Editor's last word:

Casuistry is for children. It’s decision-making with “training wheels.” It removes the frightening threat of making a wrong judgment by making no judgment at all, in its paint-by-numbers scheme of things.

But the world of “living in the Spirit,” of weighing and evaluating, of exercising the powers of reason and consciousness – that’s not for children.

Little wonder then that the frightened strive to remain in “kindergarten with cookies and nap-time,” the Peter-Pan environment, of “one true doctrines” and “one true churches.” Well, how safe and secure we feel in this make-believe certitude.

Is this a harsh evaluation?

It may be; but the question for each person becomes, do we want to know what’s real?

I’d like to summarize these initial essays by taking us back to the discussion of Jesus’ promise of “the Spirit” leading us into “all truth” – with particular focus on his comment, “You will be better off if I leave.”

We discussed the meaning: “If I stayed you would become servile and dependent, even more like children, afraid of doing your own thinking, exploring your own humanity, expanding your level of consciousness.”

Isn’t it strange that most Bible-believers don’t really believe his statement? They don’t believe that it was better for Jesus to have gone away. They’re like his men that night pleading with him to stay and form a military-government. And one of their favorite doctrines is the Second Coming, the bodily return of Jesus, when he will “rule with a rod of iron,” treating everyone as either slave or yes-man. Do you see anything wrong with this picture? How utterly unlike The Teacher who promised the coming of the "Spirit"!

Most of this we’ve touched on before, but there are certain implications, an undertone of message, that should be brought to the surface.

When Jesus said “It is better for you if I bodily depart,” he might have restated this generally as, “It is better for you if all occasion toward external authority were removed, lest you further entrench yourself in childish servility.”

Today, it’s not Jesus’ bodily presence that will stifle our expansion of soul and spirit, but several other closely related pitfalls.

In this purge of external authorities…

• Albert Einstein: "Unthinking respect for authority is the greatest enemy of truth." 

- all that which might blind oneself to the Light within - he might also have warned:

“It is better for you if you put away 'infallible holy books’ which, in casuistry, encourage an unthinking deference.”

“It is better for you if you put away all totalitarian influences, the Dear Leaders in your life, even if they come to you with august title and position, which will lead you into more childish mindset.”

“It is better for you if you put away all notions of ‘one true doctrines,’ as if God could not offer any more insight into the nature of life and love; as if truth died with the first-century apostles; as if we know everything about the universe and couldn’t possibly expand our minds – how childish, and how cult-like!”

Jesus, in the attitude of Einstein, warned against any false icon of certitude in our lives – these will accomplish nothing, as he said, but to delay the coming of the Purified Consciousness.