here is the bible lesson I promised from Genesis:
Genesis, 1
This is the first lecture of a series based upon the Christian Scriptures. Before entering upon the
subject I have chosen for this evening, I wish to speak of the various methods employed in the
interpretation of the Scriptures. Some take the Bible literally, entirely overlooking the fact that it
is an Oriental production, rich in the imagery peculiar to the Orient; others study it as a teaching
given symbolically; and still others from the standpoint of allegory. These methods result in a
truer interpretation, according to my vision of the Scriptures, than the literal method. But there is
still another way of interpreting the Bible, and this way I use--it is the understanding born of
such interpretation that I shall endeavor to share with you.
I do not believe in declaring and insisting upon the literal truth of the words as they are written;
I do not believe in torturing the text to find another meaning; I do not believe in going far afield
to find a symbolic or an allegoric meaning behind the text; I believe in going directly into the
heart of the meaning itself. In my study of the Scriptures I endeavor to approximate in my own
consciousness the state from which the vision was conceived--thus I come into the clear
perception of its meaning; then I study the way in which it was translated into concrete terms by
the great Realizers of old. That is the manner of my approach to the study of the Bible.
Realizations born from the profound depths of the awakened consciousness are very difficult to
express in thought and word. Those who have had that deeper vision of the processes of God in
bringing out manifestations have given it to humanity as clearly as possible, but so long as
humanity was limited to an objective and concrete state of development, it received everything
with which it was confronted, including the Scriptures, in an objective and concrete way. But
when the state of our individual being begins to expand, we begin to develop faculties with
which to apprehend finer meanings; in time these faculties enable us to function in an inner,
higher realm. Then, and not until then, do we have the ability to understand the Enlightened Ones
who were the channels used by the Universal Power to articulate our Christian Scriptures.
In all of my work I endeavor to teach and impart, not to lecture and sermonize, for these things
must be learned line upon line, precept upon precept, until the vision unfolds within us. We have
been preached at too much; the only way to make true progress is by our own individual effort
and application. I cannot eat the food which nourishes your body, neither can I study the Divine
Word and expand your consciousness into its meaning; but I can devote my life to that study,
and, as I gain understanding, I can share it with you and point out the way by which you can
attain it for yourselves. I shall make many positive statements, and I want to ask you now not to
misinterpret my attitude in doing so. Do not consider that I am dogmatic, or that I wish to force
my perception of Truth upon you. In your own minds, do not put me into the position of
preaching at you dogmatically. My statements will be positive because they are made from my
realization of these truths, but you must understand all the time that my attitude is this: I offer to
you my vision, my understanding; you will determine whether your consciousness receives it,
whether your Spirit bears witness to its truth.
-1-
"In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth." To the Infinite Consciousness there is
no beginning and no ending, but to the finite consciousness belonging to our individualized state
of development there is a beginning to everything and an ending to everything. In fact, there is
nothing except a beginning and an ending, and this we call "the becoming." Everything is in flux;
nothing is stable; nothing becomes--it always is becoming. There is beginning, and that
beginning is constant; there is ending, and that ending is constant; and in the midst of the
beginning and the ending only One is stable, and that is the Conceiver of the becoming. The
Conceiver of the becoming changes not; all else changes.
What do I mean by the Conceiver of the becoming? Anything you can name is becoming--that is,
it is constantly beginning and ending--but the "I" of you is conceiving it. The "I" is the Conceiver
of the becoming and does not change; it is the only thing which is permanent. That which is
permanent is eternal; that which is eternal is infinite; that which is infinite is divine; and that
which is divine is God.
"In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth." Do you note that we have already
removed our consideration of this passage from the conceptual realm to the perceptual realm? I
am pointing out to you the basis of misunderstanding and the basis of true understanding. If you
study the Scriptures from a conceptual standpoint, you will have no realization of their meaning;
you can come into the vision only by the way of spiritual perception, for the things of the Spirit
of God are spiritually discerned. We can conceive things on the mental plane with the faculties
of that plane, but those are the things of the intellect. The things of the Spirit must be perceived
with the spiritual faculties before they can be reduced to the mental plane and clothed with
thought.
Spiritual things must be spiritually discerned; the realization of this is a point of such
importance in the study of the Scriptures that I lay great stress upon it. All interpretation of the
Scriptures from an intellectual basis will lead us into a hopeless labyrinth of conceptual values,
but the awakened spiritual faculty within can be trusted; it cannot perceive anything which is not
true. It refuses to register anything until the truth is revealed--then it responds. You must learn to
trust that inner response absolutely; until you do so trust it, the mind will step in with its
conceptual values and argue against the intuitive direction. If you follow the mind you will make
a mistake, and later you will say, "Why did I not obey my inner feeling?" It is this inner
perceptive faculty which cannot register falsehood that we must depend upon in our
interpretation of the Scriptures. You can cultivate the faculty to such a degree that your inner
response or reaction to a verse of the Scriptures will reveal to you any interpolation or
mistranslation.
Now, agreeing that we cannot interpret the Scriptures from a conceptual basis, we must next
attempt to clear away any concepts already existing. When the word "God" is mentioned, you
have some response to it in your mind or in your spiritual perception. If the response is a mental
creation, God may be to you an entity--a glorified human being--or God may be represented by
some idea of all-pervading space infilled with power or energy; either one is a concept--you do
not know the meaning of the word "God". God is Creative Life, and, in essence, you are
Creative Life, though not in your concept of yourself, not in the state in which you are conscious
of yourself. The Power which is conscious of itself, the very Power-to-be-Conscious, is
Creative Life. The power to think, the power to feel, the power to act, the power to do or be
anything--is not that power Creative Life? That power is
-2-
constantly creating; that Power is God. It is the Conceiver of all concepts, but it is not a concept;
it is the Power-to-Conceive, but it is not a thing conceived. This God is the Creator of "the
heaven and the earth." Heaven is within your own consciousness; the earth is the objective
appearance or representation of heaven. Thus we have heaven and earth created simultaneously
by Creating Life. You are creating right now; Creating Life, which is in essence what you are, is
conceiving itself, and whatever it conceives you manifest in some state whether physical,
emotional, mental, or spiritual.
"And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the
Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters." The heaven means the inner state in which
conception takes place; the earth is the outer manifestation. In this first chapter of Genesis, the
night or the darkness is spoken of; this we call the unmanifest. Out of the unmanifest comes
manifestation, or the day, and a firmament is established to divide the night from the day. Do not
take this literally; remember that three nights and days are described before the sun is
mentioned. The sun was created on the fourth day. In the Ancient Hindu Scriptures the period is
spoken of as the day and night of Brahm. The Buddhists call it a Maha-manvantara which means
the great cycle of manifestation.
Now we have established the meaning of the six days of creation; we have established that the
Creating Life is God. The first point we made was that the "I", the Power-to-be-Conscious, is
the only thing that is permanent, and that nothing is real to us except that which we are conscious
of being. What connection does the last statement have with the statement concerning the
creation- that out of darkness light comes? Light comes through self-consciousness, through
individualization. Everything depends upon your individualized state of self-awareness. Only
that of which you are conscious is light. If you could destroy your own individualized point of
self-awareness, there would be only darkness, and you would not be conscious of the darkness.
There would be no God, no concept of God; there would be no being, and of course, no object
of being. All day, all light, all life, is self-awareness--there is nothing except your Self. Through
individualization we come into the day out of the night. Individualization divides the darkness
from the light, and manifestation appears.
We now manifest the man state of Creative Life; we see readily that the animal also is Creative
Life in a less degree, and, in a still less degree, that the vegetable is Creative Life. Do you know
that the Professor Bose of the University of Calcutta has proved that the vegetables have loves
and hates? We can go back to the mineral kingdom and find loves and hates in the atoms in the
test tubes. Atoms will coalesce with some other atoms, but will react from still others. In this
way we can go back to the beginning of manifestation. "And the earth was without form, and
void" when it first was self-aware. But "the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters.
And God (Creative Life) said, Let there be light; and there was light. And God saw the light,
that it was good; and God divided the Light from the darkness." Dawning individualized
consciousness divides the unmanifested from the manifested, the undifferentiated from the
differentiated. "And God called the light Day, and the darkness he called Night. And the evening
and the morning were the first day." That is the description of the first period of our
creations--the creation of our Godhead realized.
"In the Beginning God created the heavens and the earth. And the earth was waste and void; and
darkness was upon the face of the deep; and the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the
waters. And God said, Let there be light; and there was light. And God saw the light, that it was
good: And God divided the light from the darkness. And God called the light Day, and the
darkness he
-3-
called Night. And there was evening and there was morning, one day."
"And God said, Let there be a firmament in the midst of the waters, and let it divide the waters
from the waters." This firmament is the beginning of the division of darkness from light, of the
unmanifest from the manifest. It is the developing focalization of Creative Power which we call
individualization. The Creative Power focalizes in a conscious center until that center possesses
itself and masters its environment, masters the earth, the sea, and the air. The subjugation of all
created conditions is the full development of individualized consciousness as a creative center
of light. That is self-mastery; it is the sixth period of creation.
"And God made the firmament, and divided the waters which were under the firmament from the
waters which were above the firmament; and it was so. And God called the firmament Heaven.
And there was evening and there was morning, a second day. And God said, Let the waters
under the heavens be gathered together unto one place, and let the dry land appear: and it was
so. And God called the dry land Earth and the gathering together of the waters called He Seas:
and God saw that it was good. And God said, Let the earth put forth grass, herbs yielding seed,
and fruit trees bearing fruit after their kind, wherein is the seed thereof, upon the earth: and it
was so. And the earth brought forth grass, herbs yielding seed after their kind, and trees bearing
fruit, wherein is the seed thereof, after their kind: and God saw that it was good. And there was
evening and there was morning, a third day."
"And God said, Let there be lights in the firmament of heaven to divide the day from the night:
and let them be for signs, and for seasons, and for days and years: and let them be for lights in
the firmament of heaven to give light upon the earth: and it was so. And God made the two great
lights; the greater light to rule the day, and the lesser light to rule the night: he made the stars
also. And God set them in the firmament of heaven to give light upon the earth, and to rule over
the day and over the night, and to divide the light from the darkness: and God saw that it was
good. And there was evening and there was morning, a fourth day."
These verses are usually accepted in the most literal way; the light is considered as referring to
the physical sun of the solar system. I believe that it refers to the dawn of the mind, to the period
when Creative Power has developed intellect. These lights are established in the firmament to
give light to the outer realm of the earth--the objective manifestation.
"And God said, Let the waters swarm with swarms of living creatures and let birds fly above
the earth in the open firmament of heaven. And God created the great sea-monsters, and every
living creature that moveth, wherewith the waters swarmed, after their kind, and every winged
bird after its kind: and God saw that it was good. And God blessed them, saying, Be fruitful,
and multiply, and fill the waters in the seas, and let birds multiply on the earth. And there was
evening and there was morning a fifth day. And God said, Let the earth bring forth living
creatures after their kind, cattle, and creeping things, and beasts of the earth after their kind: and
it was so. And God made the beasts of the earth after their kind, and the cattle after their kind,
and everything that creepeth upon the ground after its kind: And God saw that it was good. And
God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness: and let them have dominion over the
fish of the seas, and over the birds of the heavens, and over the cattle and over all the earth, and
over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth. And God created man in his
-4-
own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them. And God
blessed them: and God said unto them, Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth, and
subdue it; and have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the birds of the heaven, and over
every living thing that moveth upon the earth. And God said, Behold, I have given you every
herb yielding seed, which is upon the face of all the earth, and every tree, in which is the fruit of
a tree yielding seed; to you it shall be for food: and to every beast of the earth, and to every bird
of the heavens, and to everything that creepeth upon the earth, wherein there is life, I have given
every green herb for food: and it was so. And God saw everything that he had made, and
behold, it was very good. And there was evening and there was morning, the sixth day."
This is the sixth period of creation or of development. In the higher consciousness of the
Awakened Ones, man is classified as an animal so long as he is dominated by his animal nature.
There is no advancement out of the animal kingdom until that period in the man state of
consciousness when Divine Light and Understanding dawn and are manifested. When that
Divine Realization awakens, man is literally created in the image and likeness of God. Divine
Life becomes completely aware of itself in the sixth period. When that state of development is
reached we no longer function in concepts, we no longer have faith, we are completely aware of
our own divinity, our own immortality; Creative Life images forth perfectly, as it is in its own
divine essence.
When the realization of divinity is fully consummated in an individualized center of
consciousness, he has dominion over all things by reason of the tremendous power radiating
from him. He is no more subject to things and conditions--he is master of all by virtue of his
divine awakened light. Then, after the labor of creating these six periods of our own world,
comes the glorious seventh day of rest in the Universal Self-awareness. Then are we "perfect,
even as your Father which is in heaven is perfect."
What point in this teaching of the creation is the most vital lesson for you and me? There are so
many vital lessons in it that I could give many more talks just in pointing them out. The most
important is this: You are the Conceiver; you are birthless, deathless, and changeless; you have
the possibility of mastering all relative conditions, not in a personal, human, egotistical sense,
but in liberation, in divine self-awareness. "To him that overcometh will I give to eat of the
hidden manna, and will give him a white stone, and in the stone a new name written, which no
man knoweth saving he that receiveth it." We create the new name by the divine powers of our
emancipated state. |
