Mystic Immanence, the Indwelling SpiritWilberforce, Basil
Religion
Mystic Immanence, the Indwelling Spirit
Wilberforce, Basil
Immanence of God; Mysticism
Now, before we consider what He meant by that saying, just brush the
dust off this foundation-stone—the dust of accumulated dogmatic
limitations, and theological "schemes of salvation," and all the rest.
The Christian revelation is a complete and intelligible philosophy, and
it secures your position. Infinite Mind, brooding Creative
Motherliness, has expressed itself by materializing its thoughts in the
phenomena of the universe, and body-forming its highest thought in human
beings. That man is the highest expression and self-realization of the
Creative Mother-mind, is the guarantee that man’s consciousness mirrors
the infinite Mother-mind as the dewdrops mirror the sun. It follows
that if there were an absolutely perfect human being, that human being
would be so God-inhabited that he would be able to say, "I and Infinite
Mind are one; he that hath seen Me hath seen Infinite Mind." Now Jesus
is this perfect human being. The Divine ideal was specialized,
completely expressed, in His individual personality. The Divinity of
Jesus means that He was the full embodiment of the qualities and
principles of the Creative Motherliness, the Infinite Spirit. So in
Jesus, God is no longer a vague abstraction, because I can interpret the
Universal Mind through the specialization in Jesus:
"Space and time, O Lord, that show Thee
Oft in power, veiling good,
Are too vast for us to know Thee
As our trembling spirits would;
But in Jesus, yes, in Jesus, Father, Thou art understood."
But more; in Jesus I can also understand myself. Infinite Mind sent
Jesus to be a complete full-orbed specimen of what I am potentially
myself. The principles that He embodied, the "Logos Emphutos" that
became flesh in Him, are not peculiar to Him, but universal, so that we
can claim identity with Him. St. John says: "As He is, so are we in
this world"; St. Paul says: "The Christ"—that is, the "Logos
Emphutos"—"is in you the hope of glory"; and He Himself said: "I am in
the Father, and ye in Me, and I in you."
That is why He said: "It is expedient for you that I go away." He came
to teach that the "inborn Word" is universal; it is the Mother-God
repeating Itself in all Souls; and if this truth were to be realized and
appreciated, it was expedient that the visible Personality in which it
was specialized should be removed, in order that men might mentally
universalize the manifestation, and learn that this spirit of Sonship,
this Divine nature, this distribution of the Creative Being, belongs to
all men, as the hope of their existence, the ideal of their life, the
leaven of their humanity, the assurance of their perfection.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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