| |
As to who and what is God, I dare say that never has the Bible, either the Old or the New Testament, given man an understanding of the Deity and His attributes to the extent and depth as appears in the messages signed Jesus and the Celestials. According to these high spirits, man is at-one with the Father to the degree that His love abounds in their souls.
God is Soul, composed of His greatest attribute, Divine Love, which is His very nature and essence, followed by Mercy, Goodness, Power, Omniscience, and Will, and with the Mind, so much worshipped by mankind, only an aspect of this Being.
Although God has no form such as He gives to mankind on incarnation, nor a spirit body, which is manifested by man after his physical death, yet God possesses His definite Soul form, which becomes more clearly perceptible to the soul which feels or perceives' God's Oversoul, or the divine attributes thereof, as it comes into closer rapport with God through its soul development. For while God is Soul alone, unique in its Oneness, and while He has no material or spirit body, yet He has personality, the divine personality manifesting His Love and Mercy, His kindness and solicitude for all His creatures.
God, then, is not a cold intellect, an abstract mind, or forces indifferent and unfeeling, but a personal warm and loving Father, eager for the happiness of His children, regardless of race or color or creed. He seeks through His ministering angels to turn His children to Him, and have them keep in harmony with His laws, or have them come indeed to Him in the longing of their human souls for that something they know not what and obtain at-onement with Him through the inflowing of His Love into their souls in response to their earnest prayers.
Soul is God and God is Soul and all His attributes added together do not make up who and what God is. These attributes radiate from His Great Soul and flood the universe, so when men say they live and have their being in God they are in error for they do not, but they do live and have their being in the attributes that God has given them: the human soul. When one obtains the greatest attribute of God, the Divine Love, which manifests itself as a warm glow burning in the soul, as occurred to the refugees at Emmaus (Luke, 24, 32), then he is actually feeling or perceiving the Great Soul of God to the degree he partakes of that Love.
Information regarding the human soul not even mentioned in the Scriptures, which presumably should be the place to look for such material, abounds in theMessages from Jesus.To be sure, we are told in Genesis that God created man "in His image," but everything that such a statement implies or suggests is tantalizingly wanting and we are left to our own ideas or compelled to accept what the churches believe should be the meaning. The result is that the conception of what was meant by the creation in man varies in accordance with the interpretation which each church, claiming for itself the truth, lays upon those meager words.
The early Hebrews, of course, were not interested overly much in the life beyond the grave, and their conception of the soul or its habitat after mortal experience is limited mainly to Paradise or Gehenna (and these, we may note, were originally conceived to be places on this earth; in the first case, the Garden of Eden supposed to be near the Euphrates; in the second, in the valley of Hinnom where the Jebusites once offered up human sacrifices). It is strange, perhaps, that the Greeks, with their love of physical culture, form and beauty, should have a much more detailed view of the afterlife: the dark realm of Pluto, the glory and happiness of the Elysian Fields, where the souls of the righteous dwell in peace and communion with their god, the shadow forms of the harpies, the influence, perhaps, of an older Egyptian religion.
But in these messages signed the Master and his celestial spirits, the information given is clear and logical, even though such information is new and hitherto unknown. Certainly, no one up to the time of Padgett's mediumship was able to obtain messages of that high quality directly from these spirits themselves, although Swedenborg, the Swedish seer, was permitted experiences in the spirit world which in many respects parallel what Padgett obtained.
Jesus tells us that just as God is Infinite Love, so is His universe infinite matter which, like God, has neither beginning nor end. At some time in this infinity of time and space, God created a habitat designed for "man". Exactly when we "men" were created as living souls, (that is to say, before or after the creation of our world) is not known, but God created human souls which dwelt, and have been so dwelling, with Him before their incarnation in the flesh. After the mortal experience, the soul, manifesting its spirit body acquired with incarnation, returns to the spirit world to inhabit a locality commensurate with its condition.
Human souls created by the Father, according to the messages, are duplex: they are male and female in composition and at the time of incarnation divide into their two component parts. Each thereafter in the flesh is a complete soul as to itself. These soul mates may or may not meet and marry in the flesh, depending upon various conditions and circumstances which prevail at the time of their marriage, but such marriage is in no way a guarantee of happiness, for the different education, religious beliefs, family traditions, upbringing and other circumstances of each may often hinder rather than aid in their marital relations. On the other hand souls which are not mates have a better chance of marital harmony if their marriage is based on similar interests, upbringing, education and general social condition on the plane of the material world. Soulmates, after death, eventually meet and stay together in real soulmate love, though not before a period of purification, and in accordance with their condition of soul.
The messages are unequivocal in their insistence that human souls are, as theBook of Genesis states, creations in the image of God, and that therefore there is nothing of the Divine in us. They also insist that man is not the product of evolution such as Darwin or his followers have taught, but that ours represents a material form similar to, but more highly developed than, other creations consistent with the development of life on this planet and harmonizing with the conditions for life which this planet presents. Man was provided with a human soul which, with its special appendage, the mind, enabled him to make the advances and progress which exalt him as lord over the other creatures of this life and give him the potentiality of exploring and mastering the physical surroundings into which he has been placed.
But men are tragically mistaken, declares Jesus, when they believe that the mind is superior to, or the equal of, the soul, or that the soul is merely a name which is given to an entity whose existence is either doubtful or has no basis in fact. For the mind is limited and dependent upon the soul, the seat of the emotions and the passions, and it is the soul which is the real man. It is through the soul perceptions that man knew instinctively that he was linked to his Creator, whom he was to revere and obey. Man, says Jesus, can know and knows God only because he possesses a soul, and he can never know God if he seeks Him intellectually and with his mind alone. Doubt and speculation is a product of the mind, but faith is a product of the soul and we know that God exists through our soul perceptions, so that we can create the spiritual link with God through prayer. Not a mental prayer, but a prayer that comes from man's soul-earnest, sincere, full of longing, faith and love. (True Gospel Revealed Anew by Jesus, Vol. I, pp.XXI-XXIII).
