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5 Planes of Existence
Introduction
Five Planes of Manifestation
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IMAGE OF GOD
This expression signifies a projection of the
Divine nature on the two highest planes of the soul, and
constitutes, when united with mind, the Archetypal Man energising as
Love and Wisdom (atma-buddhi).
"And God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness: and
let them have dominion over, etc. And God created man in his own
image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created
he them." - GENESIS. i. 26, 27.
At this stage of involution, the Divine nature projects a likeness
of itself upon the highest planes. This is the Divine Ray or Spark,
which is a direct emanation of the Logos, -Atma-buddhi,-dual,
male-female, and consequently spoken of as Us. The two Divine
aspects united, are essential to the making of Man as a spiritual
being. The Love and Wisdom principles (Atma-buddhi) united in mind (manas),
are to have dominion over the feelings, ideas, actions, and the
entire nature, including the lower mental nature. And so the Divine
Will caused to be created the Archetypal Man in the image
(microcosm) of the Divine fullness (Macrocosm), the dual expression
of Truth- Wisdom.
"Man made after the image of God. This is the Word of God, the first
beginning of all things, the original species or the archetypal
idea, the first measure of the universe." - PHILO, Works, Yonge's
trans., Vol. IV. p. 285.
"What is this image of God? It is the mind of God; for Christ is
that Mind or Word to rule in us. The Man is Christ, the perfect mind
of God. This Man was created 'male and female,' that so he might be
a perfect image of God. God is infinite Wisdom and Love : no image
of Him would be complete which did not express both." - A. JUKES,
Types of Genesis, p. 40.
“But All-Father Mind, being Life and Light, did bring forth Man
co-equal to Himself, with whom He fell in love, as being his own
child; for he was beautiful beyond compare, the Image of his Sire."
- Pomandres (Hermetic), 12.
"This image of God, which is found in all men, may be considered
under three aspects: first, as a natural aptitude for loving and
understanding God, which belongs to the nature of the mind and is
common to all men; secondly, as actual and habitual knowledge
imperfect love, which is the conformity of grace; and thirdly, as
that perfect love and knowledge which constitute the image of God in
a State of Glory. The first is in all men, the second in the just,
the third in the Blessed. . . . The image of God in man is according
to the Divine Nature and the Trinity of Persons, inasmuch as in God
Three Persons exist in One Nature." - T. AQUINAS, Comp. Summa
Theol., p. 237.
"In every department of being, where the imperfect is found, the
perfect pre-exists." - Ibid., p. 129.
"As the soul is said to be of the breath of God, so it is said to be
made after God's own image, even after the similitude of God. . . .
This character the Holy Ghost, in the Scriptures of truth, giveth
only of man, of the soul of man; for it must not be thought that the
body is here intended in whole or in part." - J. BUNYAN, Greatness
of the Soul.
"The Platonists called Dionysus 'Our Master,' for the mind in us is
Dionysiacal and the Image of Dionysus." - PROCLUS, Crat., LIX. 114,
82.
This may be explained in the words of Tauler, where he speaks of,—
"the unseen depths of man's spirit wherein lies the Image of God."
"A conception which pervades the Midrash literature is that there is
an upper' and a 'lower' Adam : a celestial man made strictly in the
image of God, and a terrestrial man corresponding in detail to his
archetype." - C. TAYLOR, Sayings of the Jewish Fathers, p. 70.
“Irenæus says, 'What we had lost in Adam, namely our possession of
the image and likeness of God, we recover in Christ.' Adam, however,
is humanity; in other words, as all humanity is united and renewed
through Christ, so also it was already summarised in Adam." -
HARNACK, Hist. of Dogma, Vol. II. p. 273.
'Wisdom, Love, and Truth are the principle or image of God" (P. P.
Quimby). - G. MILMINE, Life of Mrs. Eddy, p. 129.
“The soul who perceives himself to associate with God, will have
himself the similitude of Him. And if he passes from himself as an
image to the Archetype, he will then have the end of his
progression." - PLOTINUS, On the Good, or the One, § XI.
“Because of the constitution of Man in Elohim's likeness, the Man,
i.e. the Perfect, Primordial, Ideation Man or Adam, comprises (in
itself as the similitude of Elohim) all things, and admits all
things to settle (be contained or arranged) in it." - I. MYER,
Qabbalah, p. 138.
"The Life-Force which speaks in the soul in the language of duty,
truth, and love, must have been these things to begin with, or it
could never have made us know them; and the wiser and older grows
the race the more plainly does the Life-Force speak of these. God
and the Life-Force are one. To be in line with the Life-Force of the
universe, to do the will of God, is to live in the spirit of the
love that seeketh not its own. And he knows this best who gives
himself for it most with unfaltering faith." - R. J. CAMPBELL, Serm.,
Jesus and the Life Force.
"As the Bird-life builds up a bird, the image of itself, so the
Christ-life builds up a Christ, the image of Himself, in the inward
nature of man.' ""
"Observe the passive voice in these sentences: Begotten of God';
'The new man which is renewed in knowledge after the Image of Him
that created him'; or this, 'We are changed into the same Image'; or
this, 'Predestinate to be conformed to the Image of His Son.'" - H.
DRUMMOND, Natural Law, etc., pp. 293, 310.
"That God is the true and supreme end of man we know by the simple
fact that the end of man can lie only on true lines of himself, and
all these lines lead directly and only to God. The end of his mind
is Truth, the end of his feelings and affections is Love, the end of
his will and activities is Goodness and Good : and the completeness
and perfection of all these is God. No finite spirit, seeking and
striving to be all itself, can will or conceive for itself anything
short of the infinitely True, Beautiful and Good- infinite Wisdom,
Virtue, Happiness- infinite Holiness, Righteousness, Life. God, so
far as we can know Him, is the Infinite, Eternal, Perfect of
ourselves, as we are the finite, incomplete, and imperfect of Him.
If this is conceiving or creating God in our own image, I admit it
and justify it. It is the only way and form in which we can know God
at all." - W. P. Du BOSE, Constructive Quarterly, March 1913.
"Manhood itself may be regarded as the product of countless mons of
an evolutionary process; but if the evolution is to be considered
from this point of view, and subjected to the theory of reality,
which the religious consciousness insists upon assuming, then the
process is a divine procedure, and its product a divine creation.
Man's evolution, for religion, is but God's way of making man in the
divine image. The psychological truth involved in the assumption of
an essential likeness between the two-a certain Oneness which
accounts for the duality; this is an assumption upon which is based
the very existence of religion at all." "Man makes God in man's
image; because God has made man in the divine image. Man as he
becomes more fully man, more of a rational and free personality,
worthily and truly conceives of God; but this is because God is
himself making man more and more like God." - G. T. LADD, Phil. of
Religion, Vol. I. pp 347, 361.
"The great work of religion is to conform ourselves to God, or to
unfold the divine likeness within us." - W. E. CHANNING, Likeness to
God.
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