Harvey Hardman
Making Your Self the Master
© Harvey Hardman
Denver, Colorado, 1935.
[47] “I am the true vine and my Father is the husbandman.”–Jesus
We are learning a new tongue. The language of religious thought has a tendency to remain fixed. Its idioms and terminology do not change from generation to generation, for the simple reason that the Church, guarding the sacred lore and the traditions and rituals of religion as something perfect and complete, sees to it that children are taught from baby-hood to accept the catechism and terms of theology as inspired truth.
Jesus taught a new language of religious thought. Even his immediate disciples found it hard to accept the new idioms and thought forms. We are facing the same difficulty today. We acknowledge the logic of Science and approve intellectually the findings of scientific spiritual research. But it is hard for the majority of us to get the feeling of reality and living truth which the new tongue seeks to convey. It takes time to learn a foreign language. It takes time to learn the new scientific language of religion.
Christian theology has no word for the [48] Universal Mother-Principle. The reason is obvious. The presence of a personal Mother-God in the trinity would have brought in complications of relationship very difficult to explain. So the Holy Ghost was invented as a substitute for the Universal Mother. No two theologians agree on the meaning of the Holy Ghost. The word ghost is defined as a disembodied spirit. Holy means “pure; morally excellent; highest spiritual purity.” Thus Holy Ghost means a spirit that is pure. But there is nothing in the term to signify universality. It does not signify whether the entity is male or female. The other two members of the trinity are both male–Father and Son. They are both persons, the Son having incarnated in human form to exhibit the personal nature.
In Divine Science, we accept the three factors in the creative process that are fundamental and present in all phases of creation now: The Father–masculine principle of will, choice, decision, positive action. The Mother–feminine principle of receptivity, love, creative response, subjective life force. The Son–the manifestation of life in form, the personal offspring of the impersonal Father-Mother God.
Jesus used the vine as a figure to define the intimate relationship between the Father-Mother-Son, [49] in the creative process. The vine is the mother of the branches, and thus the cause of the fruit. “As the branch cannot bear fruit except it abide in the vine, no more can you except you abide in me.” The vine as a symbol is universal. Its characteristics are the same everywhere. We must examine that rather than the words Jesus used, for they have been translated from Aramaic into Greek; from Greek into Latin; from Latin into English. The words originally used have lost much of their meaning. Only the figure remains intact–the vine, the life in it, the branches, the fruit, the fate of barren branches, the physical form of the vine.
Consider the subjective factor in the vine. It is life-force. It is the same life-force that lifts up the form of a tree or a stalk of corn. It is universal. But here in this vine, it is no longer universal, any more than it is in the tree or corn. It is identified, individualized–a vine.
What makes it a vine? Surely the idea, the mental concept of [a] vine. Whence did it originate? In the Mind of the Father–the Universal Thinker, the masculine principle of will and choice. How did the idea become embodied in the vine as an objective reality? By the union of the idea with the subjective or [50] female principle of universal life. Thus the germinal idea of form unites with the germinating principle of life to form the vital center which expands by the law of growth to fill the subjective pattern with objective substance–personality. I Am is the “true vine”–the actual formative principle. The vine itself is external evidence of the true or living vine. The branches are dependent upon this inner life of the vine and cannot exist apart from it.
If we carry the metaphor into the human plant we find the same law operating. The life of the body is soul, the subjective principle. The consciousness of the body is spirit, the self or I am. The body is the result of the union of the idea of the self and the germinating principle of soul, developed from a vital center to organize objective substance to fill the mental pattern of the self. The fruit of this union is experience. No experience is possible, except as the result of the union of the husbandman (Father) and the True Vine (Mother) which furnishes the intelligence and life of which consciousness is the offspring (son).
If you will draw the following diagram and consider it as the symbol of the three-fold action of the creative process, you will have a [51] clear conception of what we mean by the Father-Mother-Son.
Draw a circle three inches in diameter. Draw within it two interlaced equilateral triangles. Let the base of the one with ascending angles touch the circle at two points below, and its apex the point directly above center in the circle. Reverse the process with the other triangle inverted. [This symbol was later modified by the author. Click here to view.] Let the space above the base of the inverted triangle represent Spirit, the Creative impulse, Will, Choice–the Father. Let the space below the base of the triangle with ascending angles, represent the Principle of Subjectivity, Soul, the Receptive Substance, the undifferentiated world of matter–subjective Mind–the Mother. One of the angles descending into this Subjective World represents the Life and Intelligence Impulse. The other–Idea, Image, Word. These unite in the Universal Subjective Principle with the substance of Form, and organize a body corresponding to the nature of the Idea. This body is the external aspect of the Idea-form, and grows, or evolves, toward the perfect Ideal in the Father Mind. Involution is the descent of the Word or Image into the matter level. Evolution is the ascent of this image, through changing forms, to express the more perfect Ideal of the Father. This is the Son acting as [52] individual being. The Son, as Principle, is the Father’s Word or idea of Man. The individual is the movement of that idea through the world of Law, Force, Time, Space, Matter, on its path of evolution through experience, toward the divine Idea in the mind of the Father.
The Idea came forth from the Father, was acted upon by the Life-Principle in the Mother, and emerged as the son–man. This process is true throughout nature. The sower, the soil, the seed. The spirit, (conscious mind); the soul, (subjective mind); the body, result of the creative action of soul and self. Or, to carry the figure into the individual experience where the universal law is re-enacted in terms of the son’s creative power: You think, and the idea falls into your subjective mind, there to unite with the mother principle of creation. It then comes forth in terms of objective experience. You plan a house with your spirit (conscious mind). You choose the type, decide upon location and other details. Creative Mind in you acts to bring it forth on the objective plane.
Man re-enacts the creative process. He is re-presentation of the Father-Mother-Son. Because the Universal Mother is Principle, and responds as Law, man can use the Law as [53] the Agent of his own individual consciousness. In short he is himself a creator by the power of his word acting in unity with the creative mind in himself. We should have faith in the Universal Mother whose care is Omnipresent Love; whose function is to bring forth life, form, being. The subjective mind of the individual is the Universal Mother manifest as person. The conscious mind is the Universal Father–the power of will and choice. We reap what we sow. We get what we ask. This is the Law.
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