The Light Of Life

The Light of Life

Moses at the Well of Be'er (Dura)

“In him was life, which life was the light of men... That was the true Light which enlightens every man who comes into the world.” John 1: 4, 9

Daniel Drumm

The angels of peace weep bitterly. The roads are ruined, and no one travels the Way. The covenant is made void. Isaiah 33: 7-8

Author’s Note What the concept of the Logos - theologically translated as the Word - meant in Christ’s day, and the relation Greek philosophy had to Christianity, can be read in a brief selection from the Cliff Notes to the New Testament before the main text is read. It is included at the start of the appendix. Otherwise it might be felt that the statements made in the text about Light and Reason don’t relate to Christianity. It is strange that later centuries have practically erased the role that reason (logos) and the mind or understanding (nous) play in connecting man to the Logos. The Logos was known anciently as Reason, or the acting Ideas, Order, or Intelligence of God. The claim that Jesus was God was made primarily because John said in the opening lines of his Gospel that Jesus was the Logos, a concept from Greek philosophy. Other quotes like, “Why do you call me good? There is One who is good and He is God” (Mt 19:17; Mk 10:18; Lk 18:19), coupled with Jesus’ claim that he was not blaspheming when he called himself the Son of God, because everyone who is taught by the Spirit is a Son of God (Jn 10: 32-36; Rom 8:14,16; Jn 6:45; Heb 8: 6-13; Psalm 82: 1, 6-7) argue against it. So what the Logos meant in Greek philosophy, and in Philo, called the Thirteenth Apostle, whose ideas helped shape early Christian thought, is important to understand. “God is Truth, and his shadow is Light.” Philo, who was familiar with this saying of Plato’s, called the Logos the shadow of God; and the Apostle John identified the Logos as “the true Light which enlightens everyone coming into the world.” The Logos was conceived as “apportioned into an infinite number of parts in humans” (Philo: Her. 234-236), with the reasoning capacity of the human mind being a portion of the all-pervading Divine Logos. The mind itself was a special gift to humans from God and has a divine essence (from Hillar’s notes on Philo in the appendix p.22). In the Various Notes section (p.21) which follows the Cliff Notes In the appendix are statements from different religious and noetic traditions that amplify the text, and indicate that other traditions than the Christian are similarly aware of many things Jesus and the Apostles taught. Following that are the ideas of a Jewish philosopher of Christ’s time, Philo (20 B.C.-50 A.D.), with whom Paul and John seem familiar (p.22). His ideas form an extraordinary link between Jewish and Greek thinking, and perhaps helped enable the Apostles to communicate to their varied audiences. If Jesus’ words about manna are accurately reported they sound unaccountably like Philo’s. Philo attempted to relate Greek philosophy with Jewish revelation and was influential in early Christian thinking. He was even called the 13th Apostle. The selections on Philo included in the notes are by Marion Hillar, from the Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Following the notes in the appendix every Biblical reference cited in the text is included in full (p.24). They are arranged in order and in columns so you can flip back and forth to the text. Following that are a few specific Biblical references that concern overcoming death (p.29). Daniel Drumm February 25, 2007

connecting the human present with the divine future. As Zizioulas, discussing Justin Martyr, summarizes: 'The permanent sungeneia between God and man through the medium of nous leads us to take the idea of logos, employed by Justin in a christological sense, as the bond between God and the world, between truth and the mind. Christ, as the logos of God, becomes this very link between truth and the mind, and the truth of philosophy is nothing less than part of this logos."' - Edward Moore, STD, PhD Please send any questions or comments to [email protected]. Include “Light of Life” in the subject header. Frontispiece: Moses at the Well of Be’er- from Dura (Europas), detail of the wall-painting from the Synagogue at Dura. Columbia University Art Database, http://www.mcah.columbia.edu/cgi-bin/dbcourses/item?skip=1340

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"The greatest Church Fathers attest... there is... an ontological link or bond (sungeneia)



Preface Christianity no longer really has a way to establish grounds for knowledge that derives from the divine, that includes what we call objective knowledge. Not that works psychologically and philosophically, and can stand side by side with science. As a result many churches have become faith or feeling based, filled with hope, love and belief, but not knowledge. Few Christians would consider religion an equal with science in obtaining knowledge or facts, despite their disagreement with science’s interpretation of them. Western religion has lost its philosophical and noetic roots in our culture. Yet with religion that hasn’t divorced insight from practice such as Yoga, Vedanta or Buddhism it is an odd fact that western science itself, and physics in particular, has opened a dialogue to compare its knowledge and thinks it may even have something to learn- from men who merely sit in meditation. Scientists like Bohm and Sheldrake have even incorporated elements from these knowledge based religions’ explanations of reality into their theories. The following points to markers in the Bible that establish the grounds for knowledge as divine in origin. It needs to be described what has lead to the elimination of the philosophical views that expressed those grounds originally, but truthfully the psychological descriptions here go beyond the old philosophical forms. They come from examining the nature of thinking and knowing directly. Meditation or thinking if developed by the means indicated are considered more than capable of demonstrating what is being described. The claim is that the nature of focussing Light, or the noetic clarity of the mind, which is what thinking that produces knowledge or understanding is, is the same in essence for everyone and the facts about it are discoverable by anyone who examines their own experience. It is possible to demonstrate the action of Light directly, at least to yourself, and requires no belief. This is not intended to convince an atheistic or scientistic audience. It most likely would not even though it rests on the unexplained but universal experience of the nature of thinking itself, and not on religious or biblical assertions. It is intended to address a religious one, though, because it is modern religion that no longer believes thinking can lead to actual knowledge of the divine or to a knowledge of the world that does not contradict its beliefs. Christianity has abandoned the field of knowledge to science and secular thought. Science already believes that thinking can lead to its goals, even if it will not look at how it does so, subjectively, and pretends that objectivity is established by externals, and not by the Light of mind. It is religion that does not believe in the connection between truth and the mind. However if God is the Real, the Real is never absent from any of its creations; nor is it absent now from the mind of man, its greatest creation. So the divine ends up partitioned by religion from life and its problems, and is represented only as a set of feelings, experiences and beliefs that are made to shape or influence thought and action from the outside as it were. That is not real faith, nor does it fulfil the command to love God with one’s mind. Reality and the Spirit are then considered as unrelated rather than entwined, and in such religion the aim of life inevitably becomes something outside of or beyond life and the present moment. Spirit is not seen as the active and acting Cause of all forms of life. And spirituality is not understood as entering man’s knowledge and creative endeavors as a light inspiring from within, already whole and holy, transforming the ego from its roots up. Instead it is viewed as a set of “holy” concepts and assertions to which the ego, the intellect, the emotions, and even the Spirit must adapt. That view is the hallmark of the carnal man who, separated from God, sees adaptation of his self-concept and not the transformation of his being as what demonstrates Spirit. What interprets the Bible is the state of the feeling and desiring soul, expressing through the sense mind, or the mind of the Spirit. The contention between these two views is symbolized by the Pharisees’ and Christ’s deeply different interpretations of the spirit and intent of the Scripture. Spirituality to Christ means it is always the quality of heart or mind that makes the connection with the Light, always, and not mere adherence to the Law, belief in a doctrine, or submission to an authority. In this lies the freedom of the Sons of God, and that freedom is the whole point of Paul’s repeated message of the difference between the Old Covenant (or testament) and the New; and of the Old Adam and the New. Where this freedom is not understood understanding itself is under a cloud, and a veil is upon the heart, no matter what the authority claimed for what is believed. (2 Corinthians 3:6-18) Following Christ or turning to the Light means thinking, feeling and becoming true and good, for we are to become like him in act and thought. When we do we become intimately involved in Christ’s being, and that brings us to life; whereas simply wearing and declaring a belief leaves our hearts unchanged and the light of our being unbirthed.

Daniel Drumm

Daniel Drumm © 2007

“For God has not given us the spirit of fear; but that of power, and of love, and of a sound mind.” 2 Tim 1:7



Love and Light

The Light of Life

Daniel Drumm © 2007

In the New Testament loving God never means bowing to a powerful personality simply because he is more powerful and important than we are. God does not support arrogance in anyone. If God really were egotistical and lorded his strength over the weak, as he seems to in Job, he would contradict his own being, which is the Good (Lk 18:19) and the True, making him an affront to his own justice. (Job 34: 10-12,17) John’s first epistle says instead that “God is Love” (1 Jn 4:8,16), love being the root and substance of all good. This replaces the idea of a vengeful, arrogant tribal god, with the divinely caring Father of Jesus; who is a Father to all men. In the same epistle John also says, “God is Light” (1 Jn 1:5), light being that which illumines what is true. That isn’t mentioned as often, perhaps because Light is less familiar than Love. We must ask though what these words mean, if we want to know what to worship, and what it means to worship. These words Love and Light define what God is, according to the Bible, and they are the indicators there of the nature of what we call God. Most other descriptions are of powers, attributes or actions. There is one other defining statement, however, given by himself: that he is “I am”- as if essence or being were life and existence - and he was the “I” position, or conscious awareness, of existence itself. (Ex 3:14) What then does it mean to love God with our whole heart, mind and soul, as the first of Jesus’ Two Great Commandments asks? It means to love Light and Love and Life, as these are the Real, and are how the Whole, which God is, expresses itself. But what does it mean to love Light, Life and Love? It can only mean to value them, and valuing means using, being and expressing them. This is what keeping the Lord’s Word would have to mean, as his Word is not the words in a book, but the Light and Love behind them, which are Life. (Jn 14:23; Jn 15:10; Jn 6:63) This is the same Light and Love by which the worlds were made, and upon which we live. (Jn 1:1-4; Mat 4:4) It is this Word which will never pass away, or be changed by the changing translations and opinions of men. To keep that Word is Life, and the Life of God is eternal. The Lord’s Word is real love and living light, experienced within you where God’s Kingdom actually is. (Lk 17:21) Light is what enables us to understand anything. It is intelligence itself, and is what illumines our understanding. According to John, the Logos in Whom “was life, which life was the light of men” is “the true Light which enlightens all who come into the world.” (Jn 1:4, 9) God is conscious intelligence, or in other words, light and truth. Love, on the other hand, which John also says God is, is an expression of the unity of all existence. That which seems separated by bodies, like hearts and minds, is not separate in him. God is conscious of, and is conscious as, the oneness of all Being. Therefore Love is his commandment to us: to acknowledge our deep relatedness to others and share our being with them. This is the harmony working beyond and behind all forms. When these two, intelligence and love, express directly in your relations, not as beliefs or concepts, but as active powers, you will then have, as the Bible puts it, life in you and life more abundantly. (Jn 10:10) John’s epistle makes clear that simple acceptance of a doctrine or dogma is not what is meant by this, for he says plainly that if you do not dwell in love toward others, you do not love God; nor do you know God; nor, despite whatever you believe or have been told, have you been born again. (1 Jn 4:20-21; 1 Jn 4:7-8; 1 Jn 2:9-11) To love your neighbor as yourself, the second of the Two Great Commandments, does not mean loving only your spouse, relatives, and friends; or just those who are nice to you; or who believe or think like you. Spiritual publicans do that much (Mat 5:41-48); and such love does not form Christ, or the love of all in you, nor give access to the Light. Dwelling in Love has nothing to do with converting your neighbor to your doctrinal views, using every means necessary to have them agree with you. (Heb 8:10-11) Legalistic wrangling over scripture and dogma marked the sects of Paul’s time too, but Paul repeatedly teaches that Love is what is real to him, not the Law. (Rom 13:8) He himself will eat meat, or not eat meat; set aside circumcision; become a Greek to a Greek, or a Jew to a Jew, because the external trappings of convention and culture that divide men are as nothing to him. He seeks to reach the love and light in another and wake those, not simply make their views mirror his (2 Tim 5-6, 14). Love sees what is real in others, and everything else through that. As Martin Buber puts it, “Love is a cosmic force. For those who stand in it and behold in it, men emerge from their entanglement in busy-ness, and the good and the evil, the clever and the foolish, the beautiful and the ugly, one after another become actual and a You for them.” - from I and Thou (and consider 1 Jn 4:12). This is the Name under which when two or more are gathered God is present. (Mat 18-20) 

In his first epistle John relates what anointing by Light means: “The anointing which you have received of him abides in you, and you need not that any man teach you: but as the same anointing teaches you of all things, and is truth... even as it teaches you, so you will abide in him.” (1 Jn 2:27) As the Light shows you internally what is true, you abide in him by comprehending, and then acting on what the Light shows you. The Light that enlightens everyone will show you what things are, because it is truth, and is present in you. Light is living clarity that reveals, experienced as inspiration, insight and knowledge, when you think to know or understand. The source is hidden from you, but responds when you ask, seek, or wonder - when you truthfully want to know. It responds to your internal questions when focused with desire. Thinking is an internal asking which tries to see or understand. If instead your “asking” is just telling the Light what you want according to your preferences or prejudice, desiring to see what you already think, or get what you want, rather than caring what the Light which illumines all things will show an honest question, then the Light will allow you to believe any delusion you desire. At least within your own mind and until your actions, which affect others, require a correction through reaping what you sow. Fairness gives no one the right to affect another against their will, unless that will is itself unfair, or delusional. If instead you allow the sense of what is real intuited in honesty and genuineness to win over imagination the Light, which establishes objectivity internally and externally, will relate what is inside to what is outside, because it dwells in both. This is the Light you use in thoroughly honest thinking and in all creative thinking. It is available to all men through simple honestness (ask, seek and knock Mat 7: 7-12). There is no real genius, ultimately; just a more conscious and intelligent use of the Light. Anyone at any time can remove the impediments they have created to using it in their own form of asking. The Light does not require belief, as its use and development are direct and responsive to sincerity, desire, honesty, and focus. It is God’s omniscience put at your disposal, but you must want the answers. The Light always preserves the freedom of the individual; it will not interfere with free choice, desiring that men grow through the law of their own thinking and asking. The Light is available to show the truth about anything if the truth is wanted. When the mind understands this and uses Light appropriately, recognizing its real nature, the mind grows in reality, strength, creativity and wisdom. The Light itself is unattached to and unaffected by what is done with it. Yet it affects what uses it. This Light, the Life of the Logos, teaches you of all things, because it is truth, as John says. It shows all things as they are- that is its function. The Light of Truth is what illumines every mind that comes into the world, according to its asking. Truth is not a concept of any sort. Truth is the living Light that shows you what is true. That is what Truth does. It is not a single startling fact to which all things conform. It is the Divine Light of consciousness. Truth connects what is real in you to what is real outside you. The proof is that this is what any focused thinking which leads to understanding already does. Focusing the light of awareness through interest and honesty is how we discover the truth about the world and ourselves. Mind is the functioning of spiritual matter. It is the only thing in existence that can use Light. When you develop the mind and then true it, the Light leads to seeing and hearing without illusions. Thinking is inner seeing, as understanding is inner, or spiritual, hearing. When you think, you know because of previous experience that if you strongly desire to understand something, the focus of something internal provides you answers by means of a light, or clarity. This comes in response to your effort. This increased clarity is experienced in thinking, or focused awareness that is asking, not in passive everyday awareness that simply meanders in unfocused light. You know and have experienced the psychological reality of all this. You just need to look when you are really thinking to see the action of the Light. Everyone thinks about something. It doesn’t matter what it is about, as thinking, which is focusing the Light, is fundamentally the same act in all people. That itself is a remarkable fact that few have ever looked at. When you really need to know something you don’t hesitate, for you already know how to get answers. Especially when you want something badly, and have to think to get it. You must focus Light to get it. The Light is what responds to thinking when you ask, seek or knock, but it reveals only to the degree of your actual desire to know, and only to your level of readiness. It is what you have always posed questions to internally when you have thought to know anything. The Light will reveal what things are to themselves when you honestly

Daniel Drumm © 2007

What is Light?



want to know that. Thinking is nothing more than this activity of asking questions internally, however you do that, and trying to see; focusing in a way to get answers. Focus is interest brought to a point by the desire to know. You ask questions of yourself when you think - and it makes no difference to the process that you do so, actually making it easier - but you are who doesn’t know. You do not already have the knowledge you seek. Thinking is your act, but what is it that enlightens your mind when you do? It is not your mind. Your mind is what makes the effort to know: it is open, receptive, and asking... but asking of what? Your mind is also what understands when you receive, and it is affected, even changed in its spiritual substance by the Light it receives. Either one very superior level inside you is affecting another, or one very superior being is. As even the atheistic philosopher Nietzsche says, still faithful in this to the Spirit, “One receives. One doesn’t ask who gives.” But consider this... if it is the Logos itself you ask to show you, and the Light is pure intelligence or divine omniscience, then you have the potential for knowing the truth about anything whatsoever. Consider the implications of that faith and possibility, and what you may have given up by leaving your Father’s hearth to feed on husks, or the opinions of men. You get answers when you think (or meditate) qualified by the form and light your mind puts the question in. Because you obtain answers through your ability to temporarily experience oneness with the Light, which is what knowing is, you do not think of the Light as different from you. You do not realize that the knowledge you obtain comes from the brief union with the Light, which illumination is, no matter how small the degree of it. Oneness occurs when you focus the Light. It takes place when you are open, real (honest and truthful), impersonal (no respecter of personalities over life, fact, or meaning) and desire to see, be and know what is true. The Light responds when you ask, which simply means desiring to know. More Light is shed on what you are trying to see when you focus your interest on the point of what you are considering, and try to see what is essential, or significant, or true about it. Focusing your inner question on the point focuses Light, and the Light opens through that point into knowledge of your subject. The Light behind your answer comes from a level so far beyond your present level, or the level of the question, that the answer can, when the focus is clean like that described above, flood the mind with a completely new understanding or solution. It can instantaneously show everything true about it, relating to it, and developing from it. A survey of great discoverers and thinkers, cited by Eckhart Tolle in A New Earth, quoted that description, that insight would come in great mental breakthroughs, and flood the mind with understanding. Sometimes it also comes later than when the mental effort was made to see, or after sleep, or at an unexpected moment. The reason is that the depth or complexity of what is sought is so new, or different from the previous mental context of the “asker”, that one must be prepared over time to receive the answer. The desire to know beyond what is already understood, like a scientist, a thinker, or a spiritually focused person wants to know, sometimes involves carrying that desire, and developing one’s thought over weeks, months, even years, like a miniature pregnancy. The Light represents an actual potential to know all things, because it will show what is essential, true or real about anything it is asked to illumine. At the same time it exposes illusions. It gives knowledge itself. In fact enlightenment itself is a condition in which no egoic resistance is present in the relationship one has with the Light, and so knowing is direct- free of craving, prejudice, one’s conditioning or ignorance. This has also been called oneness with God.

Light is the intelligence of all understanding. The Light in response to interest and focus will give insight into how to make a painting beautiful as readily as how to make a gun, for even at the level of the sensory intellect it leaves you free to ask what you like. That is because people must learn to value and develop their intellect before they can learn to use it rightly. But to the real mind, that is, to the deeper intuition or understanding, the Light will also show the cataracts of preference and prejudice on the sense-mind’s eye. This sense-mind is ideally intended to be the focus faculty for the real mind- a neutral, unfeeling hand that holds steady whatever the mind wants to look upon, and that which translates light into act. But most often it is the cause of the mind’s fall. It is unfeeling and only perceives the surfaces of things. It works with form and abstractions from form, with what the senses show, and with words- but not with underlying principles or ideas, unless they concern form. If it is made to do so despite its incapacity - and it is made to do so all the time - it carnalizes meanings or strips them of their living essence so

Daniel Drumm © 2007

The Sense-mind, Intelligence and Love.



The Light of Life

Daniel Drumm © 2007

that it can grasp them. Then it works with them mechanically as if they were objects. It is analytical, taking things apart to work with them, or it makes things dead to “understand” them. Its action is to isolate and separate, as if everything and every problem it considered were a form that could be fitted together or taken apart. It cannot wonder, nor synthesize its understandings through essences, but like a computer can only tabulate, and compare appearances through association (i.e. this is like that) - for it can perceive neither essences nor life. When it tries to work with ideas it substitutes mechanical logic and authorities for pure thinking, or a direct knowing with Light. This carnal mind is essentially an identification that arises when the soul identifies with the body, with the point of view of the mind of the body, and with the personality that arises from these. Then one acts for the body, the passions, for feelings and desires, and not for intelligence and love. Objects and how they feel become strangely important and substantial, as feeling fills them out, and desire hungers for them; while what causes them or what they are in themselves recedes. The real mind is what focuses meaning and comprehends. When the mind and the sense-intellect (the shining mind and the chattering mind of Taoism) are brought together in the pursuit of knowledge conceptual intuition is born. But the ego or earthly man normally uses the carnal intellect as its prop and ally; not for knowledge but to deal with things unfeelingly. The intellect or sense-mind has this virtue, that it can view desire and emotion unmoved, allowing the real mind sufficient breathing space to see and consider; but this virtue is more often used to suppress, not to acknowledge or work with feelings and desires. When the intellect is used to work with issues and matters beyond itself this is how evil arises, especially if it is acting at the whim of the ego or unbalanced emotion. It then cuts off feeling, empathy and the sense of relation. In that case its focus and intent become fed by an intense, unconscious drive. It deals with all things as if they were mechanical and unfeeling like itself, able to slice through bodies or issues as if they were so much butcher’s meat. But it has no motive of its own, being unaware as a self. It is the soul of feeling and desire that chooses and uses the minds based on what it most wants. And the soul may identify with the sense-mind or the mind of the Spirit. The Pharisees are the Bible’s imagery for what the carnal mind regularly does with the things of the Spirit. The Light will show what Love is, and what it is not. It gives intuitions of your real relations with things and others. Or it can bring to the surface the emotion causing a habit, and show how such a contraction of life is released. Your heart’s knowledge must include the warmth and depth of love to understand the greater dimension of what is Good. The way loving a child teaches love unselfishness. The Light that the sense-intellect accesses allows for any and all discovery, based simply on right asking, and not necessarily on right being. Honesty will solve much, and through the development of the morality that honesty and truthfulness are, will reconnect the intellect to the real mind - but without Love the mind plows a barren field. Put differently, despite the fact that the sun is brightest in winter, the earth is cold because its axis is turned away from the sun’s warmth. Nothing can grow or live then, and everything returns to the root. But come spring the hemisphere leans back into relation; light and warmth combine, and everything comes to life and grows. The light of the intellect needs the love of the heart to grow into the actual Light of Life. It is Love that allows Light access and entry to whatever it is considering and trying to understand, and Knowledge itself is the union spiritually with the subject or object known. Similarly, love without what is true is blind, selfish, sentimental, and foolish; a psychic whirlpool of feelings and desires, and not the One who is Good. (Luke 18:19) It takes love and light for life to take root in the Real, and reach upward.

“For the bread of God is he that comes down from heaven, and gives life to the world.” (Jn 6:33) and the “Kingdom of God is within you” (Lk 17:21) indicate these are psychological realties spoken of, as God is a Spirit and can only be worshiped in spirit and in truth. (Jn 4:24) When it is said that God is Light and Love what is referred to are spiritual and internal facts and states, not external ones, despite the fact these ultimately cause all external realities, and support and indwell them. The union of Light and Love within you is entry into the Kingdom of God. This is Life, and the water of Life, and Life is Spirit. (Jn 4:14) The bread, water, and wine, which are poetical emblems for light, life, and love, Christ meant to be used and absorbed by us, literally. John 4:32 and John 6:57 10

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make clear he was not referring to an external sacrament here. In the same way that Jesus was literally fed by, and lived by his Father, he states that the use of his Light and Love will transform us, and give us eternal life. (Jn 6: 5158) And he clarifies in this passage this eating - the most primitive form of oneness or union - is not meant physically but spiritually. For it is the spirit that quickens and changes the inner being, not what the body consumes. (Jn 6: 63) Light and Love are real food, or as he puts it, meat and drink indeed. (Jn 6:55) These are what God’s being actually is, and we are to live upon God’s being. “Except you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you have no life in you. Who eats my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life... He that eats my flesh and drinks my blood dwells in me and I in him. As the living Father has sent me, and I live by the Father, so he that eats me will live by me.” (Jn 6: 45-63) Light is the living Bread, the Body of Christ we are to absorb and use to attain eternal life, just as Love is the Wine or the Blood of Christ, and not any carnal symbols for them. This is literally true. The Life within these, in you, is the Life of the Logos, without which you can neither love nor think nor act. (Jn 15:1-5; Jn 6:33, 51 ; Jn 1: 4, 9) This is the spiritual Bread that comes down from heaven. (Jn 6:32) For even manna, or the physical bread that came down from the heaven, that the fathers ate in the desert, still they died. But whoever eats this Bread will not die. (Jn 6:50-51) This Light feeds, elevates and transforms the soul insofar as you inquire into the Real, and don’t merely use it for distracted and disconnected desire. “Blessed is he that shall eat bread in the kingdom of God.” (Lk 14:15) “Who is made, not after the law of a carnal commandment, but after the power of an endless life.” (Heb 7:16) Despite the fact this is a description of Melchisadek, and Jesus after him, it is also the goal and promise for all of Jesus’ teaching (Heb 6:20). Paul says in Romans: “But if the Spirit of him that raised up Jesus from the dead dwell in you, he that raised up Christ from the dead will also quicken your mortal bodies by his Spirit that dwells in you.” (Rom 8:11) It does not say that you must be dead, or in heaven for your body to be quickened, only that the Spirit dwell in you. The churches interpret that resurrection means something that happens to us after we die, but if sin is death as Paul says, and death is overcome by dying to sin, how is it that those in the hells they picture also have eternal life? “For to be carnally minded is death; but to be spiritually minded is life and peace... if you live after the flesh you will die, but if through the Spirit you will mortify the deeds of the body, you will live.” (Rom 8: 6,13) “For the first man is of the earth, earthy. The second is of the Lord from heaven.” (1 Cor 15:47) The spirit is not born when the body is born, not according to the passage “Where were you when I laid the foundations of the earth... when the morning stars sang together, and all the sons of God shouted for joy.” (Job 38:4,7). Here God is speaking to the personality of Job, the earthly man, but is reminding the Son of God that he wanted to come to earth when the foundations of the earth were laid. In John 10:32-36, Jesus defends himself against the charge of blasphemy by saying he is a son of God, and had not their scriptures indicated that all those unto whom the light of God came were gods? Paul also says, “For as many as are led by the Spirit of God, they are the sons of God... The Spirit itself bears witness with our spirit that we are the children of God.” (Rom 8:14,16) The quotes, “Dust thou art, and to dust thou shalt return,” and “It is appointed unto man once to die, and then the judgement,” (Heb 9:27) are warnings to the earthly man, the son of man not God. For the Bible also says, “You are gods, and all of you are children of the Most High. But you shall die like men.” (Psalm 82:6-7) “Then shall the dust return to the earth as it was: and the spirit shall return unto God who gave it.” (Ecc 12:7) The spirit was not born at physical birth, but already existed when the foundations of the earth were laid; nor does it die at death. So continuing life after the death of the body is not what is meant by resurrection- the Son of God already lives forever. It is the servant, the son of a man, the earthly man, the creature, who puts on incorruption, not the spirit. ( Jn 8: 32-36; Rom 8:18-21, 23) But if the body is resurrected and given eternal life for those who are evil, then are Paul, John, Genesis (3:22, 24) and Revelations (2:7) contradicted. Redemption is of the body, after the mind and heart are reborn in Christ. (Rom 8:23) The word sleep is what the New Testament uses when it refers to someone who has died, saying they have fallen asleep, or are asleep in Christ. (Jn 11: 11-14) By contrast, to be dead or to refer to the dead means, in biblical terms, that a person’s spiritual consciousness is buried in their body (“Let the dead bury the dead.”). This means they are not aware as the spirit, but live as the creature, identified psychologically with the animal body that the spirit inhabits and makes human. When the spirit lives as the body, and not for intelligence and love, it is dead spiritually. It is unconscious as a Son, and is a prodigal living on husks, unaware how to re-ascend to heaven, which it came down 11

from. It is walking in darkness at noonday. The body is necessary, and important, but it is not identity. It is the body, and the personality of the body, which together the Bible calls the old Adam, that die. This corruptible, if it does not put on incorruption by the power of the Spirit (1 Cor 15:53-54), is the son of man unto whom it is appointed once to die, and then the judgment. Only by the Spirit dwelling in you is death of the body overcome, is judgment overcome, and “the creature itself shall be delivered from the bondage of corruption into the glorious liberty of the children of God.” (Rom 8:21; Jn 8:51) Overcoming death means overcoming physical death, which Jesus demonstrated, acquiring a Body of Light that could be touched and felt by all. [Various Notes, notes 2-4] “Now this I say brethren, that flesh and blood cannot inherit the Kingdom of God; neither does corruption inherit incorruption. But behold, I show you a mystery: we shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed.” (1 Cor 15: 50-51) The resurrection of the dead means overcoming physical death, for “I tell you of a truth, there be some standing here, which shall not taste of death, till they see the kingdom of God.” (Lk 9:27) Nor will they will taste it after, if death is swallowed up in victory. Death is the backdoor into heaven. Melchisadek lives, and is made after the power of an endless life, without beginning or end of days, capable of appearing physically like he did to Abraham. So also Jesus, made a high priest after the Order of Melchisadek, did to his Apostles, eating fish, letting himself be touched, and afterward appearing to upwards of 500 people. If this is not true, then as Paul puts it, your faith is vain, and Christ is not risen from the dead. Nor is he the firstfruits of them that slept, or those who have already died. If Christ, “who is a quickening Spirit”, makes you alive, how is it we die, if we are not still in Adam? “For as in Adam all die, even so in Christ shall all be made alive,” (1 Cor 15:22) Spiritual “death” causes physical death, for in Adam, that is, in identification with the carnal man, all die. (Rom 8:6) This is the Fall, “for the sting of death is sin, and the strength of sin [ie to kill] is the Law.” (1 Cor 15:56 ); and the Fall is a choice we are continually making, else we would not die. (James 1:15). Rising from actual death as Jesus and Lazarus did only makes the point dramatically that death does not exist for the Spirit. These were demonstrations that death has no power over the Spirit. You do not die physically to overcome death, for the Spirit, who is as (or is, or is of, in some translations) the Lord from heaven, is immortal; but if the Spirit dwell in you “he that raised up Christ from the dead will also quicken your mortal bodies by his Spirit that dwells in you.” (Rom 8:11). Rising from actual death as Jesus and Lazarus did only makes the point dramatically that death does not exist for the Spirit. It is not necessary to die physically to overcome death; only that the Spirit dwell in you. That was only a demonstration that death has no power over the Spirit. Nor must we think it robbery to be equal with Jesus. (Phil 2: 5-6) Everything Jesus did we can do, according to his own words - and Jesus overcame physical death, eating fish and being touched in the physical, not the heavenly, world. (Jn 14:12)

Spirituality is living as the spirit, as the “heavenly man”. (1 Cor 15:47) According to the Bible, this heavenly man is elohim, a god in the midst of whom Yave Elohim judges. (Jn 10: 34; Psalm 82:1, 6-7) What such living means is to become richly conscious, manifesting love and light, and to have abundant, even eternal life. To live as the spirit means to establish real relationships with things and others (love); and to think and act based on honesty and truthfulness (light). These two, intelligence and love, are the true and the good. They relate to each other, and perfect each other, for “whoever keeps his word [or light], in him truthfully is the love of God perfected”. (1 Jn 2: 5) “He that says he is in the light and hates his brother is in darkness even now. He that loves his brother abides in the light, and there is no occasion of stumbling in him.” (1 Jn 2:9-10) By contrast, mainstream religion’s initial address to people is quite often about fear: fear of God, fear of the unknown, fear of the uncontrollable, and fear of the afterlife. It even calls the spirit of fear in man, wisdom. Many of religion’s teachings and beliefs are based on a negative, fearful view of God and his wrath. Much of its activities and some of its doctrines are designed to avert or overcome the fear which religion intentionally arouses to interest people in its views. This approach is really the First Covenant from the Old Testament, which Hebrews Chapter 8 criticizes, and then has God himself set aside. It’s author says, “But now hath [Jesus] obtained a more excellent ministry, by how much also he is the mediator of a better covenant, which was established upon better promises.

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The Old and New Covenant

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For if that first covenant had been faultless, then should no place have been sought for the second.” (Heb 8: 6-7) The old covenant was based upon fear of God, upon the Law, the Prophets, and on Commandments that proscribe and condemn. This was the covenant about which Hebrews says, “For there is truthfully an annulling of the commandment that went before, for its weakness and unprofitability. For the Law made nothing perfect; but the bringing of a better hope did, by which we draw near to God.” (Heb 7: 18-19) Paul says there is a literal veil over the mind and heart of anyone who looks backward to what has been done away with. (2 Cor 3: 6-18; also Ga 4:21-31) Fear prevents understanding of the good news of the Gospel, that Love and Light have replaced the Law, and our life is hid in Christ. You cannot love and be open to what you must placate and fear, no matter what you may force your lips to say. Love and Light are the New Covenant Jesus brokered for us. In that Covenant, God’s laws, or eternal ideas, are written in all men’s hearts and minds. They are perceived there as the moral intuitions of Light and Love, in tablets of the heart, and not in books or on tablets of stone. He says: “Not according to the covenant that I made with their fathers in the day when I took them by the hand to lead them out of the land of Egypt [which covenant is the Law, the Prophets and the Commandments]... For this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, says the Lord: I will put my laws into their mind, and write them in their hearts... and they shall not teach every man his neighbor, or his brother saying, Know the Lord: for all shall know me from the least to the greatest.” (Heb 8:6-11; Jer 31:30-34; Heb 10: 16; 2 Cor 3:3-8; 2 Cor 3:13-18) The writer of Hebrews says plainly that the time Jeremiah was predicting is present now, and that the New Covenant Jesus established for us can perfect us, whereas the Law could not. “The law and the prophets were until John: since that time the kingdom of God is preached, and every man presses into it.” (Lk 16:15-17) He repeatedly states that the Old Covenant was ineffective, and is ended. At the end of the chapter in which he quotes Jeremiah’s words, saying they are already fulfilled, he says, “In that [God] says, a new covenant, he has made the first old. Now that which decays and waxes old, is ready to vanish away.” (Heb 8:13)

The Light as the Logos In the writings of Plato the term logos is translated as reason or meaning. Reason was viewed as a fundamental order; as sanity, balance, and proportion; and as the comprehension of identity through essence. The Logos of Philo, Heraclitus, and the Stoics, was understood as the divine Reason, or as God, and was related to Plato’s divine Ideas:

It was to these ideas that the Apostles John and Paul were referring when they explained that it was the incarnation of the Logos itself in Jesus to their Jewish and Gentile audiences. Man’s reason is the rational light of the mind. Through thinking the mind reaches in its considerations beyond the personal and the particular, to the impersonal and the universal. It can even lift it’s understanding to the World Mind and see reality through that. In philosophy, the breakthrough by thinking into the higher mind of the heavenly man is termed Pure Reason. That there was a relation between man’s reason (logos), or the light of his mind (nous), and Reason itself, was understood by the early church Fathers. Augustine, for instance, says that the image of God in man is not a corporeal image, but is the understanding itself: “The God-image in us reveals itself through “prudence, justice, moderation, virtue, wisdom and discipline.” St. Augustine distinguishes between the God-image which is Christ and the image which is implanted in man as a means or possibility of becoming

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“To say just how much of the New Testament was influenced... by Greek conceptions is difficult, but such influences are recognized readily in the doctrine of the Logos, which may be translated as Word or Reason... For Heraclitus, the Logos was a kind of cosmic order, or divine justice, that presides over the destinies of a changing world. Whenever either of two opposite forces operating in the world oversteps its bounds, the Logos ensures that a proper balance is restored. Light and darkness, heat and cold, wet and dry, male and female, like all other pairs of opposites, are thus kept in proper relation to one another. Nor is the work of the Logos confined to the physical aspect of nature, for it affects the moral order as well. Whenever the requirements of justice are violated, either by individuals or by nations, the Logos acts in a compensatory manner, punishes the evildoers, and restores the proper balance of things. Plato regarded the Logos, or Reason, as the divine element that is present in human beings. Its demand for harmony among the elements, including those in human nature, provides the key to the real meaning of the good life” - from Cliff Notes to the New Testament.

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like God. The God-image is not in the corporeal man, but in the “anima rationalis” [rational mind, or soul], the possession of which distinguishes man from animals. “The God-image is within, not in the body. . . Where the understanding is, where the mind is, where the power of investigating truth is, there God has his image.” Therefore we should remind ourselves, says Augustine, that we are fashioned after the image of God nowhere save in the understanding. “But where man knows himself to be made after the image of God, there he knows there is something more in him than is given to the beasts.” From this it is clear that the God-image is, so to speak, identical with the “anima rationalis”. The latter is the higher spiritual man, the “homo coelestis” [or heavenly man] of St. Paul.” (1 Cor. 15:47) - from Aion, by Carl Jung.

The translation in the Bible of Logos as the Word tends to obscure that early Christianity’s understanding of the Logos provided a link between truth and mind. The tendency of religion to strip knowledge of its claim to connection with divinity has allowed instead the claims of feeling based, faith-only teachings of later centuries to go unchallenged. It has helped promote “...the doctrine,” as Hegel put it, “which has now become a prejudice, that it is impossible to know God.” Hegel continues, “Following this doctrine we now contradict what the Holy Scripture commands as our highest duty, namely, not only to love but also to know God. We now categorically deny what is written, namely, that it is the spirit that leads to truth, knows all things, and penetrates even the depths of divinity. Thus, in placing Divine Being beyond our cognition and the pale of all human things, we gain the convenient license of indulging in our own fancies. We are freed from the necessity of referring our knowledge to the True and Divine. On the contrary, the vanity of knowledge and the subjectivity of sentiment now have ample justification. And pious humility, in keeping true recognition of God at arm’s length, knows very well what it gains for its arbitrary and vain striving.” - from Hegel’s lecture Reason in History.

Secular attempts to make the competing voices of different religions politically equal are not the source of relativism in our culture. Those efforts are attempts at fairness. The source of relativism lies in what denies that reason or knowledge is meaningful; that is, denies that there can be direct insight into facts by the mind, through internal asking, using the Light of God made available to thinking. This denial makes knowledge relative, by denying that the Light of God is what illumines the mind of man, and thereby asserting that truth cannot be known. But Jesus said, “Ye shall know the Truth, and the Truth shall make you free.” (Jn 8:32)

Knowledge and Religion

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In feeling based, faith-only religions, since there is no longer any divine source for objectivity, such religion’s “truths” are also irrational and relative. It is the Light that establishes all objectivity. Even if you claim a divine source like the Bible for your belief, it is still a set of thoughts to you. You must use your mind to understand what its expressions mean; just as anyone who explains it to you also must. If you insist that all understanding and divine experience must conform to scripture to be considered true, it is nonetheless to your reasoning about scripture that you have it conform. That reasoning is based upon your understanding of and experience of the divine. Provided you don’t simply parse the letter of scripture as the Pharisees did by the carnal intellect, building a tower of interpretation based on whatever doctrine and dogma are considered traditional. The difference between Jesus’ open, flexible and loving interpretation of scripture, and the Pharisees’ fear-based version of the same words, illustrates the difference between the sense-mind’s treatment of spiritual matters, and the Christ mind’s. One is ego-based, legalistic, and essentially negative, while the other is intuitive and based on life. Jesus always sets aside any view that is not love, treating scripture as a tool but never as the Spirit itself, even going so far as to call it “your law” more than once, and not his. (Jn 8:17; 10:34) Something given in it because of the hardness of a people or a period’s heart may be changed, or set aside, without breaking the scripture, according to Love. And some sayings are only for those who can receive or understand them rightly. (Mat 19:4-11) The science of establishing the link to the Logos through self-knowledge and insight slipped away from the churches as the possibility of knowing God or the divine through the light of the mind was denied. If we have no access through knowledge to the divine, to what underlies, causes and supports all things, then ultimately knowledge of any sort is impossible as there is no relation to what is actual or real through understanding. Feeling alone cannot support knowledge; and faith without any knowledge is merely imagination. The capacity for mind to know truth cannot be established, including any truths belief asserts, if it has no access, no comprehension, and no conscious relation to the divine. Or, if truth is rooted in the divine, but is not itself knowable, how can anyone know 14

The Logos and the Holy Spirit In John 10:34 Jesus indicates parenthetically that the scriptures were written by the “word” of God coming unto

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that what they believe is true? How is any explanation or understanding trustworthy, if comprehension itself is untrustworthy? By doing this religion became vulnerable to atheistic science, having only faith and feeling now, without reason or knowledge, to contend against what science tangibly demonstrated it could accomplish with Light, mind and reason- irrespective of its beliefs. Simply by honest methodology and strong asking, with an idealism, at least originally, to relieve the suffering of man. God doesn’t care what a man says he believes if in fact he worships in spirit and in truth. The Father has need of such, especially if he works and thinks to benefit his neighbor. What that man values in his heart and mind, because it is God and not a concept of God, will lead him to the knowledge that is union with God eventually - because he honors what is real. Such “worship” fulfills the requirements of the New Covenant, by closing the gap between knowing and doing, seeing essence as spiritual meaning, and treating others as equal to oneself. By contrast, the worship of a concept-idol, whether of God or man, leads to whatever the motive for that worship really is. God ponders the heart, or the essence of the man, and not the changing thoughts and opinions of men. The modern confusion of tongues in religions that declare they are all the “same faith” and the “One Way” is unavoidable since they are based on unillumined feeling and desire, human tradition, and the carnal intellect. These are at war with the spirit, just as they were in Christ’s time. To these the Mind of the Spirit and the motive of love are foolishness. (1 Cor 2:14) Feeling and desire without the Light have no capacity for understanding in themselves. In Buddhism they are called winds, and are termed irrational because they cannot comprehend or discern- they simply feel and want. Religion based only in feeling, or in beliefs or assertions that are not understood, is not founded on using Light (thinking/unselfish prayer/meditation), on awareness (direct knowledge), on love (conscious, not instinctual union), or on the transformations of character wrought by these. Hence they are not founded on a relation with the Holy Spirit or the Logos. Instead doctrines of men are simply applied like bandages to the body of men’s thoughts. Faith is quite often seen as the verbal or sense-mind’s acceptance of a set of assertions deemed absolute by the church, or the pastor of the church, and worse, are believed without further inquiry into any deeper meaning than the literal, intellectual examination of the letter of it. The “truth” is arrived at by textual, linguistic and historical analysis, guided by the religious tradition examining. Or the text is treated as inerrant, and as entirely complete and self contained, so that whatever the mortal mind can reason from this position is accepted as biblical. But all such efforts are the fleshly mind, and rely upon formal, not intrinsic, reasoning, on emotion, and on belief in authorities. Such faith is not a result of knowledge produced by the divine nature of man, through experience of the Light that illumines that nature’s understandings (Job 32:8), or through contact with the One who is Good itself (Mk 10:18). Instead many religionists, because the ego is based in fear, and the intellect is based in the ego, believe that God is a wrathful spirit. Their faith really amounts to believing that Jesus will save them - but from God apparently - if they only say and believe he will. There are many who say that Jesus is Lord, but for them this means a fundamentally fear-based bending-of-the-neck which is taken for piety, and such piety for spirituality. Unfortunately, there is a clear rejection by God of that view in Isaiah 58, and the whole of Jesus’ manner and approach refutes it. The light of the mind is no longer seen as linked to God through the Good and the True. And how many Christians believe that the New Covenant that Jesus established is the discernment of the Real through the heart and mind of man? (Heb 10:16) Or that the Kingdom of God is actually and literally within? Or that we are to become perfect, or complete, as our Father in Heaven is perfect and complete? Many churches’ teachings have instead become hieratic assertions of the bigness of God, and the unworthiness of man; their dogma is the letteralism of the sense-bound intellect, rather than the spirit of divine intuition (as in Meister Eckhart’s sermons); and their worship has devolved to rote flattery of a massive ego, expressing a fundamental fear of God, and not love of the Good. The tongues of their several inspirations have become a Babel, and not a Pentecost, and every sect argues with the other the meaning of what neither understands anymore. Belief is not salvatory until it reaches the Light. You must know God in spirit and in truth to actually worship him. Otherwise you worship your own thought... a mental idol of him.

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one of the prophets. This can only be interpreted as an internal communication of light and understanding that was translated into words by the mind of the prophet. It does not refer to some already written book spoken of as the Word of God. This is a higher form of inspiration, or revelation, and is accomplished through the Light of the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit communicates to the heart and mind of man as the Logos does, but the Holy Spirit is more man’s experiential teacher in whatever environment he finds himself. It’s lessons concern learning through relationship to undo the ego and let go, and through love to enter the life of things. The Logos on the other hand communicates directly to, and through, the light of man’s knowing, reason and self-knowledge. Both reveal. Both are One. But one communicates to the inner thinking world of man, as the Light of insight. The other communicates to his inner feeling world as a Presence, but teaches primarily through his outer relationships. In this way man is aided in all realms (the three worlds, or heavens). However, this discussion is about the Logos as the Light. The Holy Spirit as Love is already taught by the churches, often out of profound experience, and has been for centuries. The Holy Spirit teaches feeling and desire, or the psychic soul, transformation through forgiveness and learning to love, really love, without fear. It teaches one to intuit life directly, and to engage the wholesomeness of Being, concretely, in situation after situation. It does this in terms the psychic soul can understand by constructing events experienced entirely for these learnings. The Logos on the other hand instructs the understanding of the heart and mind directly, based upon the individual effort to see, know, love and understand. Knowledge and Being are one, but the paths to them can seem very different for a while. Early Christian teachers thought, as Greek philosophy did, that there was a link through the mind with the Logos [Various Notes, notes 1]. The Apostles would have known this when they claimed the Logos was incarnated as Jesus. That claim was an odd, and a new claim to the Jews and Gentiles of their audience, but that the link in man to the Logos was through self-knowledge, understanding itself, and rational thought, was not. Clement of Alexandria stated “He who knows himself, knows God.” Clement was echoing the saying “Know Thyself” from Greek philosophy, written over the entrance to the Oracle at Delphi, and taught by Socrates. That phrase was considered by the Greeks to be the epitome of their philosophy and wisdom, as it was by the Hindus where the teaching most likely came from, as Hindu teachers came back from India with Alexander’s armies. Even the word that Christ used for Father, Abba, sounds like the Pali word for the real Self, Atta. Both sayings are also echoed in the Gospel of Thomas, the source text of which may even predate the so-called “Q-document” used to write the Gospels: (3) “If you know yourselves you will be known, and you will know that you are Sons of the Living Father. But if you do not know yourselves, you are in poverty, and you are that poverty.” It is possible that references to self-knowledge as a path were deleted or obscured in the public texts because they did not lend themselves to institutionalization. Given Jesus’ statements about an inner teaching reserved for those prepared to receive it, such alterations would not necessarily have been looked upon as problematic. I have read that Jerome claimed he altered the Gospel of Matthew because it was too esoteric.

Preaching the idea that the light of one’s own heart and mind, or the individual reason of man, are what connect him to the Logos, doesn’t make control or consensus easy. That was Iraeneus’ objection, and why he insisted salvation could only come through the Catholic Church via its sacraments. The original heresy hunter, he treated any Christian system of thought based upon individual knowledge, revelation or relation with God, as Gnosticism and heresy. If every man can know God through his own heart and mind and you need not that any man teach you, then what is the role of the churches? How is agreement even possible? If men are to be guided by reason, or the Light, rather than by fear, how are people to be motivated when so few think deeply, and care little about love? These are very practical problems. The fact is religion is not a search for truth, which search is an individual dialogue with Light, but for brotherhood. That is its real purpose. It is where the practical work of building culture can be done with other like-minded individuals. Religion’s method and purpose is to create consensus agreements that form a recognizable and moral culture, where men and women can live in the light of the understandings they receive. Its purpose is to create brotherhood, if those understandings are truly enlightened. But for this very reason, that religion seeks to establish

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Religion and Spirituality

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agreement, and not insight; harmony, and not knowledge of what is Real; community, and not direct experience of God, it cannot be what, in the individual, searches for truth. The experience of truth is the intuition of God’s Ideas in one’s heart and mind, through his Light, and the experience of his Love. Religion is where what is known and experienced of these, encounters the daily world. It is conservative because it seeks to create, and then maintain, a form of culture and community in which spiritual relations can express. Insight and revelation however are always ongoing and developmental, not because God necessarily changes, but man’s understanding does. If religions cultivated an inner circle of individuals whose efforts were to bring Light and revelation to the community, a balance might be struck to raise the real knowledge of religion. What the consensus agreement chose would be integrated into the mainstream of religion, and the rest would be treated as valid but auxiliary teaching for varying temperaments. This would be practicable if direct experience were held up as the ideal, and religion’s intention was to lead the social orders to that and not away from it. Old age for many would become the time of life reserved for direct spiritual experience, and the development of the individual. A time when religion itself would fall away, like scaffolding, to enable the always individual approach to God. The trouble is that those in authority usually seek to guide and control what the consensus is. When control is the goal it is easier to preach to people what they must believe to be saved, and make clear that deviation in thinking from consensus leads to terrible consequences. That however is not spiritual consensus. It is one person, or some small group, and the actual level of their understanding, that interprets reality, or God, or scripture to those not in authority. The claim is made, even if it remains unsaid, that it is God’s thinking, or some special authority’s, and not their own that is being put forward. As if they were simply telling you what God’s “Word” is or says. The fact is they have used their own intellect and feeling to establish and justify their views. So again, it is the Light the mind uses that discerns here. And, as ever, if it is not an open, truthful and sincere asking, then prejudice, preference, desire, and expectation color the result. The quality of one’s relation to the Light is primary, even in groups, and establishing it should be taught as far more important than any absorption of views. In other words honesty, love and truthfulness should be taught as what actually links man to the spirit, and not concepts. Those in authority will often promote doubt and fear in whomever they wish to control; and will often censure thinking, extol faith, and deny the capacity of the mind to reach God. This is because what is to be believed can be crafted and directed with certain ends in mind, and the promotion of belief inclines people to follow, not question. Thinking is treated badly then, as if it were only carnal and intellectual, and not as linked to the divine, which the real mind is, through honesty and truthfulness. The faith one is asked to have is really faith in a minister’s personality or point of view, or the tradition he follows. It is really faith in that person’s understanding or some other authority’s interpretation of the meaning of what all truthfully can read for themselves, in a Bible most everyone agrees gives no clear exposition of reality itself. [Various Notes, note 5] God will let any person make a mistake because you are to always be left free. There are none who are incomplete who are inerrant. Even the Apostles did not understand Jesus’ teaching, and were vacillating and fearful even after Pentecost, as when Paul upbraids Peter and Barnabas for being both (see A History of Christianity by Paul Johnson, p.5). The Light itself takes pains not to intrude on, or to interfere with your sense of self despite the fact that it is closer to you than breath, remaining invisible except to what is like itself. By trying to understand, by making mistakes, by seeking to get real knowledge through asking more sincerely and honestly, you establish a living relation to the Light. And to Love. Not to a book, an experience, or the say-so of others. Incidentally, God’s Love is his Will, in the same way that your love and your will are the same thing. What you love, secretly or openly, that you do. With God though, his love is real love, and he gives unselfishly what is true and what is good to the one loved, based on knowledge, enabling them to grow. It is not just an affection which attaches him, or which blindly seeks union. God has said directly, in the very book being used to tell others to know the Lord, not to tell others to know the Lord, or be told by them, for his laws are written in every person’s heart and mind, and no longer in books or rituals or forms. After Jesus entered as high priest all now know God directly, from the least to the greatest. (Heb 8: 6-13; 2 Cor 3:3, 7-8) What it is that all know and believe in is some form of Love and Light internally. It may be unrecognized as God, but it is the actual yardstick of their effort nonetheless, on which they rely, and for which they seek. Everyone can find rightness matching their responsibility in the tablets of the heart. Everyone who is truthful wor- 17

ships God in spirit. Everyone who loves, knows God and is born of him. (1 Jn 4:7) These are the commandments of the New Covenant, the doing of which lead to the Light, and the Light to transformation. The old commandments are preparation for them, but they cannot transform you. Jesus is the high priest of the New Covenant, and not of the ancient religious forms that are passing away. Much in present day Christianity is inappropriate. Jesus is no object for cheerleading, or for flattering his self-importance or personality, like some old pagan potentate. All such ego he overcame and let die, so that he could express and be the Light. The Light relates directly and without superiority. If the desire for acclaim died in him, what is left to respond to external praise? Love certainly doesn’t seek it. Jesus also rebuked his Apostles, who desired the authority and power of the Old Testament prophets, for thinking him a prophet like Elias to visit punishment on whoever disagreed with him, making it plain he will have nothing to do with a spirit of wrath. (Lk 9: 54-56) That he is One with Love... has this ever been believed?

If you stifle your conscience by accepting the beliefs of others out of fearfulness or doubt, you do not fulfill the first of the Two Great Commandments, to love God with your whole heart, mind, and soul, for you are not being truthful. Loving God with your mind means using it, using Light, and honoring what it shows you until through the development of honesty and truthfulness you know, and know that you know. The Spirit itself bears witness with your spirit. Instead, by allowing others to think and ask for you, you are being expedient, if not cowardly, and expediency is a cardinal value of the earthly man. An expedient man will not take up any cross for what is true, and fears to disagree or stand alone. The acceptance of a belief system, which is simply a set of thoughts that you regard as truth, does not make you spiritual no matter what the nature or original source for those beliefs. Especially if you have merely adopted them, and have not won through to them by your own efforts. Thoughts are things you can have, like a book or a vase. They do not in themselves involve you in the Light of God, not intimately like insight, intuition or revelation do. You can have the “right” thoughts, and even repeat them on demand, but remain unaffected in your heart. Hence you remain in your sins. “Whoever commits sin”, no matter what he says he believes, “is the servant of sin. And the servant abides not in the house forever. But the Son abides forever.” (Jn 8: 34-35) Spirit is life, identity and meaningfulness. Spirit develops the greater you, called the Son, and to the Son all of the Sons of God are of importance. They are of infinite importance, else Jesus would not have made them the cornerstone of love in the Two Great Commandments that replace the Law and the Prophets for a Christian: to love God with your whole heart, mind and soul, and to love your neighbor as yourself. “For how can you love God whom you cannot see, if you cannot love your fellow man, whom you can?” (1 Jn 4:20) Spirit intends a sane and reasonable world through sane and reasonable relations. This has never been and never will be accomplished by any form of fear, control, threat, brainwashing, or coercion, whether subtle, silent, or blatant. The means are the end as far as Spirit is concerned. There cannot be an excuse for trying to force others to believe as you do. Not if you have been warned not to by the book you use for the authority to do so, and especially not if the Light itself refuses to do so with any man. Without the expression of love, which coercion of any kind negates, the Kingdom of God cannot manifest on earth. Everyone agreeing to some doctrine or other is not the Kingdom of God, nor is it even religion. Living from Light and Love is. The Old Testament Commandments and the Scripture are fingers pointing toward the Real, but are not the Real itself. The two Great Commandments to love God and man given by Jesus and Hillel, and originally by Moses, which involve direct relation with Light and Love internally, are the “better hope” of St. Paul. This hope is based upon bringing the heavenly man forward into awareness, through the transformations love and truth work in the personality, or earthly man, “until Christ be formed in you.” (Ga 4:19) If you have faith in God and in his Light to reveal truth your awakening connection to that Light, or the Kingdom of God within you, will “teach you of all things.” Asking means the humility of admitting you don’t know something, and the truthfulness of your asking opens the door.

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The Spirit of the Commandments

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The Real Knowledge, when it is considered equivalent to Being, is the capacity to know or see into something: to comprehend. It is not the memorization of facts or thoughts, or any aggregate of those, which you neither penetrate, nor integrate, but simply regurgitate. Knowledge is Union. The Light uses all of your experiences to educate you, including the ideas and writings of men and religions. They are not to replace your own connection with the Light, since the real point is to develop in you the mind of Christ. (1 Cor 2:9-16) In Patanjali this mind is called Soul Vision and it is the aim of Yoga. In philosophy it is called Pure Reason and in Buddhism, Rigpa. The super-consciousness of the heavenly man is the view of the third heaven Paul mentions, which Plato speaks of as formless: “Without color or shape, that cannot be touched; reason alone, the soul’s pilot, can behold it, and all true knowledge is knowledge thereof.” It is the Causal plane of Shankara and the Dharmakaya of Buddhism. The Hall of Wisdom according to Mahayana, it is described as the “indestructible fount of omniscience... wherein all shadows are unknown, and where the light of truth shines with unfading glory.” - from Book of the Golden Precepts, trans by H.P.Blavatsky as The Voice of the Silence.

Reality is viewed for the first time from that level, with that mind. The doctrines, dogmas, beliefs and authoritative voices of any particular time period are a picturing of God by each race’s level of awareness, and rarely reach beyond the understandings of the first or second heaven. That is why there is such a gulf in the understanding of the different countries, centuries, and even between the books of the Bible, in how they see God. God is Pure Intelligence and Love, and that is the Real. God is known through your inner core, expressing his Life and Kingdom through you, and is not something separate from you. You can’t separate the within of you, from you. You can bring love and light into expression, and let these transform you into what is real and eternal- as Lincoln put it, into “our better angel.” If the Kingdom of God is within you then consciousness, or the simple fact of being conscious, prior to everything else, is a direct expression of God. You are that. You cannot be different from it if, as the Bible says, that is what you are within. Being conscious is the ground upon which everything else within you depends, prior to all thinking, feeling and experiencing, for if you are not conscious no other psychological act is possible. Becoming conscious that you are conscious then, is a clearing act. Just as seeing the conscious one in another is a way to reach toward the Divine in them, looking for that which is essential and real in them, prior to their identifications with habits, preferences and prejudices. Being conscious means “with Knowing”. What you identify yourself with or as distorts that innate ability. Consciousness is prior to life, as we now know it, and represents the highest aspect of Deity. By virtue of being conscious we share in the knowledge and being of God. God is the Real, and the Light is that which shows you things as they are. Honesty with facts leads to substance. All facts derive from the Ground of Being, so they must eventually lead to knowledge of its nature and the means of its expression. Faith is then the intuitive extension of one’s knowing, its implications and direction, into the yet unknown, much like a hypothesis, or a prediction of the behavior of a system does, based on known laws. A little knowledge often leads away from God; but a great deal leads back. The Light will show us what we wish to know, if we will learn how to know, and honor the real nature of our minds. Honesty is the fundamental working principle of the mind, without which its basic function to see things as they are and work with them as it sees them is prevented. Truthfulness is how transformation is embodied.

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Nothing real can separate us from the Life that the Light and Love of God express. Only fear can, distorting our hope and estranging our love. Fear of God, and fear of our fellow man express themselves in a contraction from life, from events, and from others. It is a contraction of the heart which causes us to be afraid of others, and not know they are terrified as well. A person believes themself vulnerable and mortal when they identify spiritually with the body, conscious as the personality of the body’s life, and not of it. The fear at the root of this idea of self, that of an earthly conditioned ego, capable of dying, is an emotional and moral collapse from the heavenly man or woman. This fear is our satan, and all that really opposes a Christian of the New Covenant, given that any form of evil only reaches us through that. 19

This collapse and inferiorization of self causes withdrawal emotionally and leads to possession by one’s own attached mind states, appetites and energy. People become mere ideas or images to you; blips on your radar, and not real relations. There is a recoil from openness, engagement, freed feeling, and radiance. A recoil from Life. Events and experience are then no longer how the living Father communicates the path of growth, but are something fear and distorted desires manipulate to pleasurable or consoling ends. Re-cognition or identification with the Son or Daughter of God you are, through the Light and Love of God, transforms your manifested energy, just as identification with the body, and feeling and desiring as the personality of the body, lowers it. This is the Fall, and the Fall is a choice you are continually making. Choose to ascend through the Light and Love of God by being intelligence and love in relation, and you will arise. Ascension is moral and spiritual, and not a matter of space and time. The Light shows us what it true; we need only listen and look. But we must be truthful with what we see, otherwise the Light will wait until we are asking, to show us what is actually there. Similarly, if we are authentic in our being, and open our hearts unselfishly, we will see others for the first time, and feel directly. We then discover the Love that underlies the happenings of all our lives; that enfolds the sorrowful selves who appear here as fearful caricatures of their real selves; the Love which weaves the fabric of all life’s relations. If our life expresses intelligence as sanity and love as fearlessness, in all of our relations, “then will our light break forth like morning, and our health spring forth speedily.” (Isa 58:8) We will call, and he will answer.

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Cliff Notes to the New Testament: On Greek Philosophy in the New Testament http://www.cliffsnotes.com/WileyCDA/LitNote/id-85,pageNum-8.html

The influence of Greek philosophy was widespread throughout the Greco-Roman world. The Greek language was used by educated people, Greek-inspired schools of philosophy were established in leading cities of the Roman Empire, and the writings of the Old Testament were translated into Greek by the seventy scholars whose work was known as the Septuagint version of the Hebrew Scriptures. The influence of Greek ideas can be seen in many instances of New Testament writing, especially in those parts of the literature that attempt to interpret the Christian religion of people whose prior experience was in a Gentile rather than a Jewish environment. Such attempts are true to a considerable ex--tent in the Pauline letters and also in the Gospel of John. In both of these instances, the writings were addressed to communities composed of Gentile and Jewish Christians. Therefore, these authors necessarily had to use language with which the people to whom they were writing were familiar and could readily understand. Greek influences can be noted, too, in other parts of the New Testament, although they are not as conspicuous there as they are in the writings of Paul and John. To say just how much of the New Testament was influenced either directly or indirectly by Greek conceptions is difficult, but such influences are recognized readily in the doctrine of the Logos, which may be translated as Word or Reason; in ethical conceptions having to do with the conflict between flesh and spirit; and in the belief in immortality. When the author of the Fourth Gospel, commonly known as the Gospel of John, begins his account of Christianity by saying “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God,” he uses a concept that had long been familiar to students of Greek philosophy. The Word, or Logos, which was the term used by the Greeks, has a long and interesting history. One finds it in the writings of Heracleitus, one of the Pre-Socratics whose work appears to have had considerable influence on the philosophies of Plato and Aristotle. For Heracleitus, the Logos was a kind of cosmic order, or divine justice, that presides over the destinies of a changing world. Whenever either of two opposite forces operating in the world oversteps its bounds, the Logos ensures that a proper balance is restored. Light and darkness, heat and cold, wet and dry, male and female, like all other pairs of opposites, are thus kept in proper relation to one another. Nor is the work of the Logos confined to the physical aspect of nature, for it affects the moral order as well. Whenever the requirements of justice are violated, either by individuals or by nations, the Logos acts in a compensatory manner and punishes the evildoers and thus restores the proper balance of things. Plato regarded the Logos, or Reason, as the divine element that is present in human beings. Its demand for harmony among the elements, including those in human nature, provides the key to the real meaning of the good life. In Stoicism more than in any other branch of Greek phi-

losophy, the doctrine of the Logos was emphasized. The Stoic philosophers identified Reason with God. They did not conceive of it as having an existence apart from the world; they believed that it permeates every part of the world. By virtue of the Logos, or Reason, the world is a cosmos rather than a chaos. Reason is present in the minds of humans, and knowledge is possible because the rational element in human nature is akin to the Reason that exists in nature, the only difference being that in the former case, Reason becomes conscious of itself. So far as humanity is concerned, Reason functions to give guidance and direction to the activities of life. Because all humans are rational beings, a common bond exists between them, and this bond was recognized by the Stoics as the basis for their belief in the universal brotherhood of humanity. Reason operating in the lives of human beings made possible the realization of what constituted for them the real meaning of the good life. The Stoic ideal is expressed in the words “life according to nature,” which means a life directed by the rational element that is present in both nature and humanity. This ideal can be achieved by bringing one’s feelings and desires under the control of Reason, which the Stoics believed was a real possibility for any normal human being. Epictetus, a well-known Stoic writer, describes this way of life in his essay “Things within our Power and Things not within our Power.” The individual has power over his own inner attitudes. He can govern his own spirit, control his temper, and follow the path of duty rather than yield to his feelings or be led by his emotions. On the other hand, circumstances arise over which there is no control. Some things that happen are inevitable, and the wise person will accept them without fear or complaint. The apostle Paul reflects this ideal when he writes in one of his letters, “I have learned, in whatsoever state I am, there to be content.” Closely related to the concept of the Logos, or Reason, is the notion of conflict between flesh and spirit, an idea that pervades the whole structure of Greek philosophy and is illustrated in the teachings of Plato, who held that the world of ideas, or the realm of the spirit, constitutes reality. This realm is eternal and unchanging. In contrast, the world that is experienced through the senses is a changing and unstable one. We could not have any knowledge concerning such a world except for the unchanging ideas that participate in it. The presence of these ideas, which are copied or imitated in particular things, gives to them the appearance of reality. But when ideas are embodied or imitated in material things, the result is always somewhat inferior to the original. In other words, matter is the source of corruption and deterioration. Ideas conceived in this way are something more than a basis for the existence of particular things: They are also ideals or standards of perfection, thus making it possible for particular things to be evaluated in terms of their approximation to the ideal. To call an object good means that it is a close approximation to the ideal, one that is as nearly like the ideal as it is possible for a physical object to be. In a similar way of thinking, a person is morally good who conforms to the pattern of the ideal as much as it is possible for a human being to do. Centuries after Plato, Christians illustrated this point when they said of Jesus

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For the Greeks, the source of goodness is spirit, and evil has its roots in matter. Because a human being is composed of both matter and spirit, a struggle is constantly going on within one’s own nature. The conflict between good and evil that takes place in the life of an individual is a conflict between the desires of the flesh and the demands of the reason, which is the ruling part of one’s spiritual nature. The Greek idea of a good mind and an evil body was never accepted by Jews, who teach that man is created in the image of God. Body, soul, and spirit constitute a unit that is good. Evil entered the world with the Fall of man and infected all of the elements in his nature, including his mind and his body. The apostle Paul was brought up in the Jewish tradition, and nothing indicates that he ever abandoned the notion of original sin. Nevertheless, in writing to Gentile Christians, he frequently uses the language of Greek philosophy. For example, in the Epistle to the Galatians, he writes, “So I say, live by the Spirit, and you will not gratify the desires of the sinful nature. For the sinful nature desires what is contrary to the Spirit, and the Spirit what is contrary to the sinful nature. They are in conflict with each other. . . . But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control.” - from the Cliff Notes to the New Testament Various Notes: “Christ consciousness produces a new creature, a spiritual state of being. It is not for the purpose of patching up the old man, or producing more harmonious material conditions. Christ consciousness is the means by which God, in His-Her Principles of Being, fashions the child of Light, in which there will be no more sin, sickness, sorrow, or death. This state of being appears at the end of mortality as the fruit of Christ’s progression in Time. Christ consciousness is the identification of Christ within the organism of one suitable to function the Principles of Being. It ultimates in producing the Body of Christ, the spiritual state of being.” - from Steps in the Way, Vol. 1, by Ida Mingle “The Body of Light is the supreme realization of Dzogchen. Its function is different from that of a Sambhogakaya manifestation, because a being in a Body of Light can communicate and actively help other beings. It is as if the physical body, its material substance having been absorbed into its luminous essence, continues to live as an aggregation of the elements in their subtle aspect.”- from Dzogchen: the self-perfected state, pp. 39-40, by Namkhai Norbu “A mahatma may decide to keep a body- the form body of the physical- in which he can communicate with and be seen by humanity. Then he overcomes in his physical body time and death in the physical world by immortalizing the form of the physical body, not physical matter as such. He puts the body through a course of training and provides it with particular foods which he gradually diminishes in quantity. The body increases in strength and gradually throws off its physical particles, but

maintains its form. This continues until all the physical particles have been thrown off and the body of form stands, the conqueror of death, in the physical world where it may be seen by men, though it lives in the form-desire world and is known as an adept, an adept of a higher order. This body is the one which has been spoken of in theosophical teachings as “nirmanakaya.” - from Adepts, Masters, and Mahatmas by Harold Percival. “What man of good sense can ever persuade himself that there were a first, a second, and a third day, and that each of these days had a night when there were yet neither sun, moon, nor stars? What man can be stupid enough to believe that God, acting the part of a gardener, had planted a garden in the east, that the tree of life was a real tree, and that its fruit had the virtue of making those who eat of it live forever?” - Origen, from Thomas Paine’s answer to the Bishop of Landaff “To comprehend what is, is the task of philosophy, for what is is reason... To recognize reason as the rose in the cross of the present and thus to delight in the present- this rational insight brings us that reconciliation with actuality which philosophy grants those who have once been confronted by the inner demand to comprehend.” - from the preface of Philosophy of Right by Hegel “...From passion comes confusion of mind, then loss of remembrance, the forgetting of duty. From this loss comes the ruin of reason, and the ruin of reason leads man to destruction. But the soul that moves in the world of the senses and yet keeps the senses in harmony, free from attraction and aversion, finds... that the God in himself is the same God in all that is... that I am the heart of all.” - from the Bhaghavad Gita, trans by Yogi Ramacharaka “’Know Thyself.’ This is what Hinduism stands for. This is the quintessence of Hinduism... The Hindu religion has no specific founder. It is based primarily on the soul-stirring utterances of the rishis, the seers. A seer is one who visions the Truth, and communes with the Truth. If you want to define Hinduism, you can do so with the help of a monosyllable: Love. This Love is all-embracing and ever-growing. A staunch Hindu will say, “I can live without air, but not without God.” - from Yoga and the Spiritual Life, by Sri Chinmoy “In his dialogue Phaedrus (247 BC) Plato envisions a journey by a soul to the outermost boundary of the cosmos, and then gives us a glimpse of what the soul would see if for a brief moment it were able to “look upon the regions without.” “Of that place beyond the heavens,” says Plato, none of our earthly poets has yet sung, and none shall sing worthily. But this is the manner of it, for assuredly we must be bold to speak what is true, above all when our discourse is upon truth. It is there that true being dwells, without color or shape, that cannot be touched; reason alone, the soul’s pilot, can behold it, and all true knowledge is knowledge thereof.” - from The Cosmic Mysteries of Mithras, by David Ulansey, Author of The Origins of the Mithraic Mysteries (Oxford University Press, 1991)

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of Nazareth, “The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us.” Jesus is regarded as an embodiment of the ideal. He is the ideal man, the standard according to which the goodness of any other human being is to be judged.

“The knowledge of God... is not the knowledge of, or awareness of a great Being, but the expression through human instru- 22

"Like a thread passing through each of the atmospheres and connecting with physical man, there is that which relates each to the other and by means of which the mind in its physical body may become aware of each and of all its atmospheres and adjust itself in its proper relationship to each atmosphere. The mind in the physical body is at one end of the thread; the underlying individual "I am" is at the other end. To the incarnate mind there seems to be no other end than that at which it is; or else, if it thinks there is a spiritual end it does not consider how that end is to be reached. The end which is in the physical can reach the spiritual end. The way to reach it and unite the ends is by means of thought. Thought is not the way, but thought makes or prepares the way. The way is the thread. Thought travels along this thread and discovers it and inspirits it. The thread itself is that which is conscious through all atmospheres. Thinking about it is the beginning; being conscious is the opening of the way. By continuing to think about it and by extending the conscious principle, the incarnate mind becomes conscious of itself and conscious of its higher self at the other end of the conscious principle, and in course of continued effort the ends will become one. - from “Converstations with Friends” by Harold Percival “There dwells within us all this potential which allows us to awaken into buddhahood and attain omniscience.... When, at some future point, we do attain buddhahood, that subtle continuum of our awareness will awaken to a state of omniscience called dharmakaya.” - from Dzogchen, by H. H. the Dalai Lama "Both the pituitary body and pineal gland are organs for the soul of man. But whereas the pituitary body is that center which is used directly by the human mind in all things requiring mental operations, the pineal gland is the organ by which the higher and more divine individuality of man is related. The pituitary body is used in all ratiocinative processes and mental operations requiring the activity of the reasoning faculties. The pineal gland is used when direct knowledge of a thing is to be obtained. The pineal gland is the organ through which is brought to the human understanding that knowledge and wisdom which is complete in itself, self-evident, without the process of reasoning. The pineal gland is the organ which is used consciously and intelligently by one possessed of spiritual understanding and wisdom. This applies to the spiritually wise. To ordinary mankind the pituitary body is used without his immediate knowledge in the same manner that he may think but does not know how he thinks. In the ordinary man the pineal gland is a present witness to the possibilities of the future Divinity of mankind. But at present it is as silent as the tomb." - from “Converstations with Friends” by Harold Percival “Concerning Meditative Technique: The form of meditation that I have found effective differs substantially from that generally given in the manuals on meditation. Repeatedly I have tried stopping thought and closing out the senses, but the artificial state thus effected was barren of results. Heretofore, the rich values have come to me through or while thinking. I finally took this fact as a key and abandoned all effort to stop thought or to interfere with the reports of sensation. In any case, the distrac-

tion caused by the latter I have found to be too weak to be of real importance. Through the larger part of my life the thought-world has naturally dominated the sensation-world so that sensation had come to mean little more than small waves do to an ocean liner. The issue then lay between thought-consciousness and Transcendant-Consciousness while the rest, I found, could be neglected. Now, within a process or manifold, a given phase or aspect may be isolated for special attention without stopping the process or eliminating the balance of the manifold. This is a familiar technique in scientific and philosophic thinking. When I recalled this fact and applied it, I found at once a really effective method of meditation. In fact, I realize, I have done this for many years [Wolff had been a Professor of Mathematics at Stanford] without regarding it as a meditative technique. It was by applying this method of isolation of the essential element in the midst of a complex, without trying to restrain the other components, that [my transcendental experience] was effected.” - from Experience and Philosophy by Franklin Merrell-Wolff (State University of New York’s press) Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy: On Philo (by Marion Hillar) http://www.iep.utm.edu/p/philo.htm

[Note: Philo fuses Jewish with Greek ideas, and was likely discussed in Jewish religious circles during Christ’s time. Jesus speaks of manna as if he were referring to Philo. Many of Paul and Johns’ ideas, and the identification of Jesus with the Logos, seem to have come from contact with ideas derived from Philo] Philo believed that man’s final goal and ultimate bliss is in the “knowledge of the true and living God” (Decal. 81; Abr. 58; Praem. 14); “such knowledge is the boundary of happiness and blessedness” (Det. 86). To him, mystic vision allows our soul to see the Divine Logos (Ebr. 152) and achieve a union with God (Deut. 30:19-20; Post. 12)... He adheres to the Platonic picture of the souls descending into the material realm and that only the souls of philosophers are able to come to the surface and return to their realm in heaven (Gig. 12-15). Philo adopted the Platonic concept of the soul with its tripartite division. The rational part of the soul, however, is breathed into man as a part of God’s substance. Philo speaks figuratively “Now, when we are alive, we are so though our soul is dead and buried in our body, as if in a tomb. But if it were to die, then our soul would live according to its proper life being released from the evil and dead body to which it is bound” (Op. 67-69; LA 1.108). According to Philo, man’s highest union with God is limited to God’s manifestation as the Logos... The Greek, metaphysical concept of the Logos is in sharp contrast to the concept of a personal God described in anthropomorphic terms typical of Hebrew thought. Philo made a synthesis of the two systems and attempted to explain Hebrew thought in terms of Greek philosophy by introducing the Stoic concept of the Logos into Judaism. In the process the Logos became transformed from a metaphysical entity into an extension of a divine and transcendental anthropomorphic being and mediator between God and men.

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mentality of the divine omniscience.” - Alice Bailey

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Philo’s doctrine of the Logos is... clearly the second individual in one God as a hypostatization of God’s Creative Power-Wisdom... Earthly wisdom is but a copy of this celestial Wisdom. It was represented in historical times by the tabernacle through which God sent an image of divine excellence as a representation and copy of Wisdom (Lev. 16:16; Her. 112-113). The Divine Logos never mixes with the things which are created and thus destined to perish, but attends the One alone. This Logos is apportioned into an infinite number of parts in humans, thus we impart the Divine Logos. As a result we acquire some likeness to the Father and the Creator of all (Her. 234-236).... The reasoning capacity of a human mind is but a portion of the all-pervading Divine Logos. Mind is a special gift to humans from God and it has divine essence, therefore, as such, it is imperishable. By receiving this humans received freedom and the power of spontaneous will free from necessity (Deus. 47)... The immortal part of the soul comes from the divine breath of the Father/Ruler as a part of his Logos.

Philo’s Model of Creation Though Philo’s model of creation comes from Plato’s Timaeus, the direct agent of creation is not God himself (described in Plato as Demiurge, Maker, Artificer), but the Logos. Philo believes that the Logos is “the man of God” [the universal human or Adam Kadmon] (Conf. 41) or the shadow of God [Note: Plato said“God is Truth, and his shadow is Light”, and John identifies the Logos with Light] that was used as an instrument and a pattern of all creation (LA 3.96). The Logos converted unqualified, unshaped preexistent matter, which Philo describes as “destitute of arrangement, of quality, of animation, of distinctive character and full of disorder and confusion,” (Op. 22) into four primordial elements: For it is out of that essence that God created everything, without indeed touching it himself, for it was not lawful for the all-wise and allblessed God to touch materials which were all misshapen and confused, but he created them by the agency of his incorporeal powers, of which the proper name is Ideas, which he so exerted that every genus received its proper form (LA 1.329).

Intermediary Power The fundamental doctrine propounded by Philo is that of Logos as an intermediary power, a messenger and mediator

between God and the world. And the father who created the universe has given to his archangel and most ancient Logos a pre-eminent gift, to stand on the confines of both, and separate that which had been created from the Creator. And this same Logos is continually a suppliant to the immortal God on behalf of the mortal race, which is exposed to affliction and misery; and is also the ambassador, sent by the Ruler of all, to the subject race. And the Logos rejoices... saying “And I stood in the midst, between the Lord and you” (Num. 16:48); neither being uncreated as God, nor yet created as you, but being in the midst between these two extremities, like a hostage, as it were, to both parties (Her. 205-206). When speaking of the high priest, Philo describes the Logos as God’s son, a perfect being procuring forgiveness of sins and blessings: “For it was indispensable that the man who was consecrated to the Father of the world (the high priest) should have as a paraclete, his son, the being most perfect in all virtue, to procure forgiveness of sins, and a supply of unlimited blessings” (Mos. 2.134). Philo transforms the Stoic impersonal and immanent Logos into a being who was neither eternal like God nor created like creatures, but begotten from eternity. This being is a mediator giving hope to men and who “was sent down to earth.” God, according to Philo, sends “the stream of his own wisdom” to men “and causes the changed soul to drink of unchangeable health; for the abrupt rock is the wisdom of God, which being both sublime and the first of things he quarried out of his own powers.” After the souls are watered they are filled with the manna which “is called something which is the primary genus of everything. But the most universal of all things is God; and in the second place is the Logos of God” (LA 2.86). Through the Logos of God men learn all kinds of instruction and everlasting wisdom (Fug. 127-120). The Logos is the “cupbearer of God ... being itself in an unmixed state, the pure delight and sweetness, and pouring forth and joy, and ambrosial medicine of pleasure and happiness” (Somn. 2.249). This wisdom was represented by the tabernacle of the Old Testament which was “a thing made after the model and in imitation of Wisdom” and sent down to earth “in the midst of our impurity in order that we may have something whereby we may be purified, washing off and cleansing all those things which dirty and defile our miserable life, full of all evil reputation as it is” (Her. 112-113). “God therefore sows and implants terrestrial virtue in the human race, being an imitation and representation of the heavenly virtue” (LA 1.45).

Manna God sends “the stream” from his Wisdom which irrigates God-loving souls; consequently they become filled with “manna.” Manna is described by Philo as a “generic thing” coming from God. It does not come from God directly, however: “the most generic is God, and next is the Logos of God, the other things subsist in word (Logos) only” (LA 2.86). According to Philo, Moses called manna “the most ancient Logos of God (Det. 118).” Next Philo explains that men are “nourished by the whole word (Logos) of God, and by every portion of it ... Accordingly, the soul of the more perfect man is nourished by the whole word (Logos); but we must be contented if we are nourished by a portion of it” (LA 3.175-176). And “the Wisdom of God, which is 24

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The Logos is the Bond of the universe and mediator extended in nature. The Father eternally begat the Logos and constituted it as an unbreakable bond of the universe that produces harmony (Plant. 9-10). The Logos, mediating between God and the world, is neither uncreated as God nor created as men. So in Philo’s view the Father is the Supreme Being, and the Logos as his chief messenger, stands between Creator and creature. The Logos is an ambassador and suppliant, neither unbegotten nor begotten as are sensible things (Her. 205). Wisdom [Sophia], the Daughter of God, is in reality masculine because powers have truly masculine descriptions, whereas virtues are feminine. That which is in the second place after the masculine Creator was called feminine, according to Philo, but her priority is masculine; so the Wisdom of God is both masculine and feminine (Fug. 50-52). [Meaning Philo is saying the Logos and Sophia are one]

Eternal Creation Philo denies the Aristotelian conclusion coming, according to him, from the superficial observation that the world existed from eternity, independent of any creative act. “For some men, admiring the world itself rather than the Creator of the world, have represented it as existing without any maker, and eternal, and as impiously and falsely have represented God as existing in a state of complete inactivity” (Op. 7). He elaborates instead his theory of the eternal creation (Prov. 1.6-9), as did Proclus (410-485 C.E.) much later in interpreting Plato. Proclus brilliantly demonstrated that even in the theistic system the world though generated must be eternal, because the “world is always fabricated... is always becoming to be.”  Proclus believed, as did Philo, that the corporeal world is always coming into existence but never possesses real being. Thus God, according to Philo, did not begin to create the world at a certain moment, but he is “eternally applying himself to its creation” (Prov. 1.7; Op. 7; Aet. 83-84).

On Philo: Biography Philo of Alexandria (20 B.C.E.-50 C.E.) Philo of Alexandria, a Hellenized Jew, is a figure that spans two cultures, the Greek and the Hebrew. When Hebrew mythical thought met Greek philosophical thought in the first century B.C.E. it was only natural that someone would try to develop speculative and philosophical justification for Judaism in terms of Greek philosophy. Thus Philo produced a synthesis of both traditions developing concepts for future Hellenistic interpretation of messianic Hebrew thought, especially by Clement of Alexandria, Christian Apologists like Athenagoras, Theophilus, Justin Martyr, Tertullian, and by Origen. He may have influenced Paul, his contemporary, and perhaps the authors of the Gospel of John (C. H. Dodd) and the Epistle to the Hebrews (R. Williamson and H. W. Attridge). In the process, he laid the foundations for the development of Christianity in the West and in the East, as we know it today. Philo’s primary importance is in the development of the philosophical and theological foundations of Christianity. Scriptural References in the Text All selections KJV unless noted otherwise.

Job 32:8 8 But there is a spirit in man: and the inspiration of the Almighty giveth them understanding. 2 Tim 1:7 7 For God has not given us the spirit of fear; but that of power, and of love, and of a sound mind. John 1:4, 9 (Young’s Literal Translation) 4 In him was life; and the life was the light of men.... 9 He was the true Light, which doth enlighten every man, coming to the world;

1 Corinthians 2: 9-16 9 But as it is written, Eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, neither have entered into the heart of man, the things which God hath prepared for them that love him. 10 But God hath revealed them unto us by his Spirit: for the Spirit searcheth all things, yea, the deep things of God. 11 For what man knoweth the things of a man, save the spirit of man which is in him? even so the things of God knoweth no man, but the Spirit of God. 12 Now we have received, not the spirit of the world, but the spirit which is of God; that we might know the things that are freely given to us of God. 13 Which things also we speak, not in the words which man’s wisdom teacheth, but which the Holy Ghost teacheth; comparing spiritual things with spiritual. 14 But the natural man receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God: for they are foolishness unto him: neither can he know them, because they are spiritually discerned. 15 But he that is spiritual judgeth all things, yet he himself is judged of no man. 16 For who hath known the mind of the Lord, that he may instruct him? but we have the mind of Christ. Luke 18:19 19 And Jesus said unto him, Why callest thou me good? None is good, save one, that is, God. 2 Corinthians 3:6-18 6 Who also hath made us able ministers of the new testament; not of the letter, but of the spirit: for the letter killeth, but the spirit giveth life. 7 But if the ministration of death, written and engraven in stones, was glorious, so that the children of Israel could not steadfastly behold the face of Moses for the glory of his countenance; which glory was to be done away: 8 How shall not the ministration of the spirit be rather glorious? 9 For if the ministration of condemnation be glory, much more doth the ministration of righteousness exceed in glory. 10 For even that which was made glorious had no glory in this respect, by reason of the glory that excelleth. 11 For if that which is done away was glorious, much more that which remaineth is glorious. 12 Seeing then that we have such hope, we use great plainness of speech: 13 And not as Moses, which put a veil over his face, that the children of Israel could not steadfastly look to the end of that which is abolished: 14 But their minds were blinded: for until this day remaineth the same veil untaken away in the reading of the old testament; which veil is done away in Christ. 15 But even unto this day, when Moses is read, the veil is upon their heart. 16 Nevertheless when it shall turn to the Lord, the veil shall be taken away. 17 Now the Lord is that Spirit: and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty. 18 But we all, with open face beholding as in a glass the glory of the Lord, are changed into the same image from glory to glory, even as by the Spirit of the Lord. Job 34: 10-12, 17 10 Therefore hearken unto me ye men of understanding: far be it from God, that he should do wickedness; and from the Almighty, that he should commit iniquity. 11 For the work of a man shall he render unto him, and cause every man to find according to his ways. 12 Yea, surely God will not do wickedly, neither will the Almighty pervert judgment. 17 Shall even he that hateth right govern? And wilt thou condemn him that is most just? 1 John 4:8, 16 8 He that loveth not knoweth not God; for God is love.... 16 And we have known and believed the love that God hath to us. God is love; and he that dwelleth in love dwelleth in God, and God in him.

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the nurse and foster-mother and educator of those who desire incorruptible food... immediately supplies food to those which are brought forth by her... but the fountain of divine wisdom is borne along, at one time in a more gentle and moderate stream, and at another with greater rapidity and a more exceeding violence and impetuosity.... (Det. 115-117

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1 John 1:5 5 This then is the message which we have heard of him, and declare unto you, that God is light, and in him is no darkness at all. Exodus 3:14 14 And God said unto Moses, I AM THAT I AM: and he said, Thus shalt thou say unto the children of Israel, I AM hath sent me unto you. John 14:23 23 Jesus answered and said unto him, If a man love me, he will keep my words: and my Father will love him, and we will come unto him, and make our abode with him. John 15:10 10 If ye keep my commandments, ye shall abide in my love; even as I have kept my Father’s commandments, and abide in his love. John 6:63 63... the words that I speak unto you, they are spirit, and they are life. John 1:1-4 1 In the beginning was the Logos, and the Logos was with God, and the Logos was God. 2 The same was in the beginning with God. 3 All things were made by him; and without him was not any thing made that was made. 4 In him was life; and the life was the light of men. Matthew 4:4 4 But he answered and said, It is written, Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God. Luke 17:21 21 Neither shall they say, Lo here! or lo there! For behold, the kingdom of God is within you.

and persecute you; 45 That ye may be the children of your Father which is in heaven: for he maketh his sun to rise on the evil and on the good, and sendeth rain on the just and on the unjust. 46 For if ye love them which love you, what reward have ye? do not even the publicans the same? 47 And if ye salute your brethren only, what do ye more than others? do not even re publicans so? 48 Be ye therefore perfect, even as your Father which is in heaven is perfect. Hebrews 8:10-11 10 For this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, saith the Lord; I will put my laws into their mind, and write them in their hearts: and I will be to them a God, and they shall be to me a people: 11 And they shall not teach every man his neighbor, and every man his brother, saying, Know the Lord: for all shall know me, from the least to the greatest. Romans 13:8 8 Owe no man any thing, but to love one another: for he that loveth another hath fulfilled the law. 2 Timothy 5-6, 14 5 When I call to remembrance the unfeigned faith that is in thee, which dwelt first in thy grandmother Lois, and thy mother Eunice; and I am persuaded that in thee also. 6 Wherefore I put thee in remembrance that thou stir up the gift of God, which is in thee by the putting on of my hands... 14 That good thing which was committed unto thee keep by the Holy Ghost which dwelleth in us. 1 John 4:12 12 No man hath seen God at any time. If we love one another, God dwelleth in us, and his love is perfected in us.

John 1:4, 9 - see above John 10:10 10 I am come that they might have life, and that they might have it more abundantly.

Matthew 18:20 20 For where two or three are gathered together in my name, there am I in the midst of them. 1 John 2:27  - see above

1 John 4:7-8  7 Beloved, let us love one another: for love is of God; and every one that loveth is born of God, and knoweth God.  8 He that loveth not knoweth not God; for God is love. 1 John 2:9-11  9 He that saith he is in the light, and hateth his brother, is in darkness even until now. 10 He that loveth his brother abideth in the light, and there is none occasion of stumbling in him. 11 But he that hateth his brother is in darkness, and walketh in darkness, and knoweth not whither he goeth, because that darkness hath blinded his eyes. Matthew 5:41-48 41 And whosoever shall compel thee to go a mile, go with him twain. 42 Give to him that asketh thee, and from him that would borrow of thee turn not thou away. 43 Ye have heard that it hath been said, Thou shalt love thy neighbour, and hate thine enemy. 44 But I say unto you, Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them which despitefully use you,

Matthew 7: 7-12 7 Ask, and it shall be given you; seek, and ye shall find; knock, and it shall be opened unto you: 8 For every one that asketh receiveth; and he that seeketh findeth; and to him that knocketh it shall be opened. 9 Or what man is there of you, whom if his son ask bread, will he give him a stone? 10 Or if he ask a fish, will he give him a serpent? 11 If ye then, being evil, know how to give good gifts unto your children, how much more shall your Father which is in heaven give good things to them that ask him? 12 Therefore all things whatsoever ye would that men should do to you, do ye even so to them: for this is the law and the prophets. Luke 18:19 - see above John 6:33 33 For the bread of God is he which cometh down from heaven, and giveth life unto the world. Luke 17:21 - see above John 4:24  24 God is a Spirit: and they that worship him must worship him in spirit and in truth. John 4:14 14 But whosoever drinketh of the water that I shall give him shall never

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1 John 4:20-21 20 If a man say, I love God, and hateth his brother, he is a liar: for he that loveth not his brother whom he hath seen, how can he love God whom he hath not seen? 21 And this commandment have we from him, That he who loveth God love his brother also.

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thirst; but the water that I shall give him shall be in him a well of water springing up into everlasting life. John 4:32 32 But he said unto them, I have meat to eat that ye know not of. John 6:57 57 As the living Father hath sent me, and I live by the Father: so he that eateth me, even he shall live by me.

John 6:32 32 Then Jesus said unto them, Verily, verily, I say unto you, Moses gave you not that bread from heaven; but my Father giveth you the true bread from heaven. John 6: 50-51 50 But here is the bread that comes down from heaven, which a man may eat and not die. 51 I am the living bread that came down from heaven. If anyone eats of this bread, he will live for ever.

John 6: 51-58 - see below

John 6:55 55 For my flesh is meat indeed, and my blood is drink indeed. John 6:45-63 NIV 45 It is written in the Prophets: ‘They will all be taught by God.’ Everyone who listens to the Father and learns from him comes to me. 46 No one has seen the Father except the one who is from God; only he has seen the Father. 47 I tell you the truth, he who believes has everlasting life. 48 I am the bread of life. 49 Your forefathers ate the manna in the desert, yet they died. 50 But here is the bread that comes down from heaven, which a man may eat and not die. 51 I am the living bread that came down from heaven. If anyone eats of this bread, he will live for ever. This bread is my flesh, which I will give for the life of the world. 52 Then the Jews began to argue sharply among themselves, How can this man give us his flesh to eat? 53 Jesus said to them, I tell you the truth, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you have no life in you. 54 Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life, and I will raise him up at the last day. 55 For my flesh is real food and my blood is real drink. 56 Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood remains in me, and I in him. 57 Just as the living Father sent me and I live because of the Father, so the one who feeds on me will live because of me. 58 This is the bread that came down from heaven. Your forefathers ate manna and died, but he who feeds on this bread will live for ever. 59 He said this while teaching in the synagogue in Capernaum. 60 On hearing it, many of his disciples said, This is a hard teaching. Who can accept it? 61 Aware that his disciples were grumbling about this, Jesus said to them, Does this offend you? 62 What if you see the Son of Man ascend to where he was before! 63 The Spirit gives life; the flesh counts for nothing. The words I have spoken to you are spirit and they are life. John 15:1-5 1 I am the true vine, and my Father is the husbandman. 2 Every branch in me that beareth not fruit he taketh away: and every branch that beareth fruit, he purgeth it, that it may bring forth more fruit. 3 Now ye are clean through the word which I have spoken unto you. 4 Abide in me, and I in you. As the branch cannot bear fruit of itself, except it abide in the vine; no more can ye, except ye abide in me. 5 I am the vine, ye are the branches: He that abideth in me, and I in him, the same bringeth forth much fruit: for without me ye can do nothing. John 6:33, 51 33 For the bread of God is he which cometh down from heaven, and giveth life unto the world. 51... This bread is my flesh, which I will give for the life of the world. John 1:4, 9 - see above

Luke 14:15 15 And when one of them that sat at meat with him heard these things, he said unto him, Blessed is he that shall eat bread in the kingdom of God. Hebrews 6:20 20 Whither the forerunner is for us entered, even Jesus, made an high priest for ever after the order of Melchisedec. Hebrews 7:16 Who is made, not after the law of a carnal commandment, but after the power of an endless life. Romans 8:11 But if the Spirit of him that raised up Jesus from the dead dwell in you, he that raised up Christ from the dead will also quicken your mortal bodies by his Spirit that dwells in you. Romans 8:6,13 6 For to be carnally minded is death; but to be spiritually minded is life and peace... 13 For if ye live after the flesh, ye shall die: but if ye through the Spirit do mortify the deeds of the body, ye shall live. Job 38:4,7 4 Where wast thou when I laid the foundations of the earth? Declare, if thou hast understanding.... 7 When the morning stars sang together, and all the sons of God shouted for joy? John 10:32-36 32 Jesus answered them, Many good works have I shewed you from my Father; for which of those works do ye stone me? 33 The Jews answered him, saying, For a good work we stone thee not; but for blasphemy; and because that thou, being a man, makest thyself God. 34 Jesus answered them, Is it not written in your law, I said, Ye are gods? 35 If he called them gods, unto whom the word of God came, and the scripture cannot be broken; 36 Say ye of him, whom the Father hath sanctified, and sent into the world, Thou blasphemest; because I said, I am the son of God? Romans 8:14, 16 14 For as many as are led by the Spirit of God, they are the sons of God... 16 The Spirit itself beareth witness with our spirit, that we are the children of God: Psalm 82:6-7 6 You are gods, And all of you are children of the Most High. 7 But you shall die like men. Ecclesiastes 12:7 7 Then shall the dust return to the earth as it was: and the spirit shall return unto God who gave it. James 1:15 Then when lust hath conceived, it bringeth forth sin: and sin, when it is finished, bringeth forth death. John 8:32-36 32 And ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free. 33 They answered him, We be Abraham’s seed, and were never in bond-

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John 6:63 63 It is the spirit that quickeneth; the flesh profiteth nothing: the words that I speak unto you, they are spirit, and they are life.

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Romans 8:18-21, 23 18 For I reckon that the sufferings of this present time are not worthy to be compared with the glory which shall be revealed in us. 19 For the earnest expectation of the creature waiteth for the manifestation of the sons of God. 20 For the creature was made subject to vanity, not willingly, but by reason of him who hath subjected the same in hope, 21 Because the creature itself also shall be delivered from the bondage of corruption into the glorious liberty of the children of God.... 23 And not only they, but ourselves also, which have the firstfruits of the Spirit, even we ourselves groan within ourselves, waiting for the adoption, to wit, the redemption of our body. Genesis 3:22, 24 And the LORD God said, Behold, the man is become as one of us, to know good and evil: and now, lest he put forth his hand, and take also of the tree of life, and eat, and live for ever... he drove out the man. Revelation 2: 7 7 He that hath an ear, let him hear what the Spirit saith unto the churches; To him that overcometh will I give to eat of the tree of life, which is in the midst of the paradise of God. Romans 8:21, 23 - see above John 11:11-14 (NIV) 11 After he had said this, he went on to tell them, “Our friend Lazarus has fallen asleep; but I am going there to wake him up.” 12 His disciples replied, “Lord, if he sleeps, he will get better.” 13 Jesus had been speaking of his death, but his disciples thought he meant natural sleep. 14 So then he told them plainly, “Lazarus is dead.” 1 Corinthians 15: 53-54 53 For this corruptible must put on incorruption, and this mortal must put on immortality. 54 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. Hebrews 9:27 27 And as it is appointed unto men once to die, but after this the judgment: Romans 8:21 21 Because the creature itself also shall be delivered from the bondage of corruption into the glorious liberty of the children of God. John 8:51 51 Verily, verily, I say unto you, If a man keep my saying, he shall never see death. Luke 9:27 27 But I tell you of a truth, there be some standing here, which shall not taste of death, till they see the kingdom of God. 1 Corinthians 15:12-22 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? 13 But if there be no resurrection of the dead, then is Christ not risen: 14 And if Christ be not risen, then is our preaching vain, and your faith is also vain. 15 Yea, and we are found false witnesses of God; because we have testified of God that he raised up Christ: whom he raised not up, if so be that the dead rise not.

16 For if the dead rise not, then is not Christ raised: 17 And if Christ be not raised, your faith is vain; ye are yet in your sins. 18 Then they also which are fallen asleep in Christ are perished. 19 If in this life only we have hope in Christ, we are of all men most miserable. 20 But now is Christ risen from the dead, and become the firstfruits of them that slept. 21 For since by man came death, by man came also the resurrection of the dead. 22 For as in Adam all die, even so in Christ shall all be made alive. Philippians 2:5-6 5 Let this mind be in you, which was also in Christ Jesus: 6 Who, being in the form of God, thought it not robbery to be equal with God. John 14:12 12 Verily, verily, I say unto you, He that believeth on me, the works that I do shall he do also; and greater works than these shall he do; because I go unto my Father. 1 Corinthians 15:47 (NIV) 47 The first man was of the dust of the earth, the second man from heaven. [Note: In Adam all die, or return to dust “because dust thou art, and to dust thou shalt return.” Gen 3:19 “It is appointed unto man once to die, and then the judgment.” Heb 9:27 But Psalm 82: 1, 6-7 says: “God hath stood in the company of God, In the midst God doth judge... I- I have said, `Gods ye [are], And sons of the Most High- all of you, But as man ye die”Young’s Literal Translation. What dies as a man is the spirit’s identification with and as the earthly man; the body; the human animal or creature- as contrasted with the heavenly man, or son of God, who is as the Lord from heaven. Ecclesiastes 12:7 says “Then shall the dust return to the earth as it was: and the spirit shall return unto God who gave it.” In Christ, the second Adam, all are made alive, for he is a quickening spirit. It is the heavenly man buried in the tomb of the body who wakes from the dead. The one who came down from heaven, is the one who ascends back up to it. The dust of Adam, the creature, must put on incorruption when the Spirit overcomes death. See Romans 8:18-21, 23 above.] John 10:34 34 Jesus answered them, Is it not written in your law, ‘I said, Ye are gods?’ Psalm 82: 1, 6-7 (NKIV) 1 God stands in the congregation of the mighty; He judges among the gods... 6 I said, “You are gods, And all of you are children of the Most High. 7 But you shall die like men 1 John 2:5 5 But whoso keepeth his word, in him verily is the love of God perfected: hereby know we that we are in him. 1 John 2:9-10 “He that says he is in the light and hates his brother, is in darkness even now. He that loves his brother abides in the light, and there is no occasion of stumbling in him.” Hebrews 8 1 Now of the things which we have spoken this is the sum: We have such an high priest, who is set on the right hand of the throne of the Majesty in the heavens; 2 A minister of the sanctuary, and of the true tabernacle, which the Lord pitched, and not man. 3 For every high priest is ordained to offer gifts and sacrifices: wherefore it is of necessity that this man have somewhat also to offer. 4 For if he were on earth, he should not be a priest, seeing that there are priests that offer gifts according to the law: 5 Who serve unto the example and shadow of heavenly things, as Moses was admonished of God when he was about to make the tabernacle: for, See,28

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age to any man: how sayest thou, Ye shall be made free? 34 Jesus answered them, Verily, verily, I say unto you, Whosoever committeth sin is the servant of sin. 35 And the servant abideth not in the house for ever: but the Son abideth ever. 36 If the Son therefore shall make you free, ye shall be free indeed.

saith he, that thou make all things according to the pattern shewed to thee in the mount. 6 But now hath he obtained a more excellent ministry, by how much also he is the mediator of a better covenant, which was established upon better promises. 7 For if that first covenant had been faultless, then should no place have been sought for the second. 8 For finding fault with them, he saith, Behold, the days come, saith the Lord, when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and with the house of Judah: 9 Not according to the covenant that I made with their fathers in the day when I took them by the hand to lead them out of the land of Egypt; because they continued not in my covenant, and I regarded them not, saith the Lord. 10 For this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, saith the Lord; I will put my laws into their mind, and write them in their hearts: and I will be to them a God, and they shall be to me a people: 11 And they shall not teach every man his neighbor, and every man his brother, saying, Know the Lord: for all shall know me, from the least to the greatest. 12 For I will be merciful to their unrighteousness, and their sins and their iniquities will I remember no more. 13 In that he saith, A new covenant, he hath made the first old. Now that which decayeth and waxeth old is ready to vanish away.

his brother, saying, Know the LORD: for they shall all know me, from the least of them unto the greatest of them, saith the LORD: for I will forgive their iniquity, and I will remember their sin no more.

Hebrews 7: 18-19 For there is truthfully an annulling of the commandment that went before, for its weakness and unprofitability. For the Law made nothing perfect; but the bringing of a better hope did, by which we draw near to God.

Luke 16:15-17 15 And he said unto them, Ye are they which justify yourselves before men; but God knoweth your hearts: for that which is highly esteemed among men is abomination in the sight of God. 16 The law and the prophets were until John: since that time the kingdom of God is preached, and every man presseth into it. 17 And it is easier for heaven and earth to pass, than one tittle of the law to fail.

Galatians 4:21-31 21 Tell me, ye that desire to be under the law, do ye not hear the law? 22 For it is written, that Abraham had two sons, the one by a bondmaid, the other by a freewoman. 23 But he who was of the bondwoman was born after the flesh; but he of the freewoman was by promise. 24 Which things are an allegory: for these are the two covenants; the one from the mount Sinai, which gendereth to bondage, which is Agar. 25 For this Agar is mount Sinai in Arabia, and answereth to Jerusalem which now is, and is in bondage with her children. 26 But Jerusalem which is above is free, which is the mother of us all. 27 For it is written, Rejoice, thou barren that bearest not; break forth and cry, thou that travailest not: for the desolate hath many more children than she which hath an husband. 28 Now we, brethren, as Isaac was, are the children of promise. 29 But as then he that was born after the flesh persecuted him that was born after the Spirit, even so it is now. 30 Nevertheless what saith the scripture? Cast out the bondwoman and her son: for the son of the bondwoman shall not be heir with the son of the freewoman. 31 So then, brethren, we are not children of the bondwoman, but of the free. Hebrews 8:6-11 -see above Jeremiah 31:30-34 30 But every one shall die for his own iniquity: every man that eateth the sour grape, his teeth shall be set on edge. 31 Behold, the days come, saith the LORD, that I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel, and with the house of Judah: 32 Not according to the covenant that I made with their fathers in the day that I took them by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt; which my covenant they brake, although I was an husband unto them, saith the LORD: 33 But this shall be the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel; After those days, saith the LORD, I will put my law in their inward parts, and write it in their hearts; and will be their God, and they shall be my people. 34 And they shall teach no more every man his neighbor, and every man

2 Corinthians 3:3-8 3 Forasmuch as ye are manifestly declared to be the epistle of Christ ministered by us, written not with ink, but with the Spirit of the living God; not in tables of stone, but in fleshy tables of the heart. 4 And such trust have we through Christ to God-ward: 5 Not that we are sufficient of ourselves to think any thing as of ourselves; but our sufficiency is of God; 6 Who also hath made us able ministers of the new testament; not of the letter, but of the spirit: for the letter killeth, but the spirit giveth life. 7 But if the ministration of death, written and engraven in stones, was glorious, so that the children of Israel could not steadfastly behold the face of Moses for the glory of his countenance; which glory was to be done away: 8 How shall not the ministration of the spirit be rather glorious? 2 Corinthians 3:13-18 - see above

Hebrews 8:13 - see above 1 Corinthians 15:47 - see above John 8:32 - see above John 8:17 17 It is also written in your law, that the testimony of two men is true. John 10:34 - see above Matthew 19:4-11 4 And he answered and said unto them, Have ye not read, that he which made them at the beginning made them male and female, 5 And said, For this cause shall a man leave father and mother, and shall cleave to his wife: and they twain shall be one flesh? 6 Wherefore they are no more twain, but one flesh. What therefore God hath joined together, let not man put asunder. 7 They say unto him, Why did Moses then command to give a writing of divorcement, and to put her away? 8 He saith unto them, Moses because of the hardness of your hearts suffered you to put away your wives: but from the beginning it was not so. 9 And I say unto you, Whosoever shall put away his wife, except it be for fornication, and shall marry another, committeth adultery: and whoso marrieth her which is put away doth commit adultery. 10 His disciples say unto him, If the case of the man be so with his wife, it is not good to marry. 11 But he said unto them, All men cannot receive this saying, save they to whom it is given. 1 Corinthians 2:14 - see above Job 32:8- see above Mark 10:18 18 And Jesus said unto him, Why callest thou me good? There is none good but one, that is, God. Isaiah 58: 1-12

Daniel Drumm © 2007

2 Corinthians 3:6-18 - see above

Hebrews 10:16 16 This is the covenant that I will make with them after those days, saith the Lord, I will put my laws into their hearts, and in their minds will I write them.

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1 Cry aloud, spare not, lift up thy voice like a trumpet, and shew my people their transgression, and the house of Jacob their sins. 2 Yet they seek me daily, and delight to know my ways, as a nation that did righteousness, and forsook not the ordinance of their God: they ask of me the ordinances of justice; they take delight in approaching to God. 3 Wherefore have we fasted, say they, and thou seest not? Wherefore have we afflicted our soul, and thou takest no knowledge? Behold, in the day of your fast ye find pleasure, and exact all your labours. 4 Behold, ye fast for strife and debate, and to smite with the fist of wickedness: ye shall not fast as ye do this day, to make your voice to be heard on high. 5 Is it such a fast that I have chosen? A day for a man to afflict his soul? Is it to bow down his head as a bulrush, and to spread sackcloth and ashes under him? Wilt thou call this a fast, and an acceptable day to the LORD? 6 Is not this the fast that I have chosen? To loose the bands of wickedness, to undo the heavy burdens, and to let the oppressed go free, and that ye break every yoke? 7 Is it not to deal thy bread to the hungry, and that thou bring the poor that are cast out to thy house? When thou seest the naked, that thou cover him; and that thou hide not thyself from thine own flesh? 8 Then shall thy light break forth as the morning, and thine health shall spring forth speedily: and thy righteousness shall go before thee; the glory of the LORD shall be thy reward. 9 Then shalt thou call, and the LORD shall answer; thou shalt cry, and he shall say, Here I am. If thou take away from the midst of thee the yoke, the putting forth of the finger, and speaking vanity; 10 And if thou draw out thy soul to the hungry, and satisfy the afflicted soul; then shall thy light rise in obscurity, and thy darkness be as the noon day: 11 And the LORD shall guide thee continually, and satisfy thy soul in drought, and make fat thy bones: and thou shalt be like a watered garden, and like a spring of water, whose waters fail not. 12 And they that shall be of thee shall build the old waste places: thou shalt raise up the foundations of many generations; and thou shalt be called, The repairer of the breach, The restorer of paths to dwell in. Hebrews 10:16 -see above John 10:34 - see above Hebrews 8:6-13 - see above 2 Corinthians 3:3, 7-8 - see above 1 John 4:7- see above Luke 9:54-56 54 And when his disciples James and John saw this, they said, Lord, wilt thou that we command fire to come down from heaven, and consume them, even as Elias did? 55 But he turned, and rebuked them, and said, Ye know not what manner of spirit ye are of. 56 For the Son of man is not come to destroy men’s lives, but to save them. And they went to another village. John 8:34-35 34 Jesus answered them, Verily, verily, I say unto you, Whosoever committeth sin is the servant of sin. 35 And the servant abideth not in the house for ever: but the Son abideth ever. 1 John 4:20 20 If a man say, I love God, and hateth his brother, he is a liar: for he that loveth not his brother whom he hath seen, how can he love God whom he hath not seen? Galatians 4:19 19 My little children, of whom I travail in birth again until Christ be formed in you.... 1 Corinthians 2:9-16 - see above

Supplemental References: On Immortality James 1:15 Then when lust hath conceived, it bringeth forth sin: and sin, when it is finished, bringeth forth death. Romans 6:23 For the wages of sin is death; but the gift of God is eternal life. 1 Corinthians 15:56 The sting of death is sin; and the strength of sin is the law. 1 John 3:9 Whosoever is born of God doth not commit sin; for his seed remaineth in him: and he cannot sin, because he is born of God. From the Chaldaic writings of the Hebrews given before the Egyptian bondage: “On those overcoming all weaknesses and abolishing all sin from their lives, death has no claim.” - Rabbi Bendovan, a Levite record keeper. 1 Corinthians 15:26 26 The last enemy that shall be destroyed is death. John 8:51 (NIV) 51 I tell you the truth, if anyone keeps my word, he will never see death.” Luke 9:27 (also quoted in Mk 9:1; Mt 16:28) 27 But I tell you of a truth, there be some standing here, which shall not taste of death, till they see the kingdom of God. John 6:48-51 (NIV) 48 I am the bread of life. 49 Your forefathers ate the manna in the desert, yet they died. 50 But here is the bread that comes down from heaven, which a man may eat and not die. 51 I am the living bread that came down from heaven. If anyone eats of this bread, he will live forever. This bread is my flesh, which I will give for the life of the world.” 1 Corinthians 15:42-55 42 So also is the resurrection of the dead. It is sown in corruption; it is raised in incorruption: 43 It is sown in dishonor; it is raised in glory: it is sown in weakness; it is raised in power: 44 It is sown a natural body; it is raised a spiritual body. There is a natural body, and there is a spiritual body. 45 And so it is written, The first man Adam was made a living soul; the last Adam was made a quickening spirit. 46 Howbeit that was not first which is spiritual, but that which is natural; and afterward that which is spiritual. 47 The first man is of the earth, earthy; the second man is the Lord from heaven. 48 As is the earthy, such are they also that are earthy: and as is the heavenly, such are they also that are heavenly. 49 And as we have borne the image of the earthy, we shall also bear the image of the heavenly. 50 Now this I say, brethren, that flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God; neither doth corruption inherit incorruption. 51 Behold, I shew you a mystery; We shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed, 52 In a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trump: for the trumpet shall sound, and the dead shall be raised incorruptible, and we shall be changed. 53 For this corruptible must put on incorruption, and this mortal must put on immortality. 54 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. 55 O death, where is thy sting? O grave, where is thy victory?

John 11:25-26 25 Jesus said unto her, I am the resurrection, and the life: he that believeth in me, though he were dead, yet shall he live: 26 And whosoever liveth and believeth in me shall never die. Believest thou this? [Note: If you abide in the Vine, his Word or Light, you shall never die. He was not referring to a life after death, or a later resurrection, for he was speaking to Martha right before he raised Lazarus. Lazarus was one on whom death had no claim. If he were simply demonstrating the power of the Spirit to raise the dead in a later physical resurrection, why would he tell Martha the living would not die?] Hebrews 11:5 5 By faith Enoch was translated that he should not see death; and was not found, because God had translated him: for before his translation he had this testimony, that he pleased God. Hebrews 7: 1, 5-17 1 For this Melchisadek... 3 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... 5 And verily they that are of the sons of Levi, who receive the office of the priesthood, have a commandment to take tithes of the people according to the law, that is, of their brethren, though they come out of the loins of Abraham: 6 But he whose descent is not counted from them received tithes of Abraham, and blessed him that had the promises. 7 And without all contradiction the less is blessed of the better. 8 And here men that die receive tithes; but there he receiveth them, of whom it is witnessed that he liveth.... 11 If therefore perfection were by the Levitical priesthood, (for under it the people received the law) what further need was there that another priest should rise after the order of Melchisadek, and not be called after the order of Aaron? 12 For the priesthood being changed, there is made of necessity a change also of the law. 13 For he of whom these things are spoken pertaineth to another tribe, of which no man gave attendance at the altar. 14 For it is evident that our Lord sprang out of Judah; of which tribe Moses spake nothing concerning priesthood. 15 And it is yet far more evident: for that after the similitude of Melchisadek there ariseth another priest, 16 Who is made, not after the law of a carnal commandment, but after the power of an endless life. 17 For he testifieth, Thou art a priest for ever after the order of Melchisadek. Genesis 3:22, 24 And the LORD God said, Behold, the man is become as one of us, to know good and evil: and now, lest he put forth his hand, and take also of the tree of life, and eat, and live for ever... he drove out the man. Revelation 2: 7 7 He that hath an ear, let him hear what the Spirit saith unto the churches; To him that overcometh will I give to eat of the tree of life, which is in the midst of the paradise of God.