 Gnosis of the Creed –by Swami Nirmalananda Giri
Chapter Eighteen—I confess one baptism for the remission of sins.
 A New Term
“I confess one Baptism for the remission of sins.” The verb change is interesting. Previously in the Creed we have been saying: “I believe,” but now we are confessing. In the last statement of the Creed we will be saying: “I look.” Why is this? The reason is twofold. First, genuine belief, pistis, is an effect of higher illumination. We may even say that true faith is an act of God, not of ourselves. Second, everything spoken of so far in the Creed–from the Trinity to the Church–is a matter of eternal verities. Nothing outlined has fallen in the scope of the individual’s will. What is, is. We either perceive it or we do not. And our perception or lack thereof has no bearing whatever on the matters treated so far. But now we come to another realm, that of our response, for “faith without works is dead.”
Precisely because the foregoing statements of the Creed are true, the illumined individual then acts upon his understanding in the only logical and correct way: he enters into the true Life of Christ through the recovery of his own Christhood. Confessing Baptism?
“I confess one Baptism for the remission of sins.” It is interesting to note that no mention is made of confessing Christ, as is so popular with those “churches” outside the Church, but instead it is made quite clear that the true Christian confesses baptism. Why is this? Because simple faith in Christ is useless. As has just been quoted, a faith that does not produce a corresponding action is “dead.” Putting more of a point on it are the words of Jesus: “He that believeth and is baptized shall be saved.” Any argumentation with this principle declared by Jesus, can only come from those “thieves and robbers” who would “climb up another way” into the kingdom of heaven.
We confess Christ by following Christ, not by eulogizing him or “accepting the Lord Jesus Christ as our personal Lord and Savior,” for He posited the question: “Why call ye me, Lord, Lord, and do not the things which I say?” He continues: “Whosoever cometh to me, and heareth my sayings, and doeth them,…is like a man which built an house, and digged deep, and laid the foundation on a rock.” “And that Rock was Christ,” Saint Paul tells us. Baptized in Christ
“I will greatly rejoice in the Lord, my soul shall be joyful in my God; for he hath clothed me with the garments of salvation, he hath covered me with the robe of righteousness.”
It is Christhood itself that is the garment of salvation, the robe of righteousness: “For as many of you as have been baptized into Christ have put on Christ.”
The word “baptism” is derived from the Greek baptizo, which means to immerse or plunge–usually into water. In the New Testament there are two distinct forms of baptism: one is immersion in water and the other is immersion in the Holy Spirit–in the Consciousness that is Christ and which gives birth to “Christ in you the hope of glory” within each aspiring soul. Inner baptism
It is the inner baptism, the baptism in Spirit, that is the Baptism of Christ; and this is clearly marked out in the Gospel texts. Saint John the Baptist told the people: “I baptize you with water: but he that cometh after me is mightier than I: he shall baptize you with the Holy Ghost.”
It is significant that Jesus never baptized anyone with water, but told His disciples: “With the baptism that I am baptized withal shall ye be baptized,” “for John truly baptized with water; but ye shall be baptized with the Holy Ghost.” For it is baptism with (in) the Holy Spirit that revealed Jesus as the Christ and sealed Him as the Son of God. “And lo, the heavens were opened unto him, and he saw the Spirit of God descending like a dove, and lighting upon him. And lo a voice from heaven, saying, This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased.” And so it shall be with us.
Jesus clearly tells us: “Behold, the kingdom of God is within you,” therefore His true disciples shall not “say, Lo here! or, lo there!” pointing others to external rites and observances that supposedly give the New Birth of baptism. In exoteric Christianity people are thought to be “christened” (Christed) by the baptism of water and thereby born into the kingdom of God. But Jesus said: “The kingdom of God cometh not with observation. Neither shall they say, Lo here! or, lo there! for, behold, the kingdom of God is within you.” No one can sprinkle, pour, or immerse in water and then legitimately give you a certificate saying you are now born anew in Christ and a citizen of the heavenly kingdom–a disciple of Jesus. There can be no witnesses or godparents at the true baptism of Christ, for it “cometh not with observation.” All the baptism fonts in the world cannot fulfil the function of the aspirant’s living heart. Nor can they point us to external “here and there” things that “prove” we are baptized and of the kingdom. They cannot rightly claim that because we say or act in a certain way or accept the set of dogmas or the spiritual authority of an institution or conglomerate of “believers” that we are proven to be really baptized or part of the divine kingdom. For it is all within.
Even more: Jesus did not say: “The kingdom of God shall be within you.” He said: “The kingdom of God is within you.” It is an ever-present eternal fact, not a future matter. All beings are ever in the kingdom, but they are out of touch with it and wander in forgetfulness. Jesus came to remind us of the kingdom, to reveal it, and to show us how to enter back into it on a functional level. The parable of the Prodigal Son affirms this. Consequently, He tell us regarding the exoteric teachers of Churchianity: “And they shall say to you, See here; or, see there. Go not after them, nor follow them.”
“And then if any man shall say to you, Lo, here is Christ; or, lo, he is there; believe him not.” That is: if anyone tells us that Christ is far away in the heavens or on the earth in the form of “His Church” or in the form of words on a printed page–or anywhere other than within us–believe him not.
And the same is true of baptism. “For by one Spirit are we all baptized; and have been all made to drink into one Spirit.” For it is the baptism in Spirit that enables us to “put on the Lord Jesus Christ.”
“But ye are not in the flesh, but in the Spirit, if so be that the Spirit of God dwell in you. Now if any man have not the Spirit of Christ, he is none of his.” Surely this is the final word on the matter. The ongoing baptism
Baptism is not a circumscribed happening in our life–not even in the inner life–that begins and ends in a few short moments. Rather, it is a perpetual process that continues until it culminates in the perfect liberation of the spirit into Spirit Itself. This baptism is always inward, yet it can manifest externally. This is why Jesus, in speaking of His future suffering and death, said to the apostles: “I have a baptism to be baptized with; and how am I straitened till it be accomplished!” In this instance He is speaking of being baptized in the will or the cosmic plan of God as well as undergoing the passion and the cross. And since He has told us that we, too, must take up the cross daily, our baptism is an ongoing event, as well.
The purpose of true Christianity–and of any valid religion–is the transformation of the aspirant into higher and higher levels of spiritual evolution until “the measure of the stature of the fulness of Christ” is attained. Thus Saint Paul exhorts us: “be ye transformed,” for it is this transmutation into Christ that is “that good, and acceptable, and perfect, will of God.” For the will of God is not–as is commonly supposed–merely our “doing good” or “serving” Him, but rather that “we all, with open face beholding as in a glass the glory of the Lord, are changed into the same image from glory to glory, even as by the Spirit of the Lord.”
Changed from glory to glory–what a marvellous destiny! But destiny is not enough. Just as potential means nothing unless it is realized, neither does destiny. That which “Eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, neither have entered into the heart of man,” is exactly “that which God hath prepared for them that love him” and must be actualized in us. Interior life–meditation–is the means of this actualization, for it alone is the “renewing of your mind” insisted upon by Saint Paul. The inner life is the “power to become the sons of God,” the Life of Christ that is the Light of mankind as it aspires to Divinity, that in time–or rather, eternity–we may be enabled to say: “And of his fulness have all we received, and grace for grace.” The real inner birth
It is within meditation that the conception, growth, birth, and development of the whole being of the aspirant “unto the measure of the stature of the fulness of Christ.” Without the practice of meditation there is no life in Christ. There may be an externalized “devotion to Jesus” on a sheerly intellectual and emotional level (and therefore egoic in nature), but Christ will not enter into it.
The meditative live alone is the effective life in Christ. It is the spirit that gives life, as opposed to the dead letter of outer religion. Meditation is truly “catholic”–kata holos, “containing the whole”–for it provide us with all that is needed for success in the transcendence of all limitation and the ascension to the Infinite.
Being a part of the living God, we are of course all alive essentially. But in our present condition that life is mostly potential rather than actual. We need a gestation, a quickening of the inner faculties that directly link our outer levels of existence to the immortal and eternal spirit within. This is accomplished by meditation. One baptism
Yet the Creed speaks of one baptism. How is this? Saint Paul wrote that “as many of you as have been baptized into Christ have put on Christ”–that is, have entered into Christhood. Obviously simple immersion in water cannot accomplish such a great thing that can only result from great endeavor and development on the part of the aspirant. To be plunged into Christ, to “put on Christ” is the pinnacle of spiritual attainment: deification itself. And since, as we have seen sin (amartano) is falling short of divinity, the state of separation in our consciousness from God and the negative propensities and consequences of “sinful” thought and act–including the karmas of a multitude of previous live–“the remission of sins” means their complete expunging or annihilation. This is the only real remission of sins there can be; all that we consider “spiritual life” simply leads up to it, to the brink of the ocean of Divine Consciousness. The irrevocable plunging into that Consciousness to be united totally with God is the One Baptism to which the “baptisms” of our meditations lead as necessary steps of the divine ladder which we ascend to The Baptism. And that is the baptism which we need to confess by the ordering of our lives, orienting everything internally and externally toward that supreme realization. Holy Communion
By meditation we are empowered to “grow up into Him in all things,” just as He became like us in all things. It is the esoteric means to enter into communion with Christ on all levels of our being, to become interpenetrated with Christ Consciousness and assimilate It into our own consciousness, “sealing” ourselves unto Him.
“Another parable spake he unto them; The kingdom of heaven is like unto leaven, which a woman took, and hid in three measures of meal, till the whole was leavened.” By receiving the seed-leaven of the Consciousness of Christ by means of meditation, the seeker can become completely “leavened” with It, receiving and absorbing It into all levels of his being. This is the “breaking of bread” in which Christ is known, for it unites us in every part of our existence with Jesus, and He imparts to us the fulness of His own Life. The body and blood of Jesus
Jesus tells us in the Gospel: “Verily, verily, I say unto you, Except ye eat the flesh of the Son of man, and drink his blood, ye have no life in you. Whoso eateth my flesh, and drinketh my blood, hath eternal life.…He that eateth my flesh, and drinketh my blood, dwelleth in me, and I in him.”
Besides the purely physical phenomena of Jesus material flesh and blood (and it was material, otherwise He could not have been “crucified under Pontius Pilate” or have suffered, died, or been buried), there are two other forms of His body and blood.
Firstly, there is the life of ascent to Christhood that follows the archetypal pattern of Jesus Himself. In this aspect the “body” of Christ is the external disciplines–especially of purification–needful to clear the way for the revelation of Christ within as well as the outer beliefs and attitudes necessary to keep us oriented toward Christhood. These outside things are the “flesh” of Christ. The consciousness of the inner Christ that becomes increasingly revealed within us is the “blood” of Christ. For that is the ultimate Life of Christ, the “life that is the light of men.” And in truth “the life is the blood” and the blood is the life.
“And Jesus said unto them, Ye shall indeed drink of the cup that I drink of.” Secondly, body of Christ is our becoming in the outer world exactly what He became in the outer world, and our becoming in the inner world exactly what He became in the inner world. To “eat”–to assimilate into ourselves and become–the inner and outer lives of Christ is to finally become genuine “Christians”–other Christs. We pass from communion as an experience to Communion as a state of being.
But we must realize that the body and blood of Jesus are not the physical entities of earth known as body and blood, but rather are the Divine Consciousness of Jesus–or, more exactly, they are the communion with the Consciousness that is Christ.
Meditation: Communion
After His resurrection Jesus transmuted His physical vehicles of body and blood into pure Consciousness. Though retaining their original appearance, their nature was no longer matter but Spirit. So when the Apostles–and later Saint Thomas–touched Jesus they were touching Consciousness Itself. So in meditation we are receiving and assimilating into all levels of our being the Consciousness of the Lord Jesus, His true “body” and “blood”–not earthly flesh and blood. We already have enough of that!
Through inner Communion the Consciousness of Christ is imparted to us and begins to pervade our bodies, our life energies, our mind, our intellects, and our wills–and to transmute them into Spirit, into Divinity, enabling us to pass “from glory to glory” until we, ourselves, become the Glory. This is the divine Alchemy of Christ. In every meditation this wondrous process takes place so that in us as in Christ Jesus “God may be all in all,” that we may truly and fully “taste and see that the Lord is good.” This is the real Communion that Jesus intended for us to experience.
If we will cultivate this divine implantation within us through an intense interior life, turning within in silence through meditation, we will find this Jesus living within us, spread like leaven throughout our whole being, and come to the full realization of the words: “Christ in you the hope of glory.”
Meditation is thus a necessary component of our spiritual life–if not actually the sole component–for through it alone can we follow the counsel of God: “Be still, and know that I am God” and experience the fulfillment of Jesus’ prayer: “This is life eternal, that they might know thee the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom thou hast sent.” Wherefore: “Commune with your own heart, and be still.”
Spiritual Laws Of Grace
The Hermetic Principle, “As above, so below,” is very important to keep in mind regarding spiritual life, for we tend to feel that spiritual matters function according to chance or whim in some random, abstract manner, when the truth is, the world of the spirit functions according to precise laws, just as does the world of matter. And as in the material world we accomplish our aims through following definite procedures, so it is in matters of the spirit, as well. The grace of God may be given freely, but it flows through specific channels such as those we have been considering, in a predetermined manner. As the Lord Jesus said: “I will give unto thee the keys of the kingdom of heaven.”
“There is a river, the streams whereof shall make glad the city of God.” The Holy Spirit is the mystical River from Which flow these various means of mercy and grace which impart the Life of Christ. The City of God is the seeker himself, for through the divine baptism of many meditations that lead to the supreme baptism of union with God he becomes himself the tabernacle of God.
“And I heard a great voice out of heaven saying, Behold, the tabernacle of God is with men, and he will dwell with them, and they shall be his people, and God himself shall be with them, and be their God.”
With this in mind, Saint Paul wrote: “We have this treasure in earthen vessels [the physical body], that the excellency of the power may be of God.” 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) James 2:20 [Go back]
2) Mark 16:16 [Go back]
3) “Verily, verily, I say unto you, He that entereth not by the door into the sheepfold, but climbeth up some other way, the same is a thief and a robber.” (John 10:1) [Go back]
4) Luke 6:46 [Go back]
5) Luke 6:47,48 [Go back]
6) I Corinthians 10:4 [Go back]
7) Isaiah 61:10 [Go back]
8) Galatians 3:27 [Go back]
9) Colossians 1:27 [Go back]
10) Matthew 3:11. Also: Mark 1:8 and Luke 3:16. [Go back]
11) “Jesus himself baptized not, but his disciples.” (John 4:2) [Go back]
12) Mark 10:39 [Go back]
13) Acts 1:5, 11:16 [Go back]
14) Matthew 3:16,17 [Go back]
15) Luke 17:20,21 [Go back]
16) Luke 17:23 [Go back]
17) Mark 13:21 [Go back]
18) I Corinthians 12:13 [Go back]
19) Romans 13:14 [Go back]
20) Romans 8:9 [Go back]
21) Luke 12:50 [Go back]
22) “And he said to them all, If any man will come after me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross daily, and follow me.” (Luke 9:23) [Go back]
23) Ephesians 4:13 [Go back]
24) Romans 12:2 [Go back]
25) Ibid. [Go back]
26) II Corinthians 3:18 [Go back]
27) I Corinthians 2:9 [Go back]
28) Romans 12:2 [Go back]
29) “In him was life; and the life was the light of men.” (John 1:4) [Go back]
30) John 1:16 [Go back]
31) Galatians 3:27 [Go back]
32) Ephesians 4:15 [Go back]
33) “In all things it behoved him to be made like unto his brethren” (Hebrews 2:17). [Go back]
34) Matthew 13:33 [Go back]
35) Luke 24:35, Acts 2:42 [Go back]
36) John 6:53,54,56 [Go back]
37) John 1:4 [Go back]
38) Leviticus 17:11,14; Deuteronomy 12:23 [Go back]
39) Mark 10:39 [Go back]
40) “If the Spirit of him that raised up Jesus from the dead dwell in you, he that raised up Christ from the dead shall also quicken your mortal bodies by his Spirit that dwelleth in you.” (Romans 8:11) [Go back]
41) II Corinthians 3:18 [Go back]
42) I Corinthians 15:28 [Go back]
43) Psalm 34:8 [Go back]
44) Psalms 46:10 [Go back]
45) John 17:3 [Go back]
46) Psalms 4:4 [Go back]
47) Matthew 16:19 [Go back]
48) Psalm 46:4 [Go back]
49) Revelation 21:3 [Go back]
50) II Corinthians 4:7 [Go back] |
