Chapter Five TRUE LIFE
The satisfaction of personal will leads to death, the satisfaction of the father’s will gives true life.
THY WILL BE DONE
Wisdom consists of recognizing one’s own life as a son of the spirit father. People give themselves goals in mortal life and as they work to achieve these goals, they torment themselves and others. When they accept the teaching about the life of the spirit and submit and humble themselves in the flesh, people find complete satisfaction in the life of the spirit, the life that has been allotted them.
Jesus asks a woman of another faith for a drink. She denies him on the pretext of their differing faith. Jesus says to her, “If you understood that a living man is asking you for a drink, one in whom the spirit of the father resides, then you would not deny the request, but would seek to do me good, and thereby unite in spirit with the father.”
Jesus says to his students, “A person’s true food is to fulfill the will of the spirit father. Fulfilling his will is always possible. Our entire life is the gathering of the fruits of life, which the father has planted within us. Fruits are the good acts that we do to other people. One must never cease to live and do good to people.”
In Jerusalem there is a bathhouse at which a sick man lays, doing nothing, waiting for a miracle healing. Jesus approaches the weak man, saying, “Do not await a miracle healing, but go and live, with as much strength as you have in yourself and do not mistake the meaning of life.” The weak man obeys Jesus, stands and walks off. The orthodox reproach Jesus because he had raised a feeble man on the Sabbath. Jesus says to them, “I did nothing new. I simply did what our mutual spirit father does. He lives and animates people. And that is every person’s calling. Every person is free and can either choose to live, doing the will of the father and doing good to others, or not to live, doing their own will and not doing good to others.
“People’s true lives are like this: A master gives his slaves a portion of his priceless estate and commands each to labor over the part that he gave them. Some work, others do not, hiding what was given to them. When the master makes his account, he gives to those that worked an even bigger measure of what they had, and from those that did not work he takes away all that they had been given. This is like the spirit of life within a person—he who works for the spirit of life receives endless life, he who does not work loses the one that has been given to him. The only true life is the life that is common to all, and not the life of a single person. All people should work for the life of others.”
Jesus’s disciples do not know how to feed the crowd that has followed him into the wilderness. Jesus asks that all available bread be given to him. He takes the bread, gives it to his apostles, they give it to the others and the others begin to do the same. All the people eat at someone else’s hands and they are all satisfied together, yet there is food remaining. Jesus says, “It is unnecessary for everyone to obtain food for themselves. Give others something to eat—that is what the spirit within man dictates. Man’s real food is the spirit of the father. You should serve all life, since life is not a matter of doing one’s own will, but the will of the father of life. The father, the source of all life, is a spirit. Life is just the fulfillment of the father’s will and so, in order to fulfill the spirit’s will, one must give up the flesh. The flesh becomes food for the life of the spirit. Only by yielding our flesh do we allow the spirit to live.”
Jesus selects certain of his students and sends them to preach the life of the spirit. As he sends them off, he says, “To preach the life of the spirit you must renounce all lusts of the flesh and must not possess anything of your own. Be prepared for persecutions, deprivations and sufferings. You will be hated by those who love mortal life. They will torment and murder you, but do not be afraid. If you do the father’s will, then you will have the life of the spirit, which no one can take from you.”
When the students return, they announce that they have defeated evil teachings everywhere they have gone. The orthodox contend that if his teaching defeated evil, then it must be evil itself, since people must endure suffering when they follow it. To this, Jesus says, “Evil cannot defeat evil. If evil is victorious, then it only conquers with goodness. Goodness is the will of the spirit father, who is common to all people. Everyone knows that goodness exists for themselves, and if they perform their actions for other people and do the will of the spirit father, then they do good. And therefore, fulfilling the spirit father’s will is good, though it may be yoked with suffering and death for those who fulfill it.”
And Jesus rejoiced deeply over the power of the spirit and said, “I recognize the father’s spirit as the source of all things in heaven and on earth because what has been hidden from the clever and the wise ones is now opening to the uneducated simply because they see themselves as sons of the father.
“All people worry about the well-being of the flesh, they have loaded up a kind of cart that they could never pull away; they have placed a yoke on themselves which was not designed to fit them. Understand my teaching and follow it, and you will come to know peace and joy in life. I will give you a different yoke and a different cart: spiritual life. Harness yourselves to it and you will learn calmness and blessedness from me. Be peaceful and meek in heart and you will find blessedness in your life. Because my teaching is a yoke designed to fit you; fulfilling my teaching is an easy cart to pull and a yoke designed to fit you.”
Once, Jesus went into the city of the Samaritan Sychar near the field that Jacob gave to his son Joseph. And the well of Jacob was there. Jesus was tired from the road and he sat down at the well.
And a woman of Samaria came for water and Jesus said to her, “Give me something to drink.”
And Jesus’s students went into the city to buy some food.
And the Samaritan woman said to him, “How can you, a Jew, ask me for a drink? After all, Jews do not associate with Samaritans.”
And Jesus said to her, “If you understood what God has given people and who it is that asks you for a drink, I would give you the water of life.”
And the woman said, “You don’t even have a bucket and the well is very deep. How will you give me the water of life? Are you greater than our father Jacob? He gave this well as a gift and drank from it himself, as did his children and livestock.”
And Jesus answered, “Whoever drinks his fill of this water will again become thirsty, but whoever drinks his fill of the water that I will give will never again know thirst. But the water that I give will produce in him a fountain of water flowing into eternal life.”
And the woman said, “Give me that kind of water, so that it will no longer be necessary to drink or come to the well for water.”
And Jesus said, “Go call your husband and come back here.”
And the woman said, “I see that you are a prophet. Our fathers here pray to God on this mountain, but you say that the place of God, where one ought to pray, is in Jerusalem.”