Spiritual Interpretation of Scripture
| Chapter - Spiritual Development
There is no external change without an internal development. You may wonder as you go through the years with no apparent change in your affairs, why this thing called God isn't doing something for you. You can go on for your entire career and still find no increase or improvement unless there is inner expansion, a broadening of spiritual vision. There must be a change in consciousness before there can be a change in your outer experience. When you turn to a metaphysician for help and receive it without having expanded your consciousness; you have been improved through his spiritual unfoldment. Sooner or later, in order to hold your good, you will have to realize your God-being; you will have to cultivate a spiritual sense of existence. Your good must come to you as the result of the activity of your own consciousness. Every spiritual idea realized in your consciousness will find manifestation and expression. Not that the manifestation is external to you, but it becomes an object or expression of subjective unfoldment. This is law, a spiritual law: there can be no external change without an inner change. In the degree that your consciousness approaches that of John, the beloved Disciple, you are able to grasp the vision of spiritual life and its spiritual formations. You then discern "the temple not made with hands" -- the spiritual body, health and wholeness. The God that controls your destiny is your consciousness. You might say that it is divine Consciousness or divine Mind, and it would be true, but putting it that way, you are apt to think of it as something outside of or external to yourself. One of the greatest factors in the failure of men is the belief that God is something other than their own being, and therefore, they are looking to something outside themselves to do or achieve for them. Your whole existence is reconstructed by your consciousness of good. Always when you go into the temple of your being with a listening attitude, something takes place which we call realization and an outer harmony is revealed. You do not go within to tell God your desires or to outline the condition of thought to be changed -- only to listen, to be receptive to the voice of Truth. There are no evil powers to overcome, to be destroyed or removed. There is but one Power. I am that individual consciousness. I am the law unto my being. I am the government of my body and business. Because "I and my Father are one" and that one is God, I am the law of eternal harmony unto my universe. Right where you are seeing me or I am seeing you, right there is the one Life, the one Soul, called God; infinitely appearing as an individual. Only in the realization of the one universal Life, expressing as you, can you experience immortality. Only in this sense can you know abundance. No contact need be made with some principle or God, for you are this Principle, this Mind, and the realization of this truth starts the entire God-being flowing consciously as you. Truth appears as you. Life appears as you. Soul reveals itself as you. This truth is the truth of individual being -- of you and me. Starting with Genesis, the story of creation, you understand now there never was a God and a creation, nor a time in which creation began. Your consciousness unfolding is what is termed as God creating. This does not make a God of our human or personal consciousness, nor give us a consciousness apart from the one universal Consciousness. Rather it reveals that Consciousness as the only creative Principle of the universe. It likewise reveals the universe as the continuing unfoldment of ideas, without beginning and without end, and this revelation shows forth your immortality. Your so-called human consciousness is the shutter that keeps out the infinity of your own consciousness and, opening wider, let's in the realization of its infinity. When that shutter is completely open, there is no barrier -- therefore, no separation or limitation. You cannot increase your consciousness because it is already infinite, but you can open your eyes in awareness of the infinite nature of your being. You who come to the search for God are probably seeking healing of some kind - physical, mental, moral, or financial. Life must be understood as a giving process rather than a getting one. As we face life with this attitude, we draw spiritual riches from it in the form of health, harmony, supply, activity, home, companionship and purity. Many fail to realize their desire because their thought is held to getting, achieving, accomplishing, rather than the unfoldment of good from within. When we bring to the search a heart full of love for God, for Truth, for Reality, all things are added unto us. You need never seek your good outside yourself. It is true that your good comes to you apparently as a person or thing, or through some individual or circumstance. All good, however, comes through the realization of your Self-completeness. This realization is your need. Life is Self-sustained; individual life is Self-sustained. The belief in a power apart from God is duality. Since God is the Mind, Soul and Life of the individual, you are immortal and perfect. The basis of a metaphysical healing is that neither sin, disease nor death exists as reality. They have no existence except as illusions of sense. It would therefore be folly to use any power -- material, mental or spiritual -- to over come or destroy that which has no real existence. Spiritual healing is the realization of oneness and that One God. All that takes place in treatment is the practitioner's realization that all there is, is God. There is only one infinity expressing itself. What then takes place in the thought of the individual when he goes into prayer, meditation or treatment? You turn within to re-establish your realization of oneness. Temporarily you have come into the belief that I and the Father are two. The more you realize oneness, the more you consciously reflect infinity in your experience. You are separated from your good, or seem to be, through ignorance. If this were not so, all human experiences would be seen as divine. It is only as you give up the belief in a selfhood apart from God that you achieve the awareness of your spiritual identity and spiritual demonstration of life. Success crowns our efforts as we learn that God, practitioner and patient is one. But for this we would have God with infinite power of good, a patient lacking some form of good, and a practitioner with some mysterious power going to God on behalf of the patient for some good. There is no such relationship or condition in all history. Our sense of unity is the One appearing as many. Always God is God and includes all that appears as God, patient and practitioner. You yourself are the law. The law is law only as you realize it within or as yourself. Making declarations of truth is not sufficient. It helps. Statements are reminders of your true identity, but the so-called demonstrations are never made until a feeling accompanies the letter of truth -- until some inner conviction comes with it, some realization of a "peace be still" within your own being. For too many years, Truth students and metaphysicians have been content with healings. The time has come to rise to a higher sense of Life. Yours must be the realization of the presence of God. Let this Truth provide the added things of health and prosperity, joy and freedom. Your good will always appear in the form necessary at the moment. It is not, however, a human good appearing but rather a spiritual idea upon which you are placing a finite interpretation. As you realize your oneness with God, you will understand that there has never been a sick or sinning person. All disastrous things will continue to appear until you attain a realization of the true nature of your being, which is Spirit, God. The experience of the Hebrews under Moses is one of fluctuating human good. This will be your experience as long as you live only in a realm of demonstrating things and conditions. The Ten Commandments were laws of human good; governing human conduct. It is only as we come consciously into oneness with Spirit that we attain the eternal harmony of spiritual good. Jesus' understanding of this is evident in his refusal to head an army to fight the Romans; in his statement, "My Kingdom is not of this world"; in his refusal to call on material power to save him from the crucifixion. Jesus was not here to patch up human relationships or bring about a temporal dynasty. His mission was to reveal man's spiritual relationship to God and the spiritual nature of the real universe. That which appears to sense is our concept of the eternal and real. The incorporeal and spiritual temple, body or universe is seen as finite, corporeal and material. This does not constitute two worlds, but one - the spiritual and harmonious. The sense world is not a world, but merely your limited sense of the infinite. What you see, hear, taste, touch and smell constitutes the illusory sense of Reality. Let us realize everything as God - appearing and any finite sense as the illusion. When we see railroad tracks come together, the illusion is not "out there" at the tracks, but in our false and limited view of the perfectly placed tracks. The sky is not sitting on the mountain, and the illusion is not "out there" where it seems to be, but it is your false sense of what you are beholding. You cannot get rid of the illusion; you must understand it as illusion, and see through it to ever present Reality. Understand that all that appears is God-appearing, despite the illusory sense of it you may be momentarily entertaining, and even the illusion will be dispelled. Error is never personal. You must therefore never condemn a person, but see the error as impersonal, a part of universal mesmerism and no part of any individual. In this impersonalising of error, you dispel it. One of the great laws of the Bible is, "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." (Matt. 5:44). Your understanding of the prayer of forgiveness is that it is the realization of oneness. To know that that which is appearing, as persecutor, hater, enemy in any form, is really the Christ itself, which finite sense has misinterpreted, will free you of any evil effects of hate, persecution and enmity. Never forget that there is in reality no sick person to heal, neither a sinner to reform -- only the Christ-presence to be spiritually discerned. This is the true law of forgiveness. Thus we pray for our enemies. There is a prevalent belief that the thought of certain individuals or groups can harm you. You cannot be made to suffer from any belief other than your own acceptance of a selfhood apart from God. Those who entertain a belief in two minds or in a life that can be impaired or ended, or in a selfhood apart from God, suffer from the belief in proportion as the belief is accepted. This, too, can be healed in a moment by a relinquishing the belief in two powers, and the belief in more than one Presence. The purpose of your study is, first, the improvement of humanhood -- the improvement of health, wealth, harmony, companionship, home and security. The average person stops there, content. In their church, marriage, business and body, they find an increased sense of good and then rest content, and because of this the problems of the world are never solved. At best they prolong their human sense of existence -- put off the date on their tombstone by a few years. The object of our search for truth is to gain a spiritual awareness of existence that we may live spiritually perfect and realize immortality without the change called death. In all the years of human history, there has never been peace even among neighboring nations; there has been no settlement of economic questions; there is still a battle between capitalism, socialism and communism. No human government ever conceived is any better than the humans controlling it. The vision that is to come will only be when we transcend humanhood and begin to live the divinity of our being. The Bible acknowledges the divinity of your being. John says, "Now we are the sons of God"; and elsewhere it has been said, "Know ye not that ye are gods?" All through the Bible you will find promises of the coming of spiritual man. The Old Testament contains many prophecies of the coming of spiritual man, Messiah, Saviour. The belief is that these prophecies referred to the coming of one particular spiritual man. What value would it be to the world if all the Jesuses, Buddhas and Shankaras ever evolved had attained Christhood -- and we not? All of these men have prophesied and predicted for centuries, but the advent of the Christ is not the coming of a man who shall be perfect -- but the coming of perfection in you and me. Spiritually understood, the Bible is never personal, not even when it uses the names of people, centuries, cities and rivers, but rather these signify and symbolize spiritual qualities and activities of consciousness. The only value of the prophecy of the coming of the Christ is when it is understood to be the advent of the Christ or spiritual consciousness to you and to me. The Christ, this spiritual ideal, this spiritual consciousness, becomes evident (is born) as your individual consciousness, displacing the false or limited sense of self. It is a present reality awaiting in this instant your recognition and demonstration. The Hebrews were always prophesying the coming of this Messiah. Not only those who follow the teaching of the Hebrew church, but many Christians are actually Hebrews as long as they are prophesying or hoping for the coming of the Christ. According to Hebrew lore, the Christ is still to come; according to Christian churches, the Christ was among us for a brief period and ever since, the second coming is awaited. How hopeless the world must seem to both of these. Unless you agree with the higher revelation of Scripture, to the effect that "now are we the sons of God", you are not really Christians or followers of the Christ revelation that, "Before Abraham was, I am." This statement places the Christ as the ancient of ancient days, and the truth, "Lo, I am with you always, even unto the end of the world," carries the Christ presence with you into eternity. You can see that there never was a time (from the lips of Jesus himself) when the Christ was not present awaiting your recognition, and there will be no time when that Christ will not be present as individual consciousness. We must acknowledge that the Christ appeared as Jesus, then realize that the Christ appears as individual you and me. Then we begin the demonstration of our spiritual existence and present immortality. In the human thought there are stages of consciousness when the personal I, or ego, is paramount and we are engaging principally in the getting end of experience -- getting, achieving, accomplishing, acquiring. Our existence then is directed towards what is coming in to us. Then there is the higher state of humanhood where life is flowing out from us and we are more concerned for helping, sharing, teaching, co-operating. The spiritual goes higher though than human good. In the spiritual life we are the Light of the world, and we are not concerned who comes into our orbit -- how many, or if there are none at all. We are now the Light of the world, showing forth the harmony of spiritual existence, and allowing that perfection in us to attract those seeking something more than they have yet realized. Return to "Spiritual Interpretation of Scripture" Book Menu Page |
In proportion to the cultivation, development and unfoldment of your spiritual awareness of life, will harmony appear in your health, business and home life.