All
scriptures declare that man is the spiritual image and likeness of
God. This is emphatically revealed in the inspiration of our own scripture
which says: "God created man in his own image." "The
spirit of God hath made me, and the breath of the Almighty hath given
me life." "Hereby know we that we dwell in him, and he in
us, because he hath given us of his Spirit." "Thou hast
made him a little lower than the angels, and has crowned him with
glory and honour. Thou madest him to have dominion over the works
of thy hands; thou has put all things under his feet." "Be
ye therefore perfect, even as your Father which is in heaven is perfect."
Now
there are diversities of gifts, but the same Spirit." "There
is one body, and one Spirit . . . one Lord, one faith, one baptism,
one God and Father of all, who is above all, and through all, and
in you all." "One faith, and one baptism" means that
through faith and intuition we realize that we are living in one Spirit,
or, as Emerson said, "There is one Mind common to all individual
men."
"Have
we not all one Father? Hath not one God created us?" "To
us there is but one God, the Father, of whom are all things."
"Beloved, now are we the sons of God." "Ye are the
sons of the living God." "And because ye are sons, God has
sent forth the Spirit of his Son into your hearts." In other
words, there is but one son of God which includes the whole human
family, and the Spirit of this son, which is the Spirit of Christ,
is incarnated in everyone. Therefore, the Bible says that "he
(man) is the image and glory of God."
"Know
ye not that your body is the temple of the Holy Ghost which is in
you . . . therefore glorify God in your body, and in your spirit,
which are God's." "That which is born of the Spirit is spirit."
We could have no more definite statement of the Divine Incarnation
than this. Every man is an incarnation of God. Since God is the Universal
Spirit, the one and only Mind, Substance, Power and Presence that
exists, and since all men are individuals, it follows that each man
is an individualized center of the Consciousness of the One God.
When
Jesus said, "I and my Father are one," but "my Father
is greater than I," he was stating a mathematical proposition.
Every man is an incarnation of God, but no single incarnation of God
can exhaust the Divine Nature. Everyone can use the figure 7 to infinity
without ever exhausting its possibility. The more Divine Power we
use the more Divine Power is placed at our disposal, for "there
is that which scattereth, and yet increaseth."
Not
only is every individual an incarnation of God, and, therefore, a
manifestation of Christ, but since each individual is unique, every
person has access to God in a personal sense. The Spirit is most certainly
personal to each one of us --individually and uniquely personal. We
could not ask for a more complete union than this, for the union is
absolute, immediate and dynamic.
According
to the revelation of the ages, man has a spiritual birthright which
gives him dominion over all evil. But the old man must be put off;
that is, transmuted into the new man, which is Christ. The real spiritual
man is here now could we see him. It is ignorance of this fact which
produces all evil, all limitation, all fear. It is a sense of separation
from our Source which begets all our troubles. In the midst of the
possibility of freedom we are bound. Thus, the Hermetic philosophy
states that though we are born of harmony we have become slaves because
we are overcome by sleep. And our own scripture says that we must
awake from this sleep; that we must arise from the dead in order that
Christ may give us life.
The
Koran says: "We created man: and we know what
his soul whispereth to him, and we are closer to him than his neck-vein."
In
the Talmud we read: "First no atom of matter,
in the whole vastness of the universe, is lost; how then can man's
soul, which is the whole world in one idea be lost?"
The
following quotations are drawn from various Hindu Scriptures:
"The ego is beyond all disease . . . free from all imagination,
and all-pervading." "As from a . . . fire, in thousand ways,
similar sparks proceed, so beloved are produced living cells of various
kinds from the Indestructible." "If ye knew God as he ought
to be known, ye would walk under seas, and the mountains would move
at your call." (This is similar to the teaching of Jesus when
he said that if we had faith the size of a grain of mustard seed,
we could say unto the mountain, "Remove hence to yonder place.")
"There is that within every soul which conquers hunger, thirst,
grief, delusion, old age and death."
Perhaps
one of the most remarkable sayings in the Scriptures of India,
relative to the self, is the following: "Let him raise the self
by the Self and not let the self become depressed; for verily is the
Self the friend of the self, and also the Self the self's enemy; The
Self is the friend of the self of him in whom the self by the Self
is vanquished; but to the unsubdued self the Self verily becometh
hostile as an enemy." This, of course, refers to the deathless
Self, the incarnation of God in us.
"He
who knows himself has come to know his Lord . . ." This refers
to the complete unity of the Spirit, or, as Jesus said, "I and
the Father are one." "And he who thus hath learned to know
himself, hath reached that Good which doth transcend abundance . .
."
From
the Text of Taoism are gathered the following inspiring
thoughts: "Man has a real existence, but it has nothing to do
with place; he has continuance, but it has nothing to do with beginning
or end." "He whose whole mind is thus fixed emits a Heavenly
light. In him who emits this heavenly light men see the (True) man."
Referring
to the one whose mind is fixed on reality, "His sleep is untroubled
by dreams; his waking is followed by no sorrows. His spirit is guileless
and pure; his soul is not subject to weariness." In spiritual
revelation a calm contemplation of spiritual Truth is held important.
The mind must be like a mirror if it is to reflect or image forth
the Divine Prototype, the incarnation of God in man. "Men do
not look unto running water as a mirror, but into still water: --it
is only the still water that can arrest them all, and keep them in
the contemplation of their real selves."
The
Hermetic Philosophy tells us that if we would know
God we must be like Him, for "like is knowable to like alone."
"Make thyself to grow to the same stature as the Greatness which
transcends all measure . . ." "Conceiving nothing is impossible
unto thyself, think thyself deathless and able to know all, --all
arts, all sciences, the way of every life." It tells us to awake
from our deep sleep, as though our spiritual eyes were dulled by too
much looking on effect and too little contemplation of cause.
