The “Electrical” Eucharist (The Radical Essence of Jesus’ Teachings)

The Crux of Christianity

What does it mean to be a Christian?

Being a true Christian isn’t about believing in Jesus; it’s about realizing your Christ (or Buddha, or Self)-nature. It’s about duplicating Jesus’ realization that “I and the Father are One,” and the way to do this is by practicing the spiritual discipline that Jesus himself recommends: the Eucharist—the sacrament, or act, of Holy Communion.

At the Last Supper, the last meal he shared with his disciples, Jesus implicitly describes the spiritual discipline that leads to the Kingdom of Heaven (or Christ-consciousness). And this discipline, the Eucharist, is the very essence of not only Christianity but all great mystical (or yogic) traditions.

Our series of discussions will focus on fully explicating the Eucharistic practice of Holy Communion that Jesus alluded to at the Last Supper. We will consider the electrical mechanics of the Eucharistic discipline and the mystical process of becoming Christ-like that the practice of Eucharistic spirituality engenders.

So you’re saying that Christianity can be reduced to the Eucharist?

Yes, if the Eucharist is properly understood. And I’m not the only one who makes this claim. As the renowned nineteenth-century mystic and occultist Eliphas Levi succinctly put it, “The whole of Christianity is the Eucharist.” In other words, if you can understand what the Eucharist is really about, you will also understand what being a true, or Spirit-full, Christian is really about.

The Eucharist is the sacrament, or act, of Holy (or Divine) Communion in its entirety; in other words, the holy (or spiritually holistic) act of connecting to the Divine Source (or Presence) and channeling, or receiving, its Grace (or Blessing Power), in the form of Light-energy. The word “Eucharist,” derived from Greek, means “thankfulness” (within the context of communion), and a true devotee of the Divine is always grateful for receiving God’s Grace.

Although the Eucharist is the essential component of true, or mystical, Christian spirituality, I contend that it has never been adequately explicated or elaborated upon. My aim as a mystic-philosopher and writer-teacher is to remedy this exegetical deficiency, and to this end, I analogize Eucharistic spirituality to an electrical circuit. I use Ohm’s Law to explain the Eucharist, transforming it, in effect, into what I call the “Electrical Eucharist.”

Can you explain how to practice the Electrical Eucharist? I really want to practice Holy Communion, but I don’t know how.

I think the best way to answer your question is to first explain the basic practice of Holy Communion, and then to elaborate on the explanation via the Electrical Eucharist paradigm. But before I begin my explanation of Holy Communion, I want to make an important point: Although technical instructions can point the way to the Divine Connection, until you are baptized, or initiated, by the Holy One, and receive His Spirit-power, or Grace, you cannot practice true Holy Communion—Spirit-infused contemplation of the Divine. Technical instructions for connecting to the Divine pertain mainly to the act of putting yourself in psycho-physical position to receive the Benediction, the descent of Divine Power. Once you receive this Divine Blessing Power, this Love-Bliss from above, then instead of you meditating, God, via His Shakti, or Spirit-power, meditates you. You rest in the descending Spirit-current, Light-energy from on high, and simply allow it to irradiate, or divinize, your bodymind.

Now that I’ve prefaced my answer to your question by disclosing the limitations of technical spiritual instructions, I can answer your question. Holy Communion is a synonym for conscious relationship, or at-one-ment, with God, as Spirit; therefore, the practice of Holy Communion is simply the discipline of conscious relationship, or at-one-ment, with the Holy Spirit. For a man to awaken as a Son who is one with the Father, he must permanently unite his consciousness (or soul) with Spirit-power, Divine Light-energy from above. The fundamental technique for establishing this holy relationship can be summarized as follows:

Sit upright in a chair with your palms resting on your thighs (or assume a yogic meditation posture on the floor). From your seated position, be whole-bodily present to the empty space in front of you. In other words, consciously inhabit, or “feeling-occupy,” your body, and as the whole body, be present to, or pressing against and gazing into, empty space (the void)—which will become shining Presence (the luminous Void) once your connection to it is strong enough to pull down Divine Power, Light-energy from above. To help you inhabit your body, randomly focus your attention on your hands and “third-eye” area (between, and just above, your brows). Every time, and as soon as, you notice your mind wandering or you feel yourself retracting from the position of being directly present (or in relationship) to the empty space in front of you, simply reassume the whole-bodily asana, or posture, of being present to space. To intensify your efforts to connect to, and stay connected to, space, you can use a verbal enquiry in the form of a question. For example, you can randomly ask yourself: “Avoiding relationship?” This type of self-questioning will focus your attention on your activity of avoiding relationship and instigate your return to the state of connectedness. Alternatively, you can simply pray, intently (and repeatedly, if necessary) asking God to bless you (with His Grace, or Spirit-power). Earnest, focused prayer naturally establishes a disciple in right relationship, which leads to empowered Holy Communion.

When your connection to empty space is sufficiently stable, or “locked-in,” it generates conscious force, felt as a palpable energetic pressure. If you utterly yield to this pressure (while maintaining your whole-bodily posture of relationship, or at-one-ment), the Spirit-current, Light-energy from above, can pour into you. When it does, you can either maintain your focused attention on the void (now the luminous Void-Presence), or partially or totally relax it. When the Spirit powerfully “touches” you, the Void-Presence no longer needs reliance. The first time the Spirit touches, or flows into, you is called baptism, or initiation. When, after years, or lifetimes, of spiritual practice, your immersion in the Spirit, the Light-current, becomes constant, then you spontaneously awaken as a Christ, a fully en-Light-ened Son (or Daughter) of God.

Now if you consider the “mechanics” of the Eucharistic Act—connecting to (or plugging into) the Divine Source (or Void-Presence) and then receiving (or conducting) the Power (or Spirit-current) stemming (or emanating) from it—you will notice that it is akin to an electrical circuit. Your bodymind can be likened to an electric lamp, and when you consciously plug it into the Divine Source (or “Socket”), then the Spirit-current flows into and through you, en-Light-ening you with its radiant Energy and “saving” you from your primal “sin,” your estrangement from God. Because an electrical circuit is such a wonderful metaphor for the Eucharist, we’ll continually return to it in the course of our spiritual discussions.

The Divine Presence and its Divine Power, like fire and its flames, are essentially one. But to become en-Light-ened, you must receive the Divine in the form of Power (Light-energy) emanating from the Presence, hence the emphasis on receiving the Holy Spirit, the en-Light-ening action of the Divine. The Divine Presence (the luminous Source or Void) is a marvelous meditation object, but once Its Power begins to pour into you, your relationship to the Divine becomes more a receptive feeling-connection to the Spirit than an active concentration-focus on the Presence. The Bible says to worship God in, and as, Spirit; therefore, Divine (or Holy) Communion is essentially Spirit Communion, connecting to the Highest Power, the Holy Spirit, and allowing it to divinize you.

Before we proceed further in our consideration of the Eucharistic method, I want to point out that the fundamental technique I’ve presented for the practice of Holy, or Divine, Communion is not set in stone. Holy Communion is an art as well as a science; therefore, you can creatively modify my instructions to a certain degree. I emphasize “to a certain degree,” because communion is simply, and only, communion. Thus, “creativity” in the practice of Holy Communion pertains only to your ability to make subtle psycho-physical adjustments that are helpful in enabling you to connect to and “lock in” to the Divine. The creativity I’m talking about can be likened to the adjustments a baseball hitter makes at the plate. Just as a hitter consciously relaxes, breathes deeply, and repositions himself to better enable him to connect his bat to the ball, you likewise can creatively adjust your psycho-physical “positioning” to better enable you to connect to the Divine. In the course of our discussions, we’ll consider some adjustments that may help you to establish and maintain a Divine connection.

The Eucharistic Consecration

What is the significance of the bread and wine in the Eucharistic rite?  

At his Last Supper, Jesus gives his disciples bread, saying, “This is my body,” and wine, saying, “This is my blood.” He breaks the bread, implying that man cannot live by bread (or body) alone, that true, or spiritual, sustenance cannot be found through the physical. The message is that man’s bodymind isn’t intended for sense satisfaction, but rather for sacrificial whole-bodily worship of God. The wine was poured into an empty cup before being given to his disciples, implying that one must empty, or surrender, oneself in order to receive, or to be filled with, the Holy Spirit, the Life-blood of God.

The meaning of the wine is seemingly straightforward, but the breaking of the bread has two meanings: the physical-sacrificial one (described above) and a mystical one. Thus, when Jesus breaks the bread, he is not only implying that the visible form body must be surrendered (or sacrificed), but that an invisible, or mystical, Truth Body underlies it.

According to most of the Christian sects that accept the mystical meaning of the breaking of bread, when Jesus says, “This is my body,” he is referring to a mystical, or invisible, Church, or Body, a non-physical communion of all true believers. From an esoteric perspective, the Body he is pointing to is the Truth Body (the Dharmakaya in Buddhism). The Bible directs us to worship God in Spirit and in Truth; hence, blood refers to the Spirit, and the broken bread to the Truth Body, the invisible, universal God Space, or “Church,” in which all true, or Spirit-baptized, disciples worship.

Because bread contains yeast and wine is fermented, these two sacramental offerings symbolize the spiritual growth or enzymatic transformation of the disciple. Transubstantiation signifies the nth degree of transformation, and the symbolic metamorphosis of bread into the Truth Body (or Dharmakaya) and wine into the Holy Spirit (the Sambhogakaya, or Bliss Body, in Buddhism) is a reminder for us to surrender, or sacrificially offer ourselves, to the Holy One, so that He, the Master Alchemist, can, via the divinization process, transform us into His likeness.

Baptism by the Spirit     

When I attempt to practice Holy Communion, I don’t experience the Spirit-energy that you’re talking about. Does this mean that I’m not a true Christian?

You can’t be a true, or Spirit-connected, Christian—unless you’re baptized. And the baptism I’m talking about is by the Spirit itself. The Spirit, Holy “Water” from above, literally pours down upon you, infilling your bodymind with intense, flowing Energy. This Energy, or Spirit-power, is your Saving Grace, but until you’ve been baptized, initiated by the Holy One, you can be only a believer, not a true disciple, or faith-full devotee, of the Lord.

If you religiously (or adamantly) practice the method of Holy Communion that I recommend, and you haven’t been baptized after, say, a few months of intense effort (meaning at least two half-hour sessions a day), then you should experiment with the basic concentration/meditation exercises that I’ll present in our later discussions.

What do I have to do in order to be baptized?

You have to generate enough conscious force, or “voltage,” in your communion practice to “invoke the Deity,” to “pull down” the Highest Power. In other words, your “Plugged-in Presence” needs more “push” to transpose into “pulled” (or poured-down) power from above. You get this push by intensifying your concentration, by single-pointedly focusing your attention on the enactment of the Eucharist. In the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus emphasizes this when he says, “If thine eye [consciousness] be single, thy whole body will be filled with Light [from above].” 

The greatest aid to generating conscious force is the practice of celibacy. Although sexual abstinence isn’t fun, if you’re serious about spiritual life and find yourself unable to pull down the Highest Power, the Holy Spirit, then you should experiment with celibacy, or at least with significantly reduced sexual activity. The practice of celibacy isn’t about morality; it’s about energy—spiritual (or Spirit-connecting) energy. When you abstain from sex, your conserved essential life-energy transmutes into subtle spiritual concentrative power, which helps you to lock into the Divine and pull down Light-energy.

Jesus fasted and prayed for forty days. If you’re unable to draw down Divine Power, consider imitating his efforts to a degree. For example, your “imitation of Christ” could be a spiritually intensive, weekend-long or several-day retreat in which you eat sparingly and devote yourself to nearly nonstop prayer, study, and meditation.

Poverty in the Spirit

After the Holy Spirit enters you, what should your spiritual practice be?

When the Spirit “touches” you, you should yield to its invasive pressure by relaxing your body and letting go of your mind. Be as if dead: empty and effortless. This holding on to nothing in the face of Spirit’s intrusion is the true meaning of “poverty in the Spirit.”  The pressure of the Spirit-current sensitizes you to your resistance, enabling you to palpably feel it. And when you feel it, the only intelligent response is to release it and let the Spirit-current move unimpeded through your bodymind, divinizing, or en-Light-ening, you.

When Jesus says, “The meek shall inherit the Earth,” he seemingly implies that those who practice poverty in the Spirit, by virtue of the Blessing Power they receive and radiate, will inevitably reign supreme because their selfless purity will be the Saving Grace that rescues humanity from its ego-crazed self-destruction. There is much that can be said about the implications of Jesus’ controversial statement, and we’ll consider this matter in some depth later.

The Dialectical Eucharist

Can you explain how to integrate the practice of presence with the practice of poverty?  

The practices of presence and poverty constitute a dialectic, with presence (or relationship) as the thesis, absence (or inner emptiness) as the antithesis, and the descent of the Holy Spirit as the synthesis. In other words, the pressure of your conscious presence (or relational force) instigates your self-emptying (or surrendering), which “produces,” or pulls down, the Spirit, which deifies you, transforming you into a Self-realized, or Christ-like, being.

In engendering the descent of the Spirit, the two dialectical practices of presence (or relationship) and poverty (or absence) give birth to a third, synthesizing practice: the practice of power. The practice of presence is about connecting; the practice of poverty is about surrendering; and the practice of power, which integrates the practices of presence and poverty, is about receiving.

The practice of receiving the Holy Spirit synthesizes the practices of presence and poverty by, in effect, mediating them. Thus, instead of full attention being focused on either the act of being present or the act of being self-empty, the act of receiving, or conducting, the Spirit-current involves the artful integration of both these gestures. It involves the letting go of psychical content while simultaneously holding on to the context of connectedness. In order to instigate the drawing-down of Divine Power, the Holy Spirit, the disciple must sometimes emphasize the “pole of presence” (or relationship), and at other times the “pole of poverty” (or self-emptying). But when the descent of Light-energy is intense, the disciple can dispense with the dialectical spiritual practices (of presence and absence) and effortlessly rest in the Bliss (or Blessing)-current from above.

Ohm’s Law and the Eucharist

The dialectical spiritual practice that you’re describing does seem to mirror an electrical circuit, with the Spirit-current representing the amperage-like resolution of voltage-like conscious force and ohms-like reduced resistance. But how can you be sure that Ohm’s Law applies to spirituality?

No one can prove (or disprove) that Ohm’s Law applies to Spirit-conductivity. But based on my own spiritual experiences, it is obvious to me that Ohm’s Law, or some approximate variation of it, applies to Eucharistic spirituality. Consequently, even if Ohm’s Law does not exactly hold true for the practice of Holy Spirit communion and conductivity, it still provides a nonpareil metaphor for understanding the mechanics of the Eucharist.

For those of you unfamiliar with Ohm’s Law, it states that “the strength or intensity of an unvarying electric current is directly proportional to the electromotive force and inversely proportional to the resistance in a circuit.” Ohm’s Law—where V = voltage (electromotive force), I = amperage (intensity of current), and R = ohms (units of resistance)—can be summarized in three formulas:

 ;  ;  

(Note: Any form of the Ohm’s Law equation can be derived from the other two via simple algebra.) 

Translating Ohm’s Law into a Eucharistic formula is simple. All we have to do is to substitute communion, or connected consciousness (or consciousness-force), for voltage; spiritual energy (or intensity of the Spirit-current) for amperage; and ego-resistance (or degree of resistance to the Spirit-current) for ohms. Therefore, the Electrical Eucharistic formula—where C = communion, or connected consciousness (or consciousness-force); I = spiritual energy (or intensity of the Spirit-current); and R = ego-resistance (or degree of resistance to the Spirit-current)—can, like Ohm’s Law, be summarized in three formulas:

 ;  ;  

(Note: As with Ohm’s Law, any of these equations can be derived from the other two via simple algebra.)

Can you simplify and summarize the Ohm’s Law/Eucharist analogy?

Yes. The Holy Spirit is the electric current (amperage); Holy Communion is the electromotive force (voltage); and ego-resistance is the resistance to the flow of the current (ohms). Ohm's Law applied to Eucharistic spirituality tells us that the intensity of the Holy Spirit-current is directly proportional to one's Holy Communal (or relational) force and inversely proportional to one's ego-resistance to the inflowing Holy Spirit-current. Once you’ve been baptized by the Holy Spirit, you'll be able to palpably and viscerally experience the seeming reality of Ohm's Law in Eucharistic spirituality.      

Ohm’s Law is a cool formula for considering the Eucharist, the practice of Holy Communion and Holy Spirit reception. And in our further discussions on Eucharistic spirituality, we will use the Ohm’s Law formula to delve more deeply into the spiritual en-Light-enment process. But before we continue further in this vein, it will be helpful to first consider Christianity’s greatest mystery, the Trinity.