Artwork "Enchanted" by Sandy Jones
Excerpt from
"The Child Within Us Lives! A Synthesis of Science, Religion and Metaphysics"
By William Samuel
48
*****
THE SUBJECTIVE COMFORTER AND THE HISTORIC JESUS
When first “the mountain” becomes “not a mountain,” (our move from objectivism to the discovery of metaphysics) for a time the concept of a mortal man goes out of the Christ for most earnest metaphysicians. Well then, how does one at this level of things, before he has moved beyond metaphysics, describe the historic Jesus of Nazareth? When one of the good, old-timey fundamentalist churchmen collars him, how does the metaphysician respond? Not very well, clearly, or there would have been a greater interest in subjective studies. A good statement that can withstand the onslaught of bickering theology needs to be made—but to do that is tantamount to making a rock fall up.
Here is that question, recently put to me for ten thousandth time: “What is the significance or relationship of Jesus Christ to me, as this Awareness I am?”
Let me try to answer that question to the satisfaction of a thinker. TRUTH is applicable at all levels of human understanding, but the metaphysician has never been able to give a satisfactory answer to the fundamentalist churchman. Not just because the churchman hasn't come to accept subjectivism yet, but because subjectivism can't make the whole statement of Truth. However, the Child of us CAN.
In reply to the question above, I must answer from the metaphysical, subjective, middle position so it will remain subjectively correct, but still be understood objectively by one who hasn't caught the subjective idea yet. I begin a full answer: I can speak only for myself, Subjectively, people and history unfold within my self-awareness. I have no awareness of Moses, Abraham, Jesus, Genghis Khan, Dolly Parton or anyone else OUTSIDE this conscious/subconscious awareness that writes and reads these words. I take myself to be this Awareness within which all bodies appear, including this one that plunks at the keyboard, as well as the one who asks this one a question about Jesus. Everyone, including the one who reads these words, is within myself/yourself-as-Awareness. This is self-evidently and undeniably true for each of us, even for the theologian who dismisses it as “silly solipsism.” His dismissal doesn't make it untrue.
Identified as Awareness, I look “outside” and see trees, flowers, people and history in the making—all MYSELF-AS-AWARENESS going on in an unending “now.” I look out and see evidences of the past(history) and the possibilities for the future. I look out and read history books and bibles. I look out and see attracting, compelling, unifying things and ideas which are all within this Self-awareness. I look out and, despite all the teeth-clenching metaphysical absoluteness I am capable of, I still see (“seem” to see) distracting, repelling, dividing and destructive things, all within Awareness. Wheat and tares.
The wheat and tares “outside” myself have an equivalent “inside.” The tree and the warm glow of the setting sun evoke a sense of beauty. The unifying themes evoke a sense of harmony and joy. The distracting and divisive scenes evoke discomfort, distrust, dis-ease, and so on. The obverse of this is true as well. I feel a sense of peace within and look outside and see evidences of that peace as happy and harmonious things I might not have been aware of otherwise. (Part of the Mystery is the Christly admonition to “make the inside and the outside into a single one.”)
Let us examine this solipsistic fact for a moment. The first thing I see when I look “outside” is this body-image at the typewriter, an image more sensitive to me than all the other images—from this objective point of view. Stick a pin in this image and I yell. Stick a pin in that image and I may yell, but I don't always feel the pain. “My” view seems to be limited to the purview of this first image whose name is William and who sits here at the typewriter. But is isn't. After these many years of subjective living, I have learned that Awareness isn't limited at all, but can and should perceive from many viewpoints simultaneously, including some views little understood by the more distant images I see within myself when I look “out”—and especially not understood by my religious selfhood, nor even by my metaphysician friends who should understand. For that matter, Awareness sees things undreampt by men.
The belief which “the world” proclaims and the beliefs (viewpoints) I hear spoken “out there” in the people-world are written and spoken from the position that IDENTITY is that first thing I see when I look into the mirror. That body-image which is so sensitive, the world says, is our (my) identity. This form and shape that sits here writing and answering your question is said to be the identity I am—an identity not unlike the form of the man who walked the hills of Galilee. But clearly (to me), the body-image is not my identity. Rather, the Awareness that “looks out” and looks in, “thinks out” from that body, is the Identity I am. The Awareness within which all the bodies and trees and books and artifacts appear is Identity, as nearly as I can establish at the metaphysical level. My God, if I'm naught but the body, I am a mere bucket of blood and a sack of tremulous pumps. If I am that only, I am what my mother and father made. If I am LIFE, I am what God made.
Therefore, this Awareness is the “subjective” Identity I am and think of myself AS. From this perspective, all tangibility, all things, thoughts, ideas, books, historic figures and all history itself are WITHIN the Awareness I am—and this Awareness embraces every form of every thing. Clearly, Moses spoke of this identity as having dominion over every creeping thing that creepth upon the earth. He also indicated that we lost sight of it very quickly in the scheme of things.
Well now, subjectively (metaphysically), some of the things I look at are more meaningful to me at one time or another. When it seems this first image within awareness, the William body, is hungry, food is a sight to enjoy. When I look at a unifying idea within the world of myself, I feel more satisfaction than when looking at or listening to a destructive idea, a dividing idea, or one that creates doubt and confusion in myself and in the world.
“But what about JESUS, for Christ's sake?” my questioner thunders.
He is the most unifying Idea I have, my friend, but keep your shirt on. I am answering your question reasonably, logically, step by step, leaving nothing out, which is the way the Answer comes to us. O.K.? Your question will be answered if you will be patient.
“William Samuel, I tell you that Jesus is the blood of the Lamb! Jesus saves! Jesus is the way! Praise Jesus, Hallelujah!”
Thank you for such love, my friend. Now let me answer that part of your question about the relationship of Jesus Christ and “me as Awareness.” I was saying that identified as Awareness, all my knowledge of anything and everything is WITHIN Awareness—including the knowledge of Jesus Christ. It is exactly the same for you. All the bibles of the world are knowledge that comes to us by way of Awareness. I have no consciousness of the avatars, Jesus mighty among them, except as they come to ME here, WITHIN and AS this AWARENESS. Would you agree with this?
“I'm lost.”
It seems so.
“If I'm lost, why am I trying to save you?
You are not lost really, my friend, and neither am I. Let's get back to the subjective views of Awareness. About Jesus Christ specifically, because this will answer questions for subjectivists who need to know as well. They especially need to get their metaphysics straight so they can get on with the rest of the Work given them to do.
Suppose I look outside that window of myself and suddenly, unexpectedly, see a special butterfly—a big, beautiful, flashing sparkle of ethereal light darting through the sky. I am delighted and thrilled. Something in me comes alive. I would like to know more about butterflies, and about THAT butterfly especially.
What do I do? If that spectacular butterfly passes out of my sight and goes into history, I can still turn within myself, to my expert friends, libraries and books. I find a book on butterflies and learn more than I ever believed possible because such books are filled with information, are they not? (Incidentally, those books are an external confirmation of the Wisdom you and I already are, internally. We may not know that consciously yet, but that is partly what the human experience is about.)
One day I find a photograph of my special butterfly on page 1212. I get right down to a knowledge of everything about that special bug, and I'm so fascinated and excited, I pack my bags and make the necessary pilgrimage to Central America to the butterbug's winter home. I visit with hundreds of those particular butterflies to learn about them first hand, eyeball to eyeball.
Now, my friend. Listen gently. The holy books of the world have come to me just like that special butterfly. I have gone to the experts and authorities and libraries of the world within myself to examine them further. The Bible in particular has flashed and flown through my experience countless hundreds of times—and I tell you, it is surely among the special flashing lights of my world. INSIDE that book, the story of the historic Christ, the “Son of God,” is, among all the stories within myself, the most influential record within this Awareness. How so? Because Something Wonderful within me stirs and sings when I even think of that man's statements and parables.
So, to finally answer your questions right down to a bug's whisker, my friend, I have examined the words of many men within my holy books, but the words of Jesus and the words of LaoTse are head and shoulders above all other words within myself except for my own. How so? Because those words of Jesus, subjectively understood, told me what to do with this first image, this body that talks to that body and they told me how to live my subjective view in an
objective and apparently divided world of conflicting stories, ideas and people.
And why are my own words important to me? Because here in this world of images, they reflect what I believe. My own beliefs influence my words, and my words bring results in my own subjective arena, here and now. Whose words put those shoes on your feet? The words in the Bible or the words that came out of your own mouth? Whose words put you into your present church?
“But Jesus came to save the entire world, Mr. Samuel. In Jesus there is salvation. Have you accepted Jesus as your Lord and Savior?”
You aren't listening, are you, my new friend? Much more than acceptance, I have become ONE with the words from the Christ's mouth. I have become ONE with THAT One. Reading and rereading his words, I have come to learn the mystery of those words and stand as one with them. I have drunk those words and eaten them and they have become me. The one who uttered them in human history came to confirm this Identity I Am and you are, and the two of us have become one Identity.
Furthermore, as the inner meanings of those words have come alive within “me”—this form you are looking at—my entire subjective world is being lifted up, even as I am lifted up in the honest and faithful understanding of His words. As I find God's grace via the words of the Christ—and all other ways the light of Spirit comes—my world finds it too, just as you found me to come to and ask your questions. As I am saved from the former identification, all mankind within myself can be (is) saved from that mistaken sense of things as well. As I surrender the deadly deception, I come alive as the Christ-light for my own subjectivity, my entire world! And this is exactly what the Christ of the Bible told me to do, isn't it? I am doing those things with all the power and authority God has given Me.
At this point, I looked at the man who had come to question me and he was sleeping softly. His wife looked at me strangely, shook her head almost imperceptibly, first one way, then another, as if she were thinking yes, then no, then yes again. She wanted to say something, but didn't or couldn't. Suddenly she burst into tears and threw here arms around me saying “Thank you! Thank you!” Her husband awoke looking most bewildered.
Sometimes I look out and see those images of myself hearing what I'm trying to say. Sometimes they seem to hear and understand. Oftentimes, it is as if I were talking to a rock wall or a mud fence, but the one of myself who hears, makes plain the one who doesn't. And the one who doesn't, tells me I am to say it better and more clearly still, when I can, when I can, when, with God's grand Grace, I can. In ten thousand years the world hasn't understood the subjectivist yet.
If the world knew how completely the “transfiguration” has taken place here-as-AWARENESS, the world would BE on the door steps of the subjective idea, butterfly book in hand, asking questions, prepared to hear the deep things of Selfhood. The Tree of Life is soon to blossom and seed. There isn't much time, of temporal time, remaining. Life is eternal; the mortal tree of life is not eternal. “Ask Me while you can,” says the Christ Light of Love.
Dear Sam,
You have answered the man's question logically. I understand how I should think of the historic Christ from the “is NOT a mountain” position. Now, will you tell me how to think of Him from the “It is a mountain AGAIN” position?
The purpose of this book is to help you answer that question for yourself. No book alone will answer you fully. The answer, surrounded by the wilderness of time and space, lies within you and your own interface with God. “Thine own right hand can save thee.” Perhaps you should know it took thirty years to write the paper you have just read. It will not take you so long to answer your question for yourself. Just don't throw the historic Christ of the Bible out the window as science and some versions of metaphysics try to do.
Excerpt from "The Child Within Us Lives! A Synthesis of Science, Religion and Metaphysics"
By William Samuel
Available on Amazon
If you would like further guidance in understanding any of William Samuel's work based on Self discover you are welcome to contact me, Sandy Jones - samuelandfriends@gmail.com - Ojai, California -
Read more by William Samuel books available on Amazon
The Awareness of Self-Discovery by William Samuel
A Guide To Awareness and Tranquillity by William Samuel
Barefoot at Heart-The Alchemy of Love and the Power of Light by Sandy Jones
