“Now the great fact to be recognized about a unity is that, because it is single unit, wherever it is at all the whole of it must be.”

The third chapter of the Edinburgh Lectures touches on the characteristics of what a unified spirit looks like and how it interacts with the rest of the world. Having a proper understanding of this concept is paramount to the subsequent chapters in this book, as each subsequent chapter dives deeper into the subject of what our spirit is.

“Spirit is thus omnipresent in its entirety, and it is accordingly logically correct that at every moment of time all spirit is concentrated at any point in space that we may choose to fix out thought upon.”

Let’s break this statement down in simpler terms. Imagine there’s a person in the middle of a desert, scorched under the intense light of the sun. In total desperation, they walk onward in search of water. With every step their body weakens. With every breath, the inevitability of death becomes ever-present. In exhaustion they fall to the ground, fully unconscious.

In this example, the man’s spirit was entirely fixated on survival: for it was the only force driving him onward. His spirit was focussed exclusively on survival.

Now imagine the man wakes up. He finds himself in a primitive hospital of some kind, with a needle in his arm, and a persistent drip of fluids entering his bloodstream. Where is his spirit now?

The answer is the same as before, but this time with a twist. His spirit is still in the desert, where he once was before passing out. But now his spirit is additionally right there in the healthcare unit, as he has no idea where he is or how he got there. As such, his spirit is inhabiting two places in his mind: the desert, and the unknown place where he physically is. Furthermore, the act of passing out was a survival mechanism. His body was entering a low-power mode. His unconscious self determined that walking any further meant risking death. So instead, it shut the whole system down in hopes that someone would arrive and bring him to safety.

You see, the man may seem surprised to find himself in this new place, but he should have expected this all along. His spirit was already there, because it knew that’s where he needed to be. He knew that too, way back in the desert, both consciously and unconsciously.

And now we see that this man’s spirit was in four places at once: the desert where he was, the desert where he is no more, the healthcare unit where he was not yet, and the healthcare unit where he presently sits.

But this example becomes far more complex when we understand that life is not just going from Point A to Point B, but an innumerable combination of points and places. Saying that our spirit is only present wherever we physically are ignores the reality that our bodies are a form, and that existential realities, like life and death, exist outside of physical forms. Troward demonstrated this in the first chapter by describing the relationship between intelligence and matter. Our spirit embodies a form, but it also exists outside of that present state, extending into the past and the future at the same time.

Troward establishes this one last time by saying, “Pure spirit is the Life-principle considered apart from the matrix in which it takes relation to time and space in a particular form.” Jesus, Himself, confirms the unity of the spirit precisely in Matthew 6:21 by saying, “For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.”

Wherever we set our spirit upon, that thing will become, in essence, the entirety of our focus. And that focus exists in any number of possible perspectives we could take.

In one final example, let’s look briefly at a man looking to change careers. How might he go about doing so? There is an endless number of ways to approach this subject, but every possible option is playing out in his mind before he ever actually submits a two-week notice. He has played out every option in his mind before ever doing so. This man’s spirit exists in all of those hypotheticals, and the letter of notice itself. Every application he ever sent contained a fraction of the person who he wished to become. That future version of self was embodied in the present by actively pursuing a career elsewhere. His spirit was present in the work today, and in the work of tomorrow.

As we will see in the next chapter, if we accept the belief of a unified spirit then it becomes possible to argue the existence of a subjective and objective version of selfhood. Furthermore, these two states of existence can be divided between personal and impersonal.

If we understand how unified the spirit of each person is across space and time, then it becomes possible to foresee who we are becoming, and align our actions with that future self. I think that is the real wisdom in this text. See you all next Monday (Not Tuesday this time!). Have a wonderful Thanksgiving.