A new view of the old
“God gave the Ten Commandments unto men; upon the mountain Moses saw the words of God; he wrote them down on solid rock; they cannot be destroyed. These Ten Commandments show the justice side of God; but now the love of God made manifest brings mercy on the wings of Holy Breath” (Aquarian Gospel 96:1,2).
The Ten Commandments are not abrogated by Jesus, but are made new by a better and higher understanding, just as Jesus came to “fulfill” the Law by transforming our understanding of it, rather than by mere conformity to it. When Jesus appeared to “break” the Law it was only if judgment was made according to the old perspective. But when viewed in the new, truer perspective he was actually keeping it and showing us the way to do so as well.
The One God
“Upon the unity of God the law was built. In all the world there is one force; Jehovah is Almighty God. Jehovah wrote upon the heavens and Moses read, I am Almighty God and you shall have no God but me” (Aquarian Gospel 96:3-5).
This commandment is not the demand of a testy autocrat, jealous of his power and therefore insecure, but a statement of absolute non-duality: nothing exists but God. All this multiplicity of our experience is an illusion; behind it all is the Divine Unity. In his confusion and ignorance Poe asked: “Is all that we see or seem but a dream within a dream?” But Emily Bronte, a knower of Reality, wrote:
No coward soul is mine,
No trembler in the world’s storm-troubled sphere:
I see Heaven’s glories shine,
And Faith shines equal, arming me from Fear.O God within my breast,
Almighty, ever-present Deity!
Life, that in me has rest,
As I, undying Life, have power in Thee!Vain are the thousand creeds
That move men’s hearts: unutterably vain;
Worthless as withered weeds,
Or idlest froth amid the boundless main,To waken doubt in one
Holding so fast by Thy infinity,
So surely anchored on
The steadfast rock of Immortality.With wide-embracing love
Thy Spirit animates eternal years,
Pervades and broods above,
Changes, sustains, dissolves, creates, and rears.Though earth and moon were gone,
And suns and universes ceased to be,
And Thou wert left alone,
Every existence would exist in Thee.There is not room for Death,
Nor atom that his might could render void:
Thou–Thou art Being and Breath,
And what Thou art may never be destroyed.
Manifestations of the One
“There is one force, but many phases of that force; these phases men call powers. All powers are of God; and they are manifests of God; they are Spirits of the God” (Aquarian Gospel 96:6,7).
It is certainly true that in religion the various powers or aspects of God are personalized and turned into actual individual beings, but Jesus is reminding us that in many cases these are really only the rays of the Divine Sun, extensions of God’s providence toward us. On the other hand, certain highly evolved intelligences are often assigned to preside over those “rays” and after a while become identified with them. For example, Archangel Raphael supervises the healing powers in the cosmos, but it would be a mistake to say that there is no Archangel, just divine healing power. So it works both ways, and chances are it does not matter much how we see this things, just as long as we keep on working at ascension in consciousness.
Illusions and shadows
“If men could seem to find another force and worship at its shrine, they would but court illusion, vain, a shadow of the One, Jehovah, God, and they who worship shadows are but shadows on the wall; for men are what they court” (Aquarian Gospel 96:8,9).
It cannot be denied that deluded human beings run after everything but God, and even adopt or create substitutes for God. One favorite activity is deifying some part of God’s creation or power and worshipping that rather than the one and only God. Jesus says that people who are themselves illusions (shadows) worship illusions; and further that the worship of illusions increases our own illusory ideas about ourselves.
Being real
“And God would have all men to be the substance, and in mercy he commanded, You shall seek no God but me” (Aquarian Gospel 96:10).
God wishes us all to come to the knowledge of him, for that is eternal life (John 17:3), but first we come come to know the reality of our spirit-self, then we can expand our consciousness to know the Infinite One.
“You shall seek no God but me” is not a stick to beat us into placating the ego of a cosmic dictator, but the loving and merciful warning that we will never really know anything until we know God. And certainly peace and joy can never be ours outside of God. Yes, there are shadows we call peace and joy, but they are only hints of the real things, and themselves are doomed to fade away into the opposites of peace and joy, leaving us worse off than we were before.
More mercy
“And finite men can never comprehend infinite things. Man cannot make an image of the Infinite in force. And when men make a God of stone or wood or clay they make an image of a shade; and they who worship at the shrine of shades are shades. So God in mercy said, You shall not carve out images of wood, or clay, or stone. Such idols are ideals, abased ideals, and men can gain no higher plane than their ideals” (Aquarian Gospel 96:11-14).
It is impossible to depict the invisible God, so any attempts must be foolish. What is missed by many who believe this is the fact that symbols of divine powers or aspects may certainly be made, as can images of holy beings such as great saints, angels, etc. Naturally, these would not be worshipped, but would certainly be kept to remind those who saw them of the ones depicted, because a picture certainly is worth a thousand words. Moreover, there is a subtle connection between a depiction and the one depicted, and their spiritual presence and power can manifest through those images.
In spirit
“The God is Spirit, and in spirit men must worship if they would attain a consciousness of God” (Aquarian Gospel 96:15).
There is no other process of doing this than meditation. Ritual can be helpful, but it only leads to worship; true worship is in the inmost consciousness of the individual.
Holy Breath, Holy Name
“But man can never make a picture or an image of the Holy Breath. The name of God man may not speak with carnal lips; with Holy Breath alone can man pronounce the name. In vanity men think they know the name of God; they speak it lightly and irreverently, and thus they are accursed. If men did know the sacred name and spoke it with unholy lips, they would not live to speak it once again. But God in mercy has not yet unveiled his name to those who cannot speak with Holy Breath. But they who speak the substitute in idle way are guilty in the sight of God, who said, You shall not take the name of God in vain” (Aquarian Gospel 96:16-22).
There is a Divine Name which is a translation into sound of the Consciousness that is God. Perhaps it might be more proper to say that the Divine Name is a sound that leads to and reveals that Consciousness. Whichever we prefer to think, that sound cannot be spoken by the speech apparatus of the human being. Rather, a verbal sound is given to the initiate, and by mentally sounding that Divine Word in the depths of his own awareness, it permutes into its inmost form and works the work of transforming the invoker’s consciousness, preparing him for the Divine Vision and the Divine Union. That is all I want to say about this right now.
Mystic seven
“The number of the Holy Breath is seven, and God holds in his hands the sevens of time. In forming worlds he rested on the seventh day, and every seventh day is set apart as Sabbath day for men. God said, The seventh is the Sabbath of the Lord thy God; remember it and keep it wholly set apart for works of holiness; that is, for works not for the selfish self, but for the universal self. Men may do work for self upon the six days of the week; but on the Sabbath of the Lord they must do naught for self. This day is consecrated unto God; but man serves God by serving man” (Aquarian Gospel 96:23-27).
Going right to the heart of this: consciousness possesses seven levels, corresponding to the seven chakras of the yoga system. The book of Revelation in the Bible speaks of these chakras in various symbols. The idea is that necessity for the human being to ascend from level to level until he reaches and is established in the highest level, the Sabbath, the Seventh Day of Eternal Rest. Then he passes beyond that into the Eighth Day of Resurrection which transcends even the Seventh. Then his union with God is complete, and nothing more remains to be done. “Him that overcometh will I make a pillar in the temple of my God, and he shall go no more out” (Revelation 3:12).
Read the next section in the Aquarian Gospel for Yogis: Aspects of the Higher Law – 1