IN THE WORDS OF JESUS–Part 726

Love is the Fulfilling of the Law

ON LOVE; PART CCCXV

ΑΩ•ΑΩ•ΑΩ•ΑΩ•ΑΩ•ΑΩ•ΑΩ•ΑΩ•ΑΩ•ΑΩ•ΑΩ•ΑΩ•ΑΩ•ΑΩ•ΑΩ•ΑΩ•ΑΩ•ΑΩ•ΑΩ•ΑΩ•ΑΩ•ΑΩ•ΑΩ•ΑΩ•ΑΩ•ΑΩ•ΑΩ•ΑΩ•ΑΩ•ΑΩ•ΑΩ•ΑΩ•ΑΩ•ΑΩ•Α

GoodWill IS Love in Action

ΑΩ•ΑΩ•ΑΩ•ΑΩ•ΑΩ•ΑΩ•ΑΩ•ΑΩ•ΑΩ•ΑΩ•ΑΩ•ΑΩ•ΑΩ•ΑΩ•ΑΩ•ΑΩ•ΑΩ•ΑΩ•ΑΩ•ΑΩ•ΑΩ•ΑΩ•ΑΩ•ΑΩ•ΑΩ•ΑΩ•ΑΩ•ΑΩ•ΑΩ•ΑΩ•ΑΩ•ΑΩ•ΑΩ•ΑΩ•Α

The Gayatri

O Thou Who givest sustenance to the universe,
From Whom all things proceed,
To Whom all things return,
Unveil to us the face of the true Spiritual Sun
Hidden by a disc of golden Light
That we may know the Truth And do our whole duty
As we journey to Thy sacred feet.

The Gayatri is an ancient prayer that IS in the mold of the type of prayer that the Master teaches us in the Lord’s Prayer as it IS called. Both are affirmations of the Awesome Nature of the Godhead and contain naught of a selfish nature. In the Gayatri the Nature of God IS seen as Universal across ALL creation and this is likely because the people who wrote this or the civilization to whom this prayer IS given had this greater vision of creation than did the early Jews whose civilization we can only rightly have any understanding of from Abraham on. It IS into the later parts of this culture that Jesus us born and our point here is that we CAN NOT  measure civilization ONLY by the writings of the Jewish Bible which IS NOT intended to be a historical document, but which unfortunately IS seen in this way by many yet today. And, while our thoughts today are not concerned with historical accuracy, we should ask the question regarding the True existence of even more ancient civilizations as Atlantis and Lemuria and understand that it IS very unlikely that these ideas have been merely made up by Plato who dated the destruction of this continent at nearly 12,000 years ago. Something existed before the Great Flood and we KNOW little of this from the bible save the genealogy of Noah and it is likely, according to he genealogy timeline, that we ARE NOT speaking about the same catastrophe as that which consumed Atlantis; and, we DO NOT KNOW nor understand the scope of either. In the East, there are other yet civilizations that are not counted in the bible and which likely come after the Atlantean and before the biblical timeline and which count their history in their own scripture far beyond the calculated history of the Jews and in some of these civilizations there are writings that ARE much more universal than just the Earth and it IS from these that we get the Gayatri. The bottom line here for us IS that we DO NOT KNOW with any accuracy how to KNOW or understand these things and that this history IS but ancillary information that does not contribute to our spiritual success save by the prayers and the writings of the Sages in every era.

The Gayatri Mantra or prayer that we have above is, as we have previously noted, one of the many translations of this prayer and we use this version as it comes to us in the writings of our Tibetan brother. The message here should be seen as the same as the message that, as aspirants, we ALL have regarding God and our own spiritual selves. First there IS the affirmation of the Great and Awesome nature of God as the  One Boundless, Immutable, Eternal and Infinite Presence in whom, as Paul tells us, “we live, and move, and have our being” (Acts 17:28). Here we affirm that He IS the Source of ALL and IS ALL and the idea that we proceed and return to God should be seen in the reality that we ARE part and parcel of Him and while we share in that Boundless, Immutable, Eternal and Infinite Nature, we ARE but a part of the Whole in manifestation. In the unveiling of the True Spiritual Sun we should see the unveiling of the Truth of our own spiritual nature which IS hidden from us by this veil of Life in form much as the True Spiritual Sun is hidden by that Sun that we can see. and we should KNOW that behind ALL manifest existence there IS a spiritual existence that is hidden from view until that time that we are awakened. In the ending lines we see the purpose which IS that we can KNOW the Truth as men in form as the Truth IS revealed from the True spiritual nature, and, in KNOWING the Truth, in overcoming the illusion and the glamour in which we live, we can do our duty, our whole duty, as we journey to the Kingdom of God. While this is apparently different than what we have been saying of this prayer as it appeared as our Quote of the Day, there is in reality no difference except perhaps in perspective. We should note here that in this invocation there IS never the individual self mentioned, ALL invocation is for the WE, the US, as the totality of men in the world and it IS in this regard that we compare this to the Lord’s Prayer which says:

         THE LORD’S PRAYER

Our Father, which art in heaven,
hallowed be thy name;
thy kingdom come;
thy will be done,
in earth as it is in heaven.
Give us this day our daily bread.
And forgive us our trespasses,
as we forgive them that trespass against us.
And lead us not into temptation;
but deliver us from evil.
For thine is the kingdom, the power, and the glory, for ever and ever. *

Here again we have a prayer which starts with the Majesty and the Sovereignty of God and here should try to see that the idea of “art in heaven” is relative to the saying that the Master gives us later as He tells us that “the kingdom of God is within you“. Here we should understand that this IS NOT  a place where God IS but rather a State of Being which is behind and IS motivating and giving Life to ALL that we see. This IS much like the idea in the Gayatri where the True Spiritual Sun is hidden by the Sun which we see except here in this culture it IS phrased as the Kingdom which we KNOW by the Master’s words IS behind or within the outer creation that we can see. And the prayer here then IS relatively the same as we ask that the Kingdom be exposed and not that it come physically which difference IS answered by the Master in the idea above that the Kingdom is within; the whole of the saying IS: “And when he was demanded of the Pharisees, when the kingdom of God should come, he answered them and said, The kingdom of God cometh not with observation: Neither shall they say, Lo here! or, lo there! for, behold, the kingdom of God is within you” (Luke 17:20-21). Among the various meanings listed in the lexicon for this Greek word erchomai which is rendered as come we find: to appear, make one’s appearance, come before the public; metaph. to come into being, arise, come forth, show itself, find place or influence; be established, become known, to come (fall) into or unto ⁴, and between this and the Master’s words we should have quite a different impression thanthe common understanding of the English word. When we see the words “thy will be done, in earth as it is in heaven” we should see the idea of the Will of God as it is spoken of by the Master in these words that we visit so often: “Not every one that saith unto me, Lord, Lord, shall enter into the kingdom of heaven; but he that doeth the will of my Father which is in heaven” (Matthew 7:21) and this is simply that we keep His words which we should see in our prayer is accomplished by the Soul, the Christ Within and which we pray can be accomplished in ALL the Earth. We should note here that we have yet to come across any idea that this is individual as this prayer is oriented toward the WHOLE of which we are individually a part. This verse ends the similarity between The Gayatri and the Lord’s Prayer as the rest of the latter is related more to the current culture of the Jews, and us as we inherit His words, and are in regard to totality of the Master’s teachings in the gospels.

Today we can look at the remainder of this prayer much as we look at the latter half of the Gayatri, as the Inner unveiled reality of the Soul giving to the Life in form, both individually and corporately, the Love and the Power that He possesses which IS the Will of God as the Will of the Soul being expressed through Life in this world. We can see from this perspective that the idea of “Give us this day our daily bread” in not in regard to bread as is commonly understood but rather more to that Bread of Life, the sustenance given by the Godhead to His creation, and, as the Master tells us that “I am that bread of life” (John 6:48), we should see as well the Christ Within, the Soul, which is the sustenance of the Life in form. The rest here can be seen as the relationship between these two, the man in form or the creation and the Soul of the man and the Soul which we can call God. Vincent links for us the Greek word that is rendered as forgive and the word we looked at a few posts back that is rendered remission; calling them kindred verbs ⁴ and treating them together and here we should do the same which would say that we ask for ‘release from the bondage of sin and our imprisonment in the world of illusion and glamour’ which IS, according to the Apostle Paul, to be “delivered from the bondage of corruption into the glorious liberty of the children of God” (Romans 8:21). This Greek word aphesis which is rendered as remission should be seen to mean: a dismissal, release ⁶ according to Vine’s which is the only place we found this word spoken of without attaching the doctrine of forgiveness which Mr. Vine does go on to later explain. As we have recently discussed, this remission IS tied to Repentance and in our prayer this Repentance is tied to His Will being done and, while we must connect these dots, we should see the overall consistency of the teaching. So then, using this idea of remission as release we can see it as well in the next verse which IS that by Love, we release ALL who may have offended us as well and this both individually and corporately; the Master emphasizes this idea of release of ALL and tells us that this is intimately tied to our own release as He tells us “forgive, and ye shall be forgiven” (Luke 6:37). There is yet another version of this Greek word of which Mr. Vine tells us: Note: Apoluo, “to let loose from” (apo, “from,” luo, “to loose”), “to release,” is translated “forgive,” “ye shall be forgiven,” Luke 6:37, AV (RV, “release,” “ye shall be released”), the reference being to setting a person free as a quasi-judicial act. The verb does not mean “to forgive.” See DISMISS, RELEASE ⁶. At the least, we should be able to see the confusion that this series of Greek words creates especially when compounded by the doctrinal need to render most all versions as some manner of forgiveness.

The next verse here is of course the most perplexing as we KNOW that we are tempted by the ways of the world and not by God nor by the God Within, the Soul. Perhaps the best that we can do here is to relate this to the Master’s words to His disciples saying: “Watch ye and pray , lest ye enter into temptation. The spirit truly is ready, but the flesh is weak” (Mark 14:38) and that which we discussed a few essays back regarding the temptation of Jesus in the wilderness. In both of these the temptation IS from the world and the ways and the things of the world which draw us in and against which we must ever stand. This temptation is most always to be seen as based in the illusion and the glamour and as a part of that force that begs our participation as men in the world and in this respect we can try to see how temptation could be of God as we ARE, according to the Apostle Paul’s words, “made subject to vanity, not willingly, but by reason of him who hath subjected the same in hope” (Romans 8:20) and this we see as subjected to this illusion and this glamour by the Plan of God. In this understanding we can see that we are praying that we are able to withstand this fact of Life and can be delivered from the evil which we KNOW as the ways of the world; here again we go again to Paul who tells us as above that we will be “delivered from the bondage of corruption into the glorious liberty of the children of God“. We should also be able to see here our own part in this ALL from the earlier verses where we ask that the Will of God be done in the Earth and this is answered for the man in the world ONLY by keeping His words. The prayer is not for the self per se but rather for ALL humankind in the world, just as ALL are subjected to this vanity, this illusion and glamour and just as ALL are expected to be delivered from this same which the apostle calls for us corruption, so do we pray that ALL will be delivered and this in Jesus words for us to say: “but deliver us from evil” which is deliver us from the ways of this world.

So then we ask for release from the bondage of sin, the ways of the world and we acknowledge that we release others who may have in some way offended us; we ask as well that we be free from the effects of the temptations of the world into which we are subjected by the very Plan of God and to be delivered by the same Plan from these effects of the world; and we KNOW that this can and will happen individually and corporately by the action of each as His Will is done, which is to say that we keep His word. While this is a difficult thing to state using the available words and translations of grammar, can we see the sense that this ALL makes as we take this out of the realm of doctrine and of the Supreme Lord of ALL interceding for the man who may utter these words? The better reality here is that there IS a Plan of God and we are encompassed by that Plan and, according to the testimony of Paul “not willingly“. Our prayer then is that we can free ourselves from these effects by the action of keeping His word and accommodating that same release that we require to ALL men in an act of Love which IS, a part of that Will of God. In this regard the Lord’s Prayer is as much a mantra as is the Gayatri and both, by their sincere recital, have that effect of moving our focus from the things of the world to the things of God and putting our individual forces that come in that Love and Power of the Soul to work on the ‘world mind’ and the ‘world mood’ as our own thoughts and aspirations can do. We should note that prayer and the recital of mantrams ARE very powerful forces and this we find in the words of the Apostle James who tells us that “The effectual fervent prayer of a righteous man availeth much” (James 5:16) and we should note here two things that are missed by doctrine, first that this prayer that the apostle tells us of is fervent or intense and passionate, this IS ardent prayer and not just the saying of the words, and second, that this is the action of a righteous man and in our varying degree of understanding this word righteous, we should a least see the striving that the Master tells us of and which comes to us in that act of True Repentance.

We should note that in our Quote of the Day for today that like our words above regarding the Apostle James’ view of prayer, that there is a similar tone in these words of the Evening Reflection. James tells us that prayer should be fervent and offered by a “righteous man” and here in our subject mantra we find the idea of True servers which, of course, implies a certain degree of righteousness of its own. Our point here is that in the Gayatri and the Lord’s Prayer above we have mass invocative appeal to God and no request for any thing for the separated self while in the context of James saying we have the idea of healing and  reference to the Prophet Elias Prayer for rain and in this we should see that the idea of praying for the self is not limited to things or events for the individual only. In today’s Quote of the Day below we have as well a personal matter as one IS asking for the intercession of our own Soul and whatsoever Power that may be available to us to help us to realize the noted aspects of discipleship.

We did not intend to get so far into this idea of prayer today and we will try to continue with our two versions of Great Commission that we have noted over the last few essays.

We will continue with our thoughts in the next post.

Aspect of God	Potency	Aspect of Man	In Relation to the Great Invocation	In relation to the Christ
GOD, The Father	Will or Power	Spirit or Life	Center where the Will of God IS KNOWN	Life
Son, The Christ	Love and Wisdom	Soul or Christ Within	Heart of God	Truth
Holy Spirit	Light or Activity	Life Within	Mind of God	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.

May the Power of the One True God flow through His group of all true servers;

May the Love of the Christ characterize the lives of all who seek to aid in His work;

May I fulfill my part in the one work through self-forgetfulness, harmlessness and right speech

(Evening Reflection)

Today’s Quote of the Day is a repeat of a previous quote and is also featured in our Prayers and Meditations section with some additional comments regarding it. It appears today again because is sets in order our understanding that it is the Power of God that flows through those that serve Him and in this Power is the Love that can heal. When the Love of the Christ can become the character of one’s Life then this Power can be made available in a predictable way and the precepts of the last line will become our mode of conduct.

This is a prayer for the Power of God to be made available to all who seek to serve Him; in this Power is the Wisdom, the Understanding and the personal strength that we need to properly serve the Lord. It is a prayer also that asks that all who serve the Lord be imbued with His Love, Christ’ Love, which defines the truth of our service to Him. And it is a prayer that, on a personal level, reminds us of our responsibilities in service which are summarized in the three words: self-forgetfulness, harmlessness and right speech.

Let the peace of God rule in your hearts!

• ² New Testament Greek Lexicon on BibleStudyTools.com
• ⁴ Word Studies in the New Testament; Marvin R Vincent D.D. 2nd edition, 1888
• ⁶ Vine’s Complete Expository Dictionary of Old and New Testament Words, 1996
• * From the Gospels of Matthew and Luke; this version is from the Book of Common Prayer of 1662