IN THE WORDS OF JESUS–Part 218

Love is the Fulfilling of the Law

ON GOD; Part V

We have been discussing the Trinity of God which we see as the Aspects of God rather than Three Persons or Entities as this is viewed in most Christian doctrine. In our view the Three Aspects each are of or in a purposeful place in regard to humanity and this manifestation of Earth plus whatever it is that we can see in the night sky and, of course, we should not forget what we can see that is only discerned through a microscope. Also, in addition to what we can see in the telescope and in the microscope we should understand two more thoughts on this Awesome Creation; first that there are likely many many ‘physical‘ things that we do not have the proper tools to see and second, that there is a world of forces and energies that we have just begun to explore. There is a reality to the saying that All Is Energy. From our physical perspective we could say that the world of emotion and the world of mind are but energies at a ‘wavelength‘ that we cannot detect and so too are the realm of the Soul and of the Spirit. It is from this thought that we take the idea of the Aspects of God being in or of a purposeful place.

We should understand that all of this is, the Spirit, the Soul and the manifested existence of Spirit, and all are things that we should consider to be of spiritual matter or spiritual energy. We should also understand that just as we deem it to be that from the Father, the Spirit, proceeds the Son and the Holy Spirit, so should we see this in terms of man and of most things that find place in this physical world. From the Spirit of man proceeds the Soul of man and his body of manifestation in form or, that power that holds his Life in form. This is necessarily obscure and it is a great mystery but this can be seen, when properly thought about, as possible, if not more probable, than any of the theories of religion and of physical science. To add a bit to the obscure nature of these thoughts we can say that for man the whole of his existence is a journey of consciousness; that it is man’s consciousness that is of or in a place in manifestation. Let us not confuse this consciousness with the mind or the emotions or even the way that we appear to think in this world today for our consciousness is well beyond these physical attributes. Let us rather look at consciousness as we would consider the Mind of God and in this we can perhaps get a glimpse of the reality of mankind.

When we say that man is a Spirit we are saying a thing that we cannot Truly understand and to say simply that man is Spirit does not contribute to our understanding at all. However, if we look at this Spirit as the energy center that it is and that it is a part of the Total Universal Energy that we call God, we can perhaps make a bit of sense of the idea. Let us say that the Highest form of Energy that we can imagine is our own Spirit; it is a point of Conscious Life within the Total Conscious Life that we call God and that we can look at this Life and say that it IS. Again, saying this thing does not contribute at all to our understanding because we cannot imagine what Spirit might be and so we then must look at what this Life called Spirit produces and this is what we call the Soul. Trying to see here that the method by which the Father God, the Supreme God of All, manifested Himself in conscious form, we can again perhaps get a glimpse of what it is that happens to us as a Spirit in manifestation. God is manifest in form through the Son, the Christ, which is an Aspect of God that still cannot be seen nor fathomed but which is closer to the our reality because the Son is manifest; it is as aspect of God that has taken on substance and controls substance and in many ways is the substance itself. The Son is the manifestation of the ALL; in our reality, there is nothing else manifest but the Son of God. Can we see here the ideas of the Apostle John 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. All things were made by him; and without him was not any thing made that was made” (John 1:1-3).

We can never repeat too often the mystery of it all but at the same time we should understand and remember what the Master tells us as His disciples saying that: “Unto you it is given to know the mysteries of the kingdom of God” (Luke 8:10). In this is our assurance that there are mysteries and, if we position ourselves right, that is in right standing with the Christ and with the Christ Within, that we can know them. Continuing on we can see here in the words of John the reality of the idea that the Son, the Christ is the manifestation of ALL and in like ways we can see ourselves as conscious Souls, being the manifestation of our Spirit in substance. The Son is God manifest and the Soul is the Spirit manifest and this is the reality and the Truth to one of the oldest of our misunderstood sayings: “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” (Genesis 1:26-27). We must ever be careful in our views of such ancient scriptures and for two reasons; first that it is written to the understanding of a people that did not have the mental acuity that we do today and second, that over the unknown thousands of years from this happening to the time when Moses wrote it, it may have been yet further molded to fit into the understanding of the man of that day. While it is uncertain that Moses did actually write these words, we can accept his authorship as True and understand that it really does not matter so long as one puts this type of simplified story of creation into its proper perspective. Several things should stick out for us in this narrative and they are namely the idea of God’s saying “Let us make man in our image” with an undefined idea of us; next is the idea encapsulated into the words “in the image of God created he him” with an undefined idea of image and finally there is the statement that “male and female created he them“. Let us look at these three points.

• First the use of the words us and our in relation to God; although there are no Hebrew words to translate as us and our, all bible versions translate this verse in this way and likely because of the nature of Hebrew writing of words in plurality. Seeing this we need to understand the use of words that bring us to this translation of us and our, both of which imply more than one. The explanation of the church revolves around the Trinity and that the Father is speaking with the Son and the Holy Spirit which constitute the us. This is, from our perspective, God talking to Himself and it is not a likely explanation in reality. However, what it may show to us is a view of Life that does not require man to be in the center of it and that there are Beings, Godly and God-Like Beings, who take part in this act of creation and this saying is a simplified way of saying this without any explanation. Remember here our thought from yesterday that ‘every man and woman is a star‘; there is not much else that can be said.
• Our next point is that God says “Let us make man in our image” and we know that the church sees this as man in form on Earth being in the image of God who would then look like a man in form on Earth. This is for us a non sequitur because we know that God is Spirit and that God is a Trinity. From this would flow the natural understanding that we discussed briefly in the last post, that man is a Spirit and, as we have been discussed through our chart, that man is a Trinity. John tells us plainly of the Master’s words saying that “God is a Spirit”  (John 4:24) and again, what can we see flowing from this except that man is a Spirit as well. Of course there is no mention of the ideas of the Trinity except in that saying that provoked this discussion we are now in but, by accepting the fact of the Trinity or as we see in the fact of the Three Aspects of God, then we must see this too in man if we are made in the image of God.
• Our final point here is the words that say “male and female created he them” which is seen much the same as above by the church and that is in the realm of man in form on Earth. However, this idea of woman does not occur in physical form until the second chapter where the story tells us that “So the LORD God caused a deep sleep to fall upon the man, and he slept; then He took one of his ribs and closed up the flesh at that place. The LORD God fashioned into a woman the rib which He had taken from the man, and brought her to the man” (Genesis 2:21-22). Far be it for us to claim to understand this part of the Book of Genesis but we should see that it is after the creation noted above. It is thought that a previous verse saying that “Out of the ground the LORD God formed every beast of the field and every bird of the sky, and brought them to the man to see what he would call them; and whatever the man called a living creature, that was its name” (Genesis 2:19) is a restatement of the creation of the animals in the first chapter and that this subject verse regarding the creation of woman is a restatement of the first chapter as well. Of course this is an easy thing to say as we do not know what actually occurred nor how but it does not seem a rational way to view these things and have likely been so constructed as to fit into man’s basic understanding of man. So, explorers that we are let us posit this as a way to understand the ideas put forth in these chapters. In the first chapter we have God saying that in a plurality He has created the Earth and All else that exists; in the second chapter we have Jehovah God dealing with the activities of man on the Earth. Ponder on this. Next we have the understanding from the point above that to be in His image is to be Spirit and that the creation of man in His image immediately precedes the subject saying “male and female created he them“. If we are to subscribe to this running statement that says that “So God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them” then we must, by way if the idea of “in the image of God” ascribe sex to God as well. Using our reasoning minds  and our basic understanding of Spirit and Soul we can deduce from this that as Spirit and Soul we are neither male nor female or we are both male and female; in other words we just are Spirit. We say this with the understanding that it is in physical form that the sexes are necessary and that procreation takes place.

To conclude today we restate our premise regarding the nature of God and of Man. God is Spirit and man is Spirit also. God is a Trinity in manifestation and so is man. The Spirit that we call God is All that there is in His unmanifest state of Being which becomes manifest though the Son as so artfully stated by John. The Spirit that we call man is manifest through his Soul which is the conscious man that we are in essence. If we are Truly made in the image of God and if God is Truly Spirit then this is a rather accurate presentation of man. Going further then we say that if God is a Trinity then man is a Trinity as well as we see in our chart below. There is much that can be said about the constitution of man and we have touched upon this in several posts and we should know that whatever we can hope to understand from this type of discussion begins with the ideas that we have covered here today. The chart again:

Note on the Quote of the Day