Key Symbols in the Gospels

(Back) Introduction to Metaphysical Bible Interpretation The Birth of Jesus (Next)

There are some key symbols that could be defined for us in advance for our benefit because we will be encountering them throughout the whole of the Gospels lessons. They are:

Jesus or Jesus Christ - Spiritual awareness in man.

Mary, the mother of Jesus — Intuition, love, pure feelings. (These are very general definitions, they become more specific in certain incidents where this is required.)

John the Baptist - The illumined intellect which has knowledge of right and wrong. (These definitions are based on the Metaphysical Bible Dictionary, I have concentrated them.) When I say, "knowledge of right and wrong" doesn't it stir up a memory in you? Yes, the tree of the knowledge of good and evil on the Garden of Eden. The illumined intellect which has knowledge of the difference between right and wrong, this is what John stands for. Notice what Jesus says concerning this factor in us: "Of all men that are born of woman," meaning all the strictly human accomplishments of the person, "there is none greater than John." That is, in the strictly human nature of us our very highest attainment has been having acquired the knowledge of the difference between right and wrong. Then Jesus goes on a different plane and says, "he that is least in the Kingdom of Heaven, is greater than John." In other words, from the human level of us, the highest attainment is to have gained the ability to have knowledge of what is right and what is wrong, but on the kingdom of heaven level that kind of knowledge isn't important, what is important is the knowledge of Truth rather than the difference between right and wrong. That is a new dimension, a higher dimension than the strictly human manifest material level, and yet, as we now are, as we are a combination of both, we need both levels. What if you lost that knowledge of right and wrong, what would happen? You would be good for nothing. But still even with your knowledge of right and wrong you have something even greater than that which is, you know the Truth that there is but One presence, One power, God, infinite, unfailing Good. In spite of your knowledge of right and wrong, and as important as it is, another level of you knows there is only One presence, One power, God the Good omnipotent. PARADOX. We will hear lots of paradoxes in this course. If paradoxes disturb you, resign now.

Q. What is the relation between the knowledge of I AM or the knowledge that I have an identity, and the knowledge of right and wrong?

A. The knowledge that you have of goodness, perfection, or Truth is innate, it is not born in time, it is an eternal reality of Being. The knowledge of right and wrong is something you have acquired because it is necessary equipment for this particular stage of your exploratory journey at this particular time in this particular level of existence in order to survive, in order to create and accomplish on this temporary level, this journey that we are on. You need and you have acquired this necessary equipment which is the ability to think on this polarity plane and to manifest a body that can function on this plane, and to communicate with others that are on this plane, and to become involved in and to learn from events which occur on this level you have to have that type of mental equipment which is the knowledge of right and wrong or you will not survive.

Q. Then, anytime I think I am or I have an identity, that is of the spiritual plane even if I don't consider myself perfect?

A. Right. In those moments you are knowing that you and your life are so much more than this temporary evolutionary experience you have entered into and, of course, you and I would question ourselves, but why am I in this limited realm? Why am I in this particular experience? What got me here? Well, of course, there are probably a dozen valid possible explanations but the one I like the best is this: We are essentially, eternally, primarily spiritual beings, Christ, but that Christ means ALL, total, all possibilities included and we have begun a look into our own allness. We have at some point turned in and begun to look into and explore our own allness and the thing that we are using to do all this inner exploring of what this is all about.

Now, this particular human family, which are really Christ, you know, are a conglomerate of persons who at this moment in "time" have their own allness called humanity and for a split of a second in eternity, our whole attention is on the split of humanity part of our wholeness but on that level the split of a second appears to be an evolutionary wave, life span, including many many lifetimes to us. Measuring from this perspective of our attention examining the human part of our allness, we are stuck here for a split second, but on the human level it appears to be an eon of evolutionary life wave; but on another level the eternal, it appears to be a split of a second (comparatively). Here we slow down, this is a gross level compared to higher levels. Everything is more gross and everything appears as migratory and so eternity is taking on the aspect of time, of measurable time. But the time will come, and Jesus indicates this without actually saying it, when we will be able to come back from this period of examining ourselves and will be able to say, "Gee, that was fun, but I don't want to do it again." But I might do it again, you might do what Jesus did, we would remember what it was like when we went through that split second on examining the human part of our allness and he might sense, as Mr. Fillmore calls it, soul sympathy toward those souls that are now going through that same thing and are having a pretty rough time of it and maybe you might want to come back into it as Jesus did, and make it easier for those souls that did follow him. I actually sometimes think that one of Jesus main missions was to help us make the time go faster.

The Disciples - "The symbols for the growing awareness of each of our twelve faculties. We are told that Jesus called forth the twelve disciples and the way it appears in the narrative is that he looked outside of himself and found the twelve different men and then added them on to his own, but metaphysically this is not so. The calling of the twelve disciples metaphysically is your own spiritual awareness calling forth and quickening the activity of the twelve powers but you do not reach outside of yourself to find these twelve and them add them unto yourself, but you call them from within. Spiritual awareness knows that within you are these twelve potentials implanted in your being as components of the Christ from the beginning but up until a certain point they are only as divine ideas. They are potentials, they are latent and only shadows of those that were utilized by us but because of the quickening and the development of spiritual awareness in us we are calling them forth now in their adult state. Jesus called forth twelve adult men as disciples, and the twelve powers are the measurable components of your Christ nature. But, is Christ the twelve powers added up? No, Christ is more than the sum total of his components. The twelve powers, as far as possible, none should be allowed to express all by itself. When Peter tried to pull it off all by himself, stepping out on faith and faith only ... he sank, with faith alone, sooner or later you are going to need help. The faculties are not meant to operate singly, they try to imitate the Christ; why did Peter want to walk on the waters? To imitate Christ. The twelve powers, as good as they are, none of them have the capability of taking the place of the Christ. The Christ is still even more and when one faculty may step out on its own and try to do something, it may have a measure of success for a while - Peter was able to walk a little bit - but only for a while. If you are expressing only love, it may rend a bit of happiness for a while but if it is not blended properly with other components, imbalance will occur. Did not Jesus say, "where two or more are gathered together ...."

Satan or the Devil - Is a personified symbol for negative tendencies in general. These words are very much like the word sin; it isn't naming something like "Harmony of the Gospels" is naming a book, but sin, the devil and evil are generic terms. They do not pin-point a specific in life or in the world, those terms are simply pointing toward or referring to tendencies, memories, characterization sort of, they are very abstract terms and must not be taken as literal specifics. You see, it was in reaction to the old way of using these words - sin, devil, evil - that Unity bounced almost too much in the other direction and starts to say, "well, these words have no validity whatsoever." Everything that exists has validity in some level or it could not exist. Everything has validity in its own part in the overall purpose in things. It is true, everything, no matter from what perspective we may be viewing it, has a validity and a purpose. We say, "There is no evil," and yet, there is evil. This thing we are referring to when we say evil has its own validity in its own role in the overall purpose of man's being and so we just cannot go around discounting things because they are distasteful to us from our current viewpoint or from our current view in the grander purpose. Remember, dear ones, your role within the grander purpose. By this I mean a purpose even grander than you becoming a successful Unity Minister. That is grand, but there is an even grander purpose of which that is a part and that will be your role and these things that we are now finding distasteful and are using denials on, be sure that you do not deny too much about them, otherwise you lose your sense of balance, you lose your usefulness in the grand purpose. Even negativeness, so that what Satan and the devil represent, this thing that humanity shares in common, a tendency toward repeating this sort of thing, negativeness, error, selfishness, things that seem to be contrary to spiritual unfoldment but in reality they are not, they only seem to be, they offer obstacles, but these obstables are never exactly what they seem to be.

Scribes and Pharisees - They too seem to offer obstruction to the work of Jesus and they stand for states of mind which very much seem to oppose and retard the unfoldment of our spiritual nature and they stand for stubborn literal mindedness, inflexible opinions based on outer appearances. I have added to that list lately our inherited opinions or opinions granted on torus by our upbringing. They must be overcome.

The Bread of Heaven (and the Blood of Christ) - Both stand for the same thing which is the substance of Truth ideas, the substance of metaphysical Truth, specially that kind of Truth brought to earth through Jesus, "Take,eat, this is my body." Bread always symbolizes substance, no matter how this word is used in the Bible stands for substance, spiritual substance, so the body of Christ would be the substance of the ideas brought to us through Christ. We are to eat of this, but we are to drink of his blood.

The Blood of Christ - and the wine which is his body. This symbol of his body stands for the livingness of Truth ideas. So, the bread or the body is the substance of Truth ideas, and the wine or his blood is the livingness of them. So, to really perform the spiritual Holy Communion we must not only learn and believe the Truth ideas (eat the body) but then we must live them, express their livingness, not just the theoretical correctness. In other words, if you are giving a lesson on forgiveness, in your lesson you share the bread or the body of Christ which is the substance of Truth ideas concerning forgiveness, but then you will want your students and yourself to carry it our into life and that is the fulfillment of the Holy Communion idea. When wine is used in the Bible and is not equated to the blood of Christ, then wine stands for life essence or life energies.

In the Introduction John Pictures Christ as the Word (Logos) (John 1:1-13) (H.G. page 2) (Read the passage) "In the beginning was the Word." The Word is used as the creative function of God which is with God, which is of God, which is God and yet it is not all of God; this opening is rather similar to the opening of Genesis, "In the beginning God created..." Here it is, "In the beginning was the Word..." The similarity with the opening paragraph of Genesis is obviously intentional, the difference being that John uses the Word as a synonym for creative principle and creation. This tells us that the aspect of God possible to talk about begins on that level of man that we call creative principle or Creator. The aspect of God that is greater than that of the Creator, we can't talk about, we don't have words for it, it doesn't relate to us. God begins to relate to you and me in his capacity or in his aspect of Creator, but God is even more than Creator. Creator is only one aspect of God Almighty but higher than that it has no meaning for that, we just know there is higher than that. Remember the little five year old Sunday School girl in the class about God created everything, the classic question, "But who created God?" Actually, what her question really is, is who created the Creator? And believe it or not, that has an answer: that which created the Creator is that aspect of God which is more than the Creator.

Text of the original transcript from paragraph 4 on page 3 through paragraph 1 on page 8.
Transcribed by Mark Hicks on August 8, 2013