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CHAPTER III

 

“I Am That I Am”

 

            THE One Substance of existence, that which sub-stands or underlies all appearances, that of which all things are modes, is Spirit or God. It is the divine original Reality, the within of matter and phenomena, the source and potency of manifestation, the essential and abstract

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Protoplasm of life; and it is the Soul, individual and universal. God is Living Substance; the primal homogeneous ONE; the All of Being, comprehending whatever is or can be within “I AM.”

 

“In the Beginning Was the Word”

 

            Before creation God subsists unmanifest; as boundless, homogeneous, unindividuated consciousness, pervading boundless, homogeneous, undifferentiated Substance. “Before the beginning of things the great and invisible God alone subsisted. There was no motion, nor darkness, nor space, nor matter. There was no other than God, the One, the Uncreate, the Self-Subsistent, Who subsisted as invisible Light.” (1) The potentiality of all things slept within the one and only SELF. But when in the Eternal Mind the conception of Self-expression or motion arose and the idea of germination stirred, then within the unity of Living Substance the ever latent duality of Life and Substance passed from repose into activity. The masculine and feminine modes or potencies of Original Being – in themselves always unmanifest – operated to find joint expression in a third aspect of Deity, their “Word” or “Son,” through Whom manifestation, which is creation, could be accomplished in the generation of the worlds spiritual and material. Thus by the interaction of God the Father, as Original Force or Energy, and God the Mother, as Original Substance or Essence, is produced the Logos or Adonai, Who is the resultant Manifestor or Utterance of Deity, in Whom the dual powers of the Father-Mother Almighty are inherent and by Whom all things are made. And this – not three Entities, but One Entity in three aspects – is the primal Trinity and Duality in Unity of the Unmanifest.

 

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“Seven Spirits Before His Throne”

 

            When Adonai, the “Lord” or Thought-Image of the Divine Mind, wills to create, He – Who is also She – assumes the aspect of activity as distinct from that of passivity, and, as a mode of Deity dynamic or “Holy Spirit,” issues and differentiates into the Elohim or Seven Spirits of Light, the Powers or Gods who are the supreme Regents of creation. The Elohim may be conceived of as the seven-fold Breath of the Divine Nature, as the seven-fold Ray proceeding from the prism of the Invisible Light. Each a perfect Entity and each a septenary in unity, they may be symbolised as the Spirits of Wisdom, Understanding, Counsel, Power, Knowledge, Righteousness, and Divine Awfulness. It is the “day” or work of each of the Elohim that is required for the elaboration of archetypal humanity and which constitutes the creative “week.” From them emanate as replicas in many grades and orders the whole celestial Hierarchy – Logoi of Solar Systems, Planetary Spirits, Thrones and Dominions, Angels and Archangels, Principalities and Powers – the thronging ranks of spiritual beings who reach downwards from the Throne of the Most High to the status of our present humanity, and whose function it is to translate the archetypal into the actual, and the actual into the consummated ideal, co-operating in the Creation and the Redemption, the Evolution and the Involution, alike of Man and of the Universe.

 

The Divine Thought

 

            Thus God IS under two modes; of which one is passive, static, abstract, unmanifest, and the other is active, dynamic, concrete, manifest. Of the nature of the first we can know nothing; it is to us infinite paradox. The nature of the second is revealed through the Person of the Son. And these two modes of Deity are at one and the same time, for it is only with a portion of Himself that God establishes the manifest; beyond and

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around the borders of existence is ever supra-cosmic, unmanifest Primordial Mind. Now thought is the soul or essence of action, and the cosmic universe results when That Mind operates to bring forth Ideas, for these make up existence. And as there is only one Substance out of which all things are made, the universe in its ultimate analysis consists of the very Substance of God and is therefore inherently divine.

 

NOTES

 

(12:1) Clothed With the Sun, Part II, Nº VI.

 

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