Worship God in Spirit and in Truth [The Inner Jerusalem] - Part 5

[Guest guest]

Worship God " in Spirit and in Truth " [The Inner Jerusalem] - Part 5

(The Woman of Samaria, Part II)

 

The higher state of God-realization:

oneness of the soul with Spirit

 

(p.310) Any personalized communion with God or worship of a conceptualized

aspect or attribute of Divinity maintains the duality of worshiper and

Worshiped, the ecstatic relationship sometimes preferred by saints. But the even

higher state referred to by Jesus, beyond dualistic devotion, is Oneness with

the Object of worship, and specifically, the ultimate union: oneness of the soul

with Spirit. God as Spirit, the Absolute, beyond form, qualities,

manifestations, cannot be perceived, but only experienced by the supreme

realization of Spirit and soul union. This ecstasy, a supernal Bliss that no

human tongue can tell or rational thought conceive, is described simply by

India's 'rishis': " He who knows, he knows; naught else knows. "

 

God, being in truth the unmanifested Absolute, wants all His true devotees to

know that they are emanations of that Spirit, and as such, to reunite with their

immortal, ever conscious, pure Bliss-Essence. (p.311) That is why Jesus said:

" But the hour cometh, and now is, when the true worshippers shall worship the

Father in spirit and in truth: for the Father seeketh such to worship Him. "

 

All devotees who worship God as the manifested Intelligence of creation--the

guiding power within the universal laws and forces and forms of the cosmos--are

gradually taught by Him, through awakening of the soul's intuition, to worship

Him as the unmanifested Absolute, or Spirit. The link between the manifest and

the Unmanifest is the Holy Ghost, the Holy Vibration of 'Aum'; and the way to

cross this bridge is by communion with that Holy Ghost Vibration.

 

In spiritual ecstasy the meditator perceives the individual vibration of his

life and all lives as informed from the cosmic Holy Ghost, inherent in which is

God's reflected Christ Intelligence, which in turn uplifts the consciousness

into the transcendental Spirit.

 

Therefore, to truly worship God is to worship Him as transcendent Spirit in

Nature and beyond Nature, to worship the Substance and Its presence in the

delusive phenomena evolved from It, to worship the ocean of God with its

delusive waves of creation [1]--and then to realize God solely as Spirit, the

only existing substance, Truth, Bliss, without any delusive manifestation.

 

The persevering devotee advances in the realization that God is Spirit, the

Unmanifested Absolute, and understands the truth about Him as being the

ever-existent, ever-conscious, ever-new Bliss without the delusion of a material

cosmos. It is then that the devotee finds emancipation by becoming one with the

Spirit. It is only by worshiping God and His presence in Nature, and then by

worshiping God as unmanifested Spirit, by Spirit-and-soul union, that the

devotee reaches the final state of emancipation, from which there is no fall.

 

In the brilliance of sunlight, one may close one's eyes and thereby create a

darkness in which to live and move. But when the eyes are open, darkness is no

more. So the consciousness of matter as the perdurable [long continued] reality

of existence is due to man's having closed his God-perceiving eye of wisdom.

(p.312) When the wisdom eye is opened, the consciousness of relativity of the

pairs of opposites--birth and death, sorrow and pleasure, good and

evil--disappear, and the Spirit, as ever-existing, ever-conscious ever-new Joy,

is realized as the sole existent Substance. [2]

 

Learn to worship God in the temple of super-communion, or 'samadhi'. In divine

communion, the cosmos, like a shadow of darkness, dissolves as a non-existent

illusion with the opening of the eye of wisdom to the light of the only existing

Truth, Spirit, the ever blissful Absolute.

 

The Second Coming of Christ (The Resurrection of the Christ Within

You) Volume 1, Discourse 18, pg. 310-312

Paramahansa Yogananda

Printed in the United States of America 1434-J881

ISBN-13:978-0-87612-557-1

ISBN-10:0-87612-557-7

 

Notes:

 

[1] " The way to acknowledge and know Him, as taught in the highest Yoga

philosophy, is by constantly keeping the attention absorbed in His holy

vibration, 'Aum'. If the yogi hears that vibration--through the medium of

intuition--and merges his attention in it, and worships it continuously, then he

will see beyond doubt that there is a God....All may know Him through the right

method of meditation on 'Aum'. Through 'Aum' only can the manifested Spirit be

realized " (God Talks With Arjuna: The Bhagavad Gita, commentary on VII:I).

 

[2] " At birth all creatures are immersed in delusive ignorance ('moha') by the

delusion of the pairs of opposites springing from longing and aversion. But

righteous men, their sins obliterated, and subject no longer to the oppositional

delusions, worship Me steadfastly. Those who seek deliverance from decay and

death by clinging to Me know Brahman (the Absolute) " ('God Talks With Arjuna:

The Bhagavad Gita' VII:27-29).