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Lessons In Truth
Lesson 2
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[Lessons In Truth]
[Emily Cady's Works] [Unity on the Web Home Page]
Statement of Being
Lesson Two
Who And What God Is
Who And What Man Is
1. When Jesus was talking with the Samaritan woman at the
well, He said to her, "God is Spirit: and they that worship
him must worship in spirit and truth." (John 4:24 A.V.
reads, "God is a Spirit," but the marginal note is, "God is
Spirit," and some other versions render this passage, "God
is Spirit.") To say "a Spirit" would be to imply the
existence of more than one Spirit. Jesus, in His statement,
did not imply this.
2. Webster in his definition of Spirit says: "In the
abstract, life or consciousness viewed as an independent
type of existence. One manifestation of the divine nature;
the Holy Spirit."
3. God, then, is not, as many of us have been taught to
believe, a big personage or man residing somewhere in a
beautiful region in the sky, called "heaven," where good
people go when they die, and see Him clothed in ineffable
glory; nor is He a stern, angry judge only awaiting
opportunity somewhere to
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punish bad people who have failed to live a perfect life
here.
4. God is Spirit, or the creative energy that is the cause
of all visible things. God as Spirit is the invisible life
and intelligence underlying all physical things. There
could be no body, or visible part, to anything unless there
was first Spirit as creative cause.
5. God is not a being or person having life, intelligence,
love, power. God is that invisible, intangible, but very
real, something we call life. God is perfect love and
infinite power. God is the total of these, the total of all
good, whether manifested or unexpressed.
6. There is but one God in the universe, but one source of
all the different forms of life or intelligence that we
see, whether they be men, animals, trees, or rocks.
7. God is Spirit. We cannot see Spirit with these fleshly
eyes; but when we clothe ourselves with the spiritual body,
then Spirit is visible or manifest and we recognize it. You
do not see the living, thinking "me" when you look at my
body. You see only the form which I am manifesting.
8. God is love. We cannot see love or grasp any
comprehension of what love is, except as love is clothed
with a form. All the love in the universe is God. The love
between husband and wife, between parents and children, is
just the least little bit of God, as pushed forth in
visible form into manifestation. A mother's
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love, so infinitely tender, so unfailing, is God's love,
only manifested in greater degree by the mother.
9. God is wisdom and intelligence. All the wisdom and
intelligence that we see in the universe is God, is wisdom
projected through a visible form. To educate (from educare,
to lead forth) never means to force into from the outside,
but always means to draw out from within something already
existing there. God as infinite wisdom lies within every
human being, only waiting to be led forth into
manifestation. This is true education.
10. Heretofore we have sought knowledge and help from
outside sources, not knowing that the source of all
knowledge, the very Spirit of truth, is lying latent within
each one of us, waiting to be called on to teach us the
truth about all things--most marvelous of teachers, and
everywhere present, without money or price!
11. God is power. Not simply God has power, but God is
power. In other words, all the power there is to do
anything is God. God, the source of our existence every
moment, is not simply omnipotent (all-powerful); He is
omnipotence (all power). He is not alone omniscient
(all-knowing); He is omni-science (all knowledge). He is
not only omni-present, but more--omnipresence. God is not a
being having qualities, but He is the good itself.
Everything that you can think of that is good, when in its
absolute perfection, goes to make up that invisible Being
we call God.
12. God, then, is the substance (from sub, under, and
stare, to stand), or the real thing standing under
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every visible form of life, love, intelligence, or power.
Each rock, tree, animal, every visible thing, is a
manifestation of the one Spirit--God--differing only in
degree of manifestation; and each of the numberless modes
of manifestation or individualities, however insignificant,
contains the whole.
13. One drop of water taken from the ocean is just as
perfect ocean water as the whole great body. The
constituent elements of water are exactly the same, and
they are combined in precisely the same ratio or perfect
relation to each other, whether we consider one drop, a
pailful, a barrelful, or the entire ocean out of which the
lesser quantities are taken; each is complete in itself;
they differ only in quantity or degree. Each contains the
whole; and yet no one would make the mistake of supposing
from this statement that each drop is the entire ocean.
14. So we say that each individual manifestation of God
contains the whole; not for a moment meaning that each
individual is God in His entirety, so to speak, but that
each is God come forth, shall I say? in different quantity
or degree.
15. Man is the last and highest manifestation of divine
energy, the fullest and most complete expression (or
pressing out) of God. To man, therefore, is given dominion
over all other manifestations.
16. God is not only the creative cause of every visible
form of intelligence and life at its commencement, but each
moment throughout its existence He lives within every
created thing as the life, the ever
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renewing, re-creating, upbuilding cause of it. He never is
and never can be for a moment separated from His creations.
Then how can even a sparrow fall to the ground without His
knowledge? And "ye are of more value than many sparrows"
(Mt. 10:31).
17. God is. Man exists (from ex, out of, and sistere, to
stand forth). Man stands forth out of God.
18. Man is a threefold being, made up of Spirit, soul, and
body. Spirit, our innermost, real being, the absolute part
of us, the I of us, has never changed, though our thoughts
and our circumstances may have changed hundreds of times.
This part of us is a standing forth of God into visibility.
It is the Father in us. At this central part of his being
every person can say, "I and the Father are one" (Jn.
10:30), and speak absolute Truth.
19. Mortal mind--that which Paul calls "the mind of the
flesh"--is the consciousness of error.
20. The great whole of as yet unmanifested Good, or God,
from whom we are projections or offspring, in whom "we
live, and move, and have our being" (Acts 17:28)
continually, is to me the Father--our Father; "and all ye
are brethren" (Mt. 23:8), because all are manifestations of
one and the same Spirit. Jesus, recognizing this, said:
"call no man your father, upon the earth: for one is your
Father, even he who is in heaven (Mt. 23:9). As soon as we
recognize our true relationship to all men, we at once slip
out of our narrow, personal loves, our "me and mine," into
the
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universal love that takes in all the world, joyfully
exclaiming: "Who is my mother? and who are my brethren?
And he stretched forth his hand toward his disciples, and
said, Behold, my mother and my brethren" (Mt. 12:48).
21. Many have thought of God as a personal being. The
statement that God is Principle chills them, and in terror
they cry out, "They have taken away my Lord, and I know not
where they have laid him" (Jn. 20:13).
22. Broader and more learned minds are always cramped by
the thought of God as a person, for personality limits to
place and time.
23. God is the name we give to that unchangeable,
inexorable principle at the source of all existence. To the
individual consciousness God takes on personality, but as
the creative underlying cause of all things, He is
principle, impersonal; as expressed in each individual, He
becomes personal to that one--a personal, loving,
all-forgiving Father-Mother. All that we can ever need or
desire is the infinite Father-Principle, the great
reservoir of unexpressed good. There is no limit to the
Source of our being, nor to His willingness to manifest
more of Himself through us, when we are willing to do his
will.
24. Hitherto we have turned our heart and efforts toward
the external for fulfillment of our desires and for
satisfaction, and we have been grievously disappointed. The
hunger of everyone for satisfaction is only the cry of the
homesick child for its Father-Mother God. It is only the
Spirit's desire in us to come forth
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into our consciousness as more and more perfection, until
we shall have become fully conscious of our oneness with
All-perfection. Man never has been and never can be
satisfied with anything less.
25. We all have direct access through the Father in us--the
central "I" of our being--to the great whole of life, love,
wisdom, power, which is God. What we now want to know is
how to receive more from the fountainhead and to make more
and more of God (which is but another name for All-Good)
manifest in our daily life.
26. There is but one Source of being. This Source is the
living fountain of all good, be it life, love, wisdom,
power--the Giver of all good gifts. This source and you are
connected, every moment of your existence. You have power
to draw on this Source for all of good you are, or ever
will be, capable of desiring.
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