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Code of Christ an Interpretation of The
The Code of Christ is Gerald Heard's sequel to The Creed of Christ. In this volume Heard emphasizes how, Christianity is in essence a way of life for us to live. That way of life is systematically presented in the Beatitudes, which contain, a message needing decoding. Heard authoritatively decodes this central message of The world exists for man to achieve union with God. The universe and life are the means whereby souls achieve Enlightenment and Liberation. Once enlightenment is achieved, the perfected soul turns back and stands incandescent with compassion, to light others on their way home. The Code of Christ is essential reading for those desiring a deeper understanding of Christ's message. Gerald Heard's thoughtful musings skillfully expound the mystical truths of Christianity.
Hardcover
First published January 1, 2008
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About the author
Gerald Heard
61 books11 followersGerald Heard, born in London on October 6, 1889, of Irish ancestry, was educated in England, taking honors in history and studying theology at the University of Cambridge. Following Cambridge, he worked for Lord Robson of Jesmond and later for Sir Horace Plunkett, founder of the Irish Agriculture Cooperative movement. Heard began lecturing from 1926 to 1929 at Oxford University's Board of Extra Mural Studies. In 1927 he began lecturing for South Place Ethical Society. From 1929 to 1930 he edited "The Realist," a monthly journal of scientific humanism whose sponsors included H.G. Wells, Julian Huxley, and Aldous Huxley. In 1929 he published The Ascent of Humanity, an essay on the philosophy of history that received the prestigious Hertz Prize by the British Academy. From 1930 to 1934 he served as the BBC's first science commentator, and from 1932 to 1942 he was a council member of the Society for Psychical Research.
In 1937 Gerald Heard came to the United States, accompanied by Aldous Huxley, after having been offered the chair of historical anthropology at Duke University. After delivering some lectures at Duke, Heard gave up the post and soon settled in California where from 1941 to 1942 he founded and oversaw the building of Trabuco College, a large facility where comparative-religion studies and practices flourished under Heard's visionary direction. Trabuco College, 30 years ahead of its time, was discontinued in 1947, and the vast properties were subsequently donated to the Vedanta Society of Southern California.
During the 1950s, Heard's main activities were writing and lecturing, along with an occasional television and radio appearance. His broad philosophical themes and scintillating oratorical style influenced many people and attracted a legion of interested persons. But chiefly he maintained a regular discipline of meditation for many years, as the core of his mature beliefs centered around the intentional evolution of consciousness.
A prolific writer, Heard penned some thirty-eight books, the most important of which are his pioneering academic works documenting the evolution of consciousness, including The Ascent of Humanity (1929), The Social Substance of Religion (1931), The Source of Civilization (1935), Pain, Sex and Time (1939), and his last book, The Five Ages of Man (1964). He also wrote several popular devotional books, including The Creed of Christ (1940) and Training for the Life of the Spirit (1941-42). Under the name H. F. Heard (H. F. for Henry FitzGerald, his given name), he wrote a number of mysteries and fantasies, including A Taste for Honey (1941) and The Great Fog and Other Weird Tales (1944). Following five years of illness, Gerald Heard peacefully passed away at his home in Santa Monica, California, on August 14, 1971.
In 1937 Gerald Heard came to the United States, accompanied by Aldous Huxley, after having been offered the chair of historical anthropology at Duke University. After delivering some lectures at Duke, Heard gave up the post and soon settled in California where from 1941 to 1942 he founded and oversaw the building of Trabuco College, a large facility where comparative-religion studies and practices flourished under Heard's visionary direction. Trabuco College, 30 years ahead of its time, was discontinued in 1947, and the vast properties were subsequently donated to the Vedanta Society of Southern California.
During the 1950s, Heard's main activities were writing and lecturing, along with an occasional television and radio appearance. His broad philosophical themes and scintillating oratorical style influenced many people and attracted a legion of interested persons. But chiefly he maintained a regular discipline of meditation for many years, as the core of his mature beliefs centered around the intentional evolution of consciousness.
A prolific writer, Heard penned some thirty-eight books, the most important of which are his pioneering academic works documenting the evolution of consciousness, including The Ascent of Humanity (1929), The Social Substance of Religion (1931), The Source of Civilization (1935), Pain, Sex and Time (1939), and his last book, The Five Ages of Man (1964). He also wrote several popular devotional books, including The Creed of Christ (1940) and Training for the Life of the Spirit (1941-42). Under the name H. F. Heard (H. F. for Henry FitzGerald, his given name), he wrote a number of mysteries and fantasies, including A Taste for Honey (1941) and The Great Fog and Other Weird Tales (1944). Following five years of illness, Gerald Heard peacefully passed away at his home in Santa Monica, California, on August 14, 1971.
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March 22, 2021
Memorable Passages
“The real obstacle to believing in Christianity is not miracle; no, not even such a miracle as a Virgin Birth and the Resurrection of a man killed by crucifixion. What really stands in the way of accepting the Gospel of Jesus is not the strain on our credulity but the demand on our characters. It is the Sermon on the Mount which is the central problem. First and foremost, it is not a question, "Can I believe that certain miraculous events happened to and were done by one man long ago?" But, rather, "Can I believe that certain moral miracles can happen to and be done by me?" If we could believe that the Sermon on the Mount was true, if it could work as a practical proposition in our present lives, then all the rest of the Gospel statements would certainly look far less improbable.”
There are very few things on which it is possible to get all men to agree. Perhaps there is only one thing which all men will agree that they want. That is happiness. Wisdom may be above rubies in value, and yet in the end even it proves vanity, but happiness is always worth while. The Gospels mean good news, we know. We know also that a great deal of them is taken up with other things-the depressing reception given the good news, the almost more depressing muddle and misconceptions made by those who decided, here was good news but it must be the kind of good news that they considered good, it must not be too good to be true. But at the center of the Gospel story there is a core. It is a core in two senses of the word. It is that essence of which everyone who reads them feels when they reach that part-here is the heart of the whole mat ter, this is the Gospel, the Good News.
“the saints and mystics have made quite clear. The first we have seen. Hell is a place composed of completely egotistic persons. There is no other hell and all the ranges and degrees of misery can be exactly gauged and calibrated by noting the amount of ego that is present. When the ego dominates wholly in everyone then you have pandemonium and homicidal frenzy, persecution mania, insane suspicion, insane cruelty, a state to ward which parts of the world have actually now gone closer than our grandparents would have thought any people could, outside an asylum. When the ego has been checked but not resolved, then we find private suspicions, miseries, complaints and hidden hatreds. When it has begun to be eliminated then we find it only lurking in corners of the mind, in irrational worry, oversensitiveness and mind body distresses.”
Remains.
* Remains.
“But how are our rigid, restricted, withered little natures, stiff in their limited convictions, desiccated in their brittle pride, to become so supple, lithe, fluid? How are we to learn, as Lao-tzu prophesied, as the Beatitudes promise, to become unself-con scious, unimpatient parts of that great principle of dynamic transforming Acceptance; which bears so profoundly with all, in all, under all, that to call it tolerant is quite inadequate; which is so patient that our word patience is impertinent to describe its inexhaustibility; which is so kind that our notions of friendliness, in comparison with it, are crude and almost aggressive? This Heaven, this Divine Eternal Fatherhood, this which Lao-tzu calls Tao, the Ever lasting Principle, that Law of Love, the very nature of Reality, which Buddha called the Dharma, that Being who as Dante saw, turns the sun and the stars, simply because He is Love, inexhaustible, compas sionate Power, how shall we find that Power, that one and only apt and adequate Force? How shall we be trained so as not to thwart that creative light but to let it pour through us?
“ We may then complete the hypothesis of Redemption by pointing to its conclusion, a conclusion a number of mystic saints indicated. Evil, we must own, goes deep into Life. It is present not only in us but in our stock. I act ill not merely by my clear narrowed selfish choice for my personal advantage. I act ill by a deep drive which may have a terrible selflessness, an unself-seeking destructiveness—yes, self-destructiveness-inspiring it. That is original sin. But, further, evil is present in other stocks, breaking out, a common latent infection in all Life. As has been suggested earlier in Chapter 3 on the second Beatitude, sin in its root nature would seem to be a shrinking back into a defiant pleasure, a defiant pleasure in the separateness of the self, a shrinking back which can take place (but can only take place) the moment that there is a consciousness of having attained a separate experience. That self, however dimly, does deliberately choose and decide to stay where it is; to resist all further growth; to regard all other contacts as intrusions, trespassers; to hug itself and to attack all else as alien.”
“On this Beatific Ladder of Perfection we have already attained a height when we can see those tides spreading to the confines of Life and the limits of Time. When from this lofty station we can see so far, we see that Time itself becomes not a misery but a mercy. It is no longer the denial of Eternity but an aspect of the Eternal. That is what Buddhism means when it says that to the completely liberated and enlightened soul, the soul which has become nothing but the Divine Compassion, this phenomenal world, this world which is appearance and illusion to the still struggling soul, becomes also Reality, "the Sangsara becomes Nirvana," the Kingdom of Heaven is come upon earth.
Such is the tremendous nature of mercy, for mercy-which perhaps we have dismissed as something amiable but weak-is revealed as nothing less than God the Creator seen actually working upon Time and in Time.”
“We must be transcendental if we ever to be in fact practical”
“God has always prepared for man a fate beyond his dreams. The Sons who have appeared have told us that they were forerunners, first fruits. The kingdom is promised "on this earth," God's presence manifest to all and everyone. Will that make little difference save to banish injustice and war? No, it will mean, literally, paradise, the recovery with an intenser consciousness, of that Eternity which we lost when by our egotism we become specifically "man, the tran sitional creature,” time-haunted. That is the only goal which can satisfy man and it is in that direction that the Stair of the Saints, the ladder of the Beatiutudes leads us. At the first step we have men of right conduct, men who are themselves uninflammable but who cannot put out the conflagration or prevent it spreading to others. In the second we have men of right character, men who can prevent the conflagration from spreading to still unkindled fuel. But at the third we have men of right consciousness, men who living in eternity, always contacting Reality, can quench the flame.
These men are the aim of evolution, the one answer to Life's riddle, the sole reply to the desperate appeal of present man. So and so only but so surely we may believe it is the divine purpose to remedy creation by salvation and out of tragedy to bring a new wonder of being-to save man and bring peace by those who, by seeing God, achieve the one eternal union and at-one-ment, for they unite man with God.
being
Th
chall
word
Hero
anim
Levar
Aram
used
Book
being
passa
“Hence this attempt to give a reasoned statement for our common faith. But the faith itself springs and has always sprung from that "reason of the heart," that migratory instinct toward a goal toward which we can go but which while we travel we can never adequately define. It is that invisible attrac tion which launches us, holds us, guides and speeds us. It is that which makes us singlehearted and as we so become we know that the meaning of all, the one adequate reward for all, the purpose and the end of all is and can only be this one thing, the supreme blessedness, Seeing God.”
“The real obstacle to believing in Christianity is not miracle; no, not even such a miracle as a Virgin Birth and the Resurrection of a man killed by crucifixion. What really stands in the way of accepting the Gospel of Jesus is not the strain on our credulity but the demand on our characters. It is the Sermon on the Mount which is the central problem. First and foremost, it is not a question, "Can I believe that certain miraculous events happened to and were done by one man long ago?" But, rather, "Can I believe that certain moral miracles can happen to and be done by me?" If we could believe that the Sermon on the Mount was true, if it could work as a practical proposition in our present lives, then all the rest of the Gospel statements would certainly look far less improbable.”
There are very few things on which it is possible to get all men to agree. Perhaps there is only one thing which all men will agree that they want. That is happiness. Wisdom may be above rubies in value, and yet in the end even it proves vanity, but happiness is always worth while. The Gospels mean good news, we know. We know also that a great deal of them is taken up with other things-the depressing reception given the good news, the almost more depressing muddle and misconceptions made by those who decided, here was good news but it must be the kind of good news that they considered good, it must not be too good to be true. But at the center of the Gospel story there is a core. It is a core in two senses of the word. It is that essence of which everyone who reads them feels when they reach that part-here is the heart of the whole mat ter, this is the Gospel, the Good News.
“the saints and mystics have made quite clear. The first we have seen. Hell is a place composed of completely egotistic persons. There is no other hell and all the ranges and degrees of misery can be exactly gauged and calibrated by noting the amount of ego that is present. When the ego dominates wholly in everyone then you have pandemonium and homicidal frenzy, persecution mania, insane suspicion, insane cruelty, a state to ward which parts of the world have actually now gone closer than our grandparents would have thought any people could, outside an asylum. When the ego has been checked but not resolved, then we find private suspicions, miseries, complaints and hidden hatreds. When it has begun to be eliminated then we find it only lurking in corners of the mind, in irrational worry, oversensitiveness and mind body distresses.”
Remains.
* Remains.
“But how are our rigid, restricted, withered little natures, stiff in their limited convictions, desiccated in their brittle pride, to become so supple, lithe, fluid? How are we to learn, as Lao-tzu prophesied, as the Beatitudes promise, to become unself-con scious, unimpatient parts of that great principle of dynamic transforming Acceptance; which bears so profoundly with all, in all, under all, that to call it tolerant is quite inadequate; which is so patient that our word patience is impertinent to describe its inexhaustibility; which is so kind that our notions of friendliness, in comparison with it, are crude and almost aggressive? This Heaven, this Divine Eternal Fatherhood, this which Lao-tzu calls Tao, the Ever lasting Principle, that Law of Love, the very nature of Reality, which Buddha called the Dharma, that Being who as Dante saw, turns the sun and the stars, simply because He is Love, inexhaustible, compas sionate Power, how shall we find that Power, that one and only apt and adequate Force? How shall we be trained so as not to thwart that creative light but to let it pour through us?
“ We may then complete the hypothesis of Redemption by pointing to its conclusion, a conclusion a number of mystic saints indicated. Evil, we must own, goes deep into Life. It is present not only in us but in our stock. I act ill not merely by my clear narrowed selfish choice for my personal advantage. I act ill by a deep drive which may have a terrible selflessness, an unself-seeking destructiveness—yes, self-destructiveness-inspiring it. That is original sin. But, further, evil is present in other stocks, breaking out, a common latent infection in all Life. As has been suggested earlier in Chapter 3 on the second Beatitude, sin in its root nature would seem to be a shrinking back into a defiant pleasure, a defiant pleasure in the separateness of the self, a shrinking back which can take place (but can only take place) the moment that there is a consciousness of having attained a separate experience. That self, however dimly, does deliberately choose and decide to stay where it is; to resist all further growth; to regard all other contacts as intrusions, trespassers; to hug itself and to attack all else as alien.”
“On this Beatific Ladder of Perfection we have already attained a height when we can see those tides spreading to the confines of Life and the limits of Time. When from this lofty station we can see so far, we see that Time itself becomes not a misery but a mercy. It is no longer the denial of Eternity but an aspect of the Eternal. That is what Buddhism means when it says that to the completely liberated and enlightened soul, the soul which has become nothing but the Divine Compassion, this phenomenal world, this world which is appearance and illusion to the still struggling soul, becomes also Reality, "the Sangsara becomes Nirvana," the Kingdom of Heaven is come upon earth.
Such is the tremendous nature of mercy, for mercy-which perhaps we have dismissed as something amiable but weak-is revealed as nothing less than God the Creator seen actually working upon Time and in Time.”
“We must be transcendental if we ever to be in fact practical”
“God has always prepared for man a fate beyond his dreams. The Sons who have appeared have told us that they were forerunners, first fruits. The kingdom is promised "on this earth," God's presence manifest to all and everyone. Will that make little difference save to banish injustice and war? No, it will mean, literally, paradise, the recovery with an intenser consciousness, of that Eternity which we lost when by our egotism we become specifically "man, the tran sitional creature,” time-haunted. That is the only goal which can satisfy man and it is in that direction that the Stair of the Saints, the ladder of the Beatiutudes leads us. At the first step we have men of right conduct, men who are themselves uninflammable but who cannot put out the conflagration or prevent it spreading to others. In the second we have men of right character, men who can prevent the conflagration from spreading to still unkindled fuel. But at the third we have men of right consciousness, men who living in eternity, always contacting Reality, can quench the flame.
These men are the aim of evolution, the one answer to Life's riddle, the sole reply to the desperate appeal of present man. So and so only but so surely we may believe it is the divine purpose to remedy creation by salvation and out of tragedy to bring a new wonder of being-to save man and bring peace by those who, by seeing God, achieve the one eternal union and at-one-ment, for they unite man with God.
being
Th
chall
word
Hero
anim
Levar
Aram
used
Book
being
passa
“Hence this attempt to give a reasoned statement for our common faith. But the faith itself springs and has always sprung from that "reason of the heart," that migratory instinct toward a goal toward which we can go but which while we travel we can never adequately define. It is that invisible attrac tion which launches us, holds us, guides and speeds us. It is that which makes us singlehearted and as we so become we know that the meaning of all, the one adequate reward for all, the purpose and the end of all is and can only be this one thing, the supreme blessedness, Seeing God.”
February 5, 2024
Read this book concurrently with the Interior Castle by Teresa of Avila, so the two supported each other in furthering my growth. Heard can be a bit of a challenge in his style, but worth the effort.
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews