IN THE WORDS OF JESUS–Part 515

Love is the Fulfilling of the Law

ON LOVE; PART CV

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GoodWill IS Love in Action

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“And God said , Let us make man in our image, after our likeness: and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth. So God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them. And God blessed them, and God said unto them, Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth, and subdue it: and have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over every living thing that moveth upon the earth. And God said, Behold, I have given you every herb bearing seed, which is upon the face of all the earth, and every tree, in the which is the fruit of a tree yielding seed; to you it shall be for meat. And to every beast of the earth, and to every fowl of the air, and to every thing that creepeth upon the earth, wherein there is life, I have given every green herb for meat: and it was so. And God saw every thing that he had made, and, behold, it was very good. And the evening and the morning were the sixth day. Thus the heavens and the earth were finished, and all the host of them. And on the seventh day God ended his work which he had made; and he rested on the seventh day from all his work which he had made. And God blessed the seventh day, and sanctified it: because that in it he had rested from all his work which God created and made. These are the generations of the heavens and of the earth when they were created, in the day that the LORD God made the earth and the heavens, And every plant of the field before it was in the earth, and every herb of the field before it grew: for the LORD God had not caused it to rain upon the earth, and there was not a man to till the ground. But there went up a mist from the earth, and watered the whole face of the ground. And the LORD God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul. And the LORD God planted a garden eastward in Eden; and there he put the man whom he had formed. And out of the ground made the LORD God to grow every tree that is pleasant to the sight, and good for food; the tree of life also in the midst of the garden, and the tree of knowledge of good and evil. And a river went out of Eden to water the garden; and from thence it was parted, and became into four heads. The name of the first is Pison: that is it which compasseth the whole land of Havilah, where there is gold;  And the gold of that land is good: there is bdellium and the onyx stone. And the name of the second river is Gihon: the same is it that compasseth the whole land of Ethiopia. And the name of the third river is Hiddekel: that is it which goeth toward the east of Assyria. And the fourth river is Euphrates. And the LORD God took the man, and put him into the garden of Eden to dress it and to keep it. And the LORD God commanded the man, saying , Of every tree of the garden thou mayest freely eat: But of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, thou shalt not eat of it: for in the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die. And the LORD God said, It is not good that the man should be alone; I will make him an help meet for him. And out of the ground the LORD God formed every beast of the field, and every fowl of the air; and brought them unto Adam to see what he would call them: and whatsoever Adam called every living creature, that was the name thereof. And Adam gave names to all cattle, and to the fowl of the air, and to every beast of the field; but for Adam there was not found an help meet for him. And the LORD God caused a deep sleep to fall upon Adam, and he slept: and he took one of his ribs, and closed up the flesh instead thereof; And the rib, which the LORD God had taken from man, made he a woman, and brought her unto the man. And Adam said, This is now bone of my bones, and flesh of my flesh: she shall be called Woman, because she was taken out of Man. Therefore shall a man leave his father and his mother, and shall cleave unto his wife: and they shall be one flesh. And they were both naked, the man and his wife, and were not ashamed” (Genesis 1:26-2:25).

We continued on with our discussion of the creation part of the Book of Genesis as it regards the creation of man in this world and it is our premise that this first creation “in the image of God” is a spiritual creation and we have said this for the basic reason that if this IS NOT True, then God must be in the form of a man and be man like and, of course, we KNOW that this IS NOT True. We can add to this reasoning the saying from the Master to Nicodemus in His discourse about being born again: “God is a Spirit: and they that worship him must worship him in spirit and in truth” (John 4:24); and we should see here that in this saying alone is reason enough to stop any fanciful view of God based upon the scriptures in Genesis. At the same time, we must try to see the reality of Life as an eternal march of both God and the True man as Spirit, and see them moving as ONE as they are inseparable. That the doctrines teach that when a man accepts Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior he is made eternal is but fanciful thought that is based solely on the illusions and the glamour of Life in this world and we KNOW this because the Master tells us of the requirements for both the Kingdom of God and for discipleship; accepting Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior is not among these unless this acceptance results in those things that He teaches us and which we have covered here many times. Clearly the requirements are, in a single phrase, that we keep His words and focus upon the things of God. Repeating our saying from Hindu scripture again, we should try to focus upon the reality of eternity and that there is a function to ALL things including the eternal Spirit and manifest Soul of man which is to say that there is always some thing which a man must be doing in some realm within the infinite being of God of whom he is both part and parcel. We should try to understand this as a Truth that has always been, one in which KNOW that we lived before our direct experience on this Earth and will continue to do so after our time here in done and we are again in the Kingdom of God. This Life is however not what we KNOW here on the Earth.

Never was there a time when I did not exist, nor you, nor all these kings; nor in the future shall any of us cease to be. As the embodied soul continuously passes, in this body, from boyhood to youth to old age, the soul similarly passes into another body at death. A sober person is not bewildered by such a change. (Bhagavad Gita 2:12-13) from Bhagavad Gita as it is.

This is the very meaning of Infinite and Eternal and, while the nature of the bible teachings do not use these words in regard to man, this is more because they would be unintelligible to the man than because they are not our reality. There are many ideas in the New Testament that indicate our eternal nature and we will touch upon one briefly here; in the exchange between the Sadducees and the Master in regard to the theoretical story of the widow who married all of seven brothers and then surviving them all died, which posed the question to Jesus and His answer: “Therefore in the resurrection whose wife of them is she? for seven had her to wife. And Jesus answering said unto them, The children of this world marry, and are given in marriage: But they which shall be accounted worthy to obtain that world, and the resurrection from the dead, neither marry, nor are given in marriage: Neither can they die any more: for they are equal unto the angels; and are the children of God, being the children of the resurrection. Now that the dead are raised, even Moses shewed at the bush, when he calleth the Lord the God of Abraham, and the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob. For he is not a God of the dead, but of the living: for all live unto him” (Luke 20:33-38). When we look at the Master’s answer we see that He tells them and us that there is no marriage in ‘heaven’ as the place of those who are accounted worthy and this agrees with our ideas of the beginning in Genesis as well, that there is no propagation in a spiritual state, and therefore no need to marry.  When we read the idea that those accounted worthy “are equal unto the angels“, we should try to understand that we have little or no real understanding of what an angel is and what is the role of an angel in His Kingdom and, if we believe as some do that angels merely sit around blowing on trumpets and singing to God, we are but seeing the fanciful dictates of doctrines that have no understanding angels either. The further point made here is in the idea of resurrection which is largely misunderstood as well; the Master makes it clear that there ARE NO dead to resurrect. He answers in His strong statement that “For he is not a God of the dead, but of the living: for all live unto him“.

Our point here again is that this first creation is the creation of the Soul that IS man and is the manifestation of the Spirit which IS man and it is in this fashion that man is created “in the image of God“. Seeing then that man here in this part is a Spirit Being manifest as Soul we must understand also that the ideas incorporated in the saying that the spiritual man should “Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth, and subdue it: and have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over every living thing that moveth upon the earth” must be taken in that Light. Here perhaps the idea of angels will work out well; there is a role in the Earth for the spiritual man, an angel if you will, to do these things as commanded and to “have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth“. In the proper understanding of all these words is our answer; the word dominion for example means: Sovereign or supreme authority; the power of governing and controlling; independent right of possession, use, and control; sovereignty; supremacy ¹ which is not the same as the common understanding which tends more to domination over these things of the world as a superior over inferior species. There are multiple meanings for most all of these words and we end this part with the idea from the New Testament to be fruitful; in this word we see the Love and the Power of the Soul, of the Christ Within expressed in the world of men. The Master tells us:

• “Even so every good tree bringeth forth good fruit; but a corrupt tree bringeth forth evil fruit” (Matthew 7:17). We should see here first the idea of good for which the Master tells us that “Why callest thou me good? there is none good but one, that is, God: but if thou wilt enter into life, keep the commandments” (Matthew 19:17). Can we see the completion of this point comparing man to the tree while telling us that the only good man is the man that is God like; the man that keeps the commandments? Can we see also that this man who keeps the commandments, this good man, brings forth good fruit; that is he expresses this goodness, this Soul quality, in the world?
• Speaking of teachers who profess to KNOW God, the Master tells us that “Ye shall know them by their fruit” and again a few verses later that “Wherefore by their fruits ye shall know them” (Matthew 7:16, 20). The idea here is clear and that is that the man who is expressive of the Good, the Beautiful and the True, the man who is expressive of Love should be KNOWN as the man to whom one should listen and not to the man whose cares are with the carnal Life. And, should one be confused here, the Apostle Paul tells us what are the fruits of the Spirit saying: “the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, longsuffering, gentleness, goodness, faith, Meekness, temperance” (Galatians 5:22) and again he tells us that “the fruit of the Spirit is in all goodness and righteousness and truth” (Ephesians 5:9).
• Of course we should not forget the saying of the Master to His disciples saying “Herein is my Father glorified , that ye bear much fruit; so shall ye be my disciples” (John 15:8) and in this we should have the clear message of His meaning in this word fruit.

If we relate these ideas on fruit to our words from Genesis what do we see in the idea of “Be fruitful“? Can we see the idea that in this fruitfulness is the expression of the qualities of the Soul in the world and that this could work as the spiritual man acting as the Soul without a physical form in his dominion over “over every living thing that moveth upon the earth“? Can we see that this does not have to be a function of the next idea which is translated as multiply but on its own can reflect the idea of Souls, the spiritual men, having the responsibility and the duty to nurture the fledgling physical lives upon the Earth and, can we see that this can make ever more sense to the thinking man than the literal story of  Adam and Eve. The only conflict here is that the same words of “Be fruitful, and multiply” are used in a previous verse where the command is directly to the animal kingdom but this does not mean that these words have the same meaning when used in reference to the spiritual man; there is nothing completely clear in these scriptures that tell the story of creation. KNOWING this why would we believe that this part would be clear as it is only interpretable as the same when seen from the perspective of the man in the world.

We have spent three plus essays now trying to set forth what we see as the Truth of this part of the Book of Genesis, this story of the creation of man, and we have made the case for our perspective as it is based upon our vision of God and of Life. Does our understanding have uncertainty and conflict? yes it does but this conflict is only against the literal interpretation of the words of this section and, as we point out, the literal interpretation comes with its own uncertainty and conflict. We will continue with these thoughts in the next post and continue on to our next points as listed again below.

• The other part of this is in the next chapter where God “formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul“. Here we have either a repetition and explanation of the creation of man in the image of God and both male and female or we have a secondary creation that brings the spiritual man into Life in the earth. Our understanding is the latter and this would become man’s existence in the Garden of Eden.
• Next we have the creation of the woman who was, according to the text, already created with the man during the creation in the image of God. Again this is either repetition and explanation or it yet another step in the bringing forth of the spiritual man into the Earth. There is another rather obscure saying in Genesis which may go well here: “And it came to pass, when men began to multiply on the face of the earth, and daughters were born unto them, That the sons of God saw the daughters of men that they were fair; and they took them wives of all which they chose” (Genesis 6:1-2).
• Last we have the trees; “the tree of life also in the midst of the garden, and the tree of knowledge of good and evil“.

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 repeat here again a saying that is from the Bhagavad Gita and which goes well with our topic over the last several days. Today we see the God Within us as the Christ Within and this is good in the Christian world and this is True based upon our understanding of the Christ as the manifestation of God. We should see that it matters not what we call this Inner Man as it is the same in ALL, it is the Soul.

Thou carriest within thee a sublime Friend whom thou knowest not. For God dwells in the inner part of every man, but few know how to find Him. The man who sacrifices his desires and his works to the Beings from whom the principles of everything stem, and by whom the Universe was formed, through this sacrifice attains perfection. For one who finds his happiness and joy within himself, and also his wisdom within himself is one with God. And, mark well, the soul which has found God is freed from rebirth and death, from old age and pain, and drinks the water of Immortality.—Bhagavad-Gita

It is difficult to tell just what verses of the Bhagavad Gita the above is from; whether it is a paraphrase or a combination. It is from the book “The Great Initiates” by Édouard Schuré which was originally published in French in 1889 and perhaps it is in the translation of the verses that they become hard to recognize. However, the sheer beauty of the presentation caught my attention and so I share it with you. The Path to the Kingdom is the same no matter what religion one professes.

• ebster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary, 1828 and 1913