3443 Personification of God....
February 22, 1945: Book 44
The belief in a spiritually tangible Deity by no means implies a personified Deity, for this reason the human being should not have a narrow idea of God, Who is omnipresent and beyond time and space. He permeates everything with His spirit, the whole universe, the whole spiritual kingdom.... and therefore He is not conceivable as a person who, according to human comprehension, is spatially limited. Instead, a personification of God must be completely avoided if the human being wants to come anywhere near visualising God as the highest and most perfect Being of God. God has indeed made Himself visible to His living creations in a human form by permeating Jesus' body with His Divinity and showed Himself in His transfigured state to people, so that they were able to visualise the eternal Deity in Jesus Christ. Yet once the soul has discarded its body and enters the kingdom of light it will realise that the eternal Deity can never be grasped by human intellect and that the embodiment in Jesus Christ was intended to awaken or strengthen the belief in a spiritually tangible Deity in people during their earthly life, otherwise they would find it difficult to have faith which, however, it is necessary to have in order to establish a connection with God through prayer....
Thus the eternal Deity became visible to people in Jesus Christ and in merciful love It tries to make Itself accessible to people in order to encourage them in establishing their contact with Itself. Jesus Christ was the form which sheltered the eternal Deity for the people on earth.... In the spiritual kingdom the same form will be spiritually visible by those beings which have attained the degree of maturity that enables them to behold God.... But this spiritually tangible Deity is present everywhere and therefore never expended in a limited form. Hence It cannot be addressed as a personal Deity either, because this concept is only used for earthly life, for the human being himself who, as an isolated individual being within the universe, claims for himself the acknowledgment of being a personality, thus a person always has to be understood to be a human creature. That this concept can never be applied to the eternal Deity is due to the fact that God is a spirit.... but the spirit is never something restricted, something bound in a form, once it is perfect. The supreme Perfection is therefore limitless beyond all comprehension and permeates the whole of infinity; it is omnipresent because its fundamental substance is love which likewise is not restricted and therefore also not conceivable as a form. The human being's intellectual capacity is limited, he is unable to visualise anything but earthly things as long as he is still spiritually unenlightened. And therefore he tries to imagine the eternal Deity as a person as soon as he believes in a spiritually tangible God, in a God to Whom he can pray.
And God accommodated this purely human desire by embodying Himself in Jesus Christ, that is, by demonstrating how a human being living a God-pleasing life can unite with God on earth and thus become as one with Him.... He wanted to show people the path to achieve the final goal, the total unification with God. The emanation of the Divine Being completely permeated the man Jesus, consequently only the external frame, the physical form, was human, but His soul and spirit were divine, they had entirely united with God again from Whom they had come forth. Yet the eternal Deity did not expend Itself, because it is impossible for the most perfect Being ever to be limited within a form. Nevertheless the eternal Deity is something spiritually tangible, that is, it is spiritual strength which has to be granted will and faculty of thought, thus existing as a being with Whom the human being can also make heartfelt contact by using his will and his thoughts. For the human being's will and thoughts are not tied to the external form either but are part of the spiritual essence which is embodied in the human form. Once the physical shell falls away, the soul, the spiritually tangible being, remains capable of thinking and wanting, but according to its state of maturity the ability can merely be weaker or stronger, whereas the eternal Deity, as the most perfect Being, executes Its will and Its thoughts in profound wisdom and inconceivable strength.
The human physical form is just the means to an end for the duration of his earthly life. Yet anyone believing in the immortality of the soul will also understand that the external form, the person, will not be required for the soul's continued existence. Nevertheless, the soul remains conscious of itself as an individual being, even when it has joined equally mature souls.... just as the eternal Deity will likewise remain the highest and most perfect Being for the most elevated beings of light which have entered into union with It.... which are totally united with God and yet are inexpressibly happy in their own existence because they always and forever receive and feel God's strength of love Who, as eternal Father, is in intimate contact with them....
Amen
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