Monthly Archives: February 2012

Love is the Fulfilling of the Law

ON GOD; Part VI

We begin to day where we left off yesterday, in consideration of the Trinity of God or as we say the Three Aspects of God. We looked briefly at the Apostle John’s Gospel for some insight into the True relationship between the Father and the Son and we came away with the understanding that the Son, the Christ, is the manifestation of the Father in substance and this from John saying that: “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. The same was in the beginning with God. All things were made by him; and without him was not any thing made that was made” (John 1:1-3). It should be no more difficult to fathom our thoughts on this than it is to fathom the idea from John of the Christ as the Word of God being the creator of ALL. We should understand here that the word that is translated as Word is the Greek word Logos which, while meaning the idea of a word, is in this relationship so much more. In this context the idea of Logos is a synonym for the idea of God Himself in manifestation as the only way that we can know God is as He is manifest. Vincent gives us much information and theory on the expression of God as the Logos and in part he tells us that: This expression is the keynote and theme to the entire gospel. Logos is from the root  lego, appearing as (xxxxx) the primitive meaning of which is to lay: then, to pick out, gather, pick up: hence to gather or put words together, and so, to speak. Hence logos is, first of all, a collecting or collection both of things in the mind, and of words by which they are expressed. It therefore signifies both the outward form by which the inward thought is expressed and the inward thought itself, the Latin oratio and ratio: compare the Italian ragionare, “to think” and “to speak.” ⁴ Can we see in this the development of our idea in John’s words; that the Logos is the outward form of the inward thought: the manifestation of the Supreme Mind of God if we can so call it that.

We should not think that what is presented here is the whole of any Truth as it is, to be sure, just a fraction of the overall reality which we should understand as the limits of that our human comprehension and language allow for in the interpretation of that which is incomprehensible from the human perspective and, for which there are no words to adequately convey the ideas. So if we say here that God is unmanifest, we are using this word to reflect an idea that Our God is beyond all that is as the Supreme Universal Entity. We are saying also that in manifestation that we are a conscious part of the phenomenal appearance of This Great Entity. This is reflected in the words of Sri Krishna that we have used as our Quote of the Day saying that “Having pervaded the whole universe with a fragment of myself, I remain” (Bhagavad Gita 9:4; Tibetan’s translation). The Master gives us much in the way of understanding the relationship between the Father and the Son which we can then take also to be the relationship between our own Spirit and our Soul. Before we begin this we will make this statement which is reflective of what we said yesterday and above and what we will see in the Master’s words and the rest of our look at our current subject which is GOD. The Father is the Idea, the Grand Thought of this Awesome Creation and He, by His Will and His Power, creates the manifested Universe which proceeds from Him in the manifestation of the Son, the Christ, and by the Son are all things made. This manifestation of the Son is the Cohesive Nature that holds all things together which is seen in our limited understanding of the Love of God and it is the essence of the Good, the Beautiful and the True which can be seen as the Order of things created and which is found in our limited correspondence to this which is Wisdom. The Activity of all of this, the Force that gives all its Motion, the swirling Energies on every plane of manifestation, the very Body of God which is Light and the Energy of Light, is the Holy Spirit. This Body of God is brought into Being by the Christ and is given its Life by the Father and the reality of it all is that they are ONE.

Let us look now at some of the words of John and of the Master that relate, as we said, the Father and the Son:

• “No man hath seen God at any time; the only begotten Son, which is in the bosom of the Father, he hath declared him” (John 1:18). Here we have a dichotomy of thought regarding God between the Old Testament, where it is purported that Moses ‘saw’ God’s “back parts” (Exodus 33:23) and where others as well are said to have seen Him. These writings, among other things, have given rise to the ideas that God, as the Supreme Being, is in the form of a man but we know however that God is a Spirit as are we. Remembering that this verse is still in the Prologue of the Gospel of John and the context of these particular writings, we should understand that John is speaking of the Spirit that is God and this  is what John tells us that “No man hath seen“. There is a creative understanding in the translations and the interpretation of much of the Old Testament in regard to God as the Hebrew word Elohiym is made to mean many things and there is also the idea that we noted yesterday regarding the use of the words God and Jehovah from the Hebrew words Elohiym and Yahweh. Jehovah is commonly accepted as the name of God in the Old Testament and perhaps the reality of what is meant by John is in the idea that Moses may have seen Jehovah, a manifestation of God, who is speaking as God, and that others, Abraham and Jacob for example, were seeing visions and apparitions or angels of God which idea is accepted in some verses while not in others. A careful reading of the eighteenth chapter of Genesis and the beginning of the nineteenth can help one to better understand. In a capsule the text says that the Lord (Jehovah) appeared, that Abraham saw three men and after some discourse two leave for Sodom and One, called the Lord, remains speaking with Abraham. Now when the two arrive at Sodom they are called angels who tell Lot of Sodom and Gomorrah that “the LORD hath sent us to destroy it” (Genesis 19-13). If nothing else, this should give us glimpse into the reality of the Kingdom of God and the presence there of those men that have attained that Kingdom and, much like the intercessors and the apostles in Jesus day, are sent among us and used by the Will of God to assure the working our of His Great Plan. We should be careful in interpreting this and so many other sayings as to the nature of the One purported to be God and this because we have these words from John that say that “No man hath seen God at any time” and in this is a reality and a Truth because “God is a Spirit” (John 4:24).
• “And the Father himself, which hath sent me, hath borne witness of me. Ye have neither heard his voice at any time, nor seen his shape” (John 5:37). Here is an idea that is similar to that above and is spoken by the Master speaking to those Jews who had gathered against Him for healing on the sabbath. From the word shape in this saying we should see the idea of the appearance and we then have Jesus saying that these Jews have not heard nor seen God the Father. We should remember here that it is the Master who brings to these people and to us the reality of the Father God and the Trinity as well insofar as the Christian teaching is concerned; these ideas did not exist before Jesus and this leads us to our next selection.
• “It is written in the prophets, And they shall beall taught of God. Every man therefore that hath heard, and hath learned of the Father, cometh unto me Not that any man hath seen the Father, save he which is of God, he hath seen the Father. Verily, verily, I say unto you, He that believeth on me hath everlasting life” (John 6:45-47). Here there is a bit of criteria  added to the idea of seeing the Father and it is the criteria of the Kingdom. The Master tells us here of the natural sequence of things starting with hearing of God and then learning of God. When we hear of and learn of God our next step is to come into communion with one’s own Christ Within, one’s own Soul, which is his own personal connection to the Christ and to God. Coming to Christ, the Son, God manifest, or whatever we call Him brings us to the point of being “of God“, of believing on Him. We know that to believe on is the same idea as following Him and keeping His word and this is what puts one into that state of being accounted worthy, being in His Kingdom and His Presence; being “of God“. We have covered these verses before albeit from a different perspective in our series called the Bread of Life (In the Words of Jesus parts 60-70).
• “Jesus saith unto him, Have I been so long time with you, and yet hast thou not known me, Philip? he that hath seen me hath seen the Father; and how sayest thou then, Shew us the Father?” (John 14:9). In this saying in response to the question by the Apostle Phillip, the Master is showing him and all the apostles that the Father and the Son are ONE, that there is no real separation. This saying has been obscured by the ideas of seeing with one’s eyes of flesh but it is a much deeper word than that as is the translated English word see; we see with our eyes and we see with our mind and we see in visions and none of these are related. So with the Greek word horao which should be understood as the non physical aspects of this from the lexicon: to see with the eyes; to see with the mind, to perceive, know; to see, i.e. become acquainted with by experience, to experience; to see, to look to, to take heed, beware, to care for, pay heed to; I was seen, showed myself, appeared². And so with us all, when we see the spiritual side of Life, when we can touch our own Inner Man, our Christ Within, our Souls, we can know that in seeing this that we have seen God. This is a journey in consciousness however, a journey to that inner part of each of us that is pointed to by the Master when He says that: “the kingdom of God is within you” (Luke 17:21); this is a statement of great consequence to those who can understand it. Unfortunately it is a statement that goes unnoticed and largely misunderstood.
• “Believest thou not that I am in the Father, and the Father in me? the words that I speak unto you I speak not of myself: but the Father that dwelleth in me, he doeth the works. Believe me that I am in the Father, and the Father in me: or else believe me for the very works’ sake” (John 14 10-11). This saying is the follow up to the saying above to Phillip and here we see the understanding of the One within the Other, the Son as being in and proceeding from the Father and at the same time the Father being in the Son. This is the relationship between Spirit and Soul and tells us that although the Soul is the manifestation of Spirit, that Spirit is still one with the Soul; they are the same. The One is the Other in manifestation. This can be seen like an idea that becomes a reality; though all that can be seen is the reality, the idea that spawned the reality still exists invisibly within it. The reality is within the idea and needs to be manifest to be seen and, once manifest, the idea exists behind and within the reality.

These are some examples from the Master and from John that attest to the ideas that we have propounded above regarding the relationship between the Spirit and the Soul and the Father and the Son, the Christ. These are spoken of by the Christ and of the Christ by John and the Apostle Paul brings this concept down for us to the next level which is the Son, the Christ, within the conscious form of man. Paul does this in many sayings but it is all come together in his telling us: “Even the mystery which hath been hid from ages and from generations, but now is made manifest to his saints: To whom God would make known what is the riches of the glory of this mystery among the Gentiles; which is Christ in you, the hope of glory: Whom we preach, warning every man, and teaching every man in all wisdom; that we may present every man perfect in Christ Jesus” (1 Corinthians 1:26-28). The Master also gives us much in teaching on this relation and we will get to these thoughts when we address the next segment; the Holy Spirit. There needs to be built a structure for this understanding of we, ourselves, being the Holy Spirit; we talk about God in us and the Christ Within and we should here remember that we too are of that same Trinity that is God. As it is written: “God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him” (Genesis 1:27).

We end today with this saying of the Master that tells us without a doubt of the unity between the Father and the Son and thereby between the Spirit and the Soul; the Master says simply and plainly that: “I and my Father are one” (John 10:30).

Note on the Quote of the Day