____________________________________________________________ 互户互户互猾せカせЙせカせЙせカせЙせカせЙせカ  *** The Little Worker *** ____________________________________________________________ 互户互户互猾せカせЙせカせЙせカせЙせカせЙせカ  Published by CDTTT-The Committee for the Difussion of The Third Testament Issue of February 2003 _________________________ TABLE OF CONTENTS: - First Word - The Spirit - The Matter - Last Word ____________________________________________________________ 互户互户互猾せカせЙせカせЙせカせЙせカせЙせカ  - First Word Hi, again: In this issue we will start to make an overview of the relationship between spirit and matter, and even more important: We will take a look on what the real meaning of those words are. We shall cover those topics in this and in our next issue, that's how deep they are. I hope you find them interesting enough so that you may devote some time to meditate over them. ____________________________________________________________ 互户互户互猾せカせЙせカせЙせカせЙせカせЙせカ  - The Spirit "...your spirit has emerged from Me" Third Testament (The Book of the True Life 359:68) You have probably heard some people stating that the spirit is some sort of energy, thus materializing and downgrading the concept. But spirit relates more to essence than to substance. The word "spirit", as we have it in English, comes from the Latin word "spiritus" meaning breath, blowing of wind. And the Latin word was translated from the Hebrew Old Scriptures word "ruach' or "rowah" (roo'akh), and has a feminine form. Also, in the Greek New Scriptures, the word for it is "pneuma" (pa-nyew'-mah). In both cases the words literally mean "air in motion" which is, in fact, a metaphor. Jesus said to the Samaritan woman: "God [is] a Spirit: and they that worship him must worship [him] in spirit and in truth" (John 4:24) If you analyze the above paragraph, you will see that, for starters, Jesus is describing the nature of God. If He, for example, was to describe a person (e.g. Phillipe) he would had said "He is a Jew", denoting with that not just a form or shape but the true origin or nature of the one He was describing. You will find also some modern scholars or theologians that try to diminish the essential meaning of the word "spirit" to make it pass as a material power or force; but then, how would they explain not only what the Lord said to the Samaritan woman (and all humankind, I might add) but the following verses? In Hebrews 4:12 Paul separate the notion of soul from the concept of spirit: "For the word of God [is] quick, and powerful, and sharper than any two edged sword, piercing even to the dividing asunder of soul (psuche or psso-khay') and spirit (pneuma or pnyoo'-mah)..." This very same concept appears again in 1 Thessalonians 5:23... "And the very God of peace sanctify you wholly; and [I pray God] your whole spirit and soul and body be preserved blameless unto the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ." Please take note that in this verse, Paul adds another element, the body, distinguishing it from spirit and soul... So, we can see that spirit and soul are not the same. The spirit is the figure for essence, and soul is the figure for substance. When God, the Father, created man and woman, He made us as His similarity or resemblance: "So God created man (male and female) in his [own] image, in the image of God created he him..." (Genesis 1:27) We must remember here that if God is Spirit -as Jesus revealed- then the liking, the similarity of us with God must be because we are spirit too. Spirit, not soul ( please read http://144000.net/soul.htm )... Of course, all this pertains to when we were created to live as humans in Earth... but, our creation as spirits was even before than this. "According as he hath chosen us in him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and without blame before him in love." Ephesians 1:4 "Before the foundation of the world"... this simple words are the ones that stand in front of all those theologians that reject the notion of the pre-existence of our spirit before the creation of this world. So, what exactly is our spirit? ....(shall continue) ____________________________________________________________ 互户互户互猾せカせЙせカせЙせカせЙせカせЙせカ  - The Matter "Your physical part is substance which will dissolve into atoms in the Creation." The Third Testament (The Book of the True Life 185:31ss) It has been customary to speak of spirit and flesh (or soul and body if you have had a Christian upbringing) as the forming parts of our being. Many have accepted the idea that we humans have a body (or flesh) and that in that body a spirit or soul dwells. But the creation of the material world encompasses far more things than bodies. There are, living and well, many many other things. That's why this topic was tittled "The Matter" instead of "The Body" or "The Flesh"... You see, we live in the middle of what we might call "the material realm". And it is in that material realm where our matter lives. Not only our physical body or flesh, but also what we have known as a soul. Soul, in humans, is an evolutionized component of our being; it is the one that glues spirit and body together. Our soul is part of the material creation, it does not belong to the spiritual creation that preceded that of the creation of the Universe. Once our life in the matter ends, the destiny of the spirit is to elevate and return to the spiritual realm. The destiny of the soul is different. "The existence of a man on Earth is only an instant in eternity, a breath of life which animates the human being for a time, and later it separates in order to animate a new body." The Third Testament (The Book of the True Life 12:4 Our soul is the elevated and more subtle part of our material being; the physical body, our flesh, is the other one, not as ethereal as the former. To better understand this, think of the soul as a frame which sustains both our body (flesh) and our spirit and all of the functions that together they do perform. While in our human life, sentiments or the capacity of sensivity to material events, feelings and emotions are captured and handled by our soul thru the body and its functions, including in them our material senses, the simple ones (taste, smell, sight, tact, audition) as well as the elevated ones (telepathy, presentiment, material memory, the sense of awareness, etc.) In other words, soul handles all of our doors of material perception, some of them physical and some others belonging to which many know as the metaphysical (from the Greek "meta ta physika"=beyond or after the physical), but all of them belonging to the matter at the end. All those events, perceptions and happenings reach our spirit thru the soul which acts as a communication bond between the material realm and our spirit. Even our capacity to think, that many see starting in the brain, most of the times, although not always, in thruth originates from the spirit's will. Other times, material events trigger automatically that capacity. Reason, in the other had, belongs to the spirit, not to the soul or the body. By reason, we understand that capacity beyond the mere act of thinking or emitting or sending forth thoughts (just as a blender blends and a dryer dries, our brain function is to emit thoughts). Reason has to do with reaching, thru a process of continuing conclusions, the truth that lies inside all things and events. It is at this moment when the mind, that elusive and magnificent tool of our reason, commence to bright. You see, mind and reason working together do more than just gather information; they lead us to knowledge and then to wisdom. Also the faculty of the spirit to create is manifested basically thru the mind. Permanent memory belongs to the spirit, not to the soul. Nowadays, in this age of computers and cyberstuff, this concept is more easily explained and understood. Think of the soul as the RAM memory of your computer; while this is on and functioning, every single event, every single keystroke or webpage visited by you, is stored in that important part of your computer; but when you really want to keep for sure the info you have gathered, what do you do? Write it to your hard disk. Well, the spirit is our hard disk. The soul and the brain are the RAM memory, of volatile nature. This is the reason why experiences and events gathered in previous lives are "stored" in our spirit, transferred from one life to the other, manifested many times in certain capacities or abilities (the little Mozarts, the young math geniuses, etc.) and at other times in phobias or fears. Recently, the interesting studies of Dr. Ian Stevenson indicate that even birthmarks are transferred from one life to the other, without any physical connection or explanation. Not even DNA or genetics can explains this; reincarnation can. Why can't our "RAM memory" in this life remember all things captured in previous lives? Please read http://144000.net/memories.htm in which we extend a little further on this. Now, not all souls are equal. Everything created posseses a soul, but the soul of a rock differs from that of the plant, and the soul of the Sun is different from the soul of our planet. The human soul is, by far, the more evolutionated of all souls in our little corner in this huge Universe. It must be, since it serves an spirit. The rocks, the plants, our little fellow creatures do not have an spirit. Have you ever heard someone of many persons remembering past lives, saying: "In my past life I was an old shoe..." or "When I was the horse of Napoleon..."? In view of all the previous, maybe now we can understand why our dear pets manifest many beautiful sentiments, feelings and emotions and they behave accordingly, but once they reach the end of their life, their soul migrates to another part of the material creation, since not even in this case there exists death as many understand it. Probably your loved pet's soul, with most of the peculiarities that distinguished him or her (sorry, I refuse to treat these wonderful beings as things) will end animating another little animal, probably a little more evolved than your dear friend was, for the evolution law applies to everything created, minerals, plants and animals included. ....(shall continue) ____________________________________________________________ 互户互户互猾せカせЙせカせЙせカせЙせカせЙせカ  - Final Word: Not a single moment passess in which our prayer is not needed. Legions of our brethen are suffering, as you read this, of the most varied calamities: hunger, war, oppresion, disseases, sadness, depression, you name it. We can do a lot with the powers which God vested our spirit. Let us persevere and keep on being watchful and praying. Your Brother in the Lord The Little Worker **** PAST ISSUES AT http://144000.net/newsletter/ ****