Monthly Archives: January 2012

Love is the Fulfilling of the Law

ON GOD; Part II

We started a new series yesterday based on the only specific reference to what we call the Trinity in the whole of the New Testament and which had been our Quote of the Day for several days. This saying, from the Gospel of Matthew goes thus: “And Jesus came and spake unto them, saying, All power is given unto me in heaven and in earth. Go ye therefore, and teach all nations baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost: Teaching them to observe all things whatsoever I have commanded you: and, lo, I am with you alway, even unto the end of the world. Amen” (Matthew 28:18-20). Realizing that, except for the Master’s words on the Father, there is little reference to the nature any other part of the Trinity, we have embarked on this journey through the scriptures so as to try to get a clearer understanding of what this all means. We should remember also that so much of what the Master says in in the form of parables, even that which the Master spoke to His disciples directly. He testifies of this in telling His disciples that “These things have I spoken unto you in proverbs: but the time cometh, when I shall no more speak unto you in proverbs, but I shall shew you plainly of the Father” (John 16:25). Now the word here translated as proverb is the same word that is translated in this gospel as parable and in this we should see the intent of the Master insofar as their use which is that He is making a statement to them, and to us, which has some deeper relevance and meanings. In all of the Master’s words that have been recorded for us this combination of terms, “the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost“, is never used except in this passage and it is never referenced by the apostles in their writings thus leaving mankind to discern their right meaning for ourselves.

As we know, this saying, plus the other varied references to the individual terms, have spawned the doctrines and the dogmas of the churches and that the theories on the Trinity have become a cornerstone teaching of many denominations and sects. In our last post we presented our ideas on the Trinity as Aspects of God which we here enumerate the same way of which we said at the close that: God is One and Christ and the Holy Spirit are One with Him. From this perspective we have a Trinity that is a Trinity of Aspects of God and not three separate persons as many see this; God cannot be divided. In speaking about the Trinity as Aspects we can come away from the ideas of the church that, while not admitted, allude to the ideas of a separation of the Godhead into these three distinct parts that can and do act independently in action in this manifested world. The very definition that we presented of the Christian concept of the Trinity testifies to this distinction saying: In its final form the Christian doctrine of the Trinity defines God as three divine persons: the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. The three persons are distinct yet coexist in unity, and are co-equal, co-eternal and consubstantial⁹. We must remember here that these are the thoughts of men, of the Church Fathers, which were presented and refined and resolved into this type of defining statement and doctrines and we should remember also that this view is not universally held by all denominations and sects of Christianity.

For us, the idea of Aspects presents for us a God who, in this manifested creation, expresses Himself by His own Qualities or His Natures and it is to these Qualities and Natures that we give the  name of Aspects. It is then these Aspects that create the perception of the Trinity and to which the Master and we give the name of “the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost“. In yesterday’s post we began a look at the Quality of God, the Aspect, that we call the Father and referenced some of the Master’s words about the Father who we should see as the ONE GOD, undifferentiated and Supreme, and from whom is expressed His own Quality and from whom proceeds the Qualities of the other two Aspects of the Trinity. We gave reference to this idea of proceeding from the Father in Jesus’ words telling His disciples of Himself, the Christ, that  “I came forth from the Father, and am come into the world: again, I leave the world, and go to the Father” (John 16:28), and telling them of the Holy Spirit that: “But when the Comforter is come, whom I will send unto you from the Father, even the Spirit of truth, which proceedeth from the Father, he shall testify of me” (John 15:26). How our concept of the Son and the Holy Spirit proceed from the Father squares with the general Christian idea is of no moment to us here as it is rather apparent that the scripture references above do bear this out. This is of course all a great mystery and we do not profess to understand the complexity of it but, this being said, we do want to have these ideas formulated in a way that gives us at least a hint of vision into the meaning and the nature of God. The Master did tell His disciples and through them He tells us present day aspiring disciples and disciples that “Unto you it is given to know the mysteries of the kingdom of God: but to others in parables; that seeing they might not see, and hearing they might not understand” (Luke 8:10)”. We should see in this that as disciples we are able to know the mysteries of the Kingdom and this idea of the Trinity is but one of these mysteries which we are trying to uncover and to, from our own limited capabilities, understand.

So we continue with our current understanding of the role of the Father as God the ONE, the Supreme, from whom proceeds the Son and the Holy Spirit. Of the Nature of the Father we showed yesterday by scriptural references that He is Perfect, He is Merciful, He can be and wants to be glorified by our works and that He wants us to be in His Kingdom. We saw also that the Father is Spirit and He communes with us through our Spirit, that is is by His Will that the Kingdom is and that the Earth will be and we saw that, from the perspective of this manifested world, the Father is not here but that we, as Jesus, have to come to Him. These ideas we take from the six sayings of the Master that we listed in yesterday’s post and through a rereading of these sayings and pondering them, we should be able to see the reality of the Master’s words and our interpretations. We ended our thoughts yesterday with a look at the concept of God called Pantheism which posits God in and through His creation and, while we do not endorse all of the ideas inherent in classical Panthesim, we should try to understand that, at a minimum, it is the Life of God that is the Life of His manifested Universe and that it is through the actions of the other two Aspects of the Trinity, the Son and the Holy Spirit, that this entire creation moves and functions.

A while back, In the Words of Jesus parts 129 and 130, we posted a chart that helped us to understand some of the concepts of The Great Invocation. This prayer or invocation is an esoteric approach that seeks the presence in the Earth and in the lives of men of the potencies and the power of the Aspects of God. The chart is an outline of the Aspects of God and we repeat it here:

Now this chart should not be seen as the end all of our idea of God as it is but an attempt to put into language and words that Awesome Being that we have given the name of God. Yesterday, and here today, we are looking at first line which is the Father and His potency which is Will or Power. These ideas, Will and Power, may seem to be at odds but we need to look at this in relation to the Unknown of which God is the sum total. Power should give us the idea of force in the physical world but what is Power in the mental world, or the emotional? Of the mind we can understand power as will and so we should try to see this idea that we are presenting here. In our view the Father God is at the head of the Trinity of Aspects and remains in a state that we can only surmise as unmanifest; that is that the Father is beyond our understanding of manifestation which we see, by example, as the physical realm in which we live along with its corresponding emotional and mental components. Our understanding of this can be helped by the Master’s words from yesterday saying: “Touch me not; for I am not yet ascended to my Father” (John 20:17) which shows us that the idea of the Father Aspect of God is beyond and for us should also correspond with our understanding of the Kingdom of God. While this is all complex and obscure, we must keep in mind that these are not places and that there is really no separation of one to another but that all exists in one existence through which the only travel is in that moving of our consciousness from what we are forced to call level to level. Much like our experience in the world changes as our consciousness of it changes and much like, by way of our focus, we can bring the higher level of the Soul’s Life into our consciousness, we can, as we have before posited, move steadily on and into the Kingdom of God and into His Presence. This can be seen as the placement of our consciousness at that level where all that is below it is seen as what it really is, temporal and illusory. Moreover, we should try to see the idea of the forward movement of our ‘place‘ of consciousness as the purpose of Life in form itself and that this Life in form is not restricted to this Life here but includes also what we call the afterlife as well and up unto that point were we can free ourselves from the pangs of this Life and come into the Presence of God and the understanding of just what that means.

We have discussed this type of Life understanding in our brief look at evolution which is spread throughout our posts (you can find these references by entering evolution into the search box on the home page) as the evolution of consciousness and so it is. We can trace this evolution in ourselves and in the world and see it as the growth from infancy to childhood to puberty to adulthood and then on further according to the focus of one’s Life. It is this same evolution that will eventually bring us to the Kingdom of God and, once we have reached adulthood (regardless of physical age) we take responsibility for ourselves by way of our focus and, of course, focus on the spiritual and on His Kingdom will bring us closer to that destined end. So we have the Father at the extreme end of all consciousness as we can know it which is consciousness of God Within ourselves and our BEING up to that point in our journey on the Path which we have heretofore called KNOWING. We should not however see this as any kind of END as just as this lofty and heavenly place may be at the extreme end of all consciousness as we can know and understand it here and now, it may be but the beginning of the next phase of consciousness sans the physical, emotional and mental form. There is an saying by a renowned occultist and mystic Aleister Crowley which may have more significance and meaning than credit is given for it and which can be seen as much more meaningful thanks to the science of the day that says: Every Man and Woman is a Star. While it is or should be understood that it is rather impossible to count in an infinite and eternal universe and seeing the universe as we see it today with man’s estimate of between 10 sextillion and 1 septillion stars in the Universe, can we get a glimpse of the magnitude of Creation and the potential of our individual place should we so choose it?  We close today’s post and this part of the Trinity on the Father with these simple thoughts: first from the angel Gabriel saying that “For with God nothing shall be impossible”  (Luke 1:37) and then better stated by the Master saying:

…..with God all things are possible.

(Mark 10:27)

Note on the Quote of the Day