The Triune Nature of God

The trinity of being appears to run through all Nature and all life. For instance, there is electricity, the way it works, and its results, which is light or motive power. There is the seed, the creative medium of the soil, and the plant.

Throughout the ages, this Trinity has been taught. Every great religion and every great spiritual philosophy has taught this Trinity. Father, Son, and Holy Ghost is the Christian Trinity. It is the Thing, the Way It Works, and What It Does. The Thing is Absolute Intelligence; the way It works, is Absolute Law; and What It Does, is the result—manifestation.

The nature of Being is a Unity, with three distinct attributes: Spirit, Soul, and Body.

Spirit—First Cause
Spirit is the active and Self-Conscious Principle. Spirit is First Cause or God—the Absolute Essence of all that is. It is the Great or Universal I AM. Spirit is Conscious Mind and is the Power which knows Itself. It is conscious Being.

The Spirit is Self-Propelling. It is Absolute and All. It is Self-Existent and has all life within Itself. It is the Word and the Word is Volition. It has choice because It is Volition. It is Will because It chooses. It is Free Spirit, because It knows nothing outside Itself, and therefore nothing different from Itself.

Spirit is the Father-Mother God, because It is the Principle of Unity back of all things. The masculine and the feminine principles both come from the One. Spirit is all Life, Truth, Love, Being, Cause and Effect. It is the only Power in the Universe that knows Itself. The Spirit could know nothing outside Itself, that would be God and something else. Spirit is all—the Center and Circumference of everything that exists—both manifest and unmanifest. It has no enemies, no differences, no otherness, no apartness, no separation from Itself. It is Undivided, Complete and Perfect within Itself, having no opposites and no opposition. It knows only Its own ability and since It is All, It cannot be hindered in any way, shape or manner.

It is impossible for a finite mind to comprehend such a complete Life and Power. In moments of real inspiration, we realize, to a degree at least, that God is All—That which has within Itself all that really is—the Life in everything and the Love through everything. The One Presence and the One Infinite Person, Whom we call God or Spirit; within this One all live.

Creation does not mean making something out of nothing. Creation is the passing of Spirit into form and is eternally going on. Spirit cannot change, for being All, there is nothing for It to change into. This is self-evident.

It is necessary for us to understand that the only active Principle is Spirit…Self-Conscious, Self-Knowing Life…and that all else is subject to Its Will. The Spirit is conscious of Its own Thought, Its own Desire, Its own manifest Action; and It is conscious that Its Desire is satisfied. Consequently, It is conscious of that which It manifests; but It is not conscious of any effort or process in Its manifestation.

Soul—The Creative Medium
It is necessary that Soul and Body should exist because Spirit, without manifestation, would construct only a dream world, never coming to Self-Realization. In order to express, there must be a medium through which Spirit manifests and there must be a manifestation, hence, Soul and Body. The teaching of the great thinkers of all time is, that we live in a threefold Universe of Spirit, Soul and Body—of Intelligence, Substance and Form.

We are using the word “Soul” in the sense of a Universal Soul, or Medium, through which Spirit operates. It is the Holy Ghost, or Third Person of the Christian Trinity. Like the creative soil, in which seeds are planted and from which plant life comes, the Soul of the Universe is the Creative Medium into which the Word of Spirit falls and from which Creation arises.

We should not, however, think of Soul and Spirit as separate from each other. They are really two parts or aspects of the same thing, each being Self-Existent and Co-Eternal with the other. The term Subjective Mind is used in speaking of the Universal Soul, rather than the term Subconscious Mind, to avoid the impression that subjective means unconscious. Mind never could be unconscious! The Soul is subjective to Spirit, receives impressions from Spirit. The Subjective Mind which we call Soul, is not a knower in the sense that Spirit is, i.e., It is not Self-Conscious. It knows only to do without knowing why It does. It is a doer or executor of the will of the Spirit and has no choice of Its own. It is the business of Soul to reflect the images that Spirit casts into It.

Subjective Intelligence
While the Soul may not choose, having no self-consciousness of Its own, yet It has an Intelligence which is infinite, compared to the intelligence which we exhibit. For instance, the combined intelligence of the race could not create the life of a plant, yet the Intelligence in the creative soil of the earth will produce as many for us as we ask, when we plant the seed of that which we wish to have created.

The same principle holds good in that greater Creative Medium of the Spirit, which we call the Soul of the Universe. It has the Intelligence and Power to produce, but no choice as to what It is to produce. Having no conscious mind of Its own, It receives all ideas given It, and tends to create a form around them. If It could choose, It could reject, and this is as impossible as for the soil to say, “You must not plant spinach this year, you must plant cauliflower.” We can imagine what consternation would prevail throughout the world if just once the soil failed to function according to the law of its nature. We need not be disturbed by such a fear. It is bound to accept and to act. It does not argue but at once begins to create a likeness of the pattern given it. If we say “petunias,” right back to us it says “petunias,” and begins immediately the business of producing them. Being a neutral, creative medium which knows neither good nor bad, it is conscious only of its own ability to do. This is why some of the earlier philosophers referred to the Universal Soul, or Creative Medium, as a “blind force, not knowing, only doing.” This we know to be true of the nature of all law. We are not discussing the Nature of the Spirit. We are talking about Law.

Law
It must be apparent by now that the Creative Medium of Spirit is the great Mental Law of the Universe. It is the Law, obeying the Will of the Spirit; It is the Universal Law of Mind. All law is Mind in action. Soul is the Medium through which all Law and all Power operate. Being subjective, It cannot analyze, dissect or deny. Because of Its Nature, It must always accept. The Karmic Law, which means the Law of Cause and Effect, works through the medium of the Universal Soul, which is the Creative Principle of Nature and the Law of Spirit.

Body—The Manifestation of Spirit
Body means the entire manifestation of Spirit on all planes. “In my father’s house are many mansions,” said Jesus. We do not, of course, see all these mansions. Science has revealed to us that many exist which we do not see, and revelation has shown that the Universe is Infinite…“For we know in part, and we prophesy in part.”

The word “body” as used in the Science of Mind means all objective manifestations of the invisible Principle of Life. The body is distinguished from the idea, in that the body is seen while the idea is invisible. The physical universe is the Body of God—the invisible Principle of all life. Our physical being is the body of the unseen man. Behind the objective form of the rose is the idea that projects the rose.

Body is always an effect, never a cause. Body expresses intelligence, its apparent intelligence being lent by the consciousness which permeates it. We would not say that consciousness is in the body, but rather that body is in consciousness! If one is unconscious he has neither pain nor fear. Pain and fear are in consciousness, but consciousness so completely envelops the body that it appears to be intelligent.

Perhaps the human body is an exact counterpart of an invisible body which is non-material as we now understand matter and physical form. The physical body is evolved for the purpose of allowing consciousness to function on this plane. The body is necessary to this plane, since only through a physical body can we properly function here. When the body is no longer a fit instrument the soul deserts it and continues to function on another plane.

To say that the body is unreal is a mistake. It is real but is an effect, not an entity. It may yet be proven that the mind completely controls the body, and that the body is but a reflection of the mind. In no way would this contradict the reality of the body nor the experience of pain and sickness, but it might help in an understanding of these experiences. While we may affirm that the body is not a thing of itself, we cannot say there is no body. The simplest way to think of body is to realize that it is the objective manifestation of a subjective mind and consciousness; and if we are to be well and happy, not only the body but the mind also must be peaceful and harmonious.

Psychology has shown that psychical (or subjective) disturbances produce physical reactions in the body. If the body is to be permanently well, the soul or subjective life must be in poise, the mind peaceful and happy. It may be considered as a general rule that when the soul is poised in true spiritual realization the body will be normal and healthy. This is the purpose of mental healing, whether it be approached from the psychological or metaphysical angle. Psychology and metaphysics are but two ends of the same thing. So we treat the body as a legitimate effect, controlled by the soul life.

Form Within the Formless
Our physical body is like other physical manifestations. The idea of body is an image derived from the fountain of all ideas. The form is a materialization from the Substance of all forms. All bodies are made out of the same stuff. This one stuff is an inanimate and infinite stuff, and is equally distributed in the universe—much like the modern idea of the ether of space—and it is the nature of this stuff to take form! Therefore, form is entirely in the realm of effect. Form comes and goes but it is not self-knowing. Form is within the formless. Form is not an illusion, even when it is the form of disease; it then represents a false conclusion, but is as real as it is supposed to be. If the formless did not take form Spirit would never arrive at self-realization.

Form is real as form but is not self-conscious, it is subjective to the power that created it. Forms come and go but the Power back of them is Changeless. Form is temporary but Mind is eternal. •

Ernest Holmes

February 2003

The Triune Nature of God