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5 Planes of Existence
Introduction
Five Planes of Manifestation
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CHRIST
Christ, or the Higher Self, is the
fundamental principle underlying the idea of personal Godhood; and
is the Divine Life which proceeds forth from the Absolute, as the
Son from the Father, to enter the world of manifestation and animate
all things. He it is who is the Divine Sacrifice, in that he limits
himself within all his creatures. Again, when involution and
evolution are accomplished, be leaves the world and departs to the
Father, taking with him the results of the soul-process.
Now through that Divine effort of manifestation, all that is
expressed and comprised in mineral, vegetal, animal, and human, is
lived through in due order in this underworld, whilst the essential
Christ, the Lord in heaven, is "seated at the right hand of the
Father"; that is, he lives as the Power Actual proceeding from Power
Potential. He comes forth in the World-cycle as Saviour and Judge in
innumerable cloaks (forms) as the One Life operating diversely in
many sheaths.
Christ is in everything. The forms
or sheaths-the outward expressions of potential Spirit—are as the
borders of his garment, which he shall cast forth when their purpose
is effected, and afterwards he shall reveal his full form and
stature to himself, for theres not another beside him. The All is no
other than the One.
We are rooted and centred in Him. In his sight, or upon the highest
level, we, as spiritual egos, are within the outer as he is; but in
our lower consciousness we see things not as they are in reality,
but illusively, and so we only behold the diversity and separateness
which give rise to our misconceptions of the inner and real
significance of our Individuality and of its ultimate re-absorption
into the Infinite. It is He, the Inner Self of all beings, who is
infinite. Our little personality,being transitory and finite, is but
a poor and partial mirroring of his infinity.
It is the immortal Individuality within us which is the immediate
manifestation of his unmanifested Self. He alone is the Way, the
Truth, and the Life; for he is above all, and in all, and more than
all. He is the Supreme Ideal set before us to conform to, that we
may become like him, and so manifest his nature that is in us.
"You may depend upon it that the laws of all life, vegetable,
animal, mental, soulal, and spiritual, are one and the same, though
different in degree; and all derived from one and the same sacrifice
of our blessed Lord and Saviour, offered from all eternity; without
which there would have been no life, but a universal death. And you
may rest assured, also, that the lower is always typical of the
higher; and that the knowledge of the higher is best ascended into
through the progression of the lower. We ought not to wonder,
therefore, that the Holy Spirit continually useth the emblems or
symbols derived from vegetable and human life- the sowing of the
seed and the harvest, the birth of the child, and the full-grown
man-to set forth spiritual things withal. And you ought not to say,
they are finely chosen similitudes, but, they are rightly
appropriated types. And, however much our men of taste and sentiment
do laugh at the spiritualisings of our fathers, I dare to believe
and to say, that to spiritualise nature is rightly to interpret
nature, and that the greater part of our Lord's discourses are
nothing but divine exercises of this kind; and so of His parables
also." - ED. IRVING, Works, Vol. I. p. 80.
"This Epistle to the Ephesians is penetrated throughout by that idea
of living union with Christ, and indwelling in Him. It is expressed
in many metaphors. We are rooted in Him as the tree in the soil,
which makes it firm and fruitful. We are built into Him as the
strong foundations of the temple are bedded in the living rock. We
live in The Him as the limbs in the body. indwelling, we say, is
reciprocal. He is in us, and we are in Him. He is in us as the
source of our Being; we are in Him as filled with His fullness. He
is in us all- communicative; we are in Him all- receptive. He is in
us as the sunlight in the else darkened chamber; we are in Him as
the cold green log cast into the flaming furnace glows through and
through with ruddy and transforming heat. He is in us as the sap in
the veins of the tree; we are in Him as the branches. 'As a branch
cannot bear fruit of itself, except it abide in the vine, no more
can ye except ye abide in me.' " - A. MAC- LAREN, Sermons, 3rd
Series, pp.. 70-2.
“The Christ is the Divine Man in men, that through which the power
and wealth of God flow into human life. The rise of idealism in the
soul is just the emergence of the deeper Christ-nature. Whenever a
refusal is made to the things that would gratify the superficial
nature for the sake of those things which alone can satisfy the
deeper nature, it is the triumph of the Christ in man." - T. RHONDDA
WILLIAMS, Serm., The Great Choice.
"The law, or principle, of the obligation imposed upon man by a
supernatural Ideal. Indeed, the entire evolution of the race may be
considered, from the point of view of the philosophy of religion
when surveying the history of this evolution, as arising out of
obligations to the Ideal. And this Ideal which religion in its
highest form of thought, feeling, and service, strives to realise,
includes the ideals of truth, beauty, and goodness. Thus, religion
itself, when most profoundly comprehended, is scen to be of the
nature of that command which Jesus uttered to his disciples: Be ye
therefore perfect even as your Father in Heaven is perfect.' The
voice in which all religious doctrine and prophecy is expressed, and
to which the soul of man responds by entering upon the way of
salvation,' is the exhortation: Thou shalt so think, act, and be, as
to bring into the reality of human life a harmony with the Personal
Ideal of perfect truth, beauty, and goodness." - G. T. LADD, Phil.
of Religion, Vol. I. p. 257.
"The Object of religious belief and worship must ever be regarded as
some. thing about whose real Being man must increasingly strive to
know." - Ibid., p. 314.
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