Love is the Fulfilling of the Law
ON LOVE; PART CXXVII
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GoodWill IS Love in Action
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In the last post we continued with our thoughts regarding the Master’s teachings and instructions which represent what it is that He wanted us, His brothers in form, to do in the world over the many generations since He left our physical presence. We noted that it is the things that He does not ask for that we do and much of this is codified in doctrine and many are the source of interdenominational dispute. Through the rituals of baptism and the sacraments of the churches, through the teaching of devotions and penance, of praise and worship and the other things that men do, we have constructed a religious approach to God that does not include keeping His words except perhaps as regards some of the Ten Commandments. We claim closeness to the Lord and we call Him Lord and, as He asks the people with Him two thousand years ago, He asks us as well: “And why call ye me, Lord, Lord, and do not the things which I say?” (Luke 6:46); and we of course are hard pressed for an answer.
We should take some comfort as aspirants who are Truly striving in the fact that this is all likely the way that Life is intended to proceed in the face of the vanity, the illusion and the glamour of Life in form. The Master tells us of the difficulty saying “Strive to enter in at the strait gate: for many, I say unto you, will seek to enter in, and shall not be able” (Luke 13:24) and the Apostle Paul tells us the reason in this, our oft used verse from Romans: “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“. This brings us back then to our theme from Genesis and the proper understanding of the trees as in our point below:
- 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“.
From the text that we were discussing we read that “And the LORD God took the man, and put him into the garden of Eden to dress it and to keep it. And the LORD God commanded the man, saying, Of every tree of the garden thou mayest freely eat: But of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, thou shalt not eat of it: for in the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die” (Genesis 2:15-17). According to our understanding this is much clearer that what we can learn from doctrine especially when we look at this in the Light of the revelation given by the words of Paul above. We have here the first man Adam, or what he represents in the world, and this is the Pure and unblemished Soul who has taken to himself the human animal body and has now to deal with the pressure of the instincts and the appetites of that body compounded by the personality that this union has created. Now animal instincts are governed by need and not want but the personality changes this dynamic because of the self consciousness which leads inevitably to man’s emotional and mental response to the world; it is through this that the self conscious man wants what he does not need and herein lies the beginning of the problems of humanity. Here the warning goes out to man to eschew the things of want, the things of the world which are represented to us by the tree of the KNOWLEDGE of good and evil or the contrast between the Pure and unblemished Life that is the Soul and the new found experience of Life in form in the world of things. The caution is that the man should NOT partake of the experiences of the world as there is no turning back once the consciousness in form has tasted the pleasures of Life in form. We should remember here that it is at the combining of the Soul and the animal body that produces the personality through which the Soul’s consciousness will function and that the Soul begins to slowly lose control of that consciousness as it devolves ever more into its Life in the world.
Why the story then? Perhaps for the understanding of what has happened by the man in those days in which this is written or perhaps to show that the devolving into the world was a conscious choice by the Souls in form as the only way to redeem the form Life is in its completion; or, perhaps some combination of these and other reasons. We should KNOW that these writings are such that they can be understood on many levels as is most ALL scripture and that we can not KNOW the hows and the whys except by what we can discern from what we read. We should remember here that the experience for the human form itself, being introduced to self consciousness, emotion and thought, is a new experience as well further complicating the whole. Our understanding here is that what is happening to the evolved and still evolving form that has grown to that state where it could support the Life of a Soul is a natural progression and, we should understand that it is at this point that the Souls of men who were heretofore guiding Life on Earth from without, could now guide Life from within. Our perspective here is that this IS the Plan and always was the Plan and we should be able to discern some inkling of this from the saying in Chapter Three. We will put off our discussion of the encounter with the forbidden fruit and the serpent and what this ALL really means till a future post and we should try to see that doctrine has painted this as for the understanding of the early man as the story his origin in those days. There is however great depth in these words and ideas starting with the Lord’s saying: “And the LORD God said, Behold, the man is become as one of us, to know good and evil: and now, lest he put forth his hand, and take also of the tree of life, and eat, and live for ever” (Genesis 3:22).
Remembering our essays on these things over the last few weeks, we should see again our premise that this part of the story, before “men began to multiply on the face of the earth” (Genesis 6:1), is a time when there is the Purity of the Soul dwelling in the body of the human animal and beginning to suffer from the instincts and the appetites and the pangs of personality. It is this that causes them to consider and then to eat of the forbidden fruit; up to this point they KNOW only the Good as it issues forth from the Soul, it is here in form that they begin to experience the pleasures of Life in the world as they take effect on the body and the personality nature of the man. To this God says “Behold, the man is become as one of us, to know good and evil” and this saying on its own can offer some level of understanding to us as readers today. It is here that doctrine Truly fails to see any Light of reality as we see in this abridgment of John Gills comments:
- behold, the man is become as one of us, to know good and evil; which is generally understood as an irony or sarcasm at man’s deception by Satan, who promised man, and he expected to be as gods, knowing good and evil; behold the man, see how much like a god he looks, with his coat of skin upon his back, filled with shame and confusion for his folly, and dejected under a sense of what he had lost, and in a view of what he was sentenced to…..and giving credit to the devil in it: though I rather think they are seriously spoken, since this was after man was brought to a sense of the evil he committed, and to repentance for it, …….”behold, the man was as one of us” {o}; as one of the Persons in the Deity, as the Son of God, after whose image, and in whose likeness, he was made; both as to his body, that being formed according to the idea of the body of Christ in the divine mind, and which was not begotten,…...8.
- The Commentary Critical and Explanatory of the Bible tells us this about these words: And God said, Behold, the man is become as one of us–not spoken in irony as is generally supposed, but in deep compassion. The words should be rendered, “Behold, what has become [by sin] of the man who was as one of us”! Formed, at first, in our image to know good and evil–how sad his condition now 8..
Others like Matthew Henry and Alexander Maclaren bypass this verse in their commentary and what we see above is generally how doctrine depicts this verse as a part of the more general fall of man at the hands of the serpent who is understood as Satan and the devil. Doctrine also depicts the idea of God speaking as US as a reference to the Trinity although no teaching along these lines would be presented for thousands of years. Contrary to this view we should be able to see some of the reality of this in the Master’s words and our understanding that while there is ONE God, that God IS ALL things and ALL beings and in this we can easily find an instance of US. Our premise above and in past posts is that the Souls that are part and parcel of the ONE God are so positioned by the Plan of God that they are the guardians of the Earth and ALL that is in the Earth from its origin; it is also these Souls that take to themselves the forms of the Earth when they have sufficiently evolved and it is these Souls as well that are then born into these forms in the continuum of Life in form. As we have said we can not KNOW the hows and the whys of these things and while what we say may seem fanciful, it is much more purposeful that the scenarios put forth in the doctrines of the churches. The Apostle John give us our same sentiment in a looking forward perspective saying “Beloved, now are we the sons of God, and it doth not yet appear what we shall be; but we know that, when he shall appear, we shall be like him; for we shall see him as he is” (1 John 3:2) which tells us that even after we have accomplished our goals and objectives in the Earth that there is yet more and we do not KNOW what that may be but, to be sure, we will be like Him, like the Christ. And we KNOW that the goal and the objective is discipleship and the Kingdom of God.
So then speaking of the idea that “the man is become as one of us“, we can likely find a number of ways to understand this and ALL are perspective. Our reality is that the Souls, the Pure and unblemished True men, are come to Earth for the purpose of the redemption of matter and that this IS done according to the Plan as we can understand it in the words of Paul above. Living through form is an unknown for these Souls as this is their first subjection to the vanity which is spawned by Life in the world and in the infinite and eternal existence of God it is foolish to think that we are the first in God’s Great Universe to experience this. Looking from the perspective of the Hindu understanding of God and man we can see that God IS eternal and infinite and we, as part and parcel of God, share that eternal and infinite nature. Looking then also at the hierarchy of lives as we see them in the world, we can only but imagine what must exist beyond. While we can only see up to our own self conscious understanding of man, we should KNOW that there is the Soul consciousness of the disciple and the God consciousness of those more advanced in this hierarchy and we KNOW not where this would end. These ideas are of course only from our viewpoint as men and our point here is the this idea of US IS those God Conscious Lives, and those even beyond this state if we can so imagine, who qualify by the very description of God Consciousness to be included in the US that speaks as God. This is not unlike the idea that we, as Souls expressing fully through form, are Christ Conscious and in this state would speak as ONE with the Christ Aspect that IS God as well.
The end point of this premise then is that in this saying, “Behold, the man is become as one of us, to know good and evil” as based upon the ‘eating‘ of the forbidden fruit, we can take away the understanding that God, as we have explained above or in any way one wishes to view it, has this experience of KNOWING “good and evil“. In these words we should be able to see that there is nothing unexpected here and no fall of man as it is painted by doctrine. The picture painted for us in the Third Chapter of Genesis, the story of Eve and the serpent and the purported wrath of God are consequences of Life in form, the realities of such Life if you will, stated in a way that is understandable by the men in the early days of this Earth existence.
This is the tree of the KNOWLEDGE of good and evil and in this we should see that the Souls that are first partaking in the pleasures of the world that are brought to him by his taking on of form are experiencing the ways of the man in form and the ways of the world and it is these worldly ways that are called evil here and elsewhere in scripture. And the good, as Souls we already KNOW good, but in form we get to see the duality, the interaction of both poles. As Life proceeds mankind falls deeper into the ways of Life in the world and most all fall so deeply into this that they can no longer see the way out; incarnation after incarnation is spent in the ways of the world and we should KNOW that it is only a matter of time before the constant prompting of the Soul is eventually heard by the man in form and only a matter of time again before it is answered. It is here in the answering that the man will begin to again see the duality and be in a position to choose to stay in this temporal but exceedingly strong carnal Life or to set himself upon the Path of return to the Father’s House.
We will continue with our thoughts in the next post and continue on to our final point.
- “This is the book of the generations of Adam. In the day that God created man, in the likeness of God made he him; 2 Male and female created he them; and blessed them, and called their name Adam, in the day when they were created . 3 And Adam lived an hundred and thirty years, and begat a son in his own likeness, after his image; and called his name Seth: 4 And the days of Adam after he had begotten Seth were eight hundred years: and he begat sons and daughters: 5 And all the days that Adam lived were nine hundred and thirty years: and he died” (Genesis 5:1-5) .
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Aspect of God |
Potency |
Expressed as Fire |
Aspect of Man |
In Relation to the Christ |
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GOD, The Father |
Will or Power |
Electric Fire |
Spirit or Life |
Life |
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Son, The Christ |
Love and Wisdom |
Solar Fire |
Soul or Christ Within |
Truth |
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Holy Spirit |
Light or Activity |
Fire by Friction |
Life Within the Form |
Way |
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:
All scripture is given by inspiration of God, and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness: That the man of God may be perfect, throughly furnished unto all good works.
2 Timothy 3:16-17
Expanding on our Quote of the Day we reprint what we said some time back regarding these verses. The reference is to In the Words of Jesus part 321:
In yesterdays Quote of the Day we discussed the ideas of the infallibility or the inerrancy of scripture and we posted a saying from the Apostle Paul to Timothy which is: “All scripture is given by inspiration of God, and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness: That the man of God may be perfect, throughly furnished unto all good works” (2 Timothy 3:16-17). We noted how that many in the church take this saying as being in support of their understanding of inerrancy and infallibility but there is really nothing in this that should lead one to take this thought. That “All scripture is given by inspiration of God” is a great truth which should be seen as the action of the God Within, the Christ Within as we say, the Soul. It is this Soul factor working through the consciousness of the man in form that is the Holy Spirit. So many in the church do have this right, that it is the Holy Spirit that works through the man to do these Holy things; he is just missing the point of what exactly the Holy Spirit is and how it is that God does work through the man in form. Here again we can take the ideas from our text above and over the last few posts and put them into the same understanding as we should be able to gain here with this verse from Paul. The Master cautions us on what we hear and John cautions us on believing not every pneuma while Paul tells us that scripture is inspiration or pneuma from God. In all of these the subject can be seen as the same; the thoughts that a man entertains in his consciousness. As inspiration they are from above and for the disciples that the Master and John are cautioning they can be from either above or from the personality while the way to tell is clearly told to us by James.
Our last point here is that these words by Paul to Timothy are in regard to the Old Testament that they both grew up with as Jews and had no real bearing upon the New Testament which did not exist. It is also unlikely that as Paul was writing his letters that he ever thought that they would end up as scripture and would be followed and believed even above the words of the Christ. In other words, it is unlikely that Paul knew that he was writing scripture although we should have no doubt that his words are inspired. We should remember also that the words come from inspired thoughts but are written by the personality of the man which interprets and colors them and it is in this context that we are cautioned to take heed. Until the fullness of discipleship we likely can not be free from the ways of the personality and this again is shown to us in the Life of Peter as we note above. All these sayings and all of their meaning is in regard to discipleship for it is only here that the Truth can flow through from the Christ Within to a man’s consciousness in the world.
- 8 Bible commentaries on BibleStudyTools.com
