Repentance

Many things are revealed in the Writings concerning repentance—its need and place in the life of man; and also concerning the false and true ideas which may be and are entertained concerning it.

The definitions of true repentance which the Writings give are for the spiritual man; for one whose outlook is to the after states of reformation and regeneration.

True repentance can have no other intent. With this in view, the word, in its finality, can have but one meaning, namely, "to sin no more." This is at once the motive and the objective in repentance. Both may be open to question. The quality of the motive may be uncertain; "To sin no more" may have regard to the eyes of the world, or because we are seen of God. To avoid sin because it stands in the way of natural prosperity or natural ambitions, is one thing; and to resist evils because they are against the commandments of God, is quite another.

Our motives in the beginning of life are of a lowly order. With increasing power of reflection they may be raised to higher and different ends. These may become more clearly evident. Our doctrine is that a motive compelling action may be raised above our self-life and its gratifications; not entirely so, but only to the point where self-love is so reduced that it ceases to be the dominant or central aim in life.

In so far as this is accomplished man is said to become spiritual, or to have a spiritual motive, which is imparted by the Lord.

The first requirement or acquirement making possible such a motive is that man may believe in the Lord and in His power to lift man above the purely selfish life into which he is born.

Through this faith in God, that which is spiritual is derived, to a greater or less extent, into man's conscious life. There can be no motive which in any sense may be ascribed to man, or be appropriated by him, save in so far as he is able to conceive of it or assume it by a conscious mental process. But this calls for a prior faith in God. Obscure though this motive may be in the beginning, yet, if genuine, it is marked by a humble sincerity.

It can be seen that a human impulse from self may be for the sake of self, or it may be as of self, with a view to God and His kingdom.

If it is of self for self it can never rise above a selfish outlook; never lead to true repentance, and so to reformation and regeneration.

If, however, the impulse be as of self; it implies a recognition of the presence of God within and above man's life; within man in a way to be appropriated. Hence the need of belief in God, and acknowledgment of His presence and His power to save man from sin.

It is through this faith that a spiritual motive may be born in, and from, that which we speak of as spiritual. In such a case man believes that his possible salvation is a gift of God, the fact of which may be ever more clearly revealed to him.

But as to this, knowledge must precede a state of faith, and faith must precede that living evidence of it which alone is truly spiritual and lasting.

Because of this sequence of knowledge, faith, and the living evidence, which is charity, we and our children must be taught, in the first instance, the knowledge of God. For the sake of this knowledge the Word has been given, i.e., that the knowledge of God may enter from without and inform the minds of men. Given this knowledge, backed by the authority of a Divine Revelation, then repentance, reformation and regeneration may follow; but apart from such knowledge a condition would arise of which we cannot conceive the consequences.

Certainly men would be doomed to remain in their primitive self-life, and the end would be a total failure of the Divine intent in man's creation. Because of this the knowledge of God, of some God or gods, has never been lacking. Man must worship something—something conceived of as outside of, or above, himself—apart from himself.

If worship, or the love which is the soul of worship, be centered in self, then man will be consumed as by an evil flame. Every man encounters this danger. Confirmation of this self-love may be strengthened by the refinements of natural reason. It can be reduced or overcome only by a motive born of the knowledge of God.

To see God outside of, or apart from, self, and to perceive ingrown self-love as evil is the first imperative.

If from an interior perception God is seen as within man, and if the thought proceeds from this realization, it will be known that God is there with power, and that the God within is the same as God above.

The Divine is not the less outside of man as a vessel, even while it be within him. When within man, it is distinctly apart. The knowledge of God within must be revealed from without lest man should have no knowledge of the full presence of God. This knowledge brings with it an affirmation of the life within that is God. This affirmation is called conjunction with God, in which case men, though separate, are joined with Him.

A redeeming feature of the old Christian theology is that it insisted upon the separateness of God from His creation. Theologians were impressed with the need of this in view of that ancient mode of thought which failed to distinguish between God and His creation, and which in the end held that God entered into His own conscious life only in man.

To guard against this ancient view Christian theology devised an ingenious but spurious doctrine, that God created the world out of nothing, the object being to effect a strict demarkation. However, there is, and can be, no other source of the substance of creation than God Himself. Out of His own Divine Substance He made all things that were made, and yet no thing so made is Himself. The making implied that which was discrete from Himself.

God in Himself is unqualified Life—pure, unbounded and continuous. This is the definition given us.

His will to create may be seen as a turning in and upon Himself, whereby He produced limited enclosures—minimal vortices of inconceivable perfection which successively became more and more finite in form and structure.

The first of these may be regarded as the primitives of the Spiritual Sun, in which the Divine Substance is immediately present.

Successives thereafter and therefrom composed all things of creation, spiritual and natural.

One sequence of these enclosures, by the highest degree of compression, produced the natural sun, wherein the finite forms suffered a total deprivation of the life which is God; and these, in their emanation from the natural sun, formed the earths—the final basis of creation. They compose nature, in its strict definition, as apart from living forms, and as ultimates at rest. or substances exclusive of life.

On the other hand, the create enclosures derived directly from the Spiritual Sun are called spiritual because inclusive of life, and each in their degree responsive to the Divine; yet the Divine Life within them is constrained within bounds, and this increasingly, down to the ultimates of the spiritual world. It is through the intermediation of these spiritual world forms that so-called living things spring up on earth.

In all descending spiritual forms, increasing constraint is accompanied by a lessening of freedom. The Divine Life in itself alone is free in its unbounded continuity.

But wherever there is life in any degree, there also is the freedom of life in that degree. Hence the teaching that men are gifted with human freedom, and that animals and plants possess something of freedom, each in accord with its structural form.

There is even an analogue of freedom in the mineral kingdom, presented in the volatile spheres which emanate from and are fluent about a central object.

With the increasing constraint of life, freedom suffers until it ceases.

Where there are successive structural degrees within an individual, as in the human form, life is constrained in accord with those degrees.

Man is a form composed of three distinct degrees, namely, soul, mind and body. Life in its descent into man manifests itself as qualified by these degrees.

The life within the soul of man suffers the least constraint, yet there is its first binding. Its freedom therein is, however, superlative. The inmost soul of man is near placed with reference to the Spiritual Sun. Its residence is in the radiant belts. Through this soul comes the grant of man's immortality. But the life pertaining to the soul is superconscious. Conscious life is a strict predicate of the human mind.

The division of the human planes or receptive vessels composing man into soul, mind and body, is fundamental.

But the intermediate or mind of man is also divided into three degrees. These degrees, in their potency, are inborn in man, but the mind as such does not exist at birth. It is subject to development by an inner creative process.

The first formed mind is called natural. It is indeed a spiritual formation, normal to every man; yet in its formation it falls within the lumen of nature.

The two higher degrees can be opened and developed only by the affirmative reception of influx from the Lord through heaven, or what is the same, through and into the corresponding degrees of the mind.

This influx is or may become spiritually creative. The several degrees of the mind are thus created distinct one from the other; yet because of the encompassing sphere called the lumen of nature, the clear distinction between these degrees is not perceived; i.e., no sense realization of them, so long as man lives in the world.

Man appears to possess but one mind, whether here or hereafter and indeed it is so; yet by his life in the world one of the mind's three degrees may be opened and developed; and as this comes to pass, so is the mind in its totality qualified. According to the state and degree of this qualification the spirit of man is permanently constituted and located, not only in some one of the three heavens, but in a society which is intimately congenial to it.

In all cases the life of man's mind descends as a life flux passing through the two higher degrees into the natural. It is at first not retained by the higher degrees. Though open for the life passage, the higher degrees are not reactive. Only the natural is so. There, in the natural, constraint by reception and reaction is first encountered. There, apart from inherited inclinations, innumerable forms are discovered which have been raised in an image into this lower plane of the mind from the outside world, through the open door of the bodily senses.

It is in the natural mind that the conscious awareness of self-existence of the individual is first aroused. This awakening is produced by the life influx coming into touch with impressions from the outside world. First there is a sensing of objects, then an obscure awareness of the self which perceives the object. Both are mental operations—one a distinct sensation, and the other at first but a vague realization.

This first formed mind enlarges with each experience; with each contact it increases its measure. But even as the influx of life from within is unconsciously received, so is the growth of this mind a hidden process.

This meeting place of the influx from above with an afflux from the world is the plane wherein the spirit is formed and its quality determined. There also that freedom is founded: that peculiar freedom called human, which is not the freedom of life in se, but a freedom environed by many conditionments, both affirmative and negative; a freedom hampered by adversities, entangled in discordances. Nonetheless, the mind ever enjoys a fundamental freedom which is a gift of God in permanence. It is permanent because flexible and adaptable to the conflicting states of the natural mind. Moreover, this freedom of the mind of man, despite every constraint imposed, is such that man can act even as he wills, or as he chooses. He can, as of himself, turn to the right or to the left as his reason dictates. God has so provided. And this provision is never taken away, save for some super-normal cause, but at such times the man is not the man, but is impelled beyond himself. When he returns to his normal state there is a full recurrence of his freedom, with a revived sense of his own individuality, as characterized by his attainments, whether good or evil.

This freedom of man in the midst of counteracting constraints is his peculiar, his unique, gift which constitutes him a human being, separate from the lower forms of life, and a defined individual apart from all his fellows.

This life of rational freedom is not born in man, though he is born to it. It is as if acquired—acquired by his life in the world. The power that enables this acquirement is born in man, contained in the gift of life to the infant.

The growth of freedom is progressive, and its determination is qualified by many contingencies. In the adult only is it confirmed by reason. Then the man becomes responsible in the exercise of his choice of good or evil, both as to the evils which he is disposed to acquire, and those which are inborn—which he inherits from his progenitors; all are subject to his free choice. These last are said to be innumerable; yet they are comprised in one, namely, the evil of self-love. This evil manifests itself increasingly and in many directions; yet the Lord provides a counterbalance in the semblance of good and truth, apparent in childhood. No man was ever born regenerate.

From the beginning, self-life and self-love are and were man's first status—this because of the necessity of life in the world of nature. Hence man in the beginning is an image of the world—that hard, unyielding world, where self-protection, self-preservation, is a necessity, the first and most insistent law of nature. This law cannot be denied. Man must comply with it.

Therefore he was created in the beginning a form of self-protective love, that he might, as of himself, provide for his well-being. This refers to man's natural life in the world, but not in a like degree to his spiritual states.

Through man's spiritual re-creation, the image and likeness of God is, in some degree, attained, while his natural creation is and must ever be animalistic; yet deep within his animal-like form, the image and likeness of God is inseated, i.e., in man's soul, while his body is more or less possessed by his animal cravings.

Only by the gradual ascent of man to meet with his soul in its descent, can his re-creation be effected.

The mind of man is that meeting place. There the decision is made between the life of the soul descending, and the evil of the body inheritance. There in the mind regeneration or degeneration takes place. Only of the mind may either of these be predicated.

As to the threefold enclosure which is man, the highest never falls, and the lowest is put aside by death. The intermediate is competent to salvation, or damnation, in accord with its own freedom of choice—its decision in affirming the life descending from God through the soul, or by approval of the affections having their origin in the body, and its inherited content. The mind makes this choice, but never in the right way apart from a struggle, a contest; for evil delights ascend from the body with many allurements. If man is to be saved, these must be resisted. By this resistance, the power of freedom increases, and the bonds of the flesh are weakened. A reconstruction is engendered—a rebirth effected.

The beginning of this process—the key to it—is called repentance, a word significant of man's peculiar responsibility. It is the one thing which man must, and can, do—which he must continue to do so long as his life in this world lasts. But more as to this on another occasion.