The Divine Couple: The Transcendent and the Cosmic Energy

How do we distinguish between “God” and “the Godhead”?

The question arose recently. Let me expand on my answer here.

I ask that we remember that I’m not an enlightened being and am simply expressing my opinions – based on research, rather than personal experience. (1)

After discussion of the difference, let me briefly bring in the two other members of the Trinity (Divine Mother or Holy Spirit and the Christ or Atman).

***

The words “God” and “Godhead” have been given various meanings by enlightened masters.

One common version of the difference between the two is to say that “God” relates to the personal God, God in form, what Hindus call the conditioned Brahman, and the “Godhead” relates to the impersonal God, God beyond form, the unconditioned Brahman.

The Godhead is often called the Supreme Being, Prime Creator, Transcendental Void, and the One. These names could not be used of “God,” as narrowly interpreted here.

That having been said, I find the term “Godhead” cumbersome and unfamiliar to readers. After this discussion, I intend to resume my everyday practice of talking about “God” when I actually mean the Godhead.

The Godhead is void of anything and everything material and does not speak or move. About it, nothing affirmative or negative can be said. Though it cannot be known with the mind or senses, it causes everything in the world to come into creation.

Krishna expresses the mysterious relationship between the Godhead and the world:

“This entire universe is pervaded by me, in that eternal form of mine which is not manifest to the senses. Although I am not within any creature, all creatures exist within me.

“I do not mean that they exist within me physically. That is my divine mystery. You must try to understand its nature. My Being sustains all creatures and brings them to birth, but has no physical contact with them.” (2)

The minute the Godhead moves matter in this temporary dreamworld, we call it “the Divine Mother.” When at rest, we call it the Godhead.

The mystery of the Godhead, like so much else, cannot be realized with the mind. If anything, as we all know, the mind has to be quiet before realization can occur.

Movement in the mind is like a breeze on the lake; it prevents us from accurately (internally) “seeing” the reflection of the Moon. And it is “seeing” it that causes recognition or realization that what we are seeing is who we are.

Apparently each universe in the multiverse has a God who watches over it. The God of this universe has often spoken through channels, most notably Suzy Ward.

Here for instance is a passage in which Matthew distinguishes between God and Godhead, the latter of which he calls “Creator”: “Creator established the cosmic laws and God, by whatever name one calls the Supreme Being of this universe, must honor those laws in this universe.” (3)

I confess that I haven’t studied the God of this universe very much. I’ve been told in readings that it was because of my aversion to my Father. That combined with my unimpeded love for my Mother made it natural to turn to the Divine Mother as my chosen ideal.

***

Let me now briefly discuss the two other members of the Trinity: The Divine Mother or Holy Spirit and the Christ or Atman.

The Divine Mother, the second member of the Trinity, is called by Christians the Holy Spirit. “She” (4) is the Godhead’s creative energy and power expressed in form.

The Mother expresses the Father’s wishes – which, because they are One, are hers as well (5) – into form; that is, into matter, mater, Mother.

She does so by willing creation, preservation, and transformation, at all levels – the basic level of the cell – and below – on up to us – and beyond.

Hindus gave names to these three powers, calling them the gunas or cosmic forces. Creation is rajas; preservation is sattwa; and transformation is thamas.

For Eastern readers, I might relate that I asked the Divine Mother to confirm for me that these three cosmic forces or gunas are what are personified as Brahma, Vishnu, and Shiva and she concurred.

Steve Beckow: [I’d like] to know if the gunas, the cosmic forces which are called rajas, sattwa, andtamas, are the same as the Trimurthy [Triad] of Brahma, Vishnu and Shiva.

DM: Yes. We are the same as that triad.

SB: All right. And the Trimurthy of Brahma, Vishnu and Shiva is a subset of the Universal Creative Vibration that you are at your essence. Is that correct?

DM: That is correct. (6)

(Concluded in Part 2.)

Footnotes

(1) With the exception of the vision I had on Feb. 13, 1987, which showed me the total journey of an individual soul from God to God and identified for me the nature and process of the Trinity. See “The Purpose of Life is Enlightenment – Ch. 13 – Epilogue,” athttp://goldenageofgaia.com/2011/08/13/the-purpose-of-life-is-enlightenment-ch-13-epilogue/

(2) Sri Krishna in Swami Prabhavananda and Christopher Isherwood, trans., Bhagavad-Gita. The Song of God. New York and Scarborough: New American Library, 1972; c1944, 80.

(3) Matthew’s Message, Nov. 12, 2004, athttp://www.matthewbooks.com/mattsmessage.htm. An instance of the God of this universe speaking through Suzy Ward follows this article or can be found here:http://goldenageofgaia.com/2016/09/19/no-country-earth-people-free/

(4) “She” is not a female; “He” – the Godhead – is not a male. The Company of Heaven retains that way of referring to the divine couple, probably for its usefulness as a teaching device.

(5) And our will too, since we are also the Godhead.

(5) “The Divine Mother: Come to Me as I Come to You – Part 1/2,” Oct. 17, 2012, athttp://goldenageofgaia.com/2012/10/17/the-divine-mother-come-to-me-as-i-come-to-you-part-12/.

Sri Shankara also confirmed it in another Hour with an Angel:

Steve Beckow: Let me ask you: … what is the connection between what Hindus call Brahma, Vishnu and Shiva, and the gunas or the cosmic forces of rajas, sattwa and tamas?

Sri Shankara: I can answer this very quickly. There are no differences. …

All images of divine Mother and Child (like this of Yashoda and Krishna) refer back to the Divine Mother and the divine spark that we are.

(Concluded from Part 1.)

The gunas – aka the Trimurthy – are identical with the Mother’s energy. Her energy has been called “Aum.”

Let’s look at the significance of the word “Aum” from this angle. (We could look at it from many other angles.)

Aum can be visualized as a sine wave, composed of an upward incline, a plateau, and a downward incline.

• Akar is the upward incline: Rajas, creation, Brahma.
• Ukar is the plateau: Sattwa, preservation, Vishnu.
• Makar is the downward part: Thamas, transformation, Shiva.

Sine wave

The Divine Mother doesn’t create only this universe using the gunas, but all the universes of the multiverse.

The Divine Mother is herself a direct emanation of God, beyond universes and dimensions. I think we sometimes associate her only with this one universe, when she is the author of all.

***

Let me include the third Member of the Trinity now. Just very briefly. However, even from a short treatment, one does begin to see the picture the puzzle pieces present – the perennial philosophy behind the world’s religions.

Take the divine spark of the Father (the unconditioned Brahman or Godhead) and introduce it into the temple provided by the Mother – namely, the human body and in particular the heart – and you have the third member of the Trinity: us, the Divine Child.

However, when discussing the Trinity as referring to the levels of reality, sages usually ignore the physical body that the spark is housed in and consider the spark alone as the third member of the Trinity.

Speaking only of the spark, Jesus called it the “Christ.” Hindus call it the Atman or Brahman-within-the-individual. Our eternal essence is flame of the Divine Fire, a lamp always burning on the altar of the heart, a firebrand plucked from the burning.

It’s the task of the individual to descend into unknowingness of its essence and then to emerge into knowingness again, returning home to the One from whence it came.

used to think that that was the end of the drama until the Mother disabused me of that notion, informing me that souls issue forth again from the One, after returning. She was talking about the emanations of archangels and masters:

“Now, your question to me is, are there millions of emanations? And my answer, sweet one, is no, there are not. They are very specifically placed in what you would think of as universal or global roles, and they are positioned to do the work that the specific archangel or master has chosen to do, decided to do, committed to do — for me — throughout eternity, or until such time as they return. In which case they will begin again, regardless.” (1) [My emphasis]

Mike Quinsey’s source says the same:

“You may ask what is the ultimate goal of all souls and to put it quite simply it is to return to the total perfection of the Godhead, until you are sent out again for a new set of experiences.” (2) [My emphasis.]

***

Why does the Godhead (ultimately) or the Mother (operationally) assume various forms? Sri Ramakrishna explains that it’s to offer something attractive to each seeker:

“The mother cooks different dishes to suit the stomachs of her different children. Suppose she has five children. If there is a fish to cook, she prepares different dishes from it — pilau, pickled fish, fried fish, and so on — to suit their different tastes and powers of digestion.” (3)

I said earlier that I shied away from studying the personal God and the transcendent Godhead because of my aversion to my earthly Father. Fortunately the Godhead has provided other forms for me to worship; in my case, the Divine Mother.

When I interviewed her on An Hour with an Angel in 2012, the Divine Mother confirmed that the Trimurthy/gunas was an example of her providing different forms for her children to worship.

Divine Mother: [The Trimurthy] is much the same as we have been speaking of. It is a way in which my beloved children can come to know me and to have that experience. It is formless, and yet it is form.

It is a way of connection, and it is a way of understanding and entering into a higher vibration of being. So it helps the emergence into my energy.

Steve Beckow: Sort of like stair steps?

DM: That is correct.

SB: Okay.

DM: And you have all been climbing! (4)

If we can grasp the larger picture, we can see, at least conceptually, what the world’s religions are wanting to tell us: They want us to know that the plan for us is to go up the stair steps of enlightenment the Divine Mother is describing (Jacob’s ladder of consciousness), to complete our journey home to God. (5)

When we restrict our vision to Third Dimensionality, at each stage of our ascension from it, we’d ordinarily realize another level of the Trinity.

First we realize the Christ or Atman in fourth-chakra enlightenment; then the Mother or Holy Spirit in sixth-chakra enlightenment; and then our first experience of the Father or Brahman in seventh-chakra enlightenment.

(I’m not sure if this process is being followed in our Ascension or whether the gradually-rising energies are doing the same work for us without us needing to have these discrete events.)

Life’s purpose is for each of us to realize who we truly are – God. God’s purpose in creating life was to have the pleasure of meeting itself in a moment of our enlightenment. When any one of us realizes who she or he truly is, God meets God.

In my view, deciding to know about them – and, later, actuallyknowing them – launches us on one of the most rewarding adventures we can embark on in life. The deeper we know the Trinity, the deeper is our bliss, happiness, joy, and fulfilment.

Footnotes

(1) “The Divine Mother: Each and Every One of You Carries Divine Might – Part 1/2,” June 19, 2013, athttp://goldenageofgaia.com/2013/06/19/the-divine-mother-each-and-every-one-of-you-carries-divine-might-part-12/

(2) “Mike Quinsey: A Message from My Higher Self,” June 10, 2016, athttp://goldenageofgaia.com/2016/06/10/mike-quinsey-message-higher-self-18-12/.

(3) Sri Ramakrishna in Nikhilananda, Swami, trans. The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna. New York: Ramakrishna-Vivekananda Center, 1978; c1942, 81.

(4) “The Divine Mother: Come to Me as I Come to You – Part 1/2,” Oct. 17, 2012, athttp://goldenageofgaia.com/2012/10/17/the-divine-mother-come-to-me-as-i-come-to-you-part-12/. The stair steps I refer to are: Choosing a form of God, worshipping that form, seeing its form in a moment of enlightenment, and knowing its formless aspect in another moment of enlightenment.

The Reval isn’t even here yet and some of us are starting to wake up to some pretty challenging organizational realities a little ahead of time.

Faced with projects that will be large, spread out, and demanding in every respect, I came to see that there was no way that I could address what I felt I faced by drawing only on my own strength and insight.

It became clear that I had to get out of the way by surrendering to the Divine Will.

That decision coming from a merely intellectual place carries very little power.

Coming from an experiential place it carries more.

I’m not able to come to it from a realizational place yet. I’m not there yet. So feeling my way through these matters instead of thinking my way through them becomes important if my plans are to have legs or wind in their sails.

The very first thing I do when approaching surrendering my will to God’s is study what the masters have said on the subject so far. I do begin with intellectual knowledge but I don’t leave it there.

The papers I intend to produce on the subject – to educate myself – look at all aspects of working with God’s will.

Let’s set the stage by establishing a few axioms about God in the next few posts. In this one, I’d like to look at the fact that all enlightened masters feel that only God is real, permanent, existent.

I’m going to depart from my previous practice of drawing only on Company of Heaven sources and incorporate as well materials from among enlightened terrestrial masters and afterlife communicators. You therefore may see a few strange names.

In terms of wikis, I’ll be drawing on First Contact, New Maps of Heaven, and From Darkness Unto Light. (1)

If you’re saying, “I can’t write well-researched articles like these,” guess what? You have access to the same raw data that I do. It’s all right there, online.

God Alone is Real

Sri Ramakrishna, an avatar, tells us that “the truth is that God alone is real and all else unreal.”

“Men, universe, house, children – all these are like the magic of the magician…. The magician alone is real and his magic unreal…. God is like an ocean, and living beings are its bubbles.” (2)

His biographer, Swami Nikhilannda, expands on his metaphor of people as bubbles on the Ocean of God.

“Water alone is real; its bubbles appear and disappear. They disappear into the very water from which they arise.” (3)

And so will we eventually disapprear like a bubble on the Ocean of Love. (4)

What does “real” mean? Sri Ramakrishna explains:

“Real means eternal, and unreal means impermanent. He who has acquired discrimination knows that God is the only Substance and all else is non-existent.” (5)

On another occasion he used the metaphor of a real magician and his illusory magic:

“God alone is the real and permanent Substance; all else is illusory and impermanent. The magician alone is real; his magic is illusory. This is discrimination.” (6)

Speaking as God, the avatar Sri Krishna tells us that “[There is] no other beside me.” (7)

That is no different than the Prophet Isaiah speaking words for God: “I am God, and there is none else.” (8)

Indian sages like Ashtavakra report to us that “there is only God.” (9)

Or the Upanishads: “Verily, all is [God].” (10)

Muslim sages like Ibn Arabi concur:

“Whatever is manifested is …that … One Existence, One Soul, One Body; it is neither separated nor individuated; that everything in immanence is nothing other than His Manifestation and Tools.” (11)

Even one worships an idol one is still worshipping God, he holds:

“It is absolutely impossible to worship other than Him. Even the worship of an idol results in the worship of God, because the existence of the idol is also of God. To be able to understand this it is necessary to understand and to know that all existence is of God. …

“The gnostic, after having understood this meaning, neither enters into nor denies anybody else’s belief, because he understands there is no other existent but him and because he saw the All linked together in a chain of order, and understood that he himself is nothing other than an order and a will.” (12)

Have I somehow become a fundamentalist all of a sudden? No. I simply want to get to the bottom of what’s so in life and what I’m to do.

In this case, if I want to stop being Third-Dimensionally separative and dualistic, then I have to address my seeming separation from God. And this kind of step-by-step study is how I plan to do it.

Footnotes

(1) Here are their locations:

First Contact – http://goldengaiadb.com/First_Contact;
New Maps of Heaven –http://goldengaiadb.com/New_Maps_of_Heaven;
From Darkness to Light –http://goldengaiadb.com/From_Darkness_to_Light

(2) Paramahansa Ramakrishna in Swami Chetananda, They Lived with God. Life Stories of Some Devotees of Sri Ramakrishna. St. Louis: Vedanta Society of St. Louis, 1989, 354.

(3) Swami Nikhilananda, trans., The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna. New York: Ramakrishna-Vivekananda Center, 1978; c1942, 788.

(4) But apparently, according to Archangel Michael, that isn’t the end of things. Having returned to the Father, we re-emerge when desired or needed.

(5) Paramahansa Ramakrishna in Swami Nikhilananda, trans., The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna. New York: Ramakrishna-Vivekananda Center, 1978; c1942, 327.

(6) Paramahansa Ramakrishna in GSR, 179.

(7) Sri Krishna in Swami Prabhavananda and Christopher Isherwood, trans., Bhagavad-Gita. The Song of God. New York and Scarborough: New American Library, 1972; c1944, 71.

(8) Isaiah 5:22.

(9) Ashtavakra in Thomas Byrom, trans. Heart of Awareness. A Translation of the Ashtavakra Gita. Boston and Shaftesbury: Shambala, 1990, xxiv.

(10) Swami Prabhavananda and Frederick Manchester, trans., The Upanishads. Breath of the Eternal. New York and Scarborough: New American Library, 1957; c1948, 46.

(11) Muhyideen Ibn Arabi, Kernel of the Kernel. trans. Ismail Hakki Bursevi. Sherborne: Beshara, n.d., 7.