Commentary on the Aquarian Gospel–6–by Swami Nirmalananda Giri
About God the Tao
“Let us study God, the One, the Three, the Seven. Before the worlds were formed all things were One; just Spirit, Universal Breath. And Spirit breathed, and that which was not manifest became the Fire and Thought of Heaven, the Father-God, the Mother-God. And when the Fire and Thought of heaven in union breathed, their son, their only son, was born. This son is Love whom men have called the Christ. Men call the Thought of heaven the Holy Breath. And when the Triune God breathed forth, lo, seven Spirits stood before the throne. These are Elohim, creative spirits of the universe. And these are they who said, Let us make man; and in their image man was made. In early ages of the world the dwellers in the farther East said, Tao is the name of Universal Breath; and in the ancient books we read, No manifesting form has Tao Great, and yet he made and keeps the heavens and earth. No passion has our Tao Great, and yet he causes sun and moon and all the stars to rise and set. No name has Tao Great, and yet he makes all things to grow; he brings in season both the seed time and the harvest time. And Tao Great was One; the One became the Two; the Two became the Three, the Three evolved the Seven, which filled the universe with manifests. And Tao Great gives unto all, the evil and the good, the rain, the dew, the sunshine and the flowers; from his rich stores he feeds them all. And in the same old book we read of man: He has a spirit knit to Tao Great; a soul which lives within the seven Breaths of Tao Great; a body of desires that springs up from the soil of flesh. Now spirit loves the pure, the good, the true; the body of desires extols the selfish self; the soul becomes the battle ground between the two. And blessed is the man whose spirit is triumphant and whose lower self is purified; whose soul is cleansed, becoming fit to be the council chamber of the manifests of Tao Great.”
Salome, a teacher of the Essenes in Zoan, gave this lesson to Elizabeth and Mary, who were to pass it on to their sons Jesus and John. Its main value lies in the wisdom principles it enunciates, but it is also of value since it shows that the Essenes knew and acknowledged the wisdom of Taoism and actively taught it.
The One, the Three, the Seven.
Though one, God is all these: One, Three, and Seven. Yet, even to say that God is One is an error, for God is not like an egg that we can point at Him and say: “One God.” (When we are with God there is no pointing or speaking, either.) However, since we are fragmented we often have to speak of God accordingly just to get the right ideas across to our minds.
The Rig Veda says that in the beginning the One “breathed breathlessly.” This is a play on words, for in Sanskrit the word prana means both “breath” and “life.” The idea is that God’s life and breath were purely internal, perfectly self-contained with no outward movement–with no movement at all. All things were in perfect suspension and balance. The One really was ONE.
“And Spirit breathed, and that which was not manifest became the Fire and Thought of Heaven, the Father-God, the Mother-God.” Life lived; Breath breathed. If you want to know in detail how all things came about, I recommend The Secret Doctrine by Helen Petrovna Blavatsky. There you will find a full discussion of the Cosmic Fire known as Fohat that is being referred to here. Fire and Thought–Power and Consciousness–are the Father and Mother of all creation. In Indian philosophy they are termed Purusha and Prakriti–Spirit and Energy. Now it is important to note that God the Father and God the Mother are both manifestations of the One that transcends this Divine Duality. Of course They are the One, but they are also veilings of the One, as is the Trinity.
“And when the Fire and Thought of heaven in union breathed, their son, their only son, was born. This son is Love whom men have called the Christ.” Love, as used here, is not the emotion of one person for another, but the positive magnetic force that draws us into union with the One. (This is explained in The Holy Science by Swami Yukteswar Giri.) Christ is the essential life of the Father-Mother God. It is Christ-Love that impels all intelligences into higher and higher evolution until their own Christhood is revealed and made permanently manifested, fulfilling the divine dictum: “Ye are gods.” It is in this sense that Christ is the only savior, the mediator between God and man. And Christ manifests in every age through those that have attained to Christhood. These Christs come to the world to show us the way to ascend to Christhood ourselves. They do not come to be worshipped or “believed in;” they come to give us the plain facts of spiritual life. The rest is up to us. We who truly believe their teachings do not accept them as our “personal Lord and Savior”–the idea would be abominable to them. Instead, we get busy and travel the same path they walked and attain the same Goal.
“Men call the Thought of heaven the Holy Breath.” In this instance, Thought means the dynamic aspect of Divine Will. The Holy Spirit, the Holy Breath, the Mother-God, is the outward-moving flow of consciousness that manifests (fulfills) the intention of the Father-God for us. The duality of relative existence (creation) are the two “breasts” of the Mother from which we draw sustenance for our evolutionary life. Therefore the eighth Ode of Solomon says: “I fashioned their members. My own breasts I prepared for them, that they might drink My holy milk and live thereby.”
“And when the Triune God breathed forth, lo, seven Spirits stood before the throne. These are Elohim, creative spirits of the universe. And these are they who said, Let us make man; and in their image man was made.” The Seven Spirits are discussed in The Seven Pillars of Aquarian Christianity. “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.” “God” is a completely dishonest translation of Elohim, for Elohim is plural, and second, it is feminine. As Salome says, they are universal creative spirits, of which our bodies and souls (not our spirits) are images. They are our lesser father-mothers. But we should not lose sight of the Unity, so she returns to that subject, speaking of the Tao.
The Tao
Taoism was not only known to the Essenes, its principles were taught by them to all their members. Here we see that the Formless is the source of all forms, that they are not mutually contradictory. All form proceeds from the Formless and returns to the Formless. No matter how many times the Many proceed from the One, there is always a return to Oneness–for Oneness always is.
The One (Tao) is the basis for the Many, and underlies it as its true being. Nothing could exist if it were not rooted in the One, and an extension of the One. Therefore, like the lower self in relation to the higher self, the Many never really exists at all except as an appearance. The Tao alone is.
It is impossible for the One to have any desire, any yearning for either another besides Himself, or a desire for a change in status. Yet He “causes sun and moon and all the stars to rise and set”–to come into manifestation and to merge back into the Unmanifest. It is not impossible to understand the “why” of creation (see our publication Robe of Light), but it is erroneous to attribute some desire or personal motive on the part of the Tao to its production. The desire and motive is on the part of the individual spirits alone.
The Tao has no existence as an object that He could be “named,” yet He is the source of all objects, indeed has become all objects, yet without any shadow of change whatsoever.
The Tao and human beings
Because of ignorant and manipulative religion it has been supposed that God has likes and dislikes in relation to human beings, that He rewards the good, whom he likes, and punishes the guilty, whom He hates. Both Judaism and Christianity propagate this falsehood even though the Psalmist wrote: “The Lord is good to all: and his tender mercies are over all his works,” and Jesus taught: “Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them which despitefully use you, and persecute you; that ye may be the children of your Father which is in heaven: for he maketh his sun to rise on the evil and on the good, and sendeth rain on the just and on the unjust. For if ye love them which love you, what reward have ye? do not even the publicans the same? And if ye salute your brethren only, what do ye more than others? do not even the publicans so? Be ye therefore perfect, even as your Father which is in heaven is perfect” in unconditional love. Krishna said: “I am the same to all beings: to Me there is not hateful or dear” in the egoic human sense, “but those who worship Me with devotion are in Me, and I, too, and in them.”
When we comprehend that God has no “like” or “dislike” in relation to us we can no longer think that good fortune or misfortune come from God in response to our either pleasing or displeasing Him, but rather they come from ourselves, just as an echo sends back to us the words we spoke beforehand. This is the truth about karma.
“And in the same old book we read of man: He has a spirit knit to Tao Great; a soul which lives within the seven Breaths of Tao Great; a body of desires that springs up from the soil of flesh.” God (Tao) is the ground of our being, our souls breathe the sevenfold “air” of His Seven Breaths, and our body is the product of our own desires. “God’s will for us” simply does not come into it except for the overshadowing purpose of evolution. We do live in and by Him, but the how, why, and where of our living is determined by us alone. Finally, though, we get some sense and begin to grow upward and out of “the soil of flesh” into the higher life of the soul, and from thence into the consciousness of spirit.
The inner warfare
“Now spirit loves the pure, the good, the true; the body of desires extols the selfish self; the soul becomes the battle ground between the two.” Although it actually took place, the Great Indian (Mahabharata) War which is the setting for the Bhagavad Gita, was set forth by the sage Vyasa in a manner that was symbolic of the battle ground of the soul and the war that rages there until perfection is attained. In that battle, as in us, the forces of good were outnumbered overwhelmingly by the forces of evil. Not only that, the evil were all related to the good–were shadow-counterparts of the good. For that reason, the destruction of the evil was a painful prospect to the good. Yet the battle had to be waged and the enemy had to be annihilated.
“And blessed is the man whose spirit is triumphant and whose lower self is purified; whose soul is cleansed, becoming fit to be the council chamber of the manifests of Tao Great.” “Jesus answered and said unto him, If a man love me, he will keep my words: and my Father will love him, and we will come unto him, and make our abode with him.” Within him shall the One, the Two, the Three, and the Seven appear and commune with him and make him their abode, the dwellingplace of the Most High.
More Commentary on the Aquarian Gospel: |
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• The Seven Pillars of Aquarian Christianity
• The Silence and the Word
1. Introducing the Aquarian Gospel
2. Revelations in the Temple
3. Revelations in Egypt
4. The Two Selfs
5. Deliverance From Gods and Demons
6. About God the Tao
7. The Wisdom of Buddha
8. God and Prayer
9. The Mission of Jesus and John the Baptist
10. Sin and the Forgiveness of Sin
11. The Universal Law of Man’s Free Will and the Divine Will For Man
12. Understanding Death
13. The True Teacher
14. Vision of the Child Jesus
15. The Law Behind All Laws
16. Opening To The Truth
17. The Twelve-Step Ladder To Perfection
18. What is Truth?
19. What Is Man?
20. What is Power?
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21. Understanding
22. Wisdom
23. Faith
24. Healing and Healers
25. The Destiny of All Men
26. God and Man
27. The Voice in the Heart
28. Seeing the Unseeable
29. To God Through Man
30. Who Is Jesus?
31. The Real Versus The Apparent
32. The Brotherhood of Life
33. God…and Man
34. Relating To God
35. The Worthy Host
36. Come to the Light
37. The Kingdom Revealed
38. The King Revealed
39. Perspective On Death
40. Fire and Sword
41. Evolution: The Path of Glory
42. The Real Heaven
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Text of The Aquarian Gospel of Jesus the Christ
by Levi H. Dowling
• Sections I and II –Birth and Early Life of Mary, Mother of Jesus, and Birth and Infancy of the Harbinger, and of Jesus
• Section III–Education of Mary and Elizabeth
• Sections IV and V–Childhood and Early Education of John the Harbinger, and Childhood and Early Education of Jesus
• Section VI–Life and Works of Jesus in India
• Sections VII through X–Life and Works of Jesus in Western India, Tibet, Persia, Assyria, and Greece
• Section XI–Life and Works of Jesus in Egypt
• Sections XII and XIII–The Council of the Seven Sages; The Ministry of John the Harbinger
• Sections XIV and XV–The Christine Ministry of Jesus–The First Annual Epoch
• Section XVI–The Christine Ministry of Jesus–The Second Annual Epoch
• Section XVII–The Christine Ministry of Jesus–The Third Annual Epoch
• Sections XVIII and XIX–The Betrayal, Arrest, Trial, and Execution of Jesus
• Sections XX through XXII–The Resurrection and Appearances of Jesus–Establishment of the Christine Church
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1) Aquarian Gospel 9:14-29
[Go back]
2) I am recommending only the original text of The Secret Doctrine, which is available from The Theosophy Company of Los Angeles or The Theosophical University Press of Pasadena. [Go back]
3) Psalms 82:6 [Go back]
4) “He that saith he abideth in him ought himself also so to walk, even as he walked” (I John 2:6). “For even hereunto were ye called:…that ye should follow his steps” (I Peter 2:21). [Go back]
5) Genesis 1:26,27 [Go back]
6) “Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, and cometh down from the Father of lights, with whom is no variableness, neither shadow of turning. Of his own will begat he us with the word of truth” (James 1:17,18). [Go back]
7) Psalms 145:9 [Go back]
8) Matthew 5:44-48 [Go back]
9) Gita 9:29 [Go back]
10) John 14:23 [Go back]
