IN THE WORDS OF JESUS–Part 381

Love is the Fulfilling of the Law

ON GOD; Part CLXII

“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).

After many days we finally got to our two sayings by the Master that appear above and we began to look at their relationship to the everyday consciousness of a man, his heart, and to the state of awakening that this consciousness can exhibit in Life. We left off with several points that we will try to take up today. Before we begin we should take note that we have also been posting our chart above with every essay for several days now as well and the idea in doing this is simply to keep this idea of the Trinity of God and the Trinity of man in front of us so that we can begin to appreciate the significance of it and can note how many of the things that we say fit into our understanding of this Trinity. We must ever remember that although we have broken both God and man into three Aspects, there is still but ONE God and but one reality of man. These are NOT separate parts but are merely Aspects or  Qualities of the ONE as seen from the perspective of man in time and space. These qualities are defined for us by the Potency of each and the whole of this subject is a most difficult thing to understand when we try to look at it in relation to God and from the perceptive of man. However, when we look at the man first this can take on an easier way of comprehension.

We say that the True man is the Spirit and this can be seen from several perspectives as we have discussed in our posts. The easiest of these ideas that man is Spirit is seen in the statement of the relation between God and man as it is written for us in the Book of Genesis where we read: “So God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them” (Genesis 1:27). This tells us that if Our God is a Trinity then we are a Trinity as well but we go further to the understanding given us by the Master who tells us that “God is a Spirit: and they that worship him must worship him in spirit and in truth” (John 4:24). There should be no confusion here as this seems rather straightforward and clear but the Master helps us more by telling His disciples of their spiritual nature in this discourse: “And they did not receive him, because his face was as though he would goto Jerusalem. And when his disciples James and John saw this, they said, Lord, wilt thou that we command fire to come down from heaven, and consume them, even as Elias did? But he turned, and rebuked them, and said  Ye know not what manner of spirit ye are of.  For the Son of man is not come to destroy men’s lives, but to save them. And they went to another village” (Luke 9:53-56). This saying speaks volumes and we will get to this in a future post; for today our objective is to see the words of the Master telling his disciples that they are Spirit and telling them that they do not yet understand. The Apostle Paul helps us here as well saying to the Corinthians a word about the difference between what they believe they are in the flesh and what they are in Truth; he says: “What? know ye not that your body is the temple of the Holy Ghost which is in you, which ye have of God, and ye are not your own?” (1 Corinthians 6:19). While this is not a reference to the Spirit that is man directly, it is a saying that does point to the reality the the man, that it is not this body and in our reality of the Holy Spirit as it relates to man there is a synergy in all of these sayings. The unity of the Trinity as the reality of man can be seen in this from Paul through our reality that the Holy Spirit IS the activity of the Christ Within in form and that the Christ Within, the Soul, is the manifestation of the Spirit on a higher plane of existence…..in the Kingdom of God.

So without too much difficulty we have here the understanding of the Constitution of Man as a Trinity, as a Spirit manifesting as the Soul, the Christ Principal, in the Kingdom and expressing Life and consciousness through the Holy Spirit which is the activity of the Spirit and the Soul in the world of form. Relating this back then to our ideas from yesterday, we should be able to vaguely understand that this consciousness, this heart of man, is the activity of his Spirit in form and therefore can be seen as the Holy Spirit. Now this may seem a stretch but that is only because of the preconceived ideas of Holy in relation to the rather unholy consciousness of the man and this is where we can try to establish a greater understanding of ourselves and through ourselves our relation to Our God.

We have always posited that the Soul is pure and unblemished by the actions of the man in form and this is a great truth that can only be glimpsed by us as men in form but which we should understand by the teachings of the Master and of His apostles who tell us of the Purity of the Christ and tell us also that “because as he is , so are we in this world” (1 John 4:17). Seeing then that the man is the Soul as an expression of the Spirit and that he IS the activity of these in form, we should be able to see around the ideas of the ‘fall of man‘ and ‘original sin‘ and other similar doctrines that do not have any actual foundation in the bible. We should try to replace these ideas from doctrine with the ideas that we spent many days on recently which we take from Paul’s Epistle to the Romans and of which we can say again that the depth of Truth in these sayings can only be touched upon by us even today. Paul tells us that “For the creature was made subject to vanity, not willingly, but by reason of him who hath subjected the same in hope” (Romans 8:20) and in this we should see the logical replacement for the ancient belief in the ‘fall of man‘ and ‘original sin‘. In Paul’s words we see that the man in form, “the creature” and the entirety of the creation, “was made subject to vanity” and to this word vanity we have ascribed the ideas of illusion and glamour which are the True plight of men as they do deceive him and cause him to use this vanity which is as Vincent tells us: reference is to a perishable and decaying condition, separate from God, and pursuing false ends⁴. We must remember the entirety of this verse from the apostle as it tells us also that this subjection to vanity is “not willingly” but that it is rather a part of the Plan of our God who IS He that is spoken of by Paul saying: “by reason of him who hath subjected the same in hope“. In this we should see that the Soul is ‘sent’ into this world of form and is “made subject to vanity“, that the Soul becomes lost in the illusion and the glamour of Life in form with the objective of being “delivered from the bondage of corruption into the glorious liberty of the children of God” and this by the actions of the consciousness which can renounce the effects of the world and who can say as did the Master that: “I have overcome the world” (John 16:33).

This all brings us back to the duality of which we have been speaking and of which we noted how hard it is to recognize it because we are a part of it; we are that very duality that we seek to understand. This duality is the consciousness of man and this consciousness is what the Master calls the heart of man; we must realize that this is only a duality as we perceive it from the perspective of the man in form, from the perspective of the vanity itself which is the perspective of illusion and of glamour. Can we see what it is that we have here as the ‘fall of man‘ and as ‘original sin‘? that it is this immersion in the world of illusion and of glamour from which we must escape or be delivered by the Power and the Love of our own Souls. Can we see that is the Soul that is immersed and that in this immersion IS the consciousness of the man? The Soul imparts Life and consciousness to the becoming of the  Life in form and it is the Soul’s own Life that is being lived through form although in some mysterious way the Soul is yet aloof and apart from that Life. This is a hard thing to understand and while it may sound strange, it is no stranger than any of the notions of the doctrines. We have used the term lend in previous posts and this can give us more of a reality in explaining the idea of the Soul being in the form as its consciousness and, at the same time, apart from the Life in form and so we will continue with this idea of lend. The Soul, for whatever reasons, incarnates into a Life in form and is “made subject to vanity“, he is lost in the illusion and glamour of the Life in form. In this state the man lives life after life, caught up in this state of illusion in consciousness, this state of believing that he is the form and that it is this limited Life that he IS. Through this time the Soul is attempting to impart the Love and the Power that IS his to this form Life but the form Life is so immersed, so  “subject to vanity“, that he cannot see these attempts by the Soul to get the attention of his own Life in form. Can we see the power of Paul’s words in this idea?

So the Soul lends consciousness and gives Life to the form into which he incarnates and this consciousness is the changeable heart of man of which the Master speaks. It is OF the Soul but can not be understood as actually being the Soul and again we have a great mystery and one that is only understood by those who have escaped, who have delivered their consciousness out of the clutches of the world of things. This is the goal, to be delivered from the ways of the world and into the ways of the Kingdom of God and toward this goal the Soul ever strives albeit not to the conscious knowledge of the man in form. This then is the duality which is only realized when the consciousness, the heart, begins to respond to these promptings of the Soul causing the consciousness to eventually see the ‘better way‘; to see that way when the consciousness finally realizes the futility of pursuing the things of the world and the Life of the flesh. This is where the man can consciously perceive the ideas of the Master’s sayings at the top of this essay; that he can understand that his treasure is what he pays attention to….the things of the world or the things of God. A man may vacillate between these two poles for several lifetimes  but he will eventually get it. He may totally ignore the promptings in any given Life and even repudiate them in another, but once he glimpses the reality of the True Life of the Soul, he will make much progress toward his goal.

Here we come back to our idea of focus and this is the reality of salvation; this is the choice of the consciousness that is the man in form and which is lent to his Life by the Soul. It is this consciousness, this heart of man, that chooses “treasures upon earth, where moth and rust doth corrupt, and where thieves break through and steal ” or, for the aspirant and the disciple, chooses “treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust doth corrupt, and where thieves do not break through nor steal“. With either choice this is, as the Master tells us, where ones consciousness, one heart, IS. In this saying, when it is rightly discerned, lies the key to the salvation of man as an individual and as a race.

We end today with another saying from the Buddha that gives us this same message but from the perspective of choice and here we should try to understand our same premise which is that this duality does not reveal itself until a man is feeling in some way the promptings of his own Soul. The Buddha says:

We are what we think. All that we are arises with our thoughts. With our thoughts we make the world. Speak or act with an impure mind And trouble will follow you As the wheel follows the ox that draws the cart. We are what we think. All that we are arises with our thoughts. With our thoughts we make the world. Speak or act with a pure mind And happiness will follow you As your shadow, unshakable⁵.

We will continue with our thoughts in the next post.

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.

We have left this saying for several days now and want to here say that within this reflection is the reality of a True Son of God, a disciple if you will, and it is by accomplishing these things that a men can be seen as disciples and, for those who try to achieve, those who strive, as aspirants.

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)