ONENESS WITH GOD
Rev. Joseph Murphy, Ph.D.
Excerpt from:
THIS IS IT: The Art of
Metaphysical Demonstration
Church of Divine Science
Los Angeles, 3rd ed., 1948 Revised
“I AM
the Lord, and there is none else, there
is no God beside Me.” (Isaiah
45:5). You, the reader, are the one and
only being there is. When you say,
“I AM,” that means the
sum-total of all the personalities in the
world. All other conceptions are
projections in space of the one being,
yourself. In the Bible, which is a text
book on psychology--metaphysics and
man’s moods and feelings--the
“I AM” is constantly referred
to as, “I am the way, the truth,
and the life.” (John 14:6).
“I am the Resurrection and the
Life.” (John 11:25). “I am
that I am.” (Ex. 3:14). These and
similar sayings shine forth in all their
true brilliance when once we see that
Jesus, the Christ, was not speaking of
Himself personally, but of the principle
of Being inherent in all mankind.
What Truth
students fail to see is that there is
only one man, for the same reason that
there is only one God. God and man are
one--”I am in the Father, and the
Father in me.” (John 14:11). You
cannot divide One; infinity cannot be
divided or multiplied. The seeming
divisions are the illusions of
separation. We must give recognition to
that innermost Self which is pure Spirit,
and which is not subject to any condition
whatsoever. We feel that we are
conditioned by time and space, but these
conditions have no place in essential
Being. The true recognition of the
“I AM” is the acknowledgment
of the Self within you. God, the Father,
eternally subsisting in His own Being,
sends forth all forms of His will.
Likewise, all forms return to the
formless One, according to an immutable
law.
You, the one
man, can comprehend the infinite Self
within you by a limitless expansion of
your conception of God. You thus return
to the Universal Being as a son coming
home to his father. The more we study the
Bible the more we realize that, by the
art of meditation--i.e., by going
inward--we become greater in our
knowledge and comprehension of the
mysteries contained therein. The road
inward is the road to greatness, the
Royal Road of the Ancients, and for all
men who desire to become united with the
Supreme Cause, the root and substance of
all.
Rebirth
means to ascend inwardly from the lesser
to the greater by an inner realization,
or by the lifting up of consciousness
from one step to another. The
consciousness, being lifted up by
contemplation, dwells on the fact that I
am now the being I long to be, and to
make it real I must feel it. This
realization is an inner awareness of the
new state of consciousness or
rebirth.
There is not
a single note that was ever played that
any man cannot play. Anything that has
ever been felt by any holy man, any man
can feel. There are no facts or secrets
hidden in the dim past that any man
cannot bring to light. You are the only
Being there is. You have a memory of all
that has passed, consequently all tones,
moods, vibrations, knowledge and wisdom
are within you. There is no language that
ever was spoken that you cannot speak.
There is no voice that you cannot
reproduce, because all is within you.
YOU have
always lived! “Before Abraham was,
I AM.” (John 8:58). “When all
things cease to be I AM.” You, man,
wrote the Bible! You may have forgotten
it, but if you meditate on its passages,
the subjective self within you will
reveal to your conscious mind what you
meant, when YOU wrote it thousands of
years ago.
Time is an
illusion; God is the eternal NOW.
Thousands of years are as an instant.
Aeons are as a day. Therefore, shed now
the belief in time and the idea that we
have to come back again and again to this
earth plane--one time as John, another
visit as Mary--in order to gain more
experience, to perfect ourselves and
become as Jesus, the Christ.
We are
sometimes told that it is almost
impossible for us to become as Jesus, or
Moses, or Elijah in one lifetime; it
takes several lifetimes; moreover, many
say that we have some “karma”
to work out in this life. In other words,
we must expiate for the sins and crimes
committed in past lives before we can be
purified. Some state that it is almost
impossible to change certain physical
conditions in this life, particularly, if
one happened to be born with a congenital
disease or deformity.
This
teaching is false and a contradiction of
everything the Bible teaches, namely,
“Behold, I am the Lord, the God of
all flesh: is there anything too hard for
Me?” (Jer. 32:27). “I will
restore health unto thee, and I will heal
thee of thy wounds, saith the
Lord.” (Jer. 30:17). “...Who
healeth all thy diseases; Who satisfieth
thy mouth with good things, so that thy
youth is renewed like the
eagle’s.” (Ps. 103:3,5).
“I will ransom them from the power
of the grave, I will redeem them from
death.” (Hosea 13:14).
A cripple is
not instantly healed because of his or
your belief. Likewise, if a man’s
leg is amputated, the reason he does not
grow another leg is because his father
and mother, the authorities of certain
textbooks, plus tradition and race
belief, all contributed to the false
belief and teaching he received as a
baby. He holds a firm conviction within
himself now that God cannot grow another
leg for him. He firmly believes that
nothing can be done for him except to
wear an artificial leg. “Thy faith
hath made thee whole.” (Luke
8:48).
Regarding
the belief of some people that we must
suffer for errors of the past or for sins
committed centuries ago, there is no
basis for this false concept. If a person
believes that he must suffer for
something he has done, he will suffer. It
is all based on belief.
The only
loss, limitation, restriction or evil in
the world is our belief in loss, our
belief in limitation, our belief in
restriction and our belief in evil or
disease. This is known as “the son
of perdition” or sense of loss
spoken of in the Bible. “Come now,
let us reason together, saith the Lord:
though your sins be as scarlet, they
shall be white as snow; though they be
red like crimson, they shall be as
wool.” (Isaiah 1:18). “And
their sins and iniquities will I remember
no more.” (Hebrews 10:17).
“For thou, Lord, art good, and
ready to forgive; and plenteous in mercy
unto all them that call upon thee.”
(Ps. 86:5).
The reader
should stop, think and realize for a
moment that a God who says, “Love
your enemies, do good to them that hate
you,” by necessity of His greater
Love, blots out all of the past. He wipes
away all tears, and forgives you
immediately. Can you imagine a God asking
you to forgive those who trespass against
you, and in another breath refusing to
forgive Himself? “He shall call
upon me, and I will answer him.”
(Ps. 91:15). “I, even I, am he that
blotteth out all transgressions for mine
own sake, and will not remember thy
sins.” (Isaiah 43:25).
Man
completely detaches himself from the past
by partaking of a great psychological and
mystical feast of peace and happiness.
Realizing the presence of God within him,
he rises in consciousness to the joyous
conviction that he is NOW the being he
longs to be. Having fixed this state
within him, a silent inner knowing
possesses him; all former doubts and
fears pass away and shall be remembered
no more. By sustaining this silent inner
feeling, that which he felt inwardly
becomes expressed outwardly.
* * * * *
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