Victor Alexander Discusses the Future Tense of the Ancient Aramaic Bible.

I wrote a post in response to Robert Young's (author of Young's Analytical Concordance of the Holy Bible) assertion that the ancient Hebrew language did not have a future tense, but instead used the present and past in special ways to indicate the future.

Victor Alexander (v-a.com) is expert in the ancient Aramaic language and has been translating the most ancient available versions of the Bible in Aramaic into English. I buy his translations because I want to know what the authors of the Bible actually said. Alexander is not translating the modern Aramaic Bible, as that is a fairly recent translation from the Greek into Aramaic, and translating it into English would get us nowhere. He is using the ancient ancient Aramaic. Aramaic is a close kin to Hebrew and was the native language of the authors of the New Testament. The ancient texts preserve words, perspectives and passages which have become altered or dropped in the more recent copies of the Hebrew and Greek scriptures.

Anyway, when I read the Bible, I adjust for my personal perspective, which is that metaphysically, all is present: whatever the Ineffable intends is as done, and the future is available now.

Although I may have "jumped the gun" in posting Young's position, I e-mailed it (below) to Mr. Alexander and posed the question: is there a future tense in the Aramaic? Mr. Alexander graciously e-mailed me back an explanation of the workings of the Aramaic future tense, and I now feel much better and more confident with his translations (v-a.com/bible).

Below is the Assertion by Young that the ancient Hebrew had no future tense. I have also posted immediately below Mr. Alexander's response and explanation of the Aramaic future tense. And no, I get nothing for mentioning Alexander's translations. I have several issues with them, but I can deal with the issues myself. The value of accurate translations of the ancient scriptures far outweighs for me their expense and their "problems."



Hi Dan,

 

I read the article. I don’t agree.

 

Actually English is the same. But Aramaic is better. It had to be because it’s the language Maryah chose to speak and to write.

 

In English we have to say ‘shall’ or ‘will’ but this doesn’t mean that we have a future tense of the ‘verb’. The verb is the same; it doesn’t change. We have to put a ‘will’ or ‘shall’ before the verb before it means ‘future.’

 

We do the same thing in Aramaic. ‘Marana ta’ – our Lord, come. ‘Ta’ signifies to come in the future. The ‘future’ is built into the verb. ‘Ta’ doesn’t mean ‘I’m coming now’ or ‘I came.’ It means ‘come in the future.’ You say to someone, ‘ta’ – come. Hasn’t come yet – come. ‘Ta lakh-kha’ = come here.

 

‘Ta kha yooma’ – come one day. So the future is built into ‘come’.

 

In English everything is in the present. We have to say ‘to come’. We don’t say ‘come’ when we mean ‘to come.’ We have to add the ‘to’ to indicate that it’s in the future. So Aramaic is more clear then, and better grammatically.

 

All this would’ve been a semantic discussion if it weren’t for the fact that the three tenses in Aramaic are critical theologically.

 

For example, in Revelation, the three titles of Maryah: Eil-leh (He Is), Yah-weh (He Becomes), and Aa-tehh (He Comes.) The three titles of Maryah Allaha.

 

He Is = Eil. The true name of the Father, which Eashoa uses from the Cross when He says ‘Eil, Eil, l’manna shwiqj-tani.’

He Becomes = Yahweh (Jehovah) – really the title of Eashoa Msheekha (He Becomes the Messiah.)

He Comes = Aa-tehh (future tense – He shall come – past tense of the word is ‘it-tieh-wah’ – present tense is ‘it-tih’ – I’ve come.)

 

In English there is no future tense without the addition of extra words, such as ‘will’ and ‘shall’.

 

E.g.: ‘to be or not to be’ – ‘aa-wen yan la-awen.’ Same thing.

 

But the discussion presented in the article is thought provoking. Because before the Creator said, ‘Let there be light’,  there was no ‘time’ and no tenses.

 

Genesis: ‘Aa-mir Allaha’ – God said – ‘nih-weh noo-ha-ra’ – Let there be light (in “Aramaic it’s one word ‘nih-weh’, which means ‘let there be’ (in English it’s three words) – ‘noo-ha-ra’ = light.

 

‘Oo’ = And – ‘ha-weh’ = ‘there was’ (again two words in English to indicate the present tense.) But in Aramaic it’s two forms of the same word: ‘nih-weh’ (to be) and ‘ha-weh’ (there was light – meaning in the present) so three words again in English – one word each time in Aramaic.

 

No, Aramaic has all three tenses and is superior in every way.

 

With Maryah’s blessings,

Vic 
___________________________________________

 

From: imagicworldview@aol.com

Sent: Sunday, March 29, 2015 12:42 AM

To: vic@v-a.com

Subject: The Ancient Future Tense.

 

Mr. Alexander,

I am a bit confused by Robert Young's introduction to his Literal Translation of the Holy Bible, a portion of which I have posted below. Young (author of Young's Analytical Concordance) argues quite strongly that the ancient Hebrew had no future tense, but rather indicated the future by devices using the past and present. This seems a significant factor to me for accurate translation. I suspect you are already aware of the devices and translate accordingly, but may I ask, did the scribal language have a specific future tense, or would we be better--or at least more accurate--if we read scripture without the 'shalls' and 'wills'?

I feel I get more personal impact by reading future tenses as present: "I come," as opposed to "I will come," &c. I do not expect you to explain everything to me, but would you mind to tell, please, whether you personally have to decide to translate the ancient Aramaic scriptures as present or future/past or future, or is there a future tense marker in the language like our auxiliary verbs shall and will?

I hope this make perfect sense to you, as I do not understand why we would project into the future what is present today.

Thank you for your consideration of this confusing issue,

Dan Steele

___________________________________________________







From the introduction to Robert Young's Literal Translation of the Holy Bible. This introduction is available at http://www.ccel.org/bible/ylt/ylt.htm. You can read the Bible text at http://www.biblestudytools.com/ylt/

Says Mr. Young:

There are two modes of translation which may be adopted in rendering into our own language the writings of an ancient author; the one is, to bring him before us in such a manner as that we may regard him as our own; the other, to transport ourselves, on the contrary, over to him, adopting his situation, modes of speaking, thinking, acting,--peculiarities of age and race, air, gesture, voice, &c. Each of these plans has its advantages, but the latter is incomparably the better of the two, being suited--not for the ever-varying modes of thinking and acting of the men of the fifth, or the tenth, or the fifteenth, or some other century, but--for all ages alike. All attempts to make Moses or Paul act, or speak, or reason, as if they were Englishmen of the nineteenth century, must inevitably tend to change the translator into a paraphrast or a commentator, characters which, however useful, stand altogether apart from that of him, who, with a work before him in one language, seeks only to transfer it into another.
In prosecuting the plan thus adopted, a literal translation was indispensable. No other kind of rendering could place the reader in the position contemplated, side by side with the writer--prepared to think as he does, to see as he sees, to reason, to feel, to weep, and to exult along with him. His very conception of time, even in the minor accidents of the grammatical past, present, future, are to become our own. If he speaks of an event, as now passing, we are not, on the logical ground of its having in reality already transpired, to translate his present as if it were a past; or if, on the other hand, his imagination pictures the future as if even at this moment present, we are not translators but expounders, and that of a tame description, if we take the liberty to convert his time, and tense--the grammatical expression of his time--into our own. King James' translators were almost entirely unacquainted with the two distinctive peculiarities of the Hebrew mode of thinking and speaking, admitted by the most profound Hebrew scholars in theory, though, from undue timidity, never carried out in practice, viz:--

1. That the Hebrews were in the habit of using the past tense to express the certainty of an action taking place, even though the action might not really be performed for some time. And
2. That the Hebrews, in referring to events which might be either past or future were accustomed to act on the principle of transferring themselves mentally to the period and place of the events themselves, and were not content with coldly viewing them as those of a bygone or still coming time; hence the very frequent use of the present tense.

These two great principles of the Hebrew language are substantially to be found in the works of Lee, Gesenius, Ewald, &c.; but the present writer has carried them out in translation much beyond what any of these ever contemplated, on the simple ground that, if they are true, they ought to be gone through with. While they affect very considerably the outward form of the translation, it is a matter of thankfulness that they do not touch the truth of a single Scripture doctrine--not even one.

1. It would appear that the Hebrew writers, when narrating or describing events which might be either past or future (such as the case of Moses in reference to the Creation or the Deluge, on the one hand, and to the Coming of the Messiah or the Calamities which were to befall Israel, on the other), uniformly wrote as if they were alive at the time of the occurrence of the events mentioned, and as eye-witnesses of what they are narrating. It would be needless to refer to special passages in elucidation or vindication of this principle essential to the proper understanding of the Sacred Text, as every page of this Translation affords abundant examples. It is only what common country people do in this land at the present day, and what not a few of the most popular writers in England aim at and accomplish--placing themselves and their readers in the times and places of the circumstances related.
   This principle of translation has long been admitted by the best Biblical Expositors in reference to the Prophetic Delineation of Gospel times, but it is equally applicable and necessary to the historical narratives of Genesis, Ruth, etc.
   
2. The Hebrew writers often express the certainty of a thing taking place by putting it in the past tense, though the actual fulfillment may not take place for ages. This is easily understood and appreciated when the language is used by God, as when He says, in Gen. xv. 18, "Unto thy seed I have given this land;" and in xvii. 4, "I, lo, My covenant is with thee, and thou hast become a father of a multitude of nations." The same thing is found in Gen. xxiii. 11, where Ephron answers Abraham: "Nay, my lord, hear me; the field I have given to thee, and the cave that is in it; to thee I have given it; before the eyes of the sons of my people I have given it to thee; bury thy dead." And again in Abraham's answer to Ephron: "Only--if thou wouldst hear me--I have given the money of the field; accept from me, and I bury my dead there." Again in 2 Kings v. 6, the King of Syria, writing to the King of Israel, says: "Lo, I have sent unto thee Naaman, my servant, and thou hast recovered him from his leprosy,"--considering the King of Israel as his servant, a mere expression of the master's purpose is sufficient. In Judges viii. 19, Gideon says to Zebah and Zalmunnah, "If ye had kept them alive, I had not slain you." So in Deut. xxxi. 18, "For all the evils that they have done"--shall have done.
   It would be easy to multiply examples, but the above may suffice for the present. Some of these forms of expression are preceded by the conjunction "and" (waw, in Hebrew), and a very common opinion has been that the conjunction in these cases has a conversive power, and that the verb is not to be translated past (though so in grammatical form), but future. This is, of course, only an evasion of the supposed difficulty, not a solution, and requires to be supported by the equally untenable hypothesis that a (so-called) future tense, when preceded by the same conjunction waw ("and,") often becomes a past. Notwithstanding these two converting hypotheses, there are numerous passages which have no conjunction before them, which can only be explained by the principle stated above.
   
3. The Hebrew writers are accustomed to express laws, commands, etc., in four ways:
   1. By the regular imperative form, e.g., "Speak unto the people."
   2. By the infinitive, "Every male of you is to be circumcised."
   3. By the (so-called) future, "Let there be light;" "Thou shalt do no murder; " "Six days is work done."
   4. By the past tense, "Speak unto the sons of Israel, and thou hast said unto them."
   There can be no good reason why these several peculiarities should not be exhibited in the translation of the Bible, or that they should be confounded, as they often are, in the Common Version. In common life among ourselves, these forms of expression are frequently used for imperatives, e.g., "Go and do this,"--"This is to be done first,"--"You shall go,"--"You go and finish it." There are few languages which afford such opportunities of a literal and idiomatic rendering of the Sacred Scriptures as the English tongue, and the present attempt will be found, it is believed, to exhibit this more than any other Translation.
   The three preceding particulars embrace all that appears necessary for the Reader to bear in mind in reference to the Style of the New Translation. In the Supplementary "Concise Critical Commentary," which is now in the course of being issued, abundant proofs and illustrations will be found adduced at length.

View of Hebrew Tenses As Seen in the New Translation.

THE HEBREW has only two tenses, which, for want of better terms, may be called Past and Present. The past is either perfect or imperfect, e.g., 'I lived in this house five years,' or 'I have lived in this house five years;' this distinction may and can only be known by the context, which must in all cases be viewed from the writer's standing-point.
In every other instance of its occurrence, it points out either--

1. A gentle imperative, e.g., "Lo, I have sent unto thee Naaman my servant, and thou hast recovered him from his leprosy;" see also Zech. 1.3 &c; or
2. A fixed determination that a certain thing shall be done, e.g., "Nay, my lord, hear me, the field I have given to thee, and the cave that is in it; to thee I have given it; before the eyes of the sons of my people I have given it to thee; bury thy dead;" and in the answer, "Only--if thou wouldst hear me--I have given the money of the field."

The present tense--as in the Modern Arabic, Syriac, and Amharic, the only living remains of the Semitic languages--besides its proper use, is used rhetorically for the future, there being no grammatical form to distinguish them; this, however, causes no more difficulty than it does in English, Turkish, Greek, Sanscrit, &c., the usages of which may be seen in the Extracts from the principal grammarians.
In every other instance of its occurrence, it points out an imperative, not so gently as when a preterite is used for this purpose, nor so stern as when the regular imperative form is employed, but more like the infinitive, Thou art to write no more; thou mayest write no more.
The present participle differs from the present tense just in the same manner and to the same extent as "I am writing, or, I am a writer," does from, "I write, or, I do write."
THE ABOVE VIEW of the Hebrew tenses is equally applicable to all the Semitic languages, including the Ancient and Modern Arabic, the Ancient and Modern Syriac, the Ancient and Modern Ethiopic, the Samaritan, the Chaldee, and the Rabbinical Hebrew--not one of which is admitted to have the Waw Conversive.
It may be added, that all the Teutonic languages--fourteen in number--agree with the Semitic in rejecting a future tense; the futurity of an event being indicated either by auxiliary verbs, adverbs, and other particles, or by the context.

A Note on the Ineffable's Own Imagining Being Its "Form"

I do not think that the Ineffable is imagining us (or the universe) as a scene in front of him. I think that he is imagining OUR imagining. As we imagine, we experience what we overtly do. That experience, I think, is his "form." I know that sounds weird, but what we see is NOT his form no matter how it is shaped or whatever nature it may attain. His is the experience, and everything else simply exists (of him) to facilitate the experience.

Ways to Healing

I do not mean to suggest that imagining is the only way to get spiritually healed physically. Or physically healed spiritually. Let me just say that it is involved.

Perhaps I should mention again that "if it works, you have found Him." It seems that Neville Goddard would have physically crunched those words into our heads if he could. He did all that he did because he had found "Him" in Abdullah's kabbalist exercises. If we were locked into a physical-only universe, miracles and clearly spirit-caused results could not "work." But they do work, so . . .

Yes, the invisible spirit stuff is real. The world appears to be subject to our imagining. It certainly is subject to the greater "Holy" Spirit. So why isn't healing popping up all over the place?

It has something to do with our being eternal beings learning something in this earthly experience. The learning is more important than the healing. I think this is hyper-important. Healings seem to be "flags" by the healer that "Hey, yeah, I am here."

I have been healed by imagining and healed while blank-mindedly being prayed for by others. My first physical healing was really remote--Charles Hunter simply asked Jesus to heal everyone who needed it in a large auditorium, and I WATCHED my left arm grow out a half-inch or more. I wasn't thinking, imagining or believing. I was just open for something to happen, and the Big Guy knocked on my head. Couldn't have impressed me more with a two-by-four alongside the head. "Oh. It is all subject to Him."

Now I have learned that I am Him and He is me. God--YHWH--is one, including us, and physical healings and other miracles are just introductions to the fact. They do not work because of our piety nor because of our carefully framed words; they work because they are the Cause's two-by-four.

"But I prayed earnestly, believing God with all my heart, and nothing happened."

Tell me about it. My mother died of colon cancer with all the earnest prayer in the world, and oh my God, if I could turn back the clock on that one! We were not keyed into the lesson back then. "God" was the separate and distant one that DOES NOT EXIST. If you are praying for healing and nothing is happening, check your concept of God's being. If it is dualistic--he is separate, distant and "wholly other"--it might just be that he is waiting for you to learn to talk to Him, the non-dual one. He is IN you, AS you. He is the Power of God, and He is the Wisdom of God within you making you "you." Together, He is your imagination. "Man is all imagination, and God is no more."

So, what to do for healing? Not much differently. Ask and thou shalt receive. Or imagine yourself as being right now as physically, mentally, financially well as you desire. If you were well, what would you do? In your imagination, DO that as experientially as you can imagine. So vividly that it is "real." Over and over until it IS your reality, and then fall asleep in that state.

Ask yourself, the inner man that you really are. Everything is the Intelligent Power, and you are not going to hear yourself without the ineffable Most High God also hearing you, BECAUSE WE ARE ALL ONE.

"LISTEN. O, ISRAEL! YHWH IS OUR GOD (OVER THE FLAMES); YHWH IS (a multitudinous) ONE" (Deuteronomy 6: 4).

YHWH is the PATTERN of the whole "thing" that is God's existence, and we are the multitude of "flames" in that pattern. None of it is separate or divided from the rest of the pattern. Healing is as simple as His imagining you well. And when it works, you have found Him, "your own, wonderful, human imagination."

How Shall We Worship the One God With Us in Him and He in Us . . . AS us?

God is not a separate being. There is no God away from us. "He" doesn't have a consort. There is no division or disconnect between him and us. God is one. "If the words God, Lord, Jesus, Yahweh, Christ, the Almighty, El Shaddai or any other such word conveys to you or engenders the sense of "other" and something outside of yourself, you have the wrong God---a false God!"

"Examine yourselves whether you are in the faith; prove your own selves. Don't you your own selves know how that Christ is IN you (i.e., IS you), unless you are still in your ignorance" (2 Corinthians 13: 5; my paraphrase of KJV).

There is only one God, whether you consider him the Father, the Son or the Consciousness, and we each are the Father, because there is only one God, and we are in and of him, as is everything. "They shall put you out of the synagogue. . . whosoever kills you will think that he does God service. And these things they will do unto you because they know not the Father, nor me" (John 16: 2-3). "Me"--God the Father who is their own inner man!

So, here we are without a distant, "wholly other" God to worship; only an inner one. Our destiny is to become him outwardly. How are we to worship . . . uh, us? er, me (on the big scale)?

No, seriously. How are we supposed to worship God if we are him and he is us and everything else? Suppose for a moment the truth: EVERYTHING is the Father. God isn't just the only God, he is the only "thing," the sum total of everything. What are we going to do with this knowledge? Sacrifices, being illustrations only, are out.

If I may make a suggestion (posited originally by Neville Goddard), perhaps we should DO what the Father does. What does the Father do? He quickens the dead and calls those things which are not AS THOUGH THEY WERE (Romans 4: 17).

Oops. I just saw that passage in Romans. Abraham was made the Father to us all. 'Abraham' means Merciful Father--the Father of all peoples . . . who quickens the dead and calls those things which are not as though they were. What was not? Isaac. Sarah was barren. What did God do? He said, "So shall your seed be," speaking of Isaac as though he were. And Abraham believed.

I think we should believe, too, that what is not right should be called AS THOUGH IT IS RIGHT. We call in our minds, in our imaginations, which are God's. Praying out loud is fine too, of course, but it is vivid imagining which creates the end desired. I mean, imagining the good "end" that you want is what creates it. Let's forgive and create the correction for "sin"--whatever is not right/not what God would want. Let's revise whatever is wrong, as Neville said, by deeply, intensely imagining over and over and over again what would be right "until it takes on all the tones of reality." Imagine as well as God does. After all, we are him. Well, try, anyway.

Perhaps I should mention here, too, the principle of the Standing Order in "the Lord's Prayer." The Lord's Prayer (Matthew 6: 9-13) gives us the manner in which to pray. It is with an attitude and expectation that what we pray stands as the decree of the Father and "must be being done." Properly translated by Ferrar Fenton (1832-1920), the nature of prayer is that of a standing order, "a thing to be done absolutely, and continuously":

"Our Father in the Heavens (i.e., right here in my inner man);
Your name (i.e., your NATURE) must be being hallowed;
Your kingdom (i.e., your POWER and WISDOM in me) must be being restored;
Your will (i.e., your DESIRE FOR RIGHT) must be being done, both in Heaven and upon the Earth.
Give us to-day our to-morrow's bread (i.e., the right images to imagine for tomorrow);
and forgive us our faults, as we forgive those offending us (i.e., all the historical is released to be done away with),
for you would not lead us into temptation (because you do not want us to continue in sin),
but deliver us from its evil (but want us to create your Paradise)."


Added 3/27/2015:

It comes to me that inasmuch as we are the Ineffable's imagining, the attitudes of gratitude and praise are wholly appropriate. That would normally go without saying, except the premise here is that we are in that being praised.

It also occurs that we need to review what we have decreed AS God, intentionally or not. Just looking at the Table of Contents in Working With the Law for clues, I notice in Holliwell's first chapter evidence that just as Neville always said, we create our own misfortune by what we imagine, by the words that come out of our own mouths. This is something to take up with the Father in review and revision.

We need to seek forgiveness, correction and repentance. Got to watch our attitudes and our actions and correct our history. Hallelujah, we can heal our past by reliving it again and revising it in our imagination. See pg. 19 of Neville's The Law and the Promise, where the woman with chronic pain re-creates the event that wounded her and changes the event so that she was not wounded. Just another wonderful day then, and now she is healed.

Spooky? The whole of time and space is already finished. When the ineffable Beginning created God as the Heavens and the Earth, the end of the whole process was already set. Nothing that can happen can alter that end. We are free to get there.

All alternatives that can get us there are permissible. Wounds are going to get us there, and the absence of wounds is going to get us there. You choose. If we are God creating the world, the world is us. Today, yesterday, and tomorrow are our imagining, and we can change the imagining on our "wheel." A lady went back and changed her yesterday. I wonder, if her mother was still alive, what would she remember? Kind of Twilight Zone-y. (Frequency was one of my favorite movies, as was the Back to the Future series.) But her experience was real. IS real. She just had he determination to DO it.

In that the Ineffable has made us "Him," and the world us (and this is just the start), I think adoration is called for, too.

What Do We Do Without a Satan?

I was very leery of dealing with anything that could be construed as "Satanic." I knew that Satan, "who deceiveth the whole world," prowled the earth looking for those he could devour. My first spiritual experience BEFORE I became a Christian, which motivated me TO become a Christian, was being confronted by the deceiving spirit which had led me into occult meditation practices. It was at the point of possessing me in a meditation, but someone opened my mind's eyes to see what was really going on. Seeing the demon, I realized that he was there, there must be a Satan; and if Satan existed, then so did Jesus, who must have been the one who opened my eyes without needing my permission, because he has authority greater than mine, and I was going the wrong way!

As a Spirit-filled Pentecostal Christian, I have perceived the work of Satan's hoard deceiving the world and repeatedly trying to deceive me again. The lurking lion doesn't ever seem to rest, so I actively disprove and test every subtle teaching which might persuade me to lower my guard to accept anything other than "the pure milk of the Gospel" by which I have been set free from the works of Satan.

Imagine my chagrin, then, when I found out that there is no Satan. "He" is my IGNORANCE that God is one, and that I am included in that one.

That is what the Bible is telling us. The "Serpent" in the Garden who "deceived" Adam and Eve is the same "Angel of YHWH" who spoke to Moses in Exodus 3, because they are the same story. Moses' Mt. Horeb experience (Exodus 3) was so pivotal that he put it up in front of his teaching about it (Genesis 3). Moses was Adam, and he, contemplating Jethro or "His excellence," found God--the Serpent. Finding God alive in himself--Christ--wanton-living, profligate Moses was struck by conscience. It is only after we get a conscience that God can really start dealing with us.

"Hey, wait a minute. If there is no Devil or Satan, then that makes ME responsible."

Yes, and it makes God responsible. This is his plan, his doing, his doctoring (and you are him). "He is the perpetrator, and he is the victim." So who is he going to find guilty? Him who does not hear that YHWH is the one and only God and does not accept that he himself is that one ans only! Guilty, deceived by his own ignorance, 'round this man goes again wailing as a baby and gnashing his teeth at all the afflictions until in some life he "gets" it--he meets the Serpent, gets a conscience, and finds the map in the scriptures to becoming one with God, AS God.

What do we do without a Satan? Live as God, imagine like the Ineffable.

The Ideal Man We Have Forgotten but Shall Become

"Be a man," they say. Being a man (or womb-man) means different things to different people, and your ideal may not be mine or my wife's. We are all wrong, anyway.

In the course of becoming humans, we FORGOT what the ideal man is. My understanding is that the creation in Genesis is the plan for what will be accomplished at the end. The end is the GOAL we shall achieve, and in that we have forgotten it, it is Paradise Lost.

We said, "Let us make man in our image," and we made the perfect man . . .in plan. We all are going to become him, but first we need to remember what we had in mind! Here is a hint: we were God, and we said, "Let us make man in our image," and our image is the Law. We just haven't become men according to the Law yet.

Not "a man of the Law," a guy who follows a bunch of superstitious religious injunctions; but a man of the "Law," of the nature of the ineffable spirit being we really are. The Ideal man is the manifestation of the Law, the nature of God, for he is the image of God who IS the Law.

When I say "Law," I mean it like Raymond Holliwell means it in Working with the Law: Powerful Principles for Abundant Living. The Law is the positive nature of God for which the ignorant have the "shalt nots." The Perfect Man will be an individual who Gods (a verb) because he has the character of God, the awareness that he IS God, and the maturity to God. We all have some maturing to do.

Such a man will imagine and actualize his life-force for good on all levels of his existence. I think this is what Ezekiel was seeing in chapter one of that book. The four LIVING creatures are men, and the four "faces" each has are the various fields or levels of our existence. Perhaps it is that we live to each other and we live to God and we live to the earth and we live to our selves. These are fields of life our life-force is engaged in.

These men imagine (the Hebrew word for 'potter' means imagination), and their living, Godding relationships with all of existence work as potters at their "wheels within the wheel" of the earth's existence. Ezekiel is just seeing it all at once in his meditative state. I can just hear him saying like Gomer Pyle, "Sha-zam! So this what life really is."

How those men are, we are destined to become. We shall be myriads of individuals in full cooperation bound in love as the Most High--Its true imagic, manifest form.


A little Post-Script, if you would: Regarding Working with the Law, I do not believe in the Law of Attraction at all. It is just the singular most stupid thing I have ever heard of. I do not have a problem with vibration or its role in causation, but magnetic attraction? Pleease. We cause by imagining, faith and action, not by shaking.

Garnet's Other Issue: Realizing that God's Oneness is True and Includes You

"In the Lord's Prayer it states, "Thy kingdom come, thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven." We have to imagine/understand how our perfect God reigns in His perfect environment (heaven) in order to imagine a Godly, perfect and obedient Earth."

This is a good connection. Our earthly experience today falls short of right, and tonight when we review the events of the day, we pray about them by imagining WHAT WOULD HAVE BEEN RIGHT as though that was what happened. We completely forgive the historical and create the Paradise in our imaginations. Learning to create the Paradise is part of learning how to imagine like the Ineffable.

But the other issue: "Our perfect God in His perfect environment" suggests a divide between Him and us. This idea of division is the bugaboo of Judaism and Christianity and all other religions. There ain't no divide. I believe existence is a seamless spectrum of transcendence from the ineffable Most High God to the most remote quantum particle or obscure dimension of existence. That is, "God is One," includes us and everything else. There cannot be two. We (from top to bottom) are all one organic being, and we (on earth) are the Ineffable doing this at this stage in this dimension. What "this" is is learning how to imagine like the Ineffable in our development to being It.

The thing is, the "God breathed" spirit that makes us alive is our waking consciousness and our awareness of being--in short, our imagining that we are us. This imagining consciousness IS "our perfect God" simply by virtue of there being no division. "His" nature is our nature, our imagining is His imagining, and the ATTITUDE we are to take in praying for what we believe to be right is to DEMAND that the Standing Order be observed and put into effect . . . for we are one and the same being.

The demand for the standing order of God to be upheld is the manner and attitude in which we are to pray. This is what the Greek means in Matthew 6: 9-13. Properly translated by Ferrar Fenton (1832-1920), that the nature of the Lord's Prayer is that of a standing order, "a thing to be done absolutely, and continuously," it is faith shouted:

"Our Father in the Heavens (i.e., right here in my brain/spirit);
Your name (i.e., your NATURE) must be being hallowed;
Your kingdom (i.e., your POWER and WISDOM in me) must be being restored;
Your will (i.e., your DESIRE FOR RIGHT) must be being done, both in Heaven and upon the Earth.
Give us to-day our to-morrow's bread (i.e., the right images to imagine for tomorrow);
and forgive us our faults, as we forgive those offending us (i.e., all the historical is released to be done away with),
for you would not lead us into temptation (because you do not want us to continue in sin),
but deliver us from its evil (but want us to create your Paradise)."

The translators of Matthew from Aramaic into Greek used the aorist imperative passive tense: "must be being!" But the aorist imperative passive did not exist in Latin from whence our traditional English translation comes.

We create the Paradise by imagining the Paradise. Presently as God, albeit in ignorance, we create our worlds by what we believe in our daily consciousness. We are each of us a "potter" sitting at our wheel spinning into existence what we think. What we are learning is to do intentionally what we have been doing incidentally. This makes imagining an investment instead of la-la daydreaming.

We are a Defective God Here to Get a Fix

Actually, children are not "defective" adults, but they cannot work like adults because they do not know the things adults know and cannot do the things adults can do. Children are ignorant of things adults know simply because they have never heard of them and do not have experience with them.

In like manner, we are God, the imagining consciousnesses of the One, of the Ineffable. We are of the e'had: God, the Heavens and the Earth. As "children" of the Ineffable, we cannot know the things the Ineffable knows and cannot do the things the Ineffable can do simply because we are ignorant of them--we have not had experience with them yet. We have not learned how to do the action.

Comparatively, we are "defective" ineffables: we simply cannot imagine like the Ineffable does because we don't know how to. It has a lot more experience in this stuff than we do.

Welcome to the School of Experience for the Improvement of Imagining. This is a development program designed to generate the likeness of the Ineffable in us. We are learning the wisdom and knowledge and the power of the Most High God, the Imaginer. We are being trained to be like Dad.

Although a repair shop might be a quicker and more direct fix to our shortcomings, we need this education to conform us to our Father by the experiences we have in it. There is learning involved. The education we are getting is "How to Imagine like the Ineffable," so let's put our thinking caps on and figure out how to learn how to imagine just like Him of Whom we are. How does the Ineffable imagine to causation?

It has been appointed for us to die of what we were as God's consciousness until we accomplish this destiny of becoming the Ineffable's imagining in the freedom AND in the integrity of his nature. Then comes the judgment: graduation to actually being Him.

Why the Church does not teach meditation I do happen to know. Hey, guys, we have gone the wrong way! Anyone for turning around and doing what the Bible actually says and teaching prayer and meditation for the equipping of the saints to BE YHWH? We will have to learn how to meditate and imagine ourselves, and we will have to learn how to teach spiritual abilities to others.

I consider myself to be becoming something of an "old school" Gnostic, because they were teaching this stuff hundreds of years before the spiritually ignorant, dualistic-thinking, Western literal-historicalists started Modern Christianity. What knowledge saves us? That we are God? No, but the knowledge of how to imagine like the Ineffable, AS the Ineffable--Faith, Hope, and Love in action.

Compared to the Most High, we are "defective" in that we do not have the knowledge, the wisdom and capabilities of our Father. Yet. We come up short of the abilities of the One we are continuances OF, but those are what we are here to learn. THE DIVINE HAS A VESTED INTEREST IN OUR SUCCESS. "IT" is motivated to help us. Let's work hand-in-hand with Him to get it accomplished.

Learning How to Imagine Correctly From Fear

Learn how to imagine correctly from fear. You probably already know the verse, "For the thing which I greatly feared is come upon me, and that which I was afraid of is come unto me." That is the 25th verse of Job, chapter 3. Do you see what is wrong with this verse? It is successful. "Is come upon me," and, "is come unto me," are what we WANT for the things we desire. What is wrong is that these things are coming from fear and are the things NOT desired.

But Job was SUCCESSFUL. Let's learn from his mistake. And let me plant this idea right here: "When it works, you have found Him"--GOD. Just as Judas Iscariot reveals Jesus Christ to men, our belief in what we fear reveals God to us. Job's fears worked. What was operating in his being afraid revealed the operation of GOD, not Satan. The Satanic part was that he, Job, was ignorantly operating in fear instead of love and faith. But what he was DOING was imagining correctly for causation.

What is your mind like when you are afraid of something, especially something horrible? You think about it all the time. You visualize it happening. You feel it. You expect it. You run conversations about it 24/7 in your mind's voice. You don't move without looking around to see if it could happen. You might try a hundred different things to keep it from happening like Job did, but you constantly wait for it to happen with faith and expectation. And BANG! It works.

What you have found is God in you. Nothing can stop Him from doing what you believe will happen with faith. Not even the things we believe in our ignorance. The success is a flag: God is saying, "Hey, Hi. Here I am. You are doing it right, except . . . Dude, do you really want THIS? How about believing in something good?"

The flag's name, by the way, is 'Jethro', Moses' father-in-law of Biblical fame. Unstoppable increase catches our attention, even if it is what we don't want.

"But I desired the opposite," we lament. Well, we GET what we IMAGINE. You imagine desire, and that is what manifests--desire. You believe you HAVE a horrible happening, and there you go: your day is ruined; maybe your life. This stuff is SERIOUS.

LESSON LEARNED: convert your "desire" to belief of having. Have faith in Jesus Christ, the Power of God and the Wisdom of God in you who brings what you BELIEVE into manifestation.

We are told not to be afraid of success. This is true, but what you would do IF you were afraid--thinking about it all day long, visualizing it all the time, feeling it, talking about it non-stop in your mind all day long, expecting it to happen any minute and anticipating that experience--do THAT with success, whatever "success" would be.

We are Here to Learn How to Imagine, to Learn How to Revise What Our Imagining has Become--the Pruning Shears of Revision

I recently realized that what we are here for is to learn how to imagine (see http://imagicworldview.blogspot.com/2015/03/what-life-is-all-about-we-are-learning.html). We are learning how to imagine like the Ineffable. It occurs to me that the myriads of imagining consciences that the Ineffable has become are constantly revising what has been imagined (see http://imagicworldview.blogspot.com/2015/03/the-three-true-gods-of-bible-and-they.html).

That is what we do daily. Where we pick up the remains of yesterday, we start to imagine what we are going to do about them today: "For that, I think I will try this." If we are just trying, it might work; or, half-way through, we might change our mind and revise again what we plan to do. If we know exactly what we want and put our heart and soul into it from the get-go, we know that we can succeed.

Sadly, there is not a decent recording of Neville Goddard's lecture, "The Pruning Shears of Revision." One fellow has a too-strong Australian accent and the other reads like a fourth grader seeing his part in the school play for the first time. God bless them both, and I prefer the fourth grader.

Today is what we have, and it is not right. Right is like-God. So in our imagination just before going to sleep, we review the day and revise what we remember about it. We rehearse the new, revised memory over and over until it seems as natural and real as what did happen, but now revised memory is what we are dealing with.

The Ineffable has an end in mind. It is a rolling end--each moment is an end to the moment before. But the end the Ineffable desires is Its likeness. How can these moments be steered to Its likeness? Revise what we imagine of them to the best that we can imagine for them.



Here is something I can do:

Neville Goddard 1954

THE PRUNING SHEARS OF REVISION

This morning's subject is "The Pruning Shears of Revision". I firmly believe that if you will wisely and daily use the pruning shears of revision that you will find there is no objective beyond your ability to realize. And I mean that seriously, no objective beyond your ability to realize.

When I was a boy of seven, a lady said to me, "I have had a vision concerning you. I'll make it now very, very clear to you--I do not know what it is you are going to do, but I've been shown you will do something that through the centuries after you are gone man will not undo it. I can see it and through the centuries you will grow in stature long after you have gone. And then three men will be mentioned in hundreds of years to come and you will be one of the three when something is discussed that was done for man."

I feel that this morning's subject that this could be it, that if I never said another word, and you heard it and believed it, and really used it, this would be the planting that would spread from us here that tomorrow could not undo. For it is magic, this pruning shears of revision. It really is not only the achievement of objectives, but if you do it daily, it will awaken in you the spirit of Jesus, which is continual forgiveness of sin.

In this teaching the sinner should always go free; you will never condemn him, for when the spirit is awake in you you will realize in him there is no condemnation, only forgiveness, and forgiveness is not as man of the world thinks when he omits the actual execution of his revenge. What we mean by forgiveness the identification of the other that we would forgive with the ideal that other wants to embody in the world. And so we do to him what we expect or would like the world to do to us. So whatever I myself would like to embody that is the vision that I must hold of every man that I meet in my world; that no man is to be discarded, every man is to be redeemed, and my life is the process whereby that redemption is brought about. And I do it by simply identifying the other with the ideal I want to externalize in my world.

Now we will go back to the 2nd of Genesis. It is said "And God placed man in the garden of Eden to dress it and to keep it." Now when you read the story you think it happened thousands of years ago. I have come to tell you it is now. You are now in the garden of Eden and you think you are shut out or banished. You are in it, and the garden is your mind, but you need--like every gardener--you need pruning shears. For you have slept, as you are told in that second chapter; having slept, weeds have appeared in the garden and the weeds are revealing themselves by the conditions and the circumstances of life. For your garden is always projecting itself on the screen of space, and you can see by looking carefully at your world what you allow to grow in the garden of God. But you have a mission, you have a purpose, it is not to amass a fortune--you can do it if you want to--it's not to be famous, it is not to be some mighty power, but simply to tend the garden of God. That's your purpose. You are placed in the garden to dress it and to keep it, that only the lovely things grow in the garden of God.

Now every man in the world is rooted in you who look out and see that world. Every man is rooted in me; he ends in me as I am rooted in and end in God. Because he is rooted in me he cannot bear other than the nature the root allows. So he is in me and any changes desired in the outer world can be brought about only if I change the source of the thing I see growing in my world.

"You see yonder fields?
Don't be surprised when you see sesamum:
The sesamum was sesamum,
The corn was corn,
The silence and the darkness knew
So is a man's fate born"

So don't judge it, because you are the source of the thing that you are beholding. Now turn within and prune it by using these pruning shears of revision.

Now this is how we do it. At the end of my day, I review the day; I don't judge it, I simply review it. I look over the entire day, all the episodes, all the events, all the conversations, all the meetings, and then as I see it clearly in my mind's eye, I rewrite it. I rewrite it and make it conform to the ideal day I wish I had experienced. I take scene after scene and rewrite it, revise it, and having revised my day, then in my imagination I relive that day, the revised day, and I do it over and over in my imagination until this seeming imagined state begins to take on to me the tones of reality. It seems that it's real, that I actually did experience it and I have found from experience that these revised days, if really lived, will change my tomorrows. When I meet people tomorrow that today disappointed me, they will not tomorrow, for in me I have changed the very nature of that being, and having changed him, he bears witness tomorrow of the change that took place within me. It is my duty to take this garden and really make it a garden by daily using the pruning shears of revision.

I know from experience it will not only bring about these objectives, and bring about these changes, but the glorious thing is, it awakens in you, who use it, the spirit of Jesus, and you find yourself then not justifying but forgiving, and you will realize that freedom and forgiveness are indissolubly linked. You cannot be free and not forgive, for the one that you would bind and judge and condemn anchors you by your own judgment of him--for he is in you. And so by identifying him with the ideal you want to really realize you free yourself.

You are told "Forgive and you shall be forgiven. Forgive not and then you shall not be forgiven". It's automatic; it can't be otherwise for the whole springs from you who behold it. And as you begin to practice it the very spirit arouses itself within you and you know that you are he that others spoke about and thought lived 2000 years ago.

So, when you realize it, you realize it through actual knowledge, you know it; no argument, you don't tell others, you know that you are he. And then you will read the words in the ninth of Hebrews, "He appeared to put away sin by the sacrifice of himself". And you will know you are the one that put away sin by the sacrifice of self and by the sacrifice of self it's not being a brave one who throws himself in the line of fire to protect a brother, it doesn't mean one who gives his body to be burned, one who is nailed on a cross, but the self of man is the sum total of all that that man believes and consents to as true. So that's the self that is sacrificed.

I heard of this lady and she would make some man a wonderful wife, and yet she is unwed. She desires to be the companion of a great noble person, but she is unwed, I heard that. That becomes a part of myself, that's my knowledge; I must sacrifice that self, that that aspect of my being be as happy as I am and those in my world are. For that's the self I must sacrifice and put away sin, for sin to the mystic means missing the mark; it doesn't mean the violation of certain codes, unless of course you have a mark and the violation fell short, but sin to the mystic is simply haying an aim in life and failing to realize it. So when you miss the mark you have sinned; so he appeared to put away sin by the sacrifice of himself, and knowing that himself is only all that he consents to, all that he accepts, all that he believes to be true, then what am I believing concerning that one--he is unemployed and he can't find a job? I'm believing it. Now put away that sin where he is missing his mark and then by the putting away of the sin I do it only by the sacrifice of myself and myself is that belief, so now I revise. I can't say well, I will no longer believe he is unemployed: I believe he's employed.

I do it by the pruning shears of revision. I bring him before my mind's eye and I congratulate him on his good fortune because he is now gainfully employed. I allow him to accept my congratulations, because I do not see a man unemployed, I see him employed and he knows he is in my mind's eye for in that state I have pruned him from the unemployed state and once more reshaped the branch that grows in the garden of God. Tomorrow people will see him as they could not have seen him before the pruning that took place within me and he will be gainfully employed.

That one is unwell, you prune that branch. You don't accept one thing in the world as final unless it conforms to the ideal you want to realize in the world. But you do it daily; if you do not prune it daily you will get out of the habit, then weeds will grow. Every man who really is a gardener who calls himself a gardener, a gardener in the garden of God, for every day is the opportunity to really prune the tree, this wonderful tree. And so everyone that you meet is a branch rooted in the vine that you are and you are that special tree in the garden of God, a tree bearing life, a tree bearing fruit for the food of the nations. You are that one.

If you take me seriously today, tonight do not let the sun descend upon any vexation of the day. Just look at it, don't deny it, don't duck it, look at it that you may prune it and then reshape it. Take the conversations with your friends today, were they pleasant, were they arguments, no matter what it is, were they negative?

Then rewrite the script and just imagine the conversation to have taken place that now you are rewriting for the first time. And it will take place, for everything in your world that you behold, though it appears without, it is within, in your imagination. And this wonderful imagination of yours is Christ Jesus. Imagination is the actual habitation of every created thing. No matter what you see in the world, it springs from your imagination. So that's where you go, that's the workshop, the garden of God.

And now you have a mission, you have a purpose in life; it's a noble purpose, because you have been selected to really become the chief gardener in the garden of God, and in the garden you must have pruning shears, and pruning shears is revision. You simply revise, and as you revise the day you repeal the day, for the day is not slipping into the past, it does not recede as people think, it is always advancing into the future to confront you, either pruned or in some strange weed-like state.

So it's entirely up to us--I hope that every man and woman here today will take me seriously and start this day pruning your garden. pruning your mind. I know before I leave this city in a matter of two weeks that you will be able to tell me of the new things that spring in your world or that spring from the pruned tree that is your own lovely imagination. You try it: then you will know what Blake meant when he said. "In heaven, the only art of living is forgetting and forgiving." The only art of living is complete forgetfulness by putting something in its place, no vacuum, but putting something in its place.

So when you read these strange stories that you read in the daily press, you simply ignore them. They mean nothing. Men who are calling themselves leaders, shepherds of the flock, they excommunicate--not just one religion, all religions the leaders take it upon themselves to excommunicate, not knowing nothing is to be discarded, not a thing in the world can you discard for it is forever, but it can be pruned and made to conform to the ideal image. The man who will not revise his day either does not know it or he has lost the vision of that life into the likeness of which it is the true labor of the spirit of Jesus that transformed this life. So you don't discard them.

In the current issue of "Time" magazine there is that noble soul who is known to us as Spinoza, Baruch de Spinoza, who has given so much to the world of philosophy, so much everyone has been enriched because he walked the earth. And here 300 years later, the ex-premier of Israel, Ben-Gurion, has asked the leading rabbis today to rescind that excommunication of 300 years ago, and they tell this noble soul today that they cannot rescind the works of their forefathers, that the curse remains forever, and you should read that silly, silly curse as it's printed in the current issue of "Time" magazine. They call upon all the angels to curse him, as though angels would curse; they call upon everything to blast him, you could not walk within four cubits of the man's shadow; no one should talk to him, no one should show him kindness, no one should write him and never read anything he ever has to say; and that's 300 years ago.

The rabbis who so cursed him have long been forgotten and if they do live, they live only by reason of their curse. And no one knows really who they really are, but you can't forget if you read in this world the works of Spinoza. Everyone in this audience possibly has used one of his phrases; did you know it was he who said "nature abhors a vacuum"? Now you use it; I use it, but what is the source of it--it was Spinoza. For here was this giant of a mind that after 300 years little minds who think they're leading the flock; they call themselves shepherds. They should go back and read well the Book of Jeremiah, "You shepherds who spoil my vines and you who have come into my garden and you have taken my vines, now it bears no grape and it bears no leaf, and the garden of Jerusalem now has become a weed." Read it in Jeremiah, how he cries out because shepherds, who call themselves shepherds, are blind leaders of the blind.

You take me this morning at my word; you owe me nothing, it costs you not a thing to come here this morning, you come you give me your time and I give you my time, but you go out and try it and start this day pruning that wonderful imagination of yours. Do you know someone that is evil? Stop knowing it by bringing him before your mind's eye and carry on with him the most wonderful conversation in the world, with a tender spirit, a loving spirit, and believe in the reality of this communion, because if you really do it, you are entering the kingdom of heaven, for you enter heaven by a loving, knowing communion with a friend. So make him a friend, if he is a lovely one, no matter what he is, you can prune him and then as you prune him you are doing the work which you were sent to do for man--and you are that man--you are placed this day in the garden of Eden to dress it and to keep it. Don't let it continue growing weeds in your world.

You are absolutely responsible for every being you meet in this world; that's your responsibility. Just like the teacher we told you of who took this little child that was just about to be expelled; no, the child is not expelled because she heard what you are hearing this morning. So she brought before her mind's eye the child that the principal, the psychiatrist and all the faculty had agreed unanimously to expel her on her l6th birthday, for she was rude, she was crude, she was unethical; and she went home on a Sunday night and brought that child before her mind's eye and communed with her and saw in her a tender child, a considerate child, a loving child. The next day, Monday, in class she expressed all the kindness of that revision of the night before, and ten days later when it was seen and witnessed by all the faculty, and the psychiatrist, another meeting was called and they repealed their verdict of ten days before and the child is not expelled. She still sits in the George Washington High School in New York City, which is considered an excellent school; and so there she is. with no black marks against her because one teacher sat in the audience, as you are here, and she believed, what I hope everyone here will believe, and she redeemed a branch of her own tree. She didn't realize the child was herself. She saw up to that very moment all the children that she taught in pure objectivity. Blind man sees the world objective to himself, something detached from himself. When man begins to awake he sees everything subjectively related; everything he meets is part of himself, and what he does not now understand, still he knows that it is related by affinity to some as yet unrealized force in his own being. So he doesn't discard it, he knows his life is the process by which he will redeem it and he redeems it by using the pruning shears of revision.

So I feel that if after these fifty years of walking this earth that this is what that lady saw when I was but seven, I could really close the eye on three dimensions at any moment knowing you will not disprove it: you may never use them but you will never disprove this art of revision. And any man who will try it will prove it to his own satisfaction that he can rise beyond the wildest dream of men, and rising he awakens the spirit of forgiveness. He will rise in the early stages in the successful venture; he will increase his income, he will do all these things, but he will realize after a little while that wasn't the purpose. They were only toys to tickle him, toys to amuse him until he awoke within himself the spirit of Jesus; then he sees an entirely different mission, not the amassing of wealth but the redeeming of society, the redeeming of every man in the world. He comes to do his Father's will and we are told in the 6th chapter of John, "This is my Father's will, that of all that he has given me I should lose nothing but I should raise it up again."

Lose nothing--no, you don't excommunicate, you don't rub out, you simply raise it up again and as you raise it up you raise yourself up and the journey is forever. You are moving up an infinite vertical line in your own wonderful imagination, and you only move up by lifting others up. Blind men think they can save themselves, and because they think they can save themselves and discard the rest. The blind man also said this hundreds of years ago. He saved as he saved others; himself he cannot save. I say to you that it's a false statement; it was put into the mouth of the Pharisee, put into the mouth of the Sanhedrin, the leaders who thought they were leaders, but I will tell you a man saves himself by, and only by the saving of his fellowman. There is no other way of saving self other than by saving the real self and every man is rooted in you who observes men. And so don't discard, raise them up, prune the tree, and become the real gardener in the garden of God.

Take anything; you have a child today: we took all the requests this morning, there were dozens and dozens of requests this morning. Everyone must be answered, none must be discarded; don't say one is impossible, there is nothing impossible to your imagination and your imagination is Christ Jesus. With Him all things are possible. Use him, stir him, wake him from his sleep; he has been sleeping through the centuries: because he has slept he has dreamed into being all these strange misshaped states. For the world only bears witness of the use or misuse of imagination. As we are told, he is the only thing in the world. What he is the only thing in the world? --Your imagination, for it is the habitation of every created thing and by it all things are made and without it is nothing made that is made. So use it wisely, use it lovingly and any time you use your imagination lovingly on behalf of another you are at that moment literally mediating God to man. Imagination is the redemptive power of the world and you are actually mediating God to man by using it in a loving, wonderful way.

The Three True Gods of the Bible, and They are not the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost

There are three true Gods in the Bible, and I do not mean the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost.

The first true God is That which was before the beginning. Before the beginning of anything, It already was. It simply WAS the Beginning. It comes from eternal time past. It was the beginning of everything, because everything has come from It. I call It the Ineffable, others call It the Source, just don't call It Late for Supper.

The first true God was an unconditioned state of No-thing. There is nothing that we can say about It, except that we come from It. It is a core of existence beyond all that we can comprehend. It imagined us, but we cannot imagine It (unless you can imagine That which is imagining your imagination). In Genesis 1: 1, It is called, "In the Beginning," or, as I would put it, simply "The Beginning."

The first true God is imagining the second true God. Imagining is "creation." 'Imagined' does not mean that it does not exist: 'imagined' means that it DOES exist. When the Ineffable imagines, Its imagining exists, because the Ineffable becomes it. You might have noticed that the name of this blog is The Becoming God.

What the first true God imagined was myriads upon myriads of consciousness imagining and becoming what they imagined. Imagining is causal. The countless myriads of consciousness are ONE--the eternal Ineffable--although as individuals they are innumerable. And as imaginings what they become is beyond calculation.

This second true God is called "God."  The first true God, the ineffable Beginning, created (by imagining) the second true God: the Heavens and the Earth--the myriads of imaginings and what they become. In Genesis 1: 1, it says, "In the Beginning (the first true God) created God (the second true God)--the Heavens and the Earth."

You might have noticed that although the second true God is "created," it is eternal by virtue of the first true God actually being it. The words 'creation' and 'from' are misleading. They imply separation and difference, division and distance. But in actual fact it is becoming, simple transition from one state to another. It is attitude, and no distance is involved. Hence, the Earth is eternal.

A little more on the second true God, if you would. Our friend Neville Goddard had a vision many years ago, wherein he saw an enormous field of huge, magnificent sunflowers. Each sunflower had a human face, and they all moved in concert. If one smiled, they all smiled. If one frowned, they all frowned. They all bent and moved in unison (see/listen to Neville Goddard lecture: "Unless I Go Away").

I like the simile, as I believe the sunflowers represent the Ineffable's myriads of imagining conscience. Whatsoever the Ineffable wills, they all imagine the same into existence. Neville noticed that all of the sunflowers were fixed to the soil by their roots. They were locked in to prophesying forth whatever the Ineffable "spoke" into their minds. Not one was free as the Ineffable is free, and being the Ineffable is what the Ineffable is imagining!

Which brings us to the third true God in the Bible: us. The divine conscience depicted by the sunflowers has become us. "Free at last! Free at last! Thank God Almighty I am free at last!" our inner sunflower sings. We are the Eternal Being, the Beginning, Who imagined Itself the myriad-conscience "God," and as God, us!

Specifically, It has become our subtle inner conscience which is our personality, our sub-conscious and the Life that animates us. We only "know" it as our imagination. As a Pentecostal Christian, I am inclined to call this intelligent power Jesus Christ. It is What It is, but I know It answers to that name ('name', of course, means nature, and Jesus Christ is Its nature). And It answers so that we might know It.

"When It works," Neville always said, "then you have found Him. And when you have found Him, you find Him to be your own, wonderful human imagination." THIS is the Gospel of Moses: There is only ONE God, and we are included IN that ONE. Hallelujah!

Okay! Okay! They are the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost. Got you to read, though, didn't it?

The Old Testament Hebrew doesn't have a future tense? Self-correct by converting future tenses to present?

This post was written in response to Robert Young's (author of Young's Analytical Concordance of the Holy Bible) assertion that the ancient Hebrew language did not have a future tense, but instead used the present and past in special ways to indicate the future. I may have jumped the gun in publishing this assertion with the advice to mentally convert future tenses in the Bible into presents.

Victor Alexander (v-a.com) is expert in the ancient Aramaic language and has been translating the most ancient available versions of the Bible in Aramaic into English. He is not using the modern Aramaic Bible, as that is a fairly recent translation from the Greek into Aramaic, and translating it into English gets us nowhere. He is using the ancient ancient. Aramaic is close kin to Hebrew and was the native language of the authors of the New Testament. The ancient Aramaic preserves words, perspectives and passages which have become altered or dropped in the more recent copies of the Hebrew and Greek scriptures.

Anyway, when I read the Bible, I adjust for my personal perspective, which is that metaphysically, all is present: whatever the Ineffable intends is as done, and the future is available now.

I e-mailed Robert Young's assertion (below) to Mr. Alexander and posed the question: is there a future tense in the Aramaic? He graciously explained the workings of the Aramaic future tense to me and I feel much better and more confident with his translations (v-a.com/bible). Below is the Assertion by Young that the ancient Hebrew had no future tense. I have posted Mr. Alexander's response and explanation of the Aramaic future tense at http://imagicworldview.blogspot.com/2015/03/victor-alexander-discusses-future-tense.html, which please see.

Below is the original post at this location:

This is from the introduction to Robert Young's Literal Translation of the Holy Bible. This introduction is available at http://www.ccel.org/bible/ylt/ylt.htm. You can read the Bible text at http://www.biblestudytools.com/ylt/.

The important point for you is that the Hebrew writers, writing from their perspectives, wrote using the present and past tenses. As Young stresses in "View of Hebrew Tenses As Seen in the New Translation," below:

THE HEBREW has only two tenses, which, for want of better terms, may be called Past and Present.

The past is either perfect or imperfect, e.g., 'I lived in this house five years,' or 'I have lived in this house five years;' this distinction may and can only be known by the context, which must in all cases be viewed from the writer's standing-point.
In every other instance of its occurrence, it points out either--

1. A gentle imperative, e.g., "Lo, I have sent unto thee Naaman my servant, and thou hast recovered him from his leprosy;" see also Zech. 1.3 &c; or
2. A fixed determination that a certain thing shall be done, e.g., "Nay, my lord, hear me, the field I have given to thee, and the cave that is in it; to thee I have given it; before the eyes of the sons of my people I have given it to thee; bury thy dead;" and in the answer, "Only--if thou wouldst hear me--I have given the money of the field."

___________________________

If you want to read the Bible more accurately, read the Old Testament without future tenses, because the Hebrew didn't have a future tense. I "self-correct" in this way when read Victor Alexander's translation from the ancient Aramaic, as well as when I read my King James Companion Bible by Bullinger.


Says Mr. Young:

There are two modes of translation which may be adopted in rendering into our own language the writings of an ancient author; the one is, to bring him before us in such a manner as that we may regard him as our own; the other, to transport ourselves, on the contrary, over to him, adopting his situation, modes of speaking, thinking, acting,--peculiarities of age and race, air, gesture, voice, &c. Each of these plans has its advantages, but the latter is incomparably the better of the two, being suited--not for the ever-varying modes of thinking and acting of the men of the fifth, or the tenth, or the fifteenth, or some other century, but--for all ages alike. All attempts to make Moses or Paul act, or speak, or reason, as if they were Englishmen of the nineteenth century, must inevitably tend to change the translator into a paraphrast or a commentator, characters which, however useful, stand altogether apart from that of him, who, with a work before him in one language, seeks only to transfer it into another.
In prosecuting the plan thus adopted, a literal translation was indispensable. No other kind of rendering could place the reader in the position contemplated, side by side with the writer--prepared to think as he does, to see as he sees, to reason, to feel, to weep, and to exult along with him. His very conception of time, even in the minor accidents of the grammatical past, present, future, are to become our own. If he speaks of an event, as now passing, we are not, on the logical ground of its having in reality already transpired, to translate his present as if it were a past; or if, on the other hand, his imagination pictures the future as if even at this moment present, we are not translators but expounders, and that of a tame description, if we take the liberty to convert his time, and tense--the grammatical expression of his time--into our own. King James' translators were almost entirely unacquainted with the two distinctive peculiarities of the Hebrew mode of thinking and speaking, admitted by the most profound Hebrew scholars in theory, though, from undue timidity, never carried out in practice, viz:--

1. That the Hebrews were in the habit of using the past tense to express the certainty of an action taking place, even though the action might not really be performed for some time. And
2. That the Hebrews, in referring to events which might be either past or future were accustomed to act on the principle of transferring themselves mentally to the period and place of the events themselves, and were not content with coldly viewing them as those of a bygone or still coming time; hence the very frequent use of the present tense.

These two great principles of the Hebrew language are substantially to be found in the works of Lee, Gesenius, Ewald, &c.; but the present writer has carried them out in translation much beyond what any of these ever contemplated, on the simple ground that, if they are true, they ought to be gone through with. While they affect very considerably the outward form of the translation, it is a matter of thankfulness that they do not touch the truth of a single Scripture doctrine--not even one.

1. It would appear that the Hebrew writers, when narrating or describing events which might be either past or future (such as the case of Moses in reference to the Creation or the Deluge, on the one hand, and to the Coming of the Messiah or the Calamities which were to befall Israel, on the other), uniformly wrote as if they were alive at the time of the occurrence of the events mentioned, and as eye-witnesses of what they are narrating. It would be needless to refer to special passages in elucidation or vindication of this principle essential to the proper understanding of the Sacred Text, as every page of this Translation affords abundant examples. It is only what common country people do in this land at the present day, and what not a few of the most popular writers in England aim at and accomplish--placing themselves and their readers in the times and places of the circumstances related.
   This principle of translation has long been admitted by the best Biblical Expositors in reference to the Prophetic Delineation of Gospel times, but it is equally applicable and necessary to the historical narratives of Genesis, Ruth, etc.
   
2. The Hebrew writers often express the certainty of a thing taking place by putting it in the past tense, though the actual fulfillment may not take place for ages. This is easily understood and appreciated when the language is used by God, as when He says, in Gen. xv. 18, "Unto thy seed I have given this land;" and in xvii. 4, "I, lo, My covenant is with thee, and thou hast become a father of a multitude of nations." The same thing is found in Gen. xxiii. 11, where Ephron answers Abraham: "Nay, my lord, hear me; the field I have given to thee, and the cave that is in it; to thee I have given it; before the eyes of the sons of my people I have given it to thee; bury thy dead." And again in Abraham's answer to Ephron: "Only--if thou wouldst hear me--I have given the money of the field; accept from me, and I bury my dead there." Again in 2 Kings v. 6, the King of Syria, writing to the King of Israel, says: "Lo, I have sent unto thee Naaman, my servant, and thou hast recovered him from his leprosy,"--considering the King of Israel as his servant, a mere expression of the master's purpose is sufficient. In Judges viii. 19, Gideon says to Zebah and Zalmunnah, "If ye had kept them alive, I had not slain you." So in Deut. xxxi. 18, "For all the evils that they have done"--shall have done.
   It would be easy to multiply examples, but the above may suffice for the present. Some of these forms of expression are preceded by the conjunction "and" (waw, in Hebrew), and a very common opinion has been that the conjunction in these cases has a conversive power, and that the verb is not to be translated past (though so in grammatical form), but future. This is, of course, only an evasion of the supposed difficulty, not a solution, and requires to be supported by the equally untenable hypothesis that a (so-called) future tense, when preceded by the same conjunction waw ("and,") often becomes a past. Notwithstanding these two converting hypotheses, there are numerous passages which have no conjunction before them, which can only be explained by the principle stated above.
   
3. The Hebrew writers are accustomed to express laws, commands, etc., in four ways:
   1. By the regular imperative form, e.g., "Speak unto the people."
   2. By the infinitive, "Every male of you is to be circumcised."
   3. By the (so-called) future, "Let there be light;" "Thou shalt do no murder; " "Six days is work done."
   4. By the past tense, "Speak unto the sons of Israel, and thou hast said unto them."
   There can be no good reason why these several peculiarities should not be exhibited in the translation of the Bible, or that they should be confounded, as they often are, in the Common Version. In common life among ourselves, these forms of expression are frequently used for imperatives, e.g., "Go and do this,"--"This is to be done first,"--"You shall go,"--"You go and finish it." There are few languages which afford such opportunities of a literal and idiomatic rendering of the Sacred Scriptures as the English tongue, and the present attempt will be found, it is believed, to exhibit this more than any other Translation.
   The three preceding particulars embrace all that appears necessary for the Reader to bear in mind in reference to the Style of the New Translation. In the Supplementary "Concise Critical Commentary," which is now in the course of being issued, abundant proofs and illustrations will be found adduced at length.

View of Hebrew Tenses As Seen in the New Translation.

THE HEBREW has only two tenses, which, for want of better terms, may be called Past and Present. The past is either perfect or imperfect, e.g., 'I lived in this house five years,' or 'I have lived in this house five years;' this distinction may and can only be known by the context, which must in all cases be viewed from the writer's standing-point.
In every other instance of its occurrence, it points out either--

1. A gentle imperative, e.g., "Lo, I have sent unto thee Naaman my servant, and thou hast recovered him from his leprosy;" see also Zech. 1.3 &c; or
2. A fixed determination that a certain thing shall be done, e.g., "Nay, my lord, hear me, the field I have given to thee, and the cave that is in it; to thee I have given it; before the eyes of the sons of my people I have given it to thee; bury thy dead;" and in the answer, "Only--if thou wouldst hear me--I have given the money of the field."

The present tense--as in the Modern Arabic, Syriac, and Amharic, the only living remains of the Semitic languages--besides its proper use, is used rhetorically for the future, there being no grammatical form to distinguish them; this, however, causes no more difficulty than it does in English, Turkish, Greek, Sanscrit, &c., the usages of which may be seen in the Extracts from the principal grammarians.
In every other instance of its occurrence, it points out an imperative, not so gently as when a preterite is used for this purpose, nor so stern as when the regular imperative form is employed, but more like the infinitive, Thou art to write no more; thou mayest write no more.
The present participle differs from the present tense just in the same manner and to the same extent as "I am writing, or, I am a writer," does from, "I write, or, I do write."
THE ABOVE VIEW of the Hebrew tenses is equally applicable to all the Semitic languages, including the Ancient and Modern Arabic, the Ancient and Modern Syriac, the Ancient and Modern Ethiopic, the Samaritan, the Chaldee, and the Rabbinical Hebrew--not one of which is admitted to have the Waw Conversive.
It may be added, that all the Teutonic languages--fourteen in number--agree with the Semitic in rejecting a future tense; the futurity of an event being indicated either by auxiliary verbs, adverbs, and other particles, or by the context.

Go to the Beginning: the Confusion of Genesis 1: 1

Moses was no dumbie. He had found God, so when he wrote his Gospel, he put the most important things in first. I hold that the Book of Genesis is the most important book in the Bible, and that the most important things in it are in the front. In Genesis 1: 1, Moses is not beginning a history of the universe, the world, of man or of the Jews. He is just beginning to explain the state that we are in. It is all about states.

I think you might know how the verse is translated into English. I was raised (reared) with the King James' version's "In the beginning God created the Heavens and the Earth."

The Stone Tanach has it: "In the beginning of God's creating the heavens and the earth . . ."

Rabbi David A. Cooper, in God is a Verb: Kabbalah and the practice of mystical judaism, page 66, notes that a Kabbalist would say, "With a beginning, (It) created God (Elohim), the heavens and the earth." In his footnote (number 83, page 310), he notes that the Zohar says, "By means of a beginning, (It) created Elohim . . ." Another suggestion has it: "As a beginning . . . "

I am pointing out that all of these refer to the "beginning," from the Hebrew bereshit, as a point in time; specifically as a starting point.

I thank Victor Alexander for pointing out that the ancient Aramaic beresheeth--the same word--means "before the beginning." This is so important! It changes everything: That which was BEFORE the beginning . . . the Ineffable . . . WAS the Beginning!!!

Bereshit was not a reference to a point in time, it was Moses' reference to that which WAS the Beginning--the Ineffable. The existence of the Ineffable was the Beginning from which all things come. Thus Genesis 1: 1 should be read, "The Beginning created God--the heavens and the earth."

We are states OF the Beginning, variations from Its initial state. It was an unconditioned state of being BEFORE the beginning, and as It conditioned Itself we became Its conditions. I.e., we are the conditions of that unconditioned state of being having conditioned Itself.


I do not know if we can become unconditioned states of being again, or if we would ever want to. The core nature of the Ineffable is that unconditioned state, and we entertain that nature when we "float" as if we were unconditioned during meditation--something I am learning to practice. It is from this point, our having returned to the Beginning, that we create our desires in our imagination. And it behooves us to be as noble and gracious and loving and kind as the Ineffable we are then.

Regarding "Finding Judaism, Facing Anti-Semitism" OP-ED by Michael Douglas, Los Angeles Times, March 15, 2015

I have heard the statistic and opinion expressed by Mr. Douglas several times, that there are only 14 to 15 million Jews in the world. I wish to inform him and to remind everyone else that the approximately 2.2 billion Christians in the world are also Jews. Jews of a different order, but Jews nevertheless. That makes us 2.215 billion Jews strong.

Of course we approach Judaism differently, but Christianity is a form of Judaism. In Christians' eyes, one cannot become a Christian without first becoming a Jew, for we must first believe that God is, and that he is a rewarder of those who diligently seek him. The Gospel of Moses is our Gospel, and the Laws of the prophets are our Laws, more stringently enforced (though no more stringently practiced, unfortunately [we are not even to think violation, let alone not to commit]).

I am under no illusion--nor is any Christian or Jew--as to the differences between Judaism and Christianity and of Jews and Christians, and yet, paradoxically, we all are. We are all thinking, "I've got it; my group has got it," when we think of what God requires of us and of how we are meeting those requirements. He requires the same from all of us, and we all simply have different approaches to meeting the same, be we Jew, Christian, or for that matter, Muslim. There is not more than one God, and the one that is does not hate any of us but draws us to him by his love. And my apologies, ladies, for using the masculine reference for that which is so far above gender's distinctions.

There is a God with whom we all have to do, and Christians world-wide believe they are Jews who have just taken another step his direction in becoming Christians. It is nothing but the step that differentiates us: we are Jews all--all 2.215 billion of us, and anti-Semitism is de facto anti-Christianism. Every Christian within ear-shot of the pool where Dylan Douglas was insulted should have been in that man's face from the first suggestion of anti-Semitism defending a Jewish brother, as we should be at every suggestion of unreasoned racial or religious hatred. Not to confront hatred with hatred, but to interrupt vitriol with reason and sense.

We are called to be peacemakers by the subtle man within us, who will enable us as Michael Douglas bore through his conversation with the man at the pool. Unpleasant, but necessary. Let's bare that subtle man's witness and, when we witness anti-Semitism, speak up.

Basic Considerations on Self Initiation By Athos A. Altomonte

 I do not remember how I found the article below or why I copied it, but I read it again and liked the observations in it. In fact, it is quite fascinating. It is by (the apparently late) Athos Altomonte, whom I suppose to have been an Italian esotericist/occultist who was much into Freemasonry.

It speaks of a great project called "consecration of the matter," and two dimensions of conscience, one "subtle" and one "physical-animal," and initiating oneself. What really gets me are the interesting turns of phrasing, such as "psychic precipitation" and "the igneous part of the subtle conscience." Igneous?" Subtle volcanic heat? This is interesting that the name 'Ham', the second son of Noah, means heat, and Noah is the rest that creates. To cause by imagining, you have to turn up the heat--the intensity/vividness--of your imagined experience.

Remember that Altomonte was (apparently--I am not going to investigate in depth, this is just an opinion) a student of the occult, of the Western bent of Freemasonry's interpretation of Kabbalah. I have decided to not edit except for some obvious typos--extra spaces and the like. And I believe this is Athos' English and not a translator's, which makes for an interesting articulation of vocabulary.

I do not necessarily endorse these ideas, and the text is a bit heavy, but I hope you gain from the perspective and enjoy the wonderful Italian color:


Category:Esotericism Reading



Birth, Life, Death. Basic considerations on initiation
By Athos A. Altomonte
© copyright 2007 by Esonet.it - Esonet.com
Index: Birth, Life, Death, Three great initiations – To grow means to initiate oneself – Elitist, social and edonist initiations: three dimensions where to grow – Psycho-synthesis, approach to a modern initiatory praxis – The Principle of Self-Initiation – The Principle of Diorism – Conclusive aspects – Appendix: Three theories on death.
Birth, life, death, three great initiations
De Filippo wrote that exams never end in life. It follows that trials don't end either, until the last great initiation of ‘ physical death' comes.
To find the true initiatory path in life makes the concept of initiation extremely wide and refined; it eventually develops through three degrees: birth, life and death of the interpreter.
For many doctrines these are definitive passages; whilst according to the initiatory Doctrine to be born, to live and to die are apparent states of the same journey that in materiality keep repeating themselves up to the complete physical manifestation of the subtle conscience.
This goal is a project of general as well as individual order called ‘consecration of the matter.' In both cases it implies the contact between the material and the spiritual dimension. In the individual case mental development works as an intermediary between two dimensions of conscience, the physical-animal one connected to the physical body and the subtle one irradiated by the spiritual nucleus that Plato called monad.
Hermeticists call this project Great Project. But the consecration of (one's own) matter can be reached faster by the individual through a process called Initiation. The Great Work concerns both man and the planet, therefore it can be defined manifold yet unique . This can be explained if we assume that man is not the body that he moves but the thought that animates him. According to this postulate by consecrating ourselves, viz. by elevating the quality of the substance of our psycho-conscience, initiates also consecrate the substance of the matter of the planet that they use; therefore they consecrate the planet itself. Here we are back to the manifold yet unique project, where to ‘consecrate the matter' is a project that involves the planet as well as the single individual.
An example of this symbiosis is alimentation. Man feeds on elements belonging to inferior kingdoms (mineral, vegetable, animal) which he uses to produce highly specialized energy, such as the forms of thought (ideas); this elevates the elements assimilated in the specialized forms that they are turned into.
The same method in a more elevated form can be used by man to sublimate himself, using his aspects to build forms of life-thought and conscience more refined and versatile. This is another fundament of initiation, where by developing the mind with an operation called psychic precipitation the igneous part of the subtle conscience is attracted into the dimension of the physical-animal conscience enlightening it.
Practical sense drives us to concentrate this treaty on ‘life' as an initiatory journey rather than on the dimension of conscience preceding the birth and following the death of the physical body. These three dimensions in man share the same aspect: fear. Indeed, the main obstacle in the ‘journey of man' is the fear to be born, the fear to live and the fear to die. It is the same fear which all the ghosts of the humankind feed on.
To grow means to initiate oneself
We will talk about the three initiatory models that are best characterized in practical initiations, symbolical initiations and real initiation.
Since its birth the young, both animal and human, is simultaneously initiated to conscious life, to its race, to the enlarged and restricted nucleus where it belongs: herd or family. It is immediately bombarded with impulses and sensations that contribute to form its individuality. Every detail learnt influences and modifies its decisions, even the direction of its life. Accidentalnesses, tendencies, decisions, opportunities and attention are summed up to the personal virtues and faults giving a unique and unrepeatable journey to each. In this journey the quantity of trials will be proportional to sensitivity, intelligence and courage of the individual; their overcoming will be decisive for the quality of the growth.
Many interpretations have been made on the concept of growth. So many and so varied that many people end up confusing the usefulness of technological progress with the values of civilization. In a strict sense to grow implies the development of body, mind and physical conscience unconnected to the inner reality or it entails that subtle conscience and superior mind become the top of oneself and therefore the finish line of one's progress. This is the great distinction.
A path of life is marked by a long series of free choices which produce a huge number of small initiations whose qualities suit virtues and faults of the protagonist. Despite his uniqueness the human being shares certain characteristics with particular groups for affinity, empathy or affection.
The attraction towards a kind or another depends on the mental condition that can be shared or refused. When these attractions increase they end up generating specific areas of belonging that become the many ‘dimensions' where men live, grow and die, often without cognition of the surrounding dimensions.
To recognize oneself in particular dimensions and to participate to fractions of common knowledge (conventions) might seem a joining factor, therefore a positive one. In actual fact, to build different mental compartments is not only a separating aspect, but it often becomes a cause of conflict that can be marginally controlled by social security cushions such as rules and sanctions.
Conflict increases against the people we don't understand, we don't know and in general towards those considered different, as a threat to the stability of the social group.
Indeed, diversity is only an illusion based on empirical suppositions, such as ancient beliefs, different languages and particular uses which, even when they are strongly rooted in popular consciences, are not truer than others. It is common sense to say that separation is a negative factor, the result of dull consciences. It is subtler to state that it is a counter-initiatory aspect that can be overcome only by practicing the altruistic, tolerant and intelligent sense that allows to improve the harmony of the thought rather than its pre-potency.
Elitist, social, edonist: three dimensions where to grow
‘Know Thyself' was carved on the façade of the temples. Today, though, the choice of the area of growth depends on fictitious knowledge. Like the way we see ourselves and we would like to be seen, or the model we identify with.
In actual fact, though, nobody ever truly knows his identity; interestingly, one of the corollaries of initiation is to re-gain the memory of our subtle identity. Only after knowing and being recognized by his subtle counterpart, which some cultures call guardian angel and others guiding spirit , the initiate will be able to use Free Will.
The initiatory elite chose the sum of many factors parallelly matured as a path of growth. This process starts with reaching masterhood of the body and freeing the mind from the influence of the most primitive emotions. The freedom of mind and conscience is the aspect that attracts the subtle conscience towards the most external planes, recognizing a unification from which the so much talked about ‘knowledge' starts.
A different matter is the story of those who interpret their growth as the quantity of recorded information or professional and social success. This dulls the growth and makes it mercenary, establishing its value through the monetization of man. This is the field of symbolic initiations that give virtual powers marked by exterior symbols, which despite their sumptuousness can't hide the inner narrowness revealed by thoughts and words.
On the contrary, the most childish consciences link their growth to a stage of top physical efficiency or they exhalt the beauty of their body for the purpose of reaching a particularly seducing physical form. This is the dimension of carelessness of those who postpone the payment of the debt of life which will be certainly taken back with an interest.
To describe the basic aspects of initiation we should start by saying that initiation is inside us, not outside; the true master is the voice of the soul inside us, not outside. Outside we can find instructors that choose their pupils according to precise rules; they are never chosen and they never let others choose them. So much caution is given by the fact that by accepting a pupil the instructor joins his destiny and this might not be a good thing. It is essential that the instructor knows the deep reasons that drive someone to apply for acceptance in a dimension that is not only theoretical. Certain experiments can really hurt.
Psycho-synthesis, approach to a modern initiatory praxis
To understand the inner dimensions is not easy. For people who belong to the Western culture (positivist) Psycho-synthesis could be a precious source of information and a good set of rules. Psycho-synthesis is a ‘therapeutic' science because, after all, between mind and soul we are all unbalanced and ‘free' to make mistakes.
Many eminent theologists say that man owns Free Will, but it is not so. Man only has the ‘freedom of choice' and of making mistakes, which are the yeast of the bread of knowledge (see The First Occult Center of Initiation ). We regularly regret these choices; this demonstrates that they didn't originate from Free Will. The condition of error lasts until the mind gets in contact with the superior Ego. We can say that the superior Ego is our Free Will. To know this facilitates our journey.
Psycho-synthesis is not a universal remedy but it explains what interiorization is and how to practice introspection or phantasmal analysis. This is the famous VITRIOL, which no esotericist can explain how to practice. VITRIOL is the descent and re-ascent towards the several inner realities. Note, ‘reality', not dreams or delusions.
We live in an extremely limited dimension of conscience called conscience of wake , but there is a dimension called sub-consciousness , densely populated with repressed forms of thought, which Socrates called inner demòns (good) and dèmons (bad), which must be liberated to recover the energy of thought and use it again in the most efficient forms. There is also a huge dimension unknown to most people called super-consciousness , comparable to an inner sky with its inhabitants. This is a dimension we need to discover, where we can establish the best ‘alliances'.
These dimensions must be joined using the will, which is the bonding agent of different entities (see Act of Will among the texts on psycho-synthesis). All this configurates the necessary conditions so that the small personal self (personality) can ‘receive' the superior conscience, the superior Ego or Self, results of the soul. In modern terms, this is the exact description of Initiation that was re-veiled (veiled twice) by symbols and metaphors.
Initiation is therefore the transformation that, by the law that ‘the greater simile attracts the lesser simile', allows the small personal ego to join the superior Ego. This unification has been called ‘ alchemic nuptials' or ‘celestial marriage'.
In order to build the conditions favorable to the contact (see Ars Pontificia in The two faces of Freemasonry ) two operations are necessary. The Transmutation of the physical ego (personality) that starts by dis-integrating (to detach, detachment) mind and conscience from the physical ego. This element of conscience is only a residue of the subtle conscience which, in its loneliness, has matured the conviction that it rules its life, whilst it is only a temporary minor figure.
This sense of domain , which in some men becomes delirium of omnipotence , must be considered as the Great Delusion that must be rid of, freeing ourselves from the egocentrism of the small ego. The contradictions of the personal and impermanent ego become macroscopic when the mental aura of the superior Ego appears in the conscience.
The Principle of self-initiation
Leaving aside practical and professional initiation and starting from the assumption that the initiation we are dealing with requires a permanent metamorphosis of the conscience of the initiating, we can safely state that no human Organization, not even the noblest and most religious, is able to transmit initiations that are not representative, symbolical and virtual. In order to overcome the standstill that arises with this statement, we have to conclude that in dealing with Initiation we must in actual fact talk about self-initiation. More precisely descending initiation, if we use the metaphor that Initiation is the joining of above and below. Therefore we must distinguish the initiation from the public recognition made by peers.
In the Ancient Precepts we read that nobody can initiate anybody but themselves. In actual fact an initiatory Assembly doesn't transmit initiation but it recognizes its achievement after ascertaining that the neophyte got through the ‘trials' successfully.
In practice, trials consist of complying with duties that produce expansions of conscience and painful inner transmutations. It is not difficult to realize that the solitary overcoming of trials hides the Principle of self-initiation, manifested in the will to overcome oneself, one's weaknesses and fears and the resistance to any form of desire.
Self-initiation as a principle of self-sufficiency has always been hindered by mundane hierarchies, which found their power on the award of virtual ordinations.
Self-initiation is also known as ‘descending initiation' because the light of the conscience of the soul enlightens the lower forma mentis initiating it ‘to Itself'.
The Principle of Diorism
Next to the initiatory Laws we find the Principle of Diorism; according to it the only form of elitism accepted among Initiates is the recognition of exceptional abilities, which are considered as common patrimony of the Brotherhood, rather than personal powers.
The Principle of Diorism is a Platonic concept and it means distinction, division. In the instance of an initiate it refers to the criterion of meritocracy that we can describe as the principle of natural selection applied to the initiatory sphere. In this case the selection is only intellectual and it is based on the ability of the initiate to realize the personal Work and to congruously manifest the principles that he has been educated to recognize in the results of operativeness, consistency, intelligence and most of all of will, which tends towards the Top of the hierarchic Pyramid seen as Mountain of Initiation.
Conclusive aspects
The aspects necessary to reach Initiation are known as transmutation of oneself [see mental alchemy From knowledge to mental liberation ; and link or bridge (see Ars pontificia) with our real identity (see Ars Regia)].
The right attitude is to stop identifying oneself with the personal ego, because it is only a ‘shadow of the Idea that animates us'. We must start identifying with the existence inside us, of which we often hear the ‘silent voice', although we refuse to hear it in order to continue making our disastrous ‘free choices'.
There comes a day when we understand that this existence is our true identity. Without realizing it, this discovery leads us towards its ‘light'. From here comes the idea of the Wanderer who leaves the shadow where he's been for such a long time that he has forgotten the light where he came from.
The Wanderer entered the shadow voluntarily, joining the project of ‘consecration of the matter', because he is a builder, a pioneer and not a fallen angel. This is the old identity that he must regain, but this time in the physical conscience, in order to get back a spiritual conscience in the corporeal form. Nothing happens, though, until the physical conscience remains isolated. In order to break the isolation it is necessary to ‘build' a link, or bridge, with the superior conscience whose egoic center is the only mental entity in contact with the soul. The problem is to know where and how to build the link (or bridge) between physical and subtle consciences. We have dedicated many works to this subject, starting from mental alchemy.
Appendix
Three theories on death
Initiatory science states the continuity of conscience; it recognizes in death only the task of re-creation of conscience. Science recognizes that ‘nothing is lost, nothing is destroyed', whilst the divine law supports eternal persistence. Among many theories, three are known to everyone:
1. Materialism assumes the expression and the experience of a conscious life until the tangible form exists and lasts, but it teaches that after death and the disintegration of the body there isn't a conscious, living, identified being. The sense of ‘self', of a personality different from others disappears with form; it is nothing but the total conscience of corporal cells. It is a theory that places man on the same level as the other natural kingdoms. It is based on the insensitiveness of common man to life when the latter lacks a tangible vehicle. It ignores any contrary evidence and states that the ‘Ego', viz. the immortal entity, doesn't exist because it can't be seen or touched. But those that today support this theory are not as many as they were during the Victorian and materialistic age.
2. Conditioned immortality is proposed by certain theological schools limited to a few intellectuals characterized by selfishness; it states that the gift of immortality is given only to those who reached a certain level of spiritual conscience or observe a series of theological precepts. Some people with extraordinary intellectual talent say sometimes that the supreme good for man is an educated and experienced mind and the man who owns it lives forever. This theory, though, condemns all those considered reluctant or spiritually hopeless at its particular theological certainties to an eternal punishment or annihilation, like materialism; at the same time it theorizes a form of immortality. But the human heart has its inborn goodness; therefore there are very few vindictive and senseless people who accept this doctrine. Of course among them we must consider those men unable to think, which escape any mental responsibility and blindly rely on a theology.
Catholic orthodoxy can't support its theories in front of a clear and reasoned inquiry. Among the arguments that destroy its fundaments there is the fact that it assumes an eternal future without a past; this future depends only on the actions of the present episodic life and it doesn't explain the differences among men. This theory can be supported only in the hypothesis of an anthropomorphic divinity that gives a present with a future but without a past. This is undoubtably (sic.) unfair but the will of that God is unfathomable and can't be discussed. Millions of men share this belief but it isn't as strong as a hundred years ago.
3. The doctrine of reincarnation is more and more popular in the West. It is considered true (despite many additions and puerile interpretations); this teaching has undergone many distortions from narrow minded theologists, like it happened to Christ's, Buddha's or Sri Krishna's teachings. Today there is an unprecedented acceptance of the great truths with a spiritual origin, of a descent in the matter from which we can ascend through many incarnations in the form, until this expresses the spiritual conscience that inhabits it and a series of initiations to accomplish this cycle. These are the solutions given to the problem of immortality and persistence of the human soul. They answer the questions: where do we come from? Where do we go? Why?
In a few years the matter of persistence and eternity of existence will leave the area of doubt and enter the kingdom of certainty. Nobody will doubt that the abandonment of the physical body prevents man from being a conscious entity. We will know that he perpetuates his existence in a world behind the physical one. We will know that he is still alive, awake and conscious.







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Category:Mysteries of the Builders

The Three Columns of the sephirothic System by Athos A. Altomonte graphic by: Fabio Gasparri © copyright by Esonet.it - Esonet.com

The structure of the symbol is supported by three Columns. The one on the left is the Column of passive nature, while the one on the right is of active nature and in the middle there is the spiritual one. The three Columns support the Temple of creation made of material conscience, feelings and spiritual energy. On the three Columns "flourish" 10 universes (sephiroth) which are 10 spheres of sensitive conscience. A further eleventh is added to these. It is an "invisible passage" which at a conscience level can be compared to a black hole in the cosmos. Every sensitive sphere (sephiroth) is linked to all the others by 22 paths. Through the 22 ways the divine will spreads sacrificing Itself, to the point of reaching the densest levels of its own expression, re-veiling (veiling twice) Itself.