Discover the Power Within You: A Guide to the Unexplored Depths Within

by Eric Butterworth

For me, the consciousness or our divine potential that Butterworth describes begins with the prayer, with the meditation. But it’s most effective when it starts to become automatic, when it becomes unconscious or subconscious. When this happens, people do exactly what they know to do—not what they think they know, not what they should know, not what other people say they know. With this new consciousness, change becomes automatic, so that you don’t have to think about it. It is already in you so firmly, so securely, that you automatically go to the positive thought, and act upon it. As the Chinese say: to know and not to do is, in fact, not to know.

Jesus’s great discovery was the divine dimension within all persons, that point where “man is an inlet and may become an outlet to all there is in God.” We totally misread Jesus’s life and teachings if we fail to realize that he was first of all a student on the quest, working to achieve in consciousness the fullness of what Paul called, “Christ in you.” But as this book makes quite clear, Paul is not referring to Jesus, but to the divine potential within every person that Jesus discovered within himself.

I have often speculated on what Jesus would have done if he had been seated around a table with a Buddhist, a Hindu, a Muslim, and a Shintoist—discussing ultimate Truth. I just can’t believe that Jesus would have said, “You must all forsake your beliefs and come and follow me.” I think he might have pointed out that the differences were chiefly a matter of semantics, and that there is an underlying principle similar to the Christ idea in every religion. I think he would have stressed the basic unity within the diversity of religions, pointing out that the greatest need of all persons is to find that indwelling unity with God, which is found in the principle of divine Sonship, that we call the Christ.

We don’t know how this great break-through was actually accomplished in Jesus, how long the process took, or when He achieved self-mastery. But we know when He made His appearance at the Jordan River to be baptized by John (Matt. 3:13 ff.), He was a committed and polished teacher with the amazing message that “The Kingdom of God is within you.”

The Gospels of our Bible record the story of this man, Jesus, and the miracle-working powers He revealed. The message of the Gospels has been misunderstood. They have been made to appear to say that Jesus was really God taking the form of man, standing astride the world like a great Colossus, with the bolts of heaven in His hands. All this fails to take into account His great discovery.

Jesus was not a worker of magic, a performer of feats of the miraculous. He was essentially a teacher. True, He demonstrated unusual power, even over the elements; but He explained that this was an evidence of the power that comes to any man when he makes the discovery in himself of the great within. Jesus’ goal was to help everyone—you and me—to understand the great potential within the Adam man, and to help us make the break-through for ourselves. His entire teaching, shorn of the theological embellishments that have been added, is a simple outline of techniques by which we can release our own innate potential and be transformed by the power of our own divinity.

Unless we catch this point, unless we can appreciate and accept this greatest discovery of all time, we lose the thread of the tapestry of the Gospels, and we build our churches and our personal faith on shifting sands. If we recognize this vital and dynamic Truth of man’s spiritual unity with God, if we know that man is God’s beloved child, endowed with His intelligence, His life, His substance, and that he is the inheritor of a kingdom prepared for him from the foundation of the world, then all the rest of the Gospel story—the miracles and teachings, even the final overcoming in the resurrection—become purely academic, for they are all an outgrowth of this great discovery.

The amazing thing is that in each Christian church can be found a Bible that contains Paul’s speech on Mars Hill, in which He said: The God that made the world and all things therein, He, being Lord of heaven and earth, dwelleth not in temples made with hands; neither is He served by men’s hands, as though He needed anything, seeing He, Himself, giveth to all life, and breath, and all things…that they should seek God, if haply they might feel after Him and find Him, though He is not far from each one of us: for in Him we live, and move, and have our being; as certain even of your own poets have said, for we are also His offspring [Acts 17:24–28]. Jesus discovered His own divinity, His unique relationship with the Infinite. He discovered that through faith He could open doors into the inexhaustible Mind of God, finding renewed creativity, a flow of powerful ideas, a perception beyond the comprehension of the Adam man of His day or ours. And yet He realized that this is a Universe of law and order.

He was more than Jesus of Nazareth, more than any other man who ever lived on earth. He was more than man, as we understand the appellation in its everyday use, because there came into His manhood a factor to which most men are strangers. This factor was the Christ consciousness. The unfoldment of this consciousness by Jesus made Him God incarnate, because Christ is the Mind of God individualized. We cannot separate Jesus Christ from God or tell where man leaves off and God begins in Him. To say that we are men as Jesus was a man is not exactly true, because He had dropped that personal consciousness by which we separate ourselves from our true God self…. He became consciously one with the absolute principle of Being. He proved in His resurrection and ascension that He had no consciousness separate from that of Being,

The “only begotten” is spiritual man, the Christ principle, the principle of the Divinity of Man. The “only begotten son” is that which is begotten only of God. There is that in all of us that is begotten of many sources.

But John 3:16 is saying, “God’s love is so great, His wisdom so infinite, that He has given unto man that which is pure and perfect, that which is begotten only of Him. No matter what a man may experience, he is after all a child of God, and he always has within him the infinite potential of the Christ.

This is not a proof of Jesus’ divinity. It is rather a restatement of His discovery of the Divinity of Man, which He proved. He discovered that in Himself which was begotten only of God, and He believed it so completely that even death and the tomb could not hold Him.

“Christ” is not a person. It is not Jesus. Christ is a degree of stature that Jesus attained, but a degree of potential stature that dwells in every man. Paul said, “Christ in you, the hope of glory” (Col. 1:27).

And then in John 1:14 we read, “And the Word became flesh, and dwelt among us.” Now for the first time John is talking about Jesus. But even here the reference is to Jesus after He had made the break-through within Himself to the spirit, after He had made the great discovery of the Divinity of Man and had consciously fulfilled Paul’s admonition, “Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly” (Col. 3:16). Jesus had lifted Himself to the complete consciousness of the Word, and thus, in His mountaintop moments, He was the Word to all intent and purpose.

For this principle of the Divinity of Man, realized by the young lad on the hills of Judea, is a universal principle—it is the law of life, the law of your life. By this law, by this principle of the Christ indwelling, you can do all that you need to do. You can even do all that Jesus did, “and greater things than these shall you do.” Obviously, this is a long-range goal. We are not going to achieve this divine fulfillment in a day or a year, or in one lifetime. But we are challenged to “press on toward…the high calling of God” (Phil. 3:14). Along the way there is freedom for us and abundant living. The important thing is to be faced in the right direction—moving forward.

Paul says, “Be not conformed to this world: but be ye transformed by the renewing of your mind…” (Rom. 12:2, AV). Here in just sixteen words, Paul reveals both the greatest problem facing mankind today and also the key to man’s salvation. Why do we not turn back even if we sense that the “end is near”? Because we are conformed to “this world.”

the question, “What would Jesus do in this situation?” This is a laudable practice. But Jesus did not set the Christ standard—He simply followed it. The Christ standard is not a series of hard and fast rules for behavior, not simply an analysis of what Jesus did for men to see. It is, instead, a principle that Jesus revealed through His discovery of the Divinity of Man. His teachings are the revelation of certain fundamental principles pertaining to the individual, along with illustrations as to how these principles can best be applied in practice.

We all succumb at times to the temptation to condone our mistakes and weaknesses with the thought, “After all, I am only human. The divine standard is too lofty. It is more than I can attain. Besides, why should I lose any sleep over it? Everyone makes mistakes.” But the greatest mistake is in believing that we are “only human.” Our humanity is but the degree to which we have given expression to our divinity. We are human in expression but divine in creation and limitless in potentiality. The Christ standard is not a restraint. It is an inherent potential, it is the law of man’s higher self.

Everyone who turns to religion is motivated by the deep-seated urge to let his divinity transcend his humanity, to express more of what he inherently is. Jesus’ role, if we see it in the context of this great idea of the Divinity of Man, was to prove to man what man can be.

What is the principle of this change? If this new life, this new birth could come to one person, then it must be possible to all. And it is possible to all because all men are spiritual beings, whether they know it or not, and whether they act the part or not. Man is born as a physical being, but the physical is only the shell of the spiritual man which he is and always has been.

Consider the lowly caterpillar. It is self-evident that the caterpillar and the butterfly live in entirely different worlds, and no one would ever say that a caterpillar is a butterfly or that a butterfly is a caterpillar. And yet we know that the caterpillar and the butterfly are simply different levels of expression of one entity. The caterpillar can fly, but not as a caterpillar—only as a butterfly. He has the potential, but something has to happen to him. You can do the things Jesus did, but not as the man you now are. Only when you are “born anew” into a higher state of consciousness.

Jesus knew that everyone had within him the divine level of being, and that in the Divinity of Man is the limitless potential of healing.

When we know the Truth of this great spiritual potential within us which Jesus called the Kingdom of God within, we are free to become our unlimited self, free to do unlimited things. We see things in a different light, we react to a different set of principles, we draw upon a higher potential, a potential that has always been within us, which has always really been us.

To return to the question, “Must I make a decision for Christ?” The answer is “yes,” but with a more deeply mystical meaning, shorn of the emotionalism which relates to the personality of Jesus. Many people find comfort and strength and inspiration in the emotional acceptance of Jesus as their “personal saviour.” And this is good. There is much to be gained by a deep inner feeling of fellowship with the Master. For we do not want to infer here that the Fundamentalist or evangelical Christian is wrong.

But our thesis here is that this is not the high level of consciousness that Jesus had in mind when He said, “Follow me.”

We must begin to see Jesus as the great discoverer of the innate Divinity of Man, the supreme revealer of the truth about man, the pioneer and way-shower in the quest for self-realization and self-unfoldment. We must see Him turning to His fellow beings, including you and me, and saying, “Come and sit with me for a while and let me help you to see as I see, to feel the depth of the Spirit in you as I have felt it within me. Let me show you the way, the highroad to your own Mt. Olympus. Let me lead you into the wonderful world of the Christ within you, where you will know, and know that you know, that you are a limitless expression of the Infini...

We may use the phrase “let go and let God.” Actually, this is little more than a platitude until we make a conscious decision to let God really take over in every area of our lives. We may be slow to make this decision because we do not realize that it is a decision.

It is a matter of earnest resolve to see ourselves in a new light, the light of the Christ and of our own unique unity with God.

I am confident that there are non-Christian students on the quest who may be reading these lines. To you, may I say, “Don’t fight the words ‘Jesus’ or ‘Christ.’ It is the idea, the spiritual Truth, the divine relationship that counts.

Startling as it may sound, a man may hug Jesus to his breast in emotional adoration and still miss the dynamic that Jesus came to reveal, while another man may deny that Jesus ever lived and still catch the essence of His great Truth. As for me, fellowship with Jesus is invaluable in helping me to “learn of Him,” to know the Truth as He knew it. But I am convinced that “accepting Jesus” is not indispensable to the student on the quest. The important goal for all is to find our unity with God. Achieve that unity and we will be doing as He did, even if we are not believing in Jesus.

Jesus is the man who became divine through discovery of the dynamic that is innate within all men. But Christ is the self-livingness of God at the point of man. This is the unitive relationship between God and man. Jesus became so conscious of this Christ relationship that eventually we could not tell where one began and the other left off. Thus He became Jesus Christ, a legend, but more than this, a state of consciousness.

You and I can enter that state of consciousness. In the end we must do so—perhaps through following the stream of consciousness created by Jesus, perhaps through intuitively finding the way as He found the way. But we must all make the great decision to reach for the highest and to claim the divinity within us.

JESUS had a unique concept of God. To Him, God was not an object of worship but a Presence dwelling in us, a force surrounding us, and a Principle by which we live. It is not too much to say that anyone who catches the idea of Jesus’ concept will find himself caught up in a new consciousness that will change his whole life. He will never be the same again.

Everyone of us lives with some mental picture of a God “out there,” a God who exists above and beyond the world He made, a God “to” whom we pray and to whom we go, when we die.1 The problem has been that we have been conditioned to think of the God concept of the Old Testament. It has not been properly explained to us that the Old Testament is the story of the unfoldment of the God-idea and of the relationship of man with God. In pre-Mosaic Israel, God was conceived of as being attached to places, altars, trees, pillars, wells, and other natural objects. And Moses popularized the Ark, which was supposed to house God. They carried Him around with them in the Ark. If the Ark was captured they simply couldn’t win the battle. In later times, the Ark was given a fixed place in the Temple. Thus, the Temple became the “house of the Lord.”

Most of us have grown up with a primitive concept of God—a big Man, big and good, but still a big man, managing the world from the outside, a kind of absentee landlord. The attitudes of the little child toward God are not substantially different from the conceptions of primitive man, who found it difficult to conceive of God except as attached to something he could see—hence idols and fetishes.

Unfortunately, the God concept that dominates most Christian theology is the primitive concept of pre-Mosaic Israel. And Jesus, with His unique concept of God, has never really had His say in many Christian churches. Oh, there have been modifications. For instance, consider the doctrine of the Holy Trinity. God in three persons. But what does this mean? And how did such a concept evolve? This is one of the “great historic creeds.” It doesn’t seem to disturb many that these doctrines were created during an age of speculation—when the bishops of the church gathered in great conclaves and argued about the nature of God and of Jesus. It was in such meetings that most of the doctrines of the church were formulated. This was the evolution of the religion about Jesus. But what about the religion of Jesus?

So, a group of men in debate determined for all time the nature of God. Now God became three persons: Father, Son, and Holy Ghost. No one has ever really understood it and it has been the source of endless wranglings and schisms. Oh, we can and often do make an interesting metaphysical case out of it. But strangely, Jesus, who should be the central figure in any Christian theology, had nothing whatever to say about the Trinity. Thus, it becomes obvious that Jesus was relegated to a secondary role in the Church that had sprung up around Him. He was important only as a fixture, sitting by the opaque window through which no one could see anymore.

And then listen to Jesus: “But I say unto you, Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them which despitefully use you, and persecute you” (Matt. 5:44, AV). A little boy, after having many weeks of Sunday School lessons devoted to the Old Testament, and then coming to the first lesson in the New Testament, remarked to one of his classmates after Sunday school: “Boy, God sure got better as He got older, didn’t He?”

Spirit, then, is the Life Principle, the divine breath which God is breathing out as man and the Universe. The word “spirit” implies—unformed, unspecialized, unrestricted, limitless. When Jesus said, “God is Spirit,” He was not giving a definition. You cannot define God. Jesus was simply giving a guide to direct our thoughts away from finite form, or from thinking of God as a superman.

You can never be separated from God because you are an expression of God, the very self-livingness of God. God cannot forsake you any more than gravity can forsake you. As an expression of God, you are God expressing Himself as you. And your greatest desire should be to let Him have His way. Meister Eckhart had this feeling when he said that God expects only one thing of you, and that is that you should stop thinking of yourself as a created being and let God be God in you.

The true self of you, the Christ, spiritual man, is the individualization of God. You are the Presence of God at the point where you are. Thus, it is true of you as it was of Jesus, “I and the Father are one.” You are an individualized part, but the whole is always in the part; thus God is within you. However, God is not in you in the same sense that a raisin is in a bun. That is not unity. God is in you as the ocean is in a wave. The wave is nothing more nor less than the ocean expressing as a wave.

Sometimes in the study of metaphysics, we are so zealous to erase the idea of a personal God that we talk of God as Mind, God as Principle, God as Substance—but we do not emphasize God as me.

Though God is not a person, yet God is personal. There is nothing impersonal about God-Mind in me. It is my mind at the point of God-Mind, but it is my mind. I am sustained by the Life Principle, but that principle is expressing as me. It is my life. It is me. This is the great unitive idea that Jesus taught. “I and the Father are one”—not two, but one. The Father in me is me on a higher dimension of living. Jesus’ unique concept of God reveals a new concept of prayer. Prayer has usually been directed at God. Thus the typical prayer begs and pleads, is couched in pious language, is carefully intoned, and uses “vain repetitions.” Jesus says, “Your Father knoweth what things you have need of, even before you ask him” (Matt. 6:8). In Jesus’ concept, prayer is not for God, but for you. You pray, not to change something in God-Mind, but in your own.

When Jesus says, “God is spirit, and those who worship him must worship in spirit and truth,” He is saying, “If we want peace, we must get into the spirit of peace and affirm the Truth about it.” In God “with whom there is no variation,” peace is constant.

Prayer can never influence God to be less than God or more than God. God is light and peace and love and wisdom.

That is why Jesus used the sun as a symbol for God. “He maketh his sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sendeth rain on the just and the unjust” (Matt. 5:45). The rays of the sun glint into the hospital cot, into the prison cell, into the palace and the hovel. The sun radiates anywhere men will permit. So it is with the great essence which is God. There is no place where God is not. He is not selective. He is there where anyone opens his mind to accept the within of himself. And even if the mind be closed, He is there anyway—for there is always a reality beyond every appearance, there is always a within to every man.

If, like the Prodigal Son, you are living in the “far country” of superficial and materialistic living, then to all intent and purpose there is no power beyond the human in you, there is no infinite potential, and prayer is ridiculous. If you are not aware of the greater dimension of your nature, then it doesn’t exist as far as you are concerned. But when you come to yourself, when you wake up, when suddenly you come alive to the within of you, the depths of you, then God is very real to you—not as a person separate from you, but as an added dimension of you, as a living presence ever with you.

Remember God is in you as the ocean is in the wave. There is no possible way in which the wave can be separated from the ocean, and there is no way in which you can be separated from God. Because you are the activity of God in manifestation, there is no place in all the world where you can get closer to God than where you are right now. You may become more aware of God, but you can never change this closeness which is the Presence of God in you. This is the great Truth that Jesus came to teach.

Gnosis means knowledge. The Gnostics felt that they had a superior knowledge from an inner illumination, so they felt themselves to be superior to Christians, and equal or superior to Jesus. This was a heresy to Christian leaders, and in order to offset this movement among liberal theologians, the leaders of the church met and drew up decrees stating that Jesus was “very God,” that He was God who had come down from “out there,” had put on clothes as a man and walked among men. Yet He was in no way human. To make the distinction between Jesus and other men unmistakable, the doctrine was formulated of the degradation of man, the original sin by which man would be forever cursed with the stigma of humanity.

The theologians declared that Jesus was God become man. But Jesus knew that God had already become man when He first breathed the breath of life into His own image and that image became a living soul. Jesus’ idea of Himself was not that of God suddenly become man; but of man, already God’s image, becoming like unto God. Did He not pray, “Father, glorify thou me with thine own self with the glory which I had with thee before the world was” (John 17:5). The aim of the spiritual evolutionary process in you is to produce a man who completely manifests the inner life of the spirit. And Jesus’ teachings deal with techniques that you can use to fulfill this process in and through you.