by Ernest L. Norman
In your modern Christian theologies, most people who attend the Christian churches do so with the belief that they cannot envision God as anything except a super being who rules in some celestial palace, sitting on a throne, writing everyone’s name in a huge book, and making little x’s or o’s after each name denoting the temperament or disposition of the individual. Such is the Judgment Day of some far-off time, as written in the Book of Peter in which He shall come as a thief in the night. Why would God come as a thief in the night? Why should He destroy one of His planets with a rain of fire and burn all things from the surface? Such a philosophy and such a prediction is in contradiction to the simple philosophy which was taught by Jesus who, in his own way, taught the all-forgiving, the loving, the everlasting presence of God within all things. In my most ancient China, we find even to this day, groups or individuals who shave all but a small piece on the top of the head where their hair grows out into a long queue by means of which they believe they shall be snatched into heaven by some unseen hand. We find a similarity in the Christian philosophy, in which the blood of Jesus and the belief in Him will guarantee salvation even for the blackest and most vile sinner should he call upon the name of this personage.
It is small wonder that there is little progress in the Christian churches where such contradictory philosophies are preached and where each minister or priest, in his own way, expounds his own theories and concepts. However, there is a universal appeal in the belief that the blood of Jesus will wash away sins. My friends, your sins are very necessary in the experiences of your life, for they are the determining factors of your evolutionary progress. You are on the earth at this time to understand the difference between earth’s experiences, whether they are good or detrimental to your own progress. How else would you be able to determine right from wrong if all were good or all were evil? It would be very difficult, I assure you.
There are other very seeming contradictions in the Christian philosophies, just as there are in the other spiritual philosophies which exist among the peoples of the world. In the case of the Christian religion it is much more so; because, if we understand the origin and the founding of the Christian churches, which became the Holy Roman Empire, we shall see that compounds of cults, as they exist in the Mithraic concepts, are interwoven with and are in direct contradiction to the simple elemental faith and manifestation of the inward spiritual consciousness as was taught by Jesus. So the great Roman Catholic Church sprang into existence and has now become somewhat the pattern for all churches; inasmuch as the lavishness and the garishness of the edifices of these churches, with their golden altars, their beautiful rugs, their carved marble statues, their wealth, and the possessive materialism which surrounds these great churches, are themselves in direct contradiction to the rock on which Jesus stood and preached the Beatitudes. I shall not attempt at this time to underrate in a spiritual sense the values of the churches or the Christian philosophy as it exists in your country today. Such blind and obstructed faith is much better than nothing; as a lame man with a broken leg must walk with a crutch, so the Christian who is unable to think constructively for himself, must lean upon the lame philosophies as they are expounded from the very un-Christian churches of the world.
As Karl Marx expressed himself, (and I would not say that I am communistic; it would make little difference if you called me communistic, because I am in a place where the word means nothing) any philosophy or religion which subtracts the individual self-consciousness from the true perspective of realism, such realistic separations will, in themselves, tend to subjugate the individual to such low planes of mental atrophy as to completely stop his spiritual evolution. So it is, in the belief that anyone can save us from our sins. We must first conceive sin or error as that which is sin only if we let it remain as such in our consciousness. Most everyone on the earth has some guilt complex, compounded from the multiplicity of sins, as they are called in the earth dimension. The existence of these things in themselves are relatively inconsequential. They mean little or nothing. The most important element in the undergoing of such sinful experiences is that it leaves the individual with a resolution that he has now determined the factional difference between right and wrong and that he must work toward a better end. No one can do this for him. It is his own will; it is his own dominion, and his own life.
Jesus would be defeating the purpose of his mission on earth if He had left behind the word that He had come to “save” the world. The obvious fact remains that the Christians have confused the word Jesus with Christ. Now, to further analyze constructively what is meant by Jesus and the Christ: in the Christian churches, the two words are used almost simultaneously and are usually believed to be the name of an individual, just as I am Lao-Tzu. Such is not the case. Let us refer back to our original concept that God is Infinite in His nature, and in order to be Infinite, He must also express Himself into many finite dimensions. The Infinity of God in so expressing Himself to the individual comes into the individual’s consciousness from the Superconscious state of the individual’s own personal structure. We say, therefore, that God assumes and radiates Himself into the personage of the individual as a person because, as I have previously stated in the philosophy of man, man in his earth life is an individual and undergoes the very strong association of personal ego consciousness with himself to all deistic influences.
Therefore God in man as an individual must become the Christ, and that Christ is God. It was thus explained by Jesus when he stated, “The Father and I are one and the same.” Is that not so? So it is with all of you; you must personify God as Christ, the living embodiment of all things which you yourself crave, hope and desire to be; your most innate nature as you have sprung from the Divine Fountainhead, which is God. Thus you must revert into the complete attunement of such consciousness. Before doing so, as has been explained, you evolve through many dimensions, through many lifetimes; and in so doing, you achieve the finite understanding of all consciousness. This you have called sin and error. In associating yourselves with the lower materialistic elements of the lowest of the elemental planes of understanding in God’s great Mind, you have thus undergone the experience of sin and error in your evolutions through what you call space and time, or reincarnation. Thus you develop in your consciousness the personified being of Christ, and thus it is with each individual. I hope that I have made myself clear.
Therefore, in the future, my dear ones, it would be well for each of you to mark today as a distinct birthday in the history of your personal development and evolution. The day will be when you separate yourself from the blood concept. The blood and stench of the slaughterhouse should not mingle with the pure incense of God’s pure Divine Love. It is not understandable to us here that the highest precepts of spiritual consciousness should be founded upon the transgressions of man upon another man, or that such Christian concepts should be exploited to their fullest attainment with the usage at the display of some man who had been crucified by his fellowman. It would be well for these churches to submerge their consciousness into some other expression and teach differently. The philosophy of Christianity could thus be more easily understood by the more simple and primitive thinking people of the world, who have not so confounded their minds with civilization.
In the future it would be well too for the Christian churches if they would teach a more practical philosophy of life; if they would learn to understand the true innermost nature of mankind; if they would learn to understand the spiritual motivations and principles which inspired the Beatitudes and the teachings and the psychological principles which were behind the words spoken by Jesus. We do not confound the man Jesus with the Christ, because Christ is the distinct separation of a dimension and not an individual. Christ, as I said, is the personification of God into each individual; and I might add a word, that the descent of Christ, as he has promised in some future day, will not be as an individual. What Jesus meant was that the Christ, the spiritual God, would come unto the earth and infuse the minds and hearts of all individuals, so that they would live more constructively, more spiritually, and they would love their fellowman; but until such day, may I remain your most humble servant.
Excerpt from The Voice Of Hermes
Part II coming soon.