Chapter 19 - God In Person

God [Universal Mind] is not a person; he is all persons.

“The Universe is One Stupendous Whole,
Whose body Nature is, and God the Soul.”

This means that “Nature,” which includes man, is the body of God; and God’s body is to him what your body is to you -- a statement of beliefs which is eternally changing as experience teaches you more.

The only body God has is your body and mine; the only brains he has are your brains and mine; the only experience he has is your experience and mine; the only judgment he has is your judgment and mine.

The only way God has of proving anything is through your experience and mine.

You have heard it said that you cannot teach a man anything he does not already know; that to educate a man is to draw out into consciousness that which is already within him. By his own experience and by the teaching of others he becomes conscious of the wisdom which was all the time within him. All knowledge is latent in God (the Whole) just as it is in you; and God becomes conscious of what he knows by the same processes by which you become conscious. Your real self is God.

Watch yourself and you will see how God does things.

God is Wisdom. But Wisdom and knowledge are not identical. Knowledge is Wisdom proved -- by the only proof, experience. All Wisdom is latent in God’s soul, which is your soul and mine. God’s Wisdom is expressed in his body, or “statement of beliefs,” which is your body and mine.

God knows everything; but he knows that he knows only what he has proved through you and me, and all mankind and animal-kind and vegetable-kind.

“Some call it evolution; others call it God.”

If God knew more he would not suffer through us. This is equivalent to saying if you and I knew more we would not suffer. There is no you and I; there is only God.

Evolution is simply God coming into consciousness of himself and his wisdom. Your body is a part of God’s body; your soul is God, the One Life of all creation.

Do you wish to make his people suffer? Of course not. Do you wish to make yourself suffer? Of course you don’t. You are God, and you don’t intentionally make anybody suffer unless you think you have to. The rest of the suffering you have not yet learned to avoid. In other words, God has not yet learned how to avoid it.

But evolution still evolutes, and sighing and sorrow are already fleeing before the dawn of Wisdom coming to itself. God is learning how to enjoy himself in the flesh -- in your flesh and mine.

What is flesh? It is mind. God is learning to enjoy himself in his own mind, which is your flesh and mine. He keeps on thinking through you and me until his “statements of belief,” his flesh body, bring only joy to all creation and un-creation.

Why did he make the Ten Commandments? Why do you lay down laws unto yourself? Because you catch glimpses of higher things than you have yet experienced, and you lay down laws which you mean to live up to.

But you don’t always live up to those laws, do you? Why? Because your body is an organization of intelligent cells each of which has a will of its own. You catch a glimpse of the truth that Love is the Greatest Thing in the World; you lay down a commandment: “Thou shalt not be impatient or angry.” Before a day has passed you catch yourself breaking your commandment -- “you forgot.” In other words, the most intelligent cells in your body recognized a beautiful truth and promulgated a new commandment for all the cells to live by. But the less intelligent cells being still unconvinced of that beautiful truth, and being in a great majority, you did their will -- you got mad.

Now God recognized through Moses most beautiful truths, and laid down laws to govern those who were as yet not intelligent enough to recognize the truths for themselves. For thousands of years God tried through these laws to make all the people see these truths. Thus his people evoluted -- a little.

The God in Jesus caught a glimpse of still higher truth and laid down another law, that ye love one another. And still, after 2,000 years o that law, the people do not all see it, and very few of them obey.

A Moses or a Jesus recognizes truth so much greater than can be sensed by the common run of people, that it takes thousands of years of reiteration of that truth to make even a majority of the common run of people see it. It takes centuries of evolution really to convert the world to an Ideal conceived by a Jesus.

It takes you years of reiteration of your Ideal, and constant effort toward living up to it, before you can really convert your body to that Ideal.

In other words, God glimpses in Moses or Jesus a beautiful Ideal of himself; but it takes Him thousands and thousands of years to work out that Ideal, to evolute all people to the stage of wisdom and loving-kindness.

It is God’s effort to work out his Ideals, which causes all suffering. This means that it is your effort to work out your Ideals, which causes all your suffering.

An Ideal impels change; the Established Order, in the Whole or a Part, resents and resists change; hence the pain. The spirit is willing but the flesh is established and refuses to change.

It was this Jesus had in mind when he said, “Resist not evil.” The Established Order, the flesh, resists change because it is too shortsighted to see that the change is good. Because we are not yet convinced that All is Good and every change tends to greater good, we fight the change, more or less whole heartedly.

We have within us the same high Ideals, the same backslidings and wars, revolutions and evolutions, the same joys and sorrows, that the children of Israel had, that the universe at large has had and is having. All history is the history of your own thoughts. Man is an infinite little cosmos.

Just as in history ignorance has warred against the Ideal and yet in the fullness of time the Ideal has had its way; so in yourself ignorance wars against the Ideal and may for a time seem to win, but eventually the Ideal has its way. A man in his ignorance may yield to “temptation” but the results will take away the very temptation itself. When a child’s fingers are well scorched it loses all desire to play with the fire.

There is no such thing as “ruining our lives forever.” Every soul has all eternity in which to learn to live. Every soul is God -- omnipresent, omniscient, or omnipotent in potentiality.

And all eternity is its school term, all space its school ground. Death is simply a promotion ceremony, peculiar to the kindergarten classes. A "ruined" life is no more than a "ruined" problem on Tommy's slate -- it is wiped off to give Tommy, who has been learning by his mistakes, a chance to do a better sum.

Be still and know that God and you are one, and all things shall be made plain.