Who is Jesus?/Book 2/Chapter 4
IV. AN INMOST PLANE OF LIFE
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WE HAVE outlined man as consisting of three definite and distinctly marked planes for the reception of life from his Creator. The material body is the lowest of all. It is the foundation upon which the superstructure is built and is indispensable in order that mental and spiritual life may be manifested in a material universe; but it is perishable and eventually disappears into new forms when the soul inhabiting it no longer needs it.
Directly in connection with the material body, but consisting of something distinctly different in kind, higher, finer, and interior to it, is the natural mind, but these two, the natural mind and the material body, work together as a unit. Although different in kind and operating together by analogy or correspondence, the body sewing the mind as a vehicle for manifesting itself on the plane of nature, they both belong to the realm of the natural. Animals also possess the material body and the natural mind, and belong wholly on the plane of the natural. Since animals do not possess the capacity for becoming spiritual or opening up the spiritual plane, we assume and are sure that they do not possess the next plane of spirit. Because even naturally minded men (the "carnally minded" man of Paul) do possess the plane of the spiritual, even though it remains undeveloped, we believe that they continue forever in some state of life, whereas animals, because of the absence of the superior and distinctively spiritual, perish wholly at the death of the body.
The plane of spirit, as we have indicated, is the true and proper plane to be developed, for the development of which men are born, the development of which brings them into the kingdom of heaven, or of God, while still on earth, and into a visible heaven hereafter. "The kingdom of heaven" is the constant theme of the discourses of Jesus, and we learn that it is within us. (Luke 17:21.)
Thus we have a view, and one that is entirely verifiable from the experience of mankind and the statements of the Bible, of man as body, mind, and spirit; the mind and spirit constituting the soul which endures forever because it is capable of becoming fashioned into the moral image and likeness of God.
But there still remains a plane of life belonging to man above even that of the conscious spiritual. We might call it the Unconscious Spiritual, but it is better perhaps to term it the Inmost, where life is received from its source. This Inmost of the soul we may look upon as the very Holy of Holies of man, where God dwells directly with him, even if not openly to his consciousness.
That it exists is shown by these facts: Life is received from God; because of its nature it must be received interiorly; it is not received consciously, that is, on the plane of man's consciousness: hence it must be received on an interior plane within or above man's consciousness.
Are we not justified in saying that man's soul, or his interior life, consisting of these three planes of mind, spirit, inmost, where God's life is manifested in him as his very own, is the real man? The material body drops off at death and complete conscious life continues without it. Even the life that manifests itself while man still lives in his material body on earth is wholly of the soul.
These three planes of reception of Inmost, Spirit, Mind, are the real man, and are a picture of the Tabernacle in the wilderness and the Temple at Jerusalem, with the Holy of Holies, the Holy Place, and the Outer Court. With man God dwells in his Inmost or Holy of Holies, in what is to him the silence and obscurity of his soul.
Into the Holy of Holies once a year came the High Priest, the type of Christ penetrating as the mediator between God and man into the realm of the Divine. At Christ's death the veil that shut it out from man's view was torn in twain, representing the opening up of the Divine Nature as revealed in Jesus—God made manifest. The Inmost plane is thus the Holy of Holies.
The Holy Place in man's temple is the sacred region of the heavenly life, the plane we call Spirit. The Outer Court is the region of the Natural Mind, into which all may come. Jesus referred to his body as the real Temple of God, superseding the temple at Jerusalem. Paul says that our bodies are also temples of God, and having this view of man's soul as the receptacle of life from God, its tabernacle, we can perceive just how it is true.
How shall we think of the receptacle of life from God, the soul-form, which, with the soul's life from God, is the real man? Is it not proper to regard it as in the human form—as in as complete a form as the outward body, which is, after all, only its covering? Shall we not think of that receptacle, the soul-form, as in the human form because it is in the image and according to the likeness of God? If that be true, it would seem to follow that God is, therefore, in the human form, that is, innately, as He is in Himself as well as in His manifestation. This is a new thought of God to many; but if God speaks as a man, and His face and His arms and His hands are referred to in the Bible; if He hears with His ears and sees with His eyes; shall we not think of Him in the realm of the highest as Primal Man, because of which we, as being in His image and likeness, are men? We must ever think of Him as ineffably superior to men or angels, without the limitations of time or space; and yet, after all, in the human form—not a vast giant, for that concept implies a material thought of Him; but nevertheless essentially Man. When it became necessary to manifest Himself to men, would it not be natural for Him to enter into the form of a man on all its planes of manifestation?
What would be the distinction between God manifesting Himself in the form of Jesus Christ and manifesting Himself through any other man? That is our problem, but we are near to its answer in comprehending in what man proper consists. We believe that the correct answer is found in the difference between the receptacle known to men as Jesus Christ,—the man Jesus of Nazareth,—and other receptacles of life from God in the form of men. We feel that, with the explanations about to be made, the difficulties involved in the question, How can Jesus be both God and Man? will disappear.