Chapter 1: THE ONENESS OF GOD — section 1
Chapter 1: THE ONENESS OF GOD
“HEAR, O Israel: the Lord our god is one Lord.” Hear, O Israel:
Hear, O man made of the very substance of God: You and God are one and undivided!
Man, the world and all within it are conditioned states of the unconditioned one, God.
You are this one; you are God conditioned as man.
All that you believe God to be, you are; but you will never know this to be true until you stop claiming it of another, and recognize this seeming other to be yourself.
God and man, spirit and matter, the formless and the formed, the creator and the creation, the cause and the effect, your Father and you are one.
This one, in whom all conditioned states live and move and have their being,is your I AM, your unconditioned consciousness.
Unconditioned consciousness is God, the one and only reality. By unconditioned consciousness is meant a sense of awareness; a sense of knowing that I AM apart from knowing who I AM; the consciousness of being, divorced from that which I am conscious of being. I AM aware of being man, but I need not be man to be aware of being. Before I became aware of being someone, I, unconditioned awareness, was aware of being, and this awareness does not depend upon being someone. I AM self-existent, unconditioned consciousness; I became aware of being someone; and I shall become aware of being someone other than this that I am now aware of being; but I AM eternally aware of being whether I am unconditioned formlessness or I am conditioned form.
As the conditioned state, I (man), might forget who I am, or where I am, but I cannot forget that I AM. This knowing that I AM, this awareness of being, is the only reality.
This unconditioned consciousness, the I AM, is that knowing reality in whom all conditioned states – conceptions of myself – begin and end, but which ever remains the unknown knowing being when all the known ceases to be.
All that I have ever believed myself to be, all that I now believe myself to be, and all that I shall ever believe myself to be, are but attempts to know myself,– the unknown, undefined reality.