Vision Mound Magazine – Teaching and New Testament

 

VISION MOUND

Volume 1, Number 7

JANUARY 1978

The Essential Teaching of the New Testament

an essay by Bubba Free John

The New Testament is not, in its meaning, the representation of a drama outside man. It is an archetypal drama, an esoteric play about man rather than merely a concept or incident directed to mankind. The life of Jesus is itself a Teaching or “Word” about man, and it obliges those who “hear” and understand to live a new and true pattern of presumption and action-whole bodily, rather than exclusively in inner belief or in superficial outward appearance. That pattern is sacrifice to the Divine Truth and Condition rather than mere yielding to experience and the circumstances of gross life.

The New Testament represents the ancient archetypal and esoteric understanding of man. It is also a story and a commentary about the communication of esoteric and transcendental Truth in the common world of ordinary fascination and exoteric beliefs, behaviors, and rituals.

The key to the right understanding of the New Testament is this: The “Kingdom of God” is not outside man. It is man. The “Kingdom of God” is the whole body of every man and woman. The “Kingdom of God” is the whole body-being and Destiny that is every man and woman.

The drama of Jesus birth, life, death, resurrection, “ascension to the Father,” and communication of the “Holy Spirit” is not, in Truth, a drama outside and merely observed, believed, or rejected by mankind. It is the necessary drama of transformation and Realization in the case of every human individual. “Jesus” is the “Word” or Truth about every man and woman, and every man and woman is obliged to “hear” this Truth and duplicate this Life, or else continue to be deluded by experience and egoic knowledge. The story of Jesus is an archetypal story and an esoteric Revelation of the whole bodily or spiritual process of the human being in Truth.

The “world” of the New Testament is the total human world, including “Heaven,” “Earth,” and “Hell.” Its meaning is not external to man but native to him. That is, the “world” of the New Testament is the whole body-being of man (male or female), and It, therefore, includes the apparent universe, but interpreted as a Process like that of man-that is, a psycho-physical rather than a merely physical realm. The whole body is the epitome or meaning of the world. And the whole body includes not only the elemental physical, but the etheric or life-force dimension, as well as the mental, the higher psychic or subtle super-mental, and the egoic ground or witness. Human beings discover or assign meaning to the world of their experience. Their whole bodily form and nature and Condition is the archetypal structure wherein the Truth and the Way and the Life of this world is shown and obliged upon them. The New Testament “Word” or meaning is the sacrificial Way of the human body-being as a whole. And the message is that man, in the form of every man and woman, priorly (or always alreadyexists in a transcendental Condition that is eternally free and not ultimately or truly limited by the cycle of birth, life, and death. Each of us, therefore, is destined, in Truth, to eternal Existence, Happiness, Delight, and Freedom, since we are presently, totally, and always established in the same. However, until we respond to the communication of Truth and accept, whole bodily, responsibility for the play of our manifest existence in this human world, we are distracted by our mortality, divided in our body-being, and tending by association to be constantly limited by and to the conditions of the lower body consciousness. Therefore, we are striving to survive as that portion of our Condition we notice as our conventional human birth, and we are bound to a self-possessed struggle, divided in ourselves, chronically turned away from others, and knowing only what we observe or acquire in our apparent and presently extended form rather than our prior whole body-being.

The archetype of Truth communicated in the New Testament is the whole body “Gospel,” or the message about our Happiness and Lawful Destiny. If we change in response to the understanding of this archetypal message, then we participate, presently and consciously, in the Destiny of Happiness, Fullness, and Responsibility in Truth. If we do not respond whole bodily, from the heart, then we remain turned in on ourselves, divided and self-possessed, and confined to the knowledge and presumed destiny of mortality-until we Awaken to Truth.

The drama of Jesus is the drama of human Destiny when lived in Truth. It is the story of the whole body-being of archetypal man. “God the Father,” “Jesus the Christ” (the “Son,” “Messiah,” or Messenger of “God the Father”), and the “Holy Spirit” (eternally sent from the “Heaven” of “God the Father” and also sent via the sacrificial and radiant action of the “Son” of “God the Father”are all archetypes of aspects of the whole body-being of every man or woman.

“God the Father” is the crown, the head, the brain, and the prior Source Light of the whole body-being of man. “Jesus the Christ” is the heart, the true Self (or Condition of the ego), and the sacrifice or Lawful Way of the whole body-being of man. And the “Holy Spirit” is the nervous system and the all-pervading, eternal Life of the whole body-being of man.

The heart, or “the Christ,” is the Way. It is the Way of sacrifice, through unobstructed feeling-attention, love, or whole body radiance to Infinity. It is the sacrifice of the ego-or the reactive contraction and functional disintegration of the whole body-being-into perfect Feeling-Intuition. The true heart is prior to the egoic subconsciousness and unconsciousness of the lower body as well as the egoic consciousness and superconsciousness of the upper body. The Truth or God of the whole body-being is not itself any part of the whole, nor is it the whole body-being itself. The Truth is at the heart of the whole body-being. The Truth is the sacrifice of the whole body-being into its eternally prior Condition. Therefore, the heart of man is one with Truth, the Condition of all conditions.

The crown of the body is one with the subtle Light of the whole body. It is the Revelation of the Light, Radiance, or Brightness communicated by the heart (which is the Truth of the whole body-being). It is “above,” in the direction of the creative Source, the manifesting Source or Light of all states of human experience, just as the heart itself, in the midst of the whole body-being, is the prior Truth of that Light and the whole body-being. The Light that is seen when the brain rests from perceptual reactivity and conceptualization is revealed by that rest itself. That is, the heart (or “Christ”is the Truth of the whole body-being, and when the heart sacrifices the contracted or egoic position, the Light is revealed, not merely or only to the gross or subtle eyes, but in Truth, prior to perception or differentiated knowledge.

When the heart becomes a sacrifice-when the whole body-being is love rather than contraction and reactivity of body, emotion, and mind-then it abides in its Condition in Truth and is one with its eternal Radiance or Light, which is then expressed infinitely above and all around, prior to all thinking and knowing.

Therefore, “Jesus the Christ,” the heart-which is the Way of the Law of sacrifice or love-reveals the “Father,” who is otherwise unseen or falsely envisioned. Light itself is not Truth, unless the Truth itself is Realized. “Jesus” is the Way of that Realization. The heart is the Truth of the head and the rest of the whole body-being. “Jesus” is the Truth of the Creator God. The heart, the seat of egoic consciousness, is awakened to the Real Condition in the instant of intuitive awakening and the fulfillment of the Law of Sacrifice. Then the heart says: “I and the Father are one.” That is, the Truth of the Light is sacrifice of all conditions. The “Father,” in Truth, is not any manifest or created condition, above or below, nor is He even the intention, process, or act of creation in itself. The “Father” in Truth is realized only in sacrifice of the heart (the whole body-being, including the knowledge presumed by experience at the head or via the nervous system). The “Father” is not the physical world or like it. He is the “Spirit” of the world. The “Father” is not the Light in itself, but the Source of the Light. The “Father” is revealed by the sacrifice of the “Son.” The “Father,” God, the Truth of the whole body, is one with the “Son.” The Real or God is Love-or unqualified Radiance beyond all knowledge, all forms, and prior to all that can survive.

The “Son” (the heart, and every “Son of God,” every true man or womanis not only one with the “Father,” and thus able to reveal the “Father” through sacrifice. The “Son” is also the only perfect “Messiah” or Messenger of the “Father.” The “Father” is prior to the appearance of the world (the whole body-being). The “Father” is also the ultimate Source of the world, and all things are manifest modifications of Him. Therefore, the “Father” is not only the Truth of the world, but the Love and Light of the world. The “Son” reveals the Truth, the Love, and the Light. He is not only one with the Light, but the Messenger (“Messiah”of the Light. He reveals the eternal activity of the Light in the world. That activity is the “Holy Spirit,” the Life or Breath of God. Only those who become “Sons of God” through transformative “hearing” may enter Into conscious Communion with the “Spirit” of God.

Thus, the heart becomes one with Truth through right understanding, and, in that event, fulfills the Law, which is sacrifice, release of egoic contraction, or love. Love is itself the intuition of the Truth or Condition of the whole body-being. Therefore, “Jesus” reveals the Truth of the “Father” to be the sacrifice of the whole body-being from the heart, which is love. Then the Light is realized in Truth to be beyond conditions. It is the forgiveness or non-assumption of the necessity or the effects of experience, past, present, or future. The head, the brain, is purified by the sacrifice of the heart, so that the brain and the whole body stand at rest in the all-pervading Vibratory Light rather than in the obstructed stream of reactive and presumptive thinking, feeling, and moving. When the brain is so released by the whole body sacrifice initiated by the intuition of the Condition of the heart, it sends or reveals its “Comforter” or “Spirit” to the whole body. The “Son” comes into the world to reveal the Truth, to reestablish the intuition of oneness with the Light, and then to leave, or return to the simple and prior position of the heart in Truth, and allow the “Holy Spirit,” now revealed to be pervading the whole body-being and the world eternally, to awaken, or enter, pervade, and transform, the whole body-being and its activities.

When the heart (or Truthand the crown (or Lightare acknowledged to be one through the sacrifice of the whole body-being as love (the intuition of Radiance), then “Jesus” has died, come to life again, and ascended to the Light. When this has become true in the case of any man, male or female, then “the Holy Spirit descends upon him.” That is, the Radiance of the Truth of the whole body-being pervades the whole body-being. The nervous system becomes the conductor of unqualified Light, or Fullness of Life. Such an individual is free while alive, conscious in and as eternal Life, Light, and Truth, and functioning in intuitive unity with his or her prior or Divine Condition, while alive, in death, and beyond death, into the eternity of transformations of the possibilities or “worlds” of the whole body-being, from the human to the Divine.

The universe in which such a regenerated (“reborn”man or woman appears is like himself-a whole body-being, or psycho-physical Process. And the experiential destinies he may suffer or enjoy depend on the forms his attention takes. If he responds to the Teaching of Truth, then he will tend to be associated with more subtle or “Heaven-ward” futures. If he only fulfills the responsibilities of the true man to a modest degree, oriented toward fulfillment in the apparent world, then he will tend to be associated with human futures-in the present life, in etheric or purgatorial realms after death, and through future human rebirths. If he does not respond at all to the Teaching of Truth-or the right fulfillment of the Law of the whole body-being-then he will tend to be associated with human futures that are profoundly difficult to bear, or else with daemonic futures, sub-human and elemental. Such futures are the destiny toward “Hell,” or the apparent and lower or gross, semi-conscious, unconscious, and elemental dimension of the whole body-being.

If any man or woman not only responds to the Teaching of Truth to the degree of sympathetic absorption in Radiance or Light and the subtle destinies above the awareness of Earth and the gross body, but if he or she becomes an absolute Sacrifice in Truth, so that all attention, all conditions, high and low, are yielded in the radical intuition of Happiness, then he or she will ultimately be translated out of the play of extended and unnecessary phenomena into the very Divine, the Domain of Eternity, that is neither unnecessary nor extended.

Thus, it should be seen that the Way communicated by and in association with the Messenger Jesus is the Way of every man. It is the Way in which all men, male or female, are “Sons (and “Daughters”of God.” That is, all who are devoted to Truth in this Way are alive as the whole body-being in Truth. The dimension of the whole body-being above the heart and the dimension of the whole body-being below the heart are lived as a unity, a heart-felt sacrifice, rather than a theatre of conflict and separativeness. Thus, such devotees are both “God” and “man” in their singleness. They are holy, set apart from the vulgar destiny created by reactive and mortal knowledge, understanding, and experience.

The Law of such devotees is Sacrifice, or love, which is unobstructed feeling-attention, as and via all functions, in all relations, and through all relations to Infinity, and under all conditions. Therefore, Jesus description of the practice of “Sons of God” may be summarized quite simply: Love God, or be a living and total sacrifice to God, which is Reality and Truth, or Love itself. And love or be a living sacrifice to all others, as if each other were yourself-which is, in Truth, the case.

Such devotees or “Sons of God” value above all relations the relationship with the Spiritual Master, who is the Source Messenger and direct Revealer of the Way and the Life of Truth. And they also value above all forms of ordinary human relationship the relationship of devotee to devotee, and the life they enjoy in the devotional Community of those who practice the Way. Such was or became the case with the principal devotees of Jesus, and it must also be or become the case with those to whom the Truth is revealed in every age. Therefore, abandon the narrowness of the cults of vicarious salvation and consoling beliefs. Become the whole body through hearing and awakening to Love. Become a living sacrifice, through the intelligence of unconstricted Love, to the eternal Divine, that transcends and pervades the mind, the body, and the world. Become a living sacrifice to others through Love, or unobstructed feeling-attention, and so be free of the inwardness of fear, self-possession, knowledge, experience, and belief. Be deeply rested in brain and body, regenerated in your feeling and transformed in your action. Then you will become lighter than angels and dissolve in the Bliss of God, which is neither above nor below, nor within, nor without, but all-pervading, prior to time and space.