[guthrio]

Originally Posted by A human Being

I'm pretty sure that if I asked the Christians I know this question, they'd say something along the lines of 'the truth is that Jesus is our saviour and we have to repent our sins and ask Him for forgiveness in order to be saved.'

Most of the Christians on this board will be better-acquainted with the scriptures than me, I'm sure, so hopefully someone can provide me with some context. So my interpretation of the expression is maybe coming from a place of ignorance, but what it means to me is related to the attitude of dispassion and the true nature of reality - it's seeing the world from all viewpoints, seeing all of the picture and not the part of it you want to see.

To me it's intimately related to what Jesus said about seeing the world as small children, and being born again - I feel like many Christians don't actually get what he was getting at, that you have to give up all preconceptions in order to truly grasp the nature of reality.

Perhaps I have it wrong, as I say I'm coming at it from a position of relative ignorance, so I'd be interested to hear the perspectives of the Christians on the board.

A Human Being,

What an interesting topic, and generating such stimulating responses !

My answer to that question comes from considering it from a variety of perspectives, some of which I provide as references. Truth is not based on the name under which you catagorize your beliefs (Christian, Buddhist, Muslim, or whatever). THAT is the part you won't hear from those who've sought to keep access to the Truth about ourselves limited to ONLY a self-approved “credo” of beliefs espoused in some religion's scripture, filled with sanctioned interpretations about it. Our Creator did not create human beings as Christians, Jews, Muslims, Buddhists, Hindus, or any religious faiths we associate with these or any other names (whether I've named them here or not!). These names, believed and acted upon as if relevant, only serve to hide the FACT that the Creator made ALL OF US of His Spirit and AS His Image.

Basically, the statement 'you shall know the truth, and the truth shall set you free' is encapsulated in the following statements:

As indicated in the 1st reference, "God is the Universal and 'man' is the universal individualized. Once the significance of this is seen it will revolutionize religious thought throughout the world. 'Jesus Christ' ... is 'man' living AS 'man' is meant to live! 'Jesus Christ' is 'man' functioning As 'man' is created to function. To function in the 'Christ Mind' is to function as 'Jesus Christ'.

Two thousand years ago it was not 'Jesus Christ' who walked As God ... it was God who walked as Jesus Christ.

'He' ... was God, living as all men were meant to live. Instead of 'worshiping' 'Jesus Christ' ... we were meant to WALK as 'Jesus Christ'. Each of us is an individual embodiment of God ... of the 'Source of All being'. An individualized embodiment of the Divine Mind. But ... in ignorance of this ... in ignorance of what we are ... we function As 'men'. Thus the necessity of that most significant of all commandments "YE MUST BE BORN AGAIN". Born into the realization that you are much more than the person that you now believe yourself to be. Each of us is the Source individualized ... God individualized! This is what the world's religious leaders have failed to discover. This is why humanity has become so divided. WE ARE ALL ONE! This is the Truth that the world has failed to see."

This is the Truth that shall set you free ! Why ?

WE ARE PERFECT EVEN AS OUR FATHER IN HEAVEN IS PERFECT......

.....because the Creator created US and ALL the principles of Life out of His Own perfect, Divine pattern.

......whether you know that this is so, whether you do not believe this is so, or whether you are ignorant that this is so.

….and as also indicated in the 2nd reference, "Perfection does not come from projecting our own ideas but from awakening to the knowledge that it is already the established order of things."

That is the lesson we can learn from Adam and Eve….

The Creator Himself IS the VERY pattern by which mankind was made. Our Father is Jesus just as Our Father is EACH of us...the exact Spirit and Likeness of Himself. We are PERFECTLY CREATED SPIRITUAL BEINGS, who have forgotten Who we are....fully capable of doing ALL that Jesus does, AS Jesus does. How ? Jesus' message and reason for coming to this earthly dimension was to show us, in as stark, as uncompromising, and as definitive a manner as possible, that we are as He is, which is as our Creator endowed us all to be, and that is as immortal, Spiritual beings who are the Spirit and Image of our Creator. We are NOT physical beings. We are Spiritual Beings like He is!

Consider that the the truth about the "reach" of our very understanding of REALITY is that each and every advancement has come about AFTER WE DISCOVERED WHAT HAS ALWAYS BEEN TRUE, AND WAITING FOR US TO DISCOVER IT....

...even when the tightly held ideas WE THOUGHT WERE TRUE were REALLY based on false information and dogma, WHICH virtually everyone believed, transmitted, and acted upon AS IF TRUE .....that is, until others, following their OWN ideas came along, who had quantifiable, repeatable, verifiable evidence based on a DIFFERENT set of ideas that turned the paradigm of established scientific or religious consensus on its head !!

Can there be any truer indictment of the history of mankind’s exploration and discovery of both scientific and religious Truth than to acknowledge that it is replete with examples of this or that scientist or religious prelate pontificating that this or that phenomena is impossible ???

If you understand that the words "limitations" and "grasp" are simply metaphors for "beliefs", then it becomes transparently obvious that transcending "limitations" and exceeding "grasp" is really an exercise in PERCEIVING REALITY IN ITS TRUE DIMENSIONS.....AND APPLYING THE UNDERSTANDING THEREFROM ACCORDINGLY.

Do the Heavens still rotate around the Earth? Not after Copernicus, Kepler, and Galileo. Are time and space separate from one another? Not after Einstein. Did you get your vaccines this year? Thanks to Pasteur you did. Is the Earth still flat? Ask Erikson, Columbus or Magellan for the answer. Do you have to study your science homework or read the scriptures of whatever faith you profess in the dark? Not after a little help from Gutenburg and Edison. You can readily see the impact of individuals with their OWN ideas helping other individuals change THEIR ideas about these things, which eventually results in the civilization changing, right?

The "belief" in limitation must then be seen to be SELF-IMPOSED......and if self-imposed....

....IT MUST BE SELF-REMOVED !!

If we really thought about it, if the accomplishment of miracles was not ALSO based on perfect, unchangeable principles, Jesus would not have been able to truthfully say to us, "Greater things than these shall you also do." Not so just one person can do it (Him), but so that anybody could do it, following relevant principles. Our Creator is the life of each and every one of us, regardless of the name we call ourselves. It is in Him and through Him that we ALL have our Being. That is why Jesus said, "Of myself, I can do nothing. It is the Father in me who does the works." I believe that statement is the very Truth about ALL of us. Of ourselves, we can do nothing. It is the Father within us who does the works, too! No different than it is for our Brother, Jesus. Or for our Sisters, either. Male AND female made He (our Creator) them. It's what Jesus came to show us; this way to perceive ourselves aright. But we got sidetracked and mislead to accept that Jesus, Himself, was our salvation, instead of understanding through the example of His life and resurrection that His and our Father is the very Life of all.

This does not mean just the life of those who call themselves Christians, and TO HELL WITH EVERYONE ELSE!

We ALL are Sons AND Daughters of the Most High, but we have forgotten Who we, and EACH OTHER are!

Our Creator, I AM, is EQUALLY accessible to ANY and ALL, regardless of who they think they are, or what they call themselves or someone else....WHOSOEVER WILL MAY COME.

Many have misunderstood what Jesus meant when the Bible states: "I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me."

I believe that this does NOT mean that Jesus is STANDING IN THE WAY to our Father.

This means that Jesus is SHOWING US THE WAY to our Father....through the I AM inside of US!!!

We are not supposed to just follow the Master, Jesus.

We are invited to follow the Master's EXAMPLE!!!

We are invited to FOLLOW WHAT HE FOLLOWED, which is....His and Our Father.....the I AM which is in Him, as well as in us!

....in order to REAWAKEN and REALIZE our OWN mastery AS SPIRITUAL BEINGS, not to subjugate ourselves to His mastery. We are ALSO as Jesus is, which is as our Creator endowed us all to be, and that is as immortal, spiritual beings who are the Spirit and Image of our Creator.

The I AM in US is ALSO the same I AM Who is in our Brother, Jesus!!

We are to FOLLOW THE I AM residing in ourselves, just as He does!

We are supposed to realize this Truth within, and for, OURSELVES, that Jesus also realized as Truth within Himself.

We are EACH to realize the Christ within OURSELVES, even as Jesus did. Our Creator did not intend Jesus to be the ONLY ONE who realizes this. We ALL are included in this. No one, ANYWHERE, is excluded....because our Creator INCLUDES US ALL IN HIMSELF....

WHOSOEVER WILL MAY COME…..Come to the Father, I AM, through the Christ in Yourself.

I AM IS THE WAY, THE TRUTH, AND THE LIFE....

As author Baird Spalding also says in the 2nd reference, ”Becoming aware of yourself as a spiritual being, offspring of an infinite spiritual system and one with all the powers and capacities within that system, is the very essence of attainment. To grow from the present state of awareness of himself as a material being and into the consciousness that he is a spiritual being contains the full secret of man's attainment.' Man's nature cannot be reversed for he always remains a spiritual being. He can only reverse his notion of himself. Instead of doing this, he should reverse his mistaken idea that he is a material being and retain the truth that he is a spiritual being created in the image and likeness of God."

It is ironic that, until He realizes Who He (and everyone else) is, and has always been, Man usually amasses an advanced maturity of years of pain and suffering in ignoble ignorance of the greatness of His true estate. Perfection Itself, created US perfectly, though most of us, while exploring the enormity of the Gift of Life, will make mistakes.

Ignorance of immutable Truth acts PRECISELY like ignorance of the perfect operation of a mathematical equation ALWAYS and INVARIABLY produces incorrect results. The solution can only be experienced when we recognize AND apply the Truth to ourselves or to the equation.

And the CORRECT APPLICATION of the Truth results in a LIFE LIVED ABUNDANTLY...PRECISELY like the correct application of the perfect operation of a mathematical equation ALWAYS and INVARIABLY produces CORRECT results. The solution can only be experienced when we recognize AND apply the Truth to ourselves (just as in an equation).

We must RE-awaken to the knowledge that OUR OWN PERFECTION within this infinite Spiritual system is ALREADY the established order of things....and act accordingly.

The fact is, that Man, created as the very Spirit and Image of the Creator, Himself.....IS the MIRACLE which awaits Mankind's discovery (grasp) of that immutable Truth every moment of Eternity.

In one form or another, enlightened teachers who discovered and taught the Truth in various cultures demonstrated, by the example of their own lives, that we are as our Creator endowed us all to be, and that is as immortal, Spiritual beings who are the Spirit and Image of our Creator. The teachers did NOT do this to form religions OR philosophies.

They simply lived the eternal Truth that has ALWAYS been......

We are eternally invited to do the same....

As Genevieve Behrend indicates in the 3rd reference, "Endeavor to bear in mind that your mental picture is Universal Mind specifically exercising its inherent powers of initiative and selection. God, or Universal Mind, made man for the special purpose of differentiating Himself through him. Everything there is, came into existence in this same way, by this self-same law of self-differentiation, and for the same purpose. First came the idea, the mental picture, or the prototype of the thing, which is the thing itself in its incipiency. The Great Architect of the Universe contemplated Himself as manifesting through his polar opposite—matter—and the idea expanded and projected itself until we have not only a world, but many worlds."
...a photograph of which I invite you to enjoy...as the 4th source.

Finally, in this excerpt from the 5th source, Autobiography of a Yogi, Sri Yukteswar, the guru of author Paramhansa Yogananda, describes the events by which a liberated Soul finally returns to the state of being from whence we ALL have come: "So long as the soul of man is encased in one, two, or three body-containers, sealed tightly with the corks of ignorance and desires, he cannot merge with the sea of Spirit. When the gross physical receptacle is destroyed by the hammer of death, the other two coverings-astral and causal-still remain to prevent the soul from consciously joining the Omnipresent Life. When desirelessness is attained through wisdom, its power disintegrates the two remaining vessels. The tiny human soul emerges, free at last; it is one with the Measureless Amplitude." "When a soul is out of the cocoon of the three bodies it escapes forever from the law of relativity and becomes the ineffable Ever-Existent. Behold the butterfly of Omnipresence, its wings etched with stars and moons and suns! The soul expanded into Spirit remains alone in the region of lightless light, darkless dark, thoughtless thought, intoxicated with its ecstasy of joy in God's dream of cosmic creation." Sri Yukteswar goes on to say, "When a soul finally gets out of the three jars of bodily delusions, it becomes one with the Infinite without any loss of individuality. Christ had won this final freedom even before he was born as Jesus. In three stages of his past, symbolized in his earth-life as the three days of his experience of death and resurrection, he had attained the power to fully arise in Spirit."

Do you see ?

'You shall know the truth, and the truth shall set you free'...

The Creator is Who We, and each other are...

The Creator is ALL there is to BE any thing or any one.

I AM THAT I AM AND BESIDE ME THERE IS NO OTHER

....means exactly that.

Hope this helps...

Reference: http://www.thechristmind.org/god.htm

Reference: Life and Teaching of the Masters of the Far East (Vols 1-6) by Baird T. Spalding

Reference: http://www.lightisreal.com/YourInvisiblePower.pdf by Genevieve Beherend

Reference: http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap100824.html

Reference: http://www.crystalclarity.com/yogananda/chap43.php