Excerpt taken from “I AM the I AM, Know that you and GOD are One”

GOD’S IMAGE

“So God created man in his own image…”

One of the hardest concepts to grasp is that we were made in God’s Image.

The quote above does not mean a physical image, which is what first comes to mind, but the image of what He stands for: love, compassion, and forgiveness. 

GOD created us with everything that He has.

The first truth each of us must come to terms with is, what is the image of GOD that we believe in?

Are you afraid of GOD?  Does the mention of GOD bring fear to your heart? 

Do you only worship GOD for fear of the alternative of burning in hell for all eternity?  Is your life spent worrying that you are a sinner always have been and always will be? 

Do you believe in the Second Coming and only a chosen few will go to heaven, so you had better worship GOD lest you be left behind? 

Do you honestly think that the devil is lurking at your door ready to take your soul away? 

Do you believe that GOD is going to damn others just because they don’t believe in GOD the way you do?                             

OR

Do you truly Love GOD just for the fact that he is good and loving?

Do you believe that GOD loves everyone and everything and expects nothing in return? 

Do you believe that you have free will and are not controlled by GOD?

Do you believe that GOD accepts prayers and worship from all religions that do him honor?  Are you kind to others in the name of GOD without expecting anything in return?

Do you stop short of judging others?

I can continue giving questions in either of the paragraphs above and you may find you fit in one if not both areas but that does not answer the real question.

Why do you believe in your image of GOD?

Is your belief grounded in a true understanding and communion with GOD by looking at all aspects relating to GOD or is your belief only based upon what has been told to you by others and being the lamb that follows?

Can God truly be assigned the individual attributes that make up man himself? Does he really get angry, jealous, and vengeful when he is touted as being all great and merciful?  He has no need for those negative human emotions.

In the early days of the ancient Gods, man gave them control of their everyday life, but he could not fathom a power without form. Since man could only associate to his connections with other humans he assigned personal attributes to the Gods based on observations of his fellow man.

The Gods were given all the desirable and undesirable qualities of humans. They could be loving and forgiving but they could also be cruel and petty, even though most religions have replaced the many with the one, the generally accepted opinion of his image is no different today than in ancient times.

Man’s view of GOD must change!

Origen was one of Christianity’s early fathers who was born in or about 185 AD. The following is what he believed,

 

“Now all these passages where God is said to lament, or rejoice, or hate, or be glad, are to be understood as spoken by Scripture in metaphorical and human fashion. For the divine nature is remote from all affection of passion and change, remaining ever unmoved and untroubled in its own summit of bliss.”

I view God as a Fatherly/motherly figure and I as his child I choose to believe in him as the best possible parent one can have. 

He is always watching over me, giving me guidance when I need it, allowing me to make mistakes and learn from them but not berating me when I do.  My Father gives me as many chances as I need to get things right.   He does not hold me back but encourages me to try different things.   He gives me free will to choose my own path but never leaves my side.

My God is nothing but pure goodness and love!

The SOUL

Before continuing with the description of GOD’S image we need to try and understand what GOD created, this thing we call “The Soul.” Just exactly, what does the SOUL consist of? Early man took notice of all things that surrounded him and recognized the life force that permeated from them he stood in awe and began praying to them. He had no concept of death all he understood was things were alive and moving and then they were not. Slowly he began to realize that everything followed a course from beginning to end whether it be the cycles of nature or his own life from birth to death. Something must have caused a spark in his thinking that the life force that left a physical body, when it died, continued in some form or another. Anthropologists speculate that our early ancestors believed that the essence of a dead animal could pass into a human being upon their eating them,

even today these acts are still practiced by some tribes; there are tribes today that still eat parts of men which they have killed in hopes of absorbing their soul.

During some point in time man began to think that the human body continued, after death, in another form and this is when he began to bury the dead along with their private possessions.

What a marvellous and spectacular thought to comprehend an afterlife! What divinely inspired them to think of such a thing?

There are many varied definitions out there concerning the soul, but the concepts I will be discussing will be the “spiritual essence and free will” of man.

It cannot be determined when the idea of the soul being separated from the body took hold in man’s mind, but ancient texts show that it has been around since the beginning of religious writings.

Ancient Egyptians understood the separation of the body and the soul and believed that one’s soul or AKHU would leave the body and travel into the afterlife.

Budge points out this idea from various texts;

“Soul to heaven, body to earth. (V Dynasty)”

“Thy essence is in heaven, thy body to earth. (VI Dynasty)”

Here we have man distinctly attaching the soul to a much greater and divine essence of nature.

There are many theories that all souls were created in the beginning and none have been created since and many others that believe the physical man is created first and then the soul is created for it.

Regardless of which point of view you choose to believe it is accepted by most, who believe in GOD, that the soul is continuous and everlasting. This concept has roots stretching far back into man’s history.

Hermes states,

“1. [Hermes:] Concerning Soul and Body, son, we now must speak; in what way Soul is deathless, and whence comes the activity in composing and dissolving Body”

In the Indian Upanishads, written between 800 – 400 B.C.E., a religious set of books relating to the India Vedas, it states;  

“That soul is not this, not that.

It is incomprehensible, for it is not comprehended.

It is indestructible, for it is never destroyed.

It is unattached, for it does not attach itself.

It is unfettered; it does not suffer; it is not injured.”

The Phaedo, written by Plato (360 B.C.E.), states,

“It is clear, Socrates, that the soul is like the divine, and the body like the mortal.” “Now consider, Cebes,” he said, “if from all that was said by us it results that the soul is most similar to the divine and immortal and intelligent and uniform and indissoluble..”

In the Gospel of St. John Jesus proclaims,

” Verily, verily, I say unto you, If a man keep my saying, he shall never see death.”

Origen (185 – 254 A.D.) says,

For God deals with souls not merely with a view to the short space of our present life, included within sixty years or more, but with reference to a perpetual and never-ending period, exercising His providential care over souls that are immortal, even as He Himself is eternal and immortal. For He made the rational nature, which He formed in His own image and likeness, incorruptible; and therefore the soul, which is immortal, is not excluded by the shortness of the present life from the divine remedies and cures.

Each of the above quotes stretches across almost 2,700 years of man’s thinking expounding on their concepts of what they considered the soul to be a part of and its everlasting quality, and they all carry the same thread of thought.

       The soul, which GOD created, is continuous and immortal just as our Father is, we are created in “His Image.”

Recognizing the Image of GOD in Man     

Johann Gottlieb Fichte defines the image of GOD in man as,

“in the conduct of each individual there may be manifested purely that form which the Divine nature has assumed in this particular individual; that each individual may recognize GOD as He is outwardly manifested in the conduct of all other men; that all others may recognize GOD as He is manifested in this particular individual; and that thus GOD alone may be ever manifested in all outward appearance.”

Each person must begin the process of looking beyond the physical appearances that lie before them; the blinders that we have placed upon ourselves must be removed. GOD has manifested himself in all physical and spiritual aspects of our lives, from the grain of sand on the beach to every man, woman and child who are living today and have lived before, from the first original thought of man to our highest spiritual understanding of GOD.

In 1945 a group of manuscripts were found in a region of Upper Egypt which has come to be known as “THE NAG HAMMADI LIBRARY”.  This collection is attributed to a religious sect who was called the “GNOSTICS”, (contemporaries to the early Christian movement) and it was composed of various scriptures espousing their belief system.  The time frame for writing these scriptures varies from well before until well after the life of Jesus. The following is from one of the many books in “THE NAG HAMMADI LIBRARY”.

“THE SENTENCES OF SEXTUS (XII, 1)”…

Here are some of the sentences:

(310) [Everything] God possesses the wise man has also.

       All things are within the reach of everyone, being wise does not mean that one must become a hermit and become devoid of the current material world. In fact, Buddha’s great enlightenment was that one must find a “balance” within themselves. We must eat, sleep and work to exist. However, we can do all of these things and still acknowledge who we are in relation to God.

(376a) [A man who] is worthy of God,’ [he] is God among ’[men], and [he] is the Son of God.         

When an individual truly acknowledges his relationship with God they cannot help but to act in a loving and compassionate manner making them worthy. They then project Gods image to others around them.

In the “Divine Pymander of Hermes”, Hermes speaks of the conversation that he was having with the Pymander. The Pymander is the Universal Mind or Mind of GOD and was making itself known to Hermes, since Hermes was on the path to enlightenment. While talking to Hermes about the creation of all things, Pymander makes the following statement;

 

“But the Father of all things, the Mind being Life and Light, brought forth Man like unto himself, whom he loved as his proper Birth; for he was all beauteous, having the image of his Father.”

The soul of man was created with all the goodness and beauty of God it is only through the thoughts and actions of the physical body that we tarnish this image.

Bringing GOD’S Image Within

Edgar Cayce gave many life readings during his lifetime, several of them were for people who had incarnations during the time of Jesus and had contact with him. One of these readings concerned a woman who had inquired into his teachings:

“But when the eyes of the Master, as he passed by on the road or way to the city on that day of days, were seen by Sylvia, then Sylvia understood; then she realized that man, as man, may be far from God, but man as a god and acting godly may be close to the divine.”

Today, no matter where you look, it is easy to see people performing their daily duties based upon their own selfish intentions. This is man being man. Mankind must begin and end their day in the duty of GOD showing his fellow man the love and forgiveness which GOD granted him and he must grant that same love and forgiveness to his fellow man.

In the Lord’s prayer there is a line which states, “forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us…” we cannot expect forgiveness unless we have first forgiven others.

Within the Jewish religion there is a group of mystics called Kabbalist. These individuals use the KABBALAH and the TORAH to guide them on their search culminating in a connection with GOD.

Since he believes that man is literally created in the image of God, the mystic works to polish himself until he becomes so brilliantly clear that he reflects nothing but God.”

We must as individuals and society strive to emulate GOD in our everyday actions.  Let us hone our personal image to the point that we shine the way GOD intended us to.

Paramahansa Yogananda states,

“He made you in His image; you are potentially equal to God since you are a part of Him.  Each one of us has the ability to become godly, if he would cast off the eclipse of ignorance”

The ignorance he is referring to is that we are taught through many of the religions that GOD is a separate entity from us.  GOD sits on high in heaven where we have no access to him.  What happens to each of us is the “Will of GOD”, and man is generally at his mercy. We must cast off these ideas and begin to realize that GOD is within each one of us and we have a direct connection to Him.

The goal of the Kabbalist is devekuth or cleaving to God.

 ““Union with the absolute” in this case is a matter of “like attracting like.””

As you meet people for the first time, one generally starts to size the other up to establish their likes and dislikes.  If the individual is compatible with our views, then we choose to accept them into our lives some to a small extent, others to a larger one.        When a couple starts to come together each of them begin to learn what makes the other tick. If they choose to work at making the relationship grow into something more fruitful, each of them will take on aspects of the other. Gradually they become as one, like attracting like, rather than as individuals.       Here’s the good news, you and GOD are already one with each other, and you just don’t realize it, yet. The more you take on His aspects the greater awareness you have of His being a part of you.  As you project more goodness and love within your life GOD will make Himself known more.

One must truly emulate everything about GOD to grow closer to Him. The BHAGAVAD-GITA is a spiritual book of India subscribed to by the Hindus and many other religious sects.

The quotes I use throughout this book will be from the version called “BHAGAVAD-GITA AS IT IS”.

This book was extremely helpful to me, in deciphering the context of the words spoken by Lord SRI KRSNA who was the Supreme Personality of GODHEAD speaking to one of his disciples Arjuna as an emanation of GOD.

All these devotees are undoubtedly magnanimous souls, but he who is situated in knowledge of ME I consider to be just like My own self. Being engaged in My transcendental service, he is sure to attain Me, the highest and most perfect goal.”

A devotee is one who submits his life goal for the purpose of doing Gods will upon the earth, but there is more to it than just this. One must take on the presence of God and truly act as God would act. Through this action an individual will merge their soul with that of the creator, which is what God wishes for us.

NAMASTE

P.L. Hogan

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