By Peter Canova
Every day throughout recorded history millions of people cry out daily or in the silent anguish of their broken hearts, “Where are you, God? Why don’t you answer me?” Philosophers, religions, and atheists alike have posed the same question over the ages: if there is a God, why is it so well hidden?
My study, experience, and reflections over four decades indicate to me that God is indeed hidden—in plain sight! I draw my conclusion partly from spiritual traditions, partly from science, partly from psychology and biology but mostly from validation of my inner experience.
Inner experience—let’s take our starting point from Jesus of Nazareth, a figure some believe was God incarnate, others an enlightened spiritual adept. That question is not what’s important. What is important is his repeated revelation that the kingdom of God lies within. If only people had not buried that simple truth with reams of dogma, hierarchy, and agendas the world would be a different and better place today.
So let’s look inward, not just to the mind but to the body for possible clues as to what Jesus meant.
Divisions of the Body
Our brains have a triune character consisting of distinct but overlapping evolutionary layers. The three layers are the reptilian, the limbic, and the neocortex. In evolutionary order of oldest to newest, the reptilian is the instinctual brain governing basic sensory reactions, the limbic is the seat of feeling and emotions while the neocortex governs rational or abstract thinking,
We further possess distinct brain hemispheres that seem to delineate, focus, or express qualities of the abstract mind associated with the neocortex. The left brain is rational, logical, and analytic. It is mathematically oriented and uses factual knowledge. The right brain uses feeling, intuition, and imagination. It is oriented towards symbols and imagery and is visionary.
Divisions of the Mind
To make matters more complicated, psychologists have identified differing levels of mind function called conscious, subconscious, and unconscious. Many add a layer above these called the superconscious or higher self. The subconscious handles basic bodily functions and appears to be the source of both basic creative but also potentially negative impulses.
The subconscious is the middle level where impulses for the unconscious can be processed in raw form and made available to the conscious mind, which is the everyday waking and working conscious under which we operate. The superconscious or higher self is a kind of transcendental mind realm containing the archetypes or the blueprint patterns out of which the perceptual world is formed. Each of these mind levels has discernable corresponding brain wave patterns called Alpha, Beta, Theta, and Delta.
In the Realm of Illusion
At this point, you might well be thinking, wow, all these mind-body divisions seem like such an obstacle course how do we function at all? Well, you’re on to something there. It could just be that this bio-psychological maze is serving the purpose of keeping something hidden at its center.
If we go by the creation story common to most major spiritual traditions, it’s about a kind of smoke and mirror game to allow conscious or spiritual energy to experience the perception of materiality. It’s what the Hindus called Maya, modern science calls simulated reality, and pop culture calls the Matrix. (If you wish to split the article in 2 parts, end part 1 here and begin part 2 at the next section)
In the Beginning . . .
To answer the mystery of where and why God might be hiding, we need to dig back deep into the creation beyond all the distortions and confusion posed by traditional religion. Western or Abrahamic religions all tell us that human beings were separate creations from God the way Pinocchio was a separate creation from Geppetto. The ancient spiritual traditions from Hinduism to the early Judeo-Christian mystics responded to this notion with an emphatic, “NO!”
We are not separate creations and God created nothing. We are, rather, emanations or projections of the very Mind-Consciousness of God Itself, albeit in diluted states of conscious limitation. If God is the Source of the cosmic power grid, we are like the relay stations stepping down the energy for everyday usage, which in our case means the projected perception of physical reality.
Souls Along the Frontier
Spirits and souls are not exactly the same. Spirits are the individual consciousnesses that have elected to use their free will to stay within the harmonic sphere of the Source consciousness. In Christian terminology, we might say they were the angels who stayed before the throne of God. Souls are those spirits who diverged into other dimensions of conscious vibration seeking individual experience. They were the pioneers or journeyers who strayed by exerting their individual will over that of the collective.
This falling away from the Source Consciousness was symbolically echoed in the story of the fall of Adam and Eve from Paradise. It was more incisively explained in the suppressed Gnostic mystical Christian gospels as the fall of consciousness–actually a series of falls–to lower states of awareness culminating in consciousness embodying in physical form.
Spiritual Evolution
This fall was not sudden; it was gradual and evolutionary in both material and non-material dimensions. Numerous, disparate sources from pagan and Judeo-Christian to the Sumerian texts translated by Sitchin and even the readings of psychics like Edgar Cayce all indicate that physical life on this planet was tampered with and evolved by “outside” forces.
The most frequently told version is primitive early primates were manipulated into higher forms until bodies capable of holding intelligent consciousness were perfected. That would eventually be us, folks. This evolution was described by different sources as being rather experimental with several failures until success was achieved.
I ran across a statement on a website that nicely sums up this widely-held belief: “For thousands of years Gods weren’t in human form. Then they seem to have been combined with animals, and then finally became completely human. (Damh the Bard).
Now, you can believe or not believe this happened but it certainly mirrors the evolved physical structure of the brain. The reptilian would be the original brain of the brute animal. Then came the limbic with the capacity to feel followed by the final neocortex and the power of reason and abstract thought. It was at this point that physical forms were finally capable of holding spirit consciousness giving the appearance that modern homo sapiens (sentient man) was an abrupt historical event.
The left and right brain hemispheres also perfectly correlate with ancient mystical wisdom. In the Gnostic gospels, God or the Source is a singularity but It expresses Itself in polar opposites called male and female. It was the dynamic action between these forces that generated the light, heat, and motion for creation similar to how the poles of a battery generate electrical energy.
The characteristics of the male-female forces also corresponded to the left brain/right brain characteristics previously described. As it is above, so it is below the ancient Hermetic adage says. The Gnostics validated this by saying everything in the physical dimension is a pale blueprint of a higher archetypal dimension.
Why Hide?
With the previously given background, we can now address the question of why the charade of psychological and biological obstacles to recognizing the animating force within us that led to our existence. In the Greek myth of the birth of Dionysius Zeus sires Dionysius on the mortal woman Semele. She asks to see Zeus in his true form. He reveals himself as light energy and she is destroyed. The moral of the story? High-frequency energies cannot be contained in lower-frequency vessels.
This comports with the Gnostic creation story. The Source projected other beings by limiting or stepping down Its Consciousness (energy). Only in this manner could projected beings have a sense of individuality otherwise they would just be absorbed back into the infinite Source energy. So, limitation, or lower frequency energy in scientific terms, is essential to a sense of individuality.
Remember our power grid analogy? We can’t utilize the power of the raw source energy so it gets stepped down through a series of transformers and relay stations that correspond to our biological (brain) and psychological (mind) functions. Our essential soul energies thereby become usable in physical forms. The layers of body and mind are like circuit breakers allowing our true natures to reside in lower states of energy without suffering the fate of poor Semele.
What Has Been Hidden Shall Be Revealed
Through this elaborate mechanism of concealing what we truly are, like the holodeck in the Star Trek series, we’ve immersed ourselves into a virtual reality as characters so involved that we’ve forgotten we are the programmers. But, a way exists to exit the maze. Consciousness was the way in, consciousness is the way out.
The kingdom of heaven is within and we can trace our way back to our source by elevating our consciousness. Unconscious> Subconscious> Conscious> Superconscious would seem to be the reverse-engineered pathway. This may entail study, observation, meditation, and the accumulation of higher knowledge but it lies within all of our capabilities.
Hindu sages had a saying: “This world is the playground in which God fools Himself.” Only in this manner can spirit energy experience itself as being physical, only in this manner can a physical entity be the vessel for higher energies. Once this is realized, we can, like Dorothy and her companions, begin to pull open the veil and see the Wizard of Oz behind the curtain.
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Peter Canova is an international businessman who, after a series of life-changing spiritual experiences, began writing on spirituality and consciousness. He is the author of the 25x award-winning First Souls Trilogy and has contributed to the popular Chicken Soup for the Soul series. His latest book, Quantum Spirituality, swept the American Book Fest Awards in four categories. https://petercanova.com/