The only way one can perhaps simplify the teaching of the Divinity within yourself, and the relation to the Christ, is this—
Recognise that first you have a body of flesh built up of the atoms, which have come to you from the earth—from your parents—from the thought-forces, which perhaps you have left behind you in past incarnations—or that have been embodied by your mother during pregnancy.
This body is but an evolving physical house, which an immortal divine soul comes down and inhabits.
Now it is this Divine inner self, which is the divinity within you, for this divine self has come direct from God—is one with God—is divine.
As the Bible plainly teaches—
The first man is of the earth—Earthy—The second man is the lord from heaven.You have borne the image of the earthy—You will also bear the image of the heavenly.1 Cor. xv, 47—9
The divine you finds difficulty, however, in making its divinity shine through because you—and many, many others—have permitted yourself to think that this physical house—in which the soul dwells—is you.
And quite naturally, you cannot find any divinity in it—it is not divine, but physical and mortal.
Yet it is the covering, and must be made the temple in which the divine self can dwell.
As to the relation Jesus Christ bears to the Christ within you—
Differentiate between Jesus and the Christ.
Jesus was—let us say—a physical manifestation completely filled and permeated with this divine Christ-principle, which is one with God.
The Christ is the life and soul of everything that God has created—
Everything within you that is divine—
Everything in the world.
The Christ-spirit (Buddhi), omitting the word Jesus, is the spirit of all life—
The Spirit of all divinity—
The Son and Life-aspect of the Godhead—
Jesus is the personalised manifestation—or the God-man.
Therefore, the Christ permeates—fills—should dominate all things on the earth.
The only thing, which prevents you from responding to the domination is your own misunderstanding of it—your own thought that the flesh in which this divine principle dwells—perhaps the mind—is all there is of you.
This divine presence is within you, and also with you—
It is within—without—around—everywhere.
So if you once seek to dwell in the consciousness of the divine presence, you cannot get away from it.
Letters from the Teacher, Volume II
