Water Into Wine: This Beginning of Miracles.... - Part 5

[Guest guest]

Water Into Wine: " This Beginning of Miracles.... " - Part 5

 

Relationship of matter,

energy, and thought

 

(p.220) Spirit is the power that gives intelligence and life to matter. There is

no fundamental difference between matter and Spirit. (p.221) Thought and matter

both originate in the creative vibratory power of God. [1] Thought, energy, and

matter differ only in terms of relativity of vibration, thought being the

subtlest vibration, which condenses into the light of life energy ('prana') and

ultimately into the gross vibrations of matter. Thoughts when energized become

visible images, as in dreams; matter is the crystallized thought of God, the

crystallized dreams of God.

 

The vibrations of the creative thoughts of God differ from the vibrations of

matter in quality and quantity. Matter is a gross vibration evolved from the

consciousness of God, and thought is the originating subtle vibration of Divine

Consciousness--the active and activating vibratory power.

 

Matter consists of relatively fixed vibrations of consciousness; but

thought--the basic unit of God's creative activity--is moving and progressive

consciousness, capable of unending transformations. Watching a child advance

through the various stages of maturation, we can see the progress of changing

thought within him. The child's thoughts are transformed into those of the

youth, which in turn mature into the thoughts of the adult; yet all these

thoughts arise from the consciousness of the same person.

 

Thoughts are subjective vibrations of consciousness. They are sufficiently

differentiated to be classified, yet not as rigidly differentiated as

objectified matter. Thoughts of fear, of joy, of hunger, of ambition--all of

these are different; yet they are interrelated inasmuch as they are all

manifestations of the same consciousness. Each phase of thought touches other

thoughts in an interchange of communication.

 

Matter is vibration that gives the idea of the 'want' of interrelation. Matter

can be divided or classified in different ways without interrelation; that is,

each object has its own distinct fixity. You can divide a piece of cake and

place it in two rooms without interrelation, but our thoughts of today and

tomorrow are interrelated and are conscious of each other. The objectified

consciousness of matter cannot think of itself, or of its interrelation with

other matter. It is fixed consciousness, instinct-bound. What is instinct-bound?

Thought vibrations that generate only one kind of consciousness.

 

A glass before me, whenever I look at it, gives me the fixed consciousness of a

glass only. (p.222) Though material things were created to produce fixed

consciousness within us, still, human consciousness can modify them to some

extent. A natural stone producing the fixed consciousness of a stone can be

modified, as when the stone is made into a cup. But human consciousness has its

limitations; it understands the stone from which that cup is made to remain

always stone.

 

A person under hypnosis may be induced to dive onto the floor and make the

motions of swimming if the hypnotist has suggested that he see a pond spread out

before him. Similarly, a process of cosmic hypnosis impinges on man the ordinary

consciousness of matter, making him perceive water as fluid, solid things as

impenetrable, air as an invisible current, fire as light and heat.

 

It is cosmic delusion that gives the idea of fixed, differentiated finite

substances and objects with definite unchanging properties. The universal

creative force, or 'maya', conjures apparent limitations in the Unlimited; it

makes the vibrationless Infinite Substance appear as finite things through

vibration, motion, the process of change. In the ultimate sense nothing in this

universe is finite, except the various phases of change that materiality

undergoes.

 

Waves on the ocean are finite because they appear temporarily and then

dissipate--again temporarily, until they rise again. When the ocean is thrown

into waves, and the waves disappear on the bosom of the ocean, would anyone say

that the water in the waves has been lost? No. It resolved into its source. Only

the particular surging form that the water assumed has disappeared.

 

When water passes into steam, the collected steam can be condensed into water

again. Though its form and characteristics change as the water passes through

various physical processes, in its elemental composition it remains the same.

 

Thus with all matter: Whirling particles, metamorphosing energies, come together

and part in an unending vibratory dance of change, producing for a span of time

objects and substances that have the appearance of being finite, of being

separate from other things, of having a beginning and end. Yet all matter in its

underlying essence is unlimited and unchangeable: Its changing phases are

impermanent, but the Power that vibrates into change is permanent. Deluded by

'maya' or metaphysical Satan, the human thought-process cognizes only changing

phenomena, not the underlying divine Noumena. [2]

 

(p.223) Thought is human consciousness in vibration. Human consciousness is

delimited God-consciousness in vibration. In the process of thought man's

consciousness vibrates. One whose consciousness vibrates under the control of

Maya, the Cosmic Hypnotist, remains fixated upon finitude. Through

psychophysical techniques of yoga one can regain mastery of his mind, stilling

the restless thought vibrations of human consciousness and entering the ecstasy

of God-consciousness. [3]

 

The power to effect

miraculous changes in

the material world

 

By spiritual development, one rises to a state wherein the fixed consciousness

generated from contact with matter vanishes. (p.224) Finite objects are seen as

naught but imprisoned consciousness; and the formerly rigid differentiations of

matter are experienced as relativities of thought, all interrelated in the

preeminent, unifying Divine Intelligence from which they flow. In his oneness

with that imperial Christ Intelligence, Jesus had wakened from the grand mayic

dream; he had transcended the fixed consciousness under the control of the

Cosmic Hypnotist. Thus he could at will convert the materialized thoughts of

stones into bread or those of water into wine.

 

Ordinary human beings have to go through material processes to effect changes in

the physical world because they are limited by the law of duality and the

relative difference between vibrations of matter, energy, and thought. But one

who by the higher consciousness of Unity realizes the true nature of creation

can perform any metamorphosis, just as a movie director can make any miracle

appear on the screen by manipulating projected beams of light. Jesus was sitting

in the booth chamber of Eternity, from which he saw all creation as projected

thoughts of God, actual thought particles of the consciousness of the Supreme

Creator, made visible through vibratory light of life energy. As Jesus was one

with the Divine Mind, it was nothing for him to direct one informing vibration

to change into another.

 

The Second Coming of Christ (The Resurrection of the Christ Within

You) Volume 1, Discourse 11, pg. 220-224

Paramahansa Yogananda

Printed in the United States of America 1434-J881

ISBN-13:978-0-87612-557-1

ISBN-10:0-87612-557-7

 

[1] See Discourse 1.

 

[2] Similar views are now espoused by visionaries of modern science. The

renowned work of Dr. David Bohm, late professor of physics at the University of

London, has provided " an entirely new way of understanding the fundamental

nature of the physical universe, as glimpsed through the data and laws of

physics, " writes Will Keepin, Ph.D., in " Lifework of David Bohm: River of Truth "

('ReVision' magazine, Summer 1993). " Prior to Bohm, science had generally

regarded the universe as a vast multitude of separate interacting particles.

Bohm offers an altogether new view of reality....'unbroken wholeness in flowing

movement.' What is remarkable about Bohm's hypothesis is that it is also

consistent with spiritual wisdom down through the ages. "

 

In quantum physics, the notion of matter being composed of definite particles

has now been superceded by the discovery of an all-pervading " field " of powerful

invisible forces. This discovery, writes K.C. Cole in 'The Hole in the Universe:

How Scientists Peered Over the Edge of Emptiness and Found Everything' (New

York: Harcourt, 2001), showed that " particles of matter were in themselves

rather irrelevant; they were only the spigots through which various forces

flowed. A solid object, if you like, was something like a fountain composed of

intersecting cascades of water, all flowing from tiny pointlike orifices. The

'real' stuff of matter was the flowing water, or forces. "

 

" The concept of field, " Cole explains, " was a huge revolution in thought that

remains completely unknown to most laypeople....[but] Einstein called the

'change in conception of reality' from particles and empty space to fields 'the

most profound and fruitful one that has come to physics since Newton.'...Matter,

in this view, is simply a place where some of the field happens to be

concentrated. Matter condenses out of field like water droplets condense out of

water vapor in a steamy bathroom. Particles of matter are concentrations of

field that travel through the field like ripples in a rope or a wave in water.

The essential 'stuff'--that is to say, the rope or the water--does not travel

from place to place. Only the kink travels....

 

" This view of matter explains, among other things, why every electron in the

universe is exactly the same as every other electron, every top quark the same

as every other top quark. A particle doesn't really exist in its own right. It

is only a particular manifestation of a field. And globally speaking, the field

is everywhere the same. "

 

Professor N.C. Panda, Ph.D., sums up the implications in 'Maya in Physics'

(Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass, 1991): " Science has discarded the concept of

pluralism and has accepted field or space as one and a single continuous entity

as the basis of the appearance of the multifarious world. This basic entity is

one and continuous; it is the source of the heterogenous manifestation of the

universe. The one gives rise to many; the invisible gives rise to multifarious

invisible-cum-visible ones; the formless gives rise to pluralities of forms.

Thus monism is established in science. " ('Publisher's Note')

 

[3] " Be still, and know that I am God " (Psalms 46:10).