like ‘life’ and ‘death,’ ‘land’ and ‘sea,’
have lost their meaning.
[This can’t] happen
[when] you are bound
to the distinctions
between good and evil…⁸
As Booker writes,
So we’re not dealing with evil forces;
we’re dealing with a false point of view,
assuming the center of individual gravity
to be outside our [divine] Self.⁹
It’s said that ‘to know the Truth, is to be the Truth’ and that ‘Truth will set you free.’ An acquaintance of mine named Bob had an experience many years ago that illustrates this.
In New York City, as he walked from the Chrysler Building to the lower East side, two men approached. They said, “Give us a dollar.” He said, “Sorry, I don’t have any money with me.”
Here he was dressed in a nice suit, a crisp blue shirt, wearing a vest—and he was carrying a leather briefcase, but he had no money!? Sure! They didn’t believe him for an instant.
They followed him all the while making fun of his ‘big blue belly.’ He says he’s slender now, but then he was not so in shape.
At some point, one guy pulls a knife and sticks it next to Bob’s big blue belly, and says, “Give me your money.”
At that moment, a cop car approached, but in an instant Bob calculated that if he called out to them, the guy with the knife might panic and stab him. It came to him to rely on what he knew to be absolutely true.
Truth flew forth in his thought: “This is the Kingdom of God; Heaven is here right now; These men are divine ideas in the Mind of God, and so am I.”
Apparently he verbalized some of this because the guy with the knife said, “Are you a psychologist?”
“No,” he answered, “I’m a Christian Scientist.”
At that point, the one with the knife began to recite some words from Mary Baker Eddy, the church’s founder. But he didn’t have the words quite right, so Bob said, “Let’s say it together.”
As they began, the other man rolled his eyes and began spinning round and round in circles while shouting four-letter words.
While he was distracted in his own world, Bob asked the guy with the knife where he had learned that religious text.
He said, “I learned it in prison!”
Bob says, “Once things settled down, I gave them each a dollar—big money in 1972—and some Christian Science literature. I briefly thought, ‘Whew—I'm still alive! I'll walk another way tomorrow.’”
But then I realized, “I was feeling no fear. So, I introduced myself and said, ‘Well, I walk his way every day. I hope to see y’all again!”’ He says, “I actually never did, but I like to think of the incident as a healing for us all.”
Bob had another, similar experience. After an LBGTQ+ church gathering in New York, he was walking a friend home on 14th Street, in a seedy area with a lot of traffic. Four teenage boys, probably about 19, he says, approached and began to taunt them:
“Look at these fags! They have AIDS! Let’s get rid of them!”
Bob says, “My friend and I began to speak Truth out loud—whatever zoomed forth in thought. Things like, ‘This is now the Kingdom of God. God is in charge. These boys are divine ideas.”
With this, the boys pivoted and reversed course, banging on the metal bars of buildings as they left. They couldn’t handle it! It was just like when light destroys darkness—simply by being light.
When will evil cease its apparent existence?
In her book There Is Nothing But God, Vivian May Williams writes, “Evil ceases…in direct proportion that one ceases to believe in it.
As long as you believe in evil,
you will have to contend with it.¹⁰
“Evil is a lie about good. If you wish to experience constant peace and happiness, you must dispel the lie or false cause (evil) from your consciousness.”
Photo by Tobias Polinder
2. God, Spirit is the All of all.
It follows, then, that there is no matter.
Matter is a way of seeing,
not something that is seen.¹¹
— Rupert Spira
Tzvi Freeman points out that:
There is no biblical word for…
‘matter’ or ‘stuff.’
In the Hebrew Bible,
there seems to be no concept of stuff
being made of anything at all.¹²
Are we surprised, then, to learn that the Christian Scriptures say, in a ripened translation:
[Consciousness] is the substance
of things hoped for,
the evidence of things not seen.¹³
— Hebrews 11:1
Spira explains it this way:
Nobody has ever, could ever,
or will ever find anything
outside consciousness
because all experience appears
in consciousness,
is known by consciousness,
and is made of consciousness.¹⁴
This is why Maharishi teaches that:
[Reality] is one unbounded ocean
of consciousness in motion.¹⁵
With regard to matter, Kabbalah teaches that
Everything in the world above
has its analogue in the world below.¹⁶
Where Plato makes “a sharp distinction between the physical and spiritual, the Kabbalists insist on an absolute unity. The so-called external world [is], for the Kabbalist, simply a thickened extension of the more important inner reality, like the shell on a [coconut]...”¹⁷
“[Abraham Joshua] Heschel says,
[Everything in this world is]
the jutting edge of what [is] deeply hidden.¹⁸
“Judaism treats the phenomenal world as an allusion, real in itself but, like the visible surface of an iceberg, only part of a greater reality.”
I love how Professor Daniel Matt says it:
God is not somewhere else
hidden from us.
God is right here,
hidden from us.¹⁹
The Rebbe is very clear when he says:
There are not two forms of matter,
the physical and the spiritual.
Rather, to each thing there are two faces,
the more tangible and the more abstract.
Our senses and perception grasp
that which is tangible, and we call it ‘physical.’
One's mind's eye is able to grasp
the more abstract, each according to one’s level
[of perception, that is, one’s individual perspective].²⁰
Martha Wilcox, a Christian Science teacher in the 20th century, says it this way:
It is very important to know
that there are not two groups of creation,
but that all things are spiritual.
…the concrete, visible expression
of these realities is the spiritual fact
of reality itself,
even though these visible forms
appear as human sight, food,
home, money, or a friend.²¹
To be clear, spiritual living does not ask us to abandon things. But it does require that we discard our material view of them. Wilcox says:
When rightly viewed,
all natural things,
from the sand on the seashore
to the stars in the heavens,
are formations of Spirit and are spiritual.
So also is everything, from a pin to a palace—
including houses and lands and money—
when they are correctly understood.²²
Sufi master Ibn Arabi reminds us that:
There is no being but Being.²³
— Ibn Arabi
And Rumi writes:
I know nothing of two worlds—
All I know is the One—
I seek only One,
I know only One,
I find only One,
And I sing of only One.²⁴
— Rumi
To illustrate, here’s a healing account from Kate Buck, a spiritual healing practitioner in the early 20th century. She writes, “A man came simply asking to know more of God and his individual relationship to God.
“The physical was not mentioned, and that—as every practitioner knows—is extremely rare. Yet on his face was an angry, ugly-looking growth, that had been there for years and about which he was very sensitive.
“Still, he did not refer to it. I wish I could say I did not see that thing—I cannot honestly say that, but I can say that I lost sight of it. No treatment was asked, and no treatment was given. We spent two hours talking about God and [divine manifestation]...to realize that individual being is the one Being individualized.
“We both felt the inspiration and uplift of that time of earnest communication with God…
“In the morning, his wife telephoned, saying that quite early she had heard him cry out, and when she ran to see what the trouble was, he simply said, ‘Look at me.’ And there was nothing on his face.
“That minute I saw the way of true healing. The physical [picture] was forgotten, and I certainly did not do anything. We cannot admit the existence of something and then try to destroy it. But when we realize, even in a degree, the allness [and perfection] of God and [our] oneness with [God], there is nothing to heal.”²⁵
What will happen to the material world and the material person when we awaken to the truth of being?
Williams answers. She says, “The very same thing that happened to the flat earth when Columbus proved the earth to be a sphere. The people ceased believing in a lie, and the flat earth vanished into its native nothingness, for it never existed.
“When individuals refuse to believe in a material world and a material person, sin, disease, and death will vanish like the flat earth. The lie about [materiality] is the basis of all inharmony.”²⁶
Photo by Randy Fath
3. There is only one God, only one Self.
This means there is no ‘other,’ and there is no ‘there.’
In his book, Consciousness Is All There Is, Dr. Tony Nader writes plainly,
In consciousness, there is no other.²⁷
Williams elaborates on this when she says:
Every other spiritual being
is an individualization of your Self;
therefore, there is no other…²⁸
— Vivian May Williams
Booker explains one reason why this understanding is important:
True brotherhood and sisterhood are found
when we have no ‘otherhood.’²⁹
The story of a Buddhist woman who was walking by herself on the beach when a man suddenly pulled her into the bushes serves as an illustration of this.
She remained calm and centered, even as he was about to assault her. She was inspired by the ‘still small voice’ to ask about his mother. And she calmly spoke to him of God’s love for him and of how both he and she were created from the very same essence of divine Love. She perceived his divinity.
He became calm. Then he released her. Surprisingly, she convinced him to turn himself in and get help. She then walked him to the police station, where he was booked. Interestingly, there were already outstanding warrants for his arrest.
After his prosecution and sentencing, she kept in touch with him in prison, and they were even friends for awhile after he was released.
Margaret Laird was a Metaphysical Science teacher and spiritual healer in the 20th century. With regard to “others” she writes,
Love is the Science,
the discernment…in which
there is no “you,” no “other,”
no “there,” no “together;”
there is only I as Mind—
the conscious infinitude of existence.³⁰
In Transcendental Judaism, author David Lieberman nails it when he says,
When I touch the transcendent…
I am not only experiencing my own essence;
I am also experiencing yours.
They are not two different essences
that happen to be the same,
they are the One Essence…
…recognize that at the deepest level,
you and your neighbor are the One Self.³¹
Some may ask, “If there is no ‘other,’ who are all these ‘others’ in my world?” Consider that in mathematics, there is only one number seven, yet the number seven appears with many shapes, sizes, colors, uses, etc. Not to mention that we never run out of the number seven! That’s because infinite Being, which includes the perfect, eternal number seven, is infinitely manifest.
Perhaps you have a partner with whom you share a deep and abiding love. Quite possibly there are moments in your relationship when personal boundaries drop away and even vanish. This is because true Love is the recognition of our one infinite Being.
Some may fear personal annihilation. But the only thing we ever lose are the limitations and boundaries of the apparently separate self.
The ‘annihilation’
of the limited individual self…
must not be understood as a negative experience…
The self …drowns in its love
to the point that it has
no more feeling of itself or even of its love.
The lover arrives at a station in which he says:
‘I am my beloved. My beloved is I.’³²
Rumi inspires with these words:
Beyond our ideas of right-doing
and wrong-doing, there is a field.
I'll meet you there.
When the soul lies down in that grass,
the world is too full to talk about.
Ideas, language, even the phrase 'each other'
doesn't make sense any more.³³
— Rumi
Our mission
is to inwardly, knowingly,
and spontaneously exchange
the fable of ‘evil,’
the fable of ‘matter,’
and the fable of ‘other’
for the fact of eternal,
divine At-ONE-ment.
Just where and when are we to do this knowing that God, Spirit, is the only presence, power, and consciousness? That there is no evil, no matter, no other?
In Isaiah, the Lord says :
At the right time, I will hear your prayers.
On the day of salvation, I will help you.
Isaiah 49:8 ICB
What’s the ‘right time?” The Christian Scriptures comment on this verse from Isaiah and say,
I tell you that the “right time” is now.
The “day of salvation” is now.³⁴
— II Corinthians 6:2 ERV
The truth is, there's no better time to practice spiritual vision than right now. It’s the acknowledgement—the knowing—of Truth that sets us free. It’s not the words, whether they be a vain repetition of the words or a rote affirmation of those words!
Declaring the Truth
doesn’t make it true.³⁵
— Margaret Laird
When we actually acknowledge Truth, it is Truth in action! As the founder of the Institute of Metaphysical Science says:
When facts are being acknowledged
it's [divine] Mind speaking.³⁶
— Betty Albee
If not now, when? Life will always be filled with challenges. It's best to admit this to ourselves and decide to use our spiritual vision right here, right now.
So, stop waiting!
—until your car or home is paid off
—until you get a new car or home
—until your kids leave the house
—until you go back to school
—until you lose ten pounds
—until you gain ten pounds
—until you have a new job
—until you get a divorce
—until you finish school
—until you get married
—until you have kids
—until he proposes
—until she accepts
—until you retire
—until summer
—until spring
—until winter
—until fall
—until after the New Year!
To know God means
to cast off the coils of sensuous life
and to enter the realm of spiritual thought.³⁷
— Alfred Moses
There’s no better time than right now to see and be who you really are!
The Rebbe says,
Everything is here, now.
All that's left is for us
to open our eyes.
[That is, to use our spiritual vision.]³⁸
Herbert Weiner, author of 9 ½ Mystics, laments that “Perhaps there are a few old scholars who understand some of the mystic vocabulary, but there is no longer a holy community for whom the unseen world is more real than the seen.”³⁹
We have a holy community with roots in all traditions, and we know what to do; let’s change this!
Echo for Pillar 1. God is All and God is Good.
Evil is a false belief.
God is not its author.⁴⁰
— Mary Baker Eddy
God, good, being ever present,
it follows in divine logic that evil,
the suppositional opposite of good,
is never present.⁴¹
— Mary Baker Eddy
Every evil results from attachment
to [the concepts of]
matter and non-being.⁴²
— Ibn Sina
Apparent evil is the result of ignorance,
and when Truth is presented
the error disappears.⁴³
— Charles Fillmore
The striving to free oneself
from this delusion
is the one issue of true religion.⁴⁴
— Albert Einstein
Echo for Pillar 2. God, Spirit is the All of all.
The first things manifested from God
are His names and attributes.
Everything in the physical world
is the self-disclosure of a divine name,
or the…manifestation of that name.⁴⁵
— Qunawi
All is infinite Mind
and its infinite manifestation.⁴⁶
— Mary Baker Eddy
Spirit and its formations
are the only realities of being.
Matter disappears
under the microscope of Spirit.⁴⁷
— Mary Baker Eddy
Every material belief
hints the existence of spiritual reality.⁴⁸
— Mary Baker Eddy
Echo for Pillar 3. There is only one God, only one Self.
One in the consciousness of the one Mind
has no sense of apartness.⁴⁹
— Charles Fillmore
The I that is Mind
has no ‘there’ to think about…
The Science of Being is the All—
there is no outside of Mind…
There is no ‘there’ to infinite Mind.⁵⁰
— Margaret Laird
The highest way to indicate
the divine nature is from the standpoint of “I”.
In reality there is no ‘he’ or ‘she’
or ‘you’ or ‘they.’
I alone AM.⁵¹
—James Neal
See also Non-Duality—Not Two and
Inseverability
Waves of the Ocean
[1] Herbert Weiner, 9 ½ Mystics: The Kabbalah Today, (Holt, Rinehart, and Winston, 1969), p. 7 AX 7519
[2] Tzvi Freeman, Poor Reception, https://www.chabad.org/library/article_cdo/aid/52682/jewish/Poor-Reception.htm • 10.15.20 AX 8004
[3] Ibid. AX 8004
[4] Richard Booker, The Magic of Knowing, (The Farallon Foundation, 1955, courtesy of The Institute of Metaphysical Science), p. 22 AX 7789
[5] Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, "No prayer will go in vain" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gG1qmP2qFYg • 06.14.2018 AX 7081
[6] Ibid.
[7] Rupert Spira, It's Not Enough to Discover What You Are Not, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gmDTwg8fAlE • 11.25.2023 AX 7600
[8] Arthur Green & Barry W. Holtz, Your Word Is Fire: The Hasidic Masters on Contemplative Prayer, (Jewish Lights Publishing, 1977), p. 56 AX 7067
[9] Richard Booker, Be Yourself, https://csclassics.com/be-yourself/ • 05.21.2022 AX 6919
[10] Vivian May Williams, There Is Nothing But God, (Rare Book Co., 1934) p. 91 AX 8087
[11] Rupert Spira, The Nature of Consciousness, Rupert Spira and The Mind That Knows Duality: Rupert Spira on Finite Mind and the Illusion of Matter, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R-IIzAblVlg 11.15.2024 and https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mKW_53WizV0 11.15.2024 AX 7185 AX8034
[12] Tzvi Freeman, How Real Is Stuff? Part II, • https://www.chabad.org/library/article_cdo/aid/2271263/jewish/How-Real-Is-Stuff-Part-II.htm 10.06.2024 AX 8006
[13] [Consciousness] replaces “Faith,” which is a quality of consciousness.
[14] Rupert Spira, The Pinnacle of Nondual Understanding, https://www.youtube.com/watch?si=ME-ah6DQd2If7J1S&v=dmsF8iNmWlo&feature=youtu.be • 10.23.2024 AX 8077
[15] Anna Bonshek, Mirror of Consciousness: Art, Creativity and Veda, (Motilal Banarsidass Publishers, 2001), p. 66 AX 5407
[16] Herbert Weiner, 9 ½ Mystics: The Kabbalah Today, (Holt, Rinehart, and Winston, 1969), p. 3 AX 7832
[17] Ibid., p. 16 AX 7833
[18] Ibid.
[19] Daniel C. Matt, God & The Big Bang: Discoveting Harmony Between Science & Spirituality, (Jewish Lights Publishing, 1996), p. 171 AX 6015
[20] Menachem Mendel Schneerson, A Daily Dose of Wisdom from the Rebbe: words and condensation by Tzvi Freeman, August 29, 2002 AX 4720
[21] Martha Wilcox, Association Address of 1935, Scientific Translation, (The Bookmark, 1986), p. 23 AX 6004
[22] Ibid., p. 22
[23] Kevjn Lim, Unity of Being vs. Unity of Experience: A Comparative Primer of Ibn 'Arabi's and Ahmad Sirhindi's Ontologies, p. 57-58 AX 7107
[24] Jonathan Star and Shahram Shiva, A Garden Beyond Paradise: The Mystical Poetry of Rumi, (Bantam, 1992), p. 5 AX 7141
[25] Emily Byquist, Emergence into Light, Excerpts from a talk given at Arden Wood, May 7, 2017, https://www.ardenwood.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/03/AW_Byquist-Talk_final_6.17.pdf • 08.27.2024 AX 7946
[26] Vivian May Williams, There Is Nothing But God, (Rare Book Co., 1934) p. 93 AX 8088
[27] Dr. Tony Nader, Consciousness Is All There Is, (Hay House LLC, 2024), p. 381 AX 7895
[28] Vivian May Williams, There Is Nothing But God, (Rare Book Co., 1934) p. 84 AX 8092
[29] Richard Booker, Notebook 111: The Heart of the Matter, (The 25 of Metaphysical Science, not published), p. 121 AX 7896
[30] Margaret Laird, We Are The World We Walk Through, (The Margaret Laird Foundation, 1993), p. 213 AX 7918
[31] David L. Lieberman, Transcendental Judaism: Enlivening the Eternal Wisdom Within to Uplift Ourselves and Our World, (RESOURCE Publications, 2023), p. 23 AX 7513
[32] Junayd, trans. Rosenthal, F., A Judeo-Arabic Work under Sufi Influence, Hebrew Union College Annual, vol. 15 (Cincinnati, 1940). AX 5233
[33] Coleman Barks, The Essential Rumi (Harper San Francisco, 1995,) p. 36 AX 3347
[34] Rabbi Donald Crain, ‘The Rabbi in the Seminary,’ describes Christian Scriptures as Midrash (rabbinic interpretation).
[35] Margaret Laird, 1975 Class Instruction, (The Institute of Metaphysical Science) AX 8036
[36] Betty Albee, Serendipity - Discovering the true nature of things, https://www.youtube.com/live/O6SLvMEJgDQ 08.26.2024 AX 7933
[37] Alfred G Moses, Jewish Science: Psychology of Health, Joy and Success or The Applied Psychology of Judaism, (Searcy & Pfaff, Ltd., 1920), p. 135 AX 8107
[38] The Jewish Spark, December 2004 p. 13 AX 5390
[39] Herbert Weiner, 9 ½ Mystics: The Kabbalah Today, (Holt, Rinehart, and Winston, 1969), p. 85 AX 8005
[40] Mary Baker Eddy, Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, p. 480 AX 8078
[41] Ibid., p.72 AX 7517
[42] Avicenna, On Love, Emil. Fackenheim, A Treatise of love by Ibn Sina, Medieval Studies 7 (1945), pp. 208-228 with thanks to: https://www.google.com/books/edition/The_Natural_Law_Reader/wR91rKD7sUwC?hl=en&gbpv=1&dq=%22every+evil+results+from+attachment+to+matter+and+non-being.%22&pg=PA85&printsec=frontcover p. 85 10.07.2024 AX 7155
[43] Charles Fillmore, The Revealing Word, (Unity Books, 1990), p. 64 AX 8037
[44] Jonah Steinberg, Beyond the Delusion of Separateness, Huffington Post
https://www.huffpost.com/entry/beyond-the-delusion-of-se_b_13219428 •12.6.2017 AX 3551
[45] Ali Fahri Dogan, An Outline of Qunawi's Reflections on Divine Names in terms of Oneness of the Being/Wahdat al-Wujûd, https://www.academia.edu/36100102/An_Outline_of_Qunawis_Reflections_on_Divine_Names_in_terms_of_Oneness_of_the_Being_Wahdat_al_Wuj%C3%BBd?email_work_card=view-paper 01.07.2023 AX 7210
[46] Mary Baker Eddy, Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, p. 468 AX 7911
[47] Ibid., p. 264 AX 8079
[48] Mary Baker Eddy, Miscellaneous Writings 1883–1896, pp. 60–61 AX 5998
[49] Charles Fillmore, The Revealing Word, (Unity Books), p. 133 AX 8043
[50] Margaret Laird, 1976 LA Seminar, (The Institute of Metaphysical Science) AX 8050AX8050
[51] James Neal, Man, The Divine Fullness, (Mulberry Press, ebook) AX 8057
This post includes edited excerpts and subsequent additions
from d’var Torah, Rosh Hashanah, 5785
October 3, 2024, Congregation Beth Shalom,
Fairfield, Iowa
© Copyright 2024 Expressions of Joy LLC All rights reserved.
If you enjoyed this article,
you are invited to share the link.
