(Note: I was looking for a different "open letter" to post, but came

across this one. Rich)

 

<<Now for some fun.

 

In a message dated 7/21/00 6:17:27 PM Eastern Daylight Time...Krisoff:

 

<< I read large part of it, however I think that for a human being is rather hard to swallow a whale ... >>

 

(Hint: Think outside the Box, and you are outside the Box -- your only limits are self-conceived and imposed!!!)

 

Rich:

 

Agreed, a human (state of mind and/or consciousness) cannot swallow a Whale (God Consciousness). Put more simply, "Only God can know God!” With this I whole-heartedly agree, as both humility and logic demand it. I do, however, believe that Man (as God envisioned and created Him), does have a "fore-given" capacity to "know God". In this regard, I do believe that Adam knew God (before the fall), as did Christ Jesus (after the resurrection). Let us now consider the Principle in and through which they, as Spiritual Man, were able to do so.

 

But first, how can these seemingly mutually exclusive declarations (to human consciousness at least) both be true? How can the absolute truism that "Only God can know God", co-exist with a Scripturally based conclusion that "Man can know God"? The answer to this seeming paradox is that Man (as God, not human/carnal consciousness conceives Him) “made in the Image and Likeness" of God -- is not truly Man as "man thinks”, but as "God Knows"; that Man, as God conceive(d/s) Him, is One with God (shares the same Essential Nature, Character, or Spirit -- which I have come to know as Pure Consciousness, Awareness, or God Mind). That, in truth, there is no "human nature", only "God Nature" expressed in Human Form.

 

Ah, Spirit (Conscious Awareness) as the fundamental Nature of both God and Man; Christ Consciousness as the "common ground or connect link” between God and Man -- a Bridge between Spirit and Flesh. So it is not really God and Man (or anything else for that matter), It is God-Man,the Spirit of the Living God living in, of, as and through Man (re:"...IAM God, and not man; the Holy One in the midst of thee…" Hos 11-9); It is "Christ in You, the Hope of Glory! -- The Son of God I AM that actually lives as Man (and is expressed with varying degrees of fidelity in individual men). Thus we have the Principle within Man -- the Spirit of God Himself (Infinite Mind or Father Consciousness - the Mind that was in Christ Jesus) -- that allows God to Know Himself, in and through His Personal Extension into Time and Space thru Man. This is how “Only God can Know God", and "Man can Know God" become mutually supportive declarations of absolute Truth.

 

Now back to "Jonah (man) and the Whale (God)". Jonah can know the Whale by giving up himself, sacrificing himself as man, and going into the belly of the Whale -- becoming one with It. Thus might He come to experience and know the Whale from the inside-out and so perfectly from a perspective of identity and oneness. No Jonah couldn't swallow the Whale, but the Whale could be allowed to swallow him. Man, as man, as a limited and partial state of human or carnal consciousness, can die to his carnal concept and sense of himself -- give himself up as he “thinks and feels he is", and in so doing be born of the Spirit, as God Knows He Is!

 

But there is an even more obvious analogy, the "thimble and the Ocean" I mentioned previously. No the thimble can't contain the Ocean, but the limited and contained "thimble water" of carnal mind can experience its "Oceanic Nature"; this by pouring the waters of it's life back into the Ocean, and so dying to the limits that self-identification with the thimble-mind begot. I guess it all really comes down to "Who I am" as Man. Am I the thimble full of conscious awareness (Spiritual Water) that carnal mind (my fallen nature) and human being supposes, or am I more truly the waters of God's Oceanic Awareness only temporarily contained in a unique mental thimble? Self-identified with “carnal consciousness" I am, by definition, in a finite and temporal state of mind and being. But wait! If my true nature is “consciousness/water", and not relative mind, my salvation lies in dying to myself as mind/thimble, that I might be reborn (or reawakened to) my boundless (and formless) Oceanic Nature in, of, as, and thru Christ (The Mind that was in Christ Jesus -- Christ or God Consciousness.)

 

Yours I AM/WE ARE ALL in Christ…Love…Rich

 

(Note: As an aside, what does "made in God's Image and Likeness" really imply? Does it mean he only "looks like God" on the surface, like an image or likeness reflected in a mirror, a painting on a canvas? I would think such a superficial conception clearly unworthy of God Almighty. Let's go a little deeper, and consider what the fundamental qualities of an Absolute God might be. Infinite, Eternal, Unitary, Omniscience, Omnipresence, and Omnipotence, are all essential characteristics that come to mind and might be ascribed of such a One. All of which implies that God as Creator has a capacity for First Cause Creativity. For God to Think (I believe we have to allow this possibility, as man's defining characteristic is a capacity for self-reflective thought; and if he is made in God's Likeness, so must God Think Likewise) is to Create instantaneously at all Levels of Being; and further, that since God is Eternally and Infinitely One, the Consciousness (or Mind) of God must be equally so. As such, there is and never could be "human consciousness/life/mind", apart from God Consciousness/Life/Mind; there can only be the Consciousness/Life/Mind of God, manifesting in a limited and circumscribed “self-forgotten" manner called human. Put even more simply, there can only ever be One Mind, the Mind of God, and any lesser state of mind, must be a lesser, state, condition or manifestation of that One Mind. As such, my mind and your mind, are both one with the One Mind of God (Christ); both aspects of God Consciousness -- alike in kind, though not degree. Allowing that Christ I AM is the God Given Name for said God-Mind/Consciousness, than we as Man (kind) are a Collective Being that fell into Multiplicity with Adam, and are restored to Original Unity in and thru Christ, the Only Begotten Son of God in Whom all are Brothers.>>