Wednesday, December 26, 2012

The Trinity - FATHER, SON AND HOLY GHOST

The Cosmic Drama
Part Three (of Five)
Father, Son, and Holy Ghost - AUM, TAT, SAT

This is part one of a series of articles. It has its origins in a prior blog article entitled, "Who is Jesus Christ?" You may wish to read that first, though not absolutely necessary. This series attempts to describe the Trinity, or, how God can be omniscient, omnipresent, infinite, and immanent in creation at the same time. And, what significance this has for the reality we face as individuals. As the prior article on Jesus Christ noted, "Who Jesus is says a great deal about who we are." So, too, who God is addresses who we are.

In India, that aspect of God that is the Creator, separate and untouched by “His” creation is called “SAT,” and can be called “the Father.” The creation itself as a creative act of SAT and a manifestation of the Creator in the act of “becoming,” is “AUM.” The creation comes into being through an illusion caused by movement (“duality”) in opposite directions from a point of rest at the center. A whirling fan or the hubcaps of a wheel can create the appearance of solidity owing to their motion. Basic subatomic particles, atoms and molecules combine in an infinite variety of ways to give the appearance of separate objects. This “God AS the underlying reality of creation” is called “AUM” in India and, in Christianity, is given the term the “Holy Spirit.” It is “ghost-like” (Holy Ghost) because invisible; its presence is “felt” as a breeze, a whispered sound, or an ethereal rumble of thunder or a crashing sea.  Its visible appearance is as the inner light of meditation.

In Christianity, it is personified as the Virgin Mother of Christ: virgin because God AS creation is unpolluted or untouched by creation’s subsequent and infinite variations. In India, Divine Mother (personified in a variety of goddesses) is the personification of the AUM vibration.

This primordial and essential level of creation is characterized by sound and light, especially sound. Hence we find in the great faith traditions the universal intonation of a core and divinely conscious prayer-word such as “Aum,” “Amen,” “Amin,” and “Ahunavar.” This utterance attempts to articulate the metaphysical reality called “the Word.” “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God (John 1:1).” A word is a sound uttered based on thought and consciousness. The Aum vibration is the voice of God at the heart of all creation. It creates, sustains, and withdraws from sight all things. As the living presence of God in creation, it is the “Comforter” and brings to our “remembrance” all things because all things are made by it. In hearing it, we also enter into the presence of God’s presence and “remember” that presence. In that presence wisdom comes to us. Listening to the inner sound (of AUM) brings to devotees not just comfort but protection and inner guidance.

Just as the artist or scientist or inventor has a seed idea that triggers further details and enthusiasm and finally manifests in the intended object, so creation is said to contain three distinct levels: thought (ideation), energy (astral), and the physical cosmos. The investigations by science into the underlying chemical, atomic, electrical and electro-magnetic properties of matter are suggestive of the energy or astral world that underlies the superficial appearance of matter on the gross level of the senses.

But if the universe were only God’s manifestation it would be a sham. For God to set in motion His creation and yet remain apart from it, He had to impregnate the creation (Divine Mother, his consort, the Virgin and the Aum vibration) with His seed, which is to say, with his intention, His “looks,” and, you might say, His DNA. Genesis declares that we are made in His image and thus we “resemble” our Creator, not in physical appearance but in our true essence. (The five points of the body—two feet, two arms and head—resemble the five points of a star commonly seen in meditation.)

God thus had to bestow upon His creation, His only begotten Son, His own intelligence and intention, the seed of His own perfection in Bliss. In order to sustain and perpetuate His creation, he had to endow the perpetual motion of the illusion of creation with intention and intelligence. His seed of intention and intelligence resides at the center of each atom and each object and endows all things with the power and the desire to procreate. As God is Bliss itself (meaning the summum bonum of existence), and as it is the nature of Bliss to express itself and share, so too God’s creation and creatures find joy in the act of procreating (on all levels of intelligence and intention) and, at the same time, as the inner essence of Being. God is thus Being and Becoming.

This spark of divinity and intelligence is always appropriate to the need and context. Thus it is that trees make more trees and only trees, not frogs. Thus it is objects seek to survive and to perpetuate their existence. This divine spark of intelligence and joy is itself the aspect of God that is immanent in creation. This is the true and “only begotten son of God.” The intelligence inherent in creation is God’s “son,” for it resembles him in these respects. “God so loved the world that He sent His only begotten Son” that the son might reveal the Father. This intelligence seeks to reveal the Father. All creation is endowed, to some measure, with the bliss of God and the desire, born of the nature of bliss itself, to expand and multiply.
In India the term of this is TAT, or the Christ Intelligence in creation: the reflection in creation of the Infinite Spirit beyond creation. In matter and in lower life forms it can only express itself instinctually. But when it reaches the human form, the soul has the potential to become “one with the Father.” In Christianity it is given the term “Holy Ghost:” the silent, invisible ghost or spirit which gives “life” to all things.

Joy and blessings,

Nayaswami Hriman