THE HOLY GHOST
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And now a Word from our Sponsor...
"Having gotten caught up in the letter of the Law
...they miss the Spirit which wrote it."
Jesus
Sometimes when we're talking we're using words that have a different meaning for the other person we're trying to reach. One of us sits in the barber chair and smokes, while the other is fastened into an electric chair that smokes. We're obviously not talking about the same two chairs.
When I was growing up we referred to someone as "cool" but nowadays the same person is considered "hot." At least his girlfriend is. It's obviously confusing to some when we use two opposite words to point to the very same thing.
In paragraph one above we used the same word to identify two different experiences. In the next paragraph we did the opposite: We used two different words to describe the same experience.
Language, in fact, is another layer of mist enshrouding the Spirit from which all of this talk is attempting to surface. In the words of Jesus: "Getting caught up in the letter of the law, they miss the Spirit which wrote it." They is us, brothers and sisters!
Reality itself -- the continuum we talk about -- is described in opposite terms all day/night long: hot or cold, depending; sweet or sour, depending; good or bad, right or wrong... depending on which one of us is doing the talking.
And it is described by lovers the world over in the same terms: "I love you" all day and all night long, when in fact the words are usually disguising lust and convenience and even hate and deception.
So allow me to talk about these multitude of differences which will ultimately unite us.
Oddly enough, we often use the very different words "I do" and "I don't" to point to the very same reality. When I talk about the invisible world that gives birth to this one -- the one we see and refer to as reality and claim to "know" so well -- I am talking about the same thing, the inside and the outside of the only balloon there ever was. All of our words -- and everything else we are capable of -- is abstracted from this unknown source; everything is made up from it. We each have our beginnings and endings rooted in the ghostly and surreal, the inexplicable. We are fools to think that we do not share the same Creator and the Creation...
We associate Ghosts with the dead, but the term is best understood as an archaic translation for Spirit, which is always identified with life. All life comes from this Spirit, the substance which permeates all known universes.
This "Holy Ghost" is not only established by religion, but also documented by science, as energy at its highest rate of vibration, the same energy that manifests all about us as the physical world in which we live, move and have our being.
In reality, there is no such thing as the Father, Son and Holy Ghost - the so-called Trinity. It's really a much bigger truth than all that convenient division.
Cezanne stated that the true artist seeks to become a "transparency for the truth." In other words, this physical world which we are currently composed of is at the same time identical to the spiritual world we imagine lies beyond the horizon in a place called heaven or hell. We don't live here in this world for a while, then die and go over there to that one. We are already there. Religion declares it to be an eternity; science refers to it as an infinity of parallel worlds. Cezanne suggests that the true reality automatically surfaces once we remove our own opaque understandings and ego.
Jesus pointed out that "I and the Father are one... what he does, I likewise do." He also attributed the understanding of these concepts to spiritual enlightenment... "When the Holy Ghost comes to you, he will instruct you in all things." This isn't religion. This is how it is. This is how the universe works.
Many are the gifts of this invisible Spirit. To this end we have been given the power of awareness as a witness to the Creation set before us. And although none of us is capable of creating a living thing, we are none the less empowered to choose our own destinies. To borrow the words of Samuel Beckett, we are in this world...
"involving for one and all the same obligation precisely that of fleeing without fear while pursuing without hope
"and if it is still possible at this late hour to conceive of other worlds
"as just as ours but less exquisitely organized
"one perhaps their is one perhaps somewhere merciful enough to shelter such frolics where no one ever abandons anyone and no one ever waits for anyone and never two bodies touch
"and if it may seem strange that without food to sustain us we can drag ourselves thus by the mere grace of our united net sufferings from west to east towards an inexistent peace we are invited kindly to consider
"that for the likes of us and no matter how we are recounted there is more nourishment in a cry nay a sigh torn from one whose only good is silence or in speech extorted from one at last delivered from its use than sardines can ever offer..."
from "Comment c'est" (How It Is) by Samuel Beckett, originally published in 1961
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