(Back) The Cross and Self-Denial Jesus Again Foretells His Death and Resurrection (Next)
This is a series of lectures given by Mr. Edward Rabel, member of the faculty of S.M.R.S.
Winter semester 1976 - 2nd. Yr. Class. Part of Lecture 23 and Lecture 24 given on March 4 and 5, 1976
9:14And when they came to the disciples, they saw a great multitude about them, and scribes questioning with them. 9:15And straightway all the multitude, when they saw him, were greatly amazed, and running to him saluted him. 9:16And he asked them, What question ye with them? 9:17And one of the multitude answered him, Teacher, I brought unto thee my son, who hath a dumb spirit; 9:18and wheresoever it taketh him, it dasheth him down: and he foameth, and grindeth his teeth, and pineth away: and I spake to thy disciples that they should cast it out; and they were not able. 9:19And he answereth them and saith, O faithless generation, how long shall I be with you? how long shall I bear with you? bring him unto me. 9:20And they brought him unto him: and when he saw him, straightway the spirit tare him grievously; and he fell on the ground, and wallowed foaming. 9:21And he asked his father, How long time is it since this hath come unto him? And he said, From a child. 9:22And oft-times it hath cast him both into the fire and into the waters, to destroy him: but if thou canst do anything, have compassion on us, and help us. 9:23And Jesus said unto him, If thou canst! All things are possible to him that believeth. 9:24Straightway the father of the child cried out, and said, I believe; help thou mine unbelief. 9:25And when Jesus saw that a multitude came running together, he rebuked the unclean spirit, saying unto him, Thou dumb and deaf spirit, I command thee, come out of him, and enter no more into him. 9:26And having cried out, and torn him much, he came out: and the boy became as one dead; insomuch that the more part said, He is dead. 9:27But Jesus took him by the hand, and raised him up; and he arose. 9:28And when he was come into the house, his disciples asked him privately, How is it that we could not cast it out? 9:29And he said unto them, This kind can come out by nothing, save by prayer.
(Read Mark version). In verses 22 and 23: "But if thou canst do anything, have compassion on us, and help us. And Jesus said unto him, If thou canst! All things are possible to him that believeth." In other words, who has Jesus given the initiative to? Back to the father, back to the man who made the request? "All things are possible to him that believeth." Alleluia, it is truth, after so many times I have read this I finally now believe it, I mean, I know it, all things are possible to him that believeth. "Straightaway the father of the child cried out, and said, I believe; help thou mine unbelief." In other words, "I believe it is true and it is possible if I do believe, so, help thou mine unbelief."
In dealing with healing illustrations like this, I think it would be wise to dispense once and for all with demonology and exorcism. At one time the great concentration of mass belief was that there are entities of evil, malign intent called demons. These are personifications of evil, they can have visible and invisible form and they can enter into and depart from human beings. This was the dimension of belief most strongly believed in and concentrated in that such a belief would manifest as phenomena and so the method employed to dissolve this manifested phenomena resulting of mass belief was exorcism or casting out these demons.
Now this kind of belief is not a popularly accepted belief that we all contribute to. It is possible that it can happen as a very isolated phenomenon if there is enough belief or if the movie producers have enough money to spend on a technically structured film, then it can become a manifested phenomenon but for all general purposes demons as such no longer exist. They do exist only now in their symbolism, they are negative thoughts and feelings, destructive and blindly uncontrolled emotions. Exorcism is not called exorcism now; it is called mental or emotional healing. So let’s get away from demons and entities.
But let's look at this situation. We have a young boy, who is very much afflicted and we have the father who is very much concerned with having the boy healed. We have Jesus Christ who represents more and more the Christ but still spiritual awareness also and there is a healing need here and the father making an appeal first questions if it can be done, if it is possible, is healing a possibility here? And the answer is "All things are possible to him who believes." Sanctioning in a sense the permissible belief in healing no matter what, "Oh, but in this case.. You don't understand. ... in this case ..." "She, or he, or the doctor say ..." and immediately there is a cancellation of belief and so the situation is still in a pretty bad light.
I am certain that what Jesus is trying to do here is to establish once and for all the validity of always believing that healing is possible. Upon what could we base our claim to that validity? Upon the knowledge that health and life are ideas in divine mind, they are not matters of human opinion. They are first ideas in God Mind and all of God's divine ideas are now implanted in us as our divine inheritance. Our spiritual nature is composed of the sum total of all God's ideas made alive and one of these ideas is life and health and because of this healing is always a divine possibility. On our dimension of expression and awareness there are certain kinds of afflictions which appear to us now and so remain to us as "not possible" such as the regenerating of a portion of the body that has been amputated, the growing of a new limb, the regenerating of the growth processes strictly through consciousness. For the moment on our dimension is seemingly impossible so we don't go after that but the healing of all sicknesses, all illnesses, whether organic or pathological or psychosomatic or hereditary, if they are illnesses; all can be healed and anybody on this dimension can believe in this possibility. While we may not be able to believe in the possibility of a regenerative act in the body, that is not the same as illness.
The father would represent very much the state of our human consciousness when a very courageous kind of belief is needed here. Jesus precedes this with this statement, "All things are possible to him that believeth," and what is the father's first response to that? "Lord, I believe...." In other words, what this man believes is what Jesus just said, he believes that all things are possible, but then he indicates, "help thou my unbelief." I don't have such belief and I am asking for help. But that is all that is needed right there and then Jesus was able to then fulfill his part in this incident and he heals the boy and even this boy, you see, does not become fully healed in one step. Here is another two phase type of healing; first he seems to fall into an unconscious state and then he had to be called out of that and he was helped.
The end of this incident is really great because of its deep implications. On more than one occasion people ask Jesus to give an analysis of what was done wrong. Another case was "why was this man born blind?" "What did we do wrong?" he is asked here and Jesus never falls into that trap. We do all the time, when, we are counseling with somebody all we do is to give a negative analysis of a negative outcome and Jesus never does this. Instead of spending his time and his energy and his substance into analyzing wrongness he teaches rightness. Think it over, here is an opportunity for choice, do you want to spend your time and substance analyzing wrongness or teaching rightness? You analyze it and you multiply it, it is that simple. Pathology only increases pathological conditions.
Q. Seeking to understand the spiritual takes a certain degree of analysis and rationalization.
A. Do you have to analyze in a pathological way or can you analyze in a Truth way? Pathological is the knowledge of death processes, we also use it to designate negative motivation, interest in the unreal, death processes. You can analyze a negative situation by analyzing the truth concerning negative situations; in other words, you want to be healed of an unpleasant disease. You can do one of two things, you can take that very good, very valid desire to be healed of an unpleasant disease and then use that as motivation to investigate the unpleasant disease, this is the pathological way, you might get some degree of help from that, you probably will. What you usually get is discovery of methods to overcome that unpleasant disease but that is not the end; that is not the building of a healing consciousness; that may lead you to the building of your healing consciousness out of gratitude for that; that may lead you to the necessary thing which is to build a greater consciousness of health and life and wholeness. If so then that pathological activity served a very good purpose, it led you to the right thing which is to get a greater connection in consciousness with the divine ideas of health and wholeness and life.
In this case they wanted to know what they had done wrong that failed to heal the boy. To the literal mind, to the intellect that seemed such a useful thing to get involved in, "tell me what I did wrong that I failed to heal that boy." But Jesus' spiritual awareness, sees the whole picture, the whole desirability of a thing, so instead of telling them what they had done wrong he tells them what everybody can do right which will accomplish the ends: "Pray." "But I did pray and it didn't work." "Pray, that it does work." Don't let yourself be immersed in these things of the past, keep praying, this is the right thing.
All forms of prayer have primarily one purpose which is consciousness conditioning. In healing, especially the healing consciousness, is the thing which is involved and the marvelous thing about this, it is not just marvelous; the divine thing about this is that another person healing consciousness can heal the sick. This is the greatest thing I've ever encountered in Truth, that another person can do the work but I must not always let it stay that way there will be a price tag along with that; a bill for this but the bill is a very good bill; it is a very easy to pay, the bill says. "Now that you have been healed by another's healing consciousness, you must now start now doing a little more work on building your own healing consciousness because somebody else may soon need yours; in that way we are paying the bills and all the time keeping ahead of our own debts.
Q. I am trying to correlate the times when Jesus spoke pretty harshly when he spoke of scorpions and vipers and so forth. I am sure that there is a dividing line here that I am not seeing, but it seems that he did address to the negative quite strongly.
A. Yes, he did and Mr. Fillmore explains this in Jesus Christ Heals. He says that we want to keep in mind that even though Jesus came for a divine purpose and had, as far as we know, a fully developed Christ consciousness. He still was very much unwillingly so a human being, he was Son of God, son of man, and Mr. Fillmore points out that it is often confusing when reading Jesus’ statements to see how abruptly his tone will change; how he will switch levels in some statements like calling people vipers and faithless generation, and all that. He says that this is when the son of man speaks (period) speaks out of Jesus and the other part that is when he speaks words of truth directly from Christ consciousness would be the Son of God. And Mr. Fillmore says that sometimes within the same discourses he will mix them up. This is why, folks, I am very careful of using the word "perfect" when talking about Jesus. On your application for SMRS for instance there are Unity teachings questions that every applicant has to write out an answer to them. One of these is, what is your concept of Jesus Christ? And too many applicants are throwing the word "perfect" when talking about him. Remember when you are talking about Jesus you are talking about a human consciousness, how do we know there isn't a more perfect possibility and demonstration. Use the word "perfect" when you are equating it only to something spiritual or divine. If you use the word perfect attached to anything of the world or human nature, use it in a qualified way then you will not be full of hyperbole. Perfect in human nature is that of the eternal potential for something better, only in the realm of the divine or God is perfect to be used as an actual finished act.
(My original intent in dealing with this lesson was to spotlight the importance of belief as a key factor in all spiritual attainment and the great and subtle danger of unbelief which we are too much in the habit of taking for granted as being "alright" because "I have a right to it." "Anything I have a right to, has to be alright." But it isn't, many of the things we have a right to are not good for us and just because we have a right to them doesn't make them right. Having a right to them is right, having a right even to the wrong things is right but the thing itself may not necessarily be and so I don't want to leave this business of belief and unbelief unemphasized. Let's go back to what I originally intended to present.)
This won't have so much to do with the incident we covered but it has to do with a point that so much of the Gospels touch and imply that I want us to understand it. One of the many important ideas that Jesus tries to convey in many of his teachings is the difference between material knowledge, skill and know-how and that which we call spiritual understanding. This is a point Jesus often calls attention to in many different places, but obviously it is a point still difficult for many persons to grasp. In the material realm, in worldly matters much of what is called success depends on the amount of knowledge, skill, and know-how that the person uses. Success in the outer is very often a competitive thing with both winners and losers.
But in our inner world, in the far more important dimension called our inner world and in spiritual realms skill and know-how are not the ingredients which insure success. Here something else becomes the essential ingredient to ensure success and that something is belief. Belief is an essential quality needed for success in any kind of spiritual effort, there must be belief in both, thinking and feeling. Without it one is working with too much of a handicap when dealing with ideas of spiritual origin. In the outer material world, fact, figures, and outer appearances, belief is not always a necessary ingredient.
In fact, in this realm some beliefs constitute a type of foolishness, don't they? We can believe in some things and not believe in others and in this realm, in the outer realm, we say we insist on facts, we rely on statistics and we give and we receive opinions. Then, on the basis of our judgment we believe what we think is correct and we disbelieve what we choose to disbelieve. In the outer material realm the criteria most usually followed is "seeing is believing." Unbelief here is just as valid as belief. It is all a matter of personal choice but in our inner world, the real world, the world of spiritual values and principles, belief is an essential requirement. There is where the divine ideas are. Belief is the very same as light in our inner world. Unbelief in this world becomes a parasite which robs us of our light. It is something we cannot afford in our inner life. "But I have a right to it." "Yes, you have a right to it but you can't afford it, unless you don't like light." If you don't like light, then by all means take unbelief into your inner world. When you and I are thinking about and dealing with things and personalities in the outer world, it is perfectly alright to mix up your belief and disbelief according to the who and what you are thinking about and dealing with because the give and take of earthly life and outer affairs makes it very logical for us to use the words belief and opinion as synonyms; for instance, "I believe it was a good movie we saw last night." In other words, in the outer realm our opinions are our beliefs, they change as circumstances and facts are altered.
Today’s strong belief can become tomorrow's discarded opinions. In outer life also a person who believes too many things is considered a fool, dumb, a person who disbelieves too many things is called a skeptic and a cynic. The average intelligent person tries to achieve a balance in his outlook of life and go along in life with a fairly equal number of beliefs and disbeliefs. All this is right. All this is normal. The right to either belief or disbelief is a part of our psychological equipment which we need to make our way successfully in the phenomenal realm but in our inner world and in our inner life we are not ruled by facts or figures or statistics. In our inner life outer appearances are not the reality. Here only spiritual truth or divine ideas are what count. Here we do not in any way compete with others, but we live with our own thoughts, feelings, attitudes, memories, desires, intuition, and extrasensory perception. Our inner world is much mirror to reality and it is far more important than the outer world. It is our permanent and eternal dwelling place where no disguises are permitted. The outer world is nothing but a carnival of disguises and rampant competition but in your inner world where the real you is, no disguises, no competition.
Our inner world contains our kingdom of heaven and the ruler of this kingdom is the Christ, not the personality. In our inner world where Christ rules and where God is all in all there is one thing which we as human beings must bring to this realm in order to receive that which we need from it; belief. Without belief we have no credentials in the true inner world. Belief becomes our passport in it, it is a sort of proof of citizenship and it is also the only currency that can be used to get the things we are entitled to. It is the coin of the realm in the inner world. The only currency that can be valid. It is belief which gives us the power to transform the treasures of our inner kingdom into the blessings and the accomplishments of our outer life and expression.
Now arises the question, "what sort of belief? Belief in what? and the answer could not be simpler. You must believe in the truth of God, that is all. The truth of God which is your inner world is divine ideas. You must believe in the truth of divine ideas. This is simple to say but like everything else it takes effort, it takes practice. Well, then one can still ask, "but what is the truth of God?" That is what Jesus Christ is all about. That is what Jesus Christ is all about, folks. Jesus Christ is the teacher, the way shower and the authority as to what constitutes the truth of God. Now, Jesus uses, as far as I can gather, only three synonyms for God. And I feel that if you can grasp the meaning of the three only synonyms Jesus used for God, then you will know the truth of God. He says, God is Spirit. He says, God is good. And last but far from least, he says, God is our Father. God is love is not spoken by. Jesus, love is a divine idea, love is a gift of God, love is a divine idea implanted in the soul of man. I am sure Jesus knew this that is why God is love does not come from Jesus. To really believe this is to believe all; to not believe this is really not to believe anything because in your real world, in your inner life, unbelief is the same as nothingness, darkness, unbelief is a lack of power and a lack of existence in the realm of spiritual principle and reality.
To take unbelief into your inner life is just like taking a dangerous thief into your home. That thief will turn out to be much too expensive a guest for you to entertain. So it is with unbelief in any of our thinking and feeling toward divine ideas. Unbelief is simply too expensive a privilege to entertain. It costs us more than we can afford. The father of the boy had a right to his unbelief, but suppose he had claimed his right to unbelief, what would have cost him? The healing of his son. Would it be worth it? He had made his decisions, he had his priorities, the healing of his son was worth much more than the privilege of entertaining his unbelief because "it is fashionable". For instance, somebody said, "I have a son who just came out of college. He is very bright, he is skeptical about everything." And I say, "Sorry for him."
In this realm of divine ideas and spiritual values and principles skepticism, unbelief and "seeing is believing" and that kind of thing is so so very expensive, parasitical, and unnecessary; whereas a simple, uncomplicated, selfless belief is the passport to heaven and the coin of the realm of all substance and all good, yet the privilege of choice is never taken from any individual in this matter. There is no God, there is no law, there is no organization that can say, "You just have to believe because ...I fiat..." Then it wouldn't be belief, it would be instinct, it would be Adam and Eve back in the Garden of Eden, everything was provided for them because they were purely instinctively obedient. The moment they left the realm of pure instinct into opportunity for choice, there we go. They could either use the fruit of the tree of belief or unbelief, so that in the realm we have the fruits of that privilege, but in the inner realm give up that privilege and become simple minded, the single eyed belief. Then watch folks, because twenty five years in the Unity movement, twenty two years as a Unity Minister, lots of ups and downs, lots of "kicks in the pants", a lot of beautiful and rewarding honors and all of it, what does it mean today, what does it boils down in my own consciousness, in my own credo?
It is this, divine ideas are real, they really are, and they are always here in all their fullness, in all their purity and splendor. If you and I commit our belief to any divine idea we are capable of recognizing and allow that connection then to proceed, the very essence, the very character, the very substance of whatever divine idea of combination will manifest in my world.
Whenever things go bad or wrong or painful for me, I don't have to psychoanalyze myself. All l need to do is get still, turn within, call everything good and then observe which divine ideas am I to connect with my belief, with my acceptance, fiat, what am I doing wrong, but what divine ideas are needed here; maybe a strengthening of a connection, is it healing? am I sick? am I coughing? Not, why am I coughing? but where is my connection with the divine idea of freedom and health and life. All I have to do is reconnect with my belief and I will be healed. And whatever that divine idea may be it loves to outpour its essence and character into our life and affairs.
Q. Speaking of divine ideas somebody said that the twelve powers are our divine ideas. I wonder why prosperity which is not one of the twelve powers is a divine idea.
A. Substance is the divine idea or what we know as prosperity. Yes, the twelve powers definitely are divine ideas which have reached materialization but they do not start out as materialized ideas. They are first divine ideas, then they become etherealized ideas and then into greater and greater density and lower and lower vibratory rate if you will until they become actual organic portions of the body manifestation of consciousness. The twelve certainly are divine ideas, but they aren't the only ones. There is also substance, happiness in; the purest sense of the word, peace, and these are not faculties. They may become faculties, there is no reason why man's faculties need only be twelve but only twelve have been cognized. The others may be waiting or may be in some degree of development but you can never go wrong with starting with the twelve powers in your listing of divine ideas.
Q. Why does Jesus does not call God love or any of the twelve divine ideas that are the faculties of man but instead he calls Him Good, Spirit and Father? What is the difference between the two sets of terms?
A. Jesus does not equate the other divine ideas such as the twelve powers with God as being God because the synonyms he uses doesn't mean that God is not all other ideas too, but the synonyms that Jesus uses are so all-encompassing on the three different levels of meaning. God is Good, what is good? Anything that is a divine idea is a component of Good. So rather than saying God is the name of the twelve powers and everything else Jesus just synthesizes all the components into that glorious thing called Good, and then Spirit, the same way. What is Spirit, what is your Spirit? Your twelve powers and a lot of other things, so rather than naming all the components of Spirit he calls Him Spirit. But then, all that would be too abstract, too cosmic if he doesn't add, God is Our Father, that is the whipped cream on the cake. From our perspective we can see how wonderful it is that Jesus did not leave this name of God out. It is absolutely wonderful.
Text of the original transcript of middle of p.141 through the first two paragraphs of page 148.
Transcribed by Margaret Garvin on 04-03-2014
