Episode:Jesus Goes Public—Precaution and Preaching (Part 1)/Transcript

This is a transcript of the episode Jesus Goes Public—Precaution and Preaching (Part 1).

Transcribed by Brad Garner on 10/23/2022 using a machine-learning transcription tool. Mildly edited for readbility. Transcript begins about 12 minutes in, after Kermit reads his summary from the previous week.

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Andrea (A): I was listening to an older broadcast from 2019, talking about the time in Gethsemane right before all this is going down. Chris: you brought up the idea that since Jesus was here to do the will of the Father that and then when they say "he who has seen me has seen the father" that in some ways we're not seeing Jesus. Like we don't get to know him really because he's actually transmitting the Father through himself. And that kind of brought up the question that I had the personality of jesus and that's kind of my question for the evening.

Chris (C): We've stressed a number of times to not lose the distinction between the consecration of will that Michael of is making during his seventh bestowal—and especially in his public ministry when Jesus is fully aware of that concentration of will he carries forward in contrast to the consecration of will creatures like us and celestial creatures higher than us make relative to the Father. For creatures, we were just talking about what Jesus is trying to get them to: found their lives on their inner life where they have a personalized self where there is will, as opposed to just self assertion. For creatures like us, our job is to definitively take ahold of our personal nature—our will—and wield it.

And what do we do with it? Do we just say, "Well, I've got this free. I'm just gonna use it unto itself. I don't have to consider the cosmos or anything. I am that I am!" That, of course, will take you to oblivion. You need to recognize that you've been given the opportunity to be in possession of a tiny measure of all will. Rather than having all of that will together in one fact—which would innately then function in a completely harmonized fashion because it's a singular fact—instead the First Source and Center separated all the will that was separable out into individual personalities and then every one of those free-will creatures (and creators too) are going to come together and choose to establish that harmony, not with that simplicity of merely one will but effectively an infinite number of wills working together as if they were one in a harmony of that infinite complexity.

So our consecration is, "It is my will that your will be done." That's thinking of that total will, and I consecrate my part of that to actually function in a holistic way with all other will.

In the case of the seven bestowals of our or any Creator Son in their local universe. Of course, they too have their place in that in that total infinite harmony of will. But they're doing this very special process through seven bestowals where they're setting that bigger picture aside. And in doing that they're setting aside exactly what they as an absolutely unique personality are going to contribute to that infinite complex future harmony. They're saying, "Not my will. Not that very big-picture consideration of exercising my will," but instead saying, "I'm going to just take myself out of that and narrowly—for this process of acquiring a synchronization with supreme-type Deity—I'm going to basically not be me personally but consecrate my will as best as possible in this downstepped way (because I'm not an infinite being or whatever) to be narrowly as if it was a different will." It's technically the seven wills of the seven Master Spirits, which are a downstepped expression of the sevenfold associations of the threefold will of the Infinite Persons. But the point is: he's going to attempt to to be an expression, not of his will (so you're not gonna really see him personally at all) but the Father's will.

And I don't know if we've ever kind of brought this up: this effort to really not function as his will but another will... when he does this does that in this sevenfold way, why does that get him this relationship to supreme-type Deity?

Consider a similar thing: Before I had my own personality at roughly age six, I definitely had a mindal self that had started at conception. Through all that time in the womb, and then all those years outside of the womb, I had this mind self prior to roughly age 6. But it had no personality separately identified with it. And yet... obviously... logically that mindal self must be under some some sort of subtle personality influence. For two reasons: (1) there's a fitting into that big picture like I was talking about at the beginning, but also (2) when eventually my personality does identify with that mindal self at roughly age 6, there's a continuity of this influence. So there has to be some kind of personal influence imposed upon my mindal self that is effectively just like what my personality would do if it was there. And that comes from the Mother. Every local universe's Mother has the ability to basically put a personality influence over you in such a way that it's a seamless transition from that early influence of her, basically emulating you, to literally you. And then she backs away her personality engagement. So notice how she could she could basically say, relative to just, "Not my will, but Chris' will be done" until Chris' will is there.

A: She probably has the pattern of that personality that, like a template, she can overlay so that when the personality does seat itself, it comes in seamlessly

C: My point of bringing this up (it's fascinating in and of itself) is: notice the parallel the personal-purposive part of supremacy that that a Creator Son is attempting to achieve an identification to through the seventh bestowals, the personal-purposed part of that is the Mother. Notice this process of the Creator Son saying, "Not my will but this will, and then this other will, and then this other will (seven times) be done." In that wholeness modality there's a relationship to the wholeness of the mother, the Supreme. So you see how there's a parallel process to what a local universe mother does for every mortal creature within the local universe prior to them having a personality themselves.

And so, that process of Michael setting aside our being able to get any inkling of what the personality of our Creator Son is like? No, it's not there. He's set that aside. He's consecrated his will, just like the mother did for me alright, to another measure of the total will. Not his, but another.

A: The other thing you said in that past broadcast was that Jesus is revealing God the Father. But that all goes back to the first Master Spirit. And that it's like this revealing upon revealing, because eventually the first Master Spirit (the Father expression) is what we will identify with. But we will have already seen it here in Jesus and then Got the Father and then the first Master Spirit. I had some kind of the coolest little, "Oh my gosh, what a pattern universe we live in."

C: Yeah, and the complexity of really thinking about personality! But the very fact that he could do this—could say, "Not my will but the Father's will be done"... well, wait a minute! He has some mindal self that has all kinds of temperaments and what not. Yes. But personality is dominant. It can it can rein in that self, so that personality influence can shine through that mindal self. That's we're going to read about tonight. When he can get self mastery over that mindal self, then, whatever will is attempting to be the dominant influence can flow on unhindered through that self.

A: Talk about self-mastery, huh?

C: Set aside all the complicated stuff. I have a personality. There's a will a free will to that personality, but it's shrouded behind an unmastered self right now. And for all of us it begins basically completely shrouded. All we see is someone's temperament. But the more they develop a significant character in the upper domain, hand in hand with that character in the upper domain is the dominance to that degree of the upper domain over the lower domain and some measure of self control. Which means some of that can flow out into the world. I say, "Wait a minute, I'm observing this person's character." Well technically not. You're observing a modified temperament of a differently controlled lower domain. Which I can insightfully think back to how this is giving me an initial sense of what that personality influence is over this mindal self. And what it's attempting to do through this mindal self to bring this measure of the total energy of reality into that final infinite harmony. It's purposing that mindal self to that eternal end.

So, it's a it's a great question because it allows one to try to parse through this and begin to better appreciate what the difference between personality and self is and how that self needs to be brought under control. And why? Because the purposing potential of that personality is the point. That's what it's all about in the end: all of energy being personality managed in this infinite harmony.

I just have my little bit of of mind energy (and most immediately what we analogize in the upper domain of the hourglass analogy of your mindal self) that is my measure of all the infinite energy in the cosmos infinite that I must manage perfectly and then coordinate completely with everything else. And if I'm not consecrated to that end then I will cease to have personality management of that energy at some point. That energy will be taken from me if that is not my ultimate purpose.

So, sometime in our ascension career we can get the know our Master Son personally, but you're not seeing him personally through his time here. He's set his personality well aside.

Brad (B): That was that an unexpectedly rich answer! But a patterned universe lets you do things like that. One other thought here:

Kermit, there was a way that in your review you particularly phrased a lot of conversation we had about "proscription and prescription have their place in early evolutionary religion helping to regulate and stabilize primitive societies." That's well stated. It reminds me (apparently) of this term "historicism" I wasn't familiar with that. The idea where you judge the past in terms of the light current day. There are so many these days who look back at the practices of 100, 1000, or 10000 years ago and they say, "Well, that was just unacceptable. Look at look at what religion was doing! It was holding us back so much! We've always been under the thumb of religion! Imagine what humans would be if primitive religion—or no religion!—had ever been there."

C: Yeah. Imagine nothing!

Kermit (K): Definitely one of my pet peeves. What's the word again? or you're not sure of the word?

B: I heard historicism. I'm sure you could call it any number of things, but it's judging the past by today's standards. And perhaps ill-advised standards at that!

K: It's certainly rampant.

C: Even at its best—even if the current standards weren't self righteous.

A: That's what happens when people think that ancient history is back in the Nixon administration.

B: Yeah, no context. All things that we know have been learned in the last 200 years. Right.

C: Just to emphasize what you're getting at there: there would be no history if it wasn't for religion. Religion is the only fact that drives the system anywhere. Even if it's slight, it has a originative predicate, so that's something different can come into existence. Otherwise everything would just sit there, unable to move because there could be no difference, no source of originality.

K: Look at the ground-level originating soil of religion to begin with: fear. It's quite basic, isn't it?

C: Yeah. Just consider that little bit of revelation we've been given here. So, you say you consider yourself as an animal and you think you know why fear exists. Oh, do you really? You want to know why fear really exists in humans? It's not merely because they're of animal origin. It's because "man creates his primitive religions out of his fears and by means of his illusions." And if he didn't create a primitive religion, then there would be nothing.

B: Evolution would cease. It would it would stop. Nowhere for it to go. That's the next rung on the ladder.

C: Yeah. And sure! The fact that we have fear, and the fact that we have incredibly unfettered illusory abilities produces all kinds of issues. But they're indispensable. So this is revelation—this kind of up-ending—to see things not as they appear, but as they really are. Why did God create fear? So the progress was possible.

The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom. There could be no wisdom if there wasn't fear. It could never get started. Now, you don't put the cherry on top of wisdom with fear, of course! But you don't get it started—there'll never be a sundae to put a cherry on top of—without fear.

A: Once you go through those ghost-cult papers, it's really obvious how it all works out. And so enlightening to understand that whole evolution of our civilization, how that works.

C: If something doesn't make the pond scum move, does not the pond scum just sit there forever?

B: I can watch this unfolding and I'm do grateful for this revealed framework we have here. We babysit a 4-year-old boy a couple of nights a week. It's near the Halloween season. When he's walked over to our house, there's a lot of stuff out there that's spooky to a 4-year-old this time of year. But I'm not going to try to take that fear away from him. I'm not going to say, "Fear not!" and all those other grown-up ideas. Because then, he comes inside into apparent safety and then he sits there and we talk about these ghosts, what it's what it's like, and how it makes him feel. It's almost like it's "constantly injecting spontaneity into even the material world," even a 4-year-old's mind. And it's appropriate at that age.

C: It's the only way to bring the mind to a focus point at first. Eventually, when you have full domination of the upper domain over the lower domain you use the first cosmic intuition to bring the mind to a point (it's the logical a-cumen, the point maker). But until then something has to bring the mind to a focus point. God made fear for that.

The fact that there's fear in animals? Well, the only reason there's animals is because that's the only way to make humans. Really all there is is humans. That's all there really is. Actually there's a lot more than that, but really there's only humans.

B: There's that curious enigmatic reference where we're told animals are here to support us physically (we all can agree on that... food... transportation) but they also say they're here to support us intellectually to some extent. There is some reason the animals are here. They have these echoes of the things that have more full flower in us human beings.

C: Eventually your mindedness won't need animals as a crutch. Eventually your mindedness won't need, you know, the Creative Mother Spirit as a crutch when you leave the local universe as a first-stage spirit! Eventually your body won't need morontia substance as a crutch when you leave the local universe as a first-stage spirit. But now, animals go on because those are our training wheels. Those are the crutches upon which we rest.

B: And they tell us in Paper 39 that when we are on the precipice of launching off as a first-stage Spirit we will look back at all those training wheels and all of that. And they say the closest word they can find for that looking pack at that point would be "nostalgia." You will understand those were products of the time and place you were at, but now you're not the end of an adventure, you're just starting.

C: When you see the this world with darkened eyes, you see all kinds of things that appear to be the realities of this world. No. There is only one reality: will creatures. That's why the universe exists. And see how that would change science, politics, sociology, if you actually started with the reality—with the faith-trust of your religion! So that you actually could see things as they really are. If you're not seeing things that they really are, truth is impossible. You're doing everything you do to falsehood. All your science will be false, etc. The revelators say it's so-called science because it's not true. It can't be true.

This is what we've lost. It's something that very first religionist had a million years ago, that we now don't. He had a religion! He had a founding in reality, despite all of the apparent superstition generated by his illusions.

B: Of course, he was in a time and a spiritual economy where he got that religion "for free," fairly naturally. We're in a different time, a different spiritual economy. Especially in the water we're swimming in these days, we have to do this very consciously.

C: Yeah. You don't need much of a religion when when you're in the sheltered bay. That primitive religion was adequate for the sheltered bay. We're not in the sheltered bay anymore. That primitive religion is not adequate. And guess what? No religion is very inadequate. No religion is the end of civilization.

B: Well here we are on Symmetry of Soul, like we week: a clarion call for being religionists.

C: Jesus is looking for religionists that he can uplift. He can't make something out of nothing. If you don't have an evolutionary religion of fear to begin with then Jesus has nothing to uplift within you. You just delusionally uplift yourself even more. Toward the end of this book it kind of brings it home about what's gonna happen if you don't really have that primitive religion that can be uplifted by this revelation. It says, "the idealization and attempted service of truth, beauty and goodness is not a substitute for genuine religious experience, spiritual reality."

Did you go through this book? Do you not come away with burning with the thought of truth, beauty and goodness? Oh my, how many times did they refer to! Could that not lead to the idealization and attempted service of said truth, beauty, and goodness rather than (an as a substitute for) genuine religious experience? Genuine religious experience is what we need.

B: Be religionists. Be unnatural. Thanks for expounding upon that and, Kermit, thank you for phrasing things in just such a way as to lead to that conversation.

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We can commence with the reading tonight. We're in a new paper and as Chris said at the beginning, we've got them heading out of Jerusalem under precaution. Let's see where we go.

[143:0.1] At the end of June, A.D. 27, because of the increasing opposition of the Jewish religious rulers, Jesus and the twelve departed from Jerusalem, after sending their tents and meager personal effects to be stored at the home of Lazarus at Bethany. Going north into Samaria, they tarried over the Sabbath at Bethel. Here they preached for several days to the people who came from Gophna and Ephraim. A group of citizens from Arimathea and Thamna came over to invite Jesus to visit their villages. The Master and his apostles spent more than two weeks teaching the Jews and Samaritans of this region, many of whom came from as far as Antipatris to hear the good news of the kingdom.

C: All those complicated uh village names there. Some of them bigger than others. All you have to come away with is all the -burgs immediately to the north of Jerusalem there are getting ministered to. Some because they're there. Some because they're coming from there. But when all is said and done, short of going all the way to the coast of the Mediterranean, they're hitting all the bases there in southern Samaria. That the basic thing to recognize above the specifics of the geography. How broad their engagement is of the people there.

B: This is so random. Would they have had a map or is this just based on road signs and general orientation of geography?

K: They had paper?

B: That's the problem paper, right? Paper was hammered wasp's nests or something. I guess they had a little better than that but not much better.

C: I'm sure they had those little wooden-arrowed signs at every junction.

B: Ah, those those little arrowed wooden signs which are the etymolgy for the word trivia. But I digress, for that itself is trivia.

[143:0.2] The people of southern Samaria heard Jesus gladly, and the apostles, with the exception of Judas Iscariot, succeeded in overcoming much of their prejudice against the Samaritans. It was very difficult for Judas to love these Samaritans. The last week of July Jesus and his associates made ready to depart for the new Greek cities of Phasaelis and Archelais near the Jordan.

C: Note that in the first sentence of the preface, we were talking about religion and all of these issues right with those Jewish leaders. But they are Jewish religious rulers nonetheless. You're in a religiously ruled culture. That's why Jesus has something to work with. The downside is those rulers weren't receiving him gladly! But once they got out of their shadow and headed into this no-man's-land relative to Judea and Jewish sensibilities—"oh my goodness, Samaritans?!"—those people heard Jesus gladly! So that's an improvement.

Judas, being the one Judean, has the big issues. These Galileans don't have as much prejudice against Samaritans; they're only a notch better than Samaritans in the eyes of those religious rulers. There's a reason why we we we call them Jews to this day. There's that bias to Judea. This can lead us to think of all of our preconceived opinions, settled ideas, and long-standing prejudices. The point is not to find another reason to despise Judas. It should remind you, "Where my blind spots? I don't have an issue with Samaritans but what do I have issues with?" How would you fill in the sentence, "It is very difficult for Chris me to love _______."

K: I have a whole list.

C: Ha! And the degree to which there's something in that blank you know that at best you have just brotherly love. It can serve as a challenge. "If I can actually get up to Fatherly love, then I have a desire to do good to others. Period. Not only the others I consider my neighbors, which is brotherly love." Use every opportunity to challenge yourself to see to see yourself as a little measure of that that individual there who's the poster child for "well they could have done better."

B: Judas, the name eschewed throughout a far-flung universe.

C: The object of derision d'jour.

B: I was looking back at his character and temperament sketch in [Paper 139] to try to get a sense of why Judas might be so prone to unconquerable prejudice? This is all very early on, there's not a not necessarily a lot of negative things he's nursing yet—wounded pride and all that stuff—but what was it in his upbringing? Was this the only child thing? Being spoiled? Maybe it's not exactly answerable but there's gotta be some accounting for why him, not any of the others.

J: Well like I said, it starts just straightforward as the difference between his acculturation in Judea and everyone else's acculturation in Galilee. It's that difficult side of being religious: the more religious you are, the more potentially bigoted you can be. If this religion isn't encompassed by a philosophic sphere that associates it better and better with others, and more and more others, as we've mentioned a couple of times. That was the importance of the Hellenization of Judaism and then the Hellenization of of Christianity. So you don't have such self-satisfied little religious dots, but they can actually develop an ethics for others and a better and better ethics for more and more others. But Judas was raised in a way where you know, he was, he was taught that there is no such need for a philosophic association with others.

B: And those are ideas of a different of a different age. And today we still play around with those through sports rivalries—Yankees and Giants fans, say—that's mostly relatively lighthearted play. But this tribalistic idea, "Well we can't we can't think about those people." That was standard practice. Judas is perpetuating something that's long past its sell by date by this time. Jesus is calling on them to not be like this anymore.

C: Of course, if you beyond what Americans call football to what the world calls football, it gets really serious!

[143:1.1] The first half of the month of August the apostolic party made its headquarters at the Greek cities of Archelais and Phasaelis, where they had their first experience preaching to well-nigh exclusive gatherings of gentiles—Greeks, Romans, and Syrians—for few Jews dwelt in these two Greek towns. In contacting with these Roman citizens, the apostles encountered new difficulties in the proclamation of the message of the coming kingdom, and they met with new objections to the teachings of Jesus. At one of the many evening conferences with his apostles, Jesus listened attentively to these objections to the gospel of the kingdom as the twelve repeated their experiences with the subjects of their personal labors.

C: I already kind of hinted at this upfront. Here's the new dynamic. "How's your ever-higher philosophic associativity, guys? You were struggling with the Jews. Let's try to go to the not-Jews, the gentiles." So again, how important it is to to be challenged like this so that you can be driven forward. You have genuine religion but it's quite primitive. It's a long way away from true religion—a religious nucleus that properly reaches out in every direction around it to the sphere. So this is, this is going to be a great lesson for them. "Let's see if we can um spin up some of the positive elements of the Hellenization of Judaism in you guys, and work on your associativity."

[143:1.2] A question asked by Philip was typical of their difficulties. Said Philip: “Master, these Greeks and Romans make light of our message, saying that such teachings are fit for only weaklings and slaves. They assert that the religion of the heathen is superior to our teaching because it inspires to the acquirement of a strong, robust, and aggressive character. They affirm that we would convert all men into enfeebled specimens of passive nonresisters who would soon perish from the face of the earth. They like you, Master, and freely admit that your teaching is heavenly and ideal, but they will not take us seriously. They assert that your religion is not for this world; that men cannot live as you teach. And now, Master, what shall we say to these gentiles?”

K:' It sounds a little like the "religion of the heathen" they might be referring to is Stoicism?

C: There's definitely some stuff in there, of course, with the Romans. But in general notice what we're struggling with: there's some measure of spiritual idealism that Jesus has spun in the apostles. But they're engaging these other people who are going, "Wait a minute. What about material pragmatism? If you if you are just a golden ruler you're gonna be exterminated. You'd soon perish from the face of the earth. You aren't giving me a very cosmic perspective here. You're just giving me this very biased 'heavenly and ideal' notion." So again the need for that philosophic sphere that your religious nucleus can reach out through. And there'll be that balance between spiritual idealism and material pragmatism. You can meet people where they are. You can engage them directly with their fellow spiritual idealism and you can work on building up their material pragmatism and getting them to have a more cosmic consciousness. Or vice versa! Here they need to be able to engage them with that material pragmatism and then help them to open that other eye: spiritual idealism. And put the two together.

And the fact that we're not just calling them gentiles here in this paragraph but "heathen": when you have some recognition from your being born again of a spirit dominance from above, you get this initial sense of the vertical. And when you see others that don't have that, that are just down there in the common plane—they're literally the heath, the heathen—you're just acknowledging their lack of of spiritual recognition, lack of being born again, lack of lifting themselves up out of the plane. So there's an appropriateness for the apostles to be speaking factually: "Master, they're they're still heathen! They don't feel this resonance that we're speaking to them about." Jesus would say, "Uh, yeah and your point is? Can you meet them where they are? Recognize that a religious thread, even it isn't unrecognized by them?" We all know how much religious fertile soil there is in Stoicism that could be uplifted. Jesus was doing it all the time. He'd even take little threads out of skepticism, work on trying to lift it up.

So they need to draw upon how their religion has been Hellenized you know as a as a precursor to Jesus coming. They need a little bit what the Magisterial Son would have taught them. Better engage these people.

B: This is obviously still relevant today. There are echoes in what was said here in Frederich Nietzsche, 1800 years later in The Geaology of Morals He wrote that, "Christianity is the religion of the downtrodden, the bullied, the weak, the poor, the slave." It's not a new idea. It's a very old observation from heathens, people who are down in the plane—people like Nietzsche who assert that God is dead. It always seems to go this way.

C: Not to mention how common it's been for for many generations: "Well we've got this family, and mom takes the kids to church, but dad just doesn't feel like he really has a home there."

B: Right. He he goes and does nature worship at best. "Fishing" on Sundays, whatever that actually entails.

C: It doesn't seem to be speaking to a strong, robust, and aggressive character. It seems to be a religion for weaklings. And he sees the the weakling image of Jesus that's hanging on the wall. This issue is still here.

B: It reminds us of how much language the revelators give in Part IV to describing Jesus and his apostles: rugged... red blooded... Throw some plaid on those guys and give them a woodaxe and a scruffy beard. They're just really trying to rehabilitate this image. These are not weaklings.

[143:1.3] After Jesus had heard similar objections to the gospel of the kingdom presented by Thomas, Nathaniel, Simon Zelotes, and Matthew, he said to the twelve:

C: Hmm. We don't have Andrew or Peter or James or John or the Alpheus twins. And of course there's Judas. Noticing the interesting subset of apostles here.

B: Biasing toward the later-recruited apostles.

[143:1.4] “I have come into this world to do the will of my Father and to reveal his loving character to all mankind. That, my brethren, is my mission. And this one thing I will do, regardless of the misunderstanding of my teachings by Jews or gentiles of this day or of another generation. But you should not overlook the fact that even divine love has its severe disciplines. A father’s love for his son oftentimes impels the father to restrain the unwise acts of his thoughtless offspring. The child does not always comprehend the wise and loving motives of the father’s restraining discipline. But I declare to you that my Father in Paradise does rule a universe of universes by the compelling power of his love. Love is the greatest of all spirit realities. Truth is a liberating revelation, but love is the supreme relationship. And no matter what blunders your fellow men make in their world management of today, in an age to come the gospel which I declare to you will rule this very world. The ultimate goal of human progress is the reverent recognition of the fatherhood of God and the loving materialization of the brotherhood of man.

C: Hmm. I wonder if the kind of progress that secularists talk about is in the opposite direction to the ultimate goal of human progress? You can't help but notice that. Is that what everyone in our society is talking about? "Remember everyone, the ultimate goal of all human progress is the reverent recognition of the fatherhood of God!"

B: There's a there's a lot of focus these days, on the second of those two: some materialization of the brotherhood of man, but [Paper 195] warns us about that. It's impossible.

K: You gotta have a father if you're gonna have brothers.

C: The latter is impossible without the former. It's a humanistic delusion. Many readers have emblazoned this thought in their mind—"I declare to you..."—but we need to face the facts of why the book is here and how difficult it is. How would how would Jesus' apostles have done engaging those around us today? with their discussion about the fatherhood of God? You think the gentiles were a tough crowd...

B: They'd be shouted off the stage. It would it would be a tough crowd.

C: What Jesus is trying to do is to build a recognition that, yes, there is the Father's love and that rules the universe of universes. But don't forget the Father is in intimate identification with the Paradise Trinity. The two function together: law and love. Together, you will recognize that is something we call tough love. The father doesn't act apart from the Trinity. The father's love is a tough love. There will be severe discipline, there will be restraint. You will experience the harsh consequences of any self-righteous separation from reality on your part.

But no matter how harsh that is, it doesn't mean God loves you any less. It's just he loves you on an infinite immutable plane of law. He has to conform to it, and so does everyone else. It is what it is.

[143:1.5] “But who told you that my gospel was intended only for slaves and weaklings? Do you, my chosen apostles, resemble weaklings? Did John look like a weakling? Do you observe that I am enslaved by fear? True, the poor and oppressed of this generation have the gospel preached to them. The religions of this world have neglected the poor, but my Father is no respecter of persons. Besides, the poor of this day are the first to heed the call to repentance and acceptance of sonship. The gospel of the kingdom is to be preached to all men—Jew and gentile, Greek and Roman, rich and poor, free and bond—and equally to young and old, male and female.

C: We already hinted that: do you resemble weaklings? The revelation so tries to clarify that Jesus and his apostles aren't frail mystics. But notice how he just emphasized how this God of love rules the universe of universes. But step one is the call to repentance and acceptance of sonship. It's that difficult first step you face in the world around us today. Who out there is humble enough to repent and accept sonship? And they may say, "Well I accept sonship!" Do you really? Did you repent? Are you are you just calling what you've always been sonship now because it makes you sound fancier? Did you really let go? Have you really repented and rededicated your life to a genuine religious life, which is gonna be the predicate for everything now? Or are you just thinking that religion is just this other compartment of your life? Is that what the 5th ER says in [Paper 100]? No, it says "religion is not a specific function of life, rather is it a mode of living." It's not religion if it's not the beginning of everything. If it's only the beginning of some things then it's not religion. And all those other things are just "so-called those other things" like in [195:8] secular totalitarianism they mentioned science is just so-called science. It's doomed to falsehood. And you're doomed to have blind spots where you can be led astray. If you're religious, you're making sure there are no blind spots in your predicate. It's 100% the foundation of everything in your life. And it's an inner foundation, a transcended foundation, a potentially dominating foundation.

[143:1.6] “Because my Father is a God of love and delights in the practice of mercy, do not imbibe the idea that the service of the kingdom is to be one of monotonous ease. The Paradise ascent is the supreme adventure of all time, the rugged achievement of eternity. The service of the kingdom on earth will call for all the courageous manhood that you and your coworkers can muster. Many of you will be put to death for your loyalty to the gospel of this kingdom. It is easy to die in the line of physical battle when your courage is strengthened by the presence of your fighting comrades, but it requires a higher and more profound form of human courage and devotion calmly and all alone to lay down your life for the love of a truth enshrined in your mortal heart.

A: Wow. Courageous and independent cosmic thinking it sounds like.

C: And also: "a higher and more profound form of..." What? "Human courage and devotion." Hmm. A two-fold pattern. Second word is devotion. Like wholehearted devotion to supreme values. First one is courage. That's the spirit of courage which is the energy of loyalty. They mentioned "for your loyalty to the gospel of the Kingdom." And we're talking about religious courage. We're talking about a religionist. A religionist will lay down their life for the love of the truth enshrined in their heart. They die for that which can't be seen. It's not even a knowing-ness that can be given—just knowing and obeying the truth. So religious courage.

There's a reason why I put out a couple of reflections to emphasize this. The initial one, called "unquestioning loyalty," and then a companion, the "intellectual constancy reflections" to help you to recognize this essential two-fold pattern of religion. Because it's everywhere in the book. We're seeing it yet again. You can always be looking for them to be pointing at religion by invoking that two-fold pattern, whether it's faith and trust or intellectual constancy and philosophic security. Whatever it might be. It's that essential two-fold pattern of religion. They're talking about a religionist who has something other people can't have. This religious courage, not mere courage of the flesh.

A: I think it's safe to say that most of us have never seen this sort of thing in our own life.

C: But it's been long recognized to stand above all other courage. That's why there's the concept of martyrs. And why they're so honored. Because they died "calmly and all alone," not in the presence of their fighting comrades. Again, that's one of the reasons why being religion is kind of scary because you're bringing into play, "Hmm. If I'm a definitive religionist someone's probably gonna wanna kill me. So maybe I suggest reverence truth, beauty and goodness."

B: Keep my head down.

A: Hide behind my bag of cheetos.

B: Be a gentle mystic or a capital-P pantheist. Anything that might allow me to pursue animal pleasure—hedonism.

C: And fly under the radar of those who are gonna take offense at the definitive-ness of a religionist. Even the so-called religionists decided, "You know, I think we're just too offensive, being religionists. Maybe if we were more secularists, we could get more people in the pews.

A: It's always like we're trying to sell something here

[143:1.7] “Today, the unbelievers may taunt you with preaching a gospel of nonresistance and with living lives of nonviolence, but you are the first volunteers of a long line of sincere believers in the gospel of this kingdom who will astonish all mankind by their heroic devotion to these teachings. No armies of the world have ever displayed more courage and bravery than will be portrayed by you and your loyal successors who shall go forth to all the world proclaiming the good news—the fatherhood of God and the brotherhood of men. The courage of the flesh is the lowest form of bravery. Mind bravery is a higher type of human courage, but the highest and supreme is uncompromising loyalty to the enlightened convictions of profound spiritual realities. And such courage constitutes the heroism of the God-knowing man. And you are all God-knowing men; you are in very truth the personal associates of the Son of Man.”

A: Wow that must have been incredible to hear those words spoken to you. That would make your hair stand up on the back of your neck.

C: You can just imagine. You have to kind of uh delight at the end there, in the next to the last sentence "such courage constitutes the heroism of the God-knowing man" You say, "Well, okay, Chris his emphasized it's one thing to be born again, to be spirit born, but to be born again again, is to be born and God knowing..." But then you say, "Oh we've got an exception here. If God is actually standing before you!" The apostles don't have to get to be born again again, to be God-knowing. They can give him a hug!

B: A one-time special limited time offer.

K: Yeah, I know the guy, the guy himself.

C: Even moreso since he has set his will aside and is just expressing "the Father's will." So very much they were they were God-knowing, even though they weren't born again again. But just being born again is enough to fire up the beginnings of religious courage. You see it again: their "uncompromising loyalty" That's that unquestioning loyalty and wholehearted devotion to supreme values. And "stories will be written about you and your loyal successors that will be honored above the stories of any red badge of courage"

B: I find myself wondering a little more than idly what Jesus' tone was when he was delivering this. It's got a Tolkien-esque quality. This sounds a little like you the guy delivering this on horseback. "They will sing stories of this day!" Or almost a Klingon vibe. Except he's talking about mind bravery and spirit bravery, not just "Blood will be spilt this day." It's something else.

C: Also, they're mentioning both courage and bravery. What's the difference? The simplest way to begin to understand it is: courage is spiritualized bravery. Courage is ever-present waiting for a moment to actualize as the literalness of overt bravery. Take the essence of bravery from one moment, spiritualize it, make it overarching all moments of your life and ever-present to be expressed in the moment when it needs to be expressed. You take personal possession, you put that bravery under spiritual management so that it's in the inner life, above the outer life. Remember the third adjutant is just the spirit of coverage, not courage itself.

A: When I think about showing bravery about my religious convictions to other people, I feel a couple of different things. I feel not well-equipped in a lot of ways. And I feel like that would just be a waste of time. Like casting your pearls before swine. But I don't know whether that's just me lacking courage.

C: Remember: you weren't put here to convert people. You were put here to be real. That's your act. The consequences are God the Supreme's. If that converts someone, then fine. But if you hold back then you're not making that final step to genuinely being religious. And literally, if yous say, "I can't really go all the way, I want to be a little fudging?" That's called evil. First-stage evil. See? It's uncompromising loyalty, nothing else. Otherwise it's just some self-serving reverence. The point is to serve God. If that means you're ridiculed? Well, whatever. If that means you're killed? Whatever. It's taking taking that final step where you put God first and not yourself.

A: I think we've all been so educated to look down on religious fanatics. That's part of what gets factored in here.

C: Is fanaticism religion? No, it's fanaticism. What's religion?

A: But when you say "don't hold back" that conjures up a fanatic in my mind.

C: You don't hold back in the inner life. You're gonna have a philosophy that'll tempe how you engage the world. But in your inner life it needs to be pure. You can't let the slightest crack be there. A crack is called evil. Goodness is pure. It's continuous.

[143:1.8] This was not all that Jesus said on that occasion, but it is the introduction of his address, and he went on at great length in amplification and in illustration of this pronouncement. This was one of the most impassioned addresses which Jesus ever delivered to the twelve. Seldom did the Master speak to his apostles with evident strong feeling, but this was one of those few occasions when he spoke with manifest earnestness, accompanied by marked emotion.

B: Well, there are my stage directions I was looking for. Got it.

K: There's your answer, Brad.

C: And I have tears in my eyes right now because you cannot talk about this otherwise. I can't do it. Jesus couldn't do it.

A: Because it's so at your heart level. So at the core of what it means to be religious.

C: Yes.

B: It reminds me of [Paper 100]: "Loyal persons are growing persons, and growth is an impressive and inspiring reality." That's the tadpole paragraph. So he's explaining that "you will be inspirational to people in the lives that you live." He's inspiring them to have the courage to live those lives.

C: If you're gonna make an impression upon someone, think about making a real impression, not just an impression upon their lower domain, but a personal impression. Only religionist can do that. The fanciest lower domain can't make a personal impression upon anyone else. It will just give other people a feeling. No. A personal impression. Only a religionist can make a personal impression on someone else. Inner life to inner life.

[143:1.9] The result upon the public preaching and personal ministry of the apostles was immediate; from that very day their message took on a new note of courageous dominance. The twelve continued to acquire the spirit of positive aggression in the new gospel of the kingdom. From this day forward they did not occupy themselves so much with the preaching of the negative virtues and the passive injunctions of their Master’s many-sided teaching.

C: Obviously they might be opening themselves up to getting off and a little bit of a fanatical tangent, right? If they just abstract the positive aggressive right out of it. But nonetheless, you have to lead with that. And then temper. If you don't lead it, then you never get it.

K: You can maybe understand in that light how Jesus was sparing in his emotional appeals to those guys because it's probably just that very thing. He could have wound them up tighter than anything and send them careening off into the countryside with hyper-emotional motivation.

C: Right. Many a religionist have tried that out. When they do that, of course they not only act unwisely, they even act irreligiously, right? But it's that act like. Nothing would have ever happened if you hadn't had religionists. Everything would still be in the same spot as it was at the beginning. Nothing would have moved because only a religionst acts. Your lower domain just reacts. You can't originate anything.

B: I wonder if the earnest way Jesus spoke here, if it was a foretaste? I'm thinking of a very notable speech at the start of Paper 195: Peter's sermon on the day of Pentecost. It won 2000 souls to the kingdom and basically laid the groundwork for all policies including the stuff we're still I'm living in today. One speech. I wonder if Simon took a cue from Jesus: "I'm going to have the spirit of positive aggression now let's see where it takes me." It was probably appropriate on that day.

C: And one little technical point before the next paragraph. We're setting up a process. It's going to culminate in self mastery. It's going to get to self-mastery through a long growth process of self control. But it's initiated by courageous dominance, the dominance of the upper domain over the lower domain. Establish that top-down dominance, and then begin to take control of that which potentially can be dominated below. Until you take it all the way. And that courage, for instance, that is only living in its spiritualization above will begin to penetrate down until finally it'll have its footing in that mastered self down there on the first level of meaning. That courage can penetrate down and you won't just have the spirit of courage there on the first level, you'll courage founded there on a mastered self.

[143:2.1] The Master was a perfected specimen of human self-control. When he was reviled, he reviled not; when he suffered, he uttered no threats against his tormentors; when he was denounced by his enemies, he simply committed himself to the righteous judgment of the Father in heaven.

C: Because a religionist is reviled. Because a religionist suffers. Because a religionist is denounced. But the religionist knows that he puts the concept of the divine law first. And he will commit himself to the righteous judgment.

[143:2.2] At one of the evening conferences, Andrew asked Jesus: “Master, are we to practice self-denial as John taught us, or are we to strive for the self-control of your teaching? Wherein does your teaching differ from that of John?” Jesus answered: “John indeed taught you the way of righteousness in accordance with the light and laws of his fathers, and that was the religion of self-examination and self-denial. But I come with a new message of self-forgetfulness and self-control. I show to you the way of life as revealed to me by my Father in heaven.

C: The parallel: on the one hand you have self-examination and self-denial. We're gonna take that up, in parallel, to self-forgetfulness and self-control. The obvious one that we're emphasizing is going from self denial up to self control. But what about that other one? Self examination—introspection. We recently engaged that in [140:8]. Remember when they, they talked about that whole issue? We're not doing character building. We brought this up. Here we are again. Not that introspection. It's not that you're not going to do courageous reflective examination, right? That produces the end result of "know thyself". But there is going to be this this lesser sense of self-forgetfulness. Okay. You're gonna forget about the fact that you have a navel that you can gaze that endlessly. You're not gonna be fixated on in yourself in this introspective way. You're gonna let go of yourself, you're gonna forget yourself in that sense. It's not going to be the lower domain ruminating upon itself in the lower domain. You're gonna engage yourself objectively from above and know that myself. But endless data gathering and data analysis purely in a subjective fashion down below? No. It just makes you neurotic and probably narcissistic too.

[143:2.3] “Verily, verily, I say to you, he who rules his own self is greater than he who captures a city. Self-mastery is the measure of man’s moral nature and the indicator of his spiritual development. In the old order you fasted and prayed; as the new creature of the rebirth of the spirit, you are taught to believe and rejoice. In the Father’s kingdom you are to become new creatures; old things are to pass away; behold I show you how all things are to become new. And by your love for one another you are to convince the world that you have passed from bondage to liberty, from death into life everlasting.

C: It kind of speaks for itself. Again, this is the common theme we've examined a number of times: trying to get them to re-found things in the inner life. Don't just keep churning away with some old or reworked outer-life scheme. Start anew. Predicate your whole existence on an inner life. Be born again. And then let the fruits flow down and out. And the the challenge for him talking to the apostles and to us today is: what exactly is he talking about? To find the actual inner life experience so you can match up with what he's talking about? To be able to say, "I know what he's talking about. I have a definitive experiential differentiation between the inner life and the outer life." Otherwise, it's all just an abstract bunch of words from him that don't go anywhere in your life.

So that challenge of definitively finding the experiences of the inner life in contrast to the so-called inner life, which is just some fancy parts of the outer life.

K: Notice what he cites his testimony of deliverance from bondage to liberty and death to life everlasting. It's by loving one another. It's not by preaching and teaching. It's something we can do with with our fellow workers. And if you want to look at how members of the readership and members of the organizations around this book treat one another sometimes... it's kind of sobering. You might want to cite this paragraph.

C: Not to mention taking that love up to something hitherto unseen. "It seems like this person has completely dropped the whole 'neighbor' part of their definition of love." Who's seen such love?

[143:2.4] “By the old way you seek to suppress, obey, and conform to the rules of living; by the new way you are first transformed by the Spirit of Truth and thereby strengthened in your inner soul by the constant spiritual renewing of your mind, and so are you endowed with the power of the certain and joyous performance of the gracious, acceptable, and perfect will of God. Forget not—it is your personal faith in the exceedingly great and precious promises of God that ensures your becoming partakers of the divine nature. Thus by your faith and the spirit’s transformation, you become in reality the temples of God, and his spirit actually dwells within you. If, then, the spirit dwells within you, you are no longer bondslaves of the flesh but free and liberated sons of the spirit. The new law of the spirit endows you with the liberty of self-mastery in place of the old law of the fear of self-bondage and the slavery of self-denial.

K: Thank you, Paul!

C: Very sweeping stuff. Notice using that word bondslave, and then expending it out: "fear of self bondage in the slavery of self denial." Very fascinating to bottle that up into the word bondslave.

[143:2.5] “Many times, when you have done evil, you have thought to charge up your acts to the influence of the evil one when in reality you have but been led astray by your own natural tendencies. Did not the Prophet Jeremiah long ago tell you that the human heart is deceitful above all things and sometimes even desperately wicked? How easy for you to become self-deceived and thereby fall into foolish fears, divers lusts, enslaving pleasures, malice, envy, and even vengeful hatred!

C: Ah yes, this creativity/destructivity issue. That whole bit of being self-deceived, bringing in evil. Appreciate that there are long-recognized problematic outer-life manifestations that people have called "bad" and there's always the potential of spiritualizing that and actually making it—not just antisocial behaviour—but evil.

K: That human heart is the upper domain. And when it goes haywire you're in deep deep trouble.

B: It casts a long shadow.

[143:2.6] “Salvation is by the regeneration of the spirit and not by the self-righteous deeds of the flesh. You are justified by faith and fellowshipped by grace, not by fear and the self-denial of the flesh, albeit the Father’s children who have been born of the spirit are ever and always masters of the self and all that pertains to the desires of the flesh. When you know that you are saved by faith, you have real peace with God. And all who follow in the way of this heavenly peace are destined to be sanctified to the eternal service of the ever-advancing sons of the eternal God. Henceforth, it is not a duty but rather your exalted privilege to cleanse yourselves from all evils of mind and body while you seek for perfection in the love of God.

C: He's continuing to pound on this. Notice how he starts out: not works righteousness. No, not that self righteousnessness. We've talked about that quite a bit. Notice him again, like we've been stressing: you're gonna re-found in the inner life. There's going to be fruits still. You're gonna be born again. But they are "ever and always masters of the self and all that pertains the desires of the flesh." You're going to get that back again. But you're gonna have something more than just the manipulation of your body in a pure outer-life duty sense.

And again: how difficult this is. How can you get someone to go from that duty drive to an "exalted privilege" drive? "Okay, my little three-year-old son, you're gonna do what I'm telling you to do because you recognize it as an exalted privilege." Yeah, right, as if the three year old is gonna respond to that concept. No, he needs a fear-based sense of duty to begin with.

But we're still struggling with this right. We threw out the fear-based sense of duty, but we didn't replace it by an equally effective recognition of an exalted privilege so that we still are masters of the self and all that pertains to the desires of the flesh.

[143:2.7] “Your sonship is grounded in faith, and you are to remain unmoved by fear. Your joy is born of trust in the divine word, and you shall not therefore be led to doubt the reality of the Father’s love and mercy. It is the very goodness of God that leads men into true and genuine repentance. Your secret of the mastery of self is bound up with your faith in the indwelling spirit, which ever works by love. Even this saving faith you have not of yourselves; it also is the gift of God. And if you are the children of this living faith, you are no longer the bondslaves of self but rather the triumphant masters of yourselves, the liberated sons of God.

C: You can see all sorts of shades of the differential between first milers and second milers here, taking it to free service and liberty-loving devotion. In contrast to compulsion, duty, or convention. But notice the strength of it, the very goodness of God, that moral quality that leads men to true and genuine repentance. It's an "exalted privilege" to be good like God. So liberating yourself... but then taking a hold of that liberated self and consecrating it: "It is my will that your will be done."

[143:2.8] “If, then, my children, you are born of the spirit, you are forever delivered from the self-conscious bondage of a life of self-denial and watchcare over the desires of the flesh, and you are translated into the joyous kingdom of the spirit, whence you spontaneously show forth the fruits of the spirit in your daily lives; and the fruits of the spirit are the essence of the highest type of enjoyable and ennobling self-control, even the heights of terrestrial mortal attainment—true self-mastery.”}}

C: See how clear it is at the end. What are those fruits of the spirit? Are they affectations of a kindly mystic? No. They're the essence of the highest type of enjoyable and ennobling self control.

B: The acme of all virtues.

K: Rugged self control. You know, this "living faith that you have not of yourself." I've always pondered that from the Bible. This is a restatement of a lot of Paul's stuff here. It occurred to me that it's the insight of the third cosmic intuition, that is that gift of faith, the gift of God in the Holy spirit.

C: Yeah. And it has this transcendent definitiveness to it because it's not of your own construct. It's there because of your encircuitment in the Holy Spirit, and you've taken ahold of it. So all those elements of recognition. How definitive your inner life is when it's reality-ized. And how definitive, the fruits of that reality-ized inner life are in the world. In many ways an observer could say, "Well okay, they're still just kind of doing the things that morality says they should do." Yes, but it's more than it appears now. It's not works righteousness.

B: Alright folks, that's a fine place to leave it. That's a cherry on top that we'll take there: true self mastery. A fine discourse. We hope you have some material material to reflect on; this is all highly reflective material. Follow the way.

K: God bless everyone.

A: Good night, everyone.

C: Yes, take care all. May the joy of God fill your hearts and take you through the week. See you next week.