Christ in You
PART II – MIND AND SOUL:
THEIR RELATION TO THE BODY
Author: Joseph Benner
Year: 1918
Christ in you – Joseph S Benner – Part 2
“LET YOUR LIGHT SO SHINE”
BORN OF THE VIRGIN
MIND, AND ITS POSSIBILITIES
PERSONALITY
THE TRUE SELF
THE TRUE SELFISHNESS
FIRST LESSON
“LET YOUR LIGHT SO SHINE”
WE have a glorious message for your plane, and our words are winged. They come with power and influence to all in need. You must have singleness of heart, and the consecrated life, to be the pure channel which God desires. Is it not worth while to voice the highest and to bear the light? Our message is for the world of pain and suffering, and for you, too; wholeness and perfection are God’s intention. Our message will teach you how to attain. Every spiritual value must be desired, must be lived. Our thought for you must become embodied, lived, manifested, expressed, to all men. The two conditions we ask, that we may teach you, are that you become willing and obedient. Your life shall help all you meet, cannot fail to do so, because you cannot grow without drawing others with you. This is God’s perfect plan for the redemption of the whole.
The seed dies in order to live, and becomes hidden, that it may manifest from within.
Out of darkness—light. Out of weakness—strength.
There is a wave of disturbance, a spiritual volcano, about to discharge itself on your earth. Be not dismayed; unrest and energy only prove that inherent life is at work. God’s wheels must not clog. By all the wars and signs of the times, know that the Day of the Lord is at hand, your own Lord and Christ, the indwelling and potent Christ of God. Marvel not, ye must be born of water and of the spirit. This I may explain to you later. The keys of the Kingdom are in your hands. Out of chaos and confusion there will come peace and order to your earth. The wars of the nations are the birth pangs of a new era, and the consciousness of the race will be lifted by the pain and agony of the refiner’s fire. In the hearts of those who have attained the Christ consciousness there will be rest and glorious hope, for they shall see the new dawn arising when Christ who is our light shall reign. His kingdom cometh for ever and ever.
SECOND LESSON
BORN OF THE VIRGIN
WE were discussing the journey of spirit through matter and its goal. This knowledge is valuable to students at your stage of evolution. You have learned the truth of Being, your high calling, and some of the first steps in the great path. When a traveller is going into strange country he is sometimes brought to a seeming stop by huge tracts of forest land, tremendous rivers, and mountainous heights. The spiritual life has up to the present been one shared with others of like thought and habit as yourselves. Some of you are seeking farther on, and this means that you are called as Abraham was, alone and in faith. Only the called see the burning bush and hear the great I AM. One of the obstacles we want to help you to overcome is the mystery of the Incarnation, or, as we stated at the first—the journey of the spirit. To woman and to woman alone came this understanding, and it will be again revealed to the feminine in this new age. Woman is having her true place in revelation and prophecy, and to woman shall the great mystery be made known.
You have learned through previous lessons that there is perfect unity between God and man. This consciousness is slowly and surely dawning over the whole earth. Now, only by keeping this truth in mind can you comprehend our lesson. Even as God and man are one, so also there must of necessity be one only, and in this one is the all, manifesting through every channel. God is the two in one, of both natures, ever self-creative, and the ultimate end of our race is unity. All life was symbolized by the life of Jesus Christ in every particular. He came of the perfect unity of the two natures. Mary symbolizes this truth, and here we would say—lest any err by worship, or undue adoration of type or personality—that Mary was the body of flesh used for this holy manifestation, for the teaching of the world, and not because of her separate worth. Seeing that the outer self is a separation, it cannot be known as the complete Self.
The race is rising to a knowledge of the purity of God, the sinlessness and love, wherein is harmony, and some here and there are learning that the age of passion, desire, and lust is passing away. There is stealing over men’s hearts the love-nature of God. It is through our love-nature that we learn the complete allness of God. He is making of the twain one flesh; this is the marriage of the two natures. Jesus Christ was born directly from the two in one—as He willingly chose to take up the life on earth, from the beginning. In every way He stands for our race-man. Yes, Jesus was God incarnate, and we shall be like Him. He was creative, His seed is in all, the holy child must first be born in you ere you can comprehend this mystery. Life is a spiritual essence. Birth is a spiritual fact, invisible at present to mortal eye. Jesus of Nazareth was God-Man, coming by the path of the one body of flesh.
Let us make quite clear that God has always been manifest in the world. The coming of Jesus was the symbol of the supreme wholeness and perfection of man by the Christ of God. Learn by this wondrous life the love of God and the great unity. I and the Father are one.
When you have risen out of your false belief in separateness, and know in your heart that God is ALL in ALL, then, and then only, will you glide out of the false consciousness of sin, suffering, and pain, leaving it like a worn-out garment, rising into purer life, renewed and regenerated.
Our next lesson will be “Mind, and its possibilities.”
THIRD LESSON
MIND, AND ITS POSSIBILITIES
EVERY condition of mind always brings about an outward manifestation even on the sense plane, and the separate self has power over its own environment. Thus, we will say, you think, you act, you become. Man is constantly clothing himself with his thoughts, but these truths are familiar to you, and I want to lead you to the higher possibilities of the mind that is supreme in truth; the only mind, the mind of Christ. The Psalmist, groping after this great truth, cries out: “Why art thou so heavy, O my soul? For I will yet praise Him Who is the health of my countenance and my God.”
Around you are people in a condition of sickness, imperfection, and want, some of them Christians as regards the following of the personal Jesus, but they have not made the great discovery of the indwelling Lord. There is no state of ignorance too low for the renewal of life and health. Those who throw off the body prematurely are just as culpable as suicides, and ignorance is not counted as innocence, since the light is in all men—at some time or other the knowledge comes. I am speaking now only to readers of this book. You have no right to allow sin and death to reign in your mortal bodies.
The vital question for you is—How to become alive to the mind of Christ and dead to the mind of sense? Let me here say that you have passed from death into life spiritually, but your work is less than half done if you have not conquered death in your body of flesh. You have become clothed in the flesh that you may manifest God, and you have failed seriously if you allow anything to hide or blur the outer garment, which should manifest wholeness and love.
Now we come to the beginnings. You thought your body must suffer and die. Cease your thinking, and let Christ think. I am come that they might have full, rich, abundant life. Wherever Jesus went, disease dissolved into nothingness; at His touch wholeness sprang up. Your body should be willingly laid down when you have learned life’s lessons, and when you are ready for the interior life. You will not escape the ills of the flesh even when you kill your present body, if you have failed to obtain your earth experience; for the soul has failed to use its faculties, to acquire, to obey some divine law, and therefore loses an opportunity to express divinity, the true purpose of incarnation. There is no finer school for this experience, which we set out to gain, than this earth life. We must enter into the Christ consciousness if we would express the body of wholeness.
Since the mind is the seat of pain, do you not see that unless you have the mind of Christ you cannot acquire it by freedom from the body of flesh only? It is more difficult to conquer on the plane of spirit, in fact, you will long to come back. Just where you are is the place to learn; therefore we who love you come to help you at your present stage, not only for your sake, but in order that the great Self, of which we are a part, may not be ignorantly hidden.
Begin by opposing sense suggestion. You are not born to suffer and decay, but are here for a purpose. There is a reason for your place in the great plan of life, and no one else can do your work. Reject the suggestion that you have difficult circumstances, that your environment makes triumph impossible. These very conditions can be made steps of ascent; you can begin now to readjust your life. Every sense suggestion must be reasonably and carefully dealt with, not ignorantly denied, or it will crop up again and again. Therefore answer with patience and sweet reasonableness. You will find that this is the very opportunity for the higher Self to speak. Many join with us, as you read these words, in prayer and strong encouragement that you fail not. Begin as we suggest, in the simplest way, to realize that it is God that worketh in you to will and to do.
We hope to continue the teaching of the possibilities of mind in future lessons, and our next lesson will be “Personality.” I am taking this subject because you must carefully and daily, even hourly, as you count time, follow the suggestions given, always remembering Christ in you, the Lord of all.
FOURTH LESSON
PERSONALITY
HUMANITY shrinks, and rightly so, from any thought of strangeness or loss, and any thought that occasions shrinking or pain should be quietly and peacefully dropped, without strife or resistance. I can tell you for a certainty that you will retain your personality just as long as you need it, and you will need it much longer yet. I am allowed to say to you that the meeting with your loved ones will be sweetly familiar, a great deal better than you can imagine, for they and you will be enriched by the love between you. Your loss is always gain. You can help them by your love and prayer, and they help you; think often of them. Bless them and become conscious of unity, which is a blessed reality. There is nothing untoward or strange; you are here just what you have made yourselves, and they who love you would not have you with them until you have finished. In fact, you are near them now, but the veil or covering is over you at present.
Love—Love—Love. This is a potent force. It would not meet the demands of your present nature to arrive suddenly at the end of being, since everything in God’s plan is in perfect order. There must be gradual unfoldment and gentle awakening; even after the spirit ceases to need its personal form, it can always resume it at will. Paul, who was allowed to enter the interior realms, tells you that the inner man is renewed day by day in an identity peculiarly your own, and exactly resembling you as you appeared, except that you have added the spiritual qualities, refining and defining all the highest and best. This, too, is a covering or resurrection body, and it is clothed in white raiment to appear before mortal eyes.
As your Scriptures tell you repeatedly, the continuity of life is no more broken when the breath leaves the body than is the continuity of child life broken by the incident of birth. It is the means by which life is liberated, becoming more intense. Memory exists, although we have learned the power to dissolve into nothingness—this is true forgetfulness—all that is not of use. But I would have you know that you are greater than your form, that you have no limit, that you take limitations for purposes at present hidden from you, that true personality is not the fleshly form or a separate body, but, by reason of its greatness, is best manifested in part.
Paul, who had learned this mystery, tells you plainly that “the body is for the Lord, and the Lord for the body,” therefore it is quite clear that the body or form is only a part of the great whole, the mystic body of Christ. Paul also had revealed to him the omnipresence of man, as he was present in spirit with the Church of Corinth while his body was visible in another place. Always bear in mind that to us there is neither time nor space.
I told you at the beginning that your Scriptures could reveal the highest, and you will find more and more that we only present to you in a new light the truth which was from the beginning, so that you may see life from higher standpoints, with renewed vision, new hopes, and moving in loftier spheres of thought and experience.
Now you begin to see that the Lord Christ possesses the body of flesh, through which you choose to manifest; and there is no reason why it should not readily respond, unless you yield to the great enemy, the false belief in separateness. This enemy is symbolized in the story of the Garden of Eden, the separation from God. The lower self would become even as the gods, though in the words—”Hear, O Israel, the Lord thy God is One Lord”—it was taught that we are one, that separate or outer forms never can finally overrule the One God. God requires perfection, therefore if we would rise to this consciousness we must begin with our lower self to bring it into obedience and subjection to the one Ruler, and as we do this we learn what our true personality is. We shall not accomplish this great purpose without constant watchfulness and wholeheartedness, giving all to gain all, ready at every turn to sacrifice the lower self, that we may become selfless and free.
FIFTH LESSON
THE TRUE SELF
“Let him deny himself and follow Me”
HOW often we have to remind you of the truth you have already learnt! Spirit is the only substance; exactly as the sap is the true life of the tree, so also your spiritual being is the cause of your natural existence. You can never impart a truth until it has become alive within yourself. We have many things to tell you about the life here, but at present your highest good is to learn the truths best applicable to your present conditions.
When I speak of the wholeness of the race and the mystical body, I do not want to give you wrong ideas about your individual responsibility. Each member is a complete worker. What you see on the plane of the senses is to us shadowy, vague, and often meaningless. You are to make real, to create, to bring into existence, spiritual realities by living on the only real plane of life. This is to bring in the new heaven and the new earth. Your spiritual eyes will open gradually, not into an unfamiliar environment, but into an intensely real life, wherein dwelleth righteousness.
We are working all over the world in bands to establish true unity and brotherhood. We shall succeed if you will unite with us. Is it not worth while? True unity is not to separate heaven from earth, but to bring the kingdom of heaven on to earth. For this we labour and pray—watch and wait—and we shall never cease until the Lord Christ has come to His own, the Christ of God who spake with the lips of Jesus; the Christ of God who dwells within, the great deliverer of mankind from the bondage of sin, flesh, and the world of sense. For the Son of man must indeed be lifted up, and the false man of sense become as nought, that we all may be one—for Christ is God.
Clearly you see the importance of denying self and following the voice and guidance of Christ!
In the morning of your day commence by cleansing your heart from within (the cleansing of the body follows as his shadow follows a man in the full sunshine). First cast out false thinking, prejudice, thoughts of sickness, fear and pain, by true reasoning and simple, childlike faith in God. As you rise, your thoughts should be of strength, love, a strong desire to bless. Now follows your prayer, a free and full consecration of all for good, that God only may be glorified, a prayer of steadfast assurance—Take no thought what ye shall eat or what ye shall put on. The life is more than meat, the body than raiment. It is true that God will supply your every need. In all your thoughts and deeds, your intercourse with personalities, remember that you are on the plane of spirit, seeking first the kingdom of God, the only reality.
Oh, you are rich beyond human language!
Leave your chamber “strong in the Lord and in the power of His might.” Let your whole being join in the only true life-work—”That they all may be one.”
Amen, Amen, Amen.
SIXTH LESSON
THE TRUE SELFISHNESS
BE of good courage, for all is well. God dwelleth in you, and this is the chief eternal truth.
I know you are progressing because already you can command right thoughts and dismiss inharmonious ones. Results will follow, and now you will learn discrimination. It is not given to all to be able to judge others, but content yourself, when tempted to judge, with praying for them, and as you evolve, your prayers will be fraught with beating, because you are learning to pray aright. Be of good courage. Evil is friendly and has a beneficent purpose. Man becomes God-like because he rises through and out of evil, just as the plants emerge from the soil. Every good is closely imitated in the false dream world, and one of the imitations is called selfishness. This is a divine instinct, and you cannot and should not uproot it, but learn always that these delusions of sense have behind them a truth of God. Let us discover the true and holy selfishness.
Man’s first instinct is self-interest, self- protection. Even in spiritual things you are constantly seeking to acquire for yourself. You require healing of the body, a rich mind, a true life. This is a God-given instinct, and you are to get, but learn that to get is to give. The true law of giving is to benefit all and thus you bring good to your Self; which, remember, is the great and only Self.
Let us begin by a simple explanation. I use the language of earth that you may understand, for you know already that material things have no real existence, that your thought of them is their only reality. Do you desire health of body? Let us teach you how to obtain it, the true way. You begin at once to send out healing currents to some one in a lower condition than yourself, and immediately you have made a pathway by which your own shall come to you. Your first thought, I see, is, how can I heal when sick myself? The first time you try it, you will understand that the very effort of faith required is the beginning of your own healing, and the larger love going out to others doubles your own joy in the long run.
True getting is always by way of sacrifice. This is a simple thing to know, but it is the key to all true healing, of mind, body, or estate; for all you have truly given you will receive double, but you do not render to the Lord that which costs you nothing. In the sight of God, no gift has been blessed to your own soul unless you have willingly given from your heart and blessed the gift by your love. You may have wealth untold, though unmanifest to mortal eye. A good practice each day is to bless and heal every one in the house. Begin at once, knowing only the great Self, remembering the need of all in the house. Your own Lord will reveal each need; be resolute, be positive, and, above all, full of hope and love. If the unseen become visible at such times, include them, only send out, give, give, give. I tell you that this is your real getting, your real healing.
The spirit reveals to you more and more. Do you not see that I am helping you to one of the richest positions; that you may become a centre of healing; spirit, the pure flame, burning up the dross; the soul, the link, holding all the physical powers; and the body, showing the beauty of the Lord, the true beauty of Holiness.
Again I ask that you put these lessons into practice.
SEVENTH LESSON
DWELL DEEP
YOU are spirit, soul, and body. The spirit, the innermost, is clothed upon by the soul. The body is the vehicle for manifestation. Your wholeness depends upon the one consciousness, and the active co-operation of soul and body. Knowing only God brings into operation hidden laws, at present unknown to you. You develop spiritual powers which have hitherto lain dormant, and your whole being begins to live. Hearing, seeing, touch, and the power to communicate belong to the soul; they are transmitted to a denser body for a divine purpose. The soul has great responsibilities, and everything depends upon her obedience to the Lord and Master, and to her transfer of spiritual desire to the outer body. More than this, by true living you send forth spiritual vibrations, currents of blessing and healing, and all are helped by your radiant and pure environment.
Every spiritual desire, expressed through the outer body, goes on and obeys a higher law; it is never lost. Never mind if you do not see results. I tell you the result of every noble thought expressed has far-reaching effects, and you will know one day that the faintest longing desire has been satisfied.
When you meditate or pray, it is the soul and not the body that opens to the spirit; mind wandering or lack of earnestness means that the brain is not co-operating with the soul. See to it that you are definite; and think, speak, act from the innermost of yourself. Your soul is your real identity. It is YOU.
The soul thinks, breathes, acts from the spirit, and should make perfect the outer body.
Wherever this is not so, the soul has failed in its obedience to spirit. If this disobedience takes place, you will find that the passing out of the flesh does not mean that the soul will then function freely; for disuse of the spiritual medium means coma, arrested growth, sleep. Awake! thou that sleepest, Christ dwells within.
When you have ceased to need the body you will give back the atoms, purified and transmuted by the divine life. Do not repress life, but express it. There is nothing either in or out of the flesh that can hinder the disciple who is at one with the will of God.
EIGHTH LESSON
UNFOLDMENT FROM WITHIN
THE soul has entered your present body that it may express God’s meaning through this medium, also because the soul has need of certain experiences. The body, too, must be rightly valued, seeing that it exists for a divine purpose; but it is only of value when it takes its true place in the divine order. The soul is the sheath of the spirit, the clothing of man, who is for the time veiled in flesh.
Man becomes God-like only through experience and discipline. This can be understood in your present period of life by the comparison between an innocent, happy child and a happy, ripe old age; the one is ignorantly happy and the other has matured and unfolded through knowledge and suffering. Both are happy, but the difference is very great. Your present earth experience is the most beneficial state for your present healthy development.
The mind functions from the soul. Before man awakes to self-knowledge the sense mind has ruled. All the cells in your body have their centre, their mind; the grey matter of the brain is not the only centre for the sensation of mind. When ruled by the Christ mind they are flooded by the great intelligence in every part, each doing its work perfectly. But the soul of man awakes in a body that has formed a kingdom of its own, and a warfare begins. This is the very period of your life at which I would help you: we call it the transitional, and it is a time when you need all your faith and hope, for the body is so frequently unable to respond to the new king, and seems for a while to fail. Have faith: believe me, it is true that once you have passed this stage, you gain what you will never lose; you also rise into a higher cycle, and have opportunities for greater work.
It is at this very point that, from being the healthy, uncivilized man, you become the spiritually healthy God-Man. You fail perhaps to become your ideal at once, but you will surely win. Obey the highest within you, and never let the sense mind rule you. For this reason I say that you cannot believe in what you see; you are conscious that you are about to manifest all things anew. This is a slow process, since false thinking has brought about false conditions. As an illustration, melancholy or depression causes acidity in the blood, and can only be cast out by its opposite—joy or hope. Remedies from without can do good for a time only. The inner man should be daily renewed by spirit, the one reality. It is not meet that the last should be first. Spirit rules. Love and harmony should prevail, not warfare and strife. Teach the body that its highest good is obedience to its Lord. Now you know enough to be able to say—Christ reigns in me.
Rise in harmony—spirit, soul, and body reaching the eternal consciousness, which is unchanging, holy. You have learned that this is not the case with the lower self; the sense mind being changeful, evanescent, susceptible to other influences, other minds. Now you are whole- ness, true health and unchanging thought. This is the path to unity with the two worlds; Christ in you, bringing life and immortality to light. You will receive the inner illumination. You are learning what a glorious thing your unfold- ment is, warmed into growth by the interior sun. The soul has a real work to do in your body through the mind of Christ. Rejoice that you have burst the outer covering of the seed, that by an immutable law you must rise.
Sit in silence, and slowly repeat the Lord’s Prayer.
Its spiritual meaning will arise in you.
For thine is the kingdom, the power, and the glory.
Amen. Amen. Amen.
NINTH LESSON
THE SOUL
I SHOULD like to continue our discussion on the soul, for I rejoice to know that you realize the spiritual world to be here. You will live in it more and more, learning that spirit is true substance, and that you function truly from your luminous body, holding within yourself all you need.
Wherever you see beauty, truth, or goodness, it is God finding expression, and you will see them where you least expect when dwelling on the spiritual plane, and much that seems to the natural eye good, beautiful, and true you will prove to be false imitations of the real. Music, art, poetry are expressions of God. All genius is God revealing Himself; by the very revelation, the soul refines the outer body, which should be as clay in the hands of the potter.
All states of existence, now, and in the future, are determined by the inner life and its expression. It is not enough to know that you possess the indwelling power to become the eternal Christ. Your real work, like that of Jesus, is to express God. Your environment is the outcome of your mind and thought. Heaven and hell are states of existence you make for yourself here and now. Your fall away from truth is caused by the soul’s separation from God’s thought, and by following the false self- consciousness. Listen to your own Lord and Christ, who brings deliverance to the captive and sight to the blind, who redeemeth thy life from destruction.
The seven creative days are experiences within yourself. God speaks the word of power when He says, “Let there be light, and the light shineth from within.” The dividing of the waters is the separation of the divine and the human, the firmament, symbolizing the Heavenly-Divine, and the seas the Earthly-Human. The separation of sea and land means the first state of receptivity, to express clearly that land (mind) is free and awaiting God’s manifestation. And God said, Let the earth (mind) bring forth, and God says within you, to your soul: bring forth, manifest, express My thought.
Then you read: God gave the two lights, the greater and the lesser. These symbolize the lights of the two understandings—human and divine. The seas are fruitful on the fifth day, thus proving the creativeness of mind and the birth of ideas. Then we read of larger growth, larger idea, till we come finally to ourselves—man in the image of God, God’s idea. You have not entered into the seventh period yet. It is one of great delight and triumph. Read this for yourselves with the spiritual understanding.
Each soul makes its own Heaven, and there is a sense in which each created being augments Heaven by its own created environment. By your rebirth into the spiritual kingdom, Heaven itself becomes greater. In this sense you can understand better what I mean when I tell you that all are benefited by one, because you are a part of all. I use the language of earth, but you have spiritual discernment. We can never find true language to express Heaven and God, since the first is a state of consciousness, and the second infinity.
I have given you these three lessons on the one subject, as it is good for you to live according to divine and spiritual law. With all thy getting, get wisdom. When the soul sees and knows, life appears orderly, and the body of flesh sensibly obedient. Be patient; much more shall be revealed. The kingdom of heaven is open to all believers.
Love, Peace, Joy.