Incarnation of Divinity...

Being separate and being an individual is not the same thing.....as is so often assumed in circles of non-dual spirituality........You are not separate at all AND there is certainly an individual with a particular body, mind, personality and personal history. There is no need to utterly die to that individual, deny it, or attempt somehow to destroy or obliterate it.. You just need to see that this individual personality, body and mind is not who you are EXCLUSIVELY. But it is who you are on the surface of appearance. It is how you appear in the phenomenal world of form. You are not limited to name and form, but name and form is INCLUDED in who and what you are.

You need to wake up to the eternal dimension of Spirit, which is who you are essentially at the very core of being itself.....But that does not mean the utter destruction of the individual body and mind. The individual body and mind called by your name is a vehicle, a container, a "tabernacle" of the One Spirit.

It is an incarnation of divinity itself and so, is holy, divine, and to be treated with reverence and dignity. Taken separately it is not real and does not exist as a separate entity apart from God, but taken as the vehicle, the container of divinity....it is fully included as divine itself, as a particular, beautiful and unique individual expression of God/Divinity/Consciousness. This is true for each of us as it is true for each snowflake, each ant, each diamond, each leaf on a tree.

Each one is an entirely unique expression of divinity never seen before and never to be seen again. How amazing! How gorgeous! Wow!


Francis Bennett responds to Joseph T. McMahon, you say there is no 'entity" that exists in and of itself, and I would say yes, I totally agree (but even to use the word "itself" implies an individual, which as I say is not the same thing as "a separate individual")....Nothing exists "in and of itself" as a separate discreet entity that is separate somehow from consciousness/presence/all of life/God/Brahman........But there is a difference between saying that there is nothing that has any SEPARATE independent existence, and saying that it is non-existent altogether and is completely "illusory". It is not absolutely real or ultimately real...but that is not to say that it has no relative existence or reality at all.

Precisely what I am saying here is that contingent existence is not the same as saying no existence AT ALL. Yes, there is no separate entity called a person, but as an expression of consciousness, there IS a person and a giraffe and a tree and a cat and a dog...and all these forms are particular and individual without being at all "separate entities". My sense is that this is precisely what Shankara is getting at when he states 1) The world is illusory (when seen as made up of separate discreet entities) 2) Only Brahman is real.(as that formless essence that is innate and at the core of every individual thing) 3) The world IS BRAHMAN (When it is seen as flowing from and being an expression in form of the formless divinity/Brahman)

- Francis Bennett