Lessons in Truth · 1 of 12

Statement of Being: Who and What God Is—Who and What Man Is

In entering upon this course of instruction let each one, as far as possible, lay aside for the time being all previous theories and beliefs. By so doing you will be saved the trouble of trying all the way through the course to force “new wine into old bottles.” If there is anything as we proceed which you do not understand or agree with, just let it lie passively in your mind until you receive the entire course, for many statements which would naturally arouse antagonism and discussion will be clear and easily accepted a little further on. After the course is completed, if you wish to return to your old beliefs and ways of living, you are at perfect liberty to do so. But for the time being, be willing to become as little children; for, said a Master in spiritual things, “Except ye become as little children ye can in no wise enter the kingdom of heaven.” If at times there seems to be repetition, please remember that these are lessons, not lectures.

When Jesus was talking with the Samaritan woman at the well, he said to her, “God is Spirit; and they that worship him must worship him in spirit and in truth.” He did not say, God is a Spirit. The article a, italicized as it is in our Bibles, has been interpolated by translators. To say “a spirit” would be implying the existence of more than one spirit. Jesus in his statement did not do this.

Webster in his definition of Spirit says, “Spirit is life or intelligence conceived of entirely apart from physical embodiment. It is vital essence, force, energy, as distinct from matter.”

God, then, is not, as many of us have been taught to believe, a big personage or man residing somewhere in a beautiful region in the sky called “heaven,” where good people go when they die and see him clothed with ineffable glory; nor is he a stern, angry judge only awaiting an opportunity somewhere to punish bad people who have failed to live a perfect life here.

God is Spirit, or the Creative Energy which is the cause of all visible things. God as Spirit is the invisible life and intelligence (according to Webster’s definition of Spirit) which underlies all physical things. There could be no body, or visible part, to anything unless there was first Spirit as creative cause.

God is not a being or person having life, intelligence, love, power. God is that invisible, intangible, but very real something we call Life. God is perfect Love and infinite Power. God is the sum total of these combined, the sum total of all good, whether manifested or unexpressed.

There is but one God in the universe, but one source of all different forms of life or intelligence we see, whether they be man, animal, tree or rock.

God is Spirit. We cannot see Spirit with these fleshly eyes; but when we clothe ourselves with the spiritual body, then Spirit is visible or manifest and we recognize it. You do not see the living, thinking “me” when you look at my body. You see only the form through which I am manifesting.

God is Love. We cannot see love, nor grasp any comprehension of what love is, except as love is clothed with a body. All the love there is in the universe is God. The love between husband and wife, between parents and children, is just the least little bit of God as pushed forth through visible form into manifestation. A mother’s love, so infinitely tender, so unfailing, is the same love, only manifested in greater degree through the mother.

God is Wisdom or Intelligence. All the wisdom or intelligence we see in the universe is God—is wisdom projected through a visible form. To educate (from educere, to lead forth) never means to force into from the outside, but always means to draw out from within something already existing there. God as infinite Wisdom or Intelligence lives within every human being, only waiting to be led forth or drawn out into manifestation. This is true education.

Heretofore we have sought knowledge and help from outside sources, not knowing that the source of all knowledge, the very Spirit of Truth, was lying latent within ourselves, each and every one, only waiting to be called on to teach us the truth about all things—most marvelous of teachers, and everywhere present, without money or price!

God is Power. Not simply God has power, but God is Power. In other words, all the power there is to do anything is God. God, the source of our existence every moment, is not simply omnipotent (all powerful); he is Omnipotence (all power). He is not alone omniscient (all knowing); he is Omniscience (all knowledge). He is not only omnipresent, but more—Omnipresence. God is not a being having qualities, but he is the Good itself. Everything you can think of that is good, when in its absolute perfection, goes to make up that invisible being we call God.

God, then, is the Substance (from sub, under, and stare, to stand) , or the real thing standing under every visible form of life, love, intelligence or power. Each rock, tree, animal, everything visible, is a manifestation of the One Spirit—God—differing only in degree of manifestation; and each of the numberless modes of manifestation, or individualities, however insignificant, contains the whole.

One drop of water taken from the ocean is just as perfect ocean water as the whole great body. The constituent elements of water are exactly the same, and they are combined in precisely the same ratio or perfect relation to each other, whether we consider one drop, a pailful, a barrelful or the entire ocean out of which the lesser quantities are taken; each is complete in itself; they differ only in quantity or degree. Each contains the whole; and yet no one would make the mistake of supposing from this statement that each drop was the entire ocean.

So we say that each individual manifestation of God contains the whole; not for a moment meaning that each individual is God in his entirety, so to speak, but that each is God come forth, shall I say? in different quantity or degree.

Man is the last and highest manifestation of this Divine Energy, the fullest and most complete expression (or pressing out) of God. To him, therefore, is given the dominion over all other manifestations.

God is not only the Creative Cause of every visible form of intelligence and life at its commencement, but each moment throughout its existence he lives within every created thing as the life, the ever-renewing, recreating, upbuilding cause of it. He never is and never can be for a moment separated from his creations. Then how can even a sparrow fall to the ground without his knowledge? “And ye are of more value than many sparrows.”

God is. Man exists (from ex, out of, and sistare, to stand forth). Man stands forth out of God.

Man is a threefold being, made up of Spirit, soul and body. Spirit, our innermost, real being, the absolute part of us, the “I” of us, which you and I know has never changed, though our thoughts and circumstances may have changed hundreds of times—this part of us is a standing forth of God into visibility. It is the Father in us. At this central part of his being every person can say, “I and the Father are one,” and speak only absolute truth.

Mortal mind—that which Paul calls “carnal mind”—is the consciousness of error. The great whole of as yet unmanifested Good, or God, from whom we are projections or “offspring,” and “in whom we live, move, and have our being” continually, is to me the Father—Our Father; “and all ye are brethren,” because all are manifestations of one and the same Spirit. Jesus, recognizing this, said, “Call no man upon the earth your father, for one is your Father which is in heaven.” As soon as any of us recognize our true relationship to all men we at once slip out of our narrow, personal loves, our “me and mine,” into the universal love which takes in all the world, joyfully exclaiming, “Who is my mother? who are my brethren? Behold, these are my mother and my brethren!”

Childlike, untrained minds say God is a personal being. The statement that God is Principle chills them, and in terror they cry out, “They have taken away my Lord, and I know not where they have laid him!”

Broader and more learned minds are always cramped by the thought of God as a person, for personality limits to place and time.

God is both Principle and Person. As the creative underlying cause of all things, he is Principle, impersonal; as expressed in each individual, he becomes personal to that one—a personal, loving, all-giving Father-Mother. All that any human soul can ever need or desire is the infinite Father-principle, the great reservoir of unexpressed good. There is no limit to the Source of our being, nor to his willingness to manifest more of himself through us, when we are willing to do his will.

Hitherto we have turned our hearts and efforts toward the external for fulfillment of our desires and for satisfaction, and all have been grievously disappointed. For the hunger of every one for satisfaction is only the cry of the homesick child for its Father-Mother— God. It is only the Spirit’s desire in us to come forth into our consciousness as more and more perfection until we shall have become fully conscious of our oneness with All-Perfection. Man never has been and never can be satisfied with anything less.

We each have direct access through the Father in us—the central “I” of our being—to the great whole of life, love, wisdom, power, which is God. What we now want to know is, how to receive more from the Fountainhead and to make more and more of God (which is but another name for All-Good) manifest in our daily lives.

There is but one Source of Being. That Source is the living Fountain of All-Good, be it life, love, wisdom, power, or whatever—the Giver of all good gifts. That Source and you are connected every moment of your existence. You have power to draw upon this Source for all of good you are, or ever will be, capable of desiring.