My Philosophy: Faith and Salvation and Other Essays

By John W. Hawkins

This book consists of a series of essays written by the author following his retirement from Sun Oil Company (now renamed Sunoco) in the 1980s. They are based on a life-changing experience by him at the age of 36 which showed him that all men and women are possessed of unlimited potential to achieve nearly anything that they desire. As a result of this experience he taught an adult education class for two years entitled Realize Your Potential. As quoted on the dedication page to this book, God has made us but little lower than Himself and has placed all things under our feet. An earlier book was published by the author last year entitled What Manner of Man is This? about the life of Jesus. Like St Paul the author agrees that all things work together for good for those who love God and who are called according to his purpose. (Romans 8:28) and that we can do all things through Christ who strengthens us. (Philippians 4:13). All of these essays as well as the chapters in his previous book may be found on his website at www.johnwhawkins.com. His previous book may also be purchased by going to this website.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Mar 29, 2010
• ISBN: 9781450058278

John W. Hawkins

The author has a degree in Business and Engineering from Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He is a charter member of the American Institute of Industrial Engineers and for a number of years worked as a registered professional engineer with a major oil company in Oklahoma and in Texas. He completed all his course requirements while living in Texas for an MBA degree majoring in Economics at Texas Tech but since he was successful in getting an attractive position with another oil company in Oklahoma he was unable to remain in Texas to complete all the requirements for his MBA degree. The author is a lifelong Episcopalian who has recently completed all four years of the church’s Education for Ministry program.

Book preview

My Philosophy

Faith and Salvation

and Other Essays

John W. Hawkins

Copyright © 2010 by John W. Hawkins.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

Cover painting by Raphael shows Plato and Aristotle coming down the steps of the Parthenon to join a group of their students. It is entitled: School of Athens.

Xlibris Corporation

1-888-795-4274

www.Xlibris.com

75045

Contents

PREFACE

THE NATURE OF REALITY—PART I

THE NATURE OF REALITY—PART II

THE SYMBOLISM OF NUMBERS

FAITH AND SALVATION—PREFACE

FAITH AND SALVATION—FAITH

FAITH AND SALVATION—SALVATION

THE ULTIMATE DESTINY OF MANKIND

FAITH AND SALVATION—APPENDIX

THE PROBLEM OF EVIL

THE PROBLEM OF EVIL—PART II

ENDNOTES

Dedication

To My Wife, Our Family

And

To All Our Many Friends

When I look at Thy heavens, the work of Thy fingers,

The moon and the stars which Thou hast established;

What is Man that Thou art mindful of him,

And the son of Man that thou dost care for him?

Yet Thou hast made him but little less than God,

And does crown him with glory and honor.

Thou hast given him dominion over the works of Thy hands;

Thou hast put all things under his feet,

All sheep and oxen, and also the beasts of the field,

The birds of the air, and the fish of the sea,

And whatever passes along the paths of the sea.

Oh LORD, our Lord, how majestic is Thy name in all the earth!

Psalm 8

PREFACE

The following essays are based on a life changing experience which happened to the author at the age of thirty-six. It was revealed to him at that time that Life permeates the universe; that in the words from Alexander Pope’s Essay on Man:

All is part of one stupendous whole whose body nature is and God the soul. that man, who was created in the image of God, is a microcosm of the macrocosm we call the universe; that he is therefore a being with unlimited possibilities; that as the psalmist states: Thou has made him little less than God. [and] hast put all things under his feet.; (Psalm 8:5-6 RSV); that as the apostle Paul, who was struck blind and speechless by his encounter with the risen Christ on the road to Damascus says: I can do all things through Christ which strengtheneth me.; (Phillipians 4:13) and that this applied not only to himself but that: In Christ Jesus you are all sons of God, that you are all one in Christ Jesus.; (Galatians 4:26-28); and that further Jesus himself tells the Pharisees that: I and the Father are one.; (John 10:34); and that when they accuse him of blasphemy he replies: Is it not written in your law, ‘I said you are Gods’?"; (John 10:34). It was further revealed to him that while ultimately there is only one reality by whatever name you choose to call it, it manifests itself in three interrelated modes: 1. God Above all gods; 2. Universal Consciousness; and 3. The Universe or in short: Spirit-Mind-Matter. There is no manifestation unless all three are present. Even science now recognizes that space-time is a continuum and that a consciousness is necessary to perceive events that occur there. Einstein’s famous formula, E=MC2 contains three elements: 1: Energy, (E); 2: Matter (M); and 3: Light (C), the universal constant which partakes of the nature of both energy and matter.

THE NATURE OF REALITY—PART I

Reality: that which is absolute or self-existent, as opposed to what is derivative or dependent; that which is ultimate.

(Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary)

Why I have always been drawn to think about the unknowable and higher order of abstract ideas, I am at a loss to explain. I certainly am not a philosopher nor have I had a direct message from Heaven which has given me knowledge not available to other of my fellow mortals. Nonetheless, as long as I can remember, I have been attracted to the unsolved mysteries of the universe, the nature of being, where we came from and where we are going. I have not spent years studying these questions nor years in daily meditation on them, but having reached a stage in my life which permits more time for reflection and contemplation, old, nagging questions push their way more easily into the conscious mind and demand to be addressed.

My mother refreshed my early childhood memories of my always wanting to go to India to seek the wisdom from one of the wise men reputedly living there. (A guru for a 4 or 5 year old is pretty unusual stuff to be thinking about you must admit. However, I was once told by a psychic that in a recent incarnation I had been a Hindu.)

When I was eight or nine, I remember sending off for and receiving information about the Rosicrucians (The Knights of the Rosy Cross). I certainly was not encouraged in any way on these interests by either my parents or my teachers. It was just one of those things that makes each one of us a unique creation with different aptitudes, interests, likes, dislikes, etc.

A few years later I became interested in magic and almost all of my limited funds were spent at the local magic shop buying the latest trick or books on magic. Later, when our children were small, I would perform some of these parlor tricks at birthday parties. Even to this day I am fascinated by magicians and the effects they are able to produce, even though I know they are all illusions.

My religious upbringing was very conventional. If I had not been somewhat precocious and hard for Sunday School teachers to handle, I probably would have been raised a Baptist or a Presbyterian since my parents occasionally attended one or the other of these churches. However, the teacher that finally was able to control me was an Episcopalian, and so I was baptized and confirmed in that church instead of one of those I had been ejected from. (I even became an acolyte who assisted the minister in the communion ceremony and got a few gold stars for Sunday School attendance.)

Although there was much about what I was taught that I didn’t fully understand or believe (e.g. that the world was created in six days), religion was a fascinating subject to me. While I was in the U.S. Navy during World War II, a Lutheran chaplain took me under his wing and had me seriously considering studying for the ministry when I got out of the service. Since I had already completed three semesters at M.I.T., I decided to complete my undergraduate work there before embarking on a radically different course. (I returned to M.I.T. in the Fall of 1946. However, I switched my major from Aeronautical Engineering to Business and Engineering Administration with emphasis on courses in Economics and Psychology.)

My Grandmother Eakins (my Mother’s Mother) had a great influence on my religious feelings and beliefs as a boy.

Although she was not well-educated, she was truly a good old soul. Every day of her life, that I knew about at least, she read the bible. Even when her eyes began to fail her, she used a magnifying glass and would read scriptures aloud to me from her precious book. Every word in it was God’s truth as far as she was concerned.

When I was thirty-two, my father died, and suddenly not only was I a father and a husband but also executor of my father’s will and trustee of a modest amount of money which would be mine upon my mother’s death. Therefore, I was able to have a liberal education in investing money while still wet behind the ears. I also immediately became my mother’s sole financial advisor and conservatively invested her funds for maximum safety and moderate yield. This provided her with an adequate income so that in the twenty-two years between my father’s death and her own she did not have to withdraw anything from principal in spite of setting up generous trust funds for each of

my four children.

Four years later a series of events conspired to bring me to a Cosmic Consciousness experience. (I was 36—a typical age according to Dr. Bucke’s book having this title.) In those days we spent our vacations in a rented beach house on the Gulf Coast. About one week prior to our annual trek I was parking my car downtown at a parking meter, but I found no change in my pocket. The store in front of the parking place was a book store. So even though my destination was around the corner, I went inside to get a dime in change to feed the meter. (In those days you could park an hour for a dime.)

The clerk was busy with a customer so I looked at a book rack while I waited for her to complete the transaction at the cash register. My eye fell on a book that had a picture of a spiral galaxy on it entitled: The Unobstructed Universe by Stewart White. Since I had always been interested in astronomy (My father at one time was President of the Tulsa Astronomical Society.), I decided to buy the book to read during the upcoming vacation rather than just asking the clerk to make change for me. So in the suitcase went the book which led me to a life-changing experience.

It turned out that the book was not about astronomy at all as the cover had suggested, but rather about the wife of the author. She was a psychic who had recently died and who managed to contact a friend of hers who was also a psychic. The very first chapter described how Betty White had lured her friend into a store to buy something which would lead her to make contact. A light began to go off in my head. Do you suppose it was possible that my father (definitely not a believer in things psychic) had contrived to bring me into that bookstore with no intention of buying any book, much less that particular book, and had somehow influenced me to purchase it similar to Betty White’s friend’s experience? After the Eureka experience while reading the book I was convinced that someone or something had definitely conspired to have me purchase and read that particular book.

It was not a deeply philosophical book, but rather the story of contact with the other side and what life was like after death. The point in the book when I had what Pierre Janet calls an "abaissment du niveau mental" (a lowering of the mental threshhold) was when one of them discarnates was explaining through her friend about the nature of the Trinity. All at once my mind was flooded with a myriad of images, impressions, and feelings. There was no flash of light though which often accompanies this sort of thing. (It was so brilliant that Saul was struck blind from his encounter with the risen Christ on the road to Damascus.)

Nevertheless, from that moment on many things concerning life after death, the reality of God and Christ as the Son of God were no longer merely things I had been taught as a child. They were living, tangible, eternal truths now inseparably a part of me. They were now part of MY being, MY life, and MY truth as well. (Conventional Christianity would call this a conversion or born again experience. Yet the ideas that came to me at that time such as the reality of reincarnation were far from conventional Christian concepts and teachings.)

The sense of joy, exhilaration, and heightened awareness of everything around me was unbelievable. I felt like telling everyone I met how great it was to be alive and what a thrilling experience I had just had. After we went back home after the vacation I read books like a man possessed (which I guess I was). It is to my wife’s credit that she didn’t leave me or try to have me locked up while all of this was going on. Mostly I read what would be styled metaphysical books: Eastern philosophy, mystics of all ilks, Edgar Cayce, the Filmores (the founders of the Unity School of Christianity), Blavatsky, Gurdieff, Ouspensky, Plotinus, Plato, Pascal, Carl Jung, etc. etc. etc. I even joined the Tulsa Theosophical Society (primarily because they had the best metaphysical library in Tulsa). Although everyone saw only part of the elephant (like the Six Blind Men of Hindustan), they were all describing the same magnificent beast—a Magnificent Obsession as Lloyd Douglas had titled one of his well-known books.

I thought seriously about quitting my job and expounding this revelation for the benefit of the world at large. Fortunately, cooler heads prevailed. I settled for teaching an adult education class at the YMCA on Realizing Your Potential. (This was 1964, long before the Human Potential movement now in vogue really got going.) Gradually though, the fires subsided and the realities of providing for a family of six regained their hold. Nonetheless, as Robert Browning tells us in his poem, Paracelsus (named after the famous mystic):

"I am a wanderer; I remember well one journey,

How I feared the track was missed,

So long the city I desired to reach lay hid;

When suddenly its spires afar

Flashed through the circling clouds;

(you may conceive my transport.)

Soon the vapors closed again,

But I had seen the city."

More than twenty years have passed since that experience, but the essential realities revealed remain, and will remain, unchanged. (I had seen the city.) In large measure there was nothing revealed that has not been known by many others for thousands of years for it forms the basis of the world’s major religions. It is truly The Ancient Wisdom as Annie Besant titled one of her books on Theosophy.

To acquire this knowledge, however, requires much more than just reading these inspired books (although that is certainly a good way to begin. Faith comes by hearing and hearing by the Word of God… etc.). As Aldous Huxley puts it: Knowledge is a function of being. When there is a change in the being of the knower, there is a corresponding change in the nature and amount of knowing. (The Perennial Philosophy p. vii) . . . . Jesus puts the same truth more eloquently when he says: Except a man be born again he cannot enter the Kingdom of Heaven. And You cannot put new wine in old wineskins. Dr. Bucke in his book, Cosmic Consciousness (p. 8), describes his own mystical experience at age 36 as follows:

Into his brain streamed one momentary flash of the Brahmic Splendor which has ever since lightened his life; upon his heart fell one drop of Brahmic Bliss, leaving for always an after taste of heaven. Among other things… he saw and knew that the Cosmos is not dead matter but a living Presence, that the soul of man is immortal, that the universe is so built and ordered that without any peradventure all things work together for the good of each and all, that the foundation principle of the world is what we call Love and that the happiness of everyone is in the long run absolutely certain. He claims that he learned more within a few seconds during which the illumination lasted than in previous months or even years of study, and that he learned much that no study could ever have taught.

The certainty that the universe is filled with Life, and not with little patches of dead matter separated by vast distances of empty space, is at the heart of the mystical experience. God is! I AM that I AM was the name God gave to Moses when he was commissioned by him at the burning bush. I have come that you might have Life and have it overabundantly and I am the Way, the Life and the Truth says Jesus speaking as the Son of the Living God. God’s living Spirit underpins and breathes Life into all that exists. (Ex—ist means to stand forth from what is.)

"Every common bush is ablaze with God

But only he who sees takes off his shoes."

—Elizabeth Barrett Browning

"The universe is one stupendous whole

Whose body Nature is and God the soul."

—Alexander Pope

This idea might be thought by some to be nothing but a primitive pantheism (God as Nature, its forces and laws), but it goes far beyond it. To use a human analogy: Is man nothing but the atoms and chemistry of his body and the laws governing his physiology? It is obvious to all but the most obdurate materialist that he is more than this. How much more then must God be than the physical universe. He is actively involved in the whole of the universe and not merely the Creator who has retired from the scene of His creation. (This is a Theist approach rather than a Deist one; an approach that believes in a God that is immanent as well as transcendental.)

Are you entirely separated from your physical body? Do you exercise a measure of control over it? Think then of the universe as being totally alive from its center (The Godhead) to its uttermost parts (the physical world of atoms and molecules). The degrees of freedom (i.e. levels, dimensions, planes, etc.—call them what you will) vary from the densest Matter to pure Spirit, from nearly zero to infinity, but there is nonetheless a continuum between one extreme and the other. (His eye is on the sparrow…) Not only is there an ever present, living relationship between the Creator and His creation (between what is and what ex-ists), there are immutable laws governing this relationship.

Perhaps this can best be illustrated by an example from the science of Physics—the study of Physical Laws. Fifty years ago students of Physics were taught the law of conservation of matter and the law of the conservation of energy. The two laws were analogous but separate. That is to say, matter could neither be created or destroyed, but merely changed into various combinations of atoms and molecules. Similarly, energy was a constant in the universe and although energy might be redistributed throughout space (e.g. energy radiating from our sun and other stars) the total amount of energy in the universe remained a constant.

Today we know there is an equivalence between matter and energy, and that by applying enough energy matter can be created (i.e. the fusion of matter) while in other cases matter can be converted into energy (e.g. the fission of radioactive uranium in an atomic pile or in an atomic bomb). This equivalence was stated by Albert Einstein with mathematical precision by his now famous equation:

E = MC2

Where: E = Energy,

M =Mass, and C = Velocity

of Light (a universal constant)

By solving this equation for the constant, C:

which says that in a given system the relationship between the amount of energy, E, and the amount of mass, M, is always the same, a universal constant.

By extension to the metaphysical realm we can postulate that the relationship between the world of spirit (i.e. unseen energy) and the visible world (i.e. matter) is also a constant and that all phenomena result from an interplay between these two realms. The teachings of the Chinese philosopher, Lao Tsu, taught that this interplay between the worlds of spirit and matter arose from the Tao. I am sure you are familiar with the modern symbol of the Taoists, which shows a dark half and a white half enclosed in a circle much like two fish chasing each other in perpetual motion.

The dark segment represents the yin or earthly forces continually reacting with the white segment which represents the yang or spiritual forces in the universe. They consider the yang to be male in nature and the yin to be female (no doubt because the originators of the system were men). While yin and yang endlessly circle each other, there is a point in the center of the circle which never moves. Also in this symbol of the Taoists the lighter half contains a dark speck while the darker half contains a light speck. This signifies the essential and original unity of the pair in a sexless or hermaphroditic union. Throughout history the messenger between God and man has been represented as both male and female—in other words, an hermaphrodite. (Remember in the biblical story of creation how Adam was created in the image of God, a complete being, and then later Eve was fashioned from one of Adam’s ribs thus removing the original unity.)

To further strengthen the idea of matter as the female element consider the derivation of the word from its Latin root: "materia. This is the neuter form of the Latin word mater meaning mother. You may even wish to think of this eternal male-female duo as producing a third, a child, whose nature partakes of both male and female natures, both God and man. We may even say that this child is the Light of the World". By referring to our restatement of Einstein’s famous equation we can now say metaphysically that:

Emc2_1.wmf

Where:

:E = realm of Spirit (Father)

M = realm of Matter (Mother)

C = product of Spirit and Matter

ie The Son, the constant of light

Light, as we know, is an electro-magnetic vibration or wave. It acts in some ways as if it is composed of particles (called photons) and except for being weightless susceptible to the laws of matter. In other ways it behaves as if it were nothing but a wave phenomenon and subject only to the laws of magnetism. Neither view alone is correct. It partakes of both natures. There is a magnetic component and a particle component which operate at right angles to one another and in perfect synchrony. When one component is at its maximum level, the other is at rest. Then as that component declines in intensity, the other increases until it reaches its maximum just as the other component comes to a state of rest.

This eternal alteration between the two primal universal forces is exactly what the symbol of the Taoists is all about. We now know that all matter is nothing but patterns of energy in constant flux. What we call matter is simply the nodal points (points on a standing wave where there appears to be no motion) of energy waves in constant motion.

Scientists have even discovered that for every known particle of matter (e.g. electrons, protons, neutrons, mesons etc.) there is a corresponding particle of anti-matter. No one has ever seen a particle of anti-matter but they have been inferred to be present by carefully controlled scientific experiments. I find it quite ironic to see scientists who philosophically are often either agnostic or atheistic in their beliefs forced to a concept of unseen forces lying behind every known particle of matter. It would never do for them to label these forces spirit so they label them anti-matter instead.

Esoteric sources (the Bible included) teach that the visible realm comes from invisible ones. Spiritual worlds come into being long before this material one and set the stage for it. This long process of spirit descending into ever denser levels of matter is called involution and is somewhat analogous to putting on successive layers of clothing with each outer layer being heavier and denser than the preceding one.

When the lowest point in this descending arc is reached (the fourth level), the cycle reverses and the long journey back to the realm of spirit begins. This process quite naturally is called evolution. From the scientific point of view the story starts at the appearance of matter (the densest level) and after eons of time simple life-forms appear in the ocean and slowly some of them migrate onto the land. Single cell creatures become increasingly complex. Some fish learn to deal with both water and land environments (the amphibians). Some of these gradually evolve into reptiles and as their day wanes (some 60 million years ago) a small shrew-like mammal begins evolving which leads to the evolution of pithecoid, ape-like, creatures and finally to homo sapiens—a magnificent animal but an animal nonetheless.

From the metaphysical point of view man was created by God in His own image (i.e. he was created a spiritual being). His true nature is God-like not animal-like. During the process of involution man was created prior to the rest of the animal kingdom and not vice versa. Higher life forms do not originate from lower ones; but lower ones originate from higher ones through the process of involution.

The biblical story of the creation of Adam in the image of God, of Eve being formed from one of Adam’s ribs, the original home of man in the Garden of Eden, and the fall of man through eating of the apple from the tree which gave him knowledge of good and evil—all relate to this process of involution, of the process of separation of man from his original state as a spiritual being.

This is not to deny the story of how life evolved on earth obtained by examination of the fossil remains from one era to the next, but it is only part of the story, and from the standpoint of man the least important part of the story. That man is a spiritual being, temporarily imprisoned in a body which was evolved for and by him from materials on the earth over long eons of time, whose ultimate destiny is to regain Paradise Lost, to overcome death, to complete the ceaseless rounds of birth and rebirth—that is the most important part of the story. Remember then from what you have fallen, repent and do the works you did at first… . To him who conquers I will grant to eat of the tree of Life which is in the Paradise of God. (Revelation 2:5-7)

You may remember the story in the Old Testament of Jacob’s dream of a ladder going from the earth up to heaven and on this ladder were angels ascending and descending. (Genesis 28:12) Or again you may recall that when Lucifer (an archangel, whose name means light bearer) fell to earth after losing the battle for heaven to the archangel Michael, he swept down one-third of the stars of heaven (his angels) to earth with him. (Revelation 12:4). In this manner the opposite poles of good and evil were separated by which means man is allowed to exercise his free-will choice to move up the ladder toward life eternal or down the ladder toward death and destruction.

Lest you are wont to label the philosophy expounded thus far as nothing but a spiritual-material dualism, the eternal duel between the two poles of yang and yin, let me quickly introduce a third element. After all, as you will remember from the account of my Eureka experience at age 36, I was reading at the time a discussion between Betty and friends on the other side of the nature of the Holy Trinity—the three aspects or modes of being in the Godhead. I would much prefer, therefore, to be labeled a ternarian (one who believes in the essential threefoldness of reality) than one who is labeled a monist, dualist or pluralist.

Carl Jung maintains that one who only thinks in terms of three is missing one of the essential aspects of reality because the mandalas of wholeness always appear in history, art, or out of the subconscious of his troubled patients as a quartenary. There are others who are convinced that reality is septenary (sevenfold) in its essence or duodecanary (twelve-fold). The truth, of course, is that these and all other number based systems are all only partial aspects of the one and only reality. "E pluribus unum (from many, one) or better e unibus plurum (from one, many) would be closer to the true nature of reality. We are all like the Six Blind Men of Hindustan, that delightful poem by John Godfrey Saxe, that each described a different aspect of what the Elephant was like based on the particular part he happened to grab hold of. Now we see through a glass darkly" as Paul tells us in one of his letters to the Corinthians.

One of the oldest, if not the oldest, extant writing in the world is found in the Chinese "I Ching or Book of Changes. It supposedly was created by the legendary emperor, Fu Hsi (2953-2838 B.C.). It forms the basis for many of the teachings of Confucius and also of Lao-Tsu, the founder of Taoism. It is not only a philosophy about the nature of things (all of which are combinations of the primal forces of yin and yang), but also a cosmology and a methodology for predicting futute events. The concept of the Tao, while implicit in the I Ching as the source of the interaction of two primal forces, was not formulated into a philosophy until the Fifth Century B.C. by Lao-Tsu. From his writings in the Tao Te Ching" we read about the nature of Tao:

"Out of the Tao, One is born:

Out of One, Two; Out of Two, Three:

Out of Three, the myriad things." (Ch. XLII)

"There is a Thing evolved from the chaos,

Which existed before Heaven and Earth.

Formless and Boundless,

It stands alone and never changes;

It pervades and endures.

It may be conceived as the mother of the world." (Ch. XXV)

Not only do all things proceed from the one ground of all being, from isness to existence, from the invisible to the visible, but also there are cycles connected with all changes in which one thing changes into its opposite and back to its original form ad infinitum. (Carl Jung calls this process of a thing changing into its opposite enantiodromia). This accounts for the I Ching (pronounced Yee Ching) being used for prediction as well as for a system of cosmology. As the French say: Le plus ca change, le plus ca meme, i.e., (the more it changes, the more it is the same.) The same idea is in the Old Testament in the Book of Ecclesiastes:

For everything there is a season and a time for every matter under heaven. (Eccl. 3:1).

Or again from the Tao Te Ching (Ch. LXXVII):

"The Tao of Heaven is like the stretching of a bow.

It brings down what is high;

It lifts up what is low;

It depletes what is abundant;

It augments what is deficient.

Such is the Tao of Heaven:

It depletes the abundant and augments the deficient."

And from the commentary on the Feng Hexagram in the I Ching:

"When the sun has reached its meridian height,

It begins to decline.

When the moon has become full,

It begins to wane.

Heaven and Earth are now full, now empty,

According to the flow and ebb of the season"

(Shortly after my Eureka experience I became a charter subscriber to a publication on the study of cycles, which might well be the topic of another essay, but meanwhile let us return to a discussion of the threeness aspect of reality and its relation to the production of the many things.)

Christian theology teaches us about the threefold nature of God (and therefore of all reality). He is, we are told, three persons in one: Father, Son and Holy Ghost. Many early church councils wrestled with the question of whether the Son proceded directly from the Father or through the dual working of the Father and Holy Spirit. As stated in the Nicene Creed, the Church Fathers finally decided that the Son comes directly from the Father and the Holy Ghost is generated by the joint action of Father and Son. (The word, filioque, meaning and from the Son, was added by the Roman Church in the 9th Century A.D. but was rejected by the Eastern Church who preferred from the Father through the Son.)

Other religions have elected to substitute a feminine Deity for the Holy Spirit and make the Son a product of the union of the divine Father and Mother. (e.g. Horus, the Egyptian Light of the World, is the offspring of Osiris and Isis, the Brother-Sister, Husband-Wife, duo who represented the Sun and the Moon deities.) However, the Hindu Son of God, Vishnu, springs from the hidden Father aspect of the Hindu trimurti, Siva, but Brahma, the feminine aspect, is brought into being by Vishnu through the action of the lotus which springs from his navel. In the Hindu triad of Siva, Vishnu and Brahma, Siva is the Destroyer, Vishnu the Preserver, and Brahma the Creator. The nature of Siva is Ananda (Happiness) and the real life while that produced by the interaction of Vishnu and Brahma is Maya (Illusion)—the substitute life.

In so called esoteric literature (Esoteric means secret.) we read about the Logos (which is a Greek word meaning the word) who, after his manifestation as a unity, becomes twofold and then threefold in nature. The first aspect, the Father, is the root of all being who is immanent in every atom of the universe. The second aspect arises from the first and forms the primal duality from which the web of the universe is woven (e.g. life-form, spirit-matter, positive-negative, male-female, etc.). From this twofold aspect of the Logos the third arises, which can be described as Universal Mind or Consiousness, in which all things to be created exist archetypically.

This Divine Logos or Word is described eloquently in the Gospel

of John:

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God; all things were made through Him and without Him was not anything made that was made. (John 1:1-3)

John is, of course, speaking of the Christ prior to his incarnation as the man, Jesus. Jesus himself confirms this identity many times in the New Testament. Before Abraham was, I am., his constant reference to the Father and him being one, the confirmation of his identity as the Christ to Simon Peter, etc. etc.

This fundamental threeness of the Godhead is reflected throughout all creation and even in man himself, who was created in the image and likeness of God. Consider the nature of light, which is only one octave in a huge spectrum of electromagnetic wave phenomena (long radio waves to cosmic rays). Light, when all its wavelengths are present equally, is seen to be white in color. However, we know that there are three primary colors or wavelengths: viz. red, green and blue. (Color TV for example uses these three colors of phosphors to produce these and all the other colors which you see on the screen.) Although when white light is separated by a prism, it displays the familiar seven colors of the rainbow (violet, indigo, blue, green, yellow, orange, and red), we know that violet, indigo, yellow and orange can be produced by combinations of the three primary colors.

In bringing celestial phenomena down to earth in mixing pigments to produce colors we find that there are also three colors that are primary: red, blue and yellow. All of the others (save white) can be produced by combinations of these three. Interestingly, when the three primary pigments are blended together in equal strength, the resulting color is black, the opposite of white. (It is also interesting to note that just as the three primary colors combine to make the seven colors of the rainbow, the ancient wisdom teaches that seven creative spirits spring from the Third Logos. As above, so below.)

Similarly, in music there are seven notes in the major and minor scales (do, re, mi, fa, sol, la and te with the eighth note forming the octave, exactly double in frequency to the first note), but the fundamental chord of all harmony is the triad (do, mi, sol).

Further examples from the physical realm could be given to illustrate the universality of the threeness of things, but let us look instead at man—the paragon of animals, as Shakespeare calls him. The psalmist asks:

"What is man that Thou art mindful of him?

And the son of man that Thou visitest him?

For Thou hast made him a little lower than the angels,

And hast crowned him with glory and honor.

Thou madest him to have dominion over the works of Thy hands;

Thou hast put all things under his feet." (Psalm 8:4-6)

In the quotation above the word translated as angels in the King James version is the Hebrew word Elohim which can be translated either as God or as Gods. Thus the psalmist actually means to elevate man even closer to God than the angels. In the story of the creation we read that on the

sixth day:

Thus the bible clearly states that man is a spiritual being created in the image of God, who has been placed on the earth to watch over and have dominion over it and over all of its creatures. Since the Godhead is threefold in nature, so, therefore, must be man. It is not surprising then that ancient as well as modern concepts describe man as being three-in-one: Spirit-Soul-Body (where the soul is a compound of his mental and emotional natures). Not only do we think of ourselves as being composed of Body, Soul (or Mind) and Spirit, but there is also a threefold division within each of these three realms. Let us begin with an examination of the threefold characteristic of the body of man.

In the physical realm we know that man, and virtually the entire animal kingdom that reproduces sexually, evolves from a fertilized cell (called the zygote) which, as it begins to subdivide and multiply, separates into three primary types of germ layers: the ectoderm, the mesoderm, and the endoderm. Just as the ancient wisdom teaches that the one became two and the two, three, so does the one fertilized cell, the embryo, first separate into two types of cells (the ectodermal and endodermal layers). The middle layer, the mesodermal, then develops from and between the other two. From the ectodermal cells arise the outer layers of the animal including the skin and the nervous system. From the endodermal cells evolve the internal organs and alimentary canal. Lastly, from the mesodermal cells are developed the connective tissues, the muscles and skeletal framework.

The anthropologist, Shelton, even developed a primary classification of human bodily types based on which layer of cells apparently were predominant during gestation: the ectomorph, or skinny type, when the ectodermal cells predominated; the endomorph, or corpulent type, when the endodermal cells were predominate; and the mesomorph, or muscular type, when the mesodermal cells dominated the development.

In the fully developed individual or animal we learn that there are three dynamic processes going on within every cell in the body: anabolism, catabolism and metabolism. Anabolism is the process by which food is assimilated by the organism while catabolism is the process by which waste products are excreted. The anabolic forces are thus engaged in building up the organism while the catabolic are engaged in the tearing down process. Metabolism is the process by which these two opposing forces are kept in balance. They are in short: the creating, destroying, and preserving forces necessary for the well-being of all organic life.

Does this remind you of the Hindu concept of the nature of the Godhead? You will recall that Siva is known as the Destroyer, Brahma as the Creator, and Vishnu as the Preserver. Or how about the dream of Jacob seeing the angels ascending and descending the ladder? Do we not live in a world where new life constantly appears while other life dies and disappears in regular and ordered progression? Is it not plausible that this eternal cycle of birth and death, of appearance and disappearance, of life forms is simply the ebb and flow of that all pervasive Causeless Cause, the Ground of All Being, Great Spirit, the Tao, life-force, elan vital or by whatever name you choose to call it?

Now let us move up the ladder of life from the physical realm to the realm of soul or mind. It hardly needs to be stated the mind is superior to or dominant over the world of things. It makes a good analogy to the method by which the third aspect of the Logos creates the visible world. Man, who was created in the image of God, is also a creator and brings into being creations which once were only in his mind. One of my favorite little verses (whose author I don’t recall) tells us about this creative power of the mind of man:

"Mind is the master power that molds and makes;

And Man is Mind, and evermore he takes

The tools of thought and thinking what he wills,

Brings forth a thousand joys and a thousand ills.

He thinks in secret and it comes to pass.

Environment is his looking glass."

I particular like the line in this little verse and Man is Mind because it is the middle kingdom between Body and Spirit, between Heaven and Earth. In this realm arises consciousness not only of the world about us, but also of the world within us and also of our consciousness of self. (I can see you have already guessed the triad of mind and its analogy to the triads of the physical body.)

I could very easily put on my metaphysical hat here and talk about the triad of the subconscious, conscious, and superconscious levels of mind; but instead let us use the threefold division of the psyche introduced by Sigmund Freud: the Id, the Ego, and the Super Ego (or Ego Ideal) which will reflect a more scientific approach to the subject.

As you may recall from Psychology 101, the Id is short for the Libido (pronounced Luh bee’doh) from which arises all of man’s sexual and instinctual urges. (Libido is the Latin word for instinct.) Freud taught that there are two basic types or classes of instincts: one concerned with life and its preservation, the other with death and the destruction of life. The Greeks personified them as the deities, Eros and Thanatos. (Yes, here comes anabolism and catabolism again—the life force and the death force.) I remember the first time that the idea of a death wish or death instinct was impressed on me as a reality and not just as a philosophical concept. I was involved in constructing mortality tables for oil pipe lines to be used for ICC valuation and ratemaking purposes. In doing research on the shape of mortality curves I ran across a discussion of how a statistician named Gompertz had developed the human mortality curve by assuming that we are born with a given quantity of life which dissipates slowly throughout our life. In other words each day we die a little. At birth the life force is at a maximum and the death force at a minimum (the anabolic processes are stronger than the catabolic ones.) As time goes on, however, the life force diminishes and the death force increases. Much the same process is at work in the decay of radioactive isotopes into lighter and more stable elements. This theoretical construct almost perfectly fitted the facts of human mortality except for corrections for accidental death and for countries which had a high incidence of infant mortality due to poverty and a lack of proper medical facilities.

The libido or Id, then, represents an unconscious realm of the psyche from which springs all of the primitive urges accumulated by the race since its creation millions of years ago. As Carl Jung discovered, the unconscious levels of mind also contained all of mankind’s mythological motifs, which, when activated, took on a life of their own. Archetypes was the name he gave to these primordial images inherited by all men no less than they inherit the anatomy of their physical bodies from their progenitors. Interestingly, Jung considered Freud’s libido to be synonymous with psychic energy—again pointing to a fountain of primordial instincts