May the peace of God be with you. We need to explore and understand the special relationship which can exist between man and God. We have been told that God existed in the beginningless beginning, before creation, and during that timeless period He knew Himself. He knew Himself through Himself and only through Himself because nothing else existed, there was only God. God wanted to bring something into creation through which He would also know Himself. Before He created man, He created the world and the angels, but there was no creation in whom God had breathed His essence, no such creation existed. There were so many creations but none who had been given its essence from God, the essence through which God would recognize Himself.
When His intention to create such a being was known to the angels they objected, “If You create this being he will dispute with You, he will argue with You, he will try to tell You what is right and what is wrong. He will also be the cause of bloodshed and killing in the world.”
God replied to the angels, “You do not understand what I am going to create, you do not understand My essence.” Now most of the angels accepted this, but one did not, the one known as Satan. Interestingly, the angels were doing the very thing they objected to, they disputed God’s decision in exactly the way they said man would dispute. The point here is that, until it reaches that level, nothing understands the next level, the level above itself. We are bound by our limits, we cannot understand beyond our limits. The angels understood within their limits, arguing from that capacity, just as they predicted man would.
God said He was going to create man with both His hands, as scriptures tell us. This means God intended to create man as part of His creation, using one hand, and with the other hand He would also give man something of Himself. Both the illusory aspect of creation and the reality of God exist within man, but the only reality is God. Within His creation we have the reality which is His essence and everything which is separate from Him. Both have existed within us from the beginning.
God also said He would create man as His vice-regent on earth. What does this mean? God is the beginning and the end, the regent or ruler of everything. To create a vice-regent means creating a being who can command with the authority of the regent, there must be some similarity between the vice-regent and the regent. The angels did not understand this when Adam was created. In the beginning God knew Himself, but He knew Himself as if He were looking at a mirror without any backing. He knew Himself in Himself and of Himself, but with the creation of man there was now a backing on the mirror, He knew Himself as other than Himself, even though He alone exists. He knew Himself through a reflection of Himself, that reflection contained by something within us, something from Him.
Adam, a prophet and the first man, existed as a perfected human being. Even though he had dominion over all creation, Adam also thought he needed something through which he could know himself. Just as God had wanted to know Himself, Adam wanted to know himself. God, understanding this need, created another being like Adam so that together they could continue knowing themselves, their true selves.
What is the essence of the true self? The essence of the true self is God. He gave Adam more human beings to understand the truth of human beings, the truth which is God. This is the mystery of God in man and man in God. Since we were created with both hands, in the world and in God, of the world and of God, we have a divided capacity. We can be like the world, we can be the lowest form existing in the world or we can be unlike the world, we can be a true human being, like Adam or Eve at the beginning.
Why are we here? We are here so that God can be recognized, so that we can recognize the glory of God, for His sake, in His name. Over all our generations, with the actions of Adam’s progeny, this recognition has been lost. We have not merely forgotten or lost remembrance of the reason for our existence, we have also lost remembrance of our capacity. It has been said the world exists only because of certain holy beings, and that is true. Yet we find so many other reasons to account for existence, we believe in so many other possibilities.
Just listen to the politicians, what is their program, do they talk of opportunities to become a perfected human being, to teach the reality of God and man? No, their reason for existence is to have a stable economy, to reduce unemployment, to raise or lower taxes. We have not only forgotten reality, we have made illusion our reality, we call something which is transient and illusory real, then we give our life to its promotion. We refuse to pull back from this misconception, we refuse to disengage it, lost in the world of praise and blame, praise for ourself and blame for others, praise for our worldly achievement, blame for the lack of worldly achievement, when in fact the only praise belongs to Him.
The truth is, when blame comes we need to bless His name, when praise comes we need to hand it to Him in His name. We should understand our place in things, where we came from, why we are here, what the purpose of existence is. If we cannot keep that focus we stray from what is real, we lose contact with reality, we lose contact with His qualities. As we become stronger in the world our connection to God becomes weaker.
There is work to do, understanding which needs to be incorporated in our life, priorities we have to put in focus. All this has to do with the disclosure that God is within us, He put something of Himself in us although we are not conscious of it, we have lost touch with it. We talk about obstacles or veils—what are the veils hiding us from Him? Everything that is not God, we create the veils of separation, we create the separations, we are the separation. As long as we are only conscious of our individual entity, concerned with thoughts of our own entity, differentiated from the exalted nature of our Lord, we separate ourself from Him, a path that leads to hell. What is hell? It is separation from Him. What is heaven? It is coming closer to Him, oneness on the path to Him. We need to focus on reality, we need to understand illusion; before we can understand reality we have to understand illusion, otherwise illusion will fool us, make us think it is reality.
We are told to know ourself and we will know our Lord. Who are we? Which part of ourself are we in touch with? We have two parts, which part do we focus on? Are we a mask, are we a mirror, do we reflect or are we dancing in this world of illusion just waiting for someone to say, “You are a great dancer.” Or is our purpose to reflect His grace, to reflect His glory, His ninety-nine names? His attributes are beyond count, His qualities are beyond description, understanding Him is beyond worldly understanding.
If we think we understand in terms of the world, we are like the angels arguing with God about what He intended to create. We become a force of darkness and illusion disputing God’s will, a vice-regent who says, “I do not want to be a vice-regent, I want to be part of creation and give up my birthright. I have a better idea of myself, another idea. This ‘I,’ this sense of self I am involved with is the greatest glory imaginable.”
If we try to imagine within the limits of what we perceive ourself to be, there is no glory greater than we can imagine. If we go into the world of imagination we should try to imagine what we do not know, imagine what we cannot understand. We need to imagine there is something beyond anything we dream, there is something beyond anything we have tasted or grasped so far in our life. Imagine the qualities of God and understand we are only beginning to touch the hem of His garment, we are fortunate to walk in the dust of His feet. Understand our place and His place, understand the intention He has for us, the reason for our creation.
We need to keep thinking about this, when we do not, we fall asleep. It makes no difference whether we are in bed or walking around; if all our consciousness lives in the world we have fallen victim to its magnetism, its hypnotism, the glittering lights of illusion. If we are overwhelmed by them, overwhelmed enough to believe in them we call them real, and then we have lost our bearing, lost our ability to move forward, to see and hear the truth.
These things sometimes sound difficult, sometimes impossible, but God is the One who created us, He can make a blind man see, a deaf man hear, He can restore life to the dead. When we live without knowledge of God, without an attempt to know Him, we have forgotten the reason for existence, a reason we have to learn again, understand again. We need to examine the inner things blocking us and be rid of them, we have to understand the difference between illusion and reality, we need to focus on reality.
Pray that reality is our intention, that compassion is our intention, that mercy is our intention, graciousness is our intention, pray that God becomes our intention. He is the plenitude we are capable of entering. We are here to understand this meaning of life, this reason for existence among all the reasons for existence. We have to focus on the truth, know who we are, know what we are capable of and move in His direction.
The great saints and masters come to this world as examples, mirrors for us to see that aspect of ourself we have forgotten. They come as a mirror for God, an anchor for this world and a reason why it exists. They come here to make sure that all the reasons for the existence of the world do manifest. He sent them so that we can be like them, so that we can know what it is like to be close to Him.
