DISCONNECT - PART THREE
If you have read Parts One and Two of this series, you know that we are considering the complete dissolution of all this World, its material wealth, and even one's own "self," in order to follow Jesus to the Death. He showed us the Way. His Passion was the traumatic process of separating Himself from all worldly values. So must it be for anyone who would follow Him. Who is it that can follow Him? Answer: a spirit-being, YOU! The path is to seek the death of the flesh so you, as Spirit, can be free. He showed us the Way.
Let's go on. You, as a spirit-offspring of the Father, are a player in God's Mind-Game, an actor on the stage in His Mind. You, and the stage, exist in His Mind. As I have discussed in other articles, there is nothing but Mind. There is no such thing as a physical particle of matter. There is only your perception of matter; it is an image in your mind to which you give physical attributes. The only reason you can't pass your hand through the table in front of you is because you believe that you can't. The Truth is that your flesh body and the table, and all else, exist only as figments of God's Mind (like a dream), and subsequently of your mind. Well, that's all right; one plays the cards that are dealt. You were dealt, more properly "born into," a false reality, a World which you believe to be material and finite. You were born with eyes closed, and ignorant. You were born into a bondage which was then validated by your parents and society through your growing years. So, you accepted the lie for yourself and you learned to survive in it by playing by ITS rules.
Oh, there were a few indicators that the lie wasn't valid, but you didn't recognize them very clearly. You learned the story of the FALL of Man from a higher state; that gave you a hint that this material world might not be your true home. Then Jesus came with a message that there is a Kingdom of Heaven which is your true home, but He didn't tell you much about that Heaven. His many analogies about Heaven, such as "Heaven is like a . . ." seemed more like mental puzzles rather than any place you could look to as a physical home-location. Importantly, this whole idea that you are a foreignor in World is one which seems to resonate with you, but you don't quite know what to do about it, except to hope that you will go home someday. Meanwhile, it is the material things of World which occupy your attention. After all, you have to eat and have shelter and care for family and maintain physical health and obtain security for tomorrow, etc. So, this world is your "reality" and Heaven is but a hope. Oh, if only God would present Himself in a more real way, so one could let go of the material World and have a tangible alternative to grasp! We are addicted to the tangible and don't know how to release it for the sake of some unknowable hope. We all have a deep conviction that this material world is real, and the idea of rejecting it just does not compute.
Preachers don't address this issue, firstly because they don't know it, and secondly because they would have to find a working job if they did suggest it to people who see themselves as physical persons who will go to a physical heaven to relate more happily with physical kin and friends whom they knew here. Those people don't want silly notions of Mind-Play while they are worrying about food and shelter. Ironically, the ultimate truth is that they are being asked to give up a nightmare for a dream. But, they are accustomed to the nightmare, and are reluctant to give up a known for an unknown. Yet, that is the very thing that Jesus came to suggest.
Okay, let's take a closer look at the nature of God's Mind-Play. Like most people, you could visualize God as a Being who sits up in the sky and watches His creatures below. Mark Twain wrote a very insightful story about such a Lord, titled Mysterious Stranger, where he has a nephew of Satan creating little people at will and then stomping on them when tired of watching them. That kind of God is actually a limited being who is separate from his creation, which he watches as a distant observor. Thus, that kind of god is exactly the type which primitive races look to, and make offerings to, and attempt to appease so that their earthly lives will be less difficult. That kind of god is a person-type who has a personality and even a personal name, for instance, like Yahweh or Baal. That kind of god is very different from the God of Moses who said that His name is simply "I AM," namely, All-Beingness (Tat Tvam Asi). He is not a singular god of rain, or of crops, or of fertility like those many god-names which are used for magic in the Jewish Kabbalah. Rather, our Supreme God has the nature of All-Beingness; there is nothing that is not part of Him. He is the universal Mind, in which everything exists as figmentary creations of that imagination. His Spirit is the power of His expression, by which He lives and moves as an immanence (immanēre) within everything that He imagines. This is an important concept; that God is an indwelling presence within everything that lives, rather than an observor of it. To understand this concept permits you to understand what Jesus was praying about in John 17, as He prayed that God's Elect might be One with Him just as He is One with the Father.
Good. God is the Mind which creates All-That-Is by imagining it into being, with Himself being the functioning operator of All-That-Is. In other words, God lives and experiences Life THROUGH His offspring, namely His Elect ones who make up the Body of Christ whose Head is Jesus.
Next step: God designed all creation in MIND, a mental construct. Then, His direct offspring, the Christ (a race called "Adam," from before the world began) named God's Design into manifestation by believing in it (faith). God created the Design, but His offspring created it into a perceptible reality by simply believing it to be real. All creatures and all other races of humans exist only in one's perception. Again, it is easiest to grasp this concept by visualizing it as a dream wherein the figments are granted the capability of perceiving/creating whatever they wish. Thus it is that God lives through His offspring, gives them free will to create what they wish while they are motivated by a spiritual instinct to be Godly and Righteous.
There, that is the setup; all is perfect and heavenly in that Garden of Paradise. The gift of Free Will presented no problems as long as His offspring were united in Will with their Father. But, like in any human government, if a power is available, it will get used. So, Free Will enabled the Christ family to rebel against their Father, and to build prison walls of limited lifespans, death, wickedness, lust, envy, hatred, and all the negatives. Suddenly, they were no longer free and unlimited spirits, but were enslaved to all the finite limitations of ignorance and blindness. The Light of Truth had left them, and they struggled in darkness against diabolical forces. Absent the Truth, they adopted the lie of limitation and forgot who they were. They forgot that they create their own reality by their faith, and instead, accepted the lie that they are just victims of superior material forces. The great Deceiver, Satan, had convinced them of a lie, and thereby got them to create his limited reality which is the Kingdom of World. Satan has NO power over the World which God's children created, except THROUGH them who have been deceived into performing his wishes. As long as they believe the lie, they are stuck in the World of Satan's design rather than free in the perfect Design of God's Kingdom. Only the Truth can set them free. The difficult Truth that they must reject the tangible World of the senses for the sake of the unknown world of God's Heaven. Like the monkey who won't release the cookie inside the jar to be truly free, God's children are reluctant to follow a Jesus who has no home and offers only a path to Death.
Offspring of God! People through whom God lives and experiences life! Is it too bold to say that we are God's life? Does He not live through us? Then, by placing ourselves in bondage, have we not placed Him into bondage? Can He be free separate from His offspring who perform His Life? Have the figments sabotaged the Dream and enslaved the Dreamer? Does He not feel every pain and grief and limitation which we suffer? Sure, He could "awaken" and end the Dream, but that would be the end of everything. That is not a option. So, as long as God's pageant goes on, have we not limited our Father to a prison of Hades? How can God reclaim Freedom except to struggle for it through His offspring, His Christ, His Life? Who is it that yearns so desperately for an ending to the nightmare? You? or God, through You? Who told you that the way to eternal life is through Death, that you must hate ALL this world and your own life also if you would follow Him? Who is it that struggles to end all the pain and to live again? See! It is God who struggles through His Offspring to be Free. As long as you refuse the passion and Death to which Jesus called you, God must struggle to influence you to exercise your own Free Will to correct that mistake you made long ago when you exercised it to rebel against Him. Sometimes God must let you suffer punishment for your mistakes because to do otherwise would set you more firmly against Him. Your Father loves you too much to permit you to stay in bondage to the nightmare where you do Satan's work, and where you oppose Him.
It's a Struggle. It's a War that your General, Jesus, calls you to. Follow Him. Victory is for those who will release and reject Satan's World, giving up even the physical life itself. He showed us how to do it. What is at stake in all this? God is at stake. Will God live or die within you? Since you are One with Him, He can't be Free unless you are free. If you cling to the lie, it is your Father who suffers. So, if you find salvation through Death, it is your Father who is saved from the bondage you had claimed. Who saves who? Does God save you? Well, yes; He did that, didn't He, but you didn't follow Him. Now, you hold God bondage in your prison by not walking out from it. Now it is up to you to "save" God! Your bondage is His bondage. Give it up. Die.
I don't think I need to reference the many New Testament statements which confirm the above, for you are probably familiar with them. But, I will add one bit from the Apocryphon of James, a writing that is part of the Nag Hammadi discovery of 1946. The writer is James, Jesus' brother, relating conversations which he and Peter had with Jesus. He records:
"The Lord answered and said, "Verily I say unto you, none will be saved unless they believe in my cross. But those who have believed in my cross, theirs is the kingdom of God. Therefore, become seekers for death, like the dead who seek for life; for that which they seek is revealed to them. And what is there to trouble them? As for you, when you examine death, it will teach you election. Verily I say unto you, none of those who fear death will be saved; for the kingdom of God belongs to those who put themselves to death."
To believe in Jesus' cross is to take it up for yourself and follow Him to the Death. Just as, to believe in Jesus means to do as He did. It is probably advisable to make clear this one point: suicide is never the Way! You suffer for a purpose, namely God's purpose. To end it by suicide is to default on the value of your life and suffering.
For those of you who have followed the gist of the thesis this far, I hope you will appreciate and enjoy the following eloquent expression of this subject of Disconnect by Nikos Kazantzakis (1883 - 1957). He was an intensely spiritual writer, and seeker of God. For him, God is the indwelling Holy Spirit, stimulating and guiding a man, in order for God to be fulfilled through man�s attainment of his divine potential. He pictures God as living within us, expressing Himself through us in our struggles to get free from earthly bondage. He writes:
written in 1923, in THE SAVIORS OF GOD, Spiritual Exercises. At the beginning of the section from which I copied the above excerpt, he begins with: "1. What is the essence of our God? The struggle for freedom.""At every moment of crisis an array of men risk their lives in the front ranks as standard-bearers of God to fight and take upon themselves the whole responsibility of the battle.
23. Once long ago it was the priests, the kings, the noblemen, or the burghers who created civilizations and set divinity free.
24. Today God is the common worker made savage by toil and rage and hunger. He stinks of smoke and wine and meat. He swears and hungers and begets children; he cannot sleep; he shouts and threatens in the cellars and garrets of earth.
25. The air has changed, and we breathe in deeply a spring laden and filled with seed. Cries rise up on every side. Who shouts? It is we who shout: the living, the dead, and the unborn. But at once we are crushed by fear, and we fall silent.
26. And then we forget out of laziness, out of habit, out of cowardice. But suddenly the Cry tears at our entrails once more, like an eagle.
27. For the Cry is not outside us, it does not come from a great distance that we may escape it. It sits in the center of our hearts, and cries out.
28. God shouts: "Burn your houses! I am coming! Whoever has a house cannot receive me!
29. "Burn your ideas, smash your thoughts! Whoever has found the solution cannot find me.
30. "I love the hungry, the restless, the vagabonds. They are the ones who brood eternally on hunger, on rebellion, on the endless road on ME!
31. "I am coming! Leave your wives, your children, your ideas, and follow me. I am the great Vagabond.
32. "Follow! Stride over joy and sorrow, over peace and justice and virtue! Forward! Smash these idols, smash them all, they cannot contain me. Smash even yourself that I may pass."
33. Set fire! This is our great duty today amid such immoral and hopeless chaos.
34. War against the unbelievers! The unbelievers are the satisfied, the satiated, the sterile.
35. Our hate is uncompromising because it knows that it works for love better and more profoundly than any weak-hearted kindness.
36. We hate, we are never content, we are unjust, we are cruel and filled with restlessness and faith; we seek the impossible, like lovers.
37. Sow fire to purify the earth! Let a more dreadful abyss open up between good and evil, let injustice increase, let Hunger descend to thresh our bowels, for we may not otherwise be saved.
38. We are living in a critical, violent moment of history; an entire world is crashing down, another has not yet been born. Our epoch is not a moment of equilibrium in which refinement, reconciliation, peace, and love might be fruitful virtues.
39. We live in a moment of dread assault, we stride over our enemies, we stride over our lagging friends, we are imperiled in the midst of chaos, we drown. We can no longer fit into old virtues and hopes, into old theories and actions.
40. The wind of devastation is blowing; this is the breath of our God today; let us be carried away in its tide! The wind of devastation is the first dancing surge of the creative rotation. It blows over every head and every city, it knocks down houses and ideas, it passes over desolate wastes, and it shouts: "Prepare yourselves! War! It�s War!"
41. This is our epoch, good or bad, beautiful or ugly, rich or poor we did not choose it. This is our epoch, the air we breathe, the mud given us, the bread, the fire, the spirit!
42. Let us accept Necessity courageously. It is our lot to have fallen on fighting times. Let us tighten our belts, let us arm our hearts, our minds, and our bodies. Let us take our place in battle!
43. War is the lawful sovereign of our age. Today the only complete and virtuous man is the warrior. For only he, faithful to the great pulse of our time, smashing, hating, desiring, follows the present command of our God.
In summation, you can choose to view God by two different concepts. The most common view is that God is the Almighty Supreme Being who resides in a timeless eternity, from where He watches over His creation and intervenes when asked, if the petitioner asks in the right way and has been good. The second view is that expressed in the Disconnect articles above, that as one of God's offspring you serve as an extension of Him, through which He experiences Life. He feels your feelings and experiences your thoughts. In such a position, you have the choice of bonding to the World or else rejecting the World and bonding with Him, your Source. World is finite and limited; He is not limited. If you prefer the limitations to Freedom and Truth, then the World is your natural home. If you prefer to go with God, then you must willingly offer up your life in a sort of sacrifice, preferably losing it while battling to do His will. Your death is the offering which results in eternal Life with Him.