15. We believe that sense consciousness may be lifted up, "as Moses lifted
up the serpent in the wilderness," and that all men may be again restored to paradise
through faith, understanding, and practice of the divine law, as Jesus Christ taught and
demonstrated.
Remember, sense consciousness is our awareness of life that is gained through the
channels of the five senses. The senses are an important part of our physical being. They
provide necessary information about the physical world and our relation to it in time and
space. The sensation of pain when we grab a hot pot on the stove is an important signal.
In a certain way the pain is our friend; it tells us that something is wrong, which is
pain’s only purpose. Our reaction to the pain causes us to remove our hands from the
source of the burning heat. Vision and hearing can provide information which causes us to
get out of the path of moving vehicles and objects. Observation of the outer world
provides a great amount of information, but it does not reveal the meaning of life or the
nature of reality. When we accept outer appearances as absolute reality, we establish
awareness or consciousness based on inaccurate information and construct belief systems
based on false concepts, illusion and superstition.
Jesus said, "And as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must
the Son of man be lifted up . . . (John 3:14). This is an allusion to the story of the
Israelites who cursed God as they wandered in the wilderness. Fiery serpents were sent
among them which bit many people who then died as a result. After Moses prayed, the Lord
told him to make a bronze serpent, set it upon a pole and everyone who would see it would
live. The story is a reminder of the problems which arise when we accept the appearances
of lack and limitation in our world, just as the Israelites believed that they had been
brought into a land without food or water to die. To get beyond the physical experience
requires a different perspective. Moses represents our developing spiritual awareness
which begins to lead us out of limited human consciousness. The serpent in the East is a
symbol of wisdom–the fiery serpents on the ground representing human wisdom and the
bronze serpent on the pole higher, spiritual wisdom. In order to perceive spiritual
wisdom, we need to raise our vision from sight to insight.
When Jesus alluded to this story, he used the expression "Son of man" or
breh d’nasha in his language. This expression has confused many through the
centuries and led to some odd interpretations of the meaning. However, in the common
speech of Jesus’ people this was a well-known idiom for "human being."
Jesus’ message is that every human being must raise his consciousness from sense to
spiritual. We choose how and when we accomplish this task but the eventual accomplishment
is assured. We must use the power of the mind to perceive spiritual Truth no matter what
our senses report, use and deepen our spiritual understanding and apply spiritual
Principle in our lives.
"The place of man’s overcoming is in his own individual consciousness,
‘the wilderness of his own mind,’ the soul, the conscious, thinking phase of
mind, and the subconscious, feeling phase of mind...Overcoming is a coming up and over
into Christ consciousness, up and over all false beliefs, negative thoughts, feelings,
concepts, notions, impulses, emotions, words, actions, reactions, and finally over
conditions, situations, circumstances, experiences, and things." (Unity
Correspondence School course material Annotations Series 2, Lesson 5, Annotation 19)
16. We believe that creative Mind, God, is masculine and feminine, and that
these attributes of Being are fundamental in both natural and spiritual man. "And God
created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created
he them."
It wasn’t until the 1970’s that a female Bible scholar presented a
different view of the creation of man as the image-likeness of God. After much study into
the practice of parallelism in the Hebrew scripture, she concluded that this passage
presented a view of God as a multi-gendered Being. If mankind was created in the image of
God and created both male and female, then God is also male and female. It is not
difficult to read "male and female created he them" as stating that each
individual is both masculine and feminine. This idea is consistent with the spiritual
principle contained in the Adam and Eve stories. Adam and Eve represent the masculine and
feminine within every soul–the thinking and feeling natures.
When men accepted the creation story as literal, they understood man as a divinely
created being and woman as derivative–she came into being out of man. This led to the
belief that women were second-class citizens, subject to men. Even now this belief
persists within certain religious groups. However, those who hold this concept have missed
the real meaning entirely. Thinking gives rise to feelings; they come as a result of the
thoughts we hold in mind.
The mind is a trinity of the conscious, subconscious and superconscious phases.
The conscious phase is the intellect–our Adam–and through this phase of mind we
think, reason, examine, accept, reject, deduct and conclude. The subconscious
phase–Eve–is the basic feeling nature within us. It feels and is the storehouse
of memory as well as the seat of our habits, but it does no original thinking. The
intellect provides the model and the subconscious is the "doer" or reproducer
which turns out the real thing based on the model. These two phases form the soul or
consciousness. The superconscious phase is the I AM, spiritual being, our link to all that
Divine Mind is. While the soul contains the "thinker" and the "doer,"
the superconscious is the "knower" through which all divine ideas come.
When we are functioning through human awareness, we take into the conscious mind
impressions from the outside world through the senses. When we have examined the
information, we pass along our conclusions to the subconscious which then reproduces the
model it was given and also stores the information it was given in memory.
Charles Fillmore said that we have the process backwards. Instead of working from
outside to the inside, we should function from the within outward. In other words, we are
to stop taking in sense impressions by turning within in prayer. Then we may open
ourselves to the inspiration of Spirit or God-mind through the superconscious. The divine
ideas which come to us are dropped into the subconscious first and then percolate up to
the conscious mind where we experience the "Aha!" or revelation and then project
the divine ideas into the outer world.
17. We believe that we live, move, and have our being in God mind; also that
God mind lives, and moves, and has being in us, to the extent of our consciousness.
The Unity Correspondence course material says, "Paul (referring to his
statement ‘in him we live, move, and have our being’ –Acts 17:28) was
endeavoring to make clear to the people of Athens that God is a living presence and power,
the cause or originating essence of all life as well as the sustenance of every living
creature during its existence in a bodily form...that God was...an everywhere present
intelligent, or all pervading Spirit substance, a Mind essence, in which was inherent all
the possibilities of God, all the ideas of Divine Mind." (Series 1, Lesson 1,
Annotation 8)
We have but one source and can never be separated from that source even for an
instant. Though never separate, we sometimes experience a "sense of separation"
as a result of our thoughts and beliefs. Just as there is only one air–hot or cold,
fresh or stale–so there is only one mind. One person does not have a mind and another
a separate mind. Each has consciousness in the one Mind, a point of awareness within
Universal Mind. Because this is true, we have access to all wisdom, knowledge and ideas
within Divine Mind. The I Am or Christ is God-mind individualized. Christ in you is your
individuality while what you allow to express through you of the Christ is your
personality witnessed by the world.
"Between God and man alone is there no difference, no separation, but
oneness." –Meister Eckert
To Be Continued Next Month
Copyright © 2000 by Greg W. Neteler
Used with permission.
Messages from previous months