The One That Is Three
El Uno Que Es Tres
A series of questions about solipsism, the nature of love, the Trinity, and the practice of prayer explore how oneness and relationship coexist, and how subtle thought can masquerade as realization.
The One That Is Three
A series of questions about solipsism, the nature of love, the Trinity, and the practice of prayer explore how oneness and relationship coexist, and how subtle thought can masquerade as realization.
My question is about solipsism. If we use the example that Francis Lucille offers: there's a tree with many leaves, and we think we're the leaves, but we're really the tree. The separate self is all the leaves, all these separate selves, but really there's just one universal consciousness. So how can the mistake of solipsism arise? If it's universal, it's the same consciousness here and there. Is solipsism the leaf saying, "I'm the only leaf"?
The condition for solipsism is that you believe yourself to be separate. That's the requirement: you believe you are separate, and then the consciousness that you are is the only one that exists. But it requires you to be separate.
So probably, actually, a lot of the time on the spiritual path I am making that mistake.
The confusion that is always the same confusion
Yes. Like a signature in thought, and you think you're not in thought. That's the confusion, always. It's the only confusion: when you're in thought and you think you're not. It's very simple. It's confusing thought with something real. And by "real," I would clarify: something that's not thought.
It's easy for us to see thoughts as thoughts when they're not close to that sense of separation. But when we start getting close to that sense of separation, we no longer realize we're relating to thought. We experience it as, "I'm relating to the reality of what I am," whereas in fact we're relating to thoughts: the world of me, the person. There's nothing wrong with me, the person, as long as I'm aware that it's a thought.
Love cannot be defined
Love is mysterious. You can't say there's a separate you and I, but if there isn't, then how can there be love? One teacher put it this way: you can only define love by what is not love. You can't define love itself. It's the same principle behind the opening line of the Tao Te Ching. My preferred translation is: "Tao, told, Tao is not Tao." So love, called love, is not love. Truth, called truth, is not truth. Because then you're in thought. The only way you can call something something is in the world of thought.
That reminds me of something. I used to have a really hard time getting up in the morning when I was young. I would be dreaming that I was awake, and then I'd think, "How do I get out of this? I don't know if I'm awake or asleep." Then one day I suddenly realized: if you're asking yourself the question, you're asleep.
Exactly. When something so obvious is so confusing, it's because you're lost in thought.
The Trinity as a pointer to relationship
In regard to the mysteriousness of love that was just raised, one teacher used to talk about the Holy Trinity: the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost. He would say he'd figured out the Trinity. It's like me, the other, and the relationship. The third element is the relationship, and the three are one and the one is three. I was wondering about your take on that, and whether it adds anything to the mysteriousness of what love is.
To me, the key there is: three that are one, and one that is three. In many of these teachings pointing to non-duality, they are pointing to an underlying truth that is overlooked. But then there needs to be a returning. And the returning is, in a way, the whole point.
In recognizing that there is no separation in this relationship, that recognition frees the possibility of the relationship. To see that in a sense there is no relationship, that what appeared to be three is one, allows it to go back into the one that is three.
At first, in a deeper ignorance, there is only one and the idea of another. Then the mystery of the other starts to become recognized. Then the relationship starts to become recognized: there is a third. And then that becomes recognized as being one. But it doesn't stop there. From there, it frees up, brings freedom to go back into the one that is three.
The risk of getting stuck in oneness
The risk is to stay stuck in a realization of oneness. But it's also important to realize that oneness. You could call it "not-twoness," to be more Advaita-ish. In Christianity they talk about unity, but it's the same. The Hindu culture is more mathematically precise. Unity implies duality: if there is one, there must be two. You have to go from zero to one, so then you have two. That is just the semantic, logical expression. In Advaita they say "not two," because they know that if you say one, it implies two. But in my interpretation, unity and non-duality are the same pointing, simply from different traditions.
Our recognition of unity, "I and the Father are one," can become an attachment where something is lost. There is a different kind of confusion there. A greater freedom lies first in the recognition of unity, of non-duality, of non-separation, and then in a sense going back to the Trinity, to the relationship. The relationship is freed with this recognition.
This is not something I hear very often. I think it's because it's a post-awakening step. It's simply not relevant until then. Franklin Merrell-Wolff described it as "the high indifference." What he's referring to is this: there is an entering of non-duality, and then there is a different kind of duality that has to do with the denial of the relative. The high indifference means that because non-duality is the nature of everything, I no longer need to abide in it. I can abandon it completely and be completely indifferent to it, because it is everything, everywhere. And so now I am free to live only and fully in the relative. To me, that's where the love we're talking about starts to really manifest.
It sounds like it's all beyond the mind. The first step is a recognition beyond the mind, but then you have to keep going beyond the mind, because you can go back to the mind and take to the level of thought the unity you've seen.
Yes, you're right, because that's when duality hides in subtle thoughts. This is very common. There are many people who have a real awakening and get stuck in a subtle duality. You will see it if there is a rejection of the relative. If there is an emphatic rejection of everything that's the relative (by "relative" I mean the apparent multiplicity), that's where the stuckness shows itself. When the apparent multiplicity is celebrated, that is the true freedom. That is the one that is three.
And the oneness, the unity, can be completely forgotten. It is no longer important or relevant, because it is everything. It is everywhere. It no longer needs to be highlighted, considered, thought of. It can be talked about when there is a relationship where some clarifying is invited.
What do you mean it can be forgotten?
It can be forgotten in that it no longer is important. It literally can become something forgotten. It can be something that is simply no longer special.
Prayer and the mystery of God
Going back to the discussion about thought: I'm noticing a pattern in myself, obviously because of my Christian conditioning, where I'm talking to God, whether in supplication or giving thanks or adoration. I have this voice that's talking to an external God, and I feel like I get some safety from that, especially when I'm asking for something. I'm wondering how to approach that now, because it's becoming very apparent to me. I don't know if it's healthy or not, if it's something that's keeping me in separation consciousness. I sense it might be.
With you, as I get to know you a bit more, I have a recurring sense of something I've mentioned before: not throwing out the baby with the bathwater.
There is something essentially powerful in religion, in all religions, in the essence of it. Something true. It's gotten covered up with so much that the essence is diluted, and it's hard to pick it out. But because we grow up in a certain culture, if we try to deny that or fight it, it's just going to create more problems. If you try to remove the Christianity from you, it's going to be more chaotic. That's my sense. The approach is to understand it and clarify it more deeply.
Keep praying, but clarify what you're praying to
Keep praying, because there is an energy and a calling in it. Prayer is a beautiful thing. It is very deep and profound, and it can invoke us to shift out of thought, because it is the dialogue with that which is beyond me. This is what I was talking about earlier with the relationship.
First, to move out of "me," I need to recognize that there is another, truly. A toddler, once there is a sense of "I," doesn't have much of an "other." Remnants of this persist in adulthood for most people: there is not a very deep recognition of otherness, the mystery of the other.
God is, in a sense, the ultimate otherness. The problem arises if we know what God is. If in prayer we define that which we're praying to, that's where the trouble starts. When religion becomes institutionalized, it defines God. I'm sure you could go into the Bible and find places where it's emphasized that God is not definable, that God is a mystery. But conventionally the mind is going to define God, and then we will relate to and pray to that which is known: God is this, this, this, that.
The baby that I want to metaphorically keep alive is that true desire to dialogue with and pray to. The bathwater you can clear away is when you start to see that there is a concept, a knowing, of that which you're praying to. You can move more toward what you're praying to, which you can still call God, but it is mystery. It is unknowable.
That will also change what you pray for. If you understand God as an entity that will give you or not give you something based on how you behave (which is one form of conceiving what God is), then you would pray and ask for something according to that understanding. But if that which you're praying to is more of a mystery, then what you pray for starts to become a stranger thing, a more mysterious thing as well.
The relationship starts to become, in a sense, more real, because it is a relationship with something you don't know, which is a complete other. Ultimately, you are entering a form of dialogue with reality. And that is now. You don't pray to a God that might exist in the future but doesn't exist now, or a God that existed in the past but doesn't exist now. We pray to now: that which is now, and that which is beyond you and beyond your understanding of what God is.
Thank you. I was caught in the baby-and-bathwater extremes. I definitely acknowledge that pattern in me as well. So thank you for pointing that out.