Love is the Fulfilling of the Law
ON GOD; Part CXXVI
While the subject matter of yesterday’s post may seem to be derogatory in its view against the established church, this is not the intent. The intent was, as is yet today, an attempt to show that the teachings of the Christ as we see them and the teachings of the churches are not the same as the doctrines of the church have become the fuel upon which they run. In the last post we went far to show the True meaning of discipleship so that one who desires to attain this status knows that there is more criteria than the average Christian may believe to be the case. The same is True regarding he Kingdom of God. In this season of the Christ’s Festival and World Invocation Day, it is important to realize that the ways of the Christ are intended to lead a man out of the clutches of the world and not to mediate his position so as he may come to a place where there may be a bit of religion mixed into a world of carnal living. We use this word carnal here in respect to attending to the things of the flesh and this is as it should be and not evil as it is perceived by many; Vine’s tells us that carnal means “having the nature of flesh,” i.e., sensual, controlled by animal appetites, governed by human nature, instead of by the Spirit of God, and this is the context in which we should see this word. In the reality of the duality of Life in form this is a natural occurrence as man can swing from pole to pole without recognizing what is happening and this is because the average man does not understand the True teachings of the Master; they are taught that to live in the world is good and to attend to the progression of this Life in form is the purpose that is to be accomplished while keeping in mind the precepts of the Christ. This is well nigh impossible and hence some of the Christian doctrines that allude to this as impossibility and serve to create much confusion in the minds of many. The Master tells us plainly that “No man can serve two masters: for either he will hate the one, and love the other; or else he will hold to the one, and despise the other. Ye cannot serve God and mammon” (Matthew 6:24) and we should see in this the reality for those who choose to follow the Master.
At such a time as a man Truly recognizes the duality of Life in form, he can take the proper measures to choose his direction; to heed the call of the Soul to the Good, the Beautiful and the True or to remain faithful to the world and the things of the world. Do not misunderstand this; to remain in the world with the understanding that one should follow in the words of the Master to whatever degree is possible, is good and beneficial and a thing that should be encouraged strongly by the churches which likely need a better reasoning position than currently used through the promise of eternal Life….this position should be the preaching of Love as the Master teaches as well as brotherhood and tolerance for ALL. In this way we can move the race forward into that predestined period of such virtues which we humbly call the Age of Aquarius; however, this is not our subject for today and we have covered this in some detail which can be found by a search from the home page. Here today we are looking at the disconnect between the reality of the Christ’s teachings and their portrayal in the doctrines of the churches or, as is true in some, their lack of portrayal. As we have said previously, the teaching of the Master is intended to make of each of us a disciple; He gives us no halfway point in this accomplishment. At the same time the tenor of His teaching is to show a man the way and the understanding of His teaching from this perspective should be that His way is the way to go and this should be undertaken by ALL. Again, when faced with the choices, when the duality is apparent in one’s Life, it is up to each man to choose…..the way of the world or the way of the Christ. This is not so hard a choice as it may seem although the final accomplishment of discipleship can be, as the Master tells us, very difficult. The choice is an easy one and the ways of it become easier as the Way is experienced and once the nurturing effect of Life in the world begins to erode, much progress can be made.
In the last post we discussed again in some detail the teachings of the Master on discipleship and the requirementa of accomplishing this; we also equated discipleship with one’s attainment of the Kingdom of God and the many ways that there are to understand this from what He says. Today we add to the ideas from yesterday where we spelled out the Master’s requirements for discipleship and paralleled them with with like sayings regarding being worthy of Him which we consider to be the same as being accounted worthy of the Kingdom. We looked also at the saying by the Master that tells us that to attain the Kingdom, to be accounted worthy, we must do the Will of the Father. We should here realize two things; first that the Master tells us that “I and my Father are one” (John 10:30) which should be sufficient for our understanding that the Will of the Father is the Will of the Son as well and second, He tells us in a different place that “the words that I speak unto you I speak not of myself: but the Father that dwelleth in me, he doeth the works” (John 14:10) and this ties into our idea for today which is: “Then said Jesus to those Jews which believed on him, If ye continue in my word, then are ye my disciples indeed” (John 8:31). Again we are trying to show here the connection of ALL things; the Will of the Father and the Will of the Son, the word of the Father plus the word of the Son and the Kingdom of God and the fact of True discipleship. These are not only connected in pairs, synonymous if you will, but they are ALL connected to each other as well.
If we take any one of these six idea in these three pairs and can accomplish it, we are Truly accomplishing them ALL. Can we see that if one does the Will of the Father that He is also keeping the words of the Son and that in this He is accounted worthy of the Kingdom and is as well a disciple? This is the reality of one’s spiritual Life; it is clear and straightforward and it requires nothing but one’s conscious choice to accomplish. It ALL starts as we portray above through the recognition of the duality of Life as awakened by the prompting of the Soul. And the Soul does prompt in every case where the form and personality are such that they are able to respond. If the prompting is drowned out by the illusions and the glamours of the world of things; if this world has one’s total focus, then he will not respond. However, if the consciousness is disillusioned by the things of the world, if they are not holding a man’s total attention and focus, then the opportunity to heed the call can be seized and, perhaps at a minimum, the man can become more aware of the duality in which he lives. We should note here that this is all rather automatic in response and likely away from religion; it is the operation of the conscience of a man working against the things that he has done or is doing in the world. The Soul is ever with us as in reality the Soul IS us and it is understandable if this is a hard thing to grasp these ideas of duality and focus and personality and Soul and consciousness. Since we are here we will take up the rest of this post with these ideas in an effort to make them more understandable. We must remember that whatever we say here is not the final word and we are all learning daily by experience and by the revelation from our own Soul, that Wisdom from above which we should measure, as we have discussed, against the words of the Apostle James. We start here with our chart:
|
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 |
The first thing that we should realize and remember is that the columns above each represent differing aspects of a UNITY, of a ONENESS and that this Unity also reaches across each row but this we will leave for another day. Seeing then in the first column the Trinity that is God, we KNOW that this is our ONE GOD in Three Aspects; they are inseparable as they are ever ONE. In the Father we have what we can only call Pure Spirit, the Boundless, Immutable, Infinite and Eternal ONE GOD; He is ALL that IS on levels that we cannot yet even imagine. We have said that the Son, the Christ, is the manifestation of the ONE GOD and this is an inadequate word to express this reality. The Apostle John tells us of this relationship in the Prologue to his Gospel saying “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“; in this we should see the idea of the Son being both with the Father and at the same time being the Father and the apostle repeats the fact that they have been from the beginning….from forever if we can comprehend such a thought. John goes on to tell us that “All things were made by him; and without him was not any thing made that was made” (John 1:1-3) and from this we should be able to see the idea of manifestation and, on a cosmic scale and we should be able to understand that He brings forth ALL things and we should remember here that the reality of things is not necessarily what we see but it is rather the ‘Soul’ of ALL things that is behind this manifestation. Much like we have the Soul of man living through a personality and a form we have also virtually ALL things living likewise. To understand this we must understand first that there is Life in ALL things and not just in the animate things that we KNOW; it is a Life that we cannot understand nor even glimpse but we cannot understand the Life of a tree or a flowering plant either yet we do acknowledge that they are alive. These inanimate things are separated from the animate things by the presence of consciousness however there is likely some type of this at play in ALL things; Life and consciousness are of the spiritual realms and, ALL things have Life; also, while we may not understand it, some type of consciousness that is behind the physical appearance. To further clarify this we can look at the consciousness of ALL things inanimate as the ability or even the necessity to follow the LAWS of being and of nature and this is true from the smallest particle of matter to the tallest mountain as each thing incorporates into its being the littler lives of ALL that go into its appearance.
On the animate side there is a different kind of consciousness which spreads by degree across the entirety of the animal kingdom; one can see this at work in the lives of ALL things that move by the behavior of some things that move; most any animal can be trained to some degree and who can say of their pet dog or cat that there is not some conscious personality at work. So, we have Life through ALL things and we have some kind of consciousness, even if we can only see it in the laws to which a thing conforms; we should have also the understanding that this Life and consciousness is the energy and the force that is behind the physical appearance and this is the same in principal to the way it is with man. We have gone through all this to affirm the idea that ALL is ONE and to see the idea of manifestation at the middle aspect, the Soul of ALL things which is the Son and the Christ. Note that we say here that there is an energy and a force that is behind ALL things and try to see this Soul, this Christ principal as that energy or force and as the Life and consciousness of some kind that LENDS itself to form. Can we see here the idea that we are trying to express? that Life IS ONE and IS GOD, that the Soul is the manifestation of that Life as points of energy and force that then LEND this Life and consciousness to the form nature itself? Add here then that the Life and consciousnesses, this ‘spiritual’ energy and force are in form as the Third Aspect of God and that is the Holy Spirit; the activity of the Son, the Christ, in form. So then we have LIFE which is Spirit and this Life simply IS; this is the Father. We have Life manifest through consciousness and this manifestation is the Son, the Christ, the cohesive LOVE in ALL things. We have the activity of this Life and consciousness in form and this activity is the Holy Spirit. And, THESE THREE ARE ONE.
We should add here that it is not profitable to try to break this general understanding down into too many specifics as we do not KNOW nor understand the way that these things work and just a look around ones own environment will show that there are levels of existence compounded within each other. We should understand also that for each level of Life there is a similar function of the Trinity at work and this from the minutest particle of matter to the vast expanse of galaxies. e should understand also that at each and every level there is some representative function of God and this is True of the unseen realms as well as the visible and apparent. Every particle which builds every larger thing is a part of this Awesome Creation both in its physical nature and behind this physical as the pattern upon which it is built and behind this is the Soul that gives it Life and behind this is the essence of that Life itself which we humbly call GOD. We should add here to the ideas of Boundless, Immutable, Infinite and Eternal the idea of incomprehensible, at least from our little perspective on it ALL. There is much controversy in the world regarding the nature of God; each religion, sect and denomination regards Him differently and while none can accurately portray Him, most all do have some belief on what or who He is. Much of this treatment of the nature of God takes away from the reality that GOD IS and it takes away from His very nature as He revealed it to Moses saying “I AM THAT I AM” (Exodus 3:14) and this takes away from that SAME GOD who says “Having pervaded the whole universe with a fragment of myself, I remain” (Bhagavad Gita 9:4; Tibetan’s translation).
We have again opened up the subject of the Nature of God and the Constitution of Man and this is a most intriguing subject to write and to read. Today we dealt with basic and fundamental ideas of how HIS nature pervades ALL things and, in perhaps the strangest of mysteries, we must KNOW that God is Transcendental and God is Immanent; that is that God is Greater that His creation and encompasses it ALL as Paul tells us speaking of God and saying “For in him we live, and move, and have our being; as certain also of your own poets have said, For we are also his offspring” (Acts 17:28); and that God is within each and every part of His creation as the Master tells us “the kingdom of God is within you” (Luke 17:21) and “That they all may be one; as thou, Father, art in me, and I in thee, that they also may be one in us” (John 17:21).
We will continue with these thoughts in the next post and in closing we post this idea from a past essay that we have been carrying from day to day looking for an opportunity to discuss it but have found none; we post it here for what is is.
The highlights of the Christian life, Love, Brotherhood, Forgiveness and Mercy are not hidden in parables nor in proverbs but are enunciated by the Christ in clear everyday language.
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.
Continuing again with The Great Invocation as our Quote of the Day, we should remember that The Great Invocation is the second Great World Prayer given to us by the Christ.
From the point of Light within the Mind of God
Let light stream forth into the minds of men.
Let Light descend on Earth.
From the point of Love within the Heart of God
Let love stream forth into the hearts of men.
May Christ return to Earth.
From the centre where the Will of God is known
Let purpose guide the little wills of men–
The purpose which the Masters know and serve.
From the centre which we call the race of men
Let the Plan of Love and Light work out
And may it seal the door where evil dwells.
Let Light and Love and Power restore the Plan on Earth.
“The above Invocation or Prayer does not belong to any person or group but to all Humanity. The beauty and the strength of this Invocation lies in its simplicity, and in its expression of certain central truths which all men, innately and normally, accept—the truth of the existence of a basic Intelligence to Whom we vaguely give the name of God; the truth that behind all outer seeming, the motivating power of the universe is Love; the truth that a great Individuality came to earth, called by Christians, the Christ, and embodied that love so that we could understand; the truth that both love and intelligence are effects of what is called the Will of God; and finally the self-evident truth that only through humanity itself can the Divine Plan work out.“
