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Introduction ix
laws and principles governing the expansion of consciousness, thereby bringing science closer to spirituality and the great spiritual systems closer to one another. We are coming to recognize that all the great world religions emerge from a common universal reality, and although they use different symbols, ceremonies and forms, they all express the nature and dynamics of the one universal and eternal consciousness, or God, from which all matter and energy arise.
If all this is indeed true, if all religions are fundamentally one, if the entire cosmos is a manifestation of Universal Consciousness— and if in fact we ourselves are Universal Consciousness beyond any limit; if our real self is, in fact, infinite and eternal—why are we not aware of this?
Science is beginning to look to spirituality for answers to this timeless question—to the great world religions, which have from the start declared that the material world is a manifestation of spirit or infinite consciousness. The ancient wisdom of sages and saints tells us that the crux of the problem lies in the mind, which deceives man into believing himself separate and limited.
Although the eternal ocean of spirit is oneness without a second, infinite consciousness wills a mysterious spell upon itself by creating the mind. So attracted by the mind’s powerful forces, by the dual world of pleasures and pains, desires and impulses, ego and the senses, infinite consciousness mistakenly perceives differences and limitations—separate names and forms—the appearance that it is separate from itself—duality. Why the limitless willed this delusion upon itself is creation’s greatest mystery. I will offer an explanation at the end of Chapter 4.
The great spiritual systems describe the mind as a bubble in magnitude, compared to the vastness of the ocean of spirit or pure consciousness. Infinite consciousness attaches itself to the filmy wall of the bubble-mind, erroneously identifying itself with the finite and limited content within. But the bubble can burst! The deluding film that prevents our personal consciousness from realizing its universal nature can dissolve, freeing the personal to merge back into the universal—to realize boundless, eternal awareness, pure unlimited being, unconditional love and bliss. Spirituality has much to teach psychology about this path to transcendence.
Western psychology has penetrated deep into the mystery of