by Harold W. Percival
1946

extracted from Thinking and Destiny

 

 

 

 


Section 1

 

Religions; on what they are founded.

Why belief in a personal God.

Problems a religion must meet.

Any religion is better than none.
 

 

RELIGIONS must be considered because they deal with the conscious doer-in-the-body and with Gods.

 

Religions are founded on the belief in a relation between human beings and a superior being or beings to whom the humans are subject. Sickness, accident, death, unavoidable destiny, things that do not depend on or that overcome the action of the human, are ascribed to the presence and power of a superior being.

 

Religions and religious teachings must have and do have a certain foundation in facts, else they could not last for any length of time.

Here are some truths that are fundamentals of religions and their teachings, and for the belief in religions. In every human body there is a deathless conscious something that is not the body but that makes the animal body human.

 

Because of past mistakes the conscious something has hidden itself in the coils of flesh and the flesh prevents it from understanding that it is a small integral and inseparable part of its all-knowing Great Self that is not in the body. One's own feeling-and-desire is the conscious something in the body, which is here called the doer-in-the-body.

 

The doer-in-the-body feels that it belongs to or is a part of a superior being on whom it must depend and to whom it must appeal for guidance.

 

Like a child who depends on its parent, it desires the recognition and protection and guidance of a superior being. The doer-in-the-body feels and desires and thinks, but it is by its body-mind compelled to think and feel and desire through the body senses; and, it thinks in terms of seeing, hearing, tasting and smelling.

 

The doer is therefore limited by the body-mind to the senses, and is prevented from thinking of its relation to its Great Self that is not in the body. It is led to think of a superior being of nature that is above and beyond the body, and which is all-powerful and all-wise to whom it must appeal and on whom it must depend.

The need for a religion comes from weakness and helplessness.

 

The human seeking support and refuge wants to feel that there is a superior being to whom one can appeal for help and for protection. Consolation and hope are needed at some time by everybody. Man wants to feel that he is not abandoned and alone. The fear and feeling of abandonment in life and at death are dreadful.

 

Man rarely wants his existence to be blotted out at death, nor does he want to be severed from some of those he has been with in life. He wants security, he wants to feel assured. These feelings and desires develop into belief in a superior being who watches, protects and endows, where the human is helpless.

The wish for a relation with a superior being is inherent in man.

 

Seeing the visible universe moved by something invisible, he believes this invisible to be a being, whose support or protection he seeks. The belief, which is religion, is the belief in nature and in its powers which affect the body and so overawe him. He feels a power in himself, but he sees in nature a power superior to that of his own personality, so his belief is, and has to be, in a personal God as a magnified and sublimated human being.

Man perceives order, power and intelligence in nature. He feels that they are the attributes of a personal ruler.

 

The cause of this belief is that the doer in man identifies itself with its body and feels the power of the body over it. With a loss of knowledge of the Light within, came worship of gods. Such is the need and the wish, and such is the conception which is formed for the belief. When the belief increases to faith it produces phenomena which seem to prove its correctness.

 

The need which man feels is used by his individual Triune Self and by Intelligences to foster religions for the training of human beings. These Intelligences use the belief to nurse humanity along until a very different teaching can be given by them. They allow the revelation, spread and enforcement of teachings concerning the Gods and their will.

There are twelve types of teachings which have appeared cyclically throughout the ages. The Intelligences do not make religious systems or institutions; men make them; the Intelligences allow them now, as they have in the past, because men demand them and need them for experience.

The problems encountered are many. There must be a system or theology, meeting the needs of all from the lowly to the great, from the undeveloped to the educated, from the materialistic to the inspired and from the credulous to the thinkers.

 

It must allow for thousands of different conceptions of the same thing. There must be a system which can, when backed up by innate conservatism, last for centuries and yet permit an advance of interpretation within the prescribed doctrines.

 

There must be a collection of essays, teachings, laws, exhortations, prayers, adventures, magic, stories, which can be called sacred writings and which can be made the foundation for such theology. These must be such that they permit, if not urge, the exercise of literature, architecture, sculpture, music, painting and handicraft, so as to inspire worshippers with sensuous exaltation.

 

These writings must have the strongest appeal to feelings and emotions and must be the foundation on which the ethics and laws of the adherents can rest.

 

Religion as a belief is accompanied by theology, which is a system to justify the belief, by religious institutions and forms of worship in which the belief is exhibited and, most important, by a method of life. If religious belief leads to virtues such as self-control, duty and kindliness, it serves its highest purpose in the training of the human.

The various religions, that is, theological systems and religious institutions for worship, which appear from time to time in different settings, are fitted to meet the special needs of their believers. The institutions have been made by the thoughts of those who will exist as believers and who will live under them. The outer forms of the religions thus fit the beliefs of the adherents. The religious offices are filled by persons who personify the thoughts and desires of the mass of devotees.

 

The actions of these officials are the expression of that mass. Those who are opposed to a religion are often the ones who have helped to bring the conditions about, but have learned of their mistakes and see that what they have is not what they want, yet they must meet the exteriorizations. The history of religions is what it is, because religions as theologies are made by men and as institutions are administered by men.

Religions as beliefs, systems and institutions are both good and bad.

 

This depends on the people who practice them. When a religion is practiced to lead or to allow its devotees to develop reasoning and understanding and to grow into a higher and more enlightened state, it is good. It is bad, when by means of it people are kept in ignorance and darkness, and when vice, crime and cruelty flourish under it.

 

Usually the beginning of a new religion is promising. It comes to meet a demand. It starts out of a decaying religion. It is usually born out of tumult, confusion, dissension and war. It attracts enthusiasts and the changeable crowd. It fails to school the mass of adherents to a higher life, and soon suffers from theology, institutionalism, officialism, hypocrisy, bigotry and corruption. So one religion after another appears, disappears, and reappears.

 

The reason is twofold: the mass of re-existing doers whose religion it is get it because it exteriorizes their thoughts, and the actions of those who figure as its priests and officials reflect and embody the aims of the adherents.

On the whole it is better that there should be even such a religion than none. It keeps the believers from doing worse than they do. Religions are allowed to survive as long as they supply the requirements of belief for a number of persons. They survive chiefly by means of the devotion, virtues and holy lives of some few persons in the great body of adherents.

 

These are so-called mystics, who lead lives of purity and contemplation. Their living infuses strength, vitality and virtue into the organization. The holy life is an active force and invigorates the religion as an organization. This force follows and supports the policy of the heads of the body of devotees and may be used for good or evil.

 

Thus an organization is often enabled to last, because of the virtues of some few of its members.

There are inner and outer parts of religions. The inner parts are the thoughts engendered by the theology and by the virtues, aims, ideals and aspirations, as well as by the faults of those who carry on the religion. The outer parts are the forms in which the inner appear, as offices, institutions, rites and acts of the devotees connected with the belief.

 

The outer aspect is necessary for the practice and propagation of the belief and for the other activities often connected with religions, such as teaching the young, nursing the sick and caring for the poor.

 

Sometimes sciences are studied and advanced by means of religious institutions. Always there is a tendency of the religious officeholders to exercise functions of government and to wield power, because the priests are human and this is natural. Forms are necessary though they become means of abuse. As soon as a religion is started, obscurantism, that is, the tendency to stifle individual development and thinking, comes with it.

 

The forms are given a physical meaning and made rigid, while the claim is made that they are "spiritual" and not physical. Hence come fanaticism, wars, persecutions, and whatever is horrible about religions. The profit is with the religious officeholders whose reach is increased by conservatism and obscurantism. They acquire worldly power and become less inspired and "spiritual" with their successes.

 

Religions may be cheapened by trivialities or abused when put to the service of social or political interests, but there is enough to be found in them to give consolation and hope to those who need these, and morals and faith to those who are willing.
 

 

 


Section 2
 

Classes of Gods.

The Gods of religions; how they come into existence.

How long they last. Appearance of a God. Changes of a God.

Gods have only what human beings have who create and keep them.

The name of a God. Christian Gods.
 

 

There have been and there may be innumerable Gods.

 

There are nature Gods outside, and there is the Light of Intelligences within man. The nature Gods are of two classes, the gods of the pure elements and the Gods worshipped in religions.

The gods of the pure elements, that is, of the spheres, exist in hierarchies. The term hierarchy is freely figurative; channels would be more descriptive. The earth fire is one.

 

It is like a reservoir having many channels which have lesser channels, making a system like that of water which is the same in a mountain lake, in a reservoir and in a faucet. The reservoir of the fire element is the fire god. The lesser gods under it are like channels in which it is and through which it can flow; and a radiant unit is the least jet or utmost channel of the fire element.

 

The units can progress downward only and towards the earthy earth and then towards a physical body. The great elemental fire god which stands behind all its units is the most powerful, is the most easily commanded and will obey most readily. However, it is the least of all elementals in that it is the least progressed. It is less progressed than its lowest unit.

 

The great fire gods under it are like lesser reservoirs. They are less powerful, but more progressed than the fire element as a whole. In these hierarchies a unit cannot ascend, because its descent is its advance and its development. It cannot go back, it must go on. However, when it is freed upon the breaking up of a compound in which it is, it returns to its element, by entering the stream of the units of the four states of matter that flows to a stratum in the solid earth, to the moon, to the sun and to the stars.

 

The gods of the pure elements are not known to humans and are not worshipped in religions.

The Gods worshipped in the pagan, Jewish and Christian religions are nature Gods, but not pure nature Gods. They are made by human thinking. They are nature-matter and nature forces and get their forms and traits from humans.

The Gods worshipped in religions have been and are parts of the elements. These parts are projected from their worshippers and are supported as separate beings by the thinking of these worshippers. They are allowed to exist for the experience of human beings.

Gods come into existence as the expression of human thinking which tries to bring to a few or to a group or to a mass of humans what they desire. The desire cannot be expressed by many acting together; it must be done through one of the number.

 

The one who can most clearly think of what is needed, conceives and issues a thought and speaks about it; and that thought enters into the hearts of the many and is accepted and issued by them. The God first comes into being as a human thought. The thought takes on a part of one or more of the elements and clothes itself in this elemental matter.

So far the thought is no different from other human thoughts. Before it can be turned into and take being and identity as a God it must be approved by the ruling Intelligence and must take life. The Intelligence is not arbitrary in its approval or rejection.

 

If the thought is what the people desire and merit, as a happy, lavish, bloody, warring, sexual or voluptuous God, it will be approved.

 

The God announces his name through the mouth of a human and is known to his worshippers by that name. He grows in mass and power according to the increase of the number who believe in him as a God, and praise him and pour out their thought to him. He is as though astonished at the power he has and amazed at that attributed to him. Soon he becomes accustomed to be praised as the Creator, the First Cause and the Supreme Intelligence. He is made to feel assured even of that, and he demands faith from his worshippers so that he may have faith in himself.

In this manner came into existence Moloch, Baal, Jehovah, Thor and various Christian Gods, also such trinities as Brahmâ, Vishnu and Siva, and Osiris, Isis and Horus. The Greek Gods do not belong to this class. They were not created as human thoughts, but were race types of men and women who had lived.

 

There were in Hellas traditions of human races that had existed in former ages. At their renaissance the Hellenes personified and deified these races, pictured them as the Olympian Gods, poured out to them their thought and praise and worship, and so empowered them as Gods.

A God lasts as long as there are any who nourish and support him.

 

His life may last for decades, thousands of years or ages, but it is not eternal. He ceases to be when there are no more human bodies to give exteriorization to thoughts of prayer and worship, to voice his name and to let him live in their blood and nerves. This occurs when the mass of worshippers fades away or is destroyed by war, disease or a cataclysm, or when its thought has changed to the worship of another deity.

 

When a God ceases to be, his elemental parts return to the element to which they belong, and the thoughts which have held them together remain in the mental atmospheres of the doers who created them. Only the thoughts of the living can nourish a God, because he needs blood and nerves to transmit the nourishment of prayer and praise. A God lives through the bodies of his worshippers.

Every God has the feeling of identity, that is, he feels that he is the same entity throughout the period of his existence. This identity is different from the identity which each of his worshippers believes him to have. Every one of his worshippers looks at him in a different way. They all recognize his identity, but each qualifies it differently. The difference is not in the God, but lies in the persons.

 

The identity may also be different from that given him by those who do not acknowledge him as their God. All who think about him contribute to his identity. The identity lasts as long as the God and the God is conscious of his identity, though he may be worshipped under different names, either at the same time or in successive periods.

 

The identity of a God differs from the identity which each Triune Self is.

 

Each doer of its Triune Self contributes from itself to the identity of the God, but the identity of the God, being the sum of these contributions, is different from any one of them. The identity may repeatedly grow stronger and become weaker during the life of the God; when the God ceases, his identity ceases.

The Gods have bodies, but these are not fleshly bodies. There is in the body of the God elemental matter. To this substratum comes other matter, namely, units that flow in from and go back to human bodies. This matter consists of free units from the elements, and of transient units from the bodies of the worshippers.

 

Sometimes the bodies of some Gods may contain in addition compositor units from the bodies of their worshippers, after the doers, in the after death states, have ceased to use these units.

 

The transient units that come from human bodies qualify the background of elemental units by their character, and the compositor units build the bodies of the deities into forms. Among these compositor units streaming in and out are human senses of sight, hearing, taste and smell. These give the God his all-seeing eye, his hearing of prayer and praise, his tasting of offerings and his smelling of incense.

All Gods have bodies of nature-matter and though most of these bodies have form, some are without form.

 

The body of Jehovah is without form; he dislikes images of himself. Some Christian Gods have bodies in form, and these forms are in the human image. The bodies of Gods when in form are not fleshly bodies, though they contain units that have made up the flesh bodies of their worshippers.

 

The bodies of Gods need not be dimensional as human bodies are. They may be present on the four planes of the physical world, that is, they may be present in the world of solid matter in many places at the same time. The bodies of the Gods if without form may take on form, or if having a general form may change it for a time. Gods may appear in the general human form or as many-armed, many-headed.

 

They may appear temporarily as a tree or as a dragon, a serpent, an elephant, an ape, or as a speaking rock, flowing water, a rushing wind, a flame, a blazing star, a burning sun. They may also speak as a voice coming from any of these forms. These appearances may be solid or they may be airy or astral.

While a God has no youth or old age but comes into existence fully created, he changes during his existence as his worshippers change. At times he may be stronger or weaker. He suffers no physical aches or pain, but only purely psychic afflictions, such as anger, grief and fear.

 

A God does not sleep; he has no solid body and at all times some of his worshippers are awake. The Gods have sex but no sex organs, because they have no fleshly bodies; the sex organs of their worshippers are adequate. There are Gods and Goddesses. If they were worshipped by hermaphrodites they would be hermaphrodite Gods.

In addition to the nature-matter which makes up the body, with or without form, a God has intelligent-matter, with which the doers of his worshippers endow him, through their minds and psychic atmospheres.

 

The intelligent-matter itself has no form, any more than have the doer portions to which it belongs. When people speak of a God they can only refer to the physical matter in which he dwells. They do not refer to the intelligent-matter of the God, any more than they refer to the doers of people unless they connect them with the human bodies through which they live. The nature of the Gods is in great part psychic. They feel and they desire.

 

Their character, their actions, their relations are essentially psychic, that is, like their human sources. Gods have a mental part, they think and they reason. These mental activities are not original, not self-prompted, but Gods use them to serve their desires. They do as little thinking as do their worshippers. A God is conscious as a composite of his living humanity. No God is conscious apart from the bodies and the doers of his worshippers.

The nature of Gods presents the same aspects as the average human nature. Some Gods are simple, some complex. The Gods have only what the human beings who create and worship them have, but the many human contributions during many years magnify the human traits of the Gods.

 

So the goodness, love, knowledge and power, and the anger, hatred, cruelty and lasciviousness of a God are greater than any of these traits are in human beings. The inner nature of a God changes as that of his worshippers changes. He may be more loving and forgiving or more arbitrary, revengeful and cruel at one time than at another.

A God differs from a human in the things he lacks.

 

A God has no identity independent of the identities of his worshippers; he has no mentality and no feelings and desires other than those furnished him by them. No God has a doer or a Triune Self of his own. A God has no aia and no breathform. No God receives Light directly from an Intelligence. No God was ever human, none will ever become human. Gods are not stations in the Eternal Order of Progression.

 

There are no entities that rise to become Gods, and Gods do not develop into entities independent of the doers and bodies of their peoples. A God has no destiny. He is the destiny of each of his worshippers who accepts and issues the thought of him. No God is responsible. A God exists for the experience of his people, as long as they want to look up to an outside deity.

The name of a God, if he has one, is characteristic of the God; it indicates his nature.

 

The name is made by sounds and these are shown by letters. The forms of the letters and of the sounds have meanings. The total of the meanings is the name and shows the nature of the God. To illustrate. The name Jehovah embodies powers, organs, functions, qualities and relations.

 

The letters make a male part and a female part, the male part having in it the female, and the female part having in it the male. The name is divided, but each part comes from and gets its power from the one name. The function is sexual. When the parts are in two separate beings one has to act through the other; when the parts are both in the same being they act together as one. The qualities are the elements in their active and their passive sides.

 

The relations embodied in the name of Jehovah are those of male to female and those of both to their God, their origin, their creator and their ruler.

Some Gods have no name in this sense. Christians have taken the generic title God and transformed it into a name, as they have done with the word Lord, but it is not a real name. The designation as God and the description by attributes like the All-wise, the Almighty, or by relation like Father, Friend, or by titles like King, Creator are not names. There is a reason for the failure of the Christian Gods to acquire a name.

A God gets his name through the breath and mouth of his worshippers.

 

The name, if it is a real name, like Allah, Brahmâ, Jehovah, not an appellation or a title, is always sexual, no matter what the religion or the age. The worship centers around the name.

 

So Jehovah is properly worshipped when a Jewish man and woman breathe alternately each his and her own part of the name, to propagate. They desecrate the name of their God when they are in union not to propagate; then they use his name in vain.

The name identifies the God, but it is not his identity. The name is a channel through which the desire and thought of the devotee flow to him. Rigidity and conservatism in the worship of the name are necessary to preserve the very basis of the God as a being. Those Gods who have been successful in maintaining the worship of their names have had the longest life.

 

The Gods of the Christians, though nature Gods, have no names, but the worship of the Christian religions is held together by the name of Jesus Christ, who personifies and is a substitute for these Gods.

 

Christians have adopted the Jewish God, but are not as devoted to him as they are to Jesus.

There is a mystery about a God. His nature, origin, past, location, presence, his relation to nature and to nature forces, his works and how he does them, his relation to his devotees and to others, to his messengers, prophets and priests, the purpose of life: everything about his being, aims and actions is mysterious. People wish to account for the world as it is.

 

So they accredit it to a God, and he does not reveal how he created the world or how he manages it. Many things, especially in outside nature, go by definite law, and people are inclined to believe that law prevails.

 

Yet otherwise, especially as to moral compensation, there seems at times to be no law. The mystery remains because humans have not solved it.

Among the results of the mystery are religions, and with them the awe and fear of the unknown and obscure God, the fanaticism of ignorance, the claim to know, the fascination and the wonders of the works of God, and the profit to the mercenary who can turn all this to their advantage.

These results are at times used by Intelligences and complete Triune Selves to bring about effects as destiny in their government of the world. So the awe and fear of the unknown are used to give a moral code in religions, the fanaticism is used to loose blind force to carry out some plan, the claim is used to further order, the fascination and wonder are used to stimulate doers in their search for God, and the desire for worldly advancement is used like any other desire, to have profit or advantage.

Mystery about a God is essential to him. If the mystery is gone the nature of the God is gone, the God is gone. The mystery of God lies in man himself.

There are varieties of Gods. Fashion Gods, family Gods, political party Gods, guild Gods, dynastic Gods, money Gods and gambling Gods, and the help and protection Gods who are the Gods of religions all come into existence in the same way, by human thoughts, and have a similar nature. All are made by humans, have bodies of elemental matter empowered by human thought and desire, and exhibit human traits. Here the concern is, however, only with the Gods of religions.

There are the gods of the streams and woods, in localities where human beings are and think. In places where no human beings penetrate and of which they do not think, there are none of these Gods. All are made by human thought. Elementals are there, but they cannot be called Gods. Household Gods exist, though they do not receive as much attention today as they did.

 

Most Gods are local, from the mountain and sea Gods to the English or the French or the German Gods.

 

Locality and language, since they influence thought, determine the conception of a God and therefore his nature. Sometimes Gods which were once local become independent of locality, as was the case with the Jewish Jehovah. The same God is worshipped by Jews in various countries as long as they adhere partially to the Hebrew service and to his name. Generally, however, locality and language have their part in the nature of the God.

There is no one Christian God, though most Christians believe Jesus to be the son of God.

 

The Gods of the various Christian countries are different entities. There are many Gods even in any one of these countries. Thinking through the molds of locality, language and sect makes these Gods. They are composites of the thoughts of their worshippers.

 

Each one is by his believers held to be the Creator and the Supreme Ruler of the universe. There is no one God who harmonizes and unites these various Gods. Moreover the dominating idea of a locality modifies the conception of God. The idea of democracy, if dominant, influences the king or ruler idea concerning God.

 

The characters of these Gods change when the thinking of the people changes. The Gods become kinder, more tolerant, more just, as the people do. When the times are hard, relentless, arbitrary, the Gods become so too. The Christian Gods are held together by the worship of the idea of Jesus, the Savior.

 

He too has been made a nature God, worshipped with bread and wine, with fire and water, and with stone and chants.
 

 

 


Section 3
 

The human qualities of a God.

The knowledge of a God. His objects and interests. Relations of a God.

The moral code. Flattery. How Gods lose their power.

What a God can do for his worshippers; what he cannot do.

After death. Unbelievers. Prayer.
 

 

The qualities of a God are entirely human.

 

He has no qualities which a human has not. His disposition is human. His powers may be superhuman, because they are an accumulation of the powers given by many worshippers and because he has the power of elemental nature in so far as it makes up his body.

 

A God has no health or disease and no bodily pains. He feels pleasure or distress from the manner in which his worshippers, other human beings and other Gods, treat him. He desires pleasure from the display and consequent recognition of the qualities and powers with which he is endowed. Some Gods are pitiless, revengeful, jealous and are pleased when their people successfully demonstrate these qualities.

 

None of them is entirely just, righteous or loving, or is perfect, almighty or the ultimate Good. None of them has foresight, to any greater extent than the human beings have who worship him. None of them is limitless in time, though some have lived through thousands of years under slightly different names as the Gods of different peoples. In his belief and in his declarations each God is sincere. None of them has knowledge or knows that he is ignorant.

 

Each believes that he has supreme power, when such is credited to him by his worshippers.

The objects, interests and purposes of a God are human affairs. He takes the conditions of the earth as he finds them. He does not create new earths, new continents, new races. He leaves this to man, whose originality and imagination are greater than that of any God. A God is thus interested in human affairs for the purpose of increasing the numbers of his worshippers and their enthusiasm and to obtain devotion in working for his power and glory.

Gods have relations with Intelligences, with other Gods, with nature and with men.

 

A God derives his mental properties from a multitude of doers, a part of whose educational needs is filled by the existence of this composite entity. Any Intelligence is immeasurably superior to the most powerful of the Gods that have been or ever can be. There are many Intelligences having relations with a God.

 

The bond is the Light of the Intelligence sent out by the human beings in their thoughts of worship that support the God, as the money of many small depositors constitute the assets and power of a large bank. The Intelligences guide the God in certain instances. They do not create a God, men do that. They do not give him his character, men do that. They do not shorten or prolong his life, men do that.

Governing Triune Selves use him in exteriorizing thoughts and carrying out destiny as determined by those to whom it comes. They empower or hinder a God for a special purpose. So one dynastic and religious God may be assisted in overcoming another, or a warlike God, ready to consume whole nations, may be restricted in the conquest made by his people.

 

A God is allowed to go and assisted to go as far as the destiny of those affected permits. Triune Selves see to it that the moral code, which every system of worship has, does not go against the needs of the people, and that it contains something that will aid in the education of doers.

 

The Triune Selves do not give it, nor does the God give it; men give it. The God does not particularly care about the moral code. The Triune Selves are interested in the education of the doers, which is not only immaterial to but is opposed by the God, as it will take them away from him. He does not know of Triune Selves or of Intelligences. All he feels in this regard is that he is sometimes checked, and then he fears.

The relations of Gods of religions to other Gods comprise those with pure elemental gods and those with Gods of other religions and those of Gods which are not Gods of religions. Human beings do not know of and do not come in contact with the gods of the four elements. These gods are not manifest to the human. If human beings worship a fire God or a water God it is a God created and supported by their thought, not a pure elemental.

 

The Gods which human beings worship are in contact with the elemental gods because, though they do not perceive it, their Gods are in the elements. The elements are their setting. They have their being in the elements and so are in contact with the elemental gods.

 

The elements are necessary to the Gods of religions. Without them these could not exist. But the elemental gods are not manifested to the Gods of religions, though they support them.

 

The relation of the God of a religion to the pure elemental gods is like that of an animal to air or of a fish to water.

 

All the Gods of religions are in the Great Earth Spirit, that is, in the elemental of the sphere of earth; but they are not in direct contact with it. They reach it and are affected by it through the elementals of the light, the life, the form or the physical worlds.

 

The Gods of the religions of historical times, however, were or are in direct contact with the Earth Spirit only, that is, with the elemental of the physical human world, or indirectly with it through elementals of the four planes of the physical world.

 

Because of their connection with purely elemental gods the Gods of religions are enabled to produce physical phenomena like lightning, storms, floods and earthquakes, good harvests and famines, possessions and poverty, and otherwise to show favor or disfavor to humans. Inasmuch as the worshippers connect their God with nature, they worship him as an extraneous being, and so engage in common prayer and worship.

The relations with the Gods of other religions are friendly or hostile according to the objects which the Gods pursue.

 

The relations are chiefly inimical, since the Gods of religions want the same things from the same people, worship with "body, mind and soul." The bodies of Gods have in them units which have served as compositor units in human bodies, and other units which have passed as free or as transient units through human bodies.

 

The free and the transient units may pass from the body of one God into the body of another, but the compositor units do not do this, unless the human to whose body they belonged during his life has changed his worship to that of the other God. The same matter may be therefore successively part of the physical make-up of several Gods. From the psychic make-up which comes to them from their worshippers, Gods derive their feeling and power.

 

This changes likewise when the worshippers change from one God to another. Gods are separate. They do not fraternize with one another. The relation between the Gods of religions is a constant, jealous and fierce struggle. Hence comes the general tendency to demand exclusive worship, to reward it and to enforce it.

 

Gods conquer each other only through human beings.

The history of religions shows therefore that the God of nearly every religion demands worship as the Creator of the universe and as its Supreme Ruler, claims for his priests religious and worldly power and wants to be adored in every act of life. Religious persecutions and religious wars are common features of history.

The Gods of religions have also relations with Gods who are not Gods of religions. Among such Gods are dynastic Gods, big family Gods, household Gods, money Gods, field, stream, woodland, water and other little nature Gods. The religious God wants to be at the head of this collection and usually is allowed to be so. Sometimes even that is not enough. Then these lesser gods are also looked at as enemies, and the human beings who recognize them are persecuted and punished.

The relation of the God of a religion to nature exists because the elements of nature compose his body. When a God of a religion is created, the thought of his human creators draws through the manifested out of the unmanifested, the matter that makes up the body of the God. This is the background of elemental matter to which the God is related as long as he exists.

 

The body is not condensed into solid matter, but remains on the planes where it was fashioned. The God is thus always with the unmanifested and with the manifesting elements.

Nature as causal, portal, form and structure elementals of fire, air, water and earth, forms the body of a God and gives him his power. This includes power over these elementals. He can thus produce the phenomena seen as active physical nature.

 

He cannot act in the unmanifested though he draws power from it. But everything from the bursting of volcanoes and of continents to the falling of snow, from the growing of fruits to the blighting of all vegetation, from the birth of animals to their destruction, everything that makes the conditions of human existence, a God may produce because of his relation to nature.

 

There are no bounds to what he may do with nature, as nature; but he is subject to two limitations. He is limited by the thoughts of human beings and by the plans of the Intelligences and the Triune Selves who marshal the exteriorization of these thoughts. He cannot do what would be against the destiny of the people affected. Within these two limitations he may act arbitrarily in rewarding and in punishing. He has little leeway. His great power is one which he must exercise according to law within a narrow range.

The relations of a God to men are in part shown by their religion. The relations are often different from what they are supposed to be.

 

A God is created by the thinking of men. He is a thought, differing from other thoughts in that a God-thought is one to which many persons contribute; in that a God-thought is a living being superior to any one of its creators, which an ordinary thought is not; in that a God-thought is in constant touch with the unmanifested physical world and can draw on it, which an ordinary thought cannot.

 

It differs, too, in that a God-thought is a being acknowledged by Intelligences to be an established agent between unmanifested nature and men, through which some of their thoughts are exteriorized to them; in that the idea of a God-thought as a help and protection God is established by Intelligences as the central idea in a religious system; and in that a God-thought receives constantly from men feeling-and-desire, the feeling of rightness-and-reason, and the feeling of I-ness-and-selfness.

Men adore, praise, give thanks to their God and worship him with rites, vestments, symbols, feasts, fasts and holy days. They develop a theology, a religious system and institutions for him. By all this worship they build him up from themselves. Some serve him in these ways with heartfelt devotion, some as fanatics with overwrought zeal.

 

The mass find this the easiest worship.

 

People are less sincere in their expression of gratitude, and still less do they worship their God by obedience to his moral precepts where these clash with their self-interest, appetite and lust. Neglect and disobedience of the moral code have been and are the general rule. But the God does not care much about their self-interest and vices, except for the abuse of sex.

This is hated by the Gods of most religions because the Gods want the sex energy to go to the multiplication of their worshippers or into their own glorification. Sex abuse drains the force, which should go out to the God in prayer and praise. But there are some Gods who want to be worshipped by orgies.

A God is not interested in human affairs, social or political, in which he is not named or thought of. He is interested in food because men pray for their daily bread, and in games if they have a religious tinge. He would be interested in a baseball game, a bullfight or a prize fight, if he were thought of or his name were invoked in connection with such sports.

 

Of course he takes an interest in battles, because he is prayed to. Usually the other side has a different God. So even if the prayer be apparently directed to the nominally one Christian God, each side prays to its own Christian God.

In flattery every God revels. There has never been one who did not delight in flattery. In this every God is very human. A God uses every means to get flattery. Deserved praise is not enough; the most extravagant flattery is encouraged. Hymns, prayer and worship abound in flattery.

Men shear their God of his power by the misuse of their sex function, by the worship of another God, by heresy and by sorcery; and by attempts to solve the mystery of God by thinking.

The actions which are possible to or permitted to a God are actually circumscribed in a manner which religions do not at all suggest. His actions are not voluntary; they are controlled by many factors.

No God created the world. No God made man. There have been thousands of Gods in the history of the world, and nearly every one has been credited with the creation of the world and of man. In a few thousand years the Gods of today may be as forgotten as those of a buried continent, and others will be worshipped, and each of them will claim to be the Creator of the world and of man.

 

No God governs the world, no God maintains it. No God sets the stars and the sun, moon and planets in their courses or makes the seasons.

Yet the God of any religion does many things for his worshippers, whom he aids in getting food, clothing, shelter, comforts, possessions and whatever makes life pleasant. The God also burdens them with hardships and trials, and gives them what makes life bitter, hard and desolate. The God does these things not directly, but by means of hosts of the causal, portal, form and structure group elementals, which control the four classes of fire, air, water and earth elementals, the producers of all earthly phenomena.

The God does these things for his worshippers because they in consequence support him, not because they are his children, not because he wants to educate or improve them and not because he is just. He allows and fosters the belief, which he eventually shares, that he is just, kind and loving, as he is told by them that he is, although the belief may be opposed to the facts.

 

He does not give knowledge or conscience, nor does he give science, art or literature. But these are used in his worship and he wants them in his service as much as possible. At times priests have secret knowledge of nature forces and use it in his worship, sometimes theology is finely spun, sometimes art in his service is lofty, but he is not the cause of this.

Not only does a God not give his worshippers enlightenment, but he tries to keep them in ignorance about themselves and about himself. He takes advantage of their ignorance in that respect. So he favors mysteries. Inspiration in a mass of people, enthusiasm, excitement, frenzy, these a God bestows.

 

Theurgy, in the sense of direct and supernatural interference with natural laws or with human affairs, is not among his powers.

He does not appear to men, because he has no solid physical body, and because he has no form in the form world, the life world or the light world, since his worshippers themselves have not developed any. He can only appear in the form of fire, wind, a cloud or similar shapes furnished by elementals.

Sacred monuments, books or writings are not given to men by their Gods. Men provide them, though they may be inspired thereto by their Gods. A God stunts the mental development of his worshippers where it is concerned with an inquiry into his being, but he encourages such development where it is employed in his service.

In the after death states no God can do anything for those who were his worshippers, nor can he harm or even reach those who have failed to worship him. This is as true of Jehovah, Jesus and the Christian Gods as it is of the Hindu Gods and of Allah. Their power is limited to the world on which sun and moon shine. No God can reach a doer except through and as long as it has its physical body.

 

What does follow a man into the states after death is his conception of God and what he felt was his duty.

 

Those who believe in Jesus as the Savior, or in God as their Father enthroned in the heavens amidst his angels, or in some protecting saint, will find the thought they have formed. The thought will be as real as they have made it. So they meet God, Jesus or the saints in their heaven.

Though a God cannot reach his worshippers in their after death states, he marks the breath-form during life, and this mark is by the aia transferred to the new breathform, so that it will deliver the body to be born to parents following the religion of the God.

 

If the religion of the God has passed away when the re-embodiment comes, the human being comes into that faith which is most like to the religion that has passed.

There are limits set to the power of a God in rewarding or punishing his worshippers. He can bestow, take away or withhold his gifts from them only within the limits set by their destiny, that is, the exteriorization of their thoughts. He does not know the limits as limits, but he feels them. He feels that that to which he is limited is the only possibility of action and he believes that he is acting freely. He cannot despoil an enemy or an enemy of his people unless the destiny of the enemy permits. He cannot bless a worshipper with gifts whose destiny does not permit it.

Materialists, skeptics, unbelievers and atheists nearly all believe in some kind of superhuman power manifesting in external nature. They call this power chance, luck, fate, destiny or nature. So they come back to a God of nature, even if they do not give it a name or praise. This thought is not endowed with feeling, desire and a little intelligence, as is the God of a religion, but it has power.

 

These thoughts of the deniers, the doubters and the indifferent, form some sort of little God which causes elementals to act and so furnishes the gifts of life and takes them away according to the limits set by the law. If there were a human who did not believe in any God, not even in nature or fate, he would still get necessaries, pleasures and troubles.

 

All this would come to him from elementals and not as sent by any God.

In every case what comes to a man is the exteriorization of his thoughts, nothing more, nothing less. But the events can be hastened or retarded within certain limits by a God. The exercise of this limited power appears to those who believe in him and are entirely ignorant of the matter, as omnipotence, shown sometimes as a granting of their prayer, and sometimes as the fearful judgment of heaven.

In the case of an unbeliever, events come in the end as they do to a believer, but many more unpleasant things are likely to happen to the unbeliever before his thought can produce the destiny that the simple faith of a sincere believer can project at once.

A God answers prayer, but not every prayer, especially not every selfish prayer. Indeed his power to answer prayer is circumscribed. He is limited by the destiny of those who pray and by the plans of the Triune Selves who marshal that destiny. Among the prayers which are "answered" many are not answered by the God at all.

 

They never reach him.

 

They are attended to, not by the God, but by elementals building according to the lines engraved by thought on the breath-form. As for prayer for special physical things or for help out of a difficult situation, the God does not and cannot answer it.

 

Prayer for others, for their success, for strength or growth of those one cares for, is another matter. The God does not answer that either, but it seems to be answered, sometimes because it gives encouragement to and makes easier the way of those who are prayed for. It is like saying a kind word to one who is making an effort. The result does not come from God but from the thoughts of those who pray.

 

These have an effect on the thoughts of the one who is prayed for.

 

 


Section 4

 

Benefits of a belief in a God. Seeking God. Prayer.

Outside teachings and the inner life. Inner teachings. Twelve types of teachings.

Jehovah worship. The Hebrew letters. Christianity. St. Paul.

The story of Jesus. Symbolic events.

The Kingdom of Heaven, and the Kingdom of God.

The Christian Trinity.
 

 

The results which come to the human from a belief in one of these Gods may be of great benefit.

 

They make up the higher life of human beings. In their troubles and trials men look to their God for help and protection. They believe him to be unchangeable among the changes of life. They think he is the source of their mind, that he speaks to them through their conscience, that he will give them peace. Belief in his love and presence gives them strength to live through their hardships.

 

But more. A belief in God is an incentive to a virtuous life in the hope of thereby coming nearer to God and becoming more conscious of him. These are some of the interior results.

But men must seek God and forget about themselves. If they do think about themselves it should be with humility. They must not think of what they are entitled to have or to be. They must think not of their wishes and their rights, but of their obligations for what they have received and of their duties. If they do not think about themselves they can seek God.

 

They are not free to seek God until they abandon themselves. They cannot find God while thinking of personal self persists. There is no place for both.

The exterior results are the building of places of worship, the maintenance of a hierarchy of priestly officers, almsgiving and philanthropy, persecution, war, hypocrisy and occasional excesses.

People are not aware that they are believing in two different Gods, whom they call by one name and whom they believe to be one. They look for him and see his works in the vast expanse and in the fearful power of nature outside. They believe he gives and takes things away. They believe that he gives them understanding and speaks through conscience.

 

Thus they confuse two different beings. The being from whom they receive understanding, conscience and identity and because of whom they can feel and think, is that of which they are a part. It is their unknown noetic part, their knower. How to know and worship one's knower is taught in no historical religion. But through the worship paid to the God of a religion, by a pure and noble life, worship is paid, seemingly to the God without, but really to one's individual knower.

The run of human beings is sense-bound. They live and think in externals.

 

Their feeling and thinking go out into nature. The grandeur and terror of nature and the force of destiny make deep impressions on the breath-form, and feeling and thinking follow these impressions. The knower makes no such impression. It is merely a witness. Because of its presence there is in man the feeling of "I" or identity.

 

This is not valued, as it is always present; its meaning is not appreciated. This feeling is changeless and eternal and cannot be lost. Upon this identity depends the existence of the human. Yet it is not even noticed.

Man's idea of God comes from his thinker and knower. That is the mystery of God. His ignorance about his thinker and knower and about himself as only a portion of the doer, compels him to account in some way for the "divinity" felt within. His ignorance concerning the "divinity" within and the compulsion to explain it, cause him to look outside himself. The doer is affected by this noetic presence. Man seeks to personalize, portray and deify the feeling of identity which he feels but cannot grasp.

 

He is a slave of nature, and forced to picture the idea of God in terms of nature.

 

When the nature God is built up outside, the human attributes to him the power and knowledge which he sees displayed in the universe. The attribution is wrong. The outside God cannot reveal himself, because he can tell the human only what he already knows and contributes to that God. The only explanation given is, that God is a mystery. The mystery is within. When a human knows of his thinker and his knower, he will not worship a nature God.

 

But while a human does not understand this it is fitting and the best thing for him, to worship the God of the religion into which he was born or of that of his choice.

The results of belief in God are usually good. The belief is uplifting, stimulating, comforting. It supplies what nothing else in life can give. Such a belief is necessary and answers one of the strongest yearnings of the human heart. If that God is powerless to change destiny and even helpless to answer prayer, yet strength and consolation may come from some other source.

Sincere prayer for enlightenment, for strength to withstand temptation, for light to see one's duty, is answered by one's own thinker, who is his judge, even though the prayer is addressed to the God without.

Prayer that is one-pointed, unconditioned and without reservation, is the only kind that will reach one's thinker. The thinker will not give Light or help or comfort in sorrow or in trouble where the prayer is simply to satisfy a selfish want.

The belief itself, that there is a God, even if he be a God of straw, gives strength. It allows the believer to feel that he does not stand alone, that he is not forsaken, that he can depend on God. The belief itself gives strength.

 

Worship of a God of a religion is a help, because the underlying idea is that it is concerned with something superior, something beyond the material, and because it is a lifting of the voice to what is supposed to be a being of justice and power. Again, it is the strength of the belief that brings benefit. But men do not usually worship their God honestly; they worship with their lips and not with their hearts; they say what they do not feel or believe; they are dishonest with their God; they promise more than they are willing to do.

Because of the many benefits which come from belief in a God, religions which teach his worship are necessary.

 

They form one of the closest bonds between humans believing in the protection and fatherhood of a God who is the source of their being. Every religion is a brotherhood and has in it the germ of a brotherhood of humanity.

 

A religion is a social circle in which marriage is made and a family developed. A religion encourages self-denial, self-control. It teaches a method of life which is clean, wholesome, moral. Religion based on a belief in God tells of the way to God.

Most of the great nature religions have these outer teachings. Within the religions are developed sects which search for and try to attain to an inner life, The Way, which leads to the Light within.

 

With Brahminism developed the Yoga schools. Buddhism grew out of Brahminism and teaches about The Way. Into Mohammedanism came the Sufi sects with their inner teachings. From the outer Greek religions developed sects which looked for the inner Gnosis. In Judaism arose the inner teachings called Cabala. Into it also came the inner teachings of St. Paul. But these were not able to change the Jewish nature religion, which still survives in Christianity.

Too much secrecy of these inner teachings usually has caused the possessors to lose their knowledge of them. If men have knowledge and keep it for themselves because they are too selfish to share it, they retain some of the forms without the knowledge.

 

The keys, omissions, blinds, ciphers and similar preservatives debase the teaching, until it is altered so as to be unintelligible to the would-be guardians themselves. Instances can be seen in the lost knowledge of the Brahmins, of the Cabalists and of the earliest Christians.

One who understands that he, as feeling-and-desire in the physical body, is the agent, the conscious doer portion of his own thinker and knower in the Eternal, will not, he cannot, depend on the god or gods of a nature religion. Understanding this he becomes independent and responsible; he will not require or want a nature religion.

 

He will also understand that the worship of nature gods is observed by people because such attributes as ever-presence, all-powerfulness and omniscience, with which the gods are endowed, are due to promptings from their own thinkers and knowers, whom they will then recognize and give service to. Without such understanding human beings have created thoughts which became the nature gods. Thus the nature religions have been perpetuated.

There are cycles of six types of nature religions and six types of information about the thinker and knower, one about every 2,000 years.

 

So far, whenever this information has been offered, the priests of religions have changed it, and it has been turned into nature religions. There is evidence of this in some of the nature religions.

 

Whenever the six opportunities for the acceptance of information about the thinker and knower are rejected, a cycle of six nature religions swings in and holds sway for the next 12,000 years, approximately. Then a new opportunity is given.

The Christian teachings belong to the cycle dealing with the thinker and knower. Brahminism belongs to a former cycle, and is a remnant turned into a nature religion. Buddhism, Zoroastrianism, and Mohammedanism, though millions adhere to them, do not belong to the cycle.

With Jehovah worship ends the last cycle of the six nature religions. This worship was from a former teaching which was given to a different race and which was to enable people to build a permanent body, (Fig. VI-D). The Jehovah of that original religion, whose name is now ineffable, stands behind the Jewish Jehovah. Judaism is based on the five books of Moses, on what Jehovah says about himself and on what his people say about him.

 

The first of the Ten Commandments is that they shall have no other Gods before him. The Commandments make for a proper life and a safe community in which to live on earth. The Jews have made a god, whom they worship as Adonai, which is the symbol of the physical body, as A O M is the symbol of the Triune Self.

 

Adonai is the name of the physical body as it is, in place of the Jehovah body, which would be a sexless body.

 

Adonai is the name that the race can pronounce. They cannot pronounce the name of the Jehovah or Jaweh who stands behind, because his name can be pronounced only by a two-columned sexless body. At present it takes two, a man and a woman, to invoke the name.

 

The original nature religion which underlies the Jewish version was aided by the Intelligences and Triune Selves to aid human beings in producing a permanent body, in which the entire Triune Self could be embodied.

The present Jehovah religion shows that the Jewish Jehovah is a sexual nature God, a spirit of the physical earth and its subsidiary earths, water, air and fire. The Hebrew letters are elemental forms, magical figures, through which nature elementals may be used. The vowels are the breaths and the consonants are the forms through which they work.

There was a class among the Jews who could use these letters to produce magical results with the aid of nature spirits. They knew a great deal about the workings of the body, and so could build up strong, healthy bodies for the worship of their God. Their time was before Christianity.

After Christianity a class among the Jews developed a system, the remains of which are known as Cabala. They claimed that this Cabala was the secret knowledge of their sacred books. Each of the twenty-two letters represents a particular organ or part of the body and is an opening to reach elementals and for elementals to come into the body. The elementals build the body, change it and destroy it. By knowing the use of each letter a Cabalist acquired psychic powers.

 

He could evoke and use these elementals through the letters and thereby bring about changes in his body. He could in the same way learn about the structure of physical nature and so bring about changes in it. These may be magical phenomena. The Cabalists had an opportunity of raising the Jewish religion. Because they guarded this knowledge too selfishly and would not give it out, they lost it.

 

Only fragments, which are ineffective, remain to them.

The religion which was the last in the cycle of nature religions and which became the Jehovah religion, was a link religion. It could have been used to link the cycle of nature religions with information about the thinker and knower, which is not a religion. The new information was turned into religions and became Christianity. The first opportunity given about 2000 years ago was lost.

 

Five more opportunities will be offered during the cycle. Should the world, of human beings now on earth, take advantage of this second opportunity, they will learn and practice what Jesus the Christ came to teach mankind. He was the "Forerunner" and "First Fruits" of his teaching: to conquer death by regenerating and restoring his physical body to everlasting life in the kingdom of God; that is, the Realm of Permanence. If the opportunity is also lost, four more opportunities will be offered during the cycle of 12,000 years.

Christianity is not one religion, but includes many. These have a common origin in a religion supposed to have been founded by Jesus, in a belief in Jesus as the Savior, in central ceremonies in Baptism, the Lord's Supper and common teachings taken from the New Testament, and so are held together by the name of Jesus, the Christ.

Christianity had its origin in the Jehovah and in the Greek nature religions. Inside of these arose Gnostic sects. Perhaps out of one of these, in combination with Greek philosophy and the Jewish religion, came Christianity.

The founder of Christianity was St. Paul. His teachings are teachings of the inner life. He pointed to The Way.

 

True Christianity would be the seeking and the finding of The Way. Christianity has turned out to be nothing of the kind. Instead, the Jehovah religion has multiplied itself into many nature religions, each under a different God, which are united by the name of Jesus Christ.

 

The Christian Gods, however, do not demand the food and sex regulations which the Jehovah worship imposed. The stories about the Savior's birth, life, suffering, death, resurrection and ascension have become the basis of additional nature worship which unites the various Christian nature religions.

Christianity may have resulted from the attainment to a state of perfection by a doer all of whose twelve portions were together embodied in an immortal body, and the Triune Self would be ready to become an Intelligence.

 

Such an event would cause a stir in the atmospheres of human beings, and some would feel called to follow and to teach more emphatically an inner life. The development of the doer in a human into what in the eyes of the world would be a divinity, and his telling of "the way, the truth and the life," and of the "Kingdom of God," is the basis of the story of Jesus.

Of his carnal body nothing is known. It is likely that he had retired from the world, else he could not have developed his immortal physical body.

 

Jesus was the name given to the body of the doer, here called the form being, which he had developed; Christ was the name given to the life being of the thinker; the light being of the knower is his Father, of whom tradition has him speak and with whom he attained union.

As this development of the doer could not be understood, the stories soon came to be on a level with everyday life, made attractive by miracles. The supernatural in these stories was to hold the attention of the run of human beings.

Nothing is known of the physical existence of Jesus; and of course nothing is known of the doer that inhabited this unknown body. The names Jesus and Christ were names given by the people who attempted to publish the story of his attainment and of his teaching, now lost, of The Way. The New Testament version of the person of Jesus and of his teachings is most likely the result of ignorance, compromise, tradition and editing.

Some of the events narrated are symbolic. The divine conception stands for the union of the solar and lunar germs in a purified or virgin body. The birth in a stable is the beginning of the life of the form being in the pelvic region, where the animals were.

 

The baptism stands for a later event on The Way, where the advancing traveler is led into a pool under a fountain, where the new form being draws from and is quickened by the water of life, expands into the ocean and becomes that ocean throughout nature, and the doer feels itself throughout humanity.

 

Jesus is said to have been a carpenter. He might have been called a bridge builder, a mason or an architect, because he had to build a bridge or a temple between the nature-cord and the spinal-cord for the Triune Self.

The cross is also symbolic. A human body has both a male and a female nature, and these two natures are tied together, crossed in it. This is symbolized by the cross made by a female horizontal and a male vertical line. The story of the crucifixion is symbolic of the doer embodied in and fastened to the cross of its body. Living in a body means a suffering for the doer.

His life of about thirty years in a physical body is mythological. If he had disciples they were advanced doers, not of the characters bestowed upon his apostles, and not picked up as the Bible tells.

 

But the twelve disciples are symbolical of the twelve portions of the doer.

As for his depicted suffering, that is impossible. The physical body of a doer such as was Jesus, could not suffer as human beings can, because the physical body was not of flesh such as humans know it. It would have been impossible to capture it, to hold it, to injure it. Even if he had had an ordinary human body, he would not have suffered.

 

A moment's thinking would have disconnected the involuntary from the voluntary nervous system. Even with martyrs, dervishes, sorcerers, feeling is taken away from things of the flesh when a thought connects it with worship, ideals, principles, glory; and Jesus was beyond the state of a martyr.

The story of the Roman penalty of the cross stands for any manner of slowly dying. The body in which such a one as Jesus was, went through the process of transformation from the human physical body to the perfect, deathless body.

 

Jesus, the psychic part of the Triune Self, was immune to suffering any process of death. The story of the death of his body as the result of slowly dying is a natural misconception, due to the fact that ordinary human bodies die and there is nothing left when their particles return to the four elements.

 

This did not apply to the body of Jesus, which went through the process of transformation during which it was recreated and, instead of ending by death, it conquered death and became immortal. Evidence of this is given by Paul, in his fifteenth chapter of First Corinthians.

The stories of the crucifixion, resurrection and ascension are remnants of great truths, distorted and turned into gross flesh tales. The story of the resurrection of Jesus represents the raising of the physical body from the stage of death through which it had passed, to a life eternal.

 

His ascension is a distorted picture of a doer going through a white fire which burns away the last vestiges of illusion, going into the light world and becoming a being of the three worlds in the Light of the Intelligence, in the presence of the knower, standing in the presence of the Supreme Triune Self of the worlds through which the Supreme Intelligence acts, and seeing into the Light of his Intelligence and through that Light seeing into the Light of the Supreme Intelligence.

What is called the "Kingdom of Heaven" is the purified psychic atmosphere. The "Kingdom of Heaven" is within. It can be experienced by one who isolates feeling from his body and is thereby in his psychic atmosphere, untouched by the changes of pain and pleasure which come through the body. He is not then conscious of the body.

"The Kingdom of God" refers to what in this book is called the Realm of Permanence, and was evidently intended to designate the earth or physical world of permanence, which does not change, (Fig. V-B, a); it exists throughout all changes and civilizations of the crust.

 

"First" Civilization means the highest in degree, and the "Fourth" means the lowest degree of the Civilizations of the matter and beings. They are not "created," or "destroyed" in the sense that they cease to exist.

 

The "Kingdom of God" is within, that is, within the body. The body is in it, when that body has been raised to immortality and permanence. This kingdom extends throughout the permanent earth. One who has not regenerated his body into a state of perfection cannot see it; and one who has not perfected his body cannot inherit that kingdom.

The doctrine of a Trinity, as presented in the Christian and other religions, has been a stumbling block, a subject of perplexity, which may be surmounted and solved by an understanding of the Triune Self.

One of the problems of the Christian Trinity was to understand how three persons are only one. The Trinity can be seen to correspond to or mean the three parts of the Triune Self which is one unit. The three parts constitute one whole unit, which is indivisible.

The trouble may have been that in changing the information about the Triune Self into the teachings of a nature religion, those that promulgated the Christian doctrines failed to understand the Triune Self and were confronted with the difficulty of presenting one God as three individual persons, as a Trinity, which they called the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost, or God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Ghost.

 

In nature there are threefold gods, who create, maintain, and destroy. This threefold nature aspect is the cause of Trinities in religions. The nature god is presented under three aspects as: creator, preserver, and destroyer or regenerator.

If made to correspond with the Triune Self, God corresponds to the Triune Self, as the unit; the Father is the noetic part, the knower; the Holy Ghost is the mental part, the thinker; the Son is the psychic part, the doer. The doer then is to be the Savior of the physical body, from death, by making of it a perfected, immortal physical body.

 

The doer is the real "Creator" in nature, who stands behind the nature gods and, by thinking, causes them to create, maintain, and destroy. In doing this, the Son, the doer, suffers until he controls his feeling-and-desire and is willing to be guided by the Light of the Intelligence, through his thinker, and until he perfects his physical body.

Christianity has apparently retained only the Father, the "Creator" conception, and has turned the "Preserver" and the "Destroyer" or Regenerator ideas into the Holy Ghost and the Son, or the Mother and the Son.

The teaching which became what is now Christianity was evidently not intended to be a religion at all. It was intended to be a teaching of The Way. This appears from some of the statements attributed to Jesus, among them the one that he was the way, the truth and the life, and his references to his connections with his inner God. It appears especially in the teachings of St. Paul.

 

This teaching of The Way was, however, turned into many nature religions and was lost to Christendom, the whole of the believers, as a teaching of The Way. The Greek Catholic Church is a nature religion. The Roman Catholic Church preaches nature religions; the majority of the sects that came through the Reformation are nature religions. But some like the Quakers and the mystics seek for The Way.

 

Whatever the form of the Christian or any other religion may be, and irrespective of the few who are seeking The Way, it is true that even nature religions give to their followers a little preparation for The Way.

 

 


Section 5

 

Interpretation of Bible sayings. The story of Adam and Eve.

The trial and test of the sexes. "Fall of man." Immortality.

St. Paul. Regeneration of the body. Who and what was Jesus?

Mission of Jesus. Jesus, a pattern for man. The order of Melchisedec. Baptism.

The sexual act, the original sin.

The Trinity. Entering The Great Way.
 

 

As stated in the Foreword, this section is added to explain the meaning of what seem some incomprehensible passages in the New Testament; and which will also be evidence supporting statements about the interior earth.

It is likely that the original teachings of the New Testament were about the Triune Self, as the individual

trinity; that they told of the departure or "descent" of the doer part of that Triune Self from the Realm of Permanence into this temporal human world; that it is the duty of each doer, by thinking, to become conscious of itself in the body and to regenerate the body, and thus to become consciously one with its thinker and knower as the Triune Self complete, in the Realm of Permanence, which Jesus spoke of as the "Kingdom of God."

The books of the New Testament did not become known to the public until some centuries after the alleged crucifixion of Jesus. During that time the writings passed through processes of selection and rejection; the rejected are the apocryphal books; those which were accepted make up the New Testament. The accepted books, of course, had to conform to the doctrines of the Church.

Concerning "The Lost Books of the Bible and The Forgotten Books of Eden," mentioned in the Foreword, it is said in the Introduction to "The Lost Books of the Bible":

"In this volume all these apocryphal volumes are presented without argument or commentation. The reader's own judgment and common sense are appealed to. It makes no difference whether he is Catholic or Protestant or Hebrew. The facts are plainly laid before him. These facts for a long time have been a peculiar esoteric property of the learned. They were available only in the original Greek and Latin and so forth. Now they have been translated and brought in plain English before the eye of every reader."

And in the "First Book of Adam and Eve" in "The Forgotten Books of Eden," we read:

"This is the most ancient story in the world it has survived because it embodies the basic fact of human life. A fact that has not changed one iota; amid all the superficial changes of civilization's vivid array, this fact remains: the conflict of Good and Evil; the fight between Man and the Devil; the eternal struggle of human nature against sin."

"One critic has said of this writing: 'This is we believe, the greatest literary discovery that the world has known. Its effect upon contemporary thought in molding the judgment of the future generations is of incalculable value'."

and:

"In general, this account begins where the Genesis story of Adam and Eve leaves off." (Permission has been granted to quote from these books, by the World Publishing Co. of Cleveland, Ohio and New York City.)

The Bible story of Adam and Eve is:

The Lord God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul. And God named the man Adam. Then God caused Adam to sleep and took from within him a rib and made a woman and gave her to Adam to be his help-meet. And Adam called her Eve. God told them they might eat of any of the trees of the garden, except of the fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and evil; that in the day they ate of that fruit they would surely die. The serpent tempted, and they partook of the fruit. Then they were exiled from the Garden; and they brought forth children, and died.

So far, that is all that the public at large has known about the story as told in the book of Genesis.

 

In the "Book of Adam and Eve" in "The Forgotten Books of Eden," the version given is said to be the work of unknown Egyptians, which has been translated into other languages and finally into English. Scholars have had it for centuries, but not knowing what else to do with it, it is given to the public.

 

It is mentioned here as in part corroboration of what has been written in these pages about the interior earth; of the original oneness of man; of his division into two, male and female at the trial to balance feeling-and-desire; and, later of their appearance on the surface of the earth.

 

According to the story, Adam and Eve were expelled from Paradise, the Garden of Eden. They came out to this outer earth crust by way of what is spoken of as the "Cave of Treasures."

Let Adam and Eve speak for themselves, and of God's voice to them:

Chapter 5: Then Adam and Eve entered the cave, and stood praying, in their own tongue, unknown to us, but which they knew well. And as they prayed, Adam raised his eyes, and saw the rock and the roof of the cave that covered him overhead, so that he could see neither heaven, nor God's creatures. So he wept and smote heavily upon his breast, until he dropped, and was as dead.

Eve speaks:

"...O God, forgive me my sin, the sin which I committed, and remember it not against me. For I (feeling) alone caused Thy servant to fall from the garden (Realm of Permanence) into this lost estate; from light into this darkness... O God, look upon this Thy servant thus fallen, and raise him from his death... But if Thou do not raise him up, then, O God, take away my own soul (form of the breathform), that I be like him... for I (feeling) could not stand alone in this world, but with him (desire) only. For Thou, O God, didst cause a slumber to come upon him, and didst take a bone from his side (front column), and didst restore the flesh in the place of it, by Thy divine power. And Thou didst take me, the bone, (from sternum) and make me a woman... O Lord, I and he are one (feeling and desire)... Therefore, O God, give him life, that he may be with me in this strange land, while we dwell in it on account of our transgression."


Chapter 6: But God looked upon them... He, therefore, sent His Word unto them; that they should stand and be raised forthwith. And the Lord said unto Adam and Eve, "You transgressed of your own free will, until you came out of the garden in which I had placed you."

Chapter 8: Then God the Lord said unto Adam, "When thou wast under subjection to Me, thou hadst a bright nature within thee, and for that reason couldst thou see things afar off. But after thy transgression thy bright nature was withdrawn from thee; and it was not left to thee to see things afar off, but only near at hand; after the ability of the flesh; for it is brutish."

And Adam said:

Chapter 11: ". . . Remember, O Eve, the garden-land, and the brightness thereof!... Whereas no sooner did we come into this Cave of Treasures than darkness compassed us round about; until we can no longer see each other..."

Chapter 16: Then Adam began to come out of the cave. And when he came to the mouth of it, and stood and turned his face towards the east, and saw the sun rise in glowing rays, and felt the heat thereof on his body, he was afraid of it, and thought in his heart that this flame came forth to plague him.... For he thought the sun was God.... But while he was thus thinking in his heart, the Word of God came unto him and said: "O Adam, arise and stand up. This sun is not God; but it has been created to give light by day, of which I spake unto thee in the cave saying, 'that the dawn would break forth, and there would be light by day.' But I am God who comforted thee in the night."

Chapter 25: But Adam said unto God, "It was in my mind to put an end to myself at once, for having transgressed Thy commandments, and for having come out of the beautiful garden; and for the bright light of which Thou hast deprived me... and for the light that covered me. Yet of Thy goodness, O God, do not away with me altogether (re-existence); but be favourable to me every time I die, and bring me to life."

Chapter 26: Then came the Word of God to Adam, and said unto him, "Adam, as for the sun, if I were to take it and bring it to thee, days, hours, years and months would all come to naught, and the covenant I have made with thee, would never be fulfilled.... Yea, rather, bear long and calm thy soul while thou abidest night and day; until the fulfillment of the days, and the time of My covenant is come. Then shall I come and save thee, O Adam, for I do not wish that thou be afflicted."

Chapter 38: After these things the Word of God came to Adam and said unto him: "O Adam, as to the fruit of the Tree of Life, for which thou askest, I will not give it thee now, but when the 5500 years are fulfilled. Then will I give thee of the fruit of the Tree of Life, and thou shall eat, and live for ever, thou, and Eve..."

Chapter 41:... Adam began to pray with his voice before God, and said: "O Lord, when I was in the garden, and saw the water that flowed from under the Tree of Life, my heart did not desire, neither did my body require to drink of it; neither did I know thirst, for I was living; and above that which I am now.... But now, O God, I am dead; my flesh is parched with thirst. Give me of the Water of Life that I may drink of it and live."

Chapter 42: Then came the Word of God to Adam and said unto him: "O Adam, as to what thou sayest, 'Bring me into a land where there is rest,' it is not another land than this, but it is the kingdom of heaven where alone there is rest. But thou canst not make thy entrance into it at present; but only after thy judgment is past and fulfilled. Then will I make thee go up into the kingdom of heaven..."

What in these pages is written about the "Realm of Permanence," may have been thought of as "Paradise" or the "Garden of Eden."

 

It was when the doer of its Triune Self was with its thinker and knower in the Realm of

Permanence that it had to undergo the trial to balance feeling-and-desire, in the course of which trial it was temporarily in a dual body, the "twain," by the separation of its perfect body into a male body for its desire side, and a female body for its feeling side.

 

The doers in all human beings gave way to the temptation by the body-mind for sex, whereupon they were exiled from the Realm of Permanence to re-exist on the crust of the earth in man bodies or in woman bodies.

 

Adam and Eve were one doer divided into a male body and a female body. When the two bodies died the doer did not thereafter re-exist in two bodies; but as desire-and-feeling in a male body, or as feeling-and-desire in a female body. Doers will continue to re-exist on this earth until, by thinking and by their own efforts, they find The Way and return to the Realm of Permanence. The story of Adam and Eve is the story of each human on this earth.

Thus can be epitomized into a few words the stories of the "Garden of Eden," of "Adam and Eve," and of the "fall of man"; or, in the words of this book, the "Realm of Permanence," the story of "feeling-and-desire," and that of the "descent of the doer" into this temporal human world. The teaching of the inner life, by Jesus, is the teaching of the doer's return to the Realm of Permanence.

Immortality has always been the hope of man. But in the struggle between life and death in the human body, death has always been the conquerer of life. Paul is the apostle of immortality, and Jesus Christ is his subject.

 

Paul testifies that on his way to Damascus with a band of soldiers to persecute the Christians, Jesus appeared and spoke to him. And he, blinded by the light, fell down, and asked: "Lord, What wilt thou have me do?" In this way was Paul chosen by Jesus to be the apostle of immortality to man. And Paul took as his subject: Jesus, the living Christ.

The entire 15th chapter of First Corinthians composed of 58 verses is Paul's supreme endeavor to prove that Jesus "descended" from his Father in heaven into this human world; that he took on a human body to prove to mankind by the example of his own life that man could change his mortal into an immortal body; that he did conquer death; that he did ascend to his Father in heaven; that, in fact, Jesus was the Forerunner, the bringer of the Good News:

that all those who would, could come into their great inheritance by changing their sexual bodies of death into sexless bodies of everlasting life; and, that the changing of their bodies should not be put off to a future life.

 

Paul declares:

Verses 3 to 9: For I delivered unto you first of all that which I received, how that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures. And that he was buried, and he rose again the third day according to the Scriptures.

 

After that, he was seen by above 500 brethren at once; of whom the greater part remained unto this present, but some are fallen asleep. After that, he was seen of James; then of all the apostles.

 

And last of all he was seen of me also, as one born out of due time. For I am the least of the apostles, that am not meet to be called an apostle, because I persecuted the church of God.

Paul has here stated his case, giving as evidence that according to the Scriptures, the physical body of Jesus died and was buried; that on the third day Jesus rose from the dead; that over 500 persons saw Jesus; and, that he, Paul, was the last to see him.

 

Based on the physical evidence of witnesses, Paul now gives his reasons for immortality:

Verse 12: Now if Christ be preached that he rose from the dead, how say some among you that there is no resurrection of the dead?

All human bodies were variously called the dead, the tomb, and the grave, because,

1) human bodies are not of continuous undying life

2) because they are in process of death until the conscious desire-and-feeling within stops breathing and leaves the dead body, the corpse

3) the body is called the grave because the desire-and-feeling self is enmeshed in the coils of flesh and does not know that it is buried; it cannot distinguish itself from the grave in which it is buried

The body is called the tomb because the tomb is the form of the body it is in and holds the flesh, and the flesh is the compacted dust of the earth as food in which the self is buried.

 

To rise from the dead and be resurrected it is necessary for the self of desire-and-feeling to be conscious of and as itself while it is entombed in the body, its grave, until, by thinking, the self changes the form, its tomb, and the body, its grave, from a sex body to a body without sex; then the twain desire-and-feeling self has become one, by changing, balancing desire-and-feeling, itself; and the body is no longer the male desire or the female feeling, but is then Jesus, the balanced doer, the acknowledged Son of God, his Father.

Verse 13: "But," Paul argues, "if there be no resurrection of the dead, then is Christ not risen."

That is to say, if there is no change or resurrection of or from the human body, then Christ could not have risen.

 

Paul continues:

Verse 17: And if Christ be not raised, your faith is in vain; ye are yet in your sins.

In other words, if Christ did not rise from the grave there is no resurrection from the body nor any hope for life after death; in which case every human would die in sin, sex.

 

Sin is the sting of the serpent, the result of which is death.

 

The first and original sin was and is the sexual act; that is the sting of the serpent; all other sins of the human in varying degrees are consequences of the sexual act.

 

The argument continues:

Verse 20: But now is Christ risen from the dead, and become the first-fruits of them that slept.

Therefore, the fact that Christ has risen and has been seen by more than 500 people, and become the "first-fruits of them that slept," is the proof that for all other desire-and feeling selves (still sleeping in their tombs, in their graves), it is possible to follow Christ's example and also to change their bodies, and rise in their new bodies, resurrected from the dead.

Verse 22: "For," as Paul argues, "as in Adam all die, even so in Christ shall all be made alive."

That is to say: Since all bodies of sex do die, so by the power of Christ, and with the doer of desire-and-feeling, all human bodies will be changed and made alive, no longer subject to death.

 

Then there is no more death, for those who have overcome death.

Verse 26: The last enemy that shall be destroyed is death.

Verses 27 to 46 are the reasons given by Paul to bear out the foregoing statements. He continues:

Verse 47: The first man is of the earth, earthy; the second man is of the Lord from heaven.

This shows the human body to be of the earth, and distinguishes the desire-and-feeling of the human, when it becomes conscious of itself, as the Lord from heaven.

 

Paul now makes a startling statement:

Verse 50: Now this I say, brethren, that flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God; neither does corruption inherit incorruption.

This is equivalent to saying: All human bodies are corrupt because the seed of sexual bodies is of flesh and blood; that those that are born of flesh and blood are corrupt; that bodies of flesh and blood must die; and, that no flesh and blood bodies can be in the kingdom of God.

 

Were it possible for a human body to be transported into the Realm of Permanence or kingdom of God it would instantly die; it could not breathe there. Because flesh and blood bodies are corrupt, they cannot inherit incorruption.

 

How then can they be raised?

 

Paul explains:

Verse 51: Behold, I show you a mystery: We shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed.

And, Paul says, the reason for the changing is:

Verses 53 to 57: For this corruptible must put on incorruption, and this mortal must put on immortality. So when this corruptible shall have put on incorruption, and this mortal shall have put on immortality, then shall be brought to pass the saying that is written, Death is swallowed up in victory. O death, where is thy sting? O grave, where is thy victory? The sting of death is sin and the strength of sin is the law. But thanks be to God, which giveth us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ.

This means that all human beings are subject to the sin of the sexes and are therefore under the law of sin, which is death.

 

But when the human thinks, and wakes to the fact that as the doer in the body, he is not the body in which he is encased, he weakens the hypnotic spell cast on him by his body-mind. And he begins to see things not by the light of the senses but in a new light, by the Conscious Light within, by thinking. And to the degree that he so thinks his "Father in heaven" guides him. His body-mind of the senses and the sexes is his devil, and it will tempt him.

 

But if he refuses to follow where the body-mind would lead him by its thinking; and, by thinking of his relation as the Son of his Father, he will eventually break the power of his devil, the body-mind, and will subdue it.

 

Then it will obey him. When the doer of desire-and-feeling in the body controls his thinking, and by the thinking of his desire and feeling minds also controls the body-mind, then the body-mind will change the structure of the mortal body of the sex into a sexless body of immortal life. And the conscious self in the body as Jesus the Christ will rise in the glorified body of its resurrection from the dead.

Paul's teaching, to all who will accept it, is: that Jesus descended from his Father in heaven and took on a mortal body to tell all mortals:

that they as conscious doers were asleep, entombed and buried in their bodies of flesh, which would die; that if they so desired they could wake from their sleep, could appeal to their Fathers in heaven, and discover themselves in their bodies; that they could change their mortal into immortal bodies and ascend to and be with their Fathers in heaven; that the life and teaching of Jesus set them an example, and that he was the "first-fruits" of what they also could do.

 


The Gospel Story

Scholars assert there is no authentic record that Jesus Christ of the Gospels lived on this earth; but no one denies that there were Christian Churches in the first century, and that our calendar began with the date that Jesus is said to have been born.

Earnest, honest and intelligent Christians of all denominations believe the story that Jesus was born of a virgin and that he was the Son of God. How can these claims be true and reconciled with sense and reason?

The story of the birth of Jesus is not the story of the ordinary birth of a baby; it is the unrecorded story of the conscious self of every human who has regenerated, or will in the future regenerate and change his mortal body into a sexless, perfect, immortal physical body. How? This will be shown in detail in the next chapter, "The Great Way."

In the case of an ordinary baby, the doer that is to live in it for the span of its life does not usually enter that little human animal body until from two to five years after its birth. When the doer does take possession of the body, can be marked when it asks and answers questions. Any adult can approximate the time he entered his body by the earliest recollections, memories of what he said and what he then did.

But Jesus had a special mission. If it had been for himself only, the world would not have known of him. Jesus was not the body; he was the conscious self, the doer in the physical body. Jesus knew himself as the doer in the body, whereas the doer in the ordinary human cannot distinguish itself from its body. People did not know Jesus. The 18 years before his ministry were spent in regenerating his human body into the stage of virgin virgin pure, chaste, stainless, neither male nor female, sexless.

People believe in the story of Jesus chiefly because it appeals and applies to their own conscious selves as desireand-feeling. The story of Jesus will be the story of the one who, by thinking, discovers himself in his body. Then, if he will, he literally takes up his body-cross and carries it, as Jesus did, until he accomplishes what Jesus did.

 

And, in due time, he will know his Father in heaven.

 


Jesus, and his Mission

The non-historical Jesus came at the due cyclical period and told all who would understand,

  • that the desire-and-feeling in the man or in the woman is in a self-induced hypnotic sleep in its breath-form tomb, in the flesh body, which is its grave

  • that the doer self must wake from its death-like sleep

  • that by thinking, it must first comprehend and then discover, wake, itself in its mortal body

  • that while discovering itself in the body, the doer self will suffer crucifixion between its male desire in the blood and the female feeling in the nerves of its own body, the cross

  • that this crucifixion will result in changing the physical structure of the mortal into that of a sexless physical body of everlasting life

  • that by the blended and inseparable union of desire-and-feeling as one, the doer abolishes war between the sexes, conquers death, and ascends to the knower of its Triune Self in the Realm of Permanence as Jesus, the Christ, ascended in his glorified body to his Father in heaven

His mission could not have been to found a religion, to institute or order the building or establishment of a universal church, or any temple made with hands.

 

Here is some of the evidence from the Scriptures:

Matthew 16, verses 13 and 14: When Jesus came into the coasts of Caesarea Philippi, he asked his disciples, saying, Whom do men say that I the Son of man am? And they said, Some say that thou art John the Baptist: some, Elias; and others, Jeremias, or one of the prophets.

This was a perplexing question. It could not have been a question concerning his lineage for it was said that he was the son of Mary.

 

Jesus wanted to be told whether people considered him to be the physical body or as something different from the physical, and the answers indicated that they considered him to be a reappearance, the re-existence, of any one of those mentioned; that they believed him to be a human being.

But the Son of God could not be only a human. Jesus questions further:

Verses 15 to 18: He saith unto them, But whom say ye that I am? And Simon Peter answered and said, Thou art the Christ, the Son of the living God. And Jesus answered and said unto him, Blessed art thou, Simon Bar-jona: For flesh and blood hath not revealed it unto thee, but my Father which is in heaven. And I say also unto thee, That thou art Peter, and upon this rock I will build my church; and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it.

Here Peter's answer tells his belief that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of the living God, not the physical body in which Jesus lived; and Jesus points out the distinction.

The statement of Jesus "...and upon this rock I will build my church; and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it," did not refer to Peter, who was not proof against the fires of hell, but to Christ himself, as the "rock."

By church, was meant the "Lord's house," the "temple not built with hands, eternal in the heavens"; that is: a sexless, immortal, imperishable physical body, in which his Triune Self could be and live in its three aspects as the knower, the thinker, and the doer, as explained in "The Great Way."

 

And such a body can only be built on the basis of the indwelling self, which must be as a "rock." And each human must build his own "individual" church, his temple. No one can build such a body for another. But Jesus set a pattern, an example, of how to build, as told by Paul in First Corinthians, 15th chapter, and in Hebrews, 5th and 7th chapters.

And further, Peter was too unreliable to be the "rock" on which to establish the church of Christ. He professed much but failed in the test. When Peter told Jesus that he would not forsake him, Jesus said: Before the cock crows twice thou shalt deny me thrice. And that did happen.
 

 


The Order of Melchisedec the Immortals

It should be seen from the foregoing that Jesus did not come to save the world, or to save any one in the world; that he came to show to the world, that is, to the disciples or any others, that each one could save himself by changing his mortal body into an immortal body.

 

Though not all that he taught has come down to us, there is enough left in the books of the New Testament as evidence that Jesus was one of the "Order of Immortals," of the order of Melchisedec, one of the Order of those who had done what Jesus came to demonstrate of himself, to mankind, so that all who would could follow his example.

 

In Hebrews, chapter 5, Paul says:

Verses 10 and 11: Called of God an high priest after the order of Melchisedec. Of whom we have many things to say, and hard to be uttered, seeing ye are dull of hearing.

Melchisedec is a word or title in which so much is included that it is hard to tell all that the word is intended to convey, and those to whom he speaks are dull in understanding. Nevertheless, Paul does tell a great deal.

 

He says:

Chapter 6, verse 20: Whither the forerunner is for us entered, even Jesus, made an high priest for ever after the order of Melchisedec.

Chapter 7, verses 1 to 3: For this Melchisedec, king of Salem, priest of the most high God, who met Abraham returning from the slaughter of the kings, and blessed him; to whom also Abraham gave a tenth part of all; first being by interpretation King of righteousness, and after that also King of Salem, which is, King of peace; Without father, without mother, without descent, having neither beginning of days, nor end of life; but made like unto the Son of God; abideth a priest continually.

Paul speaking of Melchisedec as King of peace explains the saying of Jesus, Matthew 5, verse 9: Blessed are the peacemakers: for they shall be called the children of God (that is, when feeling-and-desire of the doer are in balanced union in an immortal sexless body, the doer is at peace, it is a peace-maker and thus in union with the thinker and knower of its Triune Self).

Here are three strange verses in Ephesians, chapter 2 (which likewise refer to the union of feeling-and-desire, in an immortal sexless body):

Verses 14 to 16: For he is our peace, who hath made both one, and hath broken down the middle wall of partition between us; Having abolished in his flesh the enmity, even the law of commandments contained in ordinances; for to make in himself of twain one new man, so making peace; And that he might reconcile both unto God in one body by the cross, having slain the enmity thereby.

"Breaking down the middle wall of partition between us," means the removal of distinction and division of desire and feeling as the difference between the male and the female.

 

"Enmity" means the war between feeling-and-desire in every human, while under the law of sin, of sex; but when the enmity is abolished, the sin of sex ceases.

 

Then the commandment "to make in himself of twain one new man," that is, union of feeling-and-desire, is fulfilled, "so making peace," and the great work in hand of "redemption," "salvation," "reconciliation," is done, is complete he is a peacemaker, a "Son of God."

 

Again Paul says:

II Timothy, Chapter 1, verse 10: But is now made manifest by the appearing of our Saviour Jesus Christ, who hath abolished death, and hath brought life and immortality to light through the gospel.

In "Lost Books of the Bible," II Clement, chapter 5, headed: "A Fragment. Of the Lord's kingdom," it is written:

Verse 1: For the Lord himself, being asked by a certain person, When his kingdom should come? answered, When two shall be one, and that which is without as that which is within; and the male with the female, neither male nor female.

What this verse means is clearly seen when one understands that desire is the male, and feeling is the female in every human being; and, that the two disappear in their union as one; and, when that is done, that the "Lord's kingdom" would come.
 



Desire and Feeling

The vital importance of what the two words, desire and feeling, represent, seems not to have been considered before.

 

Desire has usually been regarded as a longing, as something unsatisfied, a want. Feeling is believed to be a fifth sense of the body touch, sensation, a feeling of pain or pleasure. Desire and feeling have not been linked together as the inseparable, undying "twain," which is the conscious self in the body, the doer of everything that is done with and through the body. But unless desire-and-feeling are thus understood and realized, man will not, he cannot, know himself. Man is at present the unconscious immortal.

 

When he finds and knows himself in the body, he will be consciously immortal.

No mention is made in the Gospels, of Jesus after he talked in the Temple at the age of twelve, until eighteen years later, when he is again mentioned as appearing at thirty, to begin his three years of ministry.

 

It could have been possible that during those eighteen years he had prepared and changed, metamorphosed, his human body so that it could have been in a state somewhat like a chrysalis, ready to change, as Paul explains in the 15th chapter, "in the twinkling of an eye" from a mortal to an immortal body.

 

Jesus in that form-body could appear or disappear whenever and wherever he willed to be, as is recorded that he did, and in that body he could have it so that anyone might look at it, or to have it of such radiant blinding power that it would affect a human, as it did Paul.

The changing of a human body should not seem more wonderful than the changing of an impregnated ovum into a baby, or the changing of a baby into a great man. But the historical mortal has not been observed to have become an immortal. When that is known to be a physical fact, it will not seem to be wonderful.
 

 


Baptism

Baptism means immersion.

 

The doer-in-the-body in the ordinary human, is only one of twelve portions, six of which are of desire and six of feeling. When in the course of its development and transformation other portions are enabled to come into the body and the last of the twelve portions has entered, the doer is entirely immersed, baptized. Then the doer is fit, recognized, acknowledged, as the "Son" part of God, his Father.

When Jesus began his ministry, he went down to the river Jordan to be baptized by John; and after he was baptized,

"there came a voice from heaven saying 'this is my beloved Son in whom I am well pleased'."

The narrative story of Jesus after his baptism would reveal much if one had a key to the code which Jesus used in his sermons and parables.

 


The Trinity

In the New Testament there is no agreement concerning the order and relation of the "three persons" of the Trinity, though the Trinity has often been spoken of as God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Ghost.

 

But their relation is apparent if placed side by side with what is herein called the Triune Self. "God the Father" corresponds to the knower of the Triune Self; "God the Son," to the doer; and "God the Holy Ghost" to the thinker of the Triune Self.

 

Herein they are the three parts of one indivisible unit: "God," the knower; "Christ or Holy Ghost," the thinker; and "Jesus," the doer.

 


The Great Way

It is not impossible for one who desires to travel The Great Way, which is dealt with in the next chapter, to begin at any time, but then only if he wishes to make it an individual course for himself, and unknown to the world.

 

If one should attempt to begin The Way "out of season," he might not bear the weight of the world's thought; it would be against him. But during the 12,000 years, which cycle began with the birth or the ministry of Jesus, it is possible for any one of those who will, to follow the path which Jesus came to show, and of which he himself set the pattern, being, as Paul says, the first-fruits of the resurrection from the dead.

In this new age it is possible for those whose destiny may permit, or for those who make it their destiny by their thinking, to go on The Way. One who chooses to do so, may succeed in overcoming the thought of the world, and build a bridge from this man and woman world across the river of death to the other side, to life eternal in the Realm of Permanence.

 

"God," the knower, and Christ, the thinker, are on the other side of the river. The doer, or "Son," is the carpenter or bridge builder or mason, the builder of the bridge to be. When one has built the bridge or the "temple not made with hands," while remaining in this world, he will be a living example for others to build.

 

Each one who is ready will build his own bridge or temple and establish his connection between this man and woman world of time and death, with his own thinker and knower in the "Kingdom of God," the Realm of Permanence, and continue his progressive work in the Eternal Order of Progression.