METAPHYSICAL INTERPRETATION OF JOHN CHAPTER 17
17:1These things spake Jesus; and lifting up his eyes to heaven, he said, Father, the hour is come; glorify thy Son, that the son may glorify thee: 17:2even as thou gavest him authority over all flesh, that to all whom thou hast given him, he should give eternal life. 17:3And this is life eternal, that they should know thee the only true God, and him whom thou didst send, even Jesus Christ.
IN THIS SCRIPTURE Jesus was asking of the Father as never before. To glorify means to magnify with praise, to enhance with spiritual splendor. to adorn. Jesus was asking for a full and complete unification of His consciousness with that of the Father. Jesus realized that He had been given all authority over the flesh. He was holding the realization not only for His own glorification but also for that of His disciples. Jesus realized that in this union a full understanding of God and His laws would be revealed, which would naturally make clear to Him the way of eternal life.
17:4I glorified thee on the earth, having accomplished the work which thou hast given me to do. 17:5And now, Father, glorify thou me with thine own self with the glory which I had with thee before the world was.
17:6I manifested thy name unto the men whom thou gavest me out of the world: thine they were, and thou gavest them to me; and they have kept thy word. 17:7Now they know that all things whatsoever thou hast given me are from thee: 17:8for the words which thou gavest me I have given unto them; and they received them, and knew of a truth that I came forth from thee, and they believed that thou didst send me.
17:9I pray for them: I pray not for the world, but for those whom thou hast given me; for they are thine: 17:10and all things that are mine are thine, and thine are mine: and I am glorified in them. 17:11And I am no more in the world, and these are in the world, and I come to thee. Holy Father, keep them in thy name which thou hast given me, that they may be one, even as we are. 17:12While I was with them, I kept them in thy name which thou hast given me: and I guarded them, and not one of them perished, but the son of perdition; that the scripture might be fulfilled. 17:13But now I come to thee; and these things I speak in the world, that they may have my joy made full in themselves. 17:14I have given them thy word; and the world hated them, because they are not of the world, even as I am not of the world. 17:15I pray not that thou shouldest take them from the world, but that thou shouldest keep them from the evil one. 17:16They are not of the world even as I am not of the world. 17:17Sanctify them in the truth: thy word is truth. 17:18As thou didst send me into the world, even so sent I them into the world. 17:19And for their sakes I sanctify myself, that they themselves also may be sanctified in truth.
17:20Neither for these only do I pray, but for them also that believe on me through their word; 17:21that they may all be one; even as thou, Father, art in me, and I in thee, that they also may be in us: that the world may believe that thou didst send me. 17:22And the glory which thou hast given me I have given unto them; that they may be one, even as we are one; 17:23I in them, and thou in me, that they may be perfected into one; that the world may know that thou didst send me, and lovedst them, even as thou lovedst me. 17:24Father, I desire that they also whom thou hast given me be with me where I am, that they may behold my glory, which thou hast given me: for thou lovedst me before the foundation of the world.
17:25O righteous Father, the world knew thee not, but I knew thee; and these knew that thou didst send me; 17:26and I made known unto them thy name, and will make it known; that the love wherewith thou lovedst me may be in them, and I in them.
Jesus must have been the product of a former cycle of time, and He had previously made the perfect union in the invisible with the Father.
In proportion as people understand and have faith in Jesus as their actual Saviour from sin, and in proportion as they are set free from appetite, passion, jealousy, prejudice, and all selfishness, they experience wholeness of mind and body as the result. The ultimate result of this knowledge and of daily practice in overcoming (even as Jesus Himself overcame) will be a new race that will demonstrate eternal life--the lifting up of the whole man--spirit, soul, and body--into the Christ consciousness of oneness with the Father. This is indeed true glorification. By means of the reconciliation, glorification, and at-one-ment that Jesus re-established between God and man we can regain our original estate as sons of God here upon earth.
To comprehend this glorification requires a deeper insight into creative processes than the average man and woman have attained, not because they lack the ability to understand but because they have submerged their thinking powers in a grosser thought stratum. So only those who study Being from the standpoint of pure mind can come into an understanding of the transfiguration and of the part
that Jesus played in opening the way for humanity to enter into the glory that was theirs before the world was formed.
In its highest form, prayer is an exalted state of consciousness in which self-interest is lost in the desire to do good to everybody. Jesus always prayed the unselfish prayer. There are as many kinds of prayer as there are people in the universe. Those who pray for some personal good have no conception of the ecstasy of those who utterly forget self in their supplications for the good to be given to others. Yet all kinds of prayers are fulfilled. "Ask whatsoever ye will, and it shall be done unto you."
Those who spend much time in the Spirit come to be so much in love with it that they find it hard to endure the selfishness of the world, which they are tempted to leave entirely. Mystics and spiritual adepts withdraw to caves and the wilderness, as far from the haunts of men as they can get, because of the evil they see and feel so vividly. Then it becomes a real struggle to keep the self in the world. It is not right for one who has found this divine Truth within himself to withdraw from those who are ignorant of it and enjoy his riches alone. We should not think of being taken out of the world, but rather should we strive to keep our faculties from evil.
When we have found our being in God, we are no longer identified with the world; our interest is in spiritual things, and all our prayers are lifted up. "They are not of the world, even as I am not of the world." Through our intense realization of
the eternal good and our unity with it we become so saturated with the thought of good that we are impregnable to evil. Thus we find that the doctrine of sanctification is based on Truth, and that it is possible for us to become so good in purpose that everything we do will turn to good. But we must certainly sanctify ourselves in Christ and persistently send forth the word of purity and unselfishness to every faculty in order to demonstrate it. We must not confine our prayer for perfection to ourselves alone but make it for them also that believe on Christ "through their word."
The realization of divine unity is the highest that we can attain. This is true glory, the blending and merging of the whole being into Divine Mind. "I in them, and thou in me, that they may be perfected into one."
This merging of God and man does not mean the total obliteration of man's consciousness but its glorification or expansion into that of the divine. This is taught in Hindu philosophy as the absorption of the soul into Nirvana, which has been erroneously interpreted as the total loss of individual consciousness instead of its majestic expansion.
