“We have presented man as a creature of earth, subject to all the vicissitudes of an earthly existence, to all the changes that are constantly taking place on the earth; a creature subject to all the laws governing an earthly existence, without any capacity at his command to perpetuate himself. He has no life in himself but is dependent for life upon the planet and upon the spirit of the mundane; he is carried forward by the work of evolution, generation after generation. He has a free-will, it is true; he is free to act his real nature; he can get the will to do nothing more, nothing less. So is every animal free, but every creature must act in accordance with its nature. It is accepted by many psychologists that man cannot even think that which is not in himself; he cannot think a thought, the qualities of which are not within.
Jesus often expressed the same thought, “He that is of God heareth God’s words: ye therefore hear them not, because ye are not of God”; and again, “But ye believe not, because ye are not of my sheep, as I said unto you. My sheep hear my voice, and I know them, and they follow me.” Here Jesus seemed to carry out the idea that they were of the earth, earthy, and could think only the thoughts of earth. Again, he said to Nicodemus, “If I have told you earthly things, and ye believe not, how shall ye believe if I tell you of heavenly things?” The earthly things of which Christ was speaking were in relation to the rebirth, the being born from above; for he said, “The wind bloweth where it listeth, and thou hearest the sound thereof, but canst not tell whence it cometh, and whither it goeth; so is every one that is born of the Spirit.”
Having viewed man as of the earth, earthy, we come now to a consideration of: HOW MAN IS BROUGHT INTO THE DIVINE LIKENESS. That man has nothing directly to do with being begotten from above, is clearly brought out in the text last quoted. We merely recognize that the wind blows. We know not why it blows, where it comes from, or where it goes.
When man through growth and development has reached the point where he is capable of receiving a higher influx from the Spirit, the Spirit flows into him as naturally as the flower gathers to itself the added qualities that make up the blossom, or as the fruit-tree gathers the qualities that make the luscious fruit – perhaps through an unsavory quality of sap that nourishes the tree. This, in vegetable life, is a manifestation of that wondrous law of being begotten from above.
A wonderful metamorphosis takes place in the tree when, after it has grown year after year and has reached maturity, it puts forth beautiful blossoms, a thing never known of it before. The blossoms drop their petals and the fruit appears, which finally ripens and becomes pleasant to the eye and to the taste and is good for food. So man has been growing, generation after generation, throughout the cycles of the world’s existence, until now isolated individuals put forth the blossom of spiritual desire – a blossom which is by virtue of the inflowing of an added quality, a quality that did not exist in man before.
What did Jesus mean by declaring, “Except ye eat the flesh of the Son of man, and drink his blood, ye have not life in yourselves.”; a question he partially answers by saying, “The words that I have spoken unto you, are spirit, and are life” – as much as to say, That is what I am talking about; not the flesh, not the blood, but the spirit, for “the flesh profiteth nothing.”
Here the mystery deepens. Why does not man become a partaker of the Holy Spirit long before he does? Is it because the Spirit is not present? The Holy Spirit, the Spirit of God, fills all things, all space. There is no space in the whole universe that is not filled with the Holy Spirit; but we cannot touch Spirit. To Spirit, man is but a shadow. That which is in a lower sphere is always but a shadow to that which is in a higher sphere. Therefore, though the higher is all-pervading, it can never touch the lower except through intermediaries. Like can touch like only, and the consciousness can be conscious only of that which is like itself.”
Hiram Butler
The Mark Of God: Understanding Your "I AM Presence" 