Posted on 10 January 2012, 8:54

I’ve mentioned how Stephen described a “Christian” as being conscious not of separateness but conscious as part of the Whole [Afterlife Teaching Section 47 p.92]

Stephen’s words are in line with, “My prayer is not for them alone. I pray also for those who will believe in me ...,  that all of them may be one, Father, just as you are in me and I am in you. May they also be in us so that the world may believe that you have sent me.  I have given them the glory that you gave me, that they may be one as we are one —  I in them and you in me—so that they may be brought to complete unity. Then the world will know that you sent me and have loved them even as you have loved me.” John 17.20-23 NIV

“As a prisoner for the Lord, then, I urge you to live a life worthy of the calling you have received.  Be completely humble and gentle; be patient, bearing with one another in love.  Make every effort to keep the unity of the Spirit through the bond of peace.  There is one body and one Spirit, just as you were called to one hope when you were called;  one Lord, one faith, one baptism;  one God and Father of all, who is over all and through all and in all.”

Ephesians 4.1-4 (probably written by a close disciple of St Paul) (icon of St Paul below).  “One faith”  means faith in this Oneness, not in one belief system.

Never in this wide world did Jesus intend to found tight little, right little warring sects, but rather to assert that all without exception are “children of God”.

But let’s come away from the Bible, lest you begin to think the writer is the wrong kind of religious. Let’s start with you and me. In some parts of the world there is a kind of delusion about rugged individualism. Each person for themself and the devil take the hindmost. But is it possible to regard ourselves as separated individuals?

Think about our ancestries.  If we go twenty generations back, less than 700 years, we will find that each of us has 1,042,176 forebears of that generation. Double that for each earlier one. Twenty generations ago 1,042,176 people had to get together to produce you.

Think about the language(s) you speak. Think of the thousands of years of their development, the millions of words, encapsulating the experiences of myriads of people in an almost infinite number of situations. Think how dependent you are on these languages if you are to be you.

Think of the loaf of bread on your breakfast table. Try and count the number of people involved in getting it there: the supermarket employees, the transport workers, the bakers, the banks, accountants, lawyers, salespeople, farmers, seed merchants, suppliers of fertilizer, farm machinery manufacturers, road makers, railway workers, paper manufacturers, printers, telecommunications, government departments.. perhaps you can add to the list.  Do you think it is possible for one to be a “rugged individualist”?

Christian sects often talk about a Second Coming, and they think of a separated Jesus somehow appearing the sky. But I think there is a case for suggesting that we look in quite another direction: that the Second Coming is the beginning of the fulfilment of Jesus’ prayer that we may all be one.

Such a Second Coming is showing itself more and more these days. We have global trade, with every country dependent on every other country. We have the awareness that the damage we do to our environment, is damage done to all, to the whole. But perhaps the Internet and the telecommunications teach us the truth that we are one, most of all.  It is possible by phone, Skype or similar means, by email, fax, to have cheap and instant communication with a person anywhere in the world. The person 17 000 kilometres away, can be just as present for you, as the person in your room. Those with access to the Internet through search engines such as Google, have access to huge numbers of books, articles, maps, research, music, and a range of information far exceeding what any given library or encyclopaedia could hope to provide. Facebook and Twitter too know no boundaries, and challenge the power of tyrants. We talk of the oneness of Cyberspace, where conventional time and space seem collapsed into a point.

David Bohm (below) the renowned physicist asserts something similar:

“We introduced the notion of a higher dimensional reality that projects into the lower-dimensional, elements that have not only a non-local and non-causal relationship but also just the sort of mutual enfoldment that we have suggested for mind and body”.

Very interesting words, saying in terms of his own discipline what Stephen has been saying in so many ways: that we live in the universe where we are compelled to see it as an organism, expressing itself in many ascending levels of organisational complexity. David Bohm speaks of a holographic universe, where each part gives insight into the whole, except that it is a universe in motion. Thus Bohm speaks of the Holomovement.  I have noted that at Section 134 [Afterlife Teaching] Stephen says something very similar: True life is all movement. The whole of life must be the whole of movement.

Similarly we have the Einstein-Podolski-Rosen Thought Experiment (EPR) which demonstrates that particles of energy that have once been together are entangled regardless of distance and time. We also have Bell’s Theorem, (John Bell below) which in the realm of physics we are ultimately forced to think in terms of universal causation, rather in terms of local causation. EPR and Bell’s Theorem are of great interest to those interested in the paranormal, for they demonstrate that ultimately we cannot think in terms of time and space, but rather in terms of a timeless, spaceless reality, that projects the time and space reality that we know with our physical senses.  Really, EPR and Bell’s theorem imply what David Bohm is saying about a holographic universe.  The science behind all this is complicated. If you want to follow this up, you could read this article from The Ground of Faith, or consult Wikipedia.

Our personal experiences in this age are of the SECOND COMING of Christ, of an awareness of participating in an indivisible Whole.  And so far I haven’t even mentioned the psychic, the afterlife or anything “paranormal”.  The studies of communications through mediums, through telepathy, clairvoyance, psychokinetic phenomena, and through synchronistic happenings, all these demonstrate an indivisible psychophysical universe. In this sense we are all indeed one.
 
Our personal experiences in today’s world, where, because of the internet and telecommunications in general, we experience the one interconnectedness in the whole.. these experiences are entirely in line with what science and psychical research reveal. They are also in line with the teachings of the great mystics down the ages, and in line with the prayer of Jesus that we might all be one.

So, if sometimes we feel driven to despair about the world, we should also consider whether or not we should rejoice because the “Second Coming” is plainly at hand!

If you would like to be notified each fortnight when the next blog is uploaded, then email SUBSCRIBE to .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address)

Michael’s revised edition , Afterlife Teaching From Stephen the Martyr is published by White Crow books and available from Amazon and all good online book stores.

Paperback               Kindle

Next blog, January 24

I like Elene Gusch’s image of the spider web.
Read her article on “The Music of Rosemary Brown from a Pianist’s point of view.” Very, very interesting. <http://thegroundoffaith.net/issues/2008-10/#5>
Simpler presentations of the thinking David Bohm can be found at <http://homepages.ihug.co.nz/~thegroundoffaith/issues/2003-10/epr.html>

A friend sent me this link: readers may find it interesting:-
http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2011/12/quantum-physics-photosynthesis/

Bohm’s ideas are fascinating.  I’ve been trying to study them in the past couple of days (thanks for putting me on that path) and finding that I need simpler, more layperson-friendly sources than I’ve run into so far.

The Implicate Order is such a wonderful concept.  Someone once wrote “We are on the wrong side of the tapestry,” which expresses so nicely our inability to see what the whole pattern really is from where we stand.

The two entangled particles are really the same particle… wow. 

I do a lot of distance healing work, and I keep trying to understand what is “really” going on. What my sources told me when I asked how action at a distance could be possible was that there really is no distance.  Everything touches everything at all times.  I was given the image of a spider’s web and how when an insect touches any spot on the web, the spider instantly feels it.  That’s the best I can do so far.

You are quite right in saying that Einstein did not believe in action at a distance. Nevertheless EPR does seem to show this effect, and Aspect’s work is seen as confirming the effect.
I understand Bohm to theorise that the (faster than the speed of light) effect occurs because from the point of view of his Implicate Order the separated particles or photon are the SAME particle or photon. I understand his Implicate Order to be beyond time and space.
And yes, it would be helpful to study Wikipedia articles on EPR, Aspect, Bohm and also John Bell.
In a blog like this lack of space means one has to be imprecise

Rev. Cocks, I have a great deal to say in response to this post, and no time to say it at the moment!  I’m with you on most everything, except:

The Einstein/Podolsky [Y not I]/Rosen Paradox was NOT, I repeat NOT!! meant to show that quantum entanglement exists.  It was meant to demonstrate that such an idea was absurd.  Einstein is often erroneously credited with the idea of this kind of action at a distance.  In reality, Einstein was implacably AGAINST the concept of action at a distance, and certainly did not believe in the kind of of connections across time and space that we mystics accept. 

Much later, when it became possible to do actual, physical experiments on quantum entanglement, the phenomenon was proven to exist, and the EPR authors shown to be wrong.  You may have heard of the Aspect experiment, for example.

John Bell did indeed have a hand in showing that reality is non-local, but you are overstating the implications of his work, as far as I can tell. 

20th-century physics does have a great deal to tell us about the interconnectedness of everything in the universe—but let’s quote it properly, and let’s be respectful toward Einstein and friends and not say they believed the exact opposite of what they really believed.

Wikipedia has a dense but useful summary of the EPR paradox and related issues.  It’s complicated, bothersome stuff, and it’s understandable that people get it so wrong.  I wish I had a deeper understanding of it myself, but don’t have enough math to thoroughly wrap my brain around it.