 Gnosis of the Creed –by Swami Nirmalananda Giri
Chapter Fifteen—Of Whose kingdom there shall be no end.
 The Deeper Meaning
We have come to the culmination of the major part of the Creed and are ready to consider its deeper meaning.
Christianity is a mystery religion, a mystery school of inner teaching, never meant for the populace in general. To scale down the teachings of the Gospel “so everyone can understand” is in direct opposition to the Lord, Who spoke in parables so that few would understand. Even in the closing hours of His life, the Lord said unto the Father: “I pray not for the world.”
The idea of “bringing Christ to the whole world” (or vice versa) is a delusion, for it is explicitly stated in the Holy Scriptures that the world cannot receive His illumination. The two are antithetical; one cancels out the other.
By “world” is meant the realm of the ignorant human ego, not the world which God created or those who live therein. The Lord further said: “No man can serve two masters: for either he will hate the one, and love the other; or else he will hold to the one, and despise the other. Ye cannot serve God and mammon.” By “mammon” He meant material consciousness and that which produces and fosters material consciousness. “Balance”
It has become quite popular to speak of leading a “balanced” life of spirituality and external activities. The idea is certainly appealing, but let us take a look at plain facts.
If we attend church or “spiritually-related” activity for one hour a week, we are giving only one-half of one percent of our time to God! Ninety-nine and one half percent is given to our egos and the world!!! If three hours a week are given, it is still only one and a half percent. A person who meditates for one hour a day and participates in public spiritual activities two or three hours in the week is still only giving slightly over six percent of his time to God! To simply “tithe” (give ten percent) of our time we must give a little under seventeen hours a week to pursuit of spiritual life.
Therefore we should definitely set in mind to devote at least a tenth of our time each week to spiritual practice. We can do this by each day meditating one and a half to two hours, studying spiritual books for thirty to sixty minutes, and attending some type of spiritual activity for an hour or so. (It is sad that I cannot simply mention church attendance, but most church is an utter waste of valuable time.) Certainly, a little reflection will show that this is only reasonable and not at all extreme.
“He which soweth sparingly shall reap also sparingly; and he which soweth bountifully shall reap also bountifully.” This is a law of both material and spiritual life. So if we would have an abundant spiritual harvest the way is simple: give as much time as possible (and practical) to spiritual pursuits–most especially to meditation.
Those who pass their lives with minimal expenditure of time in spiritual pursuits will eventually stand before the judgment at the end of life and lament: “The harvest is past, the summer is ended, and we are not saved!” And to them shall be said: “Thou art weighed in the balances, and art found wanting.”
The Apostle asked: “How shall we escape, if we neglect so great salvation?” Salvation, which is deliverance from the endless chain of births and deaths, is “great” indeed–of such a magnitude that it cannot be accomplished by superficial involvement with God. We must ponder the arrangement of our lives so we can give much more time to spiritual practice than we do. If we sleep for eight hours and work to make a living for eight hours, that still leaves eight hours a day, most of which we allow to be whittled away from us without giving it a thought, and then claim to have no time. We are not balanced; we are deluded. And this particular delusion can keep us bound in ignorance for ages to come. The Root Cause
The root from which these problems arise is simple and tragic: we have no “taste” for God. Rock sugar is the cure for certain liver ailments, but to those who have those liver disorders, sugar actually tastes bitter! And since it tastes bitter, the patient refuses to eat it. The spiritual condition of man is the same. That which he should love to always think about, which should be the delight of his life, and to which he should fly for refuge, is distasteful to him, and deep involvement with it is considered by him as “too much to expect.”
To Christ no price was too high to save us. Why? Because He loves us. But we do not love God, so we feel that no price is worth paying for union with Him. A Sobering Thought
The next statement of the Creed to consider is easily repeated, but rarely understood: “And of His kingdom there shall be no end.”
It is not mine or yours, but His kingdom. To dwell therein, to “go up and possess the land,” all deluded consciousness of an individualized, separate existence from the infinite Life of God must be transcended. Though we like to boast of and cling to that which we call our “individuality,” “personality,” “self identity,” etc., such a state of consciousness springs from our ego, our false self which, when seen in the light of Truth, is the principle of Antichrist within us. That primal evil cannot enter into the Kingdom of God. Only those who have dissolved the ego and reclaimed their true identity can go in freely.
“Flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God.” Why? Because it is God’s Kingdom, and God is pure Spirit. Consciousness of material life and existence, with its consequent identification with the mortal body and this perishable world, is in direct contradiction to the very Being of God, which is our true being, also. As Saint John the Baptist said regarding spiritual (“He”) consciousness versus egoic (“I”) consciousness: “He must increase, but I must decrease.” Annihilation?
Does that mean we must become annihilated and cease to exist? No. Just the opposite. We must awake from this false “life,” which is actually the sleep of death, and begin to live our true life as spirits within Spirit. This is the meaning behind the statement: “He that findeth his life shall lose it: and he that loseth his life for my sake shall find it.” That is, when we give up “our” life that is really no life at all but an illusion and seek God alone, we will then find our real life which is His Life and be enabled to say as did Jesus: “I and the Father are one.” Then His kingdom shall be ours through our union with Him.
Our Dilemma
The Kingdom of God is the state of eternal Oneness, and is the original condition of our spirit. When we were separated from this state of unity, as a substitute we gathered around ourselves the ego, the will, the mind, and ultimately this corruptible, physical body. We put on a costume and eventually began to believe the costume was really our self. We forgot who we were and began to live as what we could never really be. As a result we passed through life after life in self-created misery and frustration, blaming other human beings, God, “fate,” “natural forces,” and so forth, but never accepting the responsibility ourselves.
We often hear it asked: “If there is a God, why does He allow our suffering?” It is not God who permits our misery, but we ourselves, the very ones who create it. We do not want the suffering, but we cling to the cause of suffering, our egoic ignorance, from life to life. Many people learn of reincarnation and like the idea of limitless opportunities for physical embodiment and realization of material ambitions and desires. But the actual purpose of reincarnation is spiritual evolution and ultimate freedom from the body.
Like it or not, everything within us that orients us to the time-space existence and universe, causing us to think “God is one and I am another,” has to go, for that attitude was the original sin of Eve and Adam. They set themselves up as separate entities who could act independently of God. The primal sin is not disobedience, or pride, or greed. The primal sin is to say: “He is one and I am another.”
A Matter Of Consciousness
Saint Paul wrote: “Whilst we are at home in the body, we are absent from the Lord,” and “We are confident, I say, and willing rather to be absent from the body, and to be present with the Lord.” He is not speaking of embodiment versus disembodiment, but rather the focus of consciousness. We can be living in the body and have our consciousness centered in the spirit. On the other hand, there are many who have been expelled from the physical body by death but are intent on only one thing: getting back into another physical body. So even when out of the body they are “in” the body through the body-orientation of their consciousness.
Identity And Consciousness
People of little evolution think that if they lose their body they will go out of existence–that embodiment and existence are inseparable. In their theology, resurrection of the body is the highest gift of God for man. Those of a somewhat higher degree of evolution identify with the intellect or intuition. Since even intellect and intuition are “self-centered,” rooted in the illusion of separation from God, they, too, fear the ultimate union with God in which intellect and intuition are dissolved as though it were annihilation. But if we would truly live, then all the shadows which we call life must be dispelled by the light of God Consciousness.
A pure crystal has no color of its own. If placed on a purple cloth, it will appear to be purple; if held up to the blue sky, it will seem to be blue. It picks up the color of whatever object it is placed near. So it is with us. We are pure, unconditioned consciousnesses, beyond relative forms and names. Yet, when placed in a body, we appear to be physical. Centered in the intelligence, we appear to be intellectual; centered in feeling, we seem to be emotional. When the intuitional side of things is opened to us, we appear to be psychic. But we are none of these, ever. Always and forever we are spirit. And until we regain that awareness, we are far from the kingdom of God. Playing Or Living?
The man who played Charley’s Aunt for so many years on Broadway came to believe he was Charley’s Aunt and had to be “put away.” We, too, are like that. Instead of playing the role of relative existence as originally intended, we have begun to live the role and identify with it. What a relief it will be when all this falsehood drops away from us and we stand free in our real being, ignorance dissolved forever and only that which is real remaining. Nothing will be lost; infinitude will be gained.
Why, then, do we shrink back from that wonderful state? Because there is in us “an evil heart of unbelief, in departing from the living God” of Whom we are an eternal part.
Go Within
The Lord Jesus said plainly: “Behold, the kingdom of God is within you.” Therefore no far away heaven or some future kingdom upon this earth can be that kingdom which Christians seek. Those who worship the body and this world hold out such mythological hopes to their similarly degraded followers, but the Lord tells us: “From such turn away.” Of them He also said that they “err, not knowing the scriptures, nor the power of God.”
For the genuine Christian, the interior life is the only path to the kingdom of God. Since the kingdom is within, the only way to get there is to turn within and enter the depths of our own spirits. Through meditation alone can we “leave all behind” and go beyond the body, the senses, the mind, the intellect, and even the intuition, and enter directly into our true being, which is also the being of God, “For in him we live, and move, and have our being.”
To realize this we must meditate to bring silence to the mind and ultimately produce the cessation of all relative experience, silencing the “noise” of relative existence and external consciousness. In that Silence we attain the direct, immediate knowledge of God, having fulfilled the command: “Be still, and know that I am God.”
To experience this we must divest ourselves of everything that is not God, and be god with God. This is indicated in the Song of Solomon: “I sought him whom my spirit loveth: I sought him, but I found him not. I will rise now, and go about the city in the streets, and in the broad ways I will seek him whom my spirit loveth: I sought him, but I found him not. The watchmen that go about the city found me: to whom I said, Saw ye him whom my spirit loveth? It was but a little that I passed from them, but I found him whom my spirit loveth.”
The body is “the city of nine gates.” But God is not to be found in experience of the body, in thoughts and emotions, nor in the “streets and broad ways” which are the energy passages and centers within our psychic levels. The “watchmen” are the senses, both material and psychic. God is beyond their grasp, so when the questing spirit asks if they have seen God, the only possible answer is “No.” However, once we go beyond the senses, which are the supports of dual consciousness, we can experience God directly as the totality of our being, the Ocean of Light in Which we are eternal waves.
What Is Eternity?
Eternity is not time without end, but the mode of God’s existence outside time and relativity. To enter into eternity is not to go to the mythological heaven or hell of the ancient Greeks and Romans, which has been grafted into Christianity. Instead, it is to go back to God. Of that state Saint Paul said: “Now I know in part; but then shall I know even as also I am known.” How was he known? He was known in his totality by God. Therefore he means that in that state he (and we) shall know God to perfection, in totality. And just as he was known by the infinite consciousness of God, so also he (and we) will know God through participating in that same infinite consciousness which he also called “the mind of Christ.” The only way that could be possible would be by his (and our) being one with God so fully that he (and we) could say: “Nevertheless I live; yet not I, but Christ liveth in me.” Having come “unto the measure of the stature of the fulness of Christ,” we will be able to say with Him: “I and my Father are one.”
Meditation is the key to the principle of “Christ in you, the hope of glory,” “the mystery which hath been hid from ages and from generations, but now is made manifest to his saints,” “by his Spirit: for the Spirit searcheth all things, yea, the deep things of God.…even so the things of God knoweth no man, but the Spirit of God. Now we have received, not the spirit of the world, but the spirit which is of God; that we might know the things that are freely given to us of God.…But we have the mind of Christ.”
Oneness With God
To be one with God is to possess the Kingdom of God, to possess Him Who said in Genesis: “I am thy…exceeding great reward.” Christ defined eternal life, saying: “This is life eternal, that they might know thee the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom thou hast sent.” To understand the mystical implications of the term “know,” we must remember that Christianity is an Oriental religion. All the Oriental philosophies postulate that to know something you must become one with it by merging your consciousness with it. When you are one with it to the degree that there are no longer two, but only one, then you really know it. To know God is to be one with God, to be god. The Truth And The Substitute
As stated, to know God we must be god. We must become one with Jesus Christ through the Holy Spirit, and then through Him we shall become one with the Father. That alone is eternal life. Jesus came to offer hope of freedom from relative existence, not the awful prospect of being stagnated in an eternal heavenly mansion somewhere, still in the prison of our ego-identification.
The Real Goal
“Christ is the end of the law,” wrote Saint Paul. That is, when we keep the law of righteousness, the end–the completion–of it is not in being rewarded with heaven or “blessings,” but rather in our becoming a Christ. Our attainment of Christhood is the consummation of our observance of spiritual principles of life.
Unending Kingdom
“Of His kingdom, there shall be no end.” No end. This is another proof that His kingdom is He Himself, for nothing can be endless except that which is also beginningless. And that alone is God. And it is our true self, our spirit, as well, for we, too, are beginningless and endless.
Furthermore, since our possession of the Kingdom will never end, it is evident that we possessed it from eternity, that our “losing” of it is simply a matter of our losing awareness of it. Once we “come to ourself” by entering back into our own being, we will find we have always possessed it. When all that is false drops away from us, we then enter back into the condition we have always had, though we long ago forgot and abandoned it. We regain the Kingdom by regaining our awareness of it. And that awareness is in the core of our consciousness, our true heart. This is why meditation is rightly called “the prayer of the heart.” It is the process by which we can return to the Kingdom.
We are dreaming our “life,” seeing it unfolding before us with all its ups and downs, changing from miseries to happinesses, from failures to successes, from hopes to frustrations, and none of it really exists! It is a mere appearance. Yet we cling desperately to the little movie of psychic celluloid running through the projector of our mind, while all along we are part of the eternal, immortal, infinite Life.
The Mystery Of Unity
We must ever keep in mind that we are part, not the totality. He alone is the Totality. Yet we can enter into perfect oneness with Him and He with us. “My beloved is mine and I am his,” says the Song of Songs. We only waste our time by trying to imagine what that state is like. Such a state is a mystery, just as is the Trinity in which Three are absolutely one. What is impossible “here” can be easy “there.” For “with God all things are possible,” including the state of being absolutely one with Him and fully distinct at the same time. Our individual consciousnesses can be merged with Him so that only the One is, and yet we will not cease to exist as individual entities. We will not disappear into nothingness, but all separation from Him will cease. While this cannot be understood by the intellect, it can be experienced by the consciousness of the spirit through contemplative meditation.
Irrevocable Union
Once that status has been regained, there is no losing it. Therefore Saint John wrote: “Whosoever is born of God doth not commit sin; for his seed remaineth in him: and he cannot sin, because he is born of God.” Once we have fully transferred our consciousness–been spiritually “born”–into that kingdom and become one with Him, regaining our true self, it will never end. “Him that overcometh will I make a pillar in the temple of my God, and he shall go no more out.” Further, “To him that overcometh will I grant to sit with me in my throne.” “Temple” and “throne” are symbols of God’s own state of being and consciousness. In Summation
Since this kingdom is within, we need only go to the root of our being, and there we shall find both our true selves and God, for they are one. More chapters of the Gnosis of the Creed:
• Chapter One—The Nicene Creed
• Chapter Two—I believe
• Chapter Three—In one God, the Father almighty
• Chapter Four—Maker of heaven and earth, And of all things visible and invisible
• Chapter Five—And in one Lord
• Chapter Six—Jesus Christ
• Chapter Seven—The Only-begotten Son of God, Begotten of the Father before all ages. Light from Light, True God from true God. Begotten not made, Being of one substance with the Father; By Whom all things were made.
• Chapter Eight—Who for us men, and for our salvation
• Chapter Nine—Came down from heaven
• Chapter Ten—And was incarnate by the Holy Spirit
• Chapter Eleven—Of the Virgin Mary. And was made Man.
• Chapter Twelve—He was crucified also for us under Pontius Pilate. Suffered and was buried.
• Chapter Thirteen—And the third day He rose again according to the Scriptures. And ascended into heaven. He sitteth at the right hand of the Father.
• Chapter Fourteen—And He shall come again with glory to judge the living and the dead.
• Chapter Fifteen—Of Whose kingdom there shall be no end.
• Chapter Sixteen—And in the Holy Spirit, the Lady and Giver of life: Who proceedeth from the Father. Who together with the Father and the Son Is worshipped and glorified. Who spoke by the prophets.
• Chapter Seventeen—And in one, holy, catholic and apostolic Church.
• Chapter Eighteen—I confess one baptism for the remission of sins.
• Chapter Nineteen—And I look for the resurrection of the dead. And the life of the age to come. Amen.
1) “And the disciples came, and said unto him, Why speakest thou unto them in parables? He answered and said unto them, Because it is given unto you to know the mysteries of the kingdom of heaven, but to them it is not given. For whosoever hath, to him shall be given, and he shall have more abundance: but whosoever hath not, from him shall be taken away even that he hath. Therefore speak I to them in parables: because they seeing see not; and hearing they hear not, neither do they understand. And in them is fulfilled the prophecy of Esaias, which saith, By hearing ye shall hear, and shall not understand; and seeing ye shall see, and shall not perceive: For this people’s heart is waxed gross, and their ears are dull of hearing, and their eyes they have closed; lest at any time they should see with their eyes, and hear with their ears, and should understand with their heart, and should be converted, and I should heal them. But blessed are your eyes, for they see: and your ears, for they hear.” (Matthew 13:10-16) [Go back]
2) “I pray for them: I pray not for the world, but for them which thou hast given me; for they are thine.” (John 17:9) [Go back]
3) “And I will pray the Father, and he shall give you another Comforter, that he may abide with you for ever; Even the Spirit of truth; whom the world cannot receive, because it seeth him not, neither knoweth him: but ye know him; for he dwelleth with you, and shall be in you.” (John 14:16,17) “But the natural man receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God: for they are foolishness unto him: neither can he know them, because they are spiritually discerned.” (I Corinthians 2:14) [Go back]
4) Matthew 6:24 [Go back]
5) II Corinthians 9:6 [Go back]
6) Jeremiah 8:20 [Go back]
7) Daniel 5:27 [Go back]
8) Hebrews 2:3 [Go back]
9) Deuteronomy 9:23 [Go back]
10) I Corinthians 15:50 [Go back]
11) John 3:30 [Go back]
12) Matthew 10:39 [Go back]
13) II Corinthians 5:6,8 [Go back]
14) Hebrews 3:12 [Go back]
15) Luke 17:21 [Go back]
16) II Timothy 3:5 [Go back]
17) Matthew 22:29 [Go back]
18) “Then Peter began to say unto him, Lo, we have left all, and have followed thee.” (Mark 10:28, Luke 18:28) “And he [Matthew] left all, rose up, and followed him.” (Luke 5:28) [Go back]
19) Acts 17:28 [Go back]
20) Psalm 46:10 [Go back]
21) Song of Solomon 3:1-4 [Go back]
22) I Corinthians 13:12 [Go back]
23) I Corinthians 2:16 [Go back]
24) Galatians 2:20 [Go back]
25) John 10:30 [Go back]
26) Colossians 1:27 [Go back]
27) Colossians 1:26 [Go back]
28) I Corinthians 2:1-12,16 [Go back]
29) Genesis 15:1 [Go back]
30) John 17:3 [Go back]
31) Romans 10:4 [Go back]
32) Song of Songs 2:16 [Go back]
33) Matthew 19:26 [Go back]
34) I John 3:9 [Go back]
35) Revelation 3:12 [Go back]
36) Revelation 3:21 [Go back]
|
