What does Jesus mean by the light of the world?

What is the Will?

What is God?

He is the Will of the Universe, as He is the Light of the world. 

That which can create.

The light, the warmth, the electricity, the life of the world are the emanations from that which creates and perpetuates.

Every human spirit is a child of the Father in a spiritual sense, as much as the child of the mother's womb is body of her body.

The spirit of your child may not be akin to your own spirit so much as may be that of another child in the remotest parts of the earth.

But you and your child and all children are akin to the Father in the Spirit.

The possibilities of the manifestations of the First Cause are illimitable, innumerable—no manifestations of intelligence in the universe, however diverse, but have likeness and are related to That Which works over all—through all—in all. For were any not possessed of the spiritual essence of the Creator, there would be no life in them.

This spiritual essence is the Intelligent Will of the Universe. 

That from which all life comes.

Hence, it is obvious that all intelligence in life is possessed of will. It is the will in the individual spirit that makes that spirit what it is—that makes it exist at all—it is the life.

Because it is life itself, it is so little recognised—or comprehended by the possessor in the first stages of existence.

The growth of intelligence is like a little seed planted in the ground—as it puts forth one shoot after another, sensing the circumstances under which it pushes upward, which is its soil, and the impressions that it receives from contact with other life about it, which are the air and moisture that help—or retard its growth, the young, struggling shoot of humanity is too busy sensing its own evolutions to pause to feel—or strive to understand the will within itself that pushes it on and on.

Gradually, as it reaches more advanced stages of existence, it begins to realise the sensation I am—it perceives dimly that by force of its own inalienable life it may cause.

It feels, as it senses more and more its own selfhood, that it may affect other individuals less developed in consciousness of individuality, of power, of will.

Certain emanations of will, conscious—or unconscious, of an individual are what has been termed animal magnetism.

One of its directed emanations you have is called mesmerism. These are emanations acting upon other wills. When the emanations of the great Over Will act through—or upon inanimate things, it is electricity, it is light, it is heat, it is motion, it is force, in differing effects.

But it is always the Will that is working through them.

You say there is electricity in your hair when it crackles as you brush it. It is the life, the emanations of the will of your Spirit that makes your body alive, that causes it to crackle. Dead hair will not do so unless, possibly, it may if it has been worn long enough upon a living head to have imbibed these living emanations.

Thus, you may say that which is alive is that which possesses will force to cause—or produce effects.

That which is devoid of life may be caused to act, but has no power to act within itself.

Thus, there are the two great primal forces. The Cosmos Force, which is the force of undeveloped, unintelligent matter—it is a force that is caused by the action of the Odic Force—it is a force that is delegated, that could not exist without a cause. 

The Odic Force is the force, which can cause, hence it is a force of intelligent will, of reason, a force of conscious spirit action.

The action of the Odic Force is all we know of God.

But remember, you, as the direct spiritual offspring of God,  possess, each one of us, an indestructible germ of this Odic Force, this will power, a germ of which every seed is typical, inasmuch as each perfect seed bears within itself all the possibilities manifested by the parent whence it was produced, and which possibilities need only time and proper conditions to develop.

The tree loses nothing by the seeds, which naturally fall—they are merely excesses of its own vitality. So we may suppose the great I AM loses nothing of force—or possibilities—or power by endowing us, his spiritual children, continually being born into the world with this will force—or by constantly perpetuating the Cosmos Force, which He has caused.

So far as we know, we differ in the possibilities of our spirit nature from God most in this—

Not one of us can create a germ of life—can create one atom of the Odic Force, which is behind all force.

The earthly father and mother may create the other parts of their child, but the life germ comes directly, we suppose, from God. Although the parent may affect—or make impressions upon the unborn will of the child, as by mesmerism grown wills are affected—or as impressions are made upon the yielding mind in childhood, yet no impression can be made, which may not in time be eradicated, and the individual spirit—or will become pure and true to the great principles of purity and truth as they exist in the mind of God.

As they are crystalised and polished and made more perfect, they resemble more and more the Father, as drops of water are like the fountain whence they fall.