IN THE WORDS OF JESUS–Part 514

Love is the Fulfilling of the Law

ON LOVE; PART CIV

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•Α

“And God said , Let us make man in our image, after our likeness: and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth. So God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them. And God blessed them, and God said unto them, Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth, and subdue it: and have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over every living thing that moveth upon the earth. And God said, Behold, I have given you every herb bearing seed, which is upon the face of all the earth, and every tree, in the which is the fruit of a tree yielding seed; to you it shall be for meat. And to every beast of the earth, and to every fowl of the air, and to every thing that creepeth upon the earth, wherein there is life, I have given every green herb for meat: and it was so. And God saw every thing that he had made, and, behold, it was very good. And the evening and the morning were the sixth day. Thus the heavens and the earth were finished, and all the host of them. And on the seventh day God ended his work which he had made; and he rested on the seventh day from all his work which he had made. And God blessed the seventh day, and sanctified it: because that in it he had rested from all his work which God created and made. These are the generations of the heavens and of the earth when they were created, in the day that the LORD God made the earth and the heavens, And every plant of the field before it was in the earth, and every herb of the field before it grew: for the LORD God had not caused it to rain upon the earth, and there was not a man to till the ground. But there went up a mist from the earth, and watered the whole face of the ground. And the LORD God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul. And the LORD God planted a garden eastward in Eden; and there he put the man whom he had formed. And out of the ground made the LORD God to grow every tree that is pleasant to the sight, and good for food; the tree of life also in the midst of the garden, and the tree of knowledge of good and evil. And a river went out of Eden to water the garden; and from thence it was parted, and became into four heads. The name of the first is Pison: that is it which compasseth the whole land of Havilah, where there is gold;  And the gold of that land is good: there is bdellium and the onyx stone. And the name of the second river is Gihon: the same is it that compasseth the whole land of Ethiopia. And the name of the third river is Hiddekel: that is it which goeth toward the east of Assyria. And the fourth river is Euphrates. 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. And the LORD God said, It is not good that the man should be alone; I will make him an help meet for him. And out of the ground the LORD God formed every beast of the field, and every fowl of the air; and brought them unto Adam to see what he would call them: and whatsoever Adam called every living creature, that was the name thereof. And Adam gave names to all cattle, and to the fowl of the air, and to every beast of the field; but for Adam there was not found an help meet for him. And the LORD God caused a deep sleep to fall upon Adam, and he slept: and he took one of his ribs, and closed up the flesh instead thereof; And the rib, which the LORD God had taken from man, made he a woman, and brought her unto the man. And Adam said, This is now bone of my bones, and flesh of my flesh: she shall be called Woman, because she was taken out of Man. Therefore shall a man leave his father and his mother, and shall cleave unto his wife: and they shall be one flesh. And they were both naked, the man and his wife, and were not ashamed” (Genesis 1:26-2:25).

While one may be comfortable in believing the words as they are written in the Book of Genesis, one must at the same time seek greater understanding for if the literal nature of the story is the whole Truth, then God must be a man and God must be man like because “God created man in his own image“. In our premise of a spiritual creation, the manifestation of the Soul of man from the Spirit of man, we can and should be able to see this as working out in a rather simultaneous fashion within the reality that is given us by the Apostle John in the Prologue to his Gospel which we discussed in the last post. We must remember also that the words used and the form of writing were designed and destined first of all for the ancient man of those times as a simple cosmogony that would suit the needs of the man in that region and that day so as to give him some idea of the how and the why. We should realize at the same time that the writer, presumably Moses, was versed enough on the reality and the Truth to hide away the seeds of the Greater Truth in his simple words so that they could be discerned by later generations as they were able. With this in mind, we are charged today with trying to understand the reality in the simple story of creation that no longer suits the needs of the man who wishes to KNOW and for whom the common doctrinal teachings of a literal Genesis can no longer be taken in that great Christian way of faith. This is not to say that there is no use for faith but at the same time we should remember our posted ideas on the matter which is that faith, in its Truest sense, IS KNOWING beyond a doubt and this understanding we get from discerning the words of the Master. We must add here as well that there is the compounding effect of translation and here we have the translation of archaic words which, if they are written by Moses, are written about 3500 years ago, at the very beginnings of recorded written history; modern theory puts the actual written version that we have translated into many other languages at a much later date and this theory leaves us to wonder how it was carried forward for so many years until it was committed to writing.

This ALL is said to try to show the unreality of understanding and believing that literal interpretation which includes the belief by many Christians today, on faith, that the Earth is only seven to ten thousand years old. Our premise is not an authoritative one and is offered as a reasoned alternative based upon our understanding of the teachings of the Christ and His apostles, of the Soul and the Spirit that IS man, and of our vision of right discernment which we count as Wisdom from above. Our premise offers a perspective that can offer the Christian a literal take on the Genesis of man albeit from an new perspective and, at the same time NOT be at odds with the well reasoned conclusions of science which, being of the Higher Mind in essence, are also of God. That man properly interprets the Higher Mind, the Mind of God as the Great Invocation states, is a secondary issue and is subject to the same Powers and forces  as any other revelation; that is the spiritual capacity and focus of the one to whom these Cosmic Ideas are revealed.

Looking at this from the perspective that this is the creation of the Soul as the expression of the Eternal Spirit of man as we discussed in previous posts, and understanding what we had to say yesterday regarding man’s dominion of ALL that is on the Earth as man IS  the spiritual entities that are responsible for the lives of the myriad of Life forms in the vegetable and animal kingdoms, we are next up against the command to “Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth“. There are two things here; first that as Souls there IS NO propagation and this multiplying that we can imagine is of the animal body that we incarnate through only and second, there is the word replenish which we would have to take to mean that there was once Life on Earth but it is diminished or gone. Here we must come again to the ideas of language and try to understand that the words offered are intended to give as explanation to the man in that day who had no deeper spiritual foundation nor understanding than the words themselves and our translations of them are consistent with this aim. If the idea of the spiritual creation of the Soul is accepted then we must note that this reality is hidden in the words and not clearly stated and that would leave us with this ancillary saying of “Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth” as one that is hiding the Truth as well and, perhaps the key to our idea of the role of the Soul that is the True man can be best understood from the perspective that it was man’s responsibility to help to nurture the growth of the animal kingdom until it was able to support the incarnation of the Souls, the True man. While this may seem far fetched, it is no more so than the common understanding and timeline and it does account for something to be done, to be accomplished, by the manifest Souls of men during the eons of the evolution of the forms of the Earth.  We should try to understand here that God IS and has been eternally and that as part and parcel of God, man shares in this; that is the True man, the Spirit manifest as the Soul. This brings to mind an ancient saying from the Bhagavad~Gita that we have shared before:

Never was there a time when I did not exist, nor you, nor all these kings; nor in the future shall any of us cease to be. As the embodied soul continuously passes, in this body, from boyhood to youth to old age, the soul similarly passes into another body at death. A sober person is not bewildered by such a change. (Bhagavad Gita 2:12-13) from Bhagavad Gita as it is.

Our emphasis here is on the first verse which is stated this way in our version, the Bhagavad~Gita of order:

“I never really did not exist whenever, nor did you; you nor any of all these kings – never shall also surely all of us not exist hereafter” (Bhagavad Gita 2:12).

Our point here in these sayings from Hindu Philosophy is that God IS and has ALWAYS been and this idea is shared by many Christians. The departure here is in the idea of man being equally eternal with the disagreement of doctrine being found in the way that the Life of man is viewed. Viewed from the current perspective the body and form Life is the man and some part of him survives the Earth experience which is considered to be what we would consider the personality. Our view however is not this; our view is that the True man as Spirit has always been and is part and parcel of God and that this Spirit, being manifested as Soul on his own plane which we see as the Kingdom of God, then takes upon himself a physical form and personality through incarnation. This incarnation is the form Life and when this is over in all its aspects, when the man has attained to that state where he is, as a man in form, accounted worthy of the Kingdom, he returns to his own plane; he returns to the Kingdom of God. This is as the Apostle Paul tells us: “the creature itself also shall be delivered from the bondage of corruption into the glorious liberty of the children of God” (Romans 8:21).

In the Light that we can get from what we are saying above we can but imagine the reality of Life but let us paint it this way:

• God IS.
• The True man as Spirit and as part and parcel of God IS as well.
• God manifests and this manifestation is the Cosmic Christ, the manifestation of God on ALL levels of existence and especially that level that we humbly call the Kingdom of God.
• The physical world is created and we should understand this from the perspective of Earth only and we should leave open the possibilities that the dense physical part in which we live is likely the least important.
• God, through the Souls that are manifest, through the True man, nurtures the planet and the Life on the planet as it evolves in form and mental capacity, as it goes from instinct to intuition. This is in a strange way a progressive movement that culminates in what Paul tells us is the “redemption of our body” (Romans 8:23). Paul gives us this a a personal achievment but at the same time it may be a planetary one as well with the idea of redemption being different dependent on the nature of the Life in form but, in ALL cases redemption, can be seen as being lifted into heaven. This we can only imagine from the Gospel stories of the Transfiguration.
• At such a time as there is a form nature that is capable of used by an incarnating Soul, Souls incarnate and here we can see yet another part of Paul’s saying as the True man, the Souls, are plunged into the world which is also another Great Mystery that is couched in the bible stories of what we call today ‘the Fall of Man’. Why does man incarnate is unknown to us and our rather blind premise is found in the act of redemption which we can assume is hastened by the direct involvement of the Soul. Paul tells us that “the creature was made subject to vanity, not willingly, but by reason of him who hath subjected the same in hope” (Romans 8:20); if we can try to tie this ALL together without prejudice to what we have heretofore learned in the world, we can find much revelation.

This is a simplistic approach to a very complex affair but an approach that does maintain the literal aspects of Genesis from a new and different perspective and at the same time allows for the reconciliation between Science and Religion.

We will continue with the next point in the next post. In closing, as an example of our struggle with words and translations, let us look at the defining terms for the word translated in the King James Version as  replenish from the Lexicon: it is translated as fill 107, full 48, fulfil 28, consecrate 15, accomplish 7, replenish 7, wholly 6, set 6, expired 3, fully 2, gather 2, overflow 2, satisfy 2, miscellaneous 14². This is from the Hebrew word male’ which we are told can mean: to fill, be full; (Qal) to be full 1a, fulness, abundance (participle) 1a, to be full, be accomplished, be ended; to consecrate, fill the hand; (Niphal) to be filled, be armed, be satisfied, to be accomplished, be ended; (Piel) to fill; to satisfy; to fulfil, accomplish, complete; to confirm; (Pual) to be filled; (Hithpael) to mass themselves against ². The words in parenthesis are Hebrew terms of usage.

• The other part of this is in the next chapter where God “formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul“. Here we have either a repetition and explanation of the creation of man in the image of God and both male and female or we have a secondary creation that brings the spiritual man into Life in the earth. Our understanding is the latter and this would become man’s existence in the Garden of Eden.
• Next we have the creation of the woman who was, according to the text, already created with the man during the creation in the image of God. Again this is either repetition and explanation or it yet another step in the bringing forth of the spiritual man into the Earth. There is another rather obscure saying in Genesis which may go well here: “And it came to pass, when men began to multiply on the face of the earth, and daughters were born unto them, That the sons of God saw the daughters of men that they were fair; and they took them wives of all which they chose” (Genesis 6:1-2).
• 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“.

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:

We repeat here again a saying that is from the Bhagavad Gita and which goes well with our topic over the last several days. Today we see the God Within us as the Christ Within and this is good in the Christian world and this is True based upon our understanding of the Christ as the manifestation of God. We should see that it matters not what we call this Inner Man as it is the same in ALL, it is the Soul.

Thou carriest within thee a sublime Friend whom thou knowest not. For God dwells in the inner part of every man, but few know how to find Him. The man who sacrifices his desires and his works to the Beings from whom the principles of everything stem, and by whom the Universe was formed, through this sacrifice attains perfection. For one who finds his happiness and joy within himself, and also his wisdom within himself is one with God. And, mark well, the soul which has found God is freed from rebirth and death, from old age and pain, and drinks the water of Immortality.—Bhagavad-Gita

It is difficult to tell just what verses of the Bhagavad Gita the above is from; whether it is a paraphrase or a combination. It is from the book “The Great Initiates” by Édouard Schuré which was originally published in French in 1889 and perhaps it is in the translation of the verses that they become hard to recognize. However, the sheer beauty of the presentation caught my attention and so I share it with you. The Path to the Kingdom is the same no matter what religion one professes.

• ² Old  Testament Hebrew Lexicon on BibleStudyTools.com