Monthly Archives: January 2012

Love is the Fulfilling of the Law

The Miracles of Jesus (continued; part xv)

Yesterday’s post was a rather long journey through our ideas on the concept of reincarnation as they effect the coming into incarnation of those Souls who bring with them some new thing for the advancement of the human race. Much like we have surmised regarding the apostles and the disciples of the Christ over 2000 years ago and their ‘willing’ presence in that day to ensure the success of the Great Plan of God, we can also see that there are men who come and go on this Earth with a definite something to share with the world; again, according to the Great Plan of God. Dramatic changes in science, religion, politics and philosophy, most any field of human endeavor, require dramatic and dynamic new ideas and men in physical presence who can propound those ideas to the rest of the world. Much like the teachings of the Master were delivered to us and then supported and reinforced by His disciples and codified for us into our scripture, these new things that the other men of history have brought have also been delivered and supported and codified by adherents. In both of these thoughts, the balance is left to the freewill of men which do with the teaching what they will; but, regardless of what they do with it, it is here and it has made some progressive change. The whole of this Stupendous Creation is steadily evolving into what may seem like better and better things for the physical realm of man but which are in reality for the sole purpose of the evolution of the species called man as to bring forth in time and space better and more capable bodies and conditions of life through which the Soul can express.

Now we do not presume to know how this all works out or how there may be some conscious decisions regarding what is the next necessary step for mankind though we can be sure that there are many, many things happening simultaneously. For our mental picture of this we need see only the Mind of God in which we find ‘rest’ at our achieved level in what we call the afterlife and as this Mind of God reveals the next parts of the Great Plan, men, as Souls, willingly bring themselves to incarnation in their turn, either for their own purposes of achievement or perhaps to work in service on some greater part of the Plan. For one’s own achievement we should see the idea of building and living in a body and personality more suited for the Soul than the last; for work on some greater part of the plan, we should see some of the more advanced Souls in any aspect of Life coming forth and understanding the need of the time. For the most part we should see that the majority of Souls are working out their own ‘salvation’ by building and using better and more suitable bodies Life after Life and being drawn, rather subconsciously, into the varied fields of endeavor to which they are best suited. We should remember here that on the Soul side of Life we, all humanity, are basically the same, we are individual parts of the ONE GREAT LIFE and we should remember also that the Soul is in an unexplainable way, a manifestation of the True Self, the Spirit.

Forgetting the parts of evolution that the worlds of science and religion get hung up on as these do not matter in the least, let us look briefly at the evolution of humanity as it is presented in the Old Testament beginning with Abraham. In that day over 4000 years ago we find a rather primitive man. Although we may like to think of our biblical Fathers as holy men, there is a reality to understand; they are primitive in their ways of living, and superstitious in their habits of worshiping whatever they are in awe of or don’t understand. They are motivated by physical needs and cravings using only rudimentary thought to satisfy these needs. They are also a barbarous people. We can see as the bible story advances that they develop greater emotional attachments, better ways of living and are exposed to some more advanced societies like the Egyptians from whom they learn much. Their superstitions take a clearer form as do their varied ways of worship as they are moving steadily from being motivated by purely physical need and craving to a greater degree of emotional response to the environment and their fellow man. Still barbarous, they become more organized and somewhat civilized around the precepts given to them in the Ten Commandments and the lesser commandments. As a people they flow back and forth between obedience to their laws and anarchy as regards their God and through their emotional response to their superstitions, they continue to worship whatever they see as bringing them what it is that they may be desiring both for physical and emotional comfort. Thought is still not a motivating factor in Life and physical needs as a motivation is waning; they are increasingly governed my emotion and desire.

Taken captive by the Assyrians and the Babylonians they again are pulled into more civilized cultures from which they learn much. We lose track of them as a culture and a people for some time except for the few prophets and stories like those of the Ezra and Nehemiah; they are absorbed into the Persian Empire. The rest of history, up to the time of the Christ, is a history of wars with conquering armies taking over vast reaches of land and then losing it all to the next conquering army. Still governed by the emotion and superstition there is little in the way of free will in the greater region in which they live and little value is put on individual life. It is hard to say when the Jews come back to Jerusalem; except for the return of a small number who work on the city walls and the Temple, there is little information. That they did come back, we know biblically from the New Testament as the Jews were there in Jerusalem in a society governed by Rome, having absorbed all from the cultures through which they passed  in the nearly 600 years since the start of the exile. From the middle to the end of this range of years comes the philosophy of the Greeks which we can see as the origination of real thought and abstract thinking. Just as the motivation of Life changed from the physical needs and cravings to emotional satisfaction and desire in a slow and methodical march to the near exclusion of the purely physical through an enhanced emotional response that is inclusive of all, we find now the emotional giving way to the ideas of the mind of man. This is where the Christ comes to us, as we are beginning to move from being grounded in an emotional response to the awakening of the mind and here is the relevance of His teaching. In the older days men were expected to do the Law because it was the Law and because they were told to do so but with the advent of mind, man needs a ‘reason’ to do a thing and it is this reason that Jesus delivers to the world.

The point here is the evolution of the personality and the form through which a Soul lives and, although the above is not intended to reflect history, we should be able to see in it the progressive changes that we said are intended for the  improvement of the vehicle of expression for the Soul. From the end point above it has now been more than 2000 years in which humanity has grown ever more reliant on thought and less reliant on emotion in the conduct of life and this is the progress that ‘suits’ the need of the Soul in its own evolution which is the real evolution that is of importance. These are hard concepts to grasp and yet harder to put into words and the purpose of it all is yet the Great Mystery. If we look however we can see the progress of the form over the last 4000 or so years to this point at which the world is today. We should see also that across the Earth there are people and societies that are still at nearly every point in that evolutionary journey, from the man driven by physical needs and desires to the mental man in business and science. Souls at all ‘levels of achievement’ are born into this world and find for themselves that place in which fulfill their ‘need’ as the environment for their own growth for whatever reason. The ultimate freedom from this cycle of evolutionary lives and deaths is in coming to the Kingdom of God. Once we are accounted worthy we are free from this except then by conscious choice to return and to play some part in the Great Plan as we believe did the Apostle Peter. There are deep mysteries regarding our purpose and our future and this is True no matter what we believe; we do not know the nature of Life and there is no one to tell us save our own Souls. In all of this, from the perspective of man on Earth, there are leaders and there are followers and there are detractors as well. Each is balancing the driving motivation of the personality, be it physical, emotional or mental or whatsoever combination of these, with the purpose of the Soul as he understands it consciously and subconsciously. Each different type of personality will allow for some different aspect of Soul Life but always the intent is the same, that the personality is able to express the purpose of the Soul which is always the Good, the Beautiful and the True; this is the Pure and Unblemished Soul. Each different type of personality is also able to achieve the Kingdom as there are many approaches; to the emotional this is perhaps by devotion and to the mental man this is by reason and for others something in the combination of these. Karma also has a role to play in this Great Mystery but that is a subject for another day and we should not forget that for a successful Life one will need a suitable form and there may be much involvement with karma in this relationship. Happenstance is yet another factor; based on the free will of man in form, we are all subject to the catastrophe and the accident, even the intentional one, which serve only to disrupt our progress for in the long life of the Soul, there is always a next opportunity.

It was not the intent today to get this far into these ideas but these are important insofar as a right understanding of Life is concerned. Though we live our lives in form on this Earth, we seldom think of ourselves as a part of history. And, although we can say that we know that we are Spirit, we are still living the life of the man in form today and not seeing that there is much that has brought us to this place where we are.

Do we ever wonder why the Commandments of the Lord and of the Master are all about Love? Love for God and thereby for the God Within and Love for our fellow man. What we see here in competition and strife are caused by just those things that the Master tells us to avoid; pride, anger, lust and so on through all the list of vices. In the Life of the Soul, the True Life from our perspective, none of this matters at all and the Master tells us so by telling us that we need to forsake, or be willing to forsake, all that pertains to this world, to the personality. Since there is not space left today to pursue our original topic of the miracles of Jesus, let us look at some scripture that reflects the ideas above regarding the Commandments of the Lord and of the Master.

First on Love:

• “Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind. This is the first and great commandment. And the second is like unto it, Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself. On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets” (Matthew 22:37-40).
• “A new commandment I give unto you, That ye love one another; as I have loved you, that ye also love one another” (John 13:34).
• “If ye love me, keep my commandments” and then “He that hath my commandments, and keepeth them, he it is that loveth me: and he that loveth me shall be loved of my Father, and I will love him, and will manifest myself to him“. And, in case we still did not understand He says on “If a man love me, he will keep my words: and my Father will love him….” (John 14:15, 21, 23).
• Then is our instruction on how to Love and what it means to Love oneself: “Therefore all things whatsoever ye would that men should do to you, do ye even so to them: for this is the law and the prophets” (Matthew 7:12) or, as it is phrased in the Gospel of Luke “And as ye would that men should do to you, do ye also to them likewise” (Luke 6:31).
• Finally is our understanding of the meaning of this Love: In a general sense love is benevolence, good will; that disposition of heart which inclines men to think favorably of their fellow men, and to do them good. In a theological sense, it includes supreme love to God, and universal good will to men. Of course we need to always remember and to understand that this means ALL MEN.

On forsaking all for the Life of the Soul, the Christ Within:

• “He that loveth father or mother more than me is not worthy of me: and he that loveth son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me. And he that taketh not his cross, and followeth after me, is not worthy of me” (Matthew 10:35-38).
• “If any man come to me, and hate not his father, and mother, and wife, and children, and brethren, and sisters, yea, and his own life also, he cannot be my disciple. And whosoever doth not bear his cross, and come after me, cannot be my disciple. For which of you, intending to build a tower, sitteth not down first, and counteth the cost, whether he have sufficient to finish it?” (Luke 14:26-28). Here in this context we need to see hate as to love less; in the words of the Master, it could be no other way.
• “So likewise, whosoever he be of you that forsaketh not all that he hath, he cannot be my disciple” (Luke 14:33). In this is the culmination of the above.
• And in this is the result: “And every one that hath forsaken houses, or brethren, or sisters, or father, or mother, or wife, or children, or lands, for my name’s sake, shall receive an hundredfold, and shall inherit everlasting life” (Matthew 19:29). From the Gospel of Mark is is said this way: “Verily I say unto you, There is no man that hath left house, or brethren, or sisters, or father, or mother, or wife, or children, or lands, for my sake, and the gospel’s, But he shall receive an hundredfold now in this time, houses, and brethren, and sisters, and mothers, and children, and lands, with persecutions; and in the world to come eternal life” (Mark 10:29-30). We should understand here that there is no hundredfold now in this time, brethren, and sisters, and mothers, and children for this makes no sense except as regards brotherhood and this is seen in the idea that if one is forsaking all, he is following the Master and therefore His words on Love. Regarding houses and lands, well we can look at these the same way as well…..in brotherhood.

We will try to get back to our theme regarding the miracles of Jesus in control of the environment and in control of matter itself in the next post.

Note on the Quote of the Day