The Impersonal Life · 10 of 19
IX. The Garden of Eden
Whether or not you have gotten any clear grasp as yet of what has just been stated, do not discard it as impossible of comprehension. For in every line is hidden a meaning that will more than repay you for the study necessary to make it become clear.
This Message is to awaken you to a realization of what You are, to a realization of your real Self. It is intended to make you once more conscious of Me, your Divine Self, so conscious that never again will you be deceived by that other self, which you have imagined as being you and which so long has lured you on by feeding you with its unsatisfying sense pleasures, its mental dissipations and emotional delights.
But before that can be it will be necessary for you thoroughly to know that supposed other self, that self which You created by thinking it real and separate from Me, and then kept alive by giving it the power thus to entice and deceive you; yes, that self-created self, with its purely selfish pride and ambitions and imagined power, its love of life, of possessions, of being thought wise or good—but which self is merely your human personality, which was born only to die as a separate identity, and as such has no more reality or permanence than the leaf, the snow or the cloud.
Yes, you will be brought face to face with that petty personal self, and will see with perfect vision all its sordid selfishness and human vanities; and you will then learn—if you will but turn to me and ask in simple faith and trust— that it is I, the Infinite, Impersonal part of You, abiding always within, who am thus pointing out to you all these illusions of the personality, which for so many ages have separated you in consciousness from Me, Your glorious, Divine Self. This realization will surely come, when you can recognize that this Message is from Me, and when you have determined that it shall be. To you, whom I have inspired with such a determination, I will cause every illusion in time to disappear, and you shall in truth know Me. The exercise of your mind along these abstract lines will not hurt you. Instead it is what your mind needs. For, not until you can grasp My Meaning when presented to you in ideas such as these herein contained, coming from without, can you perceive and correctly interpret My Idea when I inspire you from within. Your mind I AM thus preparing for USE, not to gain more earthly knowledge, but in order that you can receive and give forth My Heavenly Knowledge to those whom I shall bring to you for that purpose.
So with a prayer to Me, Your own Real Self, your GOD within, that true realization may come, and that you may see the Truth in these statements, and in all things, conditions and experiences that may come to you, let us proceed.
§
We have arrived, in the course of our consideration of the process of unfoldment of My Idea, to where the I AM of you, manifesting in your Immortal Soul Body, or in the Thought Image created by My Thinking, is now ready to enter into material form, a form suitable for the earth expression of My Attributes.
This change from a mental to a mortal form took place after the manner and process of all thinking and all creating, and is literally described in the Bible, where it says I “formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul.”
Shall I explain further?—That the quickening power within My Idea (your Soul) proceeded to attract to it the various elements of life substance (dust), and, atom by atom, and cell by cell, in due course of time, to mold and shape each into bone, tissue and organs, after the pattern of the Thought Image composing your Soul Body, thus forming an earthly outer covering, as it were,—until finally your mortal form actually became manifest to the psychic sense of the outer world, if not yet to the physical eye. Whereupon, all being now prepared for this cyclic moment, You, My Attribute, breathed into and then thru its nostrils (from within) the breath of life, and You then made your first appearance on earth as a tangible human being—a living Soul (My Idea now able to express consciously thru a suitable earth medium), containing within your Self all of My Attributes, all of My Powers and all of My Possibilities. Thus were now manifest all the various mediums for the Earth expression of My Idea; and You, being one of My Attributes, naturally had dominion over all of these mediums, or possessed the power of utilizing any or all of them, if necessary, for the full and complete expression of Your—My Attribute’s—powers and possibilities.
In this manner and for this reason alone did You and Your Brothers and Sisters come into human expression. But while in human form yet was Your expression so entirely Impersonal, that, tho self-conscious, you still looked wholly to Me within for inspiration and guidance.
This, then, was the first condition into which You awakened when You entered into Earth expression, and is what is called the Edenic state or dwelling in the Garden of Eden.
This Edenic state represents the Celestial phase of Impersonal Consciousness, or that state in which You were still consciously One with Me, tho now confined in a mortal medium of expression.
Now, I shall not tell you in detail how or why it became necessary for Me to “drive” You (now manifesting as Man or Humanity) out of the Garden of Eden, other than to remind you of the part that Desire plays in Earth expression, and its relation to My Will; how it centers your interest in outer things and makes you forget Me within.
When you have solved that and comprehend somewhat of My reason, then perhaps you can understand the necessity of first causing Your (Humanity’s) consciousness to fall into a deep sleep (You having approached the close of another Cycle, called a Cosmic day), and of letting you think you had awakened—but in reality you were still asleep and only dreaming,— and of finding Your Self (Humanity) no longer outwardly one, but two; one an active, thinking, aggressive part, thereafter called a man, and the other a passive, feeling, receptive part,—a womb-man, or woman;
Also the necessity of some Earth or outer influence being brought to bear to draw Your consciousness from purely Celestial delights and to hold it in this new dream condition, in order to develop a mortal mind, that You might thru its natural selfish tendencies become centered entirely upon Your earthly mission of mortal expression;
And the wisdom of having this influence, thru the Serpent of Selfishness (the shape I caused it to assume in your mind), first generate in the passive, feeling, receptive part of You—Desire, the mortal agent of My Will, which was to supply the motives and the power for the further and complete expression of My Attributes on Earth;
And finally the necessity of Desire casting its complete spell over You (Humanity), that Your Celestial or Impersonal nature might be kept entirely in abeyance; until, by the free but ignorant use of My Will, You could taste and fully eat of the fruit of the so-called Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil, and thru the eating could learn properly to discriminate and know its fruit for what it really is; and thus acquire the strength to use the knowledge thus gained wisely and perfectly in the expression of My Idea only.
You likewise possibly now can understand how Your (Humanity’s) eyes became opened to earthly or outer things, thru the first eating of this fruit and learning to know Good and Evil, and, after learning of the new and enticing world thus opened up to you, dying to the knowledge of the Reality back of it all; and how and why it was You learned that You were naked—both the thinking and the feeling parts of You; and also why you grew afraid.
And now, perhaps, you can see why this all had to be, why You (Humanity) had to leave the Edenic state of Impersonal consciousness and lose Your Self wholly in these outer conditions portrayed so alluringly by Desire in this Dream World, in order to be able to create a body and develop in it a personal or self consciousness capable of fully expressing My Perfection. Thus was born Your human personality, and since its birth have I impelled You to nourish, support and strengthen it, by filling You with longings, hopes, ambitions, and aspirations, with all the various manifestations of Desire; and which are but the human phases of My Will, operating in the preparation and development of a medium capable of expressing perfectly My Attributes on Earth.
And so I Spake the Word, and drove You out of the Garden of Eden, and clothed You with a “coat of skin,” or, in other words, with flesh, the same as other animals. For now, in order that You might enter into the heart of Earth conditions, into the real Earth, the Earth of My Idea,—not the one of your Dream,—so as to quicken My Idea therein into active life expression, You, My Attribute, had to have an organism and a covering appropriate for the conditions in which You were to manifest.
Likewise, in thus giving You a coat of skin, or a physical organism, did I, by so doing, provide My Idea with a suitable form for earthly expression,—I gave you the power to express Your Self, thru a physical organism, by means of words.
In the Impersonal there is no use or necessity for words. Ideas alone exist and express. They simply Are, for they are the expression of the various phases of My Being.
But in this new condition, where every expression in these early stages of outer being had to have a form and substance that could be heard, seen, felt, smelled or tasted, in order that its meaning could be clearly apprehended, there naturally had to be provided organisms capable of being used for the double purpose of expression and of understanding what was expressed. As My Idea unfolded Itself, after Your expulsion from Eden, You—one of My Divine Attributes, dwelling within My Idea of that Attribute in expression, in turn dwelling within the Thought Image of My Self, and finally manifesting outwardly in the Earth form of Words, when impelled by My Will in the guise of Desire to express My Meaning—began rapidly to “increase and multiply.”
And in Your search for the most favorable conditions for the manifestation of Your particular attributes, You gradually spread over the face of the Earth, quickening and arousing the Intelligence dormant in all forms of life contacted into fuller and more active expression of their particular phases of My Idea. Thus were formed the various Languages of Earth, each containing many words, and all born of Desire in the human mind to express in Earthly terms the infinite phases of My Idea ever surging within.
And the more the human mind strove thus to express—in Words—My Idea, the greater and more abject the failure.
And in time will the Great Awakening come—that all Words are but Symbols of One Idea—and all Ideas of whatsoever nature are but phases of One Idea, My Idea of My Self in Expression, and that all Desire to express in Words that Idea, without the consciousness of My Will being the One and Only source of Inspiration, is futile. And likewise, all desire to express in living acts that Idea, without losing all consciousness of your human personality— of your personal part in the acts, and centering your self wholly in Me, is vain and fruitless, and will end only failure, disappointment and humiliation.