 I Believe: The Faith of a Gnostic Christian
An Esoteric Outline of the Nicene Creed
– by Swami Nirmalananda Giri
The Nicene Creed
I believe in one God, the Father Almighty, maker of heaven and earth and of all things visible and invisible.
And in one Lord, Jesus Christ, 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.
Who for us men, and for our salvation, came down from heaven and was incarnate by the Holy Spirit of the Virgin Mary, and was made Man.
He was crucified also for us under Pontius Pilate, suffered and was buried.
And the third day He rose again according to the Scriptures.
And ascended into heaven. He sitteth at the right hand of the Father.
And He shall come again with glory to judge the living and the dead; of Whose kingdom there shall be no end.
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.
And in one, holy, catholic and apostolic Church.
I confess one baptism for the remission of sins.
I look for the resurrection of the dead.
And the life of the age to come.
Amen. I,
an immortal, conscious entity, breathed forth from the Bosom of God, which is the very being of God, was sent forth to descend into this world of matter. Here, through ages and cycles of creation beyond count, I have traversed the scale of earthly evolution. Beginning with a simple atom of hydrogen, I have consciously taken upon myself every mode of earthly existence, every form of life manifesting in this world, living in that form until attaining the fullest potential of that form, then passing on to the next higher degree of embodiment, culminating in the status where I stand today: humanity.
Nor is this the first time I have stood upon the earth as a human being. The sun in its perpetual circling has appeared to me through myriad sets of eyes as I–the true “me”–have come to rest in countless bodies, each of which was a rung on the ladder of my personal evolution. Mercifully, the memory of all but a few of them is kept stored far away where they cannot distract me in my present work upward.
I may not remember the superficial details of my former lives, but their effects are ever with me as my body itself, which is a whirling energy mass composed of the thoughts, hopes, loves, aversions, ambitions and desires generated by me in those previous lives. Every energy pattern in all my bodies, gross and subtle, is a “word” for which I am accounting, each and every one, as our Master, Jesus, told us is the law. This is especially evident in my mental and psychic levels which I so often mistakenly call “me” and “myself.” The changes they have gone through are as multiple as the changes of the universe–and as diverse. Yet, they have ever been tending toward a single goal: return to the ONE from whence I came.
For lifetimes beyond number I did not consciously know this truth and so enmeshed myself in follies as variegated as the bodies I inhabited. Religion was not the least of these. Creeds, like the jewels within a kaleidoscope, occupied my mind in varying degrees as the lives cycled by. I obeyed, I disobeyed; I accepted, I rejected; I mocked, I feared–though only with my body and the shallowest part of my mind. Yet something within me ripened, stirred, and came to life. Awareness reaching beyond external life awoke in my consciousness, and I came to
believe
No, not to just accept and obey, but to experience for myself the substance of things aspired to, the evidence of things unseen. This was not attained by me through any actions, however virtuous, but was the result of my maturing, the unfolding of my spiritual destiny–a destiny set before the foundations of the world, and therefore a gift held for me
in
the infinite Bosom of the
one God
besides Whom there is no other: no other life, no other being–no, not one, not even the “me” I so blindly cling to.
This God is All: the Substance of all, the Self of all. Yet, since That is my origin as well as the Source of all else that is, I may call upon God as the Father
the sole transcendent Reality beyond all relative existence, dwelling in unapproachable light, Himself the Light in which all lesser lights are perceived, yet Himself ever remaining unseen, unnameable, inconceivable, incommunicable, ineffable–even these words being weak shadows hardly conveying the truth of His nature. Being all, He is therefore
almighty,
the sole Source and Will and Power that exists, all else being pale reflections of His Reality which He Himself brings forth from His own Self as the
maker
the Manifester, of all that exists, even if but for a moment, breathing forth into manifestation, and again withdrawing into Himself in precise cycles of ordered creation, that which is at all times an integral part of His infinite Life, the life
of heaven
the Celestial Hierarchy, the great ranks of nonmaterial Powers, ranging from the greatest to the least, yet all being conveyors of His perfect Life in a chain of living force that flows through all that exists, enlivening and attuning it to the infinite Perfection, including their respective worlds in which they live, move, and have their being. That divine Life surges downward from the heights of heaven, from the Throne of God, through all these rarefied strata of existence and consciousness,
and earth
as well, which is the most objective manifestation of that single Life in the scale of Its boundless modes of existence.
Yes, the heavens and the earth are His and the fulness
of all things
without exception, for apart from Him no thing can exist–no, not even as an illusion, for in Him, and with Him, and from Him both the
visible
world of atomic matter perceived by the senses of the physical body
and invisible
worlds which the eyes and ears of earth cannot see or hear, but which the illumined psychic nature easily apprehends, draw their being, which in actuality is always His being alone. For it is an absolute truth that besides Him there is no “other.”
According to the divine pattern, here, in this “visible” world of materiality, the soul takes up its first form, dwells in it until perfect control and manifestation of consciousness is attained, then lays aside that form and moves on to the next in the scale of ascending complexity and capacity for manifesting consciousness.
Having traversed the spectrum of earthly manifestation in numberless mineral, plant, and animal forms, the soul is then ready for the next rung on the ladder of divine ascent: the world of Paradise, the true home of that level of evolution we call “human.”
But all is not well in this particular cycle of creation, and the divine pattern is not being followed.
Long ago, in measureless time, at the beginning of a cycle of this creation’s manifestation, the realm of Paradise was empty, for at the close of the prior creation, all those souls residing there had passed onward into the Angelic world to continue their ascent therein when the next creation cycle of manifestation should take place.
Two souls that had in the former cycle grown beyond the need for further manifestation in the earth plane, yet had been prevented from entering Paradise by the ending of that cycle, were taken by the celestial guides, the Elohim, and placed in Paradise, clothed in paradisiacal bodies of light which overlay their elder bodies that reflected their animal embodiments on earth. Adam and Eve they were named, destined to become the Father and Mother of the newly-emerging human race, as through them those upward-striving souls graduating from the earth plane could enter Paradise and continue their destined growth unto divinity.
New and innocent, they had the Elohim as companions and teachers to walk with them and guide them in the ways of their new status of life. The Elohim did not always walk with them, however, for Adam and Eve needed to mature and develop their potentials by gaining knowledge for themselves of the ways of Paradise. And in one of those times of divine withdrawal, another came to walk with Eve, to speak with her and to draw her into his way–the way of rebellion.
Lucifer, fallen Archangel, unable to capture the heights of the heavens, had then determined to dominate the lower parts of creation, to subject all souls therein to his rule by trapping them in those regions forever, preventing their passage to higher life and evolution. There he planned to bend and subvert them into his own image and likeness as they circled ceaselessly through the endless rounds of births and deaths, drawing them ultimately into the outer darkness of the Abyss to which he had been banished, where, repolarized like him, they might forever dwell in the void, hating the light and hiding from it in eternal rejection.
His first steps had been to incite those Archangels and Angels in whom love for God was imperfect to turn from the One and seek to serve themselves alone–to attain to rulership in the Abyss rather than to serve in Heaven, to become “gods” “in their own right.”
Folly beyond measure was theirs in following Lucifer’s seductions. Cast down from heaven, they wandered without a place of their own, hoping to steal from the ignorant souls on the lower levels the rulership of those lesser worlds. But they had to be invited into those worlds by their rightful citizens, who alone could open the door for their terrible invasion. And he planned to accomplish this through Adam and Eve.
Eve hearkened to Lucifer’s words of twisted truth, conceiving in her heart the death-bearing fruit of self-worship: the madness of reaching forth to take with her own hands in self-confidence and ambition what can only be rightly received from the hand of God in humility and surrender, in love of God beyond love of self. She set her own misperceptions up against the loving warning of her Creator, making her own “truth,” her own “reality,” rather than humbly believing the words of her Lord.
She reached forth her hands and took that for which she was not yet ready. She gave it to Adam as well. He was the more culpable, for he had not been subjected to the psychic seduction of Lucifer. Rather, with open eyes he transgressed in fulness of will and understanding.
Willing to cut themselves off from their Father’s life, seeking an independence of separation from His mandates, they received the truth of their desires. They had scorned their status in Paradise, aspiring to that mode of being in which the body of Paradise is left far behind. Never could they have attained that supreme status by their mere rapaciousness; but the shedding of their Paradise bodies did occur, and they found themselves naked, clothed in light no longer but in the old reflections of their earthly evolution. Progressing further in the likeness of Lucifer and his followers, they, too, yearned to hide from the face of God.
That also was granted them, for having rejected the divine mode of evolution, Paradise was closed to them. Unable–because unwilling–to go forward, they could only move backwards, falling downward into the earth plane, to which they were also aliens, having evolved beyond any form of life therein. In this as well, they became like Lucifer and his dupes.
Fallen from the heights, they would have circled aimlessly in the orbit of the physical plane, unable to enter even there. Incapable of moving either forward or backward, they would have been completely in the influence of Lucifer and the other rebels, who, seizing them, would have worked their complete polarization to evil, to their own anti-life mode of total rejection of God, evolution, and life itself. Becoming “negative” in the truest sense of the term, they would have sunk into the Abyss, there to dwell through incalculable ages in a satire of existence, falling lower and lower unto complete annihilation. Wilful damnation–a horror far overreaching the fantasies of religionists and those they terrify with their childish presentation of mere torments in a mythical pit of fire–would have been theirs. The fictional hell of modern revivalists is a joyful paradise compared to the truth of the Abyss. But, “if we are faithless, He remains faithful; He cannot deny Himself,” so the Lord of love set about to rescue His fallen children from the awful fate they had ignorantly set themselves to suffer.
It was now impossible for them to dwell in Paradise; but it was equally impossible for them to again inhabit the earthly bodies they had evolved beyond. And so the Elohim made for them a new form in which to dwell: the human body, the “tunics of skin” spoken of in Genesis. Not being a product of earthly evolution, it was as alien to the earth as the souls inhabiting it, for it permitted the beginning degrees of self-consciousness and the unique power of The Word, which later became human speech, but in its primal mode is pure self-awareness. Full remembrance of Paradise was granted unto Adam and Eve, and so they spent their life yearning for that immortal abode, striving to purify themselves that they might reenter there and again take up the bodies of light they had left behind.
But a new factor had entered into the earth plane along with them: involuntary death. Heretofore the individual soul, as it passed up the scale of earthly evolution, lived in only one body of each type–living therein, free from all suffering, disorder or disease of any kind, for as long as was needed for it to realize the full potential of that form in mastery and consciousness. Then, effortlessly with full will and consciousness, the soul simply stepped out of that body and into a body of the next degree of evolution. This was no longer true. Distortion and disorder accompanied by pain, whose purpose was to draw the awareness of the soul out of itself and into the temporal existence of the earth plane in forgetfulness of its true nature so Lucifer and his followers could implant within them a false self-concept to reshape them into their demonic likeness, had entered the earthly creation along with Adam and Eve.
By continually interrupting the soul’s course through involuntary death–throwing it back into another birth so that it would have to spend years learning over and over again in each life the simple fundamentals of earthly existence–the passage upward from one evolutionary form to the next would be rendered almost impossible, certainly taking place only after great stretches of time. Through this vast slowing down of the soul’s progress, the evil ones gained virtually an eternity in which to work their will upon the ignorant helpless souls.
Thus, being under the new law of involuntary birth and death, the efforts of Adam and Eve to regain Paradise were interrupted by bodily death. Yet they continued to strive from life to life upon the earth. At last Adam overcame the force of his transgression and once more entered Paradise, dwelling there in immortality until he attained to the higher degree of conscious evolution that enabled him to pass from there upward into the Angelic worlds. Progressing ever onward, he eventually evolved into the Archangelic worlds and, passing from glory to glory, he ascended through the divine worlds of Thrones, Dominions, Principalities, Powers, Virtues, Seraphim and Cherubim, assuming in each the forms proper to it and evolving beyond them until at last he transcended even the world of the Cherubim and entered–not into a “world” populated by evolving intelligences, but beyond all worlds–into the Being, the Life, the actual Status of the Second Person of the Most Holy Trinity, the Only Begotten Son of God, becoming the Son of God in a divine union of identity which yet allowed differentiation.
In a Mystery, destined for all who should pass upward to divinity through His mediatorship, He was both a perfected individual soul and the Infinite Son of God, both begotten and Unbegotten, both born and Unborn, both relative and Eternal, both servant and Master, both creature and Creator, two natures in one Person: that mode of being called Christ.
He was Adam, the forefather of our race, and in
an ineffable mystery He was simultaneously the one Lord
the Source of all. He was free forever from ignorance and bondage. Yet a debt lay heavily upon him: the condition of the fallen and wandering human race. If he had not transgressed the divine command, the upward-evolving souls of the earth plane would never have come under the distorting influence of Lucifer and the fallen angels.
Moreover, they would have been able to pass on into Paradise through his–and Eve’s–agency, rather than remaining either whirling through the continual agonies of birth and death upon the earth or remaining in the stasis of Limbo, no longer impelled to take earthly birth, yet unable to pass on upward to Paradise.
Every tear shed upon earth, every curse uttered, every sorrow and pain suffered, every death agony undergone, every sin against God and self that was committed–in each one of these he had a part, for none of it would have been possible if he had not fallen from Paradise aeons before.
As in his life as Adam he had caused all to die, even so, in his coming manifestation as
Jesus Christ
of Nazareth, the Son of Man, like us in all things except sin, while at the same time being fully and irrevocably the Only Begotten Son of God, born 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. Who for us men
who had been plunged into sin and death by his transgression as Adam
and for our salvation
which He owed to us and to the Father as just retribution and reparation for the ancient folly,
came down from heaven
while yet remaining unchanged, without any lessening of his glory or diminution of His Divinity, and was incarnate
once again upon this earth–now as the Divine Savior, come to impart immortality, that: “As in Adam all die, even so in Christ shall all be made alive,” the link between our finite, human life and the Infinite Life of God being His deified Body, manifested in this world
by the Holy Spirit
the counterpart of the Only-Begotten Son within the structure of the Trinity.
As the Son is the Personal, positive-masculine reflection of the Father, Who is transcendent, beyond all polarities or dualities, so the Holy Spirit is the negative-feminine reflection of the divine Motherhood inherent in the Father. She and the Son are the Mother and Father of all creation–which is in reality the manifestation of Her Being as infinite light energy, the eternal dance of God.
Whenever a soul emerges from the Bosom of the Father it is instantly polarized to either the Son or the Holy Spirit, settling as its penultimate goal union with–and perfect manifestation of–that aspect of Divinity, after passing through the complete cycle of evolution and before returning once more to the Bosom of the Father.
Since He was polarized to the Son, Adam attained union and identity of being with Him that he might return to earth as an Incarnation of the Son.
Eve had not been left behind in all of this. Evolving along with Adam, she had attained to union and identity with the Holy Spirit, the Mother. And, sharing the obligation of Adam, who was now to appear on the earth as Jesus, she descended to earth before him, as an Incarnation of the Holy Spirit, the Divine Mother, the Queen of Heaven, miraculously born of Saints Joachim and Anna as the Virgin Mary
the New Eve. Just as she had given the fruit to Adam whereby he transgressed and hurled the human race into chaos, so now she offered him the “fruit of her womb,” a deified human body. He accepted it
and was made Man
the New Adam, so that all without exception might be made alive in Him.
Being under no compulsions from the law of sowing and reaping, His entire life was a conscious acting out upon the stage of this world of the great Mystery of Christ–that is, the symbolic depiction of the passage of the human soul from humanity to divinity, to becoming a Christ. For the very term “Christian” means “another Christ.” As the Psalm says: “God sits in the assembly of gods,” so we can say that we may become “christs with Christ.” He is the infinite Archetype, and we are His “image and likeness,” hearkening to His promise: “To him that overcometh will I grant to sit with me in my throne, even as I also overcame, and am set down with my Father in his throne,” and “Him that overcometh will I make a pillar in the temple of my God, and he shall go no more out.”
But first Jesus Christ had to overcome to make our overcoming possible. To do this, He passed through the years of His earthly life, changing the world by His every deed and word, writing clearly the destiny of all men through His example. Finally, He portrayed to mankind in all its bitterness, the common status of us all when
He was crucified
The Crucifixion is a profound symbol of the universal human state. The Cross itself represents objective, material consciousness to which the soul is nailed by the five senses, the “sixth sense” of the mind being crowned with the thorns of inner anguish as the soul whose destiny is freedom strives either to extricate itself from its helpless confinement or–much more worse–attempts to accommodate itself to bondage as a normal and good state, as its life pours out and is lost upon the earth.
The entire drama of the Crucifixion is filled with deepest insights into the hopeless misery of the human condition. All of this was done both to expiate His fall as Adam and
also for us
who have been undergoing crucifixion of the spirit through countless ages as a result of that terrible transgression.
That it was a very real agony which He experienced is borne out by the affirmation of its historicity, that it did indeed take place
under Pontius Pilate
Procurator of Judea nearly two thousand years ago, and that in very truth He
suffered and was buried
This, like the crucifixion, is also highly symbolic of the fate of the bound soul which, through suffering becoming more and more ego/body-involved, is eventually entombed, “buried alive” most literally, completely covered over by material existence, isolated from the light of Life, the Sun of Righteousness, however much He may shine forth with “healing in His wings.” The “stone” of ego, “sealed” with the law of sowing and reaping, blocks all rays of life and hope from entering the darkness of the soul’s exile. Alienated from the Light that is Life, for it, only death prevails.
But both of Him and of us the Psalmist prophesied: “My flesh also shall rest in hope. For thou wilt not leave my soul in hell; neither wilt thou suffer thine Holy One to see corruption.” Therefore, the third day He rose again according to the Scriptures
manifesting the truth of immortality, of the ultimate victory of life over death.
After revealing to the Apostles many great and awesome secrets of the life divine, He gave into their hands the task of establishing the Kingdom of Heaven within the hearts of men
and ascended into heaven
in fulfillment of the Psalmist’s further words: “Thou wilt show me the path of life,” which is the path of spiritual ascension, the path of return back to the Bosom, where
He sitteth at the right hand of the Father
For: “In thy presence is fulness of joy; at thy right hand there are pleasures for evermore.” The only way to see God is to be God–so the Fathers who have attained that Vision have told us.
Having fully opened the way for me back to the Father, He now abides in the plenitude of the Father’s being and power, “the right hand,” from which He sends forth, from the heights to the depths, that “Water of Life,” the mystical “Blood of Christ” which alone cleanses and restores my straying life into the greater Life, at the culmination of which, to each of us in his own time
He shall come again with glory
not in the outer world as before, but in the inmost center of my being.
The word translated “coming” is parousia, which literally means “presence.” The first Presence of Christ was in the world, in human embodiment, in time. The Second Presence shall be in the depths of my soul, in His advent into my spiritual being, in eternity,
to judge the living and the dead
when there shall be a total review of my embodied existence, from the moment I departed from the Father’s Bosom to that very moment of revelation when all I have taken unto myself in the infinity of my births and deaths (after each of which I have also been judged as to my degree of evolution and sent to that realm and form which would most enable me to progress from that point) in so many worlds shall be reviewed as either “living” or “dead,” when “every man’s work shall be made manifest: for the day shall declare it, because it shall be revealed by fire; and the fire shall try every man’s work of what sort it is. If any man’s work abide which he hath built thereupon, he shall receive a reward. If any man’s work shall be burned, he shall suffer loss: but he himself shall be saved; yet so as by fire,” in a judgment immeasurably more harrowing and fearsome than the “judgment day” fable of contemporary revivalism.
This shall be the final act, when “death is swallowed up in victory,” when “God may be all in all,” for “as we have borne the image of the earthly [Adam], we shall also bear the image of the heavenly [Man],” Jesus Christ, of Whose kingdom there shall be no end
and Whose kingdom shall be my kingdom, as well.
How shall this glory come to pass?
In the Holy Spirit
that mystical lifeblood of Christ spoken of before.
Just as Jesus Christ departed from this earth without establishing the Church through empowerment, leaving that completely in the hands of the Virgin Mary as part of Her act of reparation and restoration, so it is the spiritual leaven of the Holy Spirit, Her Light moving “upon the face of the waters” of my unformed spirit, that both implants the divine Seed of Christ and brings it to fruition in His perfect image.
The life of Mary and the life of Christ are one. And it is my life in Mary which in turn makes my life and the life of Christ one. Perpetually She brings forth Christ in the depths of my soul, just as She brought forth Christ in the depths of the earth, in the Cave of Bethlehem.
To Her nourishing care and discipline must my soul be subject, as was Jesus subject unto Her in the formative days of His life.
It is She Who starts the maturing soul upon its mission, as in Cana She persuaded Him to begin His earthly mission. And in its final hours of testing, before my soul can be committed into the hands of the Father, it must confess Her with the final vestiges of its earthly consciousness that it may pass into the new life of Paradise, as did He before me.
I must be Marian to be Christian; for as He is our Lord, She is equally
the Lady and giver of life
which is Christ. More, She is the evolving power which awakens and uplifts me, while Christ is the inmost consciousness that guides me.
Just as in this world nothing can exist without the dual polarities of positive and negative, so is it in the subtler reaches of my existence. Without the action upon me of both the Father and Mother within the Godhead, perfection is impossible, for I bear within myself the same duality since I am the image of God, as is stated in Genesis: “In the image of God created he him; male and female.” A religion which does not nourish and develop both the Father and the Mother likeness would produce an abnormal, a lopsided, unbalanced mental and spiritual state within me, crippling me and rendering further evolution impossible.
Loving and relating to my Mother is not an option but an essential factor of my spiritual life. There is no division within the Godhead; the Father and the Mother are eternally ONE. To approach one is to draw near to the other. To know one is to know the other. Those who claim to do otherwise are in gravest delusion. Therefore I obey with fullest joy the command of Jesus: “Behold your Mother!” For since She it is
Who proceedeth from the Father
it is She who will bring me back to the Father.
This world and all others are formed of Her Light as “wombs” within which the souls grow until She brings them to the ultimate birth: birth back into the Bosom of the Father. Until then, with the most intense love and attention, She cares for me as my divine Mother,
She
Who together with the Father and the Son is worshipped and glorified
within my unfolding life, directs each step of my growth to Christhood, illuminating and guiding me as She
Who spoke by the prophets
Yes, She it is Who is the source of all higher knowledge, of all spiritual insight. From Her alone do the Prophets, the Masters of the Spirit, receive their visions of eternity. She is “the Light” of the Father in which we see all the lesser lights of relative existence.
But She is boundless Power and Light supreme–how is it that I can touch Her glory and partake of Her life without being shattered or consumed by that Infinity? It is impossible, except “by the Prophets”–that is, through a Hierarchy of Light through which the divine Life flows downward in lessening degrees from level to level, each being therein acting as transformers to “step down” and attune that flowing Life so it can be communicated to those of the next level beneath them. Closest to our world are the Archangels, the Angels, and the Saints who continually pass between this world and their unseen abodes, to bless, heal, inspire and guide us. Even closer are the final links in the divine chain, those human beings who, while yet in this world, have joined the ranks of the sacred Hierarchy to pass on the power of Christ through their functions within the And in one, holy, catholic, and Apostolic Church
which, composed of living powers and intelligences both within this world and the highest realms, is truly the embodiment, the “Body” of Christ in the most literal and the most esoteric senses.
“So we, being many, are one body in Christ, and every one members one of another.”
“Now therefore ye are no more strangers and foreigners, but fellowcitizens with the saints, and of the household of God; And are built upon the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Jesus Christ himself being the chief corner stone; In whom all the building fitly framed together groweth unto an holy temple in the Lord: In whom ye also are builded together for an habitation of God through the Spirit.”
“For as the body is one, and hath many members, and all the members of that one body, being many, are one body: so also is Christ. For by one Spirit are we all baptized into one body,…and have been all made to drink into one Spirit.”
Like all else that has to do with Christ, His Church is a great mystery. Often decried and denounced throughout the ages, She yet is the vessel from which the Waters of Life are poured out to an unheeding, ungrateful, and uncaring world.
She is one with God, and enables her children to become one with Him, as well. She is holy, and makes them holy by the Life with Which She feeds them. She is catholic–kata holos–all-containing, bearing within Her all that is needed for my passage to divinity, to establishment in eternal being. Moreover, She does indeed “contain” God, the All, here upon this earth, and freely communicates Him to those who answer her call. She is apostolic, having been shaped by the hands of the Apostles in all her aspects, receiving from them continually the communication of the divine Life.
Therefore
I confess one baptism for the remission of sins
“Sin” (in Greek, amartano), means “to miss the mark.” It is both a state of consciousness and the behavior arising from that consciousness–both a condition and an act that mutually feed off and increase one another.
The primal “sin” is wilful separation from God, which I accomplish and reinforce by the various actions, physical and mental, which we call “sins.”
The root of all is ignorance, the remedy is knowledge: gnosis. The passage from sinner to gnostic is effected only by “baptism,” plunging into the Current of the Holy Spirit, being immersed therein and coming to life, to the vision of God which is also union with God.
In that immersion in divine Light all darkness of ignorance, all “sin” falls away, is “remitted,” done away with.
It is not “forgiveness” I need, for sin is not a social indelicacy, an act of rudeness, or an “offence,” but rather an act and state of estrangement–estrangement from the God Who is Love, Who never rejects or hates the “sinner” but yearns and works ever toward his salvation, toward reunion with Him.
It is this reunion with God that alone is salvation, though along the way I experience many forms of awakening and levels of expanding awareness. Still, until that total merging, that “one baptism” is attained, my “sin” of separation has not been fully remitted. And I look for the resurrection of the dead
the time when I shall not only rise above all realms and taint of spiritual death, but in which all that within me is now lying dormant, bound in “the valley of the shadow of death” shall hear the clarion call: “Awake, thou that sleepest, and arise from the dead, and Christ shall give thee light,” and shall then after aeons of slumber “come forth unto the resurrection of life,” the consciousness and mastery of my total being that is itself, as part of God’s infinite Being,
And the life of the age to come.
the risen Life of Christ. My life in His life.
“Then cometh the end, when he shall have delivered up the kingdom” of all separate, relative existence “to God, even the Father; when he shall have put down all rule and all authority and power” by returning me to the Bosom of the Father.
In the state of my perfect unity with God and His perfect unity with me there will be no “other” for either of us to relate to through rulership, authority or power, as that union shall be exclusively one of eternal, wilful love–love which shall never cease to be.
“For He must reign” only “till he hath put all enemies,” all obstacles to my union with Him “under his feet,” vanquished forever, dispelled like the dreams they are.
Then “the last enemy that shall be destroyed is death”–the state of my separateness from Him–” that God may be all in all.” Then shall be fulfilled the petition of Jesus Christ unto the Father: “That they all may be one; as thou, Father, art in me, and I in thee, that they also may be one in us: I in them, and thou in me, that they may be made perfect in one.”
I in God and God in me. The duality that is death being swallowed up in victory, the life that is perfect unity, eternal oneness, the God Who is All in All.
Amen.
1) Matthew 12:36 [Go back]
2) Hebrews 11:1 [Go back]
3) Ephesians 1:4-6 [Go back]
4) Ephesians 2:8 [Go back]
5) Isaiah 46:9 [Go back]
6) I Timothy 6:16 [Go back]
7) Psalm 36:9 [Go back]
8) Revelation 4:5; 5:6 [Go back]
9) Jeremiah 23:24 [Go back]
10) Genesis 3:6 [Go back]
11) Genesis 3:7 [Go back]
12) Genesis 3:8 [Go back]
13) That is, annihilation of their body-vehicles of relativity. They would then have to begin their evolution all over again. [Go back]
14) II Timothy 2:13 [Go back]
15) 3:21 [Go back]
16) II Corinthians 3:18 [Go back]
17) Limbo is the place in the astral world (hades) where souls dwelt that had evolved beyond the earth plane yet were unable to enter Paradise because of the link having been broken by the transgression of Adam and Eve. When He died upon the Cross, Jesus entered Limbo and opened the way into Paradise for them. [Go back]
18) Hebrews 4:15 [Go back]
19) I Corinthians 15:22 [Go back]
20) I Corinthians 15:22 [Go back]
21) Galatians 6:7 [Go back]
22) Revelation 3:21 [Go back]
23) Revelation 3:12 [Go back]
24) John 16:33 [Go back]
25) I Peter 3:21 [Go back]
26) Malachi 4:2 [Go back]
27) Sheol–hades–the world of the dead. [Go back]
28) Psalms 16:9,10 [Go back]
29) Psalms 16:11 [Go back]
30) Ibid. [Go back]
31) Revelation 21:6; Psalms 46:4 [Go back]
32) I John 1:7 [Go back]
33) I Corinthians 3:13-15 [Go back]
34) I Corinthians 15:54 [Go back]
35) I Corinthians 15:28 [Go back]
36) I Corinthians 15:49 [Go back]
37) Isaiah 66:8 [Go back]
38) Genesis 1:2 [Go back]
39) Luke 2:7 [Go back]
40) Luke 2:51 [Go back]
41) John 2:1-11 [Go back]
42) John 19:26,27 [Go back]
43) Genesis 1:27 [Go back]
44) John 19:27 [Go back]
45) Psalms 36:9 [Go back]
46) Romans 12:5 [Go back]
47) Ephesians 2:19-22 [Go back]
48) I Corinthians 12:12,13 [Go back]
49) Revelation 22:17 [Go back]
50) I Corinthians 12:13 [Go back]
51) I John 1:5,7 [Go back]
52) Ezekiel 33:11 [Go back]
53) Psalms 23:4 [Go back]
54) Ephesians 5:14 [Go back]
55) John 5:29 [Go back]
56) I Corinthians 15:24-26,28 [Go back]
57) John 17:21,23 [Go back]
58) I Corinthians 15:54 [Go back]
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