IN THE WORDS OF JESUS–Part 269

Love is the Fulfilling of the Law

ON GOD; Part LVI

In our last post we began with a new idea and a new way of looking at the Holy Spirit. We have previously noted our understandings that:

• The Holy Spirit is the Activity of the Christ in the world and of the Christ Within through a man.
• The expression of the Christ Within by the man in form is the Holy Spirit.
• This expression which is the Holy Spirit is only possible by having the Light of the Soul flowing through one’s conscious personality which is possible by one’s focus upon the Christ Within and which is equal in scope to keeping the words of the Master.
• The above saying is what makes a man a disciple and it is the disciple that is able to manifest the Holy Spirit, the Spirit of Truth in the world.

Remembering that God is ONE and that there is no division we then took up the ideas set forth by the Master regarding the interrelationships between the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit and through the Master’s various sayings we have come to the understanding this UNITY of the ONE GOD. That the Soul, when he is consciously working through the personality of a man creates in the world an expression of the Spirit of God as this flows into his personality consciousness making the man Soul Conscious, a disciple of the Master. This is the True Man, the Christ Within being expressed through the personality and this expression IS the Holy Spirit. We derive this from the many sayings of the Master which we put forth in previous posts; sayings that tell us of the Father in the Son and the Son in the Father, the Christ in the man and the man in the Christ and the dual nature in the sayings of the Master regarding the source of the Comforter with His being in one place from the Father and in another sent by the Son and in yet another sent by the Father at the request of the Son. In the life of the individual all of these sayings are relating for us, in parable form, the ideas of the Christ Within and the Holy Spirit being manifest in the man who can take on the burden and the responsibility of discipleship.

In yesterday’s post we took on a new direction in order to better understand the Holy Spirit which, as we have said, is likely the least understood of all of the Aspects of God. This new understanding is a practical way of viewing the Comforter in the world from the perspective of the individual who is become or is becoming Soul conscious; that is the man who is the disciple of the Master or an aspirant to discipleship. In one of our more popular saying we have equated the Holy Spirit with the “good works” that a man will do according to the saying of the Master: “Let your light so shine before men, that they may see your good works, and glorify your Father which is in heaven” (Matthew 5:16). Our question was and is: can we see the “good works” as the Activity of the Light which is the Christ Within? This is a departure from the doctrines and the dogma of the church insofar as the wording of any may be stated but when we look at the reality of this we should be able to see some vision of the Truth. If the Holy Spirit is Truly the Activity of the Christ Within in the world, and the “good works” are the activity of the Soul infused man in form, it is a natural extension then to say that the “good works” of a disciple of the Master is the Holy Spirit.

We took this idea then to a series of sayings by the Master in John’s Gospel in which we find the idea of “good works” explained as fruit and we began then trying to understand this idea of the fruit of which the Master speaks being the Holy Spirit. We repeat the sayings here and then continue in our interpretation of them:

“I am the true vine, and my Father is the husbandman. Every branch in me that beareth not fruit he taketh away: and every branch that beareth fruit, he purgeth it, that it may bring forth more fruit. Now ye are clean through the word which I have spoken unto you. Abide in me, and I in you. As the branch cannot bear fruit of itself, except it abide in the vine; no more can ye, except ye abide in me. I am the vine, ye are the branches: He that abideth in me, and I in him, the same bringeth forth much fruit: for without me ye can do nothing . If a man abide not in me, he is cast forth as a branch, and is withered; and men gather them, and cast them into the fire, and they are burned. If ye abide in me, and my words abide in you, ye shall ask what ye will , and it shall be done unto you. Herein is my Father glorified , that ye bear much fruit; so shall ye be my disciples. As the Father hath loved me, so have I loved you: continue ye in my love. If ye keep my commandments, ye shall abide in my love; even as I have kept my Father’s commandments, and abide in his love” (John 15:1-10).

In the last post we took up three of the ideas that we take from these sayings, “Abide in me, and I in you“, “As the branch cannot bear fruit of itself, except it abide in the vine; no more can ye, except ye abide in me” and “I am the vine, ye are the branches: He that abideth in me, and I in him, the same bringeth forth much fruit: for without me ye can do nothing“. Continuing then we have:

• If a man abide not in me, he is cast forth as a branch, and is withered; and men gather them, and cast them into the fire, and they are burned. How should we understand this? If the other sayings are to the disciple in form then this is too and this can be seen as the caution of the Master that if the disciple does not stay steady in the Light of the Soul, if the Christ Within does not flow through the personality because of focus upon things other than Christ and the Christ Within…..the man is cast forth from His presence and becomes again like other men in the world. From the High Calling of the disciple falling back into the world is the withering of the man who is then taken up by his kind in the Earth.
• Every branch in me that beareth not fruit he taketh away: and every branch that beareth fruit, he purgeth it, that it may bring forth more fruit. Now ye are clean through the word which I have spoken unto you. This saying is like the previous one except on a higher level that says not only “If a man abide not in me” but also the greater understanding of bearing fruit which we are coming to know as the expression of the Christ Within, the Holy Spirit. Now the balance of this saying is the more difficult to understand; Vincent tells us that the word translated as purgeth is better rendered as cleanseth which can make this a bit clearer and enable us to see the steady work that goes on in the Life of the disciple. As a man, a disciple, sets about in the “good works” of the Lord, the Light of the Soul intensifies and allows then for more “good works“, more fruit. Remember in our discussion of the Apostle Peter who as a disciple of the Master who had forsaken ALL, still suffered consistent setbacks against the high mark set for him by Jesus and who steadily and consistently grew in Christ, grew in the Light of the Soul. This saying is our reminder of this way in which the spiritual focus works out in the Life of the disciple and this of course starts in the place where we are as aspirants in His service. Keeping with the word clean in the following verse we should see the acknowledgment to His disciples that they are clean through His word. Through keeping His word, which does not detract from the prior promise that through the bearing of fruit which is the expression of the Chirst Within or the Holy Spirit, each will continue to grow to that point of KNOWING, doubting nothing.
• If ye abide in me, and my words abide in you, ye shall ask what ye will , and it shall be done unto you. Can we understand the import of this saying? Living in Christ, focusing on the Christ Within is the same as, and the result of, the words of the Master living in each disciple and being expressed by him. In His word is the Truth and it is better that we look at the rest of this saying in this Light and not in the unsupported understanding that this is any reference to things of the world. In His word what is it that one would ask but for more understanding and, in the words of the Master, when one asks for this while abiding in Him and with His word alive in one’s personality, the result is that what is asked will come to pass. Remember we are talking about disciples of the Master who had given up ALL and in this Truth we should be able to see the folly of thinking that the Master is promising to give some of these things, or other things, back.
• Herein is my Father glorified , that ye bear much fruit; so shall ye be my disciples. Here we should see two important things; first the idea that it is in one’s ability to “bear much fruit” that he can Truly be a disciple and this is in addition to those other requirements of discipleship that we have discussed in prior posts. If we do not do “good works” which is to “bear much fruit” then the right understanding would be that one cannot be His disciple. Second, we should see how this saying ties together with our other saying on Light; not only in our putting together the ideas of “bear much fruit” and “good works” but also in the Master’s telling us that it is through the disciple that will “bear much fruit” that the Father is glorified and this can be seen as the same as the prior saying that by the “good works” done in the Light of the Soul that the disciple can “glorify your Father which is in heaven“

Can we see here the ideas that we are trying to understand relating to the Holy Spirit as the expression of the Christ Within and which can be seen as the “good works” of the disciple and his ability to “bear much fruit“. These things are the Activity of the Christ Within in the world. We will conclude our thoughts on this in the next post where this all gets tied together with Love.

Note on the Quote of the Day