IN THE WORDS OF JESUS–Part 430

Love is the Fulfilling of the Law

ON LOVE; PART XXII

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GoodWill IS Love in Action

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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

We spent some time in the last post looking again at the way that a man’s sense of self, the self in this world of form, is found in the reality of the Apostle Paul’s words on vanity from his Epistle to the Romans which we have been reading much of in our previous essays. It is the sense of self and the focus of a man upon himself as the center of ALL in his Life that keeps a man grounded in this world of things and prevents what Paul tells us is his being “delivered from the bondage of corruption into the glorious liberty of the children of God” (Romans 8:21). We have also ventured over the last several posts into the premise that the reality and the Truth of repentance as the Master teaches it can be found in these ideas of the change of one’s focus from the things of the world to the things of God. To this end, let us begin today by relating the words of the Master with the words of the apostle who tells us that we, as men incarnated into Life in form, have been: “made subject to vanity, not willingly, but by reason of him who hath subjected the same in hope” and continues on to tell us that there is a way out saying that we will be  “delivered from the bondage of corruption into the glorious liberty of the children of God” (Romans 8:20-21). Against this, let us look at these words from the Master:

• Jesus tells us, in this passage below that we generally see as speaking about why He teaches in parables, these words from the prophesies of Esaias which we will look on today KNOWING that the Master is also speaking about the people themselves, their very nature. He says: “And in them is fulfilled the prophecy of Esaias, which saith, By hearing ye shall hear, and shall not understand; and seeing ye shall see, and shall not perceive: 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. But blessed are your eyes, for they see: and your ears, for they hear” (Matthew 13:14-16).
• While there are not many sayings or acts of the Master that are common to both the synoptic gospels and the Gospel of John, this is one of them. The Master’s teaching about Love is common to ALL gospels and to the writings of the apostles as well although they take on a very different perspective in John’s works where the apostle writes more from the perspective of the apostles listening than the historical view. Our point here is only that John does publish in his Gospel the same saying from Esaias albeit with slightly different wording. Here the apostle speaks and, reflecting on the words of Esaias, John tells us: “But though he had done so many miracles before them, yet they believed not on him: That the saying of Esaias the prophet might be fulfilled, which he spake, Lord, who hath believed our report? and to whom hath the arm of the Lord been revealed? Therefore they could not believe, because that Esaias said again, He hath blinded their eyes, and hardened their heart; that they should not see with their eyes, nor understand with their heart, and be converted, and I should heal them. These things said Esaias, when he saw his glory, and spake of  him” (John 12:37-41).
• Arriving in Rome Paul requests a meeting with the leaders of the Jews in Rome and he proceeds to tell them of the Christ and of his own journeys and tribulations and while many believed, many did not and here, in the end of the Book of Acts, the apostle says to them: “Well spake the Holy Ghost by Esaias the prophet unto our fathers, Saying, Go unto this people, and say, Hearing ye shall hear, and shall not understand; and seeing ye shall see, and not perceive: For the heart of this people is waxed gross, and their ears are dull of hearing, and their eyes have they closed; lest they should see with their eyes, and hear with their ears, and understand with their heart, and should be converted, and I should heal them. Be it known therefore unto you, that the salvation of God is sent unto the Gentiles, and that they will hear it” (Acts 28:25-28). We KNOW today that the message was not received by the Gentiles in any greater degree than of the Jews in that day and it is likely the apostle’s point that the Jew was the one to whom this message was directed and that they, the Jews, were True to the prophet’s words.

Our point here is to reltate the words of the Master, as His repetition of the words of Isaiah, and the repeating of these by the Apostles John and Paul, to those words of Paul that we have been studying and to relate as well the idea of the vanity to which man, as a race, is subjected and to gain the understanding from the words of the prophet that this is just the way things are in this Life in form as seen in the version from John. Can we say that more than a prediction, the words of Isaiah are addressing the fact of the subjection of which Paul writes? Having made this case of relating these ideas of subjected to vanity and the words of Isaiah which tell of of the result of this vanity as illusion and glamour we need not to only relate the ideas of repentance and being converted to understand our perspective on repentance. The word translated as repentance from the Greek is for us that change that must take place in the heart, the consciousness of a man, that brings his focus away from the things of the world and to the things of God. We have often used these ideas separately, the change and the focus but they should be seen as intimately connected and this from the perspective of speaking about the things of God. What other change would be required in repentance but the change if the focus of one’s Life and so, we have come to say that this change of focus is the reality of repentance. This is ever seen although not expressed in our understanding of the ideas of sin and evil which we see as the wrong focus, the focus of the heart, the consciousness, upon the things of the world instead of the things of God. 

We seek here to be able to paint the Master’s idea of converted as He repeats the words of Esaias to this idea of repentance and to KNOW that these different ideas are in reality the same. The Old Testament lexicon tells us of the Hebrew word shuwb that it means many things in a long list that is confirmed in Strong’s and from which the principal ideas are to return or to turn back^2*, 3 and in which we also do find the ideas of repentance albeit from the assumed interpretation from the Hebrew but, as we shall see, toward God. Strong’s tells us among other things that shuwb means to be returned, be brought back; from the base meaning of turning back comes the fig. extension of restoration of relationship, as when one returns in repentance to God³. In their long list of defining terms for shuwb the Hebrew lexicon adds to turn back (to God), repent 1a, turn back (from evil)^2*. We can best see our idea here in the variety of ways that this word is translated in the Hebrew and in the Greek from the word epistrepho; we find in the various translations of the bible its rendering as turn again, return and turned again to me, but the one that is most accurate according to our understanding is from The Common English Bible where the word is translated as “change their hearts and lives” which is of course our understanding of the word repentance. We could go on here with the reference from the Complete Jewish Bible that translates this as to “do t’shuvah” which is a reference to repentance but we should have the ideas here that we are trying to promote:

• First is the relation between the words of Paul to the Romans and the words of the Prophet Isaiah as repeated by the Master.
• Second is the relationship of the saying by the Prophet as repeated by the Master to the central idea of repentance or change or return to God. The prophet tells us of the reasons why we are not repentant and this John does as well and both outline how this is the role of the Plan of God. This understanding is inherent in the words of John above where he attributes the turning away of man to the action of God saying “He hath blinded their eyes, and hardened their heart“.
• As to the severity of this action which is but the Plan of God in the Earth, a Plan that is destined and expected to allow men to be “delivered from the bondage of corruption into the glorious liberty of the children of God“, we find this from the Prophet Isaiah speaking presumably about the Jews: “Then said I, Lord, how long? And he answered, Until the cities be wasted without inhabitant, and the houses without man, and the land be utterly desolate, And the LORD have removed men far away, and there be a great forsaking in the midst of the land” (Isaiah 6:11:12). Ponder on this.

How easy it is to get off of the proposed track in these essays but the subject of repentance and of conversion, as we see the word translated, is of grave importance to our striving and the greater our understanding the better we can help ourselves and others. Moving on now we come to the second stanza of the Affirmation of the disciple:

I am a point of light within a greater Light. 

I am a strand of loving energy within the stream of Love divine. 

I am a point of sacrificial Fire, focused within the fiery Will of God. 

And thus I stand 

I am a way by which men may achieve. 

I am a source of strength, enabling them to stand.

I am a beam of light, shining upon their way. 

And thus I stand. 

And standing thus, revolve 

And tread this way the ways of men, 

And know the ways of God. 

And thus I stand.

While the first stanza was from the perspective of the Spirit that IS man as He focused in the Three Aspects of the Trinity, this second stanza is specifically from the vantage point of the Soul. The Trinity discussion from the last post showed us the idea of Light from the perspective of the the Holy Spirit or the Life and the activity within the form and this is not necessarily the physical form as the Soul itself is the True form of the man both in and out of incarnation. The Light then can be said to be the activity of the Soul from any perspective although from our being in form it is easier thought of in that realm of existence…as the activity of the Soul in form. We next see the Loving energy which is the Second Aspect of the Trinity and which is the Christ, the Son of God, being the manifestation of God. From our perspective as men this is the same, the Soul, the Christ Within, is the manifestation of the Spirit with is ever ONE with God in essence and in reality. Finally we discussed the First Aspect of fire and Will which is worded thus perhaps to highlight the idea of the sacrifice into which we as these Spirits that are men entered into in relation to the form lives on this planet. We touched briefly on this in theory when we came across the explanation of Paul saying “And not only they, but ourselves also, which have the firstfruits of the Spirit, even we ourselves groan within ourselves, waiting for the adoption, to wit, the redemption of our body” (Romans 8:23) in which we saw the hint of a greater reality regarding the very purpose of this Life in form….the redemption of the very substance of the form itself (In the Words of Jesus part 354 and 383). This idea aside, we have here the incomprehensible idea of God as Fire which is not an unusual understanding for it is written “For our God is a consuming fire” (Hebrews 12:29); and again, “For the LORD thy God is a consuming fire, even a jealous God” (Deuteronomy 4:24). and a better understanding from the perspective of the Spirit of man in form can be found in this from a previous essay: The message is that in keeping the word of the Lord that the people are consumed, as with a fire, by the Goodness of God; they are in His blessing and their worldly lives are consumed by the Good, the Beautiful and the True. These ideas are further elucidated in In the Words of Jesus part 229 and others. The affirmation here is that man is a Spirit that he IS within the Spirit that we call God and more, that each of us is a Spirit that is within the Will of God as well. The Master tells us clearly that “God is a Spirit” (John 4:24) and if we believe this then we must see this same in ourselves as we are made “in his own image” (Genesis 1:27).

The second stanza is of a more personal nature for the aspirant and for the disciple of the Lord. Here we see the realization of the nature of the Soul or the Second aspect of the Trinity that we speak of above. We should understand the dual nature of the idea of men in much of our writing and in the writings of the Master and His apostles as well; this word can refer to the man in form believing that he is the form, and it can refer to the man who KNOWS that his is the Soul, the Christ Within. The duality is resolved in the understanding that in reality the man is the consciousness that is of the Soul and which is lent to form for lack of a better word. We have often discussed this idea that the Soul gives or rather lends his consciousness to the form Life for the duration of that Life and that this consciousness is what it is that is lost in the illusion and the glamour, it is this consciousness that is subjected to the vanity and in this is the reality of the plight of man in form and the ONENESS that we have with ALL men. No matter what this consciousness does in form, no matter how good or how ‘evil’ this consciousness may be, this consciousness IS still the Soul and in that realization he IS ONE with ALL Souls and IS divine.

We should be able to see here that this consciousness, this Soul in form, is the ONLY way of achievement for the man in form; it is only by the realization of the Soul that a man can achieve anything apart from the temporal things of the world. And, from the perspective of one who IS in realization as a Soul in form as a disciple and to a lesser degree as an aspirant, he becomes the way of achievement for others as a Shining Light on the Path to “the glorious liberty of the children of God“. This same idea can be seen in each of the three lines of this stanza, as Light as we see here and as the Strength that enables a man to come to the realization. The Master says to us that we should “Come unto me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn of me; for I am meek and lowly in heart: and ye shall find rest unto your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light” (Matthew 11:28-30). Without trying to dissect these verses we should note that the idea here is the same whether we think of Christ or of the Christ Within for the purpose is served by each and, for the man in form, the Christ may bring him but ultimately it is the Christ Within, the Soul, that causes the result. Looking at this as we do we should see that Life in form is difficult for the man who has sensed the duality of it ALL, who has seen a glimpse of the Light and the Love from within; up to this point the man is content although perhaps unhappy in his Life in the world. So the Christ and the Christ Within continue to call the man with the message that the Master enunciates above trying to show the man by His Strength and His Light that rest, or perhaps pause is a better word, from this world of things, this ‘rat race’, is possible by the refocusing of the consciousness upon the Good, the Beautiful and the True. Here is rest from the illusion and the glamour and the vanity.

Here then in this second stanza we have the Soul, the Christ Within, speaking to the form Life and, after the realization of the Christ Within, speaking to the world at large as a way of achievement of this High Calling, a source of the strength that can help others to forebear if by no other means, then by expample, and as the shining Light that can help others in the understanding as others have helped him. ALL of this can be seen in the words of the Master who tells us:

“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).

This idea that we have above of sacrifice plus this idea of the work of the Soul through the form Life of a one who has come to the realization of the Truth is put for us into different words which we have posted before and which becomes for us our Quote of the Day. We will continue with our thoughts in the next post.

We leave again our sayings on faith and believing which we hope to get back to in the next post.

• “But whoso shall offend one of these little ones which believe in me, it were better for him that a millstone were hanged about his neck, and that he were drowned in the depth of the sea”  (Matthew 18:6).
• “The baptism of John, whence was it? from heaven, or of men? And they reasoned with themselves, saying, If we shall say, From heaven; he will say unto us, Why did ye not then believe him?…..For John came unto you in the way of righteousness, and ye believed him not: but the publicans and the harlots believed him: and ye, when ye had seen it, repented not afterward, that ye might believe him” (Matthew 21:25, 32).
• “Then if any man shall say unto you, Lo, here is Christ, or there; believe it not. For there shall arise false Christs, and false prophets, and shall shew great signs and wonders; insomuch that, if it were possible, they shall deceive the very elect. Behold, I have told you before. Wherefore if they shall say unto you, Behold, he is in the desert; go not forth: behold, he is in the secret chambers; believe it not…….” (Matthew 24:23-26).

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.

“He who faces the light of His Soul and stands within its radiance is blinded to the issues of the world of men; he passes on the lighted way to the Kingdom of God. But he who feels the urge to pass that way, yet loves his brother on the darkened path, revolves upon the pedestal of light and turns the other way.”

“He faces towards the dark and then the seven points of light within himself transmit the outward streaming light, and lo! the face of those upon the darkened way receives that light. For them, the way is not so dark. Behind the warriors—twixt the light and dark—blazes the light of the Kingdom itself.“**

We previously posted this saying in In the Words of Jesus part 367 and did so in conjunction with the Master’s teaching on the idea that “But many that are first shall be last; and the last first” (Mark 10:31) and His teaching about the mustard seed where, in Luke’s Gospel, he says: “So likewise ye, when ye shall have done all those things which are commanded you, say, We are unprofitable servants: we have done that which was our duty to do” (Luke 17:5-10)”. In this context we say about the words above: Remembering that the Master is speaking to His disciples in both instances above and both are, in our view, explanatory of the nature of the disciple; that he will accomplish what he has to do, his duty if you will, but will continue on in the service of the Lord and give his ALL in service to his fellowmen. There an ancient aphorism which states this truth in a different way and on which we have taken the liberty of rendering in a more understandable language;

• ²     New Testament Greek Lexicon on BibleStudyTools.com
• ^2*  Old Testament Hebrew Lexicon on BibleStudyTools.com
• ³    Strongest Strong’s Exhaustive Concordance of the Bible – 2001
• ⁴    Word Studies in the New Testament; Marvin R Vincent D.D. 2nd edition, 1888
• ** Discipleship in the New Age – Volume II by Alice A Bailey; © 1955 by Lucis Trust