IN THE WORDS OF JESUS–Part 376

Love is the Fulfilling of the Law

ON GOD; Part CLVIII

“For every tree is known by his own fruit. For of thorns men do not gather figs, nor of a bramble bush gather they grapes. A good man out of the good treasure of his heart bringeth forth that which is good; and an evil man out of the evil treasure of his heart bringeth forth that which is evil: for of the abundance of the heart his mouth speaketh” (Luke 6:44-45).

“Lay not up for yourselves treasures upon earth, where moth and rust doth corrupt , and where thieves break through and steal : But lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust doth corrupt , and where thieves do not break through nor steal: For where your treasure is, there will your heart be also” (Matthew 6:19-21).

Aspect of God	Potency	Expressed as Fire	Aspect of Man
Father	Will or Power	Electric Fire	Spirit or Life
Son, The Christ	Love and Wisdom	Solar Fire	Soul or Christ Within
Holy Spirit	Light or Activity	Fire by Friction	Life Within the Form

We have been focusing on the confusion found in the doctrines of the churches regarding the ideas of Spirit and Soul as well as ideas like heart as regards man and an equal misunderstanding of the Father, Son and the Holy Spirit as regards the nature of God. None of these ideas are explained in much detail by the Master nor by His apostles in their writings and epistles and this has left man to assign meanings to all; meanings that meet with the particular doctrines of any denomination or sect. As we have noted, most all of the doctrinal references to God and His nature as well as the nature of man, his constitution as we say, are based upon the view that the man IS this body and mind and emotional response. We have noted that in the definition of each of our terms this same idea comes forth:

• In the lexicon’s description of Spirit we find the power by which the human being feels, thinks, decides². In the description of Soul they tell us that this is the seat of the feelings, desires, affections, aversions (our heart, soul etc.)². Regarding heart the ideas are similar; the lexicon tells us that the heart is the soul or mind, as it is the fountain and seat of the thoughts, passions, desires, appetites, affections, purposes, endeavours; of the understanding². There are other parts of the lexicon descriptions which are equally ambiguous and these were published in the last posts on this subject.
• Strong’s gives us like fare insofar as their definitions of each of these terms; pneuma, which is rendered as Spirit means wind, breath, by extension spirit, heart, mind³. For psuche, which is rendered as Soul Strong’s tells us that life, soul, heart, mind, a person³ are its meanings. On heart, from the Greek word kardia Strong’s tells us that it means heart, mind (seat of thought and emotion)³.

We could go on but the above points should suffice to show us that these terms as used by the Master and His apostles are not nearly understood as they are purported to be but are rather cloaked in doctrine that contains crossover ideas for each. There is no attempt to understand these ideas except in the format of the doctrines of the church which say that man is this form on the Earth with mind and emotions and he has a Spirit and a Soul which are by some considered to be the same. Although the saying is used in a different context, there can be much Truth found in the Apostle Paul’s saying that “God is not the author of confusion, but of peace” (1 Corinthians 14:33) and we would add here that this confusion will continue so long as the church relies on doctrine and not on the properly discerned words of the Master and His Apostles. They never state what the church believes but they say much that is contrary to the dictates of their doctrines. The Truth is in the Master’s words, in His parables and in His parabolic sayings and it is amplified by His apostles. The WHOLE KEY TO PROPER UNDERSTANDING IS THE PROPER UNDERSTANDING OF THE CONSTITUTION OF MAN. And this is a key that unlocks many more doors than just this dilemma about the nature of Spirit, Soul and heart; a dilemma that finds its roots and its foundation in the illusion and the glamour of Life in this world which is, in the words of Paul, the vanity that the True man is subjected to.

In the last post we put forth our ideas regarding Spirit and Soul and we left heart for today. To recapitulate a bit let us say these things about these Aspects of God and man again while we add some new information as well.

• Spirit is the First Aspect of God; Spirit is the Father and, from a human perspective Spirit can be seen, as Vincent tells us, as the highest, deepest, noblest part of our humanity. What he misses is that Spirit IS our humanity, a humanity that gives Life and consciousness to the complex animal form in the world. In the long and unidentifiable evolution of species, the human form is the final accomplishment of today’s reality of existence but, as Life goes on and on, there is likely no limit to this advancement of body, emotion and mind as final perfection is ever sought in ALL Kingdoms of Life. From the perspective of the True man, the Spirit IS the man and the Spirit IS ever one with God which we should try to see in the Master’s saying that “God is a Spirit: and they that worship him must worship him in spirit and in truth” (John 4:24). Spirit is our meeting place with the Father and the foremost part of our understanding that “God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him” (Genesis 1:27). In relation to God, Spirit is God, the Presence of God and this the Master tells us; this is not the Holy Spirit although the Trinity is ever OUR ONE GOD.
• The Soul is the Second Aspect of God; Soul is the nature of the Christ as a Cosmic Power and Soul is the Christ Within. Christ is the Love and the Wisdom of God and it is this that was embodied by Christ Jesus over 2000 years ago. Christ is the manifestation of the Spirit that IS GOD in that place that we can call Heaven although this is no place at all but a state of being without form as we comprehend it. The Soul is the appearance of the Spirit in what we understand as the heavenly realms which are but states of consciousness and individuality. The Soul exists in the Kingdom of God and in some strange and incomprehensible way the Soul is the Kingdom itself and this is, of course, a difficult thing to understand when one is not yet a disciple to whom it is given to KNOW the secrets of the Kingdom itself. We can get much understanding of this through the Prologue to the Apostle John’s Gospel where he speaks of the depth of being that is our God and is Christ in a Cosmic sense. John tells us: “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. In him was life; and the life was the light of men. And the light shineth in darkness; and the darkness comprehended it not“. We skip here the apostles thoughts about John the Baptist and continue with: “That was the true Light, which lighteth every man that cometh into the world. He was in the world, and the world was made by him, and the world knew him not. He came unto his own, and his own received him not. But as many as received him, to them gave he power to become the sons of God, even to them that believe on his name: Which were born, not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God. And the Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us, (and we beheld his glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father,) full of grace and truth” (John 1:1-5, 9-14). There is so much in these few statements yet waiting discovery. For a clue to the True value of these sayings we must see the idea of the Cosmic Christ who is ONE with OUR ETERNAL GOD, THAT IMMUTABLE, BOUNDLESS AND INFINITE BEING WHO IS THE CREATOR AND THE SUSTAINER OF THE ENTIRETY OF THE UNIVERSE WHICH WE GET BUT A GLIMPSE OF. It is the Cosmic Christ of whom the apostle speaks before he tells us that “the Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us” to which we apply our saying that: The Christ was able to embody ALL of the Power and the Love and the Wisdom of God. The Apostle Paul tells us that “For in him dwelleth all the fulness of the Godhead bodily” (Colossians 2:9) and we should see this literally as what it says and we should see this as our High Calling as well because, as the Apostle John tells us, “as he is , so are we in this world” (1 John 4:17). Soul is the presence that a man IS in creation and who, while standing back in the Kingdom, gives, or rather lends, his Life and consciousness to the form that he has taken for any given Lifetime.

We must try to remember that the gospels and the epistles were written long ago and the Old Testament yet further back in time. We should remember also that they were written by men of those eras and for men of those eras in their primary focus. From this perspective we should not try to understand these words only in their literal form which is written to appeal to the primary audience of superstitious and emotionally driven people. These were at the same time barbaric times that gave way to even more barbaric times and through all this the words have survived; many have lost their True meaning and intent through translation errors and the ever changing usage of words in language and by example we should be sure that there is a much deeper meaning to the Greek word logos than we can possible get from its translation into word. Let us look at a some information on this word logos through which we can get a better understanding.

Logos ( /ˈloʊɡɒs/, UK /ˈlɒɡɒs/, or US /ˈloʊɡoʊs/; Greek: λόγος, from λέγω lego “I say”) is an important term in philosophy, psychology, rhetoric, and religion. Originally a word meaning “a ground”, “a plea”, “an opinion”, “an expectation”, “word,” “speech,” “account,” “reason,” it became a technical term in philosophy, beginning with Heraclitus (ca. 535–475 BC), who used the term for a principle of order and knowledge.

Ancient philosophers used the term in different ways. The sophists used the term to mean discourse, and Aristotle applied the term to refer to “reasoned discourse” or “the argument” in the field of rhetoric. The Stoic philosophers identified the term with the divine animating principle pervading the Universe.

After Judaism came under Hellenistic influence, Philo (ca. 20 BC–AD 50) adopted the term into Jewish philosophy. The Gospel of John identifies the Logos, through which all things are made, as divine (theos), and further identifies Jesus as the incarnation of the Logos.*

Can we get a sense for the complexity of this word that we understand so simply as word? Moving on we come now to our understanding of the word heart as it is used by the Master to go with our discussion of the other points of Spirit and Soul.

Heart is a word that means so much in human terms; from the organ that pumps our blood to the center of love and romance to the doctrinal understanding which is unclear but points to a combination of ideas that include Soul, mind, and emotions. Depending upon one’s perspective there is some Truth in all of these sayings but there is a greater understanding to be found in one’s basic comprehension of the Constitution of Man. Extending from our chart above we should see man as Spirit, a Soul and both of these working through and animating the form that we take on this Earth and in the afterlife as well and we should not confuse this afterlife with the Kingdom of God or with what we call heaven. Spirit IS as we have said Life Itself, a word that we can neither understand nor properly define; all that we can say about Life is related to this Life in which we live for a time and then die. Many a philosopher has tried to explain Life but, as in all things spiritual, the basic approach from the perspective of the man in form does not allow for a proper understanding. We say that Life IS just as we say that God IS and this means little until we compare this IS to IS NOT and so this is Life, it is existence and it is awareness along a broad range of existences from the atomic structure of a thing through the kingdoms of nature to a man and beyond. Each of these has its own form of awareness which is for us as men in form self awareness. As we look around us we see Life in the Vegetable Kingdom and the Animal Kingdom but when we realize that as God IS so Life IS as well because God IS Life, we can begin to appreciate the Life within ALL things and when we can Truly see the Universe as a scientific realty, we see that there is naught but energy and this energy IS Life as well. This track is not our purpose here however except to show the inexplicable nature, as least from our very limited perspective, of Life and of God.

Our point is then that Spirit is Life, it is the presence of being, it is existence in a non-corporeal state which cannot be explained nor understood. This Life, this existence, manifests itself in some unknown way and for unknown reasons and this manifestation results in conscious activity which is still without form as we can understand it. This manifestation IS the Soul; this is not a different thing from the Spirit as they are ONE and the SAME; Soul is the conscious activity of the Spirit and there is in some unimaginable way Soul in ALL things in nature and beyond. Soul is the energy of conscious activity; it is being is a bit more understandable way. From the perspective of God we see the idea of Spirit being the Father and the idea of Soul being the Son or the Christ, the anointed appearance of the Father in conscious activity. In another way the Soul is the emanation of Spirit as the Son is the emanation of the Father both are Life and the one can be seen as the flow of this Life from the other. The Son can be seen then as the conscious Life that emanates from the Father. In John’s words above we can see this in the idea of Light; that the Son is the ray of Light that emanates from the Father and the source and the ray are one. Can we sense the difficulty in trying to explain the unexplainable? Not unexplainable because we cannot KNOW but unexplainable because there are not words nor phrases to use.

Now these above are the reality of man, he is a Spirit and he is a Soul; he is Life and the non-corporeal conscious activity of Life in what we call the Kingdom of God. Here now we come to yet another mystery and this is in regard to the reasons and the purposes for this conscious Life to take to form upon the Earth. We have speculated on this and we have found some clue for us in the writings of Paul where he tells us that “And not only they, but ourselves also, which have the first fruits of the Spirit, even we ourselves groans within ourselves, waiting for the adoption, to wit, the redemption of our body” (Romans 8:23) which, while spoken from the perspective of the man in form, tells us of the mission and the relation of the Soul to form. It is said that the True man, the Soul, desired to give of himself in this effort of redemption and thus began the incarnations of the Souls, the Sons of God, into the forms that we call the man today. We cannot say that there is any Truth to this but we can say that there is a purpose and a Plan which we are rather clueless about but of which we are aware when the Life and the consciousness that IS the Soul can be fully expressed through the form nature in the world.

A repeat of the words of Paul to the Romans here may help us to understand the nature of our Life in form when combined with our thoughts above. While we spent many days discussing these words from the apostle, there is yet more to be discovered in the perspective offered by our current topic. Paul says:

“For as many as are led by the Spirit of God, they are the sons of God. For ye have not received the spirit of bondage again to fear; but ye have received the Spirit of adoption, whereby we cry , Abba, Father. The Spirit itself beareth witness with our spirit, that we are the children of God: And if children, then heirs; heirs of God, and joint-heirs with Christ; if so be that we suffer with him, that we may be also glorified together. For I reckon that the sufferings of this present time are not worthy to be compared with the glory which shall be revealed in us. For the earnest expectation of the creature waiteth for the manifestation of the sons of God. For the creature was made subject to vanity, not willingly, but by reason of him who hath subjected the same in hope, Because the creature itself also shall be delivered from the bondage of corruption into the glorious liberty of the children of God. For we know that the whole creation groaneth and travaileth in pain together until now. And not only they, but ourselves also, which have the first fruits of the Spirit, even we ourselves groan within ourselves, waiting for the adoption, to wit, the redemption of our body” (Romans 8:14-23).

While we do not KNOW why nor how man comes into this world of form we can see in Paul’s words that it is in accord with the Plan of God and this we discussed in part of several essays (In the Words of Jesus parts 348-364). We will continue with our thoughts in the next post and leave with this esoteric saying from H.P. Blavatsky which may shed some Light upon our topic.

 “Matter is the Vehicle for the manifestation of Soul on this plane of existence, and Soul is the Vehicle on a higher plane for the manifestation of Spirit and these three are a Trinity, synthesised by Life, which pervades them all.“

Note on the Quote of the Day

This daily blog also has a Quote of the Day which may not be in any way related to the essay. Many of these will be from the Bible and some just prayers or meditations that may have an influence on you and are in line with the subject matter of this blog. As the quote will change daily and will not store with the post, it is repeated in this section with the book reference and comment.

Evening Reflection

May the Power of the One True God flow through His group of all true servers;

May the Love of the Christ characterize the lives of all who seek to aid in His work;

May I fulfill my part in the one work through self-forgetfulness, harmlessness and right speech

(Evening Reflection)