John 17

The High Priestly Prayer: A Vision of Unity and Glory

John 17 reads like the closing soliloquy of a mind about to cross a threshold. It is not a courtroom appeal to an external deity so much as the articulation of a psychological event in which the individuated self faces its source and prepares its inner community for the transfer of power. Read as a drama of consciousness, every phrase describes a subtle state: the Father names the ground of being, the Son the operative human imagination, the disciples the assembled faculties and attitudes, and the world the realm of outer appearances born of inner states. The chapter therefore maps the creative economy inside us and shows how imagined identity produces objective experience.

The prayer begins with an announcement of the hour. This hour is a decisive state of mind, the moment when latent creative faculty is permitted to express itself visibly. To say the hour has come is to recognize a psychological readiness: the sleeper is sufficiently concentrated in a new assumption to allow that assumption to pervade perception. Glorify thy Son then reads as an instruction to allow the human self to wear the attributes of its originating consciousness. To glorify is to give form and intensity to an inner conviction until it becomes an outward fact. The Son’s power over all flesh is the creative faculty of imagination which, when rightly assumed, issues life—eternal life being defined not as endless duration but as knowing the source of one’s being. Knowledge here is not intellectual but experiential, a perceptual identity with the higher self.

When the speaker says the work is finished, that is the inward completion of a pattern: the discipline of assumption has yielded a stable inner scene. This finished work is not a historical mission but a psychological integration in which the self has cohered around the idea of its divine origin. To be glorified with the glory one had before the world was is an image of reoccupation — the habitual self reenters and embodies its originating mood. This is the return from dissociation to identity, from being acted upon by outer circumstances to acting from the sovereign center.

The chosen ones, the men given out of the world, are inner qualities that have already answered the prior call. They are dispositions and capacities that will take on the power of the new assumption. They have kept the word; they are the imaginal acts that have been persistently held. The speaker praises their faithfulness because within a psyche there are always dependable centers that can anchor a transfiguring state. The prayer for them, not for the world, points to the psychological law that change begins with a selective focus. One does not first alter the external milieu; one empowers the inner core and lets that radiance transform outer appearances. The distinction is practical: it is more effective to fortify the imaginal root than to argue with its manifestations.

The appeal to keep them through thy name that they may be one describes the method of continuity. The name stands for the defining truth or ruling idea that secures identity. To be kept through the name is to be preserved from contracting into contrary states. The unity sought is inner alignment: the various sub-personalities, emotions, and beliefs harmonized under a single assumption. This unity mirrors the relationship of higher and lower consciousness when they are mutually present, producing an integrated organism of thought and feeling that the outer world recognizes as conviction.

The acknowledgement that one was with them in the world and kept them in the name is an account of an ongoing imaginative discipline. The speaker has held them steady against the pressure of ordinary experience. Yet there is one who was lost, the son of perdition, which names the self-destructive tendency within everyone. This figure is not a historical traitor but a state of inner betrayal: the part of us that refuses reorientation and insists on preserving an obsolete self-image. Its appearance is necessary in the drama; it validates the process by fulfilling the expectation of loss and recovery. Recognizing its inevitability is part of the psychology of maturation.

The prayer for joy to be fulfilled in them is the cultivation of affect as a creative agent. Joy is the felt evidence of congruence between assumption and perception. When the imaginal act is strong and unresisted, it produces a feeling of completion. This joy becomes the energizing currency that accelerates outer manifestation. Words given and received are not mere statements but the planting of imaginal seeds. Speech is the formative gesture by which images are sown into consciousness; those receptive to them will give birth to corresponding outcomes.

A crucial distinction follows: these ones are not of the world. By this is meant non-identification with the external narrative. The world stands for the set of appearances and the causal stories the mind tells about why things are as they are. To be not of the world is to inhabit the internal sovereignty that refuses to accept outward evidence as final. Sanctification through truth means purification of imagination by aligning it to a single operative decree. Truth here is not factual correspondence but the animating idea that defines identity. To be sanctified is to have one’s imaginal acts cleansed of doubt, inconsistency, and scatter so they can birth a consistent world.

The sending of the disciples back into the world models the return of an integrated imagination into ordinary life. The speaker sanctifies himself for their sake; that self-sanctification is the focused assumption that the human mind takes on purposefully so its parts may partake. The act of self-sanctifying is an inner rite in which the imagination is deliberately concentrated in the state it wishes to project. That projection will transform how the world responds because outer life is the mirror of sustained inner states.

The expanded scope of the prayer — including those who will believe through their word — describes transmission. An animating assumption, once stabilized, radiates and persuades other imaginal centers to adopt it. This is the psychology of influence without coercion: a state of unity in consciousness is contagious, not because it forces, but because its reality is felt and recognized as truth. The phrase that they may be one, as you Father are in me and I in you, is a mapping of nested consciousness. It shows how inner selfhood, personal imagination, and the source are not separate but interpenetrating. Unity is experienced as overlap, a recognition that the imagined state is not merely personal but an expression of the ground of being.

The giving of glory to the disciples, the sharing of power, is the moment of delegated imaginative authority. The creative power operating within human consciousness is not hoarded; it is given as the capacity to think and feel from the assumption of one’s fulfilled desire. To be made perfect in one is psychological completion: the various parts of the mind harmonize around a single, unambiguous assumption and so co-create a consistent environment. When the inner consensus is achieved, external facts must rearrange to fit the new inner reality, and the world may then behold that the originating source sent this living act.

The final petitions return to intimacy: that they be with me where I am and behold my glory. This is the invitation to experience the state directly. It is not about spatial relocation but about adopting the same imaginal posture. Love is the animating quality that must accompany the assumption; it is the felt sense that transforms a mere fantasy into an inner truth. Love conditions imagination so that what is created is not merely self-serving but harmonizing and life-giving. The love with which the higher mind loved the operative mind becomes the luminous atmosphere that sustains the new state.

Seen psychically, John 17 instructs in the art of purposeful assumption. It teaches that reality answers to the sustained direction of consciousness, that selectivity is the method by which transformation occurs, that unity of inner parts is the prerequisite of external coherence, and that feeling is the bridge between imaginal acts and tangible results. The chapter insists that the power to create lies not in external forces but in the hidden cause of imagination, and that the consecration of imagination to one ruling idea will both perfect the inner community and alter the world it inhabits.

Practically, this means two things. First, begin with the core assumption: establish the identity you wish to inhabit. Second, tend that assumption with the truth (the name), repeated imaginal acts, and the corresponding feeling of fulfillment. Persist until your interior parts — the disciples within — are one with that assumption. Once unity is achieved, the outer world will conform. The drama recorded in John 17 is therefore the map of psychological deliverance: the hour comes, the inner offering is made, the faculties are aligned, and the world becomes the faithful echo of an imaginal act taken to completion.