What If We Gazed upon the Universe from Within?
“... at last they gaze upon the universe from
within, from God’s viewpoint...”
...At last all
creatures become conscious of the fact that God and all the divine hosts of a
well-nigh limitless universe are on their side in the supernal struggle to
attain eternity of life and divinity of status. Such faith-liberated sons have
certainly enlisted in the struggles of time on the side of the supreme forces
and divine personalities of eternity; even the stars in their courses are now
doing battle for them; at last they gaze upon the universe from within, from
God’s viewpoint, and all is transformed from the uncertainties of material
isolation to the sureties of eternal spiritual progression. Even time itself
becomes but the shadow of eternity cast by Paradise realities upon the moving
panoply of space. [1117:3]
In this my
presentation I shall attempt something that is impossible. I shall endeavour, from
God’s viewpoint, to cast a look upon existence and upon man as a part of
that existence. There are many reasons which make such a study actually
impossible. The least among the reasons is not the circumstance that God is
much, much more than we are ever able to fathom. A reason not to be slighted is
also the fact that our thinking per force happens within the circumscribed
thought patterns conditioned by time and space, whereas God is eternal,
timeless, and independent of space. We are experiential beings, our existence
is finite, the universe age that we are going through is that of the unfinished
growth of the Supreme Being. All of
these are factors which occasion that the utmost we can comprehend of
God is as he performs in the capacity of the God of the finite universe age, as
God the Supreme. A study of the kind that I shall attempt is also frustrated by
the circumstance that whenever we think about or endeavour to visualise
something as magnificent and majestic, as absolutely beautiful, as
unconditionally truthful, as unqualifiedly good, as crushingly loving as God,
when we think about him with whom we equate our noblest ideals, our supreme
ideas and our loftiest sentiments, we are very easily overtaken by our emotions
and by an outburst of feelings: breathing becomes difficult, throat feels
constricted; we feel as if we were crushed under this beauty, goodness, truth,
and love; tears well up, and our voice fails.
I AM
In his originality,
God may state: I AM.
No qualification
can be attached to the I AM; one may merely say that I AM is. The I AM is not
deified, not non-deified, not actual, not potential, not static, not dynamic.
There is no cause, there is no effect. There are no tensions between
differentials, differences. One cannot even say that there is absoluteness,
because the I AM may be more than absolute. Actuals are concealed in their potentials,
and the potentials have not yet appeared in the infinity of the I AM. (1153:1—2).
But God
concurrently says, I AM THAT I AM, which is the same as I AM Infinity. I AM the
Infinite One; there is nothing and nobody apart from me and besides me. I AM
unqualifiedly, unconditionally and absolutely all that is. I am the entire
existence. All of Reality, all of existence is I. There is no outside, no
inside, there is only I. God is all of this even now. In human logic,
there cannot, on such premises, exist anything but God. But not so in the
paradoxical divine logic. In God’s statement ”I AM Infinite and I AM Infinity”
there is imbedded the first tension, the first differential, the first
division. Infinity is the situation where the I AM is, the Infinite One is that
entity, being, person, or thing who or which fills up the situation. The
infinite situation minus the Infinite is called infinitude. We, thus, have
three separately definable entities: apart from the original I AM, there are
Infinity and the Infinite One (the Infinite Person), who fills up the infinite
situation. Since the original I AM does not disappear in this first
differentiation, this God-imposed self-differentiation occasions the first
Triunity: I AM—the Infinite One—Infinitude. The opportunity for all further
differentiations of Reality has thus appeared.
(1152:6; 1154:1—2).
On the levels of
the infinite and the absolute the moment of the present contains all of the
past as well as all of the future. I AM signifies also I WAS and I WILL
BE. [1296:1].
Simultaneously the
I AM, who is Oneness, differentiates himself into three persons: the Universal
Father, the Eternal Son and the Infinite Spirit. They constitute a structural
union, the Paradise Trinity.
Of his free will
the spirit God separates reality into deified and undeified reality; he divides
it into the absolute and the subabsolute. He differentiates reality, or the
circle of eternity, also into spirit, mind and matter. Only the levels of
infinity are absolute, and only on such levels is there finality of oneness
between matter, mind, and spirit. [25:5].
Paradise is the focus of energy-matter. The Infinite Spirit is the focus of
mind. The Son is the focus of spirit. The Father is the focus of personality,
and ultimately, the Universal Controller of material existence. Concurrently,
the Infinite Spirit is the executive of the Father-Son union, the union of the
Thought and the Word, he is the God of Action, and the originator of movement.
Reality is
divisible, on one hand, into the eternally existent and infinite, i.e. the
existential, and on the other hand, into the non-existential, subinfinite and
experiential. The experiential again is divided into three phases: the finite,
the transcendental and the absolute experientiality. Reality breaks down to the
absolute and the subabsolute, and the latter again is divided into two phases:
finity and absonity. Reality is divisible into timelessness, time, and
supertime. Reality is also divided into spacelessness, space, and transcended
space. Space is divided into universes: the central universe of Havona, the
seven superuniverses, and the four outer space galactic belts. Reality is
differentiated, in obeisance with God’s will, into three phases: perfection, the perfected and the perfecting;
the latter one is the same as the evolutionary phase. Reality is further
differentiated into personal and nonpersonal, superpersonal, prepersonal and
impersonal. Reality divides into potentials and actuals; into theses,
antitheses, and syntheses. Reality is divisible into living beings and into
lifeless things. And all these divisions and diversifications exist because it
is the will of God. And the will of God, who is unity, is that all diversity,
finally, and with the help of God and because of its self-will shall return
back to Divinity, which means that it will regain unity, but, with its having
undergone experiential growth and with the divinity and unity being an
achievement of its own choosing, it is now much richer.
The I AM also
differentiates his Divinity into existential and evolutionary divinity. Deity,
again, constitutes Trinities. Deity
diversifies himself into God the Supreme, or the Almighty Supreme, or the
Supreme Being, who experiences growth on the finite level and there evolves in
what is termed as the power-personality synthesis, and into God the Sevenfold
who functions on the same finite level, and includes the Supreme Creator
Personalities (the Creator Sons/Creative Spirits, the Ancients of Days, and the
Master Spirits), the Supreme Being, as well as the Spirit, the Son and the
Father. Deity moreover differentiates himself into God the Ultimate, who eventuates
on the absonite level, as well as into the God the Tenfold, who functions
on the same level. And finally, Deity differentiates himself into God the
Absolute, who will evolve on the absolute experiential level. The
Trinity which functions during the finite universe age is the Paradise Trinity;
and it is called the Trinity of Supremacy as it functions in this capacity.
Upon the actualisation of the finite potentials, and after the Supreme Being
has fully emerged, the Ultimate Trinity takes shape. Whenever and wherever the
Paradise Trinity functions on the ultimate level, in absonity, it is called the
Trinity of Ultimacy. When the potentials of the Ultimate, far in the future
eternity, become actualised, the Absolute Trinity will factualise. Then and
there, the I AM and the two experiential Trinities (the Ultimate Tinity and the
Absolute Trinity) will finally form the Trinity of Trinities.
Consequently, the I
AM proclaims:
I AM the Original.
I am Absolute;
I AM the Father of
the Eternal Son, I AM the Universal Father;
I AM the Eternal
Son, I AM the God of Spirit; I AM the Absolute Person;
I AM the cause of
the eternal Paradise; I AM the Universal Controller, I AM the pattern of
material existences;
I AM one with the
Eternal Son; I AM the Universal Creator, I AM the God of Havona;
I AM the God of
Action; I AM the God of Mind, I AM the Infinite Spirit;
I AM
self-associative; I AM the Infinite Upholder; I AM the Universal Absolute;
I AM self-qualified
for me to be Deity; I AM the Infinite Potential, I AM the Deity Absolute;
I AM
static-reactive, I AM the Infinite Capacity, I HAVE NOT QUALIFIED MYSELF, I AM
the Unqualified Absolute. (1154:4—1155:4)
God is the only
stationary, self-contained, and changeless being in the whole universe of
universes, having no outside, no beyond, no past, and no future. God is
purposive energy (creative spirit) and absolute will, and these are
self-existent and universal. [58:6]
Because God so
willed, only the central abode of the Gods, Paradise, is motionless and static,
extra-spatial. The rest of reality manifests constant and dynamic change and
development, directionised towards new divine and Paradisiacal values and
meanings. Motionlessness, bliss, stagnation, outer peace, thus, are not what is
in harmony and conformity with reality and with God’s will; what is in
harmony with God’s will is dynamism, motion, effort, progress and evolution.
God Is
God is so all real
and absolute that no material sign of proof or no demonstration of so-called
miracle may be offered in testimony of his reality. [1119 :4]. The Father unceasingly pours forth energy, light,
and life [55:4]. ..God is the source and destiny of all that is good and
beautiful and true. [1431:2]. God
is the first truth and the last fact; therefore does all truth take origin in
him, while all facts exist relative to him. God is absolute truth. [1125: 1]. God is changeless. [222:4]. ..God is one. The Father’s
personality is absolutely unified. [638:2].
God is a universal
spirit; God is the universal person. [25:5]. God is
personality. [28:4]. ..he is an infinite personality. [27:3]. He
is a real spirit and a spiritual reality. [28:5]. Viewed as an
unspiritual phenomenon, God is energy. [47:1].
God is everywhere
present. [44:1]. God is truly omnipotent.. [1299:4]. God’s primal
perfection consists not in an assumed righteousness but rather in the inherent
perfection of the goodness of his divine nature. He is final, complete, and
perfect. [36:3]. God is truth. [1443:2; 1449:1; 1991:4]. God is
righteous; therefore he is just. [36:6].
God is so positively good that there is absolutely no place in him for negative
evil.. [1429:1]. God is
inherently kind, naturally compassionate, and everlastingly merciful. [38:2].
God is much, much more than a Father, but the
Father is man’s highest concept of God..
[1260 :3]. God is a Father in the highest sense of the term. He is
eternally motivated by the perfect idealism of divine love, and that tender
nature finds its strongest expression and greatest satisfaction in loving and
being loved. [59:2]. God is so
trusting, so loving, that he gives a portion of his divine nature into the
hands of even human beings for safekeeping and self-realization.. [1283:5]. The Father desires all his
creatures to be in personal communion with him... To each of you and to all of
us, God is approachable, the Father is attainable, the way is open; the forces
of divine love and the ways and means of divine administration are all
interlocked in an effort to facilitate the advancement of every worthy
intelligence of every universe to the Paradise presence of the Universal
Father. [63:6]. All true love is
from God.. [1289:3]. God is
love, the Son is mercy, the Spirit is ministry.. [94:4]. God is love.. [26:2; 38:6; 40:2; 50:5;
75:6; 75:10; 648:3;
785:14; 1004: 3; 1429:1;
1486:4; 1782:2].
God Is Love
[T]he divine
personality is defined as consisting in spirit and manifesting himself to the
universes as love. [59:2]
Jesus revealed a
God of love, and love is all-embracing of truth, beauty, and goodness. [67:4]
[they] have learned
that love is the greatest thing in the universe—and they know that God
is love. [648:3] [Author’s emphasis]
To finite man
truth, beauty, and goodness embrace the full revelation of divinity reality. As
this love-comprehension of Deity finds spiritual expression in the lives of
God-knowing mortals, there are yielded the fruits of divinity: intellectual
peace, social progress, moral satisfaction, spiritual joy, and cosmic wisdom. [648:3].
The love of God is
the greatest reality in the universe; it is like the heat that emanates from
the furnace of a big steel mill and which permeates the entire mill; its
luminosity is so intense that one cannot watch it with the naked eye. In like
manner does God’s glowing love fill the entire universe. God’s love, his
goodness, beauty, and truth, is so luminous that a mere mortal in his physical
form cannot approach it; he must die and be transformed.
“You cannot see my face, for no mortal can
see me and live.” No material man could behold the spirit God and preserve his
mortal existence. The glory and spiritual brilliance of the divine personality
presence is impossible of approach by the lower groups of spirit beings or by
any order of material personalities. The spiritual luminosity of the Father’s
personal presence is a “light which no
mortal man can approach; which no material creature has seen or can see.” But
it is not necessary to see God with the eyes of the flesh in order to discern
him by the faith-vision of the spiritualized mind. [25:3]
Yet ... to ...
every mortal creature in every sphere and on every world of the universe of
universes, the Universal Father reveals all of his gracious and divine self
that can be discerned or comprehended by such... mortal creatures. [27:1]
The existence that
we are able to recognise is there because so is the will of the God of love. He
caused what was told above: the division of his oneness and the differentiation
of universal existence into the infinite, the absolute, the absonite, and the
finite. He decreed the diversification. He decreed that the various aspects of
his divinity become manifest on different levels of existence. He bestowed
personality upon myriads after myriads of beings, he ordained that there be
material existence as a derivative of spirit existence. He bestows mind, which
is the arena whereon a creature makes his choices, an instrument wherewith matter
is taken into the control of the spirit. He bestows life. He wills that his
creatures finally find him, and step by step he dilutes his being, first within
the ranges of divinity, and finally within the realms of realities
other-than-divinity until he eventually, in the form of an angel, is well-nigh
a human being. He ordains his Paradise Sons, who are of divinity, to acquire an
experience of living in the likeness of the lowest order of beings capable of
finding God; he mandates them to incarnate in the likeness of man. And when so
incarnated, these Sons reveal the
goodness, beauty, truth and love of their Paradise Father. Of his unfathomable
love, he has given us personality and free will. He has bestowed a fragment of
his spirit to indwell us and to guide and directionise us towards Paradise, and
finally, at the moment of our Adjuster fusion, he becomes a constituent part of
our surviving selves.
[T]he Paradise
Father lovingly and willingly downstep[s] and otherwise modifi[es], dilute[s],
and attenuate[s] his infinity in order that he may be able to draw nearer the
finite minds of his creature children... [35:1]
God’s Universe
Viewpoint
From outward,
looking within, the universe may appear to be material. From within, looking
out, the same universe appears to be wholly spiritual. [1138:4]. Paradise,
the central abode of the Gods, the nucleus of the Central Universe with its
originals, actuals and potentials, is, as viewed from the divine angle,
absolute and perfect, eternal, timeless and spaceless. On Paradise, matter and
spirit are the same, even if they are called by separate names. In moving
outward from Paradise, God beholds the 21 perfect Paradise satellites, which
are eternal but nevertheless have a location in space and in time. Thereupon God
beholds Havona, which is bathing in the luminosity of the central universe. The
one billion Havona worlds are time realities; they belong to past eternity.
These worlds are perfect, but not absolute; all phases of existence—finity,
absonity, and co-absoluteness—are manifest on these worlds.
The Central
Universe luminosity impinges upon the two belts of dark gravity bodies. These
belts, however, do not constitute any obstacle for divinity, spirit, mind,
divine goodness, beauty, truth, ministry, or love; they overcome every material
hinder. Material obstacles are from the divine or spirit viewpoint nonexistent.
Beyond the dark
gravity bodies there begins the domain of the millions upon millions of hot,
blazing suns and dark islands of space as well as that of the whirling,
inhabited and uninhabited planets. The seven superuniverses whirl closest to
the central universe. These universes are the domain of finity, they belong to
the realm of finite experientials. They represent imperfection, which through
growth and coordination is progressing towards perfection. The seven
superuniverses are the realm of evolution, the domain of the Almighty Supreme,
the sphere of the activities of the evolving and forward struggling mortals and
spirit beings. The seven superuniverses are the kingdom of time; they belong to
future eternity.
Beyond the seven
superuniverses and one of the quiescent space zones there will once be in
readiness the material basis of the next phase of evolution: the four galactic
belts of outer space, whereof only the first is currently visible. The belts
are still uninhabited, but they will once be the domain of supertime and
transcendental evolution, the superevolutionary domain of the growth of God the
Ultimate, the zone of absonite experiencing.
Beyond the confines
of the outer space there is the immeasurable and unexplored open space, the
boundless cosmos, which is conjectured to be the realm of God the Absolute.
God, however, does
not “see” the situation in that manner; the narrative represents merely a
creature visualisation of how God experiences existence. In reality, from God’s
viewpoint, all of that which a material creature sees as imperfect, unfinished,
incomplete, is already an existing reality. In human thinking, this kind of a
statement is an illogical, impossible paradox. But God is replete, perfect and
infinite, that is why he governs everything, even the imperfect, the
perfecting, the finite and the absonite, along with the existentials and the
experientials.
God, being eternal,
universal, absolute, and infinite, does not grow in knowledge nor increase in
wisdom. God does not acquire experience, as finite man might conjecture or
comprehend, but he does, within the realms of his own eternal personality,
enjoy those continuous expansions of self-realization which are in certain ways
comparable to, and analogous with, the acquirement of new experience by the
finite creatures of the evolutionary worlds. [29:4]
All of this immense
“machinery” exists for the sake of many purposes, but only one of these
purposes is revealed to us, viz. the purpose which directly concerns us and
which for us is the most crucial, and that purpose is the purpose predicated in
God’s love for us:
And the whole
scheme of living existences on the worlds of space is centered in the divine
purpose of elevating all will creatures to the high destiny of the experience
of sharing the Father’s Paradise perfection.. [36:3]
Endless Change and
Development
From the viewpoint
of the changeless God, the universes are nothing but constant change and
progress. A mortal man can but think of realities with beginnings and endings;
from God’s viewpoint there are no beginnings nor endings; there is, instead,
endless transmutation from one estate into something else.
The final dynamics of
the cosmos have to do with the continual transfer of reality from potentiality
to actuality. In theory, there may be an end to this metamorphosis, but in
fact, such is impossible since the Potential and the Actual are both
encircuited in the Original (the I AM), and this identification makes it
forever impossible to place a limit on the developmental progression of the
universe. Whatsoever is identified with the I AM can never find an end to
progression since the actuality of the potentials of the I AM is absolute, and
the potentiality of the actuals of the I AM is also absolute. Always will
actuals be opening new avenues of the realization of hitherto impossible
potentials... [1263:3]
From what was said
above we may also deduce that if something or someone is not progressing, such
a thing or personality is not identified with the I AM. Jesus said that we
cannot stand still, we either go forward, or we retrogress. (1736:3). A
question is put to us: Can you not advance in your concept of God’s dealing
with man to that level where you recognize that the watchword of the universe
is progress? [54:5]
The Divine Mother
God himself is
involved in the progress, transformation, development and evolution of our
universe age. This finite and evolutionary aspect of Deity is known as the
Supreme, the Almighty Supreme, the Supreme Being and God the Supreme. Since the
Supreme is, just as we are, finite, experiential and evolutionary, the Supreme
is the maximum of Deity that we can fathom. To understand more than the Supreme
is to be more than finite! [1290:5]
The Supreme is the
beauty of physical harmony, the truth of intellectual meaning, and the goodness
of spiritual value. He is the sweetness of true success and the joy of
everlasting achievement. He is the oversoul of the grand universe, the
consciousness of the finite cosmos, the completion of finite reality, and the
personification of Creator-creature experience... [1278:5]
The Deity of
Supremacy is thus expressive of the sum total of the entire finite. [1279:7]
God the Supreme...
is the indispensable focalizer, summarizer, and encompasser of evolutionary
experience... [1266:7]
If you truly desire
to find God, you cannot help having born in your minds the consciousness of the
Supreme. As God is your divine Father, so is the Supreme your divine Mother, in
whom you are nurtured throughout your lives as universe creatures. [1288:1]
It Is God’s Will
That We Are Engaged
in
the Evolution of
the Supreme
The Supreme does
not evolve self-sufficiently; it is God’s will that all finite personalities,
energies, powers, and forces are engaged in this evolution. On the Deity level,
the evolution of the Supreme is decisively dependent on the successes and
achievements of God the Sevenfold. On the experiential level, the Supreme is
dependent on the achievements of the lowest will creatures on the spheres of
space as they struggle to liberate themselves from the fetters of matter—to
spiritise themselves.
All this must be
according to the Father’s plan, which has predicated finite progress upon
effort, creature achievement upon perseverance, and personality development
upon faith. By thus ordaining the experience-evolution of the Supreme, the
Father has made it possible for the finite creatures to exist in the universes
and, by experiential progression, sometime to attain the divinity of
Supremacy. [1266:3]
All of this confers
an immense moral responsibility upon a human creature; after all, the evolution
of Deity, the actualisation of the potentials of the Supreme, is depending, to
a large measure, on the free-will decisions of each and every human individual.
Viewed from the divine abode, from the centre of all things, existence is
interrelated in a most intricate fashion; everything depends on everything; as
is the part so is the whole. And this is so because it is the will of God; this
is how God’s love manifests itself. He wants everybody to be involved, nobody
is to be left out; is his wish that not one would want to count himself out.
Herein lies the
great cosmic responsibility of self-conscious personalities: That Supreme Deity
is in a certain sense dependent on the choosing of the mortal will. [1284:5]
Looking from the
centre out, the universe is, during the current universe age, populated by
personalities who are entrusted with a cosmic responsibility, beings whom God
wills to be cosmic citizens with cosmic morality.
The temporal
relation of man to the Supreme is the foundation for cosmic morality, the
universal sensitivity to, and acceptance of, duty. This is morality which
transcends the temporal sense of relative right and wrong; it is a morality
directly predicated on the self-conscious creature’s appreciation of
experiential obligation to experiential Deity.
[1284:4]
The great challenge
that has been given to mortal man is this: Will you decide to personalize the
experiencible value meanings of the cosmos into your own evolving selfhood? or
by rejecting survival, will you allow these secrets of Supremacy to lie
dormant, awaiting the action of another creature at some other time who will in
his way attempt a creature contribution to the evolution of the finite
God? But that will be his contribution to the Supreme, not yours. [1284:6]
Will you fail the
God of time, who is so dependent upon the decisions of the finite mind? will
you fail the Supreme personality of the universes by the slothfulness of
animalistic retrogression? will you fail the great brother of all creatures,
who is so dependent on each creature? can you allow yourself to pass into the
realm of the unrealized when before you lies the enchanting vista of the
universe career—the divine discovery of the Paradise Father and the divine
participation in the search for, and the evolution of, the God of
Supremacy? [1285:2]
In What Manner Does
God
Wish that We Do His
Will?
From the centre of
all things, from within the absolute perfection, God has pronounced his will:
From the Universal
Father who inhabits eternity there has gone forth the supreme mandate, “Be you
perfect, even as I am perfect.” [21:3].
“Be you perfect, even as I am
perfect.” [22:3; 86:1;
290:2; 295:1; 297:1; 348:3;
411:1; 449:2; 637:1;
1574:8]. The mandate is repeated time and again.
In other words, in
our being faithful to God’s will as it concerns our participation in the
actualisation of the Supreme, the finite aspect of God, we do so in our
striving for perfection. In other words, a destination has been set for us, we
are purposed to achieve perfection, eventually to “be perfect.” We, of course, need not achieve it unaided. The Universal
Father, the Eternal Son and the Infinite Spirit endow us with multiple means of
support, which enable us to attain this objective. These include: the Thought
Adjuster; the Spirit of Truth; the Holy Spirit; the adjutant mind-spirits; the
mind itself; angels; the bestowals of God’s Sons; revelations; the whole of our
universe careers, which is but one enormous and immense schooling and training
arrangement beginning with the pre-school which we are currently attending,
then to be continued in the scores upon
scores of schools in the local system and the constellation, and then further
in the thousands of local universe, minor-sector, major-sector, and
superuniverse schools and training institutions, and finally in the one billion
training worlds of Havona, whereof we are told that it is there that our real
education only begins; and every other means, even the “stars in their courses”, have been
harnessed to assist man in his obeying the divine mandate and doing the will of
God. All we need to do is to say: “Yes,
I will.”
“Be you perfect, even as I am perfect”, apart
from it being an expression of God’s will, the mandate is also an invitation
to become involved, to evolve into a perfected spirit, and in this way to
become capable of entering into the presence of the majestic God, capable of
facing divine beauty, goodness, truth, and love. And we only need to say: “Yes I will.” We need not earn the right to
meet God face to face, we need not
“pick points”, gain merits, we need not fulfil any predetermined
criteria, we have not been assigned any
“good works” that we have to do as a precondition, if we are to gain
eternal survival and win access to the presence of God. What we do is not so
important as are our motives. All we need to do is to say in our hearts: “Yes, I will.” As we say “yes, I will”, our motive must not be the
selfish desire to save our lives, but rather the love for God; and our sincere
desire must be that of doing his will. This may be what Jesus meant when he
said: “.. whosoever would save his life selfishly, shall lose it...” [1760:2].
As soon as we have
given an affirmative answer to God’s invitation, we are reborn, born of Spirit;
and then will it be possible to portray us in these words:
The transcendent
goal of the children of time is to find the eternal God, to comprehend the
divine nature, to recognize the Universal Father. God-knowing creatures have
only one supreme ambition, just one consuming desire, and that is to become, as
they are in their spheres, like him as he is in his Paradise perfection of
personality... [21:3]
If we are, free
from all guile, truthfully and honestly and it being our free-will choice, to
say “yes, I will”, and so to be born
again, born of the Spirit, certain logical and self-evident preconditions have
to be met. We cannot honestly say “yes,
I will”, if we do not believe and have faith in God. Our supreme ambition and
our consuming desire cannot be that of becoming Fatherlike, if our desire is
consciously to work against God’s will, that is, to commit sin. We cannot
sincerely say that our consuming desire is to become Godlike, if we wish to
make God in our image, make reality conform to our will, make world serve our
own selves. We cannot honestly say that it is our will to do the will of God,
if we factually and objectively just want to do and satisfy our wills.
But as soon as we
with pure motives say “yes, I will”, we
are spirit-led and begin to yield the fruits of the spirit:
The consciousness
of the spirit domination of a human life is presently attended by an increasing
exhibition of the characteristics of the Spirit in the life reactions of such a
spirit-led mortal, “for the fruits of
the spirit are love, joy, peace, long-suffering, gentleness, goodness, faith,
meekness, and temperance.” Such spirit-guided and divinely illuminated mortals,
while they yet tread the lowly paths of toil and in human faithfulness perform
the duties of their earthly assignments, have already begun to discern the
lights of eternal life as they glimmer on the faraway shores of another
world;.. And throughout every trial and
in the presence of every hardship, spirit-born souls are sustained by that hope
which transcends all fear because the love of God is shed abroad in all hearts
by the presence of the divine Spirit. [381:7]
Upon our having as
a free-will act said “yes, I will”, as soon as we have expressed our belief in
God and our confidence in him, results begin immediately to ensue. Henceforth
we shall look upon the eternal life, our survival, as self-evident. We begin to
perform as a channel through which the divine love flows; we begin to respond
to God’s love with our love for God and for his sons, our fellow men. We begin
to yield the “fruits of the spirit.” And if we fail to yield the fruits of the spirit,
it is plausible that we have actually not yet said, “yes, I will,” but instead
continue on as suspicious, unbelieving, distrustful, and doubtful.
The “fruits of the spirit” are an immediate consequence
which ensues the acceptance of the eternal mandate and the reception of the
perfection-assignment. And we ought to note that they are a consequence,
not the cause. We can delude ourselves and fool us into believing that our acts
are “the fruits of the spirit”, if we
act piously, do good works, and in so doing earn our eternal life, and actually
are already in the kingdom of heaven. We may even believe that we are
self-righteously—with all these fruits of the spirit and our professed believer
status—entitled to certain privileges, that is, that we may expect our fellows
to serve us, admire us, regard us as their models, only because we, through our
good works, our lip-serviced faith, have won God’s favour and have become “chosen people,” “God’s elect.” The hard fact, however, is that the fruits of the
spirit must be yielded ceaselessly, unstintingly and consistently; faith must
be restated every day and every moment. Faith is secure only after the Adjuster
fusion; only then is the desire to do God’s will irrevocable. A proclamation of
one’s being a believer, of one’s consenting to believing in the existence of
God, one day stated, is no act of magic which would ascertain a special favour
with God, or perhaps even make God grant privileges over other people, the
unbelievers. It is superstition—it is not faith.
In his expecting us
to yield the fruits of the spirit, God does not require anything impossible of
us. He knows us. He is aware of our shortcomings and frailties; he knows what
is possible, what is impossible. (38:1)
These are Jesus’
words in regard to the fruits of the spirit:
“I am the true vine, and my Father is the
husbandman. I am the vine, and you are the branches. And the Father requires of
me only that you shall bear much fruit. The vine is pruned only to increase the
fruitfulness of its branches. Every branch coming out of me which bears no
fruit, the Father will take away. Every branch which bears fruit, the Father
will cleanse that it may bear more fruit... You must abide in me, and I in you;
the branch will die if it is separated from the vine. As the branch cannot bear
fruit except it abides in the vine, so neither can you yield the fruits of
loving service except you abide in me. Remember: I am the real vine, and you
are the living branches. He who lives in me, and I in him, will bear much fruit
of the spirit and experience the supreme joy of yielding this spiritual
harvest... Herein is the Father glorified: that the vine has many living
branches, and that every branch bears much fruit. And when the world sees these
fruit-bearing branches—my friends who love one another, even as I have loved
them—all men will know that you are truly my disciples. [1945:4]
A living
relationship with God, living love for God, and an equally living love for
one’s fellows, which wells forth therefrom and which translates into loving
service, is a fruit of the spirit.
But religion is not
merely a passive feeling of “absolute dependence” and “surety of survival”; it
is a living and dynamic experience of divinity attainment predicated on
humanity service. [66:5]
A man who yields
the fruits of the spirit is a cosmic citizen, a subject of the kingdom of God.
He is aware of his responsibilities in relation to cosmic reality, his morality
is cosmic loyalty, faithfulness to the God-decreed order and to his perfect
plans:
What is loyalty? It
is the fruit of an intelligent appreciation of universe brotherhood; one could
not take so much and give nothing... [435:4]
The greatest among
the fruits of the spirit is love:
... love is the
greatest thing in the universe...
[648:3]
After all, I think
we all,.. love the Universal Father and all other beings, divine or human,
because we discern that these personalities truly love us. The experience of
loving is very much a direct response to the experience of being loved... [39:7]
No being in all the
universe has the rightful liberty to deprive any other being of true liberty,
the right to love and be loved, the privilege of worshiping God and of serving
his fellows. [615:2]
The better man
understands his neighbor, the easier it will be to forgive him, even to love
him. [38:2]
All true love is
from God, and man receives the divine affection as he himself bestows this love
upon his fellows. Love is dynamic. It can never be captured; it is alive, free,
thrilling, and always moving. Man can never take the love of the Father and
imprison it within his heart. The Father’s love can become real to mortal man
only by passing through that man’s personality as he in turn bestows this love
upon his fellows... [1289:3]
When men search for
God, they are searching for everything. When they find God, they have found
everything. The search for God is the unstinted bestowal of love attended by
amazing discoveries of new and greater love to be bestowed. [1289: 2]
The love of God
permeates all existence. Man can respond to this love, and the resultant fruit
of the spirit becomes manifest in two realities: for the first, in love for
God, and for the second, in one’s lovingly serving God’s sons, one’s fellow
men.
At its noblest, the
love for God is expressed in worship. Worship is love and thankfulness issuing
forth from the human soul, expressed in human mind, often wordlessly; it is
communion with the Father, and it is free from every element of self-request or
self-interest. Worship is unconditionally free from self-request. One
should note that the absence of self-request or personal interest does not
merely mean that we in our worship refrain from petitioning for something, not
so. Even here the motive is crucial. Should we worship because such an act is
described as an integral part of a believer’s behaviour, and we wish to be true
to every standard and criterion which we assume to be a badge of a true faith
son, in other words, if we worship in order to
“pick points” and think that after a preordained number of points has
been reached, God’s attitude towards us would turn favourable, our worship is
hardly true worship at all; it is not free from self-interest.
Worship is for its
own sake; prayer embodies a self- or creature-interest element; that is the
great difference between worship and prayer. There is absolutely no
self-request or other element of personal interest in true worship; we simply
worship God for what we comprehend him to be. Worship asks nothing and expects
nothing for the worshiper. We do not worship the Father because of anything we
may derive from such veneration; we render such devotion and engage in such
worship as a natural and spontaneous reaction to the recognition of the
Father’s matchless personality and because of his lovable nature and adorable
attributes. [65:5]
The worship
experience consists in the sublime attempt of the betrothed Adjuster to
communicate to the divine Father the inexpressible longings and the unutterable
aspirations of the human soul ... Worship is, therefore, the act of the
material mind’s assenting to the attempt of its spiritualizing self, under the
guidance of the associated spirit, to communicate with God as a faith son of
the Universal Father. The mortal mind consents to worship; the immortal soul
craves and initiates worship; the divine Adjuster presence conducts such
worship in behalf of the mortal mind and the evolving immortal soul... [66:4]
Unreality and the
Freedom of Choice
And here is
mystery: The more closely man approaches God through love, the greater the
reality—actuality—of that man. The more man withdraws from God, the more nearly
he approaches nonreality—cessation of existence. When man consecrates his will
to the doing of the Father’s will, when man gives God all that he has,
then does God make that man more than he is.
[1285:3]
If one looks out
from the centre of all things, from God’s viewpoint, truth, beauty, goodness,
and love are real; ugliness, evil, error, lie, and hatred are unreal. Evil,
sin, and iniquity are unreal to the point that God has no attitude towards
them; he does not even hate them. Jesus taught us not to resist evil; this does
not, however, connote any submission to evil, for he taught us also that evil
can be conquered by good. Nonetheless, in finite circumstances, situations do
arise where it is impossible to be faithful to this counsel; wisdom ordains
that evil must sometimes be affronted. Jesus likewise advised us not to go
against the mistaken and erroneous ideas of our fellows; yet he did not teach
us to endorse error, or to submit ourselves to untruth. He, instead, instructed
us to sift the grains of truth from among the elements of error and so to
amplify the truthful ideas that the erring one himself realises his blunders.
In finite conditions, even this teaching cannot always be observed; situations
do arise where one has to go in frontal attack against error. Jesus himself did
so in his saying: There cannot be peace between light and darkness, between
life and death, between truth and error [1905:4]; and we also remember his
last temple discourse, with its overt denouncements of the errors of pharisees
and other religious leaders.
A cosmic citizens
has to make decisions, decisions, and more decisions, and in doing so, to show
sincerity, sincerity, and more sincerity, in his problem solving, in his
choosing, in his determining with what and with whom to identify oneself, and
in analysing one’s ultimate motives, motives stripped of all self-deception and
deceit. Espousal of anything but divine values and constant self-delusion in
explaining decisions and actions which one, in one’s heart, knows to be wrong
rightful, is the same as self-identification with unreality; and there looms
the risk that one who identifies himself with unreality soon becomes unreal
himself.
Man is at liberty
to respond to the divine invitation of self-realisation either “yes, I will”,
or “no, I will not”. The latter
response is a choice in favour of unreality. But the universe unconditionally
honours man’s choice; no one is forced to accept eternal life.
Man’s freedom of
choice is real, for
.. if personality
has the prerogative of exercising volitional choice of reality identification,
and if this is a true and free choice, then must evolving personality also have
the possible choice of becoming self-confusing, self-disrupting, and
self-destroying. The possibility of cosmic self-destruction cannot be avoided,
if the evolving personality is to be truly free in the exercise of finite will. [1301: 4]
.. Such mistaken
choosing is time possible and indicates (besides the incompleteness of the
Supreme) that certain range of choice with which immature creatures must be
endowed in order to enjoy universe progression by making freewill contact with
reality. [1300:7]
The Soul
Viewed from the
centre of all things, man is well-nigh unreal, and for the most, just a
potentiality. What real there is in him are the spirit fragment, bestowed by
the Universal Father, and man’s personality, his free will; the mind is a
temporary endowment; his material constitution is very much an interim
arrangement. The continuing identity of a human being is fully dependent on the
man himself, it depends on his assent. The material mind and the mortal body
will disappear soon after death; man’s personality may, if the personality so
chooses, lose its identity and be absorbed into the cosmic oversoul, the
Supreme Being. The spiritual values of a human being will be preserved as a
possession of the Though Adjuster even if the man himself should decide not to
eternalise his existence. If a human being remains fully matter-identified, his
identity will not be preserved after the earthly career has run its course.
Viewed from the centre, what, then, is real in man? The real in man is that
human aspect which has ascended above the material level, that side of man
which has ascended upon the morontia level. This other, non-material, self is
called the soul. It is man’s morontia, immortal, self. The evolution of this
other self, this immortal self, this soul, is fully dependent on the freewill
choice of man. But again, God has not left man helpless; for God himself is, in
the presence of a spirit fragment, the Thought Adjuster, the Mystery Monitor,
engaged in the development of the soul. It is God’s will that we develop this
other self, this surviving self, this immortal soul, because God does not want
anybody to perish, rather that everyone would one day come into his presence
and serve for ever.
the soul—the
conjoint creation of the God-seeking mortal mind and the God-revealing immortal
Adjuster. [66:4]
Eternal survival of
personality is wholly dependent on the choosing of the mortal mind, whose
decisions determine the survival potential of the immortal soul. When the mind
believes God and the soul knows God, and when, with the fostering Adjuster,
they all desire God, then is survival assured ... The indwelling of the
Mystery Monitor constitutes the inception and insures the possibility of the
potential of growth and survival of the immortal soul. [69:8]
The spiritual
growth of the soul takes place wholly independently of the intellectual
self-consciousness. [66:3]
We know that what
awaits us, our immortal selves, after death is much more multifaceted and
magnificent than we could ever imagine. God is waiting for us into his
presence, then to dispatch us to new adventures, to another existence, to face
the challenges of Ultimacy. [A]t last they gaze upon the universe from
within, from God’s viewpoint, and all is transformed from the uncertainties of
material isolation to the sureties of eternal spiritual progression. [1117:3].
John the Revelator saw this situation in a touching way, expressible in a few
words. His vision was so exquisite that his statement was copied into our book:
The presence of God
and his Son are before you, and you are eternally his servants; you have seen
his face, and his name is your spirit. There shall be no night there; and they
need no light of the sun, for the Great Source and Center gives them light;
they shall live forever and ever. And God shall wipe away all tears from their
eyes; there shall be no more death, neither sorrow nor crying, neither shall
there be any more pain, for the former things have passed away.” [299:5]
“ ... old things are passing away; behold,
all things are becoming new.” [631:0]
Seppo Kanerva
Finland
I dedicate this talk
to you who so love one another as Jesus has loved you