Monthly Archives: March 2012

Love is the Fulfilling of the Law

ON GOD; Part LX

We began in earnest yesterday to lay out our ideas regarding the world and our keywords of illusion, glamour and deception and we started off with some thoughts on the overall illusory nature of the threefold world of form as well as the duality of the Life of a man which we established through some quotes from the Master and John the Baptist. We noted that in this idea of duality there are the realm of Spirit in which exists the Spirit and the Soul of ALL things and the physical realm in which exist the things that pertain to the world which are the physical forms, plus the emotions and the thoughts that motivate them. We have several times over the course of these posts discussed the concept of reincarnation and we have attempted to elucidate some of the nature of this process in which all Souls partake; we will today try to build upon that foundation of thought and understanding. The True man is the Soul and the Spirit which is His Life and this is so because it is the Soul that is, as is the Christ cosmically speaking, the manifestation of that Life which IS God. A hint of this relationship is given to us by the Apostle John in the Prologue to his Gospel which tells us that “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). This is the manifestation of ALL things but we should try to understand that we primarily speak here about His manifestation as and of the Kingdom of God so called. This Christ is not the same as the historic Christ but is rather the Second Aspect of the Trinity and, in Christian parlance, equal with God. For us we go bit further to say that the Christ IS God in manifestation and the historic Christ Jesus is the personification of this Second Aspect in whom, as the Apostle Paul tells us, ….”dwelleth all the fulness of the Godhead bodily” (Colossians 2:9). In this we should see the possibilities for each of us as Souls “because as he is , so are we in this world” (1 John 4:17). As the Christ was able to express this fullness through the threefold physical body that we see as Jesus, so are we then able to express this same fullness through a threefold physical body thus fulfilling what the are taught by the Christ saying: “The disciple is not above his master: but every one that is perfect shall be as his master” (Luke 6:40). The keywords in this saying are disciple and perfect and these should be seen by us as rather synonymous and we should here remember His admonition that we should “Be ye therefore perfect, even as your Father which is in heaven is perfect” (Matthew 5:48).

In this expression we should see that when not in incarnation this is the consciousness of the disciple, the Soul, who has come to be able to express Himself fully through a form on the Earth. Until freed from the cycle of Life and death, freed from reincarnation, by reaching the ultimate in perfection as a Soul in form, the Soul is ever in the Kingdom of God of which there are likely many levels; these should not be seen as so many floors as in a building but rather as different levels of spiritual consciousness which we had previously equated to KNOWING when we viewed this from a more physical perspective. This is a difficult subject to speak accurately on as all that we can know is from revelation and there are not yet words and phrases to express some of these great mysteries. However, we plod along ever trying to assemble our revelation into cogent thoughts and then into words and phrases. We know the terms of discipleship as the Master has told us and which we recently covered again (In the Words of Jesus parts 266-267) and these are largely inclusive of the Master’s terms for gaining the Kingdom of God; that we follow Him and keep His words and that we be willing to give up all for Him are the keys to the kingdom and to discipleship. For this all we use the single word and idea of focus. So the Soul is somewhere in the Kingdom of God and, until He is freed He is tied somewhat to His Life in form, both previous and future. Now there is a reality here that we can easily miss and that is the ALL, EVERYTHING, IS and exists in the Kingdom in some respect as GOD IS. However, we must not let this distract us but just show us of the inadequacy of our words and their inability to express thoughts. We will maintain our view of the Kingdom according to the teaching of the Master and proceed then to go beyond the disciple and on to those who have not reached this stage in the development of their ability, as Souls, to express fully through the form the precepts of the Master. While the disciple moves between what we are calling the Kingdom and incarnation the others, the vast majority, moves between what we simply call the afterlife and incarnation. Just as we should try to understand levels within the Kingdom, we should understand also the levels of existence in the afterlife which we can see as the result of one’s accomplishments in controlling his Life in form. From the grossly carnal and selfish man to the man who is near discipleship, there is an afterlife experience that will suit the karmic needs of each Soul. We will not entertain thoughts here today on what the likely nature of one’s time in the afterlife or in the Kingdom may be like except to say that the closer that a man in form can get to expressing the Life of the Soul, the more conscious he will be of Himself as the Soul in all phases of Life. Conversely the closer that a man in form remains to Life in the Earth insofar as his thoughts, his feelings and his actions, the closer he will remain to the carnal realm in the afterlife.

Behind ALL this the Soul exists in the perfection of the Father, pure and unblemished, and in this we should see the duality of Life. The Soul is ever the source of the Good, the Beautiful and the True and they “do always behold the face of my Father which is in heaven“. (Matthew 18:10). The power and the force of the Soul, while ever present, is enmeshed in the world of form until that time of being freed by His ability to express that ultimate perfection through His form. In many ways we could say that He, the Soul, is unaware of His True nature except by the bits of revelation that He can get through to His consciousness. And this is the crux of our whole discussion so far, the Soul and the consciousness, these are one and the same and, at the same time, these are the duality of which we speak, the duality that we are. It is this consciousness that must express the Good, the Beautiful and the True as the Soul KNOWS it and this must be expressed despite the distractions of form. The consciousness is in the threefold form, the personality, and thereby is enmeshed in the world, the threefold world of the physical presence and its attractions, the emotional apparatus and its proclivities and the mental apparatus and its ability. In the very nature of the form that the Soul has built is much of the key to His potential for success in any one Life in form. This plus whatever karmic responsibility one carries as a Soul into incarnation plus also the effect of the nurturing and free will of the conscious man, can help to lead a man to the greater good that he may sense through his revelatory communion with realm of Truth in which the Soul IS or else it may lead the man to deeper communion of his consciousness with the world. There are of course an infinite range of possibilities within the scope of any Life.

We have gone a bit further into this than we intended but it is important to understand the nature of this duality that we face as Souls in incarnation in this world if we are to mount an attack so as to fulfill the words of the Master who tells us that “from the days of John the Baptist until now the kingdom of heaven suffereth violence , and the violent take it by force” (Matthew 11:12). Up to now we have spoken in these posts of the personality consciousness and we have here further defined that to be the consciousness that is in the personality, in the form. We have spoken of our objective which is to make oneself Soul conscious versus carnally conscious and we should now understand that it is the same consciousness within the same personality that will focus upon one or the other at the extremes of the range of possibilities or upon both intermittently which is generally the way. This is the duality and the confusion of Life in form; duality ends at the extremes at which point the consciousness is dedicated to what is above or what is below but Life between these poles is the reality of what the Master tells us: “No servant 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” (Luke 16:13). The Apostle James adds to this for us by telling us that the consciousness, if it is inclined toward the above, should act thus: “If any of you lack wisdom, let him ask of God, that giveth to all men liberally, and upbraideth not; and it shall be given him. But let him ask in faith, nothing wavering. For he that wavereth is like a wave of the sea driven with the wind and tossed. For let not that man think that he shall receive any thing of the Lord.  A double minded man is unstable in all his ways” (James 1:5-8). Can we see and understand the force of focus in what we have here said and that it is one’s focus that will determine the outcome of his Life?

We have covered much here today in trying to firmly establish an understanding of the duality that we face through Life in form and that Life in form takes on many levels of existence from the unthinking, unfeeling animal man to the disciple of the Christ who is about to be freed from the cycle of Life and death. We have redefined to a degree our understanding of the personality consciousness and we have put a new and higher emphasis upon our term of focus. We will continue with these thoughts in the next post and will move on here to the completion of our discussion of the Quote of the Day from the sayings of the Buddha in the Dhammapada. We repeat here the last point we covered but with the added insight from our discussion above:

• For consider the world – A bubble, a mirage. See the world as it is, And death shall overlook you. Here is the essence of illusion and glamour and the admonition to see it as such; a bubble, a mirage. These are the ideas that we will develop as we move through these topics; the world is to be seen as it is and not as it appears to be and in this vision we are free. We are free from death because we see the reality and the Truth of Life and that there is no real death. Seeing the world as it is is to see it as the Soul and not as the personality consciousness in form. From today’s discussion we can  further clarify what we said in the last post. Seeing the world as it Truly is is the privilege of the consciousness within the personality seeing the world as the Soul; seeing the world as the personality only is seeing it as a consciousness that is only aware of the Earthly part. And, of course, there is an infinite range of possible combinations of personality and Soul awareness by the consciousness which is in reality the Soul. We should inject here again the idea of focus.
• Come, consider the world, A painted chariot for kings, A trap for fools. Both the King and the fool are painted with the same brush in this saying. For the king, the worldly king, the world is his playground. He lives the high life and amasses great wealth; it is his chariot, his glory and in so many ways the world becomes his god. Then there is the fool who we should see as anyone who does not heed the call of the Soul and attend to the higher; he sees better times in the world, he sees fame and glory based upon his lusts and his desires; he is proud to be what he is and to do what it is that he does and nary considers the higher and Truer Life of the True Self, the Soul.
• But he who sees goes free. As the moon slips from behind a cloud And shines, So the master comes out from behind his ignorance And shines. Here we have the Buddha telling us that it is ignorance that keeps the man in the world and prevents him from seeing and going free. In ignorance the world moves with few sensing the reality of Life and fewer yet taking advantage of what it is that they see. This is the illusion, that man, in ignorance, believes that he knows and he proceeds to do what it is that he knows; he does not see the reality but only the illusion. This is the glamour, the man, in ignorance, understands the world as his source of all when the Truth of it all comes only in seeing. It is a fact known by most all men: that you cannot take it with you. Knowing this and knowing whatsoever it is that you can accomplish on this Earth in fame and fortune and in prideful joy is of no importance at all except to the pride and to a misplaced sense of responsibility to those who are dear that we may leave behind. That one’s name and enterprise carries on after the death of a man is of no consequence to the True man except that it may be an expression of True Love, the Love of God. We have said before that the first master that a man will meet is His own Soul; pure and unblemished.
• The world is in darkness. How few have eyes to see! How few the birds who escape the net and fly to heaven! This is a great Truth that should amplify the words of the Master who speaking of the Kingdom tells us to: “Enter ye in at the strait gate: for wide is the gate, and broad is the way, that leadeth to destruction, and many there be which go in thereat: Because strait is the gate, and narrow is the way, which leadeth unto life, and few there be that find it” (Matthew 7:13-14). From the perspective of the Soul the world is in darkness and this is emphasized for us by the Master speaking of Himself and of the Christ Within saying: “As long as I am in the world, I am the light of the world” (John 9:5) and again “I am the light of the world: he that followeth me shall not walk in darkness, but shall have the light of life” (John 8:12). The Master tells us of the difficulty of attaining the Kingdom in the saying above and leaves the seeing to us in saying “For this people’s heart is waxed gross, and their ears are dull of hearing, and their eyes they have closed; lest at any time they should see with their eyes, and hear with their ears, and should understand with their heart, and should be converted, and I should heal them” (Matthew 13:15). While He may have been speaking then to and of the Jews as He repeated the saying of the prophet Esaias, is He not speaking now to us ALL as is the Buddha?

How few the birds who escape the net and fly to heaven! 
“strait is the gate, and narrow is the way, which leadeth unto life, and few there be that find it“

Do these not say the same thing? We will continue with our thoughts is the next post.

Note on the Quote of the Day