Within the 7th chapter of Romans- an epistle clothed with the spirit of Saint Paul – we find the following passage which has caused disturbances in theological circles due to disagreement over its application- to the very nature Paul is describing with the words below:
‘We know that the law is spiritual; but I am carnal, sold under sin. I do not understand my own actions. For I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate. Now if I do what I do not want, I agree that the law is good. So then it is no longer I that do it, but sin which dwells within me. For I know that nothing good dwells within me, that is, in my flesh. I can will what is right, but I cannot do it. For I do not do the good I want, but the evil I do not want is what I do. Now if I do what I do not want, it is no longer I that do it, but sin which dwells within me. So I find it to be a law that when I want to do right, evil lies close at hand. For I delight in the law of God, in my inmost self, but I see in my members another Law at war with the law of my mind and making me captive to the law of sin which dwells in my members.”
Whether it be himself he has in mind from personal experience or a picture he wishes to express that has a wider application, one that involves all of humanity, urging them to take a look at their own inner development – or if his aim is in a narrower sense – to the church itself; It is when we are much too dogmatic and prone to rigidly define the scope of things that we miss the enchantment that is also present. The scriptures can be applied within many contexts and it is with the scope of interpretation and application that many are too narrow- hiding a richer, fuller revelation.
It is in the above passage that a fuller truth has been missed, richer than an application to the unsaved versus regenerated man in Christendom. The state of a person before the life long process of inner sanctification. Within that idea things can be given a variance of coloring from hermeneutics and a variety of personal dispositions. Some may take the passage as expressing a constant battle with the lower self, where a person’s salvation- their place of being for the rest of eternity- rests on this new man Paul describes coming to fruition in one earthly life after his or her conversion. One tries to quantify a person’s spiritual development with what is suitable for the regenerated versus the heathen. Having to assess or to express spiritual development in contrasts of faith versus works is a product of an old way of thinking that was at one time pivotal in the evolution of consciousness – a time when men were more in tune with the word or the inspirations from the other side. Today, within certain contexts this fails to convince- falls short to satisfy many of its hearers. This can cause a person to become sick by not participating in the impressions that approach while waking or sleeping with enough strength and the result shows itself as felt anxiety, not to mention a disconnect with religious feeling-a mood that produces a much needed quality of soul – that of devotion to something higher. The same can also be said of modern science with the majority of its physiologists and psychologists working with prejudices that assume a gap that divides the inner and outer worlds – i.e. our soul life versus external phenomena. Reality is either our own making or the objects and phenomena are really there but to know its spiritual nature is not possible. Some fail to grasp that It can in fact be both and not remain abstract either ending in a monism, (a unity) or dualism but instead we can directly know how one fits into the web of living content. The knowing is not nebulous, it is a tangible experience, a different type of perceiving that results in the appropriate connectivity to the spirit while retaining egohood. For example, a much different world takes shape when the senses and their organs are viewed as an extension of spirit- that in truth, the light that the eye supposedly reflects is what actually created the eye.
If one isn’t too caught up in doctrine of the church or with modern anatomy and physiology and is able to apply this condition of soul of which is described by the apostle – of the human condition- in a multiplicity of sides- appreciating a variety of viewpoints one is able to see that it not just Paul himself but his thoughts are guided by angelic beings- higher intelligences- as he places this inner battle of the soul in the midway point of his monumental theological work. He knew the central turning point in human evolution had occurred with the appearance of Christ and with it comes a deadening and quickening of the human soul and spirit at rates never seen or heard of before. A quicker fall into earthly realm and subsequent faster ascent (a downward parabola) – of what the human being experiences in the various states of consciousness in and out of the body. Some may think it’s preposterous that many of the church fathers, some of such with such hefty intellects could not understand the more eastern gnosis, or esoteric ideas that were in reality from sources much older, in fact from the mysteries of an antiquity reaching back to times scarcely accessible to any type of perceiving. These originators of what comprises the authors of the New Testament including those who participated in the holy spirit, tasted its gifts at that time were aware that there was a higher grace watching and cradling humankind, withholding revelations it could not handle-as the ego would need to be forced to focus on the immediate life in the body- assuring that we could truly be free indeed.
Perhaps some have received the admonition this passage can bring forth in a context of a personal trial, an addiction that was being dealt with and when it is heard one joins Paul in some way and this offers comfort if one has a mood of soul fit to receive religious impressions bringing those on their last legs some inner strength. Those that are granted this gift still reap the fruits of having a high ideal they can ponder on- a man of god to emulate- that of Paul – who remains out of grasp of thinking in many ways which kindles a devotional spirit – a feeling within of that previously noted inner quality of devotion, making truth far more accessible, a needed ability to perceive in higher ways. It is when one awakens in the morning that this battle within the soul takes place and in so many fashions it gives the material, the very ideas to be preached or the content to discuss with a therapist. Some analogy that contains a quarter truth is given- supplied as an answer to “why do I feel the way i do?” – the psychologist can’t help but be stuck in a materialistic worldview based on neuroscience in hopes that his insight can help his patient to illuminate the path forward- to encourage the sufferer on to better choices or to overcome a restlessness and debilitating boredom. The feeling that a significant number possess- as they incarnate on earth – a very unique condition that belongs to an epoch of existence of which we are a part of now.. One may feel themselves burrowed as deep as they can within the material world, often characterized by not feeling at home, either with the thought of existing in spirit or even as they experience waking consciousness. Rather than knitted into a tableau of spiritual beings a fair number experience a distressing burden of facing the future. There lies hope in a transition and these points of transition or the cliched ‘ascents into the spirit’ are numerous. Perhaps the recent pandemic 2020 – 2027 holds a special 7 year cycle which comes nearer each day to its completion, allowing certain unconsciousness happenings to become noticed again- things that enter the consciousness of men unawares – as was the incarnation of the son of god missed by most. It could be now that an altogether new achievement of being more inwardly aware of higher impulses is appearing, as a new world arrives.
I have often had inklings that the solution to how I had always experienced myself in the world was possible from within but didn’t realize till much later that I was still clinging too much to outward authority, when it had done all it could as Paul says ‘to bring my sin into consciousness’. It is in these concepts from Christianity and from the medical field that one forgets that no one can leave their own thinking when it comes to knowing the world and its content. It is not difficult to forget that there is no division between the observer and observed, by the prayer of the heart and the outward confession of faith and this causes many to lose trust in their own experience -the desired destiny for humanity- but It is with thinking that makes us spiritual beings. It is the most intimate faculty that the human being processes and is in itself a spiritual act of freedom. One does not notice their thinking as it is happening but with conscious observance of one’s own thinking- a logical examination- will show that their own experience within thinking- within the very mechanism allowing self consciousness- is shaped by the very fabric of what moves through the cosmos. Our thinking allows us to share in the being of the universe and with this faculty we make ourselves and the world we live in knowable. It is with this knowledge that one enters the worlds of spirit. Thinking when it is observed, not tainted with anything subjective, has to stay within the confines that we use to judge all other percepts and so when a thinking can shut itself to outer stimuli, a purer process takes over and this thought or spiritual world now present can be experienced as an objective reality – only made subjective by one’s personality. It is the spiritual impulses- you must remember- that bring the qualities of the soul and spirit weaving within and without into consciousness [not the corpses of thought]and these hidden impulses have been evolving under the surface- making us forget the spiritual side of any given percept. We imagine the kind of thinking that we practice -combining various concepts through observation and conceptual thinking is of the same variety that Paul exercised when he articulated what he was aiming at with images of sin, salvation or eternity. These mental pictures that are brought forth that we recall to mind have not stayed constant; they have all evolved as the inner man has with its faculties of perception. Paul lived in an epoch of consciousness where the soul and spirit- what allows a person’s thinking, feeling, and willing to happen- was constituted differently, was at a different point in development and this epoch was known for developing a specific part of the soul’s body called the intellectual or mind soul- the name is not the significant matter but its inner qualities. It is the faculty within that accomplishes the inner light of thought. Much earlier in history we find other parts of the soul’s body at the forefront of evolution. For example the sentient soul which was worked upon more directly in the epoch before Paul, one that ended in 747 B.C.- a time when men did not yet feel themselves so connected to the earth- the ancient Egyptians still possessing a divine knowledge of what man goes through when he leaves the earth. The soul that we find occupying the modern man has been titled the consciousness soul whereby the physical world is now the most sharply measured and outlined. One feels the internal weight, the heaviness of physicality more strongly than at any other time, a melancholy apprehension of what is to come. As we stand in the 21st century it has only been a relatively short span of time-approaching 600 years – since we first began to truly think.
It is when conscious effort was put forth that there were powers within to heal these subtle bodies and to work them back into the rhythm of the Archangels- to the tonal emissions of my own personal angel. Then did I feel at peace and I could not be afraid as the scripture says so often. It wasn’t a pill, goal setting, or external edification from a sermon that was now needed but an awareness- a trust that there is an evolution of consciousness in one’s own life and also in the larger scope of humanity. And it is with the hidden impulses from a knowledge of this sort that one could loosen their habitual identifying with thought corpses, addictions to one’s own self image and one could then be able to feel at home in the body realizing that the spiritual core we have within is permanent assured of its salvation, but the personality is transient. Perhaps when Paul states that he knows the law as spiritual, that his experience of it was something far deeper than what we might tend to think. That he has felt his doppelganger certainly not in the exact form this concept has taken on over the centuries in literature and film but that indeed within these more modern expressions there is a remnant of a deeper karmic relationship to the universe that Paul was aware of. When Modern theology equates predestination to the providential hand of god or to a matter unknown as Deuteronomy states in chapter 29 that some things are not for us to know but are to remain hidden in God, it fails to acknowledge that there was a loss of spiritual perception- a fading of an atavistic clairvoyance- that these became hidden to some degree as humanity evolved. In the old world in which Paul reminds of us in Chapter 1 of Romans is where the predestination or election of theology was once something different- it was felt experience. The fact that men were made of and had their being in the stars, in the celestial beings behind them was natural; it hadn’t weakened to the point of being dead or lost. Where an attempt must be made to save the appearances through myth making, symbolic language, and writing would unfold as time and space unfolds, a way to hold onto the secrets that could not be remembered. This knowledge was not abstract that he had in mind but an instinctive reliance on karmic relationships- an intuitive knowing as to how the higher worlds project into the world we experience. A constant companion in the life spent on earth guiding us into the wrong action so it may seem on the surface- just a battle with old habits- but these simple pictures don’t account for all the reasons why so often there are many things that return to us which we then perceive as trials and as the gospel tells us we are to receive it with joy because it is what we wished before we were born, something for which we would like to make right. Paul knew the conditions of change humanity has gone through. Paul is hearkening back long before what is traditionally thought of as the birth of Judaism as he is including all in the content of the fall or the descent of human beings into physicality. The thorn in Paul’s side -the messenger from Satan- can also be seen in a threefoldness; three bodies(A prayer for each) within the human being-(it’s members) that were infected by powers much more intelligent than then the neurons in the brain, a wisdom so powerful that it gives us the abilities to fashion human language into literary form. The astral body woven from the stars and the seat of consciousness, the etheric body of formative forces, the sustainer and builder of the material body, shaping thinking and feeling through its cosmic rhythms and the ego of our individuality all have higher and lower beings battling for its territory . Paul had experienced a thorn- an Ahrimanic being- a being that can appear as a blanketed symbol of sin. Ahriman from whence these beings come- its illumination has often been dimmed due to focus on the other more prominent figure of evil that of Lucifer. Often its attributes like ‘the adversary’ have been misapplied to the Lucifer. Paul was able to rejoice in his weakness as he knew it wasn’t about conquering the evil forces within but as he says’ in my weakness the lord who had now made his home in the I or ego of Paul – is strong’ and that it was more about balancing his inner nature- these impulses of light and dark that can now be guided by the middle way- the christ impulse. He knew his revelations were too lofty and that his role would be one that was going to be fettered to the earthly life- to forming the church, the ecclesia in a historical sense – to the social development of humanity. So he may indeed have called himself blessed when he felt the presence of an ahrimanic or satanic being making possible the ability to have thoughts that remain to some degree to grasp- close enough to the earth and do not float away into the third heaven.
If we turn to a different epistle of Paul to the book of Ephesians, especially the beginning, in the Greek it is one long rhetorical sentence showing that Men lived in a kind of thinking that was still more instinctual and still had a musical quality than it has now, especially English. In the epoch of the mind soul men trusted their thinking the same way sadly most of us trust an electronic device. We might gasp to think that the environments of those that actually read Paul’s words as they first began to circulate were not of the caliber of most today. These individuals were on the leading end of new consciousness- they were initiates into the christian mysteries. This was not as simple as our ideas of repentance or of joining some movement or personal vow of betterment, it was an intense inward transformation often painful. Baptism, for example was designed in such a manner that when sent into the moving water one experienced a shock, a separation from the physical body much like the experience of nearly dying. The person was put together at this time that made the inner life much more loosely bound to the physical body than it is today. When the aspirant was plunged into the waters the spiritual world that lay behind the physical was present as they were ejected from their material or earthly consciousness- they knew they had assurance of salvation. The separation of these subtle bodies of soul and spirit would reveal the spirit behind its garment of nature. No one simply attended services and was thought to have indeed experienced the master.
What is commonly thought as Hell is thrusted outward from a once initiatory inward experience of those that led humanity through all its transition periods, putting the bodies visible and invisible to new heights, to truly keep the human form in pace with the spiritual impulses wrought by the various hierarchies of spiritual beings. The elect were but few as the scripture states’many are called but few chosen’ and it were these few that clothed the soul’s experience of death and new birth in stories of descents into Hades. It wasn’t until Chrsit came to earth and accomplished his mission did this once highly selective descent into the abyss or the outer darkness became externalized as a place of existence for all after crossing the threshold. As we move through the literary history of ideas, through the centuries of the middle ages when in some regards dogmatism and doctrine began and then through the years of scholasticism and through the scientific revolution these ideas become more material and solidified in time and space. These once more inner ideas now comprise an eternity that is abstract -not apprehendable in one’s mind. Closer examinations have hinted at a much different view of eternity than what Christianity has meant by it leaving out distinctions or qualities like that of cycles, Aeons, globes, and epochs. Eternity was once more cyclical, long periods of time and not the forever and ever of western man.
Practicing this Romans seven in life-to see it played out in the experience of the soul in a psychology- a person would need to grasp this reality not from an outer physiology which can never arrive at an objectivity of what orchestrates the experienced phenomena but what is fruitful is a closer inspection of the soul nature as itself exists- as it experiences itself in the day to day. It is no longer just the preachers that will be held to a stricter judgment but the call goes to other doctors of the soul caring for the lost- the ones that do not have it within yet to have their egos in right positions to the multiplicity of the soul. More therapists seem to be carrying gentle awareness of where the egos of men reside, how it delicately penetrates into specific bodies of soul and spirit. Some are practicing an ego killing of their own so that the focus is on the patient which can then become an object of love as the doctor quiets their own soul.
Many have tried to look into the head of Paul- indeed to scalp him- presuming to understand what he meant when he was so adamantly against these empty or hollow philosophies. But until one tries to enter into the consciousness of Paul not merely relying on reports from often one sided theological imagery it is hard to uncover what has been lost. There is a variety in the growing up of humanity – in the perceiving of the Parousia and it is the ideas that may have been brushed aside in history is actually what the inner man desires, what he needs in the path to wholeness to venture into very real novel mysteries of Christianity . One that appreciates the fullness of both inner and outer christian streams. Many are well equipped to use their impulses for morality but there is much out there that holds others in quite difficult positions that even the strictest religious devotion isn’t enough as fasting was needed in some deliverances. Some are constituted in a position where they are waiting for these ideas to ignite a memory that each of us has that would render us more suited to endure- to thrive in the directions that the consciousness wants to go- that the Christ impulse is unfolding. Some truly have these three bodies that were pricked by a thorn in Paul in disarray leaving them disqualified from seeing and feeling the way that is needed for life today. No longer can the current doctrinal or therapeutic solutions save those that are perishing. They need exercises that sound strange or downright impossible for so many in America. A direct training of the soul, one that does its part in making thinking, feeling, and willing gain independence- a freedom that our own epoch of time is meant to accomplish. An initiatory training that encompasses the individual freedom that has been birthed on this side of the globe coupled with lost spiritual inheritance of our origins that made it’s way from the east.