A physicist, biologist and a chemist visit the ocean for the first time in their lives.

The physicist sees the ocean and is fascinated by the waves. He decides to do some research on the fluid dynamics of the waves and walks into the ocean, never to be seen again.

The biologist decides to research the flora and fauna inside the ocean and wades into the ocean. He too drowns.

The chemist stands and watches for a long time before writing in his notebook, “Physicists and biologists dissolve in ocean water”.

Those chemists are a wacky bunch. You’ve got to keep your ion them.

Jokes aside, oneness is a profound spiritual truth that is taught in all of the ancient traditions. Now physics, biology and chemistry have all found their own paths to this same truth. Everything shares a common chemistry that unites us with all of nature. Physics points to the connection of wave and particle, and the unity of atoms once joined and now separated by distances, like an invisible leg rope uniting the surfer to his board. Biology points to the fragile ecosystems within the human body and outside. We become what we eat, and the air we breathe, and the water we drink.

Buddhist Master Thich Nhat Hanh, wrote about this interconnectedness:

If you are a poet, you will see clearly that there is a cloud floating in this sheet of paper. Without a cloud there will be no water; without water, the trees cannot grow; and without trees you cannot make paper. So the cloud is in here. The existence of this page is dependent on the existence of a cloud. Paper and cloud are so close. Let us think of other things, like sunshine. Sunshine is very important because the forest cannot grow without sunshine, and we humans cannot grow without sunshine. So the logger needs sunshine in order to cut the tree, and the tree needs sunshine in order to be a tree. Therefore you can see sunshine in this sheet of paper. And if you look more deeply … you see not only the cloud and the sunshine in it, but that everything is here: the wheat that became the bread for the logger to eat, the logger’s father … the paper is full of everything, the entire cosmos. The presence of this tiny sheet of paper proves the presence of the whole cosmos.

Realizing (or remembering) that you are connected to the whole and all the parts fills you with gratitude, humility, openness and self responsibility. You are a wave in the ocean of life, here today and gone tomorrow. But while you are here, you make your own mark, sometimes bobbing up and down quietly, other times raging and pounding the shoreline. Either way, you eventually merge back into the ocean. As Alan Watts said, “You and I are all as much continuous with the physical universe as a wave is continuous with the ocean.”

Mitch Albom, the author of Tuesdays With Morrie and The Five People You Meet in Heaven, tells a short story about waves in the ocean. The dying Morrie tells this story towards the end of his lbook.

A little wave was bobbing along in the ocean, having a grand old time. He’s enjoying the wind and the fresh air–until he notices the other waves in front of him, crashing against the shore.

“This is terrible,” the wave says. “Look what’s going to happen to me!”

Then along comes another wave. It sees the first wave, looking grim, and it says to him, “Why do you look so sad?”

The first wave says, “You don’t understand! We’re all going to crash! All of us waves are going to be nothing! Isn’t this terrible?”

The second wave says, “No, YOU don’t understand. Don’t think of yourself as a wave about to crash, think of yourself as water and energy about to merge with the ocean.”

Albom concludes, “Morrie closes his eyes again. ‘Part of the ocean,’ he says, ‘part of the ocean.’ I watch him breath, in and out, in and out.” Like an ocean.

When it feels like your life is crashing down around you, or endings are weighing heavily on you, it can be incredibly liberating to remember that you part of something larger than yourself. Breathe in. Breathe out. Like an ocean. You and every other part of the universe is linked, whether a strong link or a weak link. You have an important role to play and you don’t need to worry about making mistakes. No mistake is irredeemable and nothing truly ends. Oceanic love holds all of it, all waves, all tides, all currents, in balance.

At the same time, live mindfully. An ocean is a delicate ecosystem, as we saw with the Gulf oil spill last year. Your effect on others is like being out in a boat and creating waves. It can be fun and part of the adventure of life for yourself and others, and it can also be dangerous. You have to be aware of your effect on others.

One of the greatest measures of six degrees of separation in a shrinking world is the ability to break down the boundaries that divide us. When I was a kid, it was a miracle for Presbyterians and Baptists, or any two different denominations, to sit down together and have a civil conversation. It was unthinkable for Protestants and Catholics to work together. Eventually, we evolved beyond that. Protestants and Catholics began working together on community programs, but it was unthinkable for Muslims and Christians to work together. We still struggle with this one. What the world needs now is for people to come together across all boundaries of difference- christian, muslim, theist, atheist, non religious, humanist, scientist, artist, all of us, to practice being human together.

The world is one. The problem is that we don’t recognize each other. You know the old saying. “Jews don’t recognize Jesus. Protestants don’t recognize the Pope. And Baptists don’t recognize each other in Hooters.” The tragedy is that we fail to recognize each other; the beauty, the potential, the wholeness of each, and we fail to recognize the oneness of life; the beauty, the wholeness, the symmetry, the wonder of life.

An old Jewish story describes the possibility of connections.

A Rabbi asked his students how they could tell when the night had ended and the day had begun.

“Could it be,” asked one of the students, “when you can see an animal in the distance and tell whether it’s a sheep or a dog?”

“No,” answered the Rabbi.

Another asked, “Is it when you can look at a tree in the distance and tell whether it’s a fig tree or a peach tree?”

“No,” answered the Rabbi.

“Then what is it?” the pupils demanded.

“It is when you can look on the face of any man or woman and see that it is your sister or brother. Because if you cannot see this, it is still night. If you see them truly as they are, then it is daylight.”

We could extend the teaching of the Rabbi to include all beings. When you can look in the face of any woman or man, any being, any situation, any experience, any memory, any shadow, and see reflected back to you the unity of all things, then it is daylight.

The essence of unity, to which six degrees of separation points, is that everything touches everything else. Or as Kahlil Gibran wrote,

All things in this creation exist within you, and all things in you exist in creation; there is no border between you and the closest things, and there is no distance between you and the farthest things, and all things, from the lowest to the loftiest, from the smallest to the greatest, are within you as equal things. In one atom are found all the elements of the earth; in one motion of the mind are found the motions of all the laws of existence; in one drop of water are found the secrets of all the endless oceans; in one aspect of you are found all the aspects of existence.

http://www.soulseeds.com/grapevine/2011/08/the-whole-and-its-parts/

Your planet abounds with life. You rub shoulders with life every day. Your physical existence is an expression of life; yet, the ability to explain or define it is evasive. What makes something alive? Or dead? And where are the boundaries that define life and that which we perceive as inanimate? Is the rock dead or simply a different standard of consciousness? When one dies what has left and what remains?

To fully understand life, one must be willing to acknowledge a creative consciousness in existence. Recently renowned physicists and scientists have inferred that God was not necessary for creation. Many were frightened, dismayed, and angry over such a conjecture. Yet, in the definition of most religions concerning the concept of God, this theory is true. When creation, the combination of consciousness and physicality, is considered and that which exists is not separate from that which created it, this theory becomes more acceptable.

Life is the emergence of consciousness in creation. That is the simple, yet profound, definition that so many have sought. Everything has consciousness. The degree to which that consciousness expresses is the measure of life as you define it. Since death is not a reality, it is only a change, even the rock is birthed from an evolving planet to only return some day in a different form.

What you call the laws of nature are the foundational elements of consciousness expressing in creation. Those laws of nature are the expression of life in what you consider to be inanimate objects and non-sentient species. The degree of consciousness expressed into creation is in direct proportion to the ability to interact with or comprehend creation. All is born from the one consciousness, and be it the amoeba or the king, the planet, or the galaxy, all are expressive of one being of consciousness, no part lesser than the other, only serving different aspects of creation.

Everything in creation exists for the sole purpose of consciousness to express. So every rock, every drop of water, every star in the sky, every molecule and atom in every universe that exists and dimensions that are shared, are for the sole intent and deliberate purpose for consciousness to express. All these aspects of creation are neither your servants nor are you their master. They exist for what you yourself contain, which is the consciousness of God in physical form. God is the caretaker of the gardens—and so are you.

Life is the mirror in which consciousness can see itself expressing; for, consciousness wished to experience itself and created you. Life is a miraculous, inter-connective, and infinitely complex set of circumstances and experiences, guided by the only mind that ever existed to express itself fully and completely. Life is the aspect of your consciousness that allows you to express in physical form. Life is the expression of existence. All things forever exist, and in that existence, they always are—and in physical form they become alive.

Do you know how precious you are? Not only because you are an infinite and eternal soul expressing in physical form. But your being, like those across the galaxies and universe, is the end result of an evolutionary process begun at the moment of creation—and will continue this process until it returns to that which created it. You are consciousness expressing in creation returning to a pure state of being. That is the mechanism and the meaning of life.

http://awakeningpublications.blogspot.com/search?updated-max=2011-09-27T15%3A15%3A00-07%3A00&max-results=7

Existence is neither vulnerable to nor affected by anything created or not created. You will always exist because the source of all things and its creations are in perpetual motion creating an eternal and infinite environment for existence to dwell. Humanity, since the beginning of its pursuit of spiritual understanding, has exalted the creative aspect of consciousness over all else, and from that seed of misunderstanding, the concept of God, as you have come to understand it, has been promulgated. Part of the process of awakening is to accept the equality between the aspects of consciousness.

Just as on earth you create from something, the same if is true in the spiritual realms. It is because of misunderstandings that humanity has been taught that God created the universe out of nothing. Nothing can be further form the truth. Immediately one would question what were the raw materials for creation before creation existed. Consciousness is the substance of all things. Consciousness is like a three-legged stool that in order to maintain a stabilized position, must express the creative, the creation, and the existence aspects of itself simultaneously. Creation is not a past event or a future experience. Creation is the present. The present is the moment of creation. That is why you can only exist in the present moment because the only place this dynamic consciousness of existence is in the Eternal Here and the Eternal Now.

We understand the complexity of this concept; yet, we wish to share it with you in an attempt to assist you to begin to more fully understand your equal participation in both the creative and creation aspects of existence. It should give you great joy that you are equal and one with both the source and the creation of All That Is.

Perhaps what we have shared with you will give you deeper meaning and understanding to the many terms that are bantered about, such as oneness, the now, and the like. It is our goal, not only to give you a definition but an experiential understanding of that which you seek, what you call spiritual awareness. And in that noble state of existence, both the creator and the creation express themselves equally. For you, beloved friends, are neither servant or lord but you are the incomprehensible expression of consciousness expressed in creation. For in truth, there are no masters and there are no servants, all is one in the same, equal and of assistance to each other—all aspects of yourself.

The veil will be rent, and awakening will be achieved when one removes the illusion of separation. The veil that hinders you is woven by the threads of your own alienation from the creator and the creation—which are you.

So when we speak of the veil is thinning, it is when you accept and comprehend the oneness of all aspects of yourself. Look at yourselves. Your body is physical creation. Your spirit is the consciousness—you are the walking, talking, breathing expressions of God.

http://awakeningpublications.blogspot.com/

In this concept, rather than discussing your neighborhood of the universe and what it is telling you about the creative source that birthed it, we would wish to step back and invite you to join us in a collective overview of the interaction of the aspects of creation with itself.

We have used the term “dance”—the dance of creation. This implies a synchronicity between the elements guided by a common melody. Dance is a coordination creating beauty, rhythm, and synchronicity. Every single component of the physical universe is born from a corresponding energetic signature of the creative force of All That Is. What you call nature is but one aspect of a complex set of laws that govern the universal code of behavior. The universe, as you know it, is the physical expression of the consciousness that created it. The dance is the interaction between that creative force and that which is created. On the grand scale, the primary directive of all within the universe is to express the mind that created it and return to the source that birthed it.

Creation, like consciousness, is a perpetual motion machine—both are self-sustaining. The energy of creation is its own source of consciousness, and consciousness is its own source of creation. They are both the source and the end product of their existence. We have spoken of the One Mind, the One Thought and the One Soul—the source, the observer, and the manifestation—as aspects of consciousness, i.e. God. Creation, and consciousness would not exist without each other. One is not the cause and the other the effect.

In a time eternal and a place infinite, cause and effect have no meaning. Creation is simply the self-expression of awareness, and awareness expresses as creation. This is the melody of the universe. Two lovers joined in a dance—the creator and the creation—in a journey of self-exploration and understanding. This is the dance of creation danced to the melody created before time on an infinite dance floor of possibilities.

http://awakeningpublications.blogspot.com/

Every religion is founded on the fact that there are some principles in man that defy death and survive. Orthodoxy has built a system of reward and punishment hereafter, based, to a large extent, on the acceptance of certain creeds, dogmas and doctrines.

Nearly every sect has taught in the past, and may still do today, that acceptance of their particular brand of teaching was the only SURE and ONE passport to heaven – RUBBISH!

Obviously, the people who are TRULY competent enough to tell you what happens in the life beyond this are not theologians, who can only speculate and theorise, but mere individuals who live there and speak from personal experience.
You soon learn from the dwellers in the after-life that their earthly religious views do not determine their spiritual status in the Beyond. Many an avowed agnostic has reached a higher spiritual sphere than individuals who were most punctilious in their church attendance but neglected the application of ethical principles to their lives. “Womanisers, rapists and even murderers do go to church to absolve their sins”

The truth about religion is that creeds do not matter. Whether you accept the Thirty-Nine Articles of Faith or not, believe in the Nicene Creed or not, are a Christian, Jew, Buddhist or Parsee – all these have no relevance to the things that matter.

There is only one acid test regarding your spiritual status when you die. It is the way you have lived your daily life. We learn that all the actions we have performed, the words we have uttered and thoughts that have risen in our minds, are indelibly registered on our spirit body. For that reason we are known, after death, for what we are.

We take with us the character that we have moulded in our earthly lives. This determines our position hereafter. We cannot cheat. We cannot pretend. The sinner, to use a very clumsy word, cannot escape the consequences of his actions by uttering a magical formula on his deathbed and thus have all misdeeds absolved for him. A ‘born again whatever’ doesn’t count for anything, if he or she continues to do ill and speak ill. They must make restitution for whatever wrong he or she has committed. There is no progress for them until they have done so.
It is a mockery of divine justice to believe that the saint and the sinner are on level terms from the moment they die. And it is not true. The essential fact that is stressed by all who have had any lengthy experience of spirit life is that we are personally responsible for the life that we live, that is, of course, if we are normal human beings.

Forgiveness does not release us from personal responsibility. The mere fact that the one whom we have wronged is willing to overlook our action does not alter the wrong we have done. A true balance can be struck only when we have made retribution.
The Spiritualist is always conscious of an urge from the other side of life which stresses that real religion consists of the way one’s daily life is led. You may call this morality and not religion, but religion cannot be divorced from ethics.
Spiritualism enables you to realise that in all ages, prophets and seers have been inspired by revelations emanating from the spirit world. But these revelations were suited to the age in which they came, nothing more.

The Spiritualist does not despise the inspiration of the past. He recognises that the same natural laws which enable him to obtain revelation today caused the ancients to receive it in their time. But the world has altered, even in the last 2,000 years. New conditions have arisen and science enthroned as one of the latest gods to be worshipped.

There are different problems and difficulties to be mastered. It is foolish to argue, as some clergymen do, that God inspired the children of the year called one and has nothing to say to His children of the twenty first century. It is ignorant and foolish to argue that God had a special preference for Palestine that He does not possess for any other country today.

It is not necessary, in religion, to live in the past. Spiritualism proves that the fountain of inspiration still flows into the world, wherever it can find the necessary channels.

Spiritualism is not only ‘A’ religion. More than that, it IS religion itself. Without Spiritualism, religion is meaningless. Almost every religion was founded around a medium, in whose presence psychic phenomena, wrongly called “miracles”, occurred and who could be inspired from the same sources that are still at work.
Properly understood, Spiritualism will be the means of unifying opposing religions, proving that none of them is superior to the other, but that each possesses SOME grain of truth.

Here, in Spiritualism, is the nucleus of a brotherhood of man and a religious United Nations that would give religion its rightful place in the world, enabling it to become a force to inspire humanity in its highest ideals.
How foolish does the thought of a “holy war” become, viewed with this new knowledge? You can look with pity on the frequent wrangling of theologians and the bickering over scriptural interpretations, realising these are trivial. Whether you accept them or not makes no real difference to life here or hereafter.

Spiritualism has no creeds or dogmas, but most Spiritualists accept what are known as the Seven Principles. These were given through mediumship at a time when it was necessary, for churches owning or leasing property, for a Spiritualist organisation to declare its religious beliefs. The law demanded that this body, the Spiritualists’ National Union, should submit the religious principles on which its members agreed. These principles are:

1. The Fatherhood of God.
2. The Brotherhood of Man.
3. The Communion of Spirits and the Ministry of Angels.
4. The Continuous existence of the Human Soul.
5. Personal Responsibility.
6. Compensation and retribution hereafter for all good and evil deeds done on earth.
7. Eternal Progress being open to every soul.

Even acceptance of these Seven Principles caused controversy. Many Spiritualists said they would not be bound by any formal statements of belief. To surmount this difficulty it was decided to give Spiritualists’ National Union members complete liberty of interpretation.

These principles very aptly sum up the religion of Spiritualism. Sincere religious people could not quarrel with any of them. To a large extent, they would be accepted by most modern minds in the Church.

Spiritualists recognise that every individual must work out his spiritual salvation and that, in the end, man must stand on his own feet. They know that we cannot transfer the burden of our responsibilities to somebody else’s shoulders. We get out of life just what we put into it – no more and no less.
We are here to equip ourselves for the next stage of life. Earth is the school of our experience. If we fail to learn our lessons here, we will have to learn them when we pass on.

We take with us the character we have evolved. Nobody else can evolve it for us. We accomplish our own growth and evolution by the way we live our lives. Selfishness and greed thwart the character. Altruism and idealism help the spirit to grow.
These are natural laws. Man cannot cheat them for they operate piteously. The more good that we do, the better the persons we are. The more we fail to help others, the worse we are.

This is no new teaching. It has been taught through the ages by seers, prophets, saints and mystics. Spiritualism proves it. The purpose of life is not to enrich us materially at the expense of others. If we do, in reality we are the poorest of all – poor in spirit and character.

Opportunities for service come to each one of us, irrespective of our lot or position in life. We can always do good, if we choose, no matter who or what we are. We can be kind to others no matter whether we are princes or paupers.
Spiritualism is the declared enemy of materialism. It proves that man survives death by a natural law of the universe. It provides mankind with a religion founded not on faith, or fear, but on knowledge.

Spiritualism demonstrates that God is the ‘Father’ of all people. God is not a Christian, Jew, Roman Catholic, Protestant, Hindu, Sikh, Muslim, Methodist or a Spiritualist. Nor is God even an Englishman, as some people seem to think! God is not Black, nor White!

Whether you are orthodox or agnostic, rich or poor, educated or illiterate, a cabinet minister or a crossing sweeper, dictator or peasant, you cannot alter the law of cause and effect as it operates in your life. That is the great message of Spiritualism.

Because you are spirit, you survive death. And because you are spirit you are alive today. The spirit within you, which causes you to live, is the same spirit that animates every member of every nation, of every race and of every colour. Spiritually, the people of the world are one. Spiritualism reveals the spiritual oneness of all mankind. God has made us all members of one vast spiritual family.
When that fact is understood and applied in human, national and international life, war will be driven from the face of the earth. Man will have learned not to kill his spiritual brother.

Properly understood, Spiritualism will become one of the greatest forces for good in the world. When its truths have spread far and wide, and the majority of people accept its teachings and regulate their lives accordingly, a new era will dawn for humanity.

* Timeless Truth *

1. A human being is a part of the whole, called by us Universe, a part limited in time and space. He experiences himself, his thoughts and feelings as something separated from the rest-a kind of optical delusion of his consciousness. This delusion is a kind of prison, restricting us to our personal desires and to affection for a few persons nearest to us. Our task must be to free from this prison by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole nature in its beauty.

2. Peace cannot be kept by force. It can only be achieved by understanding.

3. The intuitive mind is a sacred gift and the rational mind is a faithful servant. We have created a society that honors the servant and has forgotten the gift.

4. What I see in Nature is a magnificent structure that we can comprehend only very imperfectly, and that must fill a thinking person with a feeling of humility. This is a genuinely religious feeling that has nothing to do with mysticism.

5. The further the spiritual evolution of mankind advances, the more certain it seems to me that the path to genuine religiosity does not lie through the fear of life, and the fear of death, and blind faith, but through striving after rational knowledge.

6. A nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual death.”- Martin Luther King Jr.

7. Thousands of candles can be lighted from a single candle, and the life of the candle will not be shortened. Happiness never decreases by being shared.Buddha

8. Man is made by his belief. As he believes, so he is.Bhagwat Gita

9. When I do good, I feel good; when I do bad, I feel bad. That’s my religion.Abraham Lincoln

10. The only test of good things is that they make us strong.Vivekananda

11. Is it not tremendously blasphemous to believe against reason? What right have we not to use the greatest gift that God has given to us? I am sure God will pardon a man who will use his reason and cannot believe, rather than a man who believes blindly instead of using the facilities He has given him.Vivekananda

12. We are what our thoughts have made us; so take care about what you think. Words are secondary. Thoughts live; they travel far.Vivekananda

13. The first sign of your becoming religious is that you are becoming cheerful.Vivekananda

14. This I have seen in life, he who is overcautious about himself falls into dangers at every step; he who is afraid of losing honor and respect, gets only disgrace; he who is always afraid of loss always losses.Vivekananda

15. In judging others we always judge them by our own ideals. That is not as it should be. Everyone must be judged according to his own ideal, and not by that of anyone else.Vivekananda

16. The first act of true teaching must be that the teaching should not contradict reason.Vivekananda

17. In wealth is the fear of poverty, in knowledge the fear of ignorance,in beauty the fear of age, in fame the fear of backbiters, in success the fear of jealousy, even in body is the fear of death. Everything in this earth is fraught with fear. He alone is fearless who has given up everything.Vivekananda

18. An eye for eye only ends up making the whole world blind.Gandhi

19. Happiness is when what you think, what you say, and what you do are in harmony.Gandhi

20. As long as you derive inner help and comfort from anything, keep it.Gandhi

21. You must be the change you want to see in the world.Gandhi

22. That knowledge which purifies the mind and heart alone is true knowledge, all else is only a negation of knowledge.Ramakrishna

23. If you chase two rabbits, you will not catch either one.Russian Proverb

24. Some people walk in the rain, others just get wet.Roger Mille

25. A man is rich in proportion to the number of things he can afford to let alone.Henry David Thoreau

26. That man is richest whose pleasures are the cheapest.Henry David Thoreau

27. This world is but a canvas to our imaginations.Henry David Thoreau

28. The obscure we see eventually. The completely obvious, it seems, takes longer.Edward R. Murrow

29. If you judge people, you have no time to love them. Mother Teresa