IN THE WORDS OF JESUS–Part 505

Love is the Fulfilling of the Law

ON LOVE; PART XCVII

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GoodWill IS Love in Action

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We spent our time in the last few posts on the ideas of illusion, glamour and vanity and we explored how they are used in scripture albeit not under those names but rather under the English word vanity and under the ideas on deception. Two of the more important groups of verses regarding this theme were not covered although one of them gets quite frequent coverage in our essays. Looking first at a saying that gives us the idea that we have been carrying throughout our posts and which gives our idea much clarity we have again the Apostle Paul’s words to the Romans saying that: “For the creature was made subject to vanity, not willingly, but by reason of him who hath subjected the same in hope, Because the creature itself also shall be delivered from the bondage of corruption into the glorious liberty of the children of God” (Romans 8:21-21). In this saying we have the whole of the human journey in a brief and succinct statement that takes us from our origins in this Life here on Earth to our release again from it. We should try to understand here that man has always existed as the True man, the Soul as the expression of the Spirit, and of this reality we KNOW little but at the same time we KNOW much that is not understandably related to our Life here in the Earth. The much that we do KNOW gives us the ideas and the ideals of the Soul in Life in this world which is to say that although we are “made subject to vanity” which we should understand as illusion and glamour or, as Vincent tells us, that we are in a perishable and decaying condition, separate from God, and pursuing false ends ⁴, there is still the beating of a heart of good deep within most men. Scripture, and we as well, speak of man from a variety of perspectives and we should here try again to portray this as best we can in saying that we speak of the consciousness of the man in form, a consciousness which is of the Soul and through which the reality of the Soul can and will be expressed on Earth. We have said in previous essays that the consciousness is lent to the Life in form and this is because there are no words to properly describe the True relationship.

The Life and the consciousnesses ARE the Soul from the perspective of the man thinking spiritually; not the mind and the emotions as these are but tools through which the consciousness is expressed. When the Life leaves the body we have death and release into the realms of the afterlife; when the consciousness leaves the body we have only a breathing form that can only express instinctive action. Thinking of the stages of Life in form and the variation of conscious behavior, one can imagine the variety of expressions of consciousness from the partial withdrawal for some age related reason to the possession of mental or emotional equipment that are not suitable for the consciousness to properly express itself through. To these ideas we add the realty of  the illusion and glamour that we are as consciousness subjected to and the ability of the mental or the emotional equipment to satisfactorily use what form and personality a Soul is able to build. We should try to understand here that a part of the Life of the Soul, incarnation after incarnation, is found in his ability to build bodies that are suitable to the need and the Soul’s ability to express through that body. When we stop and look around the world we can likely get a glimpse of what we are rather clumsily trying to say; there are men and societies and cultures and nations and even sub-races that are at a wide variety of different places, mentally, emotionally, and even physically. In this we should be able to see Souls at different levels of ability to express finding suitable body types to build with as well as societies and races to put them in and we can get an even better understanding if we look historically at the world; even the recent past of the last few hundred years. When we can see races built upon different platforms and segments within each race able to occupy the higher and the lower capabilities of the race, we can see a greater reality of brotherhood and Unity. When we can see that in the mixture of races, not only by intermarriage but by proximity as well, we can get an even closer understanding. We are, ALL OF US, Souls that are incarnating in EVERY race and in EACH sex and in ALL places around the world  and the ONLY criteria is the ability of a Soul to build a suitable form across the gamut of race, society, culture, and nation as each of these has a separate and important role to play in the ability of a Soul to reach the objective that we call the Kingdom of God and which Paul tells us is “glorious liberty of the children of God“.

We should understand here that the idea that we are trying to express in speaking of the ability of the Soul to build a form and a personality is a premise that is based in the moving target of evolution, the ‘availability’ of suitable forms for a Soul to incarnate through, and the pressure of karmic responsibility. There are likely other factors but our premise is based upon these and on the kind of choosing if you will of the ‘right’ form from those available. A child is conceived in the womb of a woman and is some combination physically of the genetics of both parents and in this the incarnating Soul plays no part and here we try to see the reality of choice as a Soul will sort of gravitate to a choice of form that will best suit his needs based upon the predictable outcome of the pregnancy and the race, society, culture and nation in which the birth should take place. What are the needs of the Soul? simply to choose a body that will best suit his own ability to express himself and offer the best opportunity to do so; here we should see that a previously mentally advanced incarnation will not lead to a choice of incarnation into a family in the darkest parts of the world where men still live in tribal fashion, steeped in superstitions and rituals that the Soul had already overcome. We should note here as well how few there are of this type of culture left in the world today and the diminishing of this is from a variety of causes.

There is apparently much here that is left to chance and this is likely True as there is little True predictability of things in this world and circumstances can change quickly and radically for the people on the Earth. In the background, the Soul understands this as the Soul understands the UNITY and the ONENESS of ALL; there is no competition for forms nor is there any regret for circumstances and we should understand that away from our realm here in which time and space play a great role, there is no similar reality on the other side of Life. We have spoken before about our view of the afterlife of the man in form and we will not address this in detail again here today but to say that it is in this realm of afterlife that the Life and the consciousness of a man ‘rests’ between incarnations and the state of that ‘rest’ is dependent upon the activity of the most recent incarnation. In this realm there is still the Life of the personality sans the form and this existence is likely as real as the one we experience now albeit quite different; Life and consciousness go on as one withdraws himself from the experience and the thoughts and the emotions that one lived with in form as the thoughts and the emotions live on for a time though the particulars of this are for us yet a mystery. However, one can premise that the more intense one’s mental and emotional Life was in form, the longer it would survive in the afterlife state. We can say here that at some point in the afterlife experience a Soul will stand free from the encumbrances of the past Life, which includes both the Life in the world and the afterlife, and make ready for yet another incarnation and this cycle continues until a man can Truly say with the Master “I have overcome the world” (John 16:33).

In the same Epistle to the Romans, Paul gives us a hint of this in his saying that “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 this verse we should try to understand that the apostle is speaking to disciples as “ourselves also, which have the firstfruits of the Spirit“; they are expressive of the fruits of the Spirit and keeping the words of the Master, Paul says that they are “waiting for the adoption” and in this we should not understand only what doctrine teaches but rather the intent of the apostle in using the word adoption to mean as ONE with God. Vincent paints it this way saying of the Greek word huiothesia which is translated as adoption: We have but a faint conception of the force with which such an illustration would speak to one familiar with the Roman practice; how it would serve to impress upon him the assurance that the adopted son of God becomes, in a peculiar and intimate sense, one with the heavenly Father” (“Conversion of the Roman Empire”)⁴. Using then Vincent’s understanding we can see the waiting for the final consummation and entry into the “glorious liberty of the children of God” which Paul here calls for us “the redemption of our body” and in this we should try to see the Master’s symbol to us of the Transfiguration.

Understanding then the goal as the release of the Soul from the necessity of incarnation which is symbolized for us in the Transfiguration, we should be able to see that the road is a long one and this based upon our own present Life in which it is difficult to see this endpoint. We are however here in the Earth and subjected to the vanity, to the illusion and the glamour, and we are at that unique point where we recognize the duality and are dealing with these forces or are beginning to. Unlike the masses that are focused upon the things of the world, we are focused, at least in part, on the things of God; we are moving from living as a child spiritually, or not living spiritually at all, to living as a man spiritually, we are moving from KNOWING in part to KNOWING full and we are clearing away the fog of illusion and the mist of glamour so that we can see clearly and “face to face” with our True selves as Souls. Can we see in this that we have progressed to this point, that we are carrying on the achievements of previous incarnations; that the body that we chose in the place that we chose it are intended to give us the best opportunity to continue with our journey? Can we also see that we have endured the reality of ‘chance’ as it exists in this world? and the fact that we are still here is testimony to that and while there is a certain amount of ‘providence’ involved in the Life of the man who may be destined to follow the Lord, this ‘providence’ is at times of secondary effect in the big picture of what can happen in the world. We will discuss this angle in a future post.

In the birth of the Master we find a different reality and a reality that is unique to Him so far as we KNOW. He did not rely upon the chance combination of genes to form His body as His was formed in the certainty of the Christ who tells us that “with God all things are possible” (Mark 10:27). Here we have the True reality of building one’s own form and in Jesus case a form was needed that could support “all the fulness of the Godhead bodily” (Colossians 2:9).

At what point a Soul takes to himself the body in the womb is uncertain though one would think that it would be when the body is capable of supporting Life and consciousness and we should see here that from that time on the Soul would likely have some ability to work upon the suitability of the form nature itself. Of course these things are beyond our ken and only speculative in nature and we do not KNOW the conscious state of the Soul in the form of the unborn nor in the infant and toddler; we do not understand the how and the why that the mental and emotional equipment that a Soul uses is built but we can premise that this is done in conjunction with the condition of the physical brain and endocrine system as to have these out of sync can create certain mental and emotional problems for a man in form. The mind is a tool of the consciousness which IS of the Soul and the expression of the consciousness through the mind works through the brain in the form. The brain is not the mind and the mind is not the Soul or the consciousness and there is much confusion in the world regarding this. Emotions work the same way, they are an expression of the consciousness through the endocrine system and its correspondences in the ‘centres’ of the form nature and, of course, their connection to the brain and the nervous system. We could in Truth refer to the mind and the emotions as a single functioning part of the form nature and that which provides us with the single term of personality but since there is some separation we will continue to address them individually.

While it seems that we have come a long way from our original idea from Paul’s writing to the Romans, we are actually on the same theme as it is this form nature that we choose and build that is then enmeshed into this vanity, this illusion and glamour and we should understand that as Souls we KNOW that is happening and why. We recently took the story of Adam and Eve and the Garden of Eden and, relating it to these words from Paul, showed that this has always been the way and that the curse from the Old Testament is in reality this Life in this world of illusion and glamour. There is a reality in all of this that we can understand when we look away from the ways of the world as our criteria for Life and focus upon the Soul as the originator of every Life on Earth. At varying points of evolution in relation to form and mental and emotional ability, the man in form is simply the Life and consciousness of a Soul who is lost in this illusion and glamour which is continually prodded by the originator to see the Light as it exists beyond the senses and the mind. There is a saying that fits well here and that is that the mind is the slayer of the real and while there are some schools of thought that teach this and say to slay the mind in response, we say with Paul that we should “be not conformed to this world: but be ye transformed by the renewing of your mind, that ye may prove what is that good, and acceptable, and perfect, will of God” (Romans 12:2). This is the intended state of mind of the aspirant and of the disciple.

We will continue with our thoughts in the next post.

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.:

Today we post a World Prayer that is also included in the Prayers and Meditation section with some explanation of its source and its use. We are entering a time of the year which we can consider more sacred by way of the newness of Spring which should reflect in our newness of Life. This is the Festival of Easter and a time of rejoicing; not only for the Resurrection of the Lord from the Christian perspective but also for the teaching that is incorporated in the Master’s sacrifice 2000 years ago and in His continued sacrifice. We should remember His parting words: “I am with you alway, even unto the end of the world” (Matthew 28:20)

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.

• ⁴ Word Studies in the New Testament; Marvin R Vincent D.D. 2nd edition, 1888