Fresh from finishing Jesus’ encounter with Satan in the wilderness for forty days, the first sentence of the Sermon on the mountain, “ Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven”, Mt.5: 3, throws different shades of light that shrouds the mystical meaning of what He really wanted to convey. While God’s Spirit starts with capital ‘S’, the spirit’s of this world begins with a small‘s’. As the small‘s’ is used in this verse, does it convey that we have to be poor in the spirit of this world that is harnessed by the Devil who perpetually imbue in our thoughts and deeds?, Mt.13: 19. Those who are vigorous with the spirit of this plane are very active and invigourating with excess energy and enthusiasm in executing any piece of work that is assigned to them. “…for the sons of this world are shrewder in dealing with their own generation than the sons of light”, Lk.16: 8.

On the contrary, did He mean us to lead a silent and docile life by avoiding various paraphernalia of our daily life? It doesn’t mean that way because the prescriptions that follow this sentence convey that we are to be silently or loudly active to be the peacemakers of this world that invites a multitude of sufferings and agony. “I send you out as sheep in the midst of wolves; so be wise as serpents and innocent as doves. Beware of men…” Mt.10: 16-17. There are two kinds of spirits that hover over or indwell this world, firstly the Spirit of God, secondly the spirit of this world that bridle our life to be with the dark angels, not the angels of God. “Now we have received not the spirit of the world, but the Spirit which is from God, that we might understand the gifts bestowed on us by God…” 1.Cor.2: 10-13. As we live in this world with the spirits of darkness, we may be led to think in the peripheral sense that Jesus meant in this verse that we have to suffer from the poverty of the spirit of this world. Only a dead fish gets sea salt in its body, not a living one in the salty ocean.

Earthly Poverty:
Jesus and His apostles who led a life of earthly nothing showed a role-model example to those who listen to the word of the Lord. While the Lord explicitly teaches us, “For what will it profit a man, if he gains the whole world and forfeits his life? Or what shall a man give in return for his life?, Mt.16: 26. St.Paul teaches, “For the love of money is the root of all evils; it is through this craving that some have wandered away from the faith and pierced their hearts with many things”, 1.Tim.6: 10. “Take heed, and beware of all covetousness; for a man’s life does not consist in the abundance of his possessions”, Lk.12: 15. The spirit of this world that languishes in money and power games thrives by hook or by crook by making dents in us, as well as in the spiritual and moral life of other people, too. During the time of His temptations in the wilderness Satan claimed that he would give the whole earth and its lust, if the Lord of all things bows down to his temptations. Jesus also admitted to Pilate that His Kingdom doesn’t belong to this temporal world, despite the naked fact that “the earth is the Lord’s and the fullness thereof, the world and those who dwell therein..”, Ps.24: 1. While the powers of God propel the whole universe, the passions of the human body that becomes a seat of the dark powers run man and his vicinities. This worldly life that is a battle which wages between the seven virtues and seven evils, our mind that is engulfed as the battleground stifles our entire life on earth from the time of our conception till the time of our last breath that is ensued by the toll-house trials of the infernal powers for forty days in the aerial realms that we call it in our prayers as ‘oyar’. This is the reason for the mystics of all ages, irrespective of religions and castes, led a life of austerity, a kind of detachment from the enticing of transient pleasures.

Here again, Jesus is our role model who led a frugal life of starvation and dispossessions. He lived a nomadic life of having no address in this plane of treachery and intrigues. He didn’t have an address in His own home, Jn.7: 1-7, nor had He anywhere in this world, a synonym of betrayals and intrigues of manifold kinds. His only wealth in this banal plane was His apostles, the starving everyday fishermen who survived one day at a time, despite they also deserted Him at the time when He needed somebody to share heavily His trials and tribulations. They left their dear households, Mk.10: 28-31, for the thirst for the kingdom of peace, but swerved out of the way to disown also Him who is powerful to give that eternal Kingdom, due to the many-sided bewilderment and confusions that the Kingdom of God is shrouded to one who is in this transitory plane of uncertainties. This world that is proved to be a haven of one who is born of the spirit of this world finds it hard to identify with the lifestyle of prophet Samuel, Jeremiah, John the Baptist and many others who were born by the promptings of the Spirit of God for doing the work in the Master’s vineyards. The procreator and conceiver of every child should be the vehicles of higher spirits that bearing the exemplary seal of the Creator of the world.

Display of prudent Dichotomy:
The verse in question is translated into Malayalam as “Atmavil tharidhrarayavar …..”. Atmavu (soul) that is everything unseen in a man, devoid the higher visitations of the Spirit of God, convey a different meaning while we look at the following verses of the Sermon on the Mount. Despite Atmavu, soul, is a translucent entity of Divine spark, it is not wholly Divine in its manifestations because mind, a component of it, is not pure in its vibrations and exercises. A Parallel of dichotomy of layers of meanings is replete in all what we understand otherwise in the other verses that are engulfed by two set worlds or boundaries. The next verse, “Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted” is a conditional negativity for a resultant positiveness of higher magnitude, so also “blessed are those who are persecuted for righteousness sake, for theirs is the kingdom of God”. It is like the cause and effect theory that countersign the prospect of having the semblance of “Every action will have an equal opposite reaction”. The meek inheriting the earth, the hungry one that thirst for righteousness and getting satisfied, the poor in heart seeing God, the persecuted inheriting the Kingdom of God and similar ones are the dichotomies involved in the sermons that He presented in the first part of His discourse. As in the words of John the Baptist, “He must increase, but I must decrease”, Jn.3: 30. Our full time sacrifice that comprises of the various types of self denials is the groundwork of earning the share in the Land of the Living that is devoid of the intrusion of thieves or moths. In other words, the slow death of our seen body, the seat of all our failures and mishaps due to the bubbling passions, is the primary aim of a Christian life that should make a guarantee for our life in the Highest Planet where the language of love and peace abound.

The first attributed meaning of taking birth by the minimum impulse of the spirit of this spiritist world that has been discussed so far may be out of place; the real meaning that Jesus meant is to know our nothingness out of which we are created and realize the overriding Spirit of God who is all in all in of our sojourn existence. The more we detach from the spirit of this world, the more we understand the vast ocean of the unseen world that nourish and flourish our life in abundance. The world of metaphysics starts at a point where the world of physics becomes dormant. Since man is a passing shadow, the moment his self becomes non-existent, his spirit that vibrates in the Spirit of God become a living reality in the other part of the world of dichotomy. “…I have put my Spirit upon him; he will bring justice to the nations. He will not cry or lift up his voice, or make it heard in the street, Is.42: 1-2. The Spirit of God works silently “and was moving over the face of the waters”, Gen. 1: 1-2, in timelessness. “ We know that the whole creation has been groaning in travail together until now; and not only the creation, but we ourselves, who have the first fruits of the Spirit, grown inwardly, as we wait for adoption as sons, the redemption of our bodies….Likewise the Spirit help us in our weakness; for we do not know how to pray as we ought, but the Spirit himself intercedes for us with sighs too deep for words…the Spirit intercedes for the saints according to the will of God”, Rom.8: 23-27.

Self-consciousness or Self-awareness:
As long as we dwell in the peripheral sphere of the spiritist world, we don’t have the prick of conscience about our emptiness that only can grasp a rhythm of the Infinite Glory of the Creator of the world. The more we climb up to the realm of the Spirit of God, the more we breathe our unworthiness or the incapability that is the only recipe for the improvement of our spiritual growth by melting our sins by self-realisation that brings humility and dedication. The transcendental, celestial travel from purity to purity has an unfathomable depth that only can highlight the mystery of our ephemeral existence. The washing of our inner body that is wriggled with different layers of a conditioned body of Adamic reflexes, together with our own intractable sins of commissions and omissions, is not an easy task, for which a whole life time of penance and contrition of heart is a pre-requisite. The fasting and prayer that our Lord recommended is the panacea for cleansing our inner being that automatically purges our physical body, too, the inevitable ingredients of weaving the white robe of salvation. The purging of the whole being by cleansing our physical body that is the throne of destructive lusts is the cornerstone of our redemption. To understand our temporal nature that ought to give exaltation to Omnipotence the Name and His Glory are the imperatives of our spiritual developments. A righteous life of sterling faith in our Redeemer is the cradle of our onward growth of Christian stewardship.

Our spiritual poverty and starvation that always highlights the greatness of our Saviour is the sign of the ‘poor in spirit’ context which Jesus apparently refers to. We may call it as an incessant infection of ‘Divine dissatisfaction’ that continually haunts and perturbs our seen and unseen lives. Those who wade through a river of tears of our repenting life are only able to dream an afterlife in the Land of the Living. This pilgrim’s progress of cleansing our refined inner ego that opens a door for the celestial openings in our inner life is the sign of the ‘poverty of our spirit”. “Submit yourselves therefore to God, and he will flee from you Resist the devil and He will draw near to you…cleanse your hands, you sinners, and purify your hearts, you men of double minds”, js.4.7-8. This double-mindedness that impedes our spiritual progress on account of devil’s haunting is the misery of mankind.

Charismatic Christianity:
Despite Christianity is a social religion of righteous and virtuous life style, Christian spirituality is an inner life of the soul that tries to interpenetrate the realm of the Spirit of God. The charismatic Christianity, the latest version of spiritual dynamics, is an antithesis of pure and enduring Christian life. This version that carries the hallmarks of false Christs and false prophets of the doomsday scenario finger points the apocalyptic Christianity which the Lord and His apostles testified. This branch that nullifies the fruits and gifts of the Spirit of God meanders along the wilderness of the spiritist world, swallowing up the real mystical Christians who try to disseminate the gospel messages to the heartland of pagan worshippers. The real Christian endurance of sufferings that produces crosses to be carried in our daily lives has been the true nature of our mission that Jesus showed us through the afflictions which His enemy created for its survival. The hysterical Christianity that hypnotises by the seeming magic’s of the diabolic world has been dynamites for those who opted for an inimical lifestyle of the devilish world. “And no wonder, for even Satan disguises himself as an angel of light. So it is not strange if his servants also disguise themselves as servants of righteousness, 2.Cor.11: 14-15. “But understand this that in the last days there will come times of stress. [2] For men will be lovers of self, lovers of money, proud, arrogant, abusive, disobedient to their parents, ungrateful, unholy, [3] inhuman, implacable, slanderers, profligates, fierce, haters of good, [4] treacherous, reckless, swollen with conceit, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God, [5] holding the form of religion but denying the power of it. Avoid such people.

The intrusion of fake, miracle-performing Christianity is the product of the celebration Christianity that identifies with the main stream churches which went after the pleasure culture, the progeny of fossil affluence unearthed from the interior of this planet. Neither the big brother Christianity nor the charismatic Christianity does worship/serve God in fullness of heart. Both have gone to the extremes in opposite directions, making a big void in the middle that cannot be remedied now because we are too far away from there, without knowing the real en-route back to the normal worshipping style. The humanity that lives in a void of utter confusion of darkness doesn’t know the difference between right worship and false deity that sucks the blood of its preys. The worldly possessions and its attachments, which the mystics denounced, are the root causes of sufferings that only can breed ignorance, creating bitter enmity within and without us. Jesus and his apostles became the vehicle of the Spirit of God because they didn’t have any wealth or attachment that could pull them back. The apostles left their households for the propagation of the Kingdom of God, Mk.10: 28-31. We are quite aware about the fate of the miracle-performing apostle who threw away the blood money that shattered his body and soul simultaneously. The poverty of the worldly spirit does enrich our inner being that can travel to an extent which our eyes have not seen it, nor has the ear that has heard the Good news of the transparent luminous world. The spirit of this world that mesmerizes our high-flying physical life that annihilate the life of the Spirit which make us as good for nothing in the resplendent world of harmony and peace. We neither serve God on the basis of the given commandments, nor do we serve our brethren who are in utter distress of making both ends meet, nor do we know the way to the Lord that could solve all our miseries and problems.

The Christian life that dedicates the body and soul that put together at the feet of the Giver who moulded it in an inexplicable, intractable earthly and unearthly formula is the real worship that works for the edifice of the share of our Heavenly Kingdom. The Soul, Athmave, is a radiation of Paramathmave, Spirit of God, hence the magnetic attraction that pull the soul towards the Creator is an automatic and spontaneous vibration, while the force of gravitation that attracts the body towards the Devil is another gathering of momentum that accelerate a conflict between the two opposing entities within us. In order to escape from the earthly magnetic forces that the soul subjected is always a perennial war that is waged without our consent by the terrestrial spirits. The soul aspires to be with the Giver, yet it is dragged away by a power that is against the Giver of life. The more the soul tries to be with the Lord, the more is the negative power that has an authority over the body of man hijacking him from the vicinity of the celestial environment. The Ps.42 makes this supplication and testimony vividly and meticulously in a grieving tone. “As a hart longs for flowing streams, so longs my soul for thee, O Lord…..Why are you so cast down, O my soul, and why are you disquieted within me? Hope in God…The sensor- object relationship makes the soul always panting that transparently whispers the Divine dissatisfaction of the soul which strive to be with its source and origin. The human body is only a temporary and delicate shelter of the soul that to be protected from the enemy, while it is in this sordid transitory plane. The first message of the Sermon on the Mount is to protect the soul that is sheltered within the mortal frame which is vulnerable to the prince of Darkness. Penitence, compunction of heart and remorse, prayer and fasting are the indispensable ingredients for the soul that cringes to be with the Almighty. The soul that is panting to be with the Creator has to shun away the spirit of this world that cripples the wings of the soul which put effort to fly away from the predator.

However, our trial to win over the adversary is the outcome that is counted for our success, not the excuses that only betray our failures. God doesn’t count the encountering impossibilities; He looks at our genuine efforts and attempts to break the hurdles that inhibit us to be in communion with the Prime Mover. Nothing is impossible to God while man confronts crowds of helplessness at every endeavour and corner of his struggle. Such Divine dissatisfactions that spin crowns for the Kingdom of God are our motto and logo. To be in the status of ‘pure in spirit’ striving that invites sufferings at every encounter is an added jewel on the glorious crown that is awaiting for us in the ever-shining planet that is waiting for us in the afterlife.

"Homes and communities depend on concerns of daily life and society. These concerns are God-appointed obligations; fulfilling them is not a step toward the ungodly, but is a walking in the way of the Lord. All who cleave to these erroneous premises fall into the bad habit of thinking that once they accept worldly obligations, they no longer need to strive towards God."

St. Theophan the Recluse.