Degrees of Being

18–04–2022

In this week, my writings will centre primarily on the promise of spiritual sensation or the imagination. My teacher is fond of quoting Blake, whom he loves and studies profoundly. One of the quotes he says often is this, ‘You ought to know that what is Grand is necessarily obscure to Weak men. That which can be made Explicit to the Idiot is not worth my care. The wisest of the ancients considered what was not too Explicit as fittest for Instruction because it rouses the faculties to act. Why is the Bible more Entertaining and Instructive than any other book? Is it not because it is addressed to the Imagination, which is Spiritual Sensation, and only immediately to the Understanding or Reason.’ (Neville, Spiritual Sensation)

We have been fond of the law, and we have known its workings very profoundly. Whether we have manifested all that we want to manifest or we have only manifested a few of them using the law, our personal experiences convince us that it works. I hope that I speak your mind by those words. For only our forgetfulness will make us not see that every moment of our daily life has been fashioned and formed by our imagining, that imagining and it alone creates reality. This is the eternal law. So much evidence for this. A few days back, a friend was having a chat with me. She was in a conversation with another pitiful friend who was sorry for herself. Well, V.R has learned how to ask the question that puts the law into wise use (we cannot stop using it; but if we use it wisely is another matter), ‘What do you want?’ She asked her friend, who told her a list. Right there, she applied the law in revision, and in 37 minutes, some of the list of wishes were met. How grand is that, on the spot! We know the law, but I write of the promise, or at least the spiritual sensation of the Man within.

Today’s writing is titled ‘Degrees of Being.’ Now, what Being are we talking? And what degrees are these? The Being that I refer to, and I know no other Being in the whole vast world, this Being is God. In the Bible, the more entertaining and instructive book than any other, the word that refers to God is ‘Elohim’. ‘In the beginning, God (Elohim) created the heaven and the earth.’ The word really means many regarded as or existing as One. So, God is the One and Only that is composed of many. It is this Being, this One God of whom I write.

Now you know the world has its own way. The children of this generation are wise in their own sight. So, they have their meanings and intentions, and they have set up a meaning and an intention for the word ‘God’. Now, it means someone on the outside, someone to whom humanity must cry and petition out of fear and terror. Totally removing this One-of-many from Self, man has created two lords. Who is in charge of your life? Who makes your decisions? You want to believe that you are in charge, that you wore the sandals when you chose and shower when you chose. So, you are God, for God is creator. You are creating these experiences. God gives and takes, but hasn’t man acted this? God creates peace and makes evil, but has humanity lagged behind? Now, do you want to believe you are in charge of these decisions of your life and still maintain with the world that God is outside of you? Well, they take God and due to ignorance of whom he really is, they put him to be outside of man. But ‘Thou art a man. God is no more. Thy own Humanity Learn to adore.’ (Blake)

In the same manner that I hope you now see God within, not only because I persuade you to do so (because I encourage you to look for him not just outside but also inside; if you so love him, complete your search) — this same manner, I hope you take the word Being and you don’t let it mean what the world has characterized it. Some vague essence or some impersonal power that is inside. When I use the word God or Being, I refer to the Man within you who is your wonderful human Imagination. It is this man who has degrees of expressing Self.

There are infinite levels of expression, or infinite states of being. There is a state called humanity, and this state is the lowest state of conscious intelligence that God descends. And he actually descended into the state of humanity, and the Eternal ONE becomes fragmented many. So, ‘Thou art a man; God is no more. Thy own Humanity learn to adore.’ God’s name is forever ‘I Am.’ You can find not one man on earth who would not address himself by the very name ‘I Am.’ It is more than words to him. Let his name be John. John is not only capable of asking, ‘Who am I?’ He has been called John from the day he’s born to earth and he introduces himself, ‘I am John.’ But he is not only capable of still asking, ‘Who am I?’; he actually asks it. He demands it of himself so seriously, in very lonely times when the whole world is buried in darkness. He calls upon himself alone listening and asks, ‘Who am I?’ So he knows that he is not just ‘John’. She knows that she is not merely ‘Alice’. I would not, I COULD NOT settle at calling myself just by the name that the world calls me. So, I meet you tomorrow and you demand to know me. I tell you, ‘I am Adelere.’ I tell you all the wonderful facts and exaggerations about me. ‘I am Adelere. I am a Nigerian. I am male. I am this and I am that.’ You take these facts and you think you know me. But who knows me? When you have left me, and they have left me. The whole world has gone still to me, gone away in their own private businesses, I then call myself to the court and demand to hear the truth before the only witness. I ask the same question that the world has asked me just a few hours or a few days before. ‘Who am I?’ And I cannot put the same answers before myself. You cannot say in that moment that you are John or you are Alice, that you are 24 or you are 64 and accept it. You won’t accept it, even though no person is there to question your verdict but yourself. In search of what at night do I unmercifully reject the answer that so masked my ignorance of myself in the day? To whom is my answer, my limitations of myself to someone called Adelere, a Nigerian, an entrepreneur, a friend or a son, to whom is my answer so dissatisfactory as to contend it with me, and bring me horrors and anguish with the most ferocious demands, ‘Who am I?’ Who is my judge within myself?

As Paul puts it, ‘Who will bring a charge against God’s elect? It is God who justifies. Who is he that condemns? It is Christ that died, yes rather, that is risen again.’ So God brings a charge against you and Christ condemns all that you hold to be true of yourself. He charges you and you alone. The world cannot then understand what you pass through alone, because it is not a man, not a fellow, not even a king that charges you, but God. God who alone can justify you now charges you, his own elect. And he demands of you, ‘Who am I?’ He is seeking his eternal name from you, because his glory will he share with no one. He would not share his name with anyone, would he? So, if he would give you the power to say, ‘I Am this and that,’ he must first totally become you. So, Christ died. He totally becomes you, and that is death. He did not die to be forgotten, no. Christ died to be risen again. For when a thing dies, this world of shadow teaches us that it dies to bring forth newness of life.
Is not all life the phoenix?
The seed of corn and
the seed of acorn,
like the burned phoenix in hell
but they beneath the cold earth of death,
there blossom in a sprout
and resurrect their likeness
only a thousand more and ten thousand more,
in three months or three centuries
but one day certainly,
one hour certainly.

So, this is the being that condemns you. You answer to the world, ‘I am rich. A multimillionaire. A singer. A politician. An analyst. An activist. A religious priest. An unhappy widow. A heartbroken wife. A frustrated son. A loved daughter. A confident woman. A proud father. A caring mother.’ But everything that you answer to the world is not enough for this being within you. You have the whole world which still does not exchange for your soul because that being condemns you, the one whom the world calls Christ. And he is You, within you as your own wonderful human imagination. But though he died or limited himself into you to become humanity, it is he who is risen again. And these are different degrees of the same being. Once humanity, once divinity. But the two are one, the Elohim. There are no two, there is just one. It is this one that the world calls God who judges all states that it fuses with by actually fusing with it, the state of Adelere or the state of Alice. The state of wealth, of fame and of poverty or insignificance. So by revelation, the poet wrote years back, ‘God stands in the congregation of God; he judges among the gods. ‘ But if we use the name translated God, that is Elohim, the poet really said, ‘He judges among God.’ So, he plays the parts. He becomes you and he becomes me. And when I think I have separated him from myself, which is my illusion because I am on a degree of the same Being, a degree called Humanity; so, when I assume myself separate from him, he judges within me and he condemns me. He condemns all that I hold dear in this world, for which I have borne his name but completely forgotten him, which is to have completely forgotten myself.

I am expressing a degree of the same Being, a degree of the One and Only Being who is my Imagination; and this expression at this level is humanity. You are expressing a degree called humanity. All the frailty, all the fears, all the affection and all the care. Whether pure, whether brave, whether impure, whether weak. There is only One Being expressing various degrees of experiencing called humanity. Now, all that makes your humanity learn to adore. ‘I do not consider either the Just or the Wicked to be in a Supreme State, but to be every one of them States of the Sleep which the Soul may fall into in its deadly dreams of Good and Evil when it leaves Paradise following the Serpent.’ (Blake) You are God. I am not conferring an identity upon you. I am not asking you to accept it. You willingly forgot it, so why would I force you to accept it? But it would be good if you dare to test it. For divine imagination and human imagination are one and the same Being on different degrees of experience.

So, use the law. For the law is given to you to make the judgement of God bearable. This judgement that you’ve forgotten who you are, and that will not accept the answer you give to mask away from the world. It will not accept it and will pursue you until the end of the world so that he will redeem you. Whether you are rich or you are poor, you face the same judgement of persistent desire: who am I? So, you don’t trade the riches and comforts of the world in the name of spirituality. Use the law to cushion yourself, to make the fires of judgement bearable for yourself while the promise seeks you. For just as humanity is divinity keyed low, the law is the promise keyed low. Divine Imagination uses the law in the beginning, and he imagines that he expands infinitely. So, he lives in the end and stays faithful to the end. Then the drama, the ‘how’ begins. There can be no expansion without a limit; and the limit of divinity is humanity. So, God became man. He must become man that he may show expanding love to man and through man expand infinitely as God. And that is the promise fulfilling itself, through all the experience of humanity that you are learning to adore. All this is part of the process, part of the play. But you are here already keyed low, God keyed into the degree of being called humanity. So, use the law to comfort yourself. He doesn’t need your poverty to save you. He doesn’t need your self-pity, your victimization nor your self-deprecation. Neither would he use your good health, your status in society nor your wealth. So, he will condemn all these states, condemn them anyway until you find him as yourself. Therefore, use the law to comfort yourself. He gave you the law because he loves you, and he wants you to be able to make the process comfortable.

Imagining creates reality. Divine imagining creates humanity. Now, you as humanity can imagine. And it is the same imagination keyed low. So, you ask yourself, ‘What do I want out of life?’ Don’t condition it. Don’t limit yourself, because you already experienced the greatest limit any Being could experience (and there is only one being, who is you). The limit is humanity, and here you are confined to this garment of flesh and blood. Go look at the shock of the baby at birth. She must cry, for she has just taken the greatest limitation upon herself. She cries and they take that for the sign that she lives, but she has confined her divinity into the garment of flesh and blood, totally forgetting whom she was.

‘So I must die. I empty myself of all that I am in order to take upon myself the weaknesses, the limitations of man and become man. And I must be completely forgetful of the Being that I am. I can’t pretend that I am. If I pretend that I am, I am simply masquerading in the flesh. I have to completely die: and that is the beginning of the drama — a complete amnesia as to who I am.’ (Neville, The Son Revealed)

While you are unfolding your purpose in it, entertain your innermost desires. God wants to succor you, and he sends you this desire. Now, you don’t condition it upon your current means. Don’t condition it by your religious code, or your moral code. Trust the being within you to bring unto you perfect desires. You want to be happy, to be fulfilled, to be noble, to be respected, to be wealthy or to be recognized? Or you want it for another. Well, the law will bring all that you want. Now, you go to the end and live in the end. God imagined being humanity and he came so low; therefore, all things are possible. You too can imagine being these states and you fuse with them. When you do, they will be animated and externalized in your world.

So, there are degrees of being; and humanity being the lowest, you can choose any state you desire. The state of affluence, the state of wealth, the state of peace, the state of loving marriage, of caring friendships? Fuse with them, and don’t hesitate to make the assumption. Dare to use the law because whatever you get does not break the promise of Divine Imagination to awaken you as God into Eternity.

In this silence, use the law.