322                     CONFESSIONS OF A GOD SEEKER

takes this idea a giant step further. He says that everything in the universe is part of a continuum. Despite the apparent separateness of things, everything is a seamless extension of everything else, and ultimately even the implicate and explicate orders blend into each other.

      Science has made us aware of other examples of this intriguing phenomenon. Every cell in our bodies contains a complete record of who we are (our genetic history) and reflects the whole of which it is a part. This is the basis of cloning. Each cell can be used to replicate a virtually identical specimen, just as the fractional hologram can produce an image of the whole. In like manner, we are not only a part of ALL THAT IS, we are an infinitesimally small replica of IT. And, just as the cell can produce a fully developed adult of the same size and capability, so are we capable of growing to become that from which we derive. This concept may appear blasphemous or inconceivable at first, but it is consistent with the spiritual law of expanding consciousness and that of the ONE. Like the acorn to the giant oak tree, we too are in the process expanding to the ONE.

      We are limited in our reflection of ALL THAT IS only by limits we set on our acceptance of a deeper understanding, awareness and acceptance of ITS nature and ways. All religions place limits on the expansion of awareness by espousing static spiritual paradigms. It is as if they are saying, “GOD is no more than what we know HIM/HER/IT to be right now; we have the answer, and that’s that.”

Expanding or Changing Paradigms

Webster’s defines paradigm as:

Example, Pattern; especially: an outstandingly clear or typical example or archetype . . . a philosophical and theoretical framework of a scientific school or discipline within which theories, laws, and generalizations and the experiments performed in support of them are formulated.

     In other words, a paradigm is a way of looking at things. It represents the combination of our assumptions, beliefs, and accepted facts on a given subject, which influences the way we think and the decisions we make. Our ideas about dating, homemaking, and God are examples of paradigms. Throughout this section, we will refer to this concept to better understand how our thought patterns and archetypes influence our view of ourselves and the universe in which we live.

      The lessons about spirit and ALL THAT IS apply to all dimensions of reality. Once we learn them, we also learn the ways of the universe itself. Far from a purely physical phenomenon understandable in scientific terms, the creation and operation of the universe is first and foremost an inner “spiritual” process. It employs the same methods that we are in this physical classroom to learn. I use the word spiritual because there is in fact no “scientific” process or “spiritual” process as such. They are actually one. However, these designations are used to separate
that part of our knowledge discernible by certain methods of inquiry from another. They are, in fact, a continuum with the line of what is spiritual constantly moving as scientific discovery intrudes. Once we depended on spiritual myth, misguided doctrine, dogma, and reverence to breach the barrier that allowed us to accept and believe. As science brought forth more rational explanations, we abandoned doctrine and dogma and accepted what we came to regard as fact. Science has not yet breached the void between life and death, reality and dreams, imagination and manifestation. Consequently, we still view these areas as “spiritual”, as distinct from “science,” and continue to look to the former for guidance and explanation.

      When we come to see that both are inextricably connected, a continuum only, we will see the fallacy and the futility of the fixed paradigms of religious dogma. Thus, the problem with the term “spiritual” is that it is surrounded with reverence and deference that eschew rational inquiry. It implies that blind trust, acceptance, and abandonment of critical faculties are prerequisites. But, as indicated, science and spirituality are merely different ways of describing the same body of knowledge. Each answers in its own manner, who we are, why we are here, and what we are to do.

      Therefore, spiritual inquiry should be treated as a form of scientific inquiry. Then, we can abandon the entrapment of doctrine and dogma that masquerade as truth. But spiritual inquiry, as an extension of scientific inquiry (or vice versa), requires adoption of new and different assumptions and methods to expand the range of knowing truth. Scientific paradigms have been expanded in the popular mind by science-fiction writers, who often take what we know and add imaginative fancy in a manner that distorts the macro-paradigm of our existence: I AM, GOD IS, WE ARE ONE.

Source — Confessions of a God Seeker: A Journey to Higher Consciousness