In the first chapter of Genesis it is written (verse 27), "God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him." This is the only man that God has created: man in the likeness of Spirit; the expression of the divine nature; the manifestation of Soul; the idea of Mind; the reflection of Life, Truth, and Love; the perfect effect of a perfect cause, sinless, birthless, ageless, deathless, pure, holy.
In the second chapter of Genesis is another record, directly opposed to the first, in which an anthropomorphic God is supposed to have created a material man, sinful, fleshly, and finite. This false concept of God and man has been largely accepted through the ages, although spiritual seers have been able to discern something of the true nature of God as Spirit and of His spiritual offspring, the perfect man.
This false concept of creation is part of the hypnotic dream of life, substance, and intelligence as existent in matter, from which emanate all the manifestations of evil, sin, sickness, and death. In this mesmeric dream, evil claims to have power and to have embodiment, thus separating man, in belief, from his perfect divine cause and from his brother man. But this evil dream and its mortal sense of man have no real existence and no power to harm, except to the extent that we believe in the dream and fear its manifestation. Truth destroys error, and the truth regarding the real nature of God and man destroys evil and discord, which, in human experience, may seem to arise between an individual and his brother.
