IN THE WORDS OF JESUS–Part 522

Love is the Fulfilling of the Law

ON LOVE; PART CXI

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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).

• 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.

It is True that we have been going on and on regarding these verses that deal with the Creation of ALL things and this is for us a necessary thing as it is in this that we can become better prepared to accept the ideas of the reality of Creation away from the doctrines and the traditions that have been driving Christian thinking for more than two thousand years. Concepts like the fall of man and original sin go back to the very foundations of Christianity and, although they may not be accepted by ALL denominations and sects, they are widely believed to be the reality of Life. That there is a fall of man is not in dispute however as we do KNOW ourselves that man is here on this Earth functioning through a seemingly endless series of incarnations attempting to get back to the Kingdom of God in a way that frees him from the responsibility of incarnation and, even in this deliverance there are some that return yet again in an undying effort to help to free their brothers on the Path. We should realize as well, that ALL are on the Path. Both of these perspectives, the Fall and the Rise of the True man, the Soul, are given to us in those two short sayings by the Apostle Paul that we have used so frequently:

“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” (Romans 8:20-21).

Although it may not seem like these ideas are directly related, this is where we left off in the last post; with the revelation that the True man, the Soul, took opportunity to use the animal form in the world when it became suitable for his use. As we have said in previous posts, we do not KNOW why or how these things occurred except that THIS IS PART AND PARCEL OF THE PLAN OF GOD. And we confidently say this because ALL things are working under that Plan which includes the limited free will that is enjoyed by the man in form and which works under the general theme of the ways of the world, a world of illusion and glamour or, as the apostle tells us, vanity. We should remember here two things as we relate the saying from Paul to our theme from Genesis again; first that our adopted understanding of vanity as the apostle uses it here is not only the common understanding but, as Vincent tells us, the reference is to a perishable and decaying condition, separate from God, and pursuing false ends ⁴ in which idea we can easily find our understanding of illusion and glamour. We must remember too that this illusion and glamour affect ALL men and, from our perspective, especially those who believe that they have found the answer in those doctrines that do not completely follow the words of the Master; especially His words on Love. And this includes us as well whensoever we believe that we have done enough or that we need not do this or that because it is too difficult or inconvenient; ALL things that are directed at the self as the Life in form are based in illusion and glamour and this ranges from ‘doing well’ and  the needs of caring for family to the fulfillment of desires and lusts; ALL things for the self can be seen as pursuing false ends ⁴. The second thing is in regard to the reasons that we are here in the Earth and we should understand that we ARE in this Earth scheme from the beginning albeit not in the incarnated fashion that we are today. With this in mind we must realize that we are in the world in this incarnated fashion and, as the apostle says we are “made subject to vanity, not willingly” but by the Plan of God which Plan is ours as well when we consider that we are in reality part and parcel of the Lord. Saying this we are of course saying that even were it the desire of the Souls of mankind to experience and to have the full KNOWLEDGE of Good and evil as it is phrased in scripture, we should understand that this works within His Plan and it is a part of this Plan that subjects us to this vanity. We should understand as well that in the idea of “not willingly” which is defined in the lexicon as not of one’s own accord ^2a, can be found the yet better idea of by necessity; by the Ordered Plan of God.

As we have said before there is a hint in Paul’s words regarding this fall of man and original sin as they are accounted for in doctrine. While we could not be sure of our premise when we originally presented it, it does make much more sense when combined with the actual story of this so called fall and the the sin that presumably causes it. In our reading of the story in Genesis and in our understanding of the words of the apostle, we see neither a fall nor sin but rather the working out of the Plan of God through the presence of man IN FORM in the Earth as provided for by the Awesome Plan of God. We see in Paul’s words that first that we are subjected to this vanity, this illusion and glamour, and that second there is the expectation of our eventual departure from this as each of us as well as the corporate race of men “shall be delivered from the bondage of corruption into the glorious liberty of the children of God“. According to Paul, this IS the Plan and the hope which is better understood as the expectation of deliverance is a part of that Plan. Paul goes on to tell give us a hint, albeit one that is couched in obscure language for which there is little reference, as he tells us that “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 firstfruits of the Spirit, even we ourselves groan within ourselves, waiting for the adoption, to wit, the redemption of our body“. Here, speaking as a disciple and to disciples the apostle tells us that in the eventual oneness with God there is “the redemption of our body” and this redemption is portrayed for us in the Transfiguration of the Lord and in this we can perhaps get a glimpse of the purpose of our intervention as Sons of God in ALL creation providing the impetus for the redemption of the very matter of the Earth from which our bodies are formed, as “the dust of the ground“, lifting it to a new level closer to God. We should remember here our understanding of adoption as it IS NOT what we see in doctrine but rather as Vincent points us saying: the adopted son of God becomes, in a peculiar and intimate sense, one with the heavenly Father ⁴.

While this may sound fanciful we should understand that the WHOLE  of our own Life experience here in the Earth has for its objective our deliverance from this existence and into that HIGHER existence that we once KNEW as Souls in the Kingdom of God. So, if this is True for man as part and parcel of God, then it can also be True of ALL parts and ALL parcels even if we cannot comprehend nor even imagine the reality. This brings us back to our point, the point of the True man, the Soul, being in the Kingdom of God, his natural place, participating in the guidance of the Created Universe and particularly in the Earth to which he belongs, who is then attracted by some means into interaction directly with the animal bodies that had evolved the capacity to be used as vehicles of expression for the Soul. Here then we have Adam and whether he is the first and only man or he is representative of mankind does not really matter; what matters is that we see the Soul in incarnation, unblemished  and pure as this is the very nature of the Soul. Here we see the Soul, the self conscious True man, taking to himself a form made from “the dust of the ground“; we have, from the perspective of the man in form, “a living soul“. In the last post we touched upon the struggles that likely ensued between the self conscious Soul, the True man, and his form nature which, being of the animal kingdom, has its own set of rules by which he lives, plus his appetites, cravings and instincts. God only KNOWS at what point in the evolution of the human forms of man this happens or what kind of skills the animal man had achieved but one can surmise that there is a certain degree self sufficiency, of family structure and of tool building as these traits are observed even today in the animal kingdom and among what we consider the higher animal species.

The human body then becomes the “a living soul” and somewhere within this human form are the remnants of its former self and the struggle here is between the Son of God, the Soul and the human form Life; the Son of God acts his part in purity attempting to express only the Good, the Beautiful and the True while the human form struggles to retain its hold and its ability to fulfill its desires, satisfy its cravings for those things pleasurable to the senses and act on the natural instincts of the animal kingdom of which it is a part. Adam then is in the Earth and attentive to the voice of God, the voice of the God Within is clear and readily heard as there is not the clamor of conflicting voices and noise that will later ensue and plague the race of men till today. Adam finds himself in the Garden in Eden and we cannot tell that this is an actual place or just a enlightening idea to give us a flavor of the Life of Adam or some combination of both as there is in this story the geographical picture painted of the rivers that flow from it.  The Hebrew word for garden, gan, is translated as garden in all its instances with a sub meaning of an enclosed garden ² which idea may come from the New Testament Garden at Gethsemane. Nonetheless the idea here is of a garden and a planted one and we should understand here that the ideas of its being planted and that “every tree that is pleasant to the sight, and good for food” was found there have no revelatory value as these things are apart from the appearance of Adam and may have been so for a long time. The key word here in this is the name of the place and it is here that we can lose the force of the idea that this is a place; Eden means simply pleasure according to the lexicon ² and paradise and delight according to Strong’s ³. So the Soul that is the True man takes to himself a human body through which to express his unblemished nature of purity and he finds himself in a place of pleasure, in a paradise, without care and as yet unaffected by the ways of the world.

But the plan of God is not complete, perhaps the struggle to contain the animal nature is too much or else perhaps this taking of a human body in this fashion was only intended as a temporary measure toward that ultimate objective as hinted to us by Paul….”the redemption of our body“. We have no way of KNOWING these things but we can follow the story to the next level where we find the mystery of the Tree of Life and the Tree of the KNOWLEDGE of Good and Evil. These realities are in the Earth with the man and we can try to see these as two polar opposites; the Tree of Life representing the True Life of purity, of the Soul, and the Tree of the KNOWLEDGE of Good and Evil representing Life in the world and the understanding of right and wrong leading up to that sense of duality which we realize as aspirants. Here also we have the caution from God that the True man, the Soul, should not partake of the ways of the world but should maintain that sense of purity as that IS his True nature. A couple of posts back we framed our understanding of the caution given regarding these Trees thus:

There is a caution here given to this first man or men and this is that they should not desire the fruits of the Tree of the KNOWLEDGE of Good and Evil and in this is represented ALL that is illusion and glamour and the vanity that the Apostle Paul tells us of. Here and now this man KNOWS his truth, his origin and he KNOWS the Tree of Life as his Truth of existence and here Life for the man in form begins on the Earth.

Perhaps in the words of the apostle we find a greater reality than we find in this story as it is given to the earlier man and that is that it is a foregone conclusion from the beginning that the Soul’s immersion in this world of form IS man’s being “made subject to vanity, not willingly” and to the illusion and the glamour and that the caution of which we read here is one that is predestined to be broken; that Life in this world is and has always been synonymous with the ideas of glamour, illusion and the vanity that Paul tells us about. In our next point comes the creation of the woman or rather the Soul’s taking to himself the human form of a woman and the strange but necessary experiences that this new relationship brings to bear on this fledgling Life of Souls in form.

We will begin with this next point in our next post.

• 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.

• ² New Testament Hebrew Lexicon on BibleStudyTools.com
• ^2a New Testament Greek Lexicon on BibleStudyTools.com
• ³ Strongest Strong’s Exhaustive Concordance of the Bible – 2001
• ⁴ Word Studies in the New Testament; Marvin R Vincent D.D. 2nd edition, 1888