IN THE WORDS OF JESUS–Part 541

Love is the Fulfilling of the Law

ON LOVE; PART CXXX

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GoodWill IS Love in Action

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Last we have the trees; “the tree of life also in the midst of the garden, and the tree of knowledge of good and evil“.

“Now the serpent was more subtil than any beast of the field which the LORD God had made. And he said unto the woman, Yea, hath God said, Ye shall not eat of every tree of the garden? And the woman said unto the serpent, We may eat of the fruit of the trees of the garden: But of the fruit of the tree which is in the midst of the garden, God hath said, Ye shall not eat of it, neither shall ye touch it, lest ye die  And the serpent said unto the woman, Ye shall not surely die: For God doth know that in the day ye eat thereof, then your eyes shall be opened , and ye shall be as gods, knowing good and evil. And when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was pleasant to the eyes, and a tree to be desired to make one wise, she took of the fruit thereof, and did eat, and gave also unto her husband with her; and he did eat. And the eyes of them both were opened, and they knew that they were naked; and they sewed fig leaves together, and made themselves aprons” (Genesis 31-7).

We have been looking at “the tree of knowledge of good and evil” and it is from here that we diverted our thoughts toward the concept of an ORDERED Universe and an ORDERLY God who, according to our Quote of the Day is ALL Pervasive in His World and His Universe. This IS God , this IS God in His Creation and this is a concept that is disputed by much of the Christian Church which sees God as outside of His Creation, separate and apart; this view however fails to account for the words of the Apostle Paul telling us of “Christ in you, the hope of glory” (Colossians 1:27) which, when combined with the words of the Master saying “I and my Father are one” (John 10:30) should at least give one pause in considering these things. Again, we must come back to the reality that it is not until the man in form can look at himself and KNOW that he IS NOT the body and personality nature but IS the Life and the consciousness that is expressing through this form nature, he will not properly grasp the Immanence of God. It is doctrine and competing theologies that help prevent men from realizing and teaching this fundamental Truth and these are ardently fed by that sense of ‘right’ that each position takes and this is in turn fed by the glamour and the illusion of the world, the vanity from our saying by Paul which helps us to understand the nature of men in the world and some reason for that nature. We will come back to this idea after we look at the other side of this Immanence of God which is His Transcendence, that He is outside of His Creation and this is a view that IS wrongly held by much of the church as we say above. It is not wrong because God is not Transcendent but rather because of the misunderstanding of the idea of Transcendence; God IS NOT separate and apart from His Created Universe as this Creation exists WITHIN God and to this end we again have Paul’s words saying: “For in him we live, and move, and have our being” (Acts 17:28). In these three sayings by the Master and His apostle we find that Christ IS in us, Christ IS God, and we ARE in God and this is the reality of God who IS BOTH Transcendent and Immanent in His Creation and it is from this perspective that we can KNOW and can be KNOWN from our tiny perspective in this world.

Compounding our idea here we can say that these things above are from a strictly physical and world view especially as seen in the nature of man. When we say the Christ Within, we refer to the “Christ in you” as spoken by Paul above; it is this Christ Within through which we can and do KNOW God. This part of us, this True man, this Soul, also says “in him we live, and move, and have our being” and says so with a much more intimate relationship than that of the things on this Earth. From the spiritual perspective of the man in form, the Christ Within is seen as the True man and IS the Soul; this IS his connection between the form Life and God. In this realization there is no longer a need to look at Life and at God through form for here we are ONE with God existing within His Presence. The difficulty in understanding this is the difficulty of perspective and so long as we look at these things from the perspective believing that we are the man in form we will have a difficult time in rightly discerning these Truths and this is also one of the difficulties in reading and understanding scripture as there is a continuous shifting of perspective from the Soul looking through form and the Soul as the Life in the form  to the man grounded in the form. It is ever the intent of scripture to speak to the man in form, the consciousness grounded in the world, and this  even for aspirants and disciples who cannot yet say with the Master that “I have overcome the world” (John 16:33). In this speaking to the man in form, it is the purpose of scripture to show the man the reality of Life and this IS the nature of the teachings of the Master. We should note the differences in His approach when He is speaking to His disciples alone versus when He is speaking to a general audience which may include His disciples and, it is from our understanding of these different perspectives that we can KNOW more Truth in His words. In saying that it is the intent of scripture to speak to the man in form we should understand that it is in this reality that we read it, that we are attracted to it; how each man perceives the sayings is a personal thing and ever a changing one and depending upon where one’s consciousness may be functioning at any given time, there can result in a different discerning.

Speaking and perceiving however as men in this world, we should see God as both, as Transcendent and as Immanent and in this idea we must remember that we are talking about God whom we define as the one Boundless Immutable Principle; one Absolute Reality which, antecedes all manifested conditioned Being. It is beyond the range and reach of any human thought or expression**. In His Transcendence we should not see God as without His Creation and looking on but rather we should see Him as does Paul in our saying above, that it is “in him we live, and move, and have our being“. In this we understand that God is ALL Encompassing and that ALL things great and small, seen and unseen, EXIST WITHIN Our God which is ALL and is that Boundless Immutable Principle, that one Absolute Reality. 

Seeing then that the reality of Life of man IS in God and that from the perspective of the man in form God is within the man as well, we can not see the literal understanding of this part of Genesis that we are discussing and, if we can not see this part literally, then we should understand that none of it is Truly literal. If however we insist on the literal interpretation of Genesis, then how can we explain the ORDERED structure of God’s Universe and the Transcendent and the Immanent scriptures that we read above. We should return here to a point that we did not complete in the last post and that is another reality, the free will of man in this world and the apparently haphazard ways in which the world of things works in accidents and catastrophes, in violent actions by one against another either corporately or individually, in famine and disease to name some. We must insert here what we said in the last post was the working out in ALL Life on ALL levels of existence, the divine and natural law of cause and effect. It is in the right understanding of this that the appearance of arbitrariness and haphazard activity are reconciled into the ORDER of ALL things. In saying this we are saying that it matters not the cause of the accident or the catastrophe, it matters only that there is a cause and because there is, there are also its effects. The effects can be far reaching and can touch people who had no relationship to the cause but who are swept up in the effect so that none are spared if they are in the path. Here we may find thoughts of luck or Providence or whatever else but these are just concepts designed to explain why a particular person is not swept up; the reality is that they are simply not in the path. There can be exception to this concept but this exception is likely based upon an action, or subsequent cause, that is taken by one’s own Soul to wake one up in the nick of time or to cause one to move at the right moment avoiding impending danger; to this we must add the power of mind over matter and the keen tricks that can be done to one’s benefit even in the absence of using such power consciously. These are however subsequent causes creating their own effects and we should understand here that the higher Life of the mind and the Soul take precedence over the physical nature; in these ideas we can form thoughts of destiny or luck or providence but these ideas on their own require one to look away from the reality “that God is no respecter of persons” (Acts 10:34).

Returning to our sayings above from the Genesis story of the Creation of man, we have seen Eve succumb to the reasoning of the serpent and eat the forbidden fruit with Adam. We have seen that the serpent is not a real thing but a metaphor for the deception of the world, the illusion and glamour, the vanity of Paul’s teaching. We have seen also that the fruit is the lure of the world, it represents the instincts and the appetites of the form Life and the emotional response of the personality; it is the desire and the lust and we can see all this in the words expressed by Eve saying that the “tree was good for food, and that it was pleasant to the eyes, and a tree to be desired to make one wise“. Here is the beginning of selfishness, the taking care of the self in form even in the understanding and recollection that to exercise these desires was contrary to the word of God. And then we have the eating of the fruit which represents the sin, the evil, of attending to the things of the world. And not Eve only, but Adam as well takes of the fruit and while we do not KNOW of his deception or of his strong desires, we do KNOW that he too partakes in the sin. In our text there is an effect here that comes from the cause of eating of the forbidden fruit and it is clearly stated if we could but try to understand it; “the eyes of them both were opened” is the way that this is presented and here we have the sensation of duality in mankind. We have said in previous posts that this duality does not effect a man until he is on the Path and is beginning to focus upon God and this is True; here however we have the opposite in that the duality effects Adam and Eve as men of God who are beginning to focus on the things of the world. From our perspective this can no longer happen because of the way that we now come into incarnation through birth; but here, in our first men in form, we have the Souls taking direct possession of the human animal form and so we have a devolving into the ways of the world.

In  broad sense we can say here that the cause of Adam and Eve succumbing to the deception of desire for the things of this world is found in the reality of Paul’s words that “the creature was made subject to vanity” (Romans 8:20), and the effect is their acting in a worldly way and this is True then for ALL men. There is nothing odd or worse about their sin when we realize that sin IS the succumbing to the ways of the world for ALL and it is here that we find the importance of duality in the Life of the Soul in form. Until the consciousness realizes the Soul as the reality of Life succumbing to the ways of the world may not be recognized as a sin. Of course this is a progressive problem and it comes with many realizations but it is the realization of one’s divine nature that triggers this final sense of duality. This is not the understanding of the religious man as regardless how much he may believe and be devoted to his religion, unless he recognizes that the ways of the world include all that he may find comfort in, he has not Truly found the sense of duality. The Apostle James gives us much food for thought in this area and he does so in the progressive way of realization as he tells us “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 1:6-8). The reality here is in focus; that the focus of the man must be unwavering and that absent this the man is double minded. We should understand here that his message is to the aspirant and the disciple, men who are supposedly focused on the things of God, and men who will see this being double minded as duality. To the casual reader however there is not his meaning and many link this to their concept of faith and of asking in faith; that they will not receive what they seek unless that steadfastly believe that they will and in this, aside from the concept of mind over matter, there is no profit to the man.

James clarifies this in several of his sayings but no more so than in telling us “know ye not that the friendship of the world is enmity with God? whosoever therefore will be a friend of the world is the enemy of God” (James 4:4). Here we should see the totality of the message; that if one cares for the things of the world, he is choosing mammon over God which is the general way of the man focused upon the things of the world as the effect of his being  “made subject to vanity“. The next part of this Third Chapter is difficult to interpret as it is purported to be the punishment of ALL men based upon Adam’s sin but is in reality the setting forth of some of the ideas pertinent in the world of things, ideas which Adam and Eve had not had to consider before they took to themselves bodies of flesh. Remembering that these things are written for the understanding of men from thousands of years ago and remembering that we should not take any part of this in literal fashion if we Truly believe in an ORDERED Creation bound by the law of cause and effect and the Transcendent and Immanent Nature of God. We will post the words here for your consideration and continue with our discussion in the next post.

“And they heard the voice of the LORD God walking in the garden in the cool of the day: and Adam and his wife hid themselves from the presence of the LORD God amongst the trees of the garden. And the LORD God called unto Adam, and said unto him, Where art thou? And he said, I heard thy voice in the garden, and I was afraid, because I was naked; and I hid myself. And he said, Who told thee that thou wast naked? Hast thou eaten of the tree, whereof I commanded thee that thou shouldest not eat? And the man said, The woman whom thou gavest to be with me, she gave me of the tree, and I did eat. And the LORD God said unto the woman, What is this that thou hast done? And the woman said, The serpent beguiled me, and I did eat. And the LORD God said unto the serpent, Because thou hast done this, thou art cursed above all cattle, and above every beast of the field; upon thy belly shalt thou go, and dust shalt thou eat all the days of thy life: And I will put enmity between thee and the woman, and between thy seed and her seed; it shall bruise thy head, and thou shalt bruise his heel. Unto the woman he said, I will greatly multiply thy sorrow and thy conception; in sorrow thou shalt bring forth children; and thy desire shall be to thy husband, and he shall rule over thee. And unto Adam he said, Because thou hast hearkened unto the voice of thy wife, and hast eaten of the tree, of which I commanded thee, saying, Thou shalt not eat of it: cursed is the ground for thy sake; in sorrow shalt thou eat of it all the days of thy life; Thorns also and thistles shall it bring forth to thee; and thou shalt eat the herb of the field; In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread, till thou return unto the ground; for out of it wast thou taken: for dust thou art, and unto dust shalt thou return” (Genesis 3:1-19).

We will try to address our final point in the next post as well:

• “This is the book of the generations of Adam. In the day that God created man, in the likeness of God made he him; Male and female created he them; and blessed them, and called their name Adam, in the day when they were created.  And Adam lived an hundred and thirty years, and begat a son in his own likeness, after his image; and called his name Seth: And the days of Adam after he had begotten Seth were eight hundred years: and he begat sons and daughters: And all the days that Adam lived were nine hundred and thirty years: and he died” (Genesis 5:1-5) .

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:

Our Quote of the Day for today is germane to our message above regarding God and shows from a different perspective the reality that God IS and it is in this reality that we can see the ORDER of it ALL.

To the God Who is in the Fire and Who is in the waters;

To the God Who has suffused Himself through all the world;

To the God Who is in summer plants and in the lords of the forest;

To that God be adoration, adoration.

Sh’vet Upanishad, II.17.

Repeating our comments from another time when we used these words:

Today’s Quote of the Day is from ancient Hindu scripture. This book, the Sh’vet Upanishad, is from a group of books on the Philosophy of God that date back to more that five hundred years before Christ. Like many religious texts, and religions for that matter, there is a great variety of interpretations; Hindu scriptures are no exception. Our selection of this as our Quote of the Day is because it fits well into our discussions in this series called ON GOD and although we take most of our information from the Judaeo-Christian tradition, we do believe that all sources of spiritual revelation should be considered. The common Christian understanding regarding God as being outside of His creation is rather opposite of this saying and is opposite much of the reality of Christian Scripture as well. In this saying God is immanent in His creation as He is immanent in man, as the Spirit within the form. In today’s text is some commentary on worship and the lack of understanding that we have regarding the intention of the Christ in our saying from the Gospel of John. Here the word adoration is used; ponder on this.

• ** A Treatise on Cosmic Fire by Alice A Bailey © 1951 by Lucis Trust