Waking Up to Oneness
Part One: Blown Away by Oneness
“May they all be one, as you, Abba God, are in me, and I am in you, may they also be in us.”
John 17: 21
Jesus said, "When you make the two one, you will become like the sons of man, and when you say, 'Mountain, move away,' it will move away."
Gospel of Thomas, Saying 106
“The eye through which I see God is the same eye through which God sees me;
my eye and God's eye are one eye, one seeing, one knowing, one love.”
Meister Eckhart
Jesus talked about Oneness with God
Jesus prayed for you and me, saying, "May they all be one, as you, Abba God, are in me, and I am in you, may they also be in us."
That’s a lovely prayer, but what does it mean? How are we to "be in" one another just as Jesus and God are and be present "in" them?
Jesus' beautiful imagery for this Oneness was, "I am the vine; you are the branches. Abide in me as I in you" (John 15:4-5). The vine and branches are attached to one another without separation. The branches are literally in the vine, growing outward. To "abide" in Jesus means to rest and be at home in him.
Next, speaking of "abide" again, he says, "As Abba God has loved me, so I have loved you. Abide in my love" (15:9). Jesus connects Oneness with resting in his love. It is like being "in" love. That's Jesus' vision of Oneness.
When Jesus said he and his Abba God were one, he meant they deeply loved each other. In more expansive terms, the essential reality of his own True Self was the ultimate reality of Oneness of the Universe – a single indivisible, infinite reality.
Everyone lives, and moves, and has their being in God (Acts 17:28). Therefore, when any of the eight billion of us on earth experience Oneness, we are experiencing this luminous reality as seen through the eyes of Jesus.
Remember the joke about the mystic who walks up to the hotdog vendor and says, "Make me one with everything"? That may be humorous, but it is terrible metaphysics. Why? Because we are all already one with everything. What is missing is awareness! Many don't realize this, and therefore don't have the awakened consciousness that comes from the practices that will allow them to know this profoundly transforming reality.
What is Oneness?
The Oneness Jesus describes is not numerical oneness but mystical Oneness. This means that it is not easy to understand and, actually, beyond understanding. However, it is so important that it must be talked about as Jesus did, even if, ultimately, it can only be experienced.
Oneness is also called Cosmic Consciousness, God consciousness, Christ in us, the Cosmic Christ, the Realm (Kingdom) of God, and the All in All. Oneness in Jesus' teaching is both a concept and an experience.
Most of us insist on understanding something first before we experience it. We want to know all about it. Not knowing can feel dangerous or scary. This is where we first must trust those we see as spiritual masters while we eventually learn to trust ourselves. For Christians, Jesus is just such a trusted teacher.
An experience of Oneness is a mystical experience that is ultimately impossible to comprehend or describe with rational or straightforward language. However, it can be pointed to, as I will do in this series, sending out as many "this way" signs as I can.
While Oneness cannot be expressed in words, the instructions on how to get to its realization can. Jesus' teaching of "oneness" includes both conceptual words and practical instruction.
Rupert Spira, widely known English spiritual teacher, philosopher and author, writes, "Rational thought enables us to deduce unobserved – and even unobservable – aspects of the world from observed ones. It allows us to connect the dots and extrapolate the boundaries of our knowledge beyond what can be directly apprehended through the five senses." However, if you're reading this article, it's unlikely that you will be satisfied with only concepts
Jesus gives instruction about moving into Oneness
Can you find the practical teaching in this saying of Jesus? "Abba God, I have given to them the words which You have given Me…that they all may be one, as You are in Me, and I in You; that they also may be one in Us…and the glory which You have given me, I have given them, that they may be one just as We are one." (John 17:1, 8, 21–22)
"The words" are conceptual arrows pointing us to Oneness. But it is the "glory which you have given me" that gets us there. What is this "glory"? It is the glory of holy spirit* that God gave Jesus at his baptism (Luke 3:21-22) This, in today's understanding, was the waking up of his consciousness to his Oneness with God. And this is the instruction Jesus was giving to them and us about experiencing Oneness: You will know you are One when you Wake Up!
*Notice that I do not add a "the" before holy spirit which was often not present in the original Greek, here emphasizing this is awakened spirit-breath-consciousness. Nor do I single out "spirit” to be capitalized since all of the original Greek New Testament writings were in ALLCAPITALLETTERS with no spaces and probably no punctuation. A set-up for arbitrary translations! I leave it in lowercase to remind us that awakened spirit-breath-consciousness is both divine and human. (See my book, Is Your God Big Enough, Close Enough, You Enough for more on this)
The wind of spirit-breath-consciousness wakes us up.
Next, this "glory" or awakening was given or transmitted to Jesus' close friends. "When he had said this, he breathed on them and said to them, 'Receive holy spirit'" (John 20:22 – there is no "the" in the Greek before holy spirit here). Here it is Jesus doing the breathwork instead of God, as in Genesis 2:7 "Then God formed a man from the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living being (Gen 2:7).
Commenting on this word "breathed," Kittel's Theological Dictionary of the New Testament says, "The breath of God awakens life in all creation." Remember that I define "spirit" (pneuma = πνεῦμα = breath) in both biblical and contemporary terminology as "spirit-breath-consciousness." Whenever you see "spirit" in the New Testament, think "awakened higher consciousness.
Divine spirit breath blew everyone away in Oneness at Pentecost
Next, awakened spirit-breath-consciousness emerges again at Pentecost, only this time in gale force! Jesus' friends suddenly experienced the ecstasy of Oneness with God in a dramatic and exhilarating way. "Suddenly there came from the sky a noise like a strong driving wind… and it filled the entire house where they were sitting" (Acts 2:2). They were all "blown away" and looked like they were drunk.
Peter dismissed the onlookers' accusations of drunkenness by saying that it was only nine o'clock in the morning and too early to be drunk. (Evidently, they did get drunk, just not this early in the day!) However, the truth was that they were drunk — drunk on the ecstatic new wine of spirit-breath-consciousness. (Acts 2: 13,15,17).
Father Keating, American Catholic Trappist monk and priest, known as one of the principal developers of Centering Prayer, says, "We come across Oneness in an infinite number of ways. This is because God is always happening. In the divine Oneness is there is no other. It blows you away."
We all experience Oneness in different ways
Today, a sudden awakening can be like being blown away at Pentecost. An amazing number of spiritual seekers in all traditions down through history and today have a sudden, exhilarating awakening. However, more commonly, it occurs gradually and can range from gentle breezes to gusts of awakening. We will each experience it somewhat differently. I’ll keep giving pointers, but one must let this experience emerge in you to feel, sense, and know it in a mystical way.
Oneness takes shape through the consciousness of the one having the experience.
There are many different degrees of intensity, concentration, and conviction in the Oneness experiences of different individuals. Like all of divine-human creation, it emerges as a co-creation molded by both God and our consciousness. Don't expect or try for your experience to be just like another's.
The most striking effect of the experience of Oneness is not new fact-knowledge or concepts. Instead, it is a new-found spiritual energy, a greater spiritual vision. We are raised to a whole new level of life.
SOME CLASSICAL VARIETIES OF ONENESS
Thomas Aquinas (1225 –1274) is considered one of the Catholic Church's greatest theologians and philosophers. He would not ordinarily be considered a mystic, but he had a mystical experience shortly before he died which made him stop writing his Summa Theologica. This is a massive history of philosophy and one of the most influential works of Western literature.
One day, while celebrating Mass, he had a profound mystical experience of Oneness. After this Mass, during which he shed many tears, he could barely speak. Later, he said to his secretary and friend, "The end of my labors has come. All that I have written seems to me like so much straw compared to what I have seen and what has been revealed to me." He immediately stopped writing, blown away by this experience. He died three months later.
Saint Catherine of Genoa (1447-1510) was an Italian Catholic mystic who was an administrator of a large city hospital. She had a life-changing mystical experience of Oneness. She described it as "the soul is in such peace and tranquility that it seems that both soul and body are immersed in a sea of the most profound peace, from which I would not issue for anything that could happen in this life." She was gently blown away.
Brother Lawrence, a seventeenth-century mystic, attained "an unbroken and undisturbed sense of the Presence of God." He did not have visions or voices; he was a quiet, faithful man who did his ordinary daily tasks, according to his friends, with "an unclouded vision, an illuminated love, and an uninterrupted joy." Simple and humble, he lived in the calm breeze of Oneness.
As St. Teresa said, "God also lives among the pots and pans."
St Teresa of Avila (1515-1582) was a Spanish Carmelite nun and prominent Spanish mystic and religious reformer. After one vision, Teresa recounted how a handsome angel pierced her heart with a flaming lance, causing both pain and rapture.
In her Interior Castle, she described this experience of union or Oneness as "a glorious foolishness, a heavenly madness, being bewildered and inebriated in [God's] love. . . It is true that my experience of Union lasted only a short time; I am not sure that it can have been for as long as an Ave Maria; but the results of it were so considerable, and lasted for so long that, although at this time I was not twenty years old. . . This kind of prayer, I think, is quite definitely a union of the entire soul with God. . . union and rapture, or elevation, or what they call flight of the spirit, or transport -- it is all one. I mean that these different names all refer to the same thing, which is also called ecstasy."
My experience with the Hum of Oneness
Hearing these experiences are more sign posts, but we must be careful not to think that experiences of Oneness only happen to great saints and famous mystics.
William James (1842 –1910) was one of the most influential philosophers of the United States and the founder of American psychology. He considered the mystical sense of unity or oneness the "root and center" of all spiritual experience. W. T. Stace at Princeton University says that mystical nature brought out by James and identified that the core feeling of oneness could be expressed in two forms.
The extrovertive mystical experience looks outward to the world through the physical senses and finds unity. On the other hand, the introvertive mystical experience turns inward, shuttering out the senses and transcending into pure consciousness. (At ICN we advocate the integration and expansion of both of these states.)
Those who favor extrovertive mystic experience usually love Whole-Body Mystical Awakening because it focuses on embodiment and physical senses. They often have difficulty in the head center of vibrant stillness or the practice of Centering Prayer.
Those who favor the introvertive mystical experience shuttering the senses and moving into pure consciousness may find themselves drifting in WMBA to their preferred place of formless emptiness or the practice of Centering Prayer.
I share this because it accurately describes part of my own experience of unity. I am naturally an introvert — but spiritually, I am an extrovert, focusing on embodiment and physical senses. This spiritual extroversion pushes past my natural introversion to provide me with great joy in the unity of connecting to others and the universe.
For much of my life my only experience of Oneness was the love I felt from God and Jesus. Some years ago, Jesus touched my right arm which still continues all the time. This means I feel a connection with him as a branch to the vine.
More recently, I identified with Stace's saying, "The extrovertive mystical experience looks outward to the world through the physical senses and finds unity." That's a great description of an important way Whole-Body Mystical Awakening functions in me.
I have been regularly practicing WBMA for over four years by myself and with others in our ICN community. Recently I felt myself occupying a new and different kind of space. When I started to try to figure it out, I heard, "Cut that out!" So, I waited a few weeks before I had permission to think about my new experience.
This is what I discerned: My four body centers of spiritual knowing (head, heart, gut, and feet) were currently awakened enough that they are now open all the time. I feel a constant and abiding "hum of aliveness" flowing from them. My 85-year-old body feels alive in a new way. Outwardly, the usual aches and pains. Inwardly, there is this abiding "hum." And when I sink down deeply into the bliss of this hum in any or all of my four centers of spiritual knowing, it blows me away!
If you are open to Oneness or a deeper dimension of it, I invite you to signal to God, Jesus or whoever your most advanced guide is that you are ready, and ask them to help you. You can do this right now.
In the rest of this series, we will explore more dimensions and ways to let the Oneness that is already in you emerge.
