65. Expansion of one‘s own Self
The only obstacle that is really hard for you to perceive is your own unwillingness to become better, more merciful, more loving, more serving the whole. And this obstacle must be overcome by each one of you personally. It is you, personally, and nobody else instead of each of you, who can desire to become as such who would be better than you have been yesterday.
Each of you desires to live better. However, this desire has a benchmark of your personal egoism. You desire that it would be better for you personally, that you would have a better material life, or a more peaceful life, and still you think about a more peaceful or healthier life of your own. And even by a single wink of your eye you are not making a hint to yourself, to your own self, that it would be nice if others would have a better life, if others would have a healthier life. If others not me would be richer, if others not me would be healthier, if others not me would have a better life.
When I lived among you two thousand years ago I did not really think about myself anything. Not a single thought occurred to me that I would direct my life for the benefit of my own self rather than project it for the benefit of the whole, of all the people. I caused plenty of troubles due to my prompt character and my endless interest in the environment and by asking both my parents and teachers as to the causes of the manifold thoughts being spun in my head – why the thunder was thundering, the lightening was striking, why women could not be equal with men among the Jews, why other people, looked upon as the gentiles, were hurt even by the Jews who considered themselves to be the believers in Jahve, why girls did not study at school, why the up-bringing of a child was split into the periods when up to the age of five the boy‘s up-bringing was exclusively in the hands of the mother and since the age of five that responsibility was transferred onto the father while the girl was taken care of further on exclusively by the mother, why the gentiles ruled over the Jews, why the gentiles were more joyful and relaxed than the Jews, why the blind and beggars were cared for by Jahve more than the healthy ones, why the rituals were that intimidating, requiring the slaughter of the lamb or other animals to be sacrificed to Jahve for the cleansing of one‘s soul, why Jahve could punish if he loved, why the Jews considered themselves to be “the chosen nation,“ and a great many of other questions that did interest me so profoundly and aroused the inquisitiveness of my mind that nobody was able to satisfy it. Therefore, I would ever more address the heavenly Father for these very same questions that were too difficult for me and that my mind would not find an answer to. And my mind would get enlightened with marvelous thoughts that would come from the Father and explain to me, very precisely, as to what were the causes of all those things. And this relationship with the Father would direct me ever more away from coddling my own ego towards thinking how to assist men in enlightening their minds so that they would feel a similar light and peace that ever more I started to feel within me.
My strong desire to help people originated as back as in my early childhood when my mind had really no idea it was communing with the Father. Even though I was talking to Him, while staying alone, after my joyful playing with my friends throughout the day, even though I did not hear any answers from the Father yet due to my permanent communication with the Father I developed such a habit that I named as “My prayer and thoughts to the Father.“ During these moments I would feel a pleasant tranquility within me. And I enjoyed them very much. Due to this pleasant sensation I tried to stay alone ever more. And not only before going to bed at night but also in the day time when I would go out of our home in Nazareth and walk up on a big hill and while viewing a panorama stretching far off with the Mount of Hermon and even with visible cities within the range of a score of miles, and on an especially transparent bright day, with a fringe of the sea, I would sit down on the ground and embrace my bent knees and would try to imagine as to what might be beyond that view visible to my eyes, what was in the sky, where I would see so many stars at night, what was in these stars, what was in-between them, why they did not fall onto the earth, why did not they get dispersed, how God was keeping them all within His grasp without letting a single one go. And after these moments of a deep and sincere pondering on the
I did not have a single man around me that I would have been able to discuss the issues that moved me and interested me very much with. Therefore I was alone with such conversations with the Father only. To my parents these changes of mine when from a joyful son who had just run out of home onto the Nazareth Mount their child would return serious not up to his age and start teaching them that it was necessary to believe in God in one‘s heart rather than to stick to the meaningless rituals that produced nothing to man‘s heart and therefore did not turn man into a better person began ever more to cause not only anguish but also irritation because by starting such incautious conversations among people I might be excommunicated from the synagogue and called as the one possessed by the devil.
Such considerations of theirs did not affect me at all but I started pondering once even the closest people to me could entertain these thoughts about me so the others should certainly take me for the abnormal one. Therefore, since my early age, I began to ever more realize that I might share not everything to the same extent with all. To those who were unable to understand it I would rather explain nothing for having been scared they would neither listen to nor understand it all the same while their fear would only increase. It was because of this that I could not explain to the people how they could find peace in their communion with the Father, find it by communicating with Him in their own words. That would have been an enormous challenge to all the Jewish ritualistic and dogmatic belief system that was generating a big money to the rabbis.
However, at home, I kept explaining that the Father was a loving Father, and He loved even more than any earthly father did. And He did not need any animal sacrifice or any other sort of sacrifice, money or vows. I would ask my father: “Would you, while loving me, require any sacrifice from me for your love?“ Joseph would always consider my words. He never tried to reply me at once. He was the opposition of my mother who was steadfast but impatient. My father was not that enthusiastic, he was rather thinking tacitly within himself. And after a while, as if continuing the conversation, he would get back to some idea exposed by me earlier and would pronounce approvingly: “My dear son, you words are still ringing in my head, you know, you are right, may be God does not need that sacrifice of ours. If He loves us, most likely He loves us not for our sacrifices. Well, all of us are doing it; and Moses did it. We do not have to break the laws left over to us by Moses. Or else we shall cease being the people of God, and we shall not be any different from the gentiles that do not need any Jahve at all. You would rather not speak out this aloud to anyone. At home you may do it but not anywhere else out. You shall bring troubles on our home. You shall not manage to clarify it to others all the same.“ I would tell the father who was the only one within our large ten-member family I could frankly talk with since my mother did not want to listen to my pondering about God while all my other younger brothers and sisters were too young to comprehend my words: “By offering any sacrifice to Jahve we are no different from the gentiles who worship the idols. For you that sacrifice is also like an idol because you believe that the Father does not love you without a still more valuable thing to Him than yourselves. You have to sacrifice something what is beyond your sincerity and opened up heart to Jahve. It means that you value that very sacrifice higher that your own opened up heart. Merely an opened up heart, according to your comprehension, is not yet a sufficient sacrifice to God since it is still necessary to add a material sacrifice as well. It is exactly what the gentiles do whom you despise so much and do not consider them to be worthy of you.“ Joseph would lack arguments to respond me, he would only say in short: “Well, well, I will ponder this; you are telling me something that my mind cannot understand at once. I need time.“ And subsequently, after a day or two he merely would continue: ‘May be you are right. But all the same do not speak out these things to others. They shall not understand it.“
I have related this episode from my experience in the human flesh to you so that you – my brethren of the present age – would also be able to realize that the Father does not need any sacrifice from you, any restraint of your body such as fasting or refusal to partake of some food during some religious holidays, or on the contrary, partaking of some special food in particular, He does not need any sacrifice of your vows and the ritual performance, and the sacrifice of your believing in dogmas. He needs the only thing that in your faith after having felt His spirit, already bestowed upon you and operating within you, and His love, constantly being radiated by this spirit, you could lead a joyful daily life in a bliss that can be experienced only by the soul opened up to Him; and nothing more.
It is upon opening up of your soul that the Father‘s spirit, indwelling you, shall fill it up with the Father‘s love as much as that soul shall be sincerely opened up for its replenishment. And it is then that your mind shall experience bliss and shall be able to start leading you in wisdom and with love for all, and that shall be the cause of your all good deeds to al; your good deeds to all rather than to yourself.
But the soul and your higher frequency mind, the mind of the soul, shall be ever more telling you what bliss is to spread love and goodness to all. And this sort of man shall really begin to feel that he has become exactly as I have been in the human flesh two thousand years before.