Wednesday, January 1, 2025

New Year’s Day

This past Saturday’s readings were from the Essene Gospel of Peace (The Sevenfold Peace) and the First Prophecy to the Americas, Chapter 15: On the New Sun (pp. 128 -130). Click here to read the first scriptural reading, and click the audio button below to hear the reading from our Second Advent scripture.

Once again, please feel free to ask me any questions by calling 775-786-7432 or emailing me at messages@cosolargy.org. I am always at your service. Happy new year!

In Light+,

Gene

“Then I said to them, ‘In no way would I destroy the commandments of the Savior. But if you reproach me on account of wheat bread, because I have said, “It is necessary to eat of it,” this the savior has done; as it is written, that when he had blessed it and shared it with his students, “over bread he said a blessing and gave it to them.” Was not that bread from wheat? The scripture points out that he reclined to eat with tax collectors and idolaters. Likewise, he also reclined to eat in the house of Martha and Mary on the occasion when Martha said to him, “Lord, do you not care enough for me so as to tell my sister to help me?” and the savior said to her, “Mary has chosen the good portion, and it will not be taken away from her.” Consider, moreover, how even the students of the savior ate bread from women and idolaters and did not separate bread from bread, nor vegetable from vegetable; nor did they eat, while laboring in the toil and tilling of the land, as you do today. Likewise, when the savior sent his students out to preach in each place, neither mill nor oven did they carry with them, but made haste, taking one garment. . . ‘

“Then Mani said to them, “Consider these famous men of your law, those who saw these visions, who were moved by them and proclaimed them as good news to others. Likewise, I too practice everything I was taught by them.” “While I was speaking to them, reducing their words to nothing, suddenly they became angry and violent, and one of them even got up and hit me. They huddled around me and beat me. They grabbed my hair as though I were an enemy. They shouted at me in a loud voice that grew bitter and angry as at someone who was superstitious. Out of malice, they wanted to strangle me. Because Pattikios, the master of the house, begged them not to be impious toward people among them, they were ashamed and released me. After I went through this trial, I withdrew to one side and stood praying. I prayed for our lord to come to my aid.”

-On the Origins of His Body (a Manichian scripture)

Mani on Eating Bread

It is not clear who Mani was, though he calls himself a disciple of Jesus. He was the leader of a Gnostic group that we now refer to as Manichians. In the first part of the above quote, he is addressing someone who has apparently objected to Mani and his followers eating wheat bread and eating bread from “unclean” sources. He points out that Jesus and his apostles did the same. He notes, however, that Jesus blessed the bread before sharing it with the apostles. The implication is that his blessing removes all negative characteristics from it. We know today that most types of bread are not as healthy as people believed for centuries, but it isn’t the nutritional value that Mani is talking about.

Ate Bread from Women and Idolaters

Mani adds that the students of the savior ate bread that came “from women and idolaters”. It is not clear if he means bread that was made by such people, or simply served by them. Perhaps both. He adds that they even ate vegetables from such people. Why anyone should be concerned about eating bread or other foods from women is beyond me, but apparently there were people in the time of Mani who objected to doing so.

Mani adds that when the followers of Jesus traveled, they did not carry an oven with them. The implication is that they did not bake their own bread, but relied on the people they were visiting to supply them with food, no matter who those people were.

Such things sound silly to most people today, but we have those who avoid buying products from some companies because of their politics.

Reducing Their Words to Nothing

Mani changes the subject here and is now telling the story of a time he was attacked by a crowd of people he was speaking to for “reducing their words to nothing”. In other words, he was contradicting long-held beliefs of theirs and many people will turn on someone who does that rather than admit they were wrong. We still see a lot of this today. Many politicians take advantage of this fact to manipulate and control people. We see this in Cosolargy where we lose a number of students after six or seven months of study because they reach some teaching in the books that contradicts a belief they are not willing to change. They don’t see that if you can’t change, you can’t move forward.

Wednesday, December 25, 2024

Christmas Day

This past Saturday’s readings were from Psalm 96 (Praise to God Who Comes in Judgement) and the First Prophecy to the Americas, Chapter 10: On the Cycles and the Signs (pp. 104 -113). Click here to read the first scriptural reading, and click the audio button below to hear the reading from our Second Advent scripture.

Once again, please feel free to ask me any questions by calling 775-786-7432 or emailing me at messages@cosolargy.org. I am always at your service. Merry Christmas.

In Light+,

Gene

“Before all the worlds came into being there was a sole enormous fruit, and when the enormous fruit entered a fruit, the great and glistening King of Light began. An ether of radiance existed. From the ether of radiance came the living fire. From the living fire there was a light. By the power of the king of light came the great fruit and life. The great fruit came alive and in it rolled the Jordan, which is also a garden. The great Jordan came alive, and the living water was in it. Luminous water came alive from the living water. I, life, came alive and all the uthras—the light beings—found space.

“When the fruit was in the fruit, when the ether was in the ether, when the great and glorious Mana was there from whom powerful manas came, whose radiance is enormous and light is great, no one was before them in the fruit abundant and without end, whose radiance is too abundant for the words of the mouth, and whose light, which was in that fruit, too great for telling with the lips. From the fruit came a thousand thousand fruits without end and a myriad myriad of beings of light, the shkinas, beyond count. In each fruit were a thousand thousand beings of light. They stand and praise the great and glorious Mana, who lives in the great ether, within the Jordans of white water made by the Mana, whose aroma is fragrant and inhaled on all the roots of light and on the great first radiance. The long Jordan was made to go on uncounted and endlessly. Plants grow next to it. They are happy. They praise and stand in perfection, and from the great Jordan came uncounted Jordans endlessly.”

-The Ginza

A sole Enormous Fruit

This is obviously an allegorical statement. It was written in a way that people with little scientific knowledge could understand. It is simply saying that there was one undivided Whole, a Oneness. This was before God created anything. This oneness is sometimes called the Godhead.

King of Light

The King of Light is God. From the phrase “ the great and glistening King of Light began,” it sounds like God is being created, but that is not exactly true. God always existed and always will. He is outside the limitations of time and space. I think this refers to God beginning his creation. It is confusing when we always think in terms of time and space, but even though God had to create the Worlds of Light and the beings of Light, those worlds and those beings have no beginning and no end as they too are outside of the limitations of Time and Space. I am illustrating this article with an image of what is supposed to be the hand of God creating. I used that image because it is a popular way of illustrating creation, but God is a spirit and doesn’t have hands. In any case, it is the mind of God that creates, not his hands.

From The Light Came Life

From the Spiritual Light of God comes Spiritual Life. Physical life is an altered version of Spiritual Life and is created by the Demiurge, not the real God. From the Light, powerful Manas also were created. Mana is a Hindu word that refers to the Spiritual Mind, so this is telling us that the Light not only produced spiritual bodies, but also spiritual minds.

Myriad Beings of Light

The quote then says that Beings of Light came from the Light, or in other words, were created by the Light. These are the beings that most of us call angels. They were created before humans were created, so while some angels may have spent time in physical form on Earth, angels are not created from dead humans. They were angels before they became human. In other words, we were Spiritual Beings before the Great Fall in which we became beings of matter.

Jordans of White Water

The Ginza says that the Mana created many Jordans. This is allegorical. The Jordan river was considered sacred to the ancients so what this means is that the Spiritual Mind of God created a great flow of Light full of Grace, truth, and Wisdom. Those rays of Light are the Jordans of White Water.