The Spiritual Architecture of My Reality
June 6, 2026 · The Intuitive Artist's Workshop
I have been wondering, lately — quietly, in that particular kind of wondering that arrives not during the busy hours of the day, but in the still moment between, when the noise falls away and the soul surfaces — about the Spiritual Architecture of my reality.
This is not a casual curiosity. It is a deep wondering, the kind that has occupied the best of me across many years of devotional study and meditation. And what I have come to know — not theoretically, but from within the lived interior — is this: reality is not merely physical. It is structured spiritually, built on a foundation I can feel but not always fully articulate, designed from the inside out by a Presence that is simultaneously the Architect and the Architecture Itself.
What I know of this, I have gathered from three sources: the Holy Scripture, the teachings of Paramahansa Yogananda, and my own intuition — which, I have come to understand, is perhaps the most reliable instrument any of us possesses when it has been properly tuned through devoted practice.
The Bible Speaks of Structure
When I turn to Scripture, what strikes me first is the architectural language woven throughout it — the sense that reality has shape, order, and intentionality from its very inception.
"In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was with God in the beginning. Through him all things were made; without him nothing was made that has been made" (John 1:1–3, NIV).
The Word — the Logos — is not simply language as we understand it. It is the organizing Intelligence, the vibrational blueprint, through which all of creation is structured. The Greek understanding of Logos included reason, order, and the principle of cosmic coherence. In other words: before the physical world, there was structure. There was intention. There was design.
This is amplified in Colossians, where Paul writes: "For in him all things were created: things in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or powers or rulers or authorities; all things have been created through him and for him. He is before all things, and in him all things hold together" (Colossians 1:16–17, NIV).
In him all things hold together. I have sat with that phrase for a long time. It implies not merely a past event — creation — but an ongoing structural maintenance of reality itself. The Spiritual Architecture is not merely a blueprint drawn and then abandoned. It is active. It is sustained by Presence.
And then there is that first divine utterance: "Let there be light" (Genesis 1:3, NIV). What strikes me in a purely scriptural sense is that light is the first structural element of reality. Before anything else is ordered, there is light. This suggests that our reality is, at its root, photonic — built on and sustained by light. When I tell you we are photonic beings, I do not say it as metaphor. I say it because I have felt it to be true in the interior landscape of deep meditation (Bales, "We Are Eternal Soul-Beings").
The Apostle Paul understood this architecture personally: "Do you not know that you are God's temple and that God's Spirit dwells in you?" (1 Corinthians 3:16, NIV). The temple — a building, a structure — is not made of stone. It is the human being. Which means the architecture of consciousness and the architecture of God's Presence are meant to be one and the same thing.
The Father confirmed this through the Holy Spirit, as Jesus told His disciples: "But the Advocate, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, will teach you all things and will remind you of everything I have said to you" (John 14:26, NIV). I return to this verse because it speaks to the instructional nature of our Spiritual Architecture — the universe is not passive. The Holy Spirit actively teaches. The reality we inhabit is designed to reveal itself to us through devotion and willingness.
Yogananda's Vision of the Sacred Blueprint
Paramahansa Yogananda, whose teachings through the Self-Realization Fellowship have deeply shaped my understanding, articulated the Spiritual Architecture of reality with a precision and beauty that I find almost indescribable.
He wrote: "God is the Eternal Consciousness, unchanging and indivisible, in which the illusions of time (change) and space (division) present an infinite variety of forms interacting in a progressive mode of past, present, and future" (Yogananda, God Talks with Arjuna). In other words: what we experience as reality — the flow of time, the shapes of space, the kaleidoscope of forms — is a modulation of Consciousness Itself. The architecture is not made of stone or atoms, fundamentally. It is made of awareness.
He further taught that Spirit — the unmanifested Absolute — divided Itself into three: "God as the Father, the Cosmic Consciousness or 'Knower' remaining beyond all creation; and into God as the Son, the Christ Consciousness or cosmic intelligent subjective 'knowing' power in creation; and into God as the Holy Ghost, the cosmic intelligent objective creation itself" (Yogananda, The Science of Religion). The architecture of the Trinity, then, is also the architecture of everything. Knower, Knowing, Known. Subject, Process, Object. There is nothing in your experience — nothing anywhere — that does not participate in this tripartite structure. This is what Yogananda called the Sat-Chit-Ananda nature of God — ever-existing, ever-conscious, ever-new Bliss — which is also our own deepest nature. We are built in this architecture because we are built of it.
One of his most remarkable insights was his commentary on Genesis 1:3. He taught: "'Let there be light! And there was light.' In the creation of the universe, God's first command brought into being the structural essential: light. On the beams of this immaterial medium occur all divine manifestations" (Yogananda, Autobiography of a Yogi). Not merely metaphorical light — structural light. The foundation upon which all else is arranged. And he connected it directly to Scripture, noting that St. John saw in Revelation that Christ's eyes "were as a flame of fire" and his countenance "as the sun shineth in his strength" (Revelation 1:14–16, KJV, as quoted in Yogananda, Autobiography of a Yogi). The Light of the first day and the Light of Christ — Yogananda understood these as the same Structural Luminescence.
Concerning the kingdom within, he wrote: "The kingdom of God is not in the clouds, in some designated point of space; it is right behind the darkness that you perceive with closed eyes" (Yogananda, Journey to Self-Realization). The Spiritual Architecture, in other words, is interior. It is not somewhere we travel to. It is the innermost room we have always lived in, but rarely entered.
And perhaps the image that has stayed with me longest: "God is the ocean, man (the jiva or individualized soul) is a wave. As man is a part of God, so is he never truly apart from Him" (Yogananda, God Talks with Arjuna). I return to this again and again. The wave does not create itself. It is raised by the ocean. The form of the wave — its height, its movement, its individual expression — is real. But the substance of the wave is always, only, ocean. The Spiritual Architecture of the wave is therefore the architecture of the ocean wearing a temporary form.
This is my truest understanding of what I am.
What I Have Found in the Interior
And now, my own intuition. Which is really not separate from the above; it is the confirmation, the felt sense that arrives within the living of these truths rather than merely the studying of them.
I have written here before about perceiving myself as the Cosmic Center, around which "the Sphere of Eternity, the Sphere of Bliss, the Sphere of Omnipresent, Omniscient Conscious Space is revolving" (Bales, The Intuitive Artist's Workshop, Home). That language, from Yogananda's teachings to the mystical writings of the Christian saints all form the function of spiritual fuel within my devotional meditations, and effectively build visualizations when chanted that build intuition.
What experience tells me about Spiritual Architecture is this: the structure is centered in you. Not as an ego-claim, but as a spiritual fact. The meditator who goes inward far enough finds themselves not in a small, personal space, but in an infinite one. The inner chamber opens into the All. And what is experienced there is not isolation but communion, which is the felt sense of being woven into something vast, structured, and benevolent beyond all ordinary understanding.
In my own sitting practice, when I enter deep concentration, greeting The Father penitently, watching the conversations of the mind fall away, floating forward to the Presence of the Light — I arrive, eventually, at what I can only call the intersection. The Cross of Christ. And at that point, within the visualized field of the Spiritual Eye, "I" disappear and something Larger takes the interior space (Bales, "Meditation & Devotion"). What remains is not nothing. It is Everything. It is precisely what Yogananda described: ever-existing, ever-conscious, ever-new Bliss.
I have no better word for this than Architecture. It is built. It is structured. It holds. It is not random. It is not indifferent. It is Living Light! It is a creation of immense intelligence and love, and it is waiting, patiently. We each are meant to stop looking outward long enough to enter it.
Yogananda taught that the reason God remains unknown to millions is that "the physical instruments of knowledge can apprehend only the products of the Creator; Divinity Itself is perceived by the supramental faculty of intuition, the soul's God-given power of knowing truth" (Yogananda, God Talks with Arjuna). This is why I return, always, to First-Sit. To devotional meditation. To the practice of quieting the instruments that cannot reach God, so that the one instrument that can — the soul's intuition — becomes available.
The question is not whether the Spiritual Architecture exists. I have felt it. It is there. It is luminous, intelligent, and personal in ways that defy ordinary language. The question is simply: Will you go in?
~ Pranam ~ OM ~ aMEn ~
6/6/26, 2:41 p.m.
Works Cited
Bales, Kora. "Meditation & Devotion." The Intuitive Artist's Workshop, May 13, 2026, www.the-intuitive-artists-workshop.com.
Bales, Kora. "We Are Eternal Soul-Beings." The Intuitive Artist's Workshop, May 22, 2026, www.the-intuitive-artists-workshop.com.
Bible Gateway. The Holy Bible, New International Version (NIV). Biblica, Inc., 2011, www.biblegateway.com.
Bible Hub. The Holy Bible, King James Version (KJV). www.biblehub.com.
Yogananda, Paramahansa. Autobiography of a Yogi. Self-Realization Fellowship, 1946.
Yogananda, Paramahansa. God Talks with Arjuna: The Bhagavad Gita. Self-Realization Fellowship, 1995.
Yogananda, Paramahansa. Journey to Self-Realization. Self-Realization Fellowship, 1997.
Yogananda, Paramahansa. The Science of Religion. Self-Realization Fellowship, 1953.