32 Various Chapters From Walter C. Lanyon Books
GOD REQUIRES THE PAST
THE GOD WITHIN YOU
GOD’S IN HIS HEAVEN
THE GOLDEN GATE
THE GOLDEN INSTANT
HE BREATHED
HE MADE DARKNESS HIS SECRET PLACE
HE OPENETH HIS HAND
HE THAT LOSES HIS LIFE
HEARING
I AM
I AM THAT WHICH I DESIRE TO BE
I Am the Light
I COME NOT TO DESTROY
If I Be Lifted Up
IF THINE EYE
The Immaculate Conception
IMMORTALITY
THE IMPATIENT DAWN
IMPRISONED SPLENDOR
IN A DREAM – IN A VISION
IN HIM
IN THE BEGINNING
INCREASE
INTEGRITY TO INSTINCT
IS THIS HE THAT SHOULD COME?
IT IS CONSUMMATED
It Is Done
JESUS AND MICHELANGELO
JESUS AND RED GERANIUMS
JESUS AND THE CENTURION
JESUS IN TWEEDS
GOD REQUIRES THE PAST
WHAT Of your past? Are you still carrying it along with you – the things you overcame and the demonstrations you made? If God requires the past, when are you going to walk through the waters of forgetfulness and let the dead past bury its past?
When you have sensed the ever out-picturing of the Jesus-Christ consciousness within you there are so many things to be revealed to you, that you have no time to set your little demonstrations in a row, and embroider them with details of evil to show how strong was the power which you “used” at that moment, or mayhap to “glorify” the little human understanding.
I have much to tell you — yea ! even the things that could not be told to you in Jerusalem because of your unbelief — but now this mysterious quality called “belief,” which is not credulity and which is not human understanding but an awareness of the Inspired Presence, here, there, and everywhere, has come to you, and when you are ready, you will hear what the “Scriptures hath to say unto the Churches.”
If, however, you are concerned with the past overcoming of evil, you are still believing in its reality — the ever-flowing stream of manifestation will suddenly subside. God requires of you the past. “The former things have passed away; they shall not be remembered nor come into mind any more.”
In the archives of memory lie the army of beliefs which strengthen evil admissions of the present. Remembering and going over all designs of evil will eventually cause them to retrace themselves in the present expression. Many a person is suffering, not from an accident, but the memory of it; not from a sin, but from the memory of it, with its army of condemnation.
“Loose it and let it go” — free yourself from the memory of that which you passed through. It is the memory of evil, drilled into us from childhood, which causes us to react so suspiciously towards the world.
As you move into the new mansion (in my Father’s house — consciousness — are many mansions) you come out from under the former laws, memories, and beliefs. You do not form your basis of judgment from the outgrown basis of evil.
“Behold I make all things new” – and so the basis of judgment is also new.
But where does evil come from — if it is not real? A thousand times the question arises.
Recently, according to a news item, a man jumped into a taxi and ordered the driver to take him to an address a considerable distance away. He settled back for the long ride, when all of a sudden he realized the taximeter was not working. He noted this irregularity, and was about to call the driver’s attention to it, when, gazing at the man, he noted the low overhanging brow and the hard, sharp features of a crook, and thought better of his action.
Not to be taken off guard, he thought out the best plan to handle the situation. Knowing that the driver had planned a little trick in order to extract an exorbitant fare from him, he thought out his line of conversation and defense, all the while regarding the “crook” driving the car. He jotted down the number of the driver’s licence and the other information given on the ticket posted inside. He would show this thief that he could not put anything over on him.
By the time he reached his destination he was excited and all set to defend his rights as a citizen. He signaled the driver to stop and got out, at the same time demanding of the driver in very curt tones: “How much?”
The hard, sharp eyes of the driver looked at him, the tightly closed mouth slowly relaxed into a warm smile, and a laughing voice replied, “No charge, boss. I am getting married tonight, and am treating all my clients to free rides.”
The honest (?) man walked away in silence, too stunned and surprised to say “Thanks.”
Where was the crook he had been creating during the long ride? Where was the anger and hate that had caused his pulse to beat degrees faster than normal? Where was the fear that pictured itself in the kaleidoscopic fashion of a “horror film”?
You answer it. And the next time you are troubled with the origin of evil, if you will look to the proper place for the cause, you will see that it lies in “judging from appearances.”
The driver had shut out all these evil thoughts, being filled with the only thing that never faileth – love.
“Judging from appearances” many times materializes the judgment. You actually endow it with the power of your own judgment, and cause it to react to you with all the force of your own fear and belief in it. It is like throwing a rubber ball against a smooth stone wall – it returns to you with all the force with which you throw it from you. Yet, at the same time, the same person or situation may be most kind and agreeable to another.
“Watch, watch, watch.” You are standing in the midst of your own consciousness — and the whole outside world is but a self-division of you.
When you begin to understand a little the “The Temple of God is with men” revelation, you will see that the “temples” (manifestations) are for the purpose of reflecting back to you the state of your own consciousness, as so many mirrors. The light need never be in the mirror, but on the object in front of the mirror, and so, with the return reflection, to any state of consciousness.
Whatever is in your state of consciousness when it is lighted by your conscious thinking will be picked up by one or a thousand mirrors the universe. A thousand “temples” will call from the housetop what you have found to be true in the “secret” of your heart — whether this be good, bad or indifferent. Therefore, it is foolish to spend further time trying to change the mirrors, the temples, on the outside for they stand ready and willing to reflect or give back the exact reproduction of your own findings within.
Stage fright, fear, etc., is a multiplication of the idea of fear. Suddenly as you come before a thousand mirrors it is multiplied by a thousand, and you see an audience ready to destroy you. You are looking at the simple little thought of fear magnified and witnessed to by a thousand.
It is true, then, that the only place of correction is within, and when Jesus was asking you to “take the attention away from the appearances” he was not asking you to hide your eyes, but to see the uselessness of trying to change something on the outside which was sustained and kept into position by something on the inside.
We do not close our eyes to evil as formerly with the idea of getting rid of it, but we take our attention away from the supposed point of power or projection, and place it on the real place of power. “What thou seest, that thou beest,” has been interpreted to mean if you imagine you are something you are not, it will come to pass. In reality it calls your attention to the fact that what you are seeing in your outward expression is the state of your consciousness made flesh. It should not be discouraging when you come face to face with this rather startling fact. It should stimulate you to know that at last you have found the place of attack.
“One man’s meat is another man’s poison” and “as a man thinketh” (thought being the emanation of a State of consciousness) “so is he” are true and just statements. When it is understood what is making the meat and poison, and what is causing the thinking, the whole process will be reversed.
My-thoughts will at no time change my state of consciousness; they proceed from, and issue out of, the truth or lack of truth I have in my mind regarding a certain object or situation.
I cannot change any man on the outside, except superficially, but I can completely make him over as far as his relations and reactions concern me. I cannot at any time control or cause another to do my bidding, neither can I meddle in any way with his private life, but I can control his reactions to me to the extent that they are harmonious and happy instead of filled with the false things claimed for him by the world or another.
When man begins to understand the Presence within him he is not looking for another — he knows that this is he that should come. He knows definitely that the outside is merely the objectification of the inside, and that, no matter for the moment whether he can suddenly change it or not, he has at least reached the point of power.
The mass fear engendered by the memory and history of your life may seem so real and true that it is inescapable, but it is through this crystallization of conscious thinking that Jesus-Christ Nature brought Jesus and caused him to do the thing which he could not do.
Jesus knew he could of himself do nothing, and then he knew he could, through the Divine nature indigenous in every man, do all things. He did not try to escape Jesus, but knew that Jesus was the vehicle of expression for the Divine Nature — the “he that should come.”
Not long ago I saw a frail little woman, illiterate, ignorant, and with a thin soprano voice, rise quaking with fear and stage fright. She made a very badly worded announcement that “her guide or master” was going to lecture through her. With a few physical jerks and motions, suddenly she straightened ‘herself up and, in the most cultured and beautiful voice, delivered an address which any scholar would have been pleased to give.
The audience sat in wonder. The speaker had escaped, through believing in another power, the limitations of herself. Jesus was faced with the same situation, and so are you faced with the same situation in one form or another — you are not adequate to that task which confronts you, and there is plenty of evidence to the fact that you cannot do it.
Jesus immediately knew that he was not “looking for another”; he knew that “This is He that should come” was sufficient to speak all languages, all tongues, and with the wisdom which so far transcended man’s feeble attempts as to put it into the plane of pure inspiration. He did not escape from himself, he found himself.
So long as you believe in the Power apart from yourself you will keep transferring the expression of your life to some being, or entity, or master. When you have found Me you will act in accordance with the law governing this Me. If your mind is stayed on Me, there is no question of the limitations of the little self standing in the way of the glorious expression of your God-self, and you will not have to believe in outside helps.
When you know there is nothing outside of you to help or harm you because the whole Power lies within, then you have come to the contact which Jesus made with God.
“I and my Father are one — my Father [the Universal Presence] is greater than I”; and yet this must be expressed through the Personal I. “Call upon me and I will answer”; “I will walk in you and talk in you”; “You need but open your mouth and I will supply the words” — all these and a thousand other truths are awaiting the recognition.
“Come close unto Me” — begin to recognize the Deity within, and magnify the Lord, and see the limitations of the little self absorbed into the Godhead. Stop looking to something outside of yourself, and see what this glorious recognition of “This is He that should come” will do for you.
“He made himself as God” – the same substance, power, and spirit. If he discovered this lovely truth and put it into practice, what use would he have for a Master who was using his body like a megaphone? If the Master has so much to convey to the universe, would it not be just as well that he took on his own body instead of using another’s? Answer me. If your body is to be eternally used as an instrument for some other power to speak through, when is your own glorious expression ever going to have an opportunity to bring out the hidden things, the gift that is within thee?
Rising above all this belief, and realizing the Presence, makes all things possible to you — it does not take anything from that which is eternally true and does not in any way deprive you of the sweet communion with the Power of God in whatever form it comes to you – but it does awaken you to the present possibilities of being yourself.
“Out of the mouths of babes and sucklings” runs the law. Why? Because they have no memory, no history, no comparison and judgment from appearances, but are actuated from the pure stream of consciousness of the God Self, not yet contaminated by the “wisdom of man.” Hence the “child shall play on the hole of an asp” and the lion and the lamb shall lie down together.
The awakened soul who is not “looking for another,” but has begun the recognition of his own Divinity, shall see the reward of this recognition instead of the bitter harvest of tears he has so long had through the denial of Me. “If you deny me I shall also deny you.” If you keep transferring your power to another point, and recognizing powers outside of Me, I shall prove to you this denial is fruitful, and you shall bring forth the hellish crop of fears which you are constantly “treating against.”
Not finding a plausible way to dispose of the evil, you will attribute it to other entities, either embodied or disembodied, or you will give it a name and run about excusing your failure to Life — God — by the fact that someone is “mal-practicing you,” or that a person of another faith is praying against you.
I have seen people rushing about pronouncing the cursings and telling of evil things that would happen to people who did not subscribe to their personal teachings, and sometimes engendering fears in others, when they themselves could not bring out enough substance to pay a subway-fare to their destination.
Awake, thou that sleepest ! The next time the messenger of Light, who has a fear thought of cursing and evil in the background, approaches you with a sweet morsel of Truth, put him in the strait-jacket of proof. Look him over carefully, deliberately; I think you will find plenty of signs which indicate his utter lack of ability to bring out even the most necessary things of life.
Awake — Arise from this dead belief. “Not that which goeth in defileth a man, or maketh him, but that which cometh out,” It is not anything that is said to you, but what you do with it. It may go in one thing and come out another. Watch !
Poised in the Christ consciousness — the recognition of your true self — you are not “looking for another” — he is come into expression when you recognize your own Divinity.
“The temple of God is with man”; you will begin to see how the embodiment of God — called man – in millions of forms and shapes, stands ready and willing to co-operate when you recognize the Divinity within. Like a million receiving stations the “temple” of God stands. When the operation is entirely within, and handled with all the integrity of the Jesus Christ consciousness, the “temple” at the right place and point will pick up the word and transmute it into substance.
The radio operator cannot reach out in the distance and “feel” about for a temple to receive his message; he is concerned with the integrity of performing the thing perfectly within. So man begins to see that the thing must be perfectly performed within — the manifestation must and will take care of itself. It makes no difference about the manifestation as long as the integrity of the sending has been held to.
“Go within; ask the Father”; “that which you tell the Father in secret” — with no judging, seeking, expecting, observation as to what the manifestation will be — “shall be called from the house top.” This is such a beautiful literal thing when once learned that it makes life a never-ending joy, full of surprises and revelations.
All the lovely sense of integrity is applied to the within, having passed the place of “wondering” whether the manifestation will be able to find you or not. By the Automatic Power nothing can escape its proper place. The fear and speculation about the results are entirely dissipated by the integrity placed upon the work within.
Statements of Truth become definite laws. “That which is told in secret shall be called from the housetop” is no more speculative of something to be proven; it is a statement of something that definitely takes place, entirely outside the ken of man’s wisdom or knowledge or anything he may think pro or con regarding the subject. It is wonderful.
“The temple of God is with man” – the temple is already into manifestation, and hence you need not worry about not getting through into expression. “I go before you and prepare the way” is like the inaudible wireless message going out into the night, through the hurricane of appearances, and finding the temple of reception ready to pick up and bring into manifestation the substance of your “secret.” It is wonderful.
“Fear not, God is not mocked,” used to be held as the sword of Damocles over the head of a trembling, shrinking sinner. Suddenly it is taken out of this dark, fearsome teaching and thrust into glorious expression. Man’s puny intellect cannot understand the eternal Justice of the Power and the manifestation of the same.
“I have a way ye know not of” settles once and for always any argument about “how,” “why,” “when,” and “where.” The Automatic Power will take care of that. Contrary to all outside appearances, this power suddenly expresses itself because “God is not mocked” and you have lost nothing for that which you have done in the secret place – either good, bad or indifferent. It is wonderful.
An interesting incident recently came to me. A woman confided in me that she practically had been the ghost writer for a series of books which have long been recognized in the metaphysical world as successful, and that the so-called author had literally taken this writing and given her no remuneration nor acknowledged it in any way. From the outside appearances the said author was now enjoying a great reputation and fame gained from these books, while the ghost writer remained entirely unknown and unrecognized. The finance which came from the books would have been much appreciated by her. The books being copyrighted, she, having no outside recourse to the matter, was indeed hopeless.
Now, then, if she judges from appearances, she has a hopeless situation. There is nothing she can do. The more she talks about it the more she sets in opposition a certain thought which does not and will not believe anything of the kind, and she receives nothing but the bitter tears of failure. When she returns to the center of her being she finds the glorious revelation that the automatic power of justice — the God is not mocked element — operative in the Temple of Man, can and does find out the rightful one — and, though ten thousand fall, or though the way be filled with armed horsemen and chariots and infernal war machines, a new and lovely sense of confidence hovers over.
“God is mindful of His own” when the integrity of the work is kept; when the operator at the sending key releases it and lets it go out into the confusion and intellect of man, he will see it return freighted with substance. It is wonderful.
“God is not mocked” — nothing that you do within is dependent on the outside situation. You are no more under the Law; you are in the Spirit, and hence you come by the way of Spirit, instead of the way of man. In coming by the way of God or Spirit man, manifestation automatically pulls itself together to form the picture necessary to give Spirit a body and a form.
“If I be lifted up I will draw all men unto me.” It is wonderful. “God is not mocked.” Nothing that belongs to you can by any possible manner of means escape you. Your disconcern with the manifestation is the Divine carelessness, the Divine indifference of Spirit moving after its own way and constantly breaking every pattern of the human thought.
“Behold, I AM the Lord, the God of ALL flesh; is anything too hard for me?”
You answer it. You reading this line. Answer Me. I said “Behold!” It transcends the limited, puny human thinking; it is standing in a radiant light of revelation; it is “beholding” the glorious presence of God beside which there is no power — not any.
“I AM the Lord, the God of ALL flesh” — of all manifestation. (All flesh shall see it together.) I did not say “some,” but all flesh — all manifestation. That means the “flesh” — situation, problem, or what you will – that has been troubling you.
Have you been able to answer “Yes” to all this? You reading this line. Am I the God of all, or have you another god of evil hidden away in your universe which causes you to say, “Yes, I know, but, if, and, and maybe?” Answer me — what are you hiding from? Are you naked’ Who told you you were naked? Answer me — come out from among those ghost forms of ancient history and be free. “Am I the God of all flesh?” or have you another? Answer me.
“Is there anything too hard for Me?” Is your situation or condition or crystallized belief too difficult to melt like wax in a blast-furnace before the coming of Me? Answer me. Put your “too hard” problem before Me and see it run down into oblivion before the Presence of the One. No matter how frozen or ossified it may be, it shall melt away before this recognition of the Presence.
Beloved! your problem, no matter what it is, how long it has been standing, what an avalanche of testimony has solidified about it, comes under this glorious Presence. Nothing is hard to this Presence, because it does not work from the “Curse of the Law of matter”; it is working through the Spirit which is free from the heavy laws of the belief in duality.
All of this wonderful releasement comes through following the revelation of Jesus. When he brought to you the Jesus-Christ Nature he gave you the Open Sesame to the King’s treasures. It is wonderful.
“Is this he that should come, or look we for another?” Are you looking for a Master to come along and do your work for you, or use your body as a megaphone, or do you want the Voice of Jesus-Christ Nature to express through you – to “talk in you and walk in you” and free its own glorious and golden expression into the universe? Answer me. “Is this he that should come, or look we for another?” Answer me. Are you beginning to recognize the Divinity of your Christ-Jesus Nature and getting busy about the Father’s works, or are you still in a maze of wonderment as to whether he has arrived yet?
You cannot be about the “Father’s work” if you are not sure where and what the Power is — you do not even know what the Father’s work is, and think your expression depends on something or other on the outside instead of the integrity within. It is true that when this integrity is kept on the inside anyone or anything may be used as the temple to aid and assist in bringing out the Secret — but never is a favor asked to perform the business of God.
If you are about your Father’s business, there is no question about being allowed to express, no matter whether this be digging a ditch or writing a book – nothing can or will block the way that you know not of, for it cannot find it or handle it either mentally or physically. Instantly I am on the other side of the lake, or I am through the crowd, or I am where you cannot find Me. It is wonderful when you see what it is to go by the way of God and stop worrying about the manifestation
When you know that “this is He that should come” – that the Jesus-Christ Nature is the nature which carries the government upon its shoulders, then all the little “prittle-prattle” about evil powers, cursings, malicious mal-practice, or any other little buzzing of the gnats of human wisdom are of no interest whatsoever. They are not to be handled — they are not even given the dignity of anything that needs “handling.” This Divine indifference is not the laxity of the lazy, sluggish human mind, but the balanced point of attention to the Mind Stayed on Thee. It is wonderful, this living in your consciousness – this sudden discovery of the Kingdom of Heaven here and now, right in the midst of the hell of yester-years.
“God requires the past”; you are leaving the Sodom and Gomorrah of human teaching, beliefs, and intellect, and coming out on to the high ground of expression. The Gift hidden within you is beginning to “start” from his prison of disbelief and is pushing into manifestation. Its progress is unencumbered by the fears of the past.
It is said that the mysteries shall pass away like the waters under a bridge. They begin this passing before your very eyes when you have made the discovery of the Divinity of Jesus-Christ Nature within you and begin the self-resurrection.
Your former capacity to create the chimera out of the cloth of belief has been absorbed into the “Judge not from appearances,” and is releasing itself as the Heaven, here and now, which Jesus so often spoke of. Eternally referring to the within state for the Heaven on the without, it is curious that we have tried just the reverse process for bringing it into being. The look again, which is so important to all manifestation, can be done only when the look without has been taken away long enough to let the new picture take form and shape.
You are voyaging through Heaven, but through the glass darkly of the human conscious thinking it can be such a burning hell that the little pleasure of the occasional moments of surcease from its flames are hardly worthwhile. You can, and eventually will, discover Me in the midst of this inferno of conscious thinking, and that will be the end of all this ugly manifestation. When the flames have subsided, you will find nothing destroyed in all my Holy Mountain.
You cannot behold that which you do not recognize within yourself, either good, bad, or indifferent, and so you know pretty well what is going on in your own consciousness by the pictures you are seeing on the outside. If you know, this is a bitter pill to swallow, because you may be so worthy, so holy, and so true, but it cannot come from any other source. It should be encouraging to have located at last the point of attack.
“What think ye of Christ?” Honestly, what do you think of the Christ-Jesus Divinity within you? Answer me. “Come, let us reason together.” Where do you stand? Is there something called your personal problem over which you have no control which is stronger and more powerful than the lovely Christ? “What think ye of Christ?” It doesn’t make any difference what another thinks — what do you think of it all?
Are you beginning to realize that the manifest universe is a self-division of your own consciousness, and that it gives back to you only what you find there. Is it not natural for a doctor to see sick people, and a musician to see musicians and music and so on and cannot these also be twined with a thousand other thoughts, so that, though the doctor sees sickness, he can also see failure of a personal nature, and have no patients while he is in the midst of a sick world, and the musician be utterly swamped with music and yet starve for the want to personal expression?
All of these central beliefs may be hung about with thousands of parasitic beliefs of lesser power. The consciousness gives off in the form of recognition that which causes the manifestation to take on certain reactions to it.
There is said to be a upas-tree in the tropics which exhales a poison vapor of such strength that small birds and insects are destroyed by smelling it. Whether this be true err not, the illustration will do to show how it is that when the inspirations do come near the consciousness that believes in evil, or to the consciousness hypnotized by belief, they fail or cease to manifest.
Have you ever met the mentality which was absolutely sterile to every offer, suggestion, prayer, or move to help? Its enormous success on a negative side should be a glorious and thrilling revelation to you and to the person using it. Think what such a mentality could do if awakened to the fact that the Power of this whole thing lies within, and that the universe is a self-division, so to speak.
Man is symbolically stepping before a universe of mirrors in which is caught and reflected the state of his acceptance of life. He sees himself in everybody he meets, and presently he begins to know what kind of a man he is consciously. Either the thing he eats is poison — the meat he partakes of kills him — or else “if they drink any deadly thing it shall not harm them.” Man cannot be under both of these influences at once.
The “choose you this day whom ye will serve” calls for a radical choice. Either you choose the Oneness of God or the duality of matter, and the mirrors of your universe immediately begin their casting back of the reflections of yourself.
When you come to recognize the literal doctrine of Jesus that “I am the Way, the Truth, and the Light,” you will understand such radical promises as “Behold I give you power to tread on serpents and scorpions and over all the power of the enemy; and nothing shall by any means hurt you.” This beautiful symbology places your problems in the path of your Divine Revelation, and they, these beliefs, shall be trampled into the dust of oblivion. Coming by the way of God — asking for wisdom of God, following the voice within — is the sure path of light and joy and Heaven here and now.
Yes, it is written, “A little child shall lead them” – a consciousness that can accept God as a reality and has done away with a thousand and one other powers, any one of which seems to you more powerful than God, and any one of which you name your problem.
“Go not back to your former bondage.” The way is straight and narrow, and does not indicate that it is a hateful strait-jacket of human invention. The way of mathematics is straight and narrow; there is no deviation from it if you expect the results; so is the Law of the Presence. Every time you divide the power and place it in anything else it weakens the manifestation in you, no matter how unselfish and lofty your ideas may be.
You must recognize, “I am He that should come,” and know that once and for always you are not looking for another, and, strange as it may be, the moment you find this within your own consciousness you find it everywhere and in everybody, and in every thing and place, yet confined to none — yet containing them all. This is One-ness, Wholeness, and God.
The glorious thrill of “Arise and shine, for thy light is come and the glory of the Lord is risen upon thee,” comes only when you have recognized this Power within as the point of communion with God, and have begun at last the Jesus instruction of making yourself as God, of the same nature and substance. Then will you call in all your lesser beliefs in power, take them out of the so-called entities, embodied or disembodied, and magnify the One God in the midst of you.
If there be but One, then there is but One — One only and nothing else — and if He is walking in you and talking in you he speaks and moves in terms of light, and the physical limitations and fears are not to be considered. “The former things have passed away” — they have gone out as far as “he” walking in you and talking in you with the universal consciousness is concerned. Then it is possible for this One not to be as well equipped to express as any little man or woman who may strut the boards of materiality in gaudy robes, personal teachings, copyrighted or otherwise, bearing a brand of personal teaching? Answer me.
Are you still dealing with a little teacher, lecturer, leader, organization, group, book? Or are you “leaving all” and following the simple teachings of Jesus, and discovering the Jesus-Christ Principle within you? If so, you are going no more out to see a man and yet at this point of revelation you can see Me in any man. I can speak to you through any temple.
The wireless operator does not know that his message will only be received by the great and lordly passenger boats, things of beauty and loveliness; his help and succor may come through the little dirty coal-steamer chugging along at a slow pace with its most unlovely cargo.
When did we see Thee? “Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of these ye have done it unto Me”; and likewise one of these might be the temple that momentarily gave forth the light necessary to you. I am not visible always in purple and fine linen, and of course I am not necessarily always visible in the thing lying in the gutter of life, but I am wherever I am necessary for you to receive the word, even though it be in the desert, in the bush, by the wayside.
Do you begin to understand the absolutivity of the teaching as given to us by Jesus? There is nothing but the One; everything else must go in order that you can possess everything else. Nothing that you look up to and endow with power will be able to stand up to this worship. You will eventually dig out its clay feet and have it crash on your head.
You will be hurt by your own self, but you will blame another, and so it will go until every stone has been overturned and he comes whose place it is to rule. I shall be satisfied with nothing but this absolute recognition of the Divinity of the Christ Jesus within.
It is wonderful-wonderful wonderful. Heaven and earth are filled with it. Do you hear? There is no place you can go to escape this glorious presence of God – you are moving into oneness, wholeness, and the manifestation will take care of itself.
“I beheld Satan as lightning falls from Heaven.” You shall see the Satanic beliefs which have held sway so long in your life fall from this inner heaven which is presently to embody itself in the outer. In the twinkling of an eye the disease and the patterns of disease which have been standing so long – in your life are wiped out and the Satan falls from your consciousness never to rise again.
“What think ye of the Christ?” Answer me.
THE GOD WITHIN YOU
The involuntary action in your body is God within you in action. The Voluntary action is largely engendered by thought.
As long as the body is controlled by involuntary action it is harmonious, and largely out of mind. The moment the voluntary action of thought takes over, evil begins to appear.
If, for instance, the thought imagines it sees a snake and takes over, the entire organism is affected. If the fear is great enough it will kill the body through fear thus engendered.
Human thought or voluntary action could not have brought forth an Immaculate Conception. The moment the idea, which is of God is touched by thought it disappears.
“Since My (God’s) ways are past finding out,” the less thought that is given to the involuntary functioning of this power, the better. “To be absent from the body and present with the Lord” is suggested as the formula for perfect health.
The blending then with the Lord within, the magnifying of this in consciousness, free from thought, the “feeling” after ME – instead of “thinking” after Me, is the Key to all healing. The moment you become one with this automatic involuntary Power within a patient the thought (voluntary) pictures begin to disintegrate – no matter what their origin or intensity. Nothing can stand in the way of this recognized God within, for that is the Life force, the Point where it is actually in manifestation. To recognize this as an already established thing, will cause it to “enlarge the borders of its tent” to a degree which will absorb the supposed action of thought. Healing is only a matter of recognizing Christ as actually within. Nothing can defeat this Power once recognized, even death can be made to disappear.
There is no way of transforming yourself, which you are told to do, by the conscious thought. A slight betterment may take place but it is negligible, but “by the renewing of your Mind” (consciousness of the Christ within) one begins to see Light.
The Christ within – then is the actual LIFE of man – the literal existence of him – and it is already in manifestation, even though it appears to be functioning in a definite evil way. It is the eternal identity of man, and cannot be destroyed, that is why you are told to “raise the dead.” You are only raising a “dead” thought.
Suffering from mal-adjustments and internal bodily trouble, the path of freedom lies within the recognition of this automatic, involuntary Power already there. The dropping of everything from thought and the entering into this recognition, will right the condition with the speed commensurate to your recognition – and rising from a sick bed you will be able to say with authority “I am Well” – and mean it.
This automatic Power within you knows everything and can do everything but the moment the voluntary thought gets hold of you it claps you into a prison house of limitation. Even in the “thought” praying it finally becomes exhausted and cannot give the perpetual adoration – the “Pray without ceasing” it is commanded to do but falls of sheer exhaustion. But when you enter into the LIFE within, you automatically pray without ceasing, for it is a constant flood of praise and recognition of the Presence.
You begin to see then that man has no “health” of itself – he has a consciousness of life which manifests in a degree of health necessary to carry out the instructions of this involuntary Power within. This Power within, this Christ, is the point of contact with the unseen, the place where the invisible is stepped down to manifestation. “The Kingdom of heaven has come nigh unto you” and the keys of healing have been actually placed in your hands. It is well!
GOD’S IN HIS HEAVEN
What the Poet Sang
GOD AND MAN
MAN is as inseparable from God as he is from his shadow. The reason of one is the cause of the other. As nothing can obliterate your shadow, or separate you from it, so nothing can separate you from God. Storms may beat upon it, rain may fall upon it, but the shadow is not effaced or even affected until its cause is removed. Since God, whose image and likeness you are, whose reflection you are, is immovable and eternal, unchangeable and fixed – there is no fear that the cause for your reflection will taken away.
To have a shadow it is necessary to have light shining on us, and the way to keep this light shining is by keeping a heart full of gratitude, full of the oil of joy of right living. There are no gray days in a grateful heart; the sun is always shining there.
That which is your will come unto you – not by any frantic struggling and fighting to wrestle it away from the Giver of all Gifts; not by long and dark hours of laboriously “knowing the truth” – but by letting it float into you as a natural sequence of right thinking, just like the light comes to you in the morning. You don’t fight for it – you don’t go out to meet it; you “let” it come unto you. There is clean, wholesome activity about this letting – it is the jewel of thought turning in all directions to catch all the light possible – it is the obedience of the sunflower which follows the sun across the sky each day, ever with its eye heavenward on the Source of all Light – and at night immediately after it has set – turning its face eastward, ready and waiting for the first faint flushes of the dawn. Keep, then, your mind’s eye open to every bit of truth and love that is being sent out to you by the all-loving Father – and all else will take care of itself.
THE GOLDEN GATE
At the first flush of dawn the pilgrims began arriving. Like so many bits of colored glass in a toy kaleidoscope, they kept making an ever-changing pattern; a riot of color, as if an artist had fallen asleep and the paint on his palette had run wild. Tension, excitement – breathless anticipation – vibrant expectancy.
It was Passion Week in the Holy City. They were again to watch for the miracle – the second coming.
“Why seek ye the living among the dead?” still went unanswered. The crowd increased and jostled one another in the narrow way. They entered through the Jaffa Gate into the teeming streets of the city. A camel train laden with merchandise and hung with rich stuffs and silks rubbed against the passers-by as they pushed up the hill. The call of the donkey boy was heard as he tried to direct his completely indifferent beasts. The hypnotic beat of the tom-toms and soothing insistent notes of the pipes made a strange eerie decor. Every eye searched each passer-by. Perhaps that might be He – who knows? He will rise again – He will come again.
Over by the Jaffa Gate sat the Arab, enfolded in his soft camel’s hair burnoose – near him a pile of golden oranges. He was unconscious of the picture he was making as he sat motionless, oblivious to the excitement of the passers-by. He neither called his wares nor offered them for sale. Above his head the budding branch of a slender tree was making a network of shadow mosaic on the wall; growing darker the while as the sun rose higher in the cloudless heavens. He, too, seemed to be waiting. He seemed to have been waiting there for eons – waiting, waiting, waiting.
One unhurried golden moment after another slipped noiselessly by like streams of wax that ran down from lighted candles in the temple – incense – the throb of distant chanting; mute – hypnotic – then disturbing-hateful. The wax from the candles kept flowing – the moments kept slipping soundlessly by into a dulcet oblivion – silently they passed like bare, perfumed dancing feet over the silken pile of a prayer rug. Time did not matter. That (time) was the illusion, the pilgrims had so little of. They were in such a vapid hurry to get out of it all they could.
When the Arab opened his eyes and let his gaze travel in a circle upon the people about him, it was like the opening of a fan. Those upon whom it rested felt the gaze, as they might have felt soft feather tips brush them ever so lightly. The gaze came from hidden places, fathomless depths, luminous darkness, accompanied by mute throbbing tones.
There was an infinite wonder and pathos in his gaze almost a pity – and the eternal question, “Why seek ye the living among the dead?” He is risen! He is coming at the precise moment you are willing to receive Him.
It was all so confusing in a way – “If I go … I will come again” and, “I will never leave thee” – as if some hidden password or secret was given for those who had ears. How could it all be that way? Going – and yet not going – and yet coming again in the flesh.
If you followed the gaze of the Arab, it led to blinding heights of Light. There was hidden in it a wisdom which somehow might change the whole pattern of man. It was that very wisdom which made the other Arab fold his tent “and as silently steal away.” It was that something akin to discovery and appropriation at the same instant.
Conception is ever silent – deep, fathomless stillness, where Stygian darkness shuts out curious human thought and reasoning, and the fearful working out of Salvation takes place. The least flutter of human thought would drive it into oblivion leaving a great void. An exquisite sensibility enfolded everything – swept it all upward as if born by angel wings into a breathless second of eternity.
And then as a crystal being shattered into a thousand pieces, the jangling noise of the Pilgrims broke the golden silence. They were fighting among themselves, trying to get into a place where they could better see Him, who would say unto them “love one another.” They would not see Him even if He appeared, for they had already gone down the wrong road again. They would miss Him for they would be looking for a miracle worker. They would be looking for a man in purple and fine linen, surely not for one washing the feet of the weary. They would only know Him by His robes glistening with jewels and power – by His authority and glamour.
If I do not get in, I may miss Him. “The race is not to the swift” meant nothing, the more physical effort they put forth the nearer the possibility of personal gains. If they could get near the man who increased the leaves and fishes, this time they would find out how it was done. When HE was here a single word would do it, a single touch of His robe would accomplish what the wise physicians could not do nor understand.
Ever and anon an excited word would go forth that He had come and was giving the Secret of His Power again, but presently the excitement died down, and the whining voices of the deceived went up with a wail.
The Arab was not concerned as he heard the exciting news again and again of His coming. He was resting leisurely at the elevation of “No chance.” He did not have to pursue anything; he did not have to win anything. Having to WIN was the out picturing of a consciousness which believed in limitation and in a God who was a respecter of persons. The very thought of this law of no-chance to many stimulated the greedy human thought to a point of frenzy. “Stillness” was impossible in such a seething cauldron of excitement and greed. A million sensuous dreams passed through the mind as a whirlwind on the desert flings waves of sand at the Sun.
It all seemed foolishness. If He was “coming again” why did He not come? and if He was a God of love, why would He permit war? Why would He permit the evil to have riches and the good to have nothing? Why? and why? and why? – until the whirlwind again enveloped him. And presently through the terrific noise, the machinery of desire blacked out everything.
The Arab arose, shook out the folds of his burnoose and passed through the gate leaving no one in charge of his stock in trade. His gaze had taken care of everything, just as the gaze of Jesus took care of everything upon which it rested and revealed all sorts of laws which were self-operative without the aid of human thought. As he went up the hill, he passed through the crowd with little difficulty. Something seemed to be making a way for him, though he was silent and asked for nothing. It was just that they automatically moved aside.
He went over to the Mosque of Omar – the Dome of the Rock (that beautiful jewel dropped down in the center of the Compound) – and disappeared through the door. It was dark inside except for the halo of varicolored lights cast by the band of heavily jeweled glass in the cupola, which kept changing the while as it lay upon the rock, a thing alive. No word was spoken – only silence throbbing, soft, enfolding. His white robe was smudged out by the velvety darkness. Only his eyes could be seen. He knelt and touched his forehead to the floor. Now the silence seemed strong enough to break the thin walls of the ear a tremendous and awful sound of the Presence – as if an infinite number of angels attended him.
The whir of the wings of the Heavenly Host as they dosed in near formation sounded: this was the elevation of miracle – pure revelation! This was the place of breathless adoration, wherein the silence became real – and the “BE STILL AND KNOW THAT I AM GOD” was effortless, an INFLOW OF POWER, an ENTERING LIGHT. This was the restoration of the soul – like the perfect reassembling of quicksilver that had been scattered. There was no seam or jointure – there was only ONE. The soul was not joined, mended or corrected – it was ONE again as it always had been; it was restored, with all faculties alerted for the Second Coming.
And then after what seemed many eons of time, which was only a moment, he left the soft incense-laden darkness and went to the far side of the Compound and stood near a walled-up gate. Presently you were at the gate too – still, silent, waiting – waiting for the eyes to touch you again with revelation, if you could stand it – if you could stand it.
And finally the eyes opened, the flood of LIGHT came, “This is the Golden Gate. It is walled up and will not be opened until He comes again. At His coming, the stones will crumble and He will pass through.” As he said the unspoken words, the stones began to fall away and the Golden Gate was filled with Light and Fire – and HE came through the Golden Gate of your consciousness. He came again in the flesh – Your flesh – and now you SAW HIM and experienced the stones of human belief and limitations fall away – and the GLORY OF GOD revealed.
As you stood trembling in the ecstasy of it all, the Arab had disappeared as a purple shadow at sunset. Over in the valley of the Mount of Olives, a saffron mist swung like a veil in the evening sun.
THE GOLDEN INSTANT
“Thou art NOW the Blessed of the Lord !”
THIS is the HOUR – the COSMIC HOUR! THIS is the TIME! NOW is the day! “NOW are we the SONS OF GOD!”
That which we call time becomes timeless – and is defined rightly as NOW. NOW is eternity. Space becomes spaceless – and is the HERE – infinity – without beginning or ending. Eternity is substance.
In the consciousness that we “were born, not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God,” we have the HERE-NOW – the real interpretation of time and space.
“Without father, without mother, without descent,
Having neither beginning of days, nor end of life;
But made LIKE UNTO THE SON OF GOD.”
Caught in the belief that we were “born of woman” we accept time and space as realities – and our good is pushed from the HERE to the there of belief, and from the NOW to then. All this time element passes away and is remembered no more in your consciousness of Jesus Christ.
“But beloved, be not ignorant of this one thing,
That one day is with the Lord as a thousand years,
And a thousand years as one day.”
When we understand this timeless, spaceless Consciousness, we can and do hear the WORDS of Jesus as he spoke them in Jerusalem – because the inspiration of HIS WORD is always HERE and NOW, when we are awake. “Lo, I AM with you always.”
When you accept the consciousness of Jesus Christ which is beyond the time-space manifestation, you experience the HERE-NOW of Life and find that which is real, which casts its light even unto the ends of the earth – even unto the ends of human belief.
When Jesus went unto the Father, he entered the place of No-Thought. What good would it have been to have taken thought with Him? What could have been accomplished by taking this thought of lack into the presence of Substance?
What good is it for you to take your “findings” (your problem) into the Silence? Better enter in and be saved. You discover in this place of Inner Peace, the Substance of LIFE. In the contemplation, you will see it come into manifestation, filling every empty vessel. It is WONDERFUL ! “Heaven and earth are full of Thee.”
“I will lead them in paths that they have not known;
I will make darkness light before them, and crooked things straight.
These things will I do unto them,
And not forsake them.”
God must be experienced – not demonstrated. At this point of the Father Consciousness, the conceptual power is activated – and the formation of the body of the new idea takes place. It is all completed in the NOW and the HERE. Jesus perceived the idea in the MIND OF GOD – and by recognition, released it into manifestation. Leaving all appearances, and returning “unto my Father,” unto a point beyond appearances, the tangled skeins of human designs are straightened and perfect manifestation follows as a natural consequence.
You are told to “acquaint NOW thyself with HIM, and be at peace.” Acquaint now thyself with that which is beyond the place of thought and problem, and be at peace “Thereby (all) good shall come unto thee.” ALL is enough, isn’t it?
Are YOU going over “THERE” in human thought to some Master, teacher, leader, or even unto the High Himalayas, or are you going to STAY HERE with ME?
Smashing the pictures of ancestral teaching, we let go of the three hateful “fates” of Greek Mythology – those sisters who wove, measured, and cut off the life of man with impunity. Man is IMMORTAL – without beginning or ending – ETERNAL; hence the measure of the human thought is not the measure of man.
Can you by digging at the roots of a tree discover the fruit? Where is it? You cannot see it, and yet you believe in the integrity of nature. From the invisible, a miracle is stepped down to a point of human comprehension in the time-space. Why should it be so amazing, that when this element of time-space is comprehended as HERE-NOW, the instantaneous manifestation appears?
Jesus stepped up the human consciousness to a point of the finished thing. He did not do anything – but reveal that which is beyond the time-space of thought.
The human intellection appears to make the action of God impossible – yet Jesus insists that a child can do it. The adult cannot because he adulterates everything he thinks of. He muddies the virginal stream of Spirit, and hence the picture cannot be reflected into the realm of matter: – that is, cannot be objectified.
It is recorded, “If a man keep my saying, he shall never see death.” Never is a long time. The meaning of keep has nothing to do with keeping or holding, as in the illustration of the ten talents. It is certainly not retiring into a desert place of meditation. Many people run away from life and imagine they are spiritually retreating into a sanctuary. Jesus Christ lived and operated IN the world. Do not run away from Life. A man in a prison cell can be reasonably sure he will not be run over by an auto, but the keeping of which He speaks is akin to the binding in heaven.
“And I will give unto thee the keys of
the Kingdom of Heaven:
And whatsoever thou shalt bind on earth
shall be bound in heaven:
And whatsoever thou shalt loose on earth
shall be loosed in heaven.”
That which you keep you have assumed as such, a natural state. The form and shape of the Word is released into manifestation. When a man shall lose his life, when he shall let go or release the WORD he is to keep, then he shall find LIFE. When he withholds it, in the human sense, he shall certainly lose it, for he has confined it into the narrow limits of human thought. Human life is confined within the parenthesis of sickness and health. Both of these bulwarks of human belief must give way before the free-flowing LIFE which searches the joints and the marrow. This becomes a natural experience. When you lose your (personal sense of) Life, you shall find it. The drop of water filled with all uncleanness merges into the sea; you have no more health, but Life.
Without provocation man can lose all of his power, health and substance. His lines of defense are brushed aside as naught. The financial world is convulsed periodically by a change in values – yet nothing actually takes place. There is never any increase or devaluation in God. It can only take place in the mind of man, in a “far country” where bits of paper and metal are regarded as substance. The same symbols become worthless even as he offers them as the fruits of his labor and a means of exchange.
Do you understand NOW what happens to you when you enter the elevation of the Christ consciousness – when you are through demonstrating it? “None of these things (appearances) move ME.” No man-made reports of findings change anything but your thought about them. The human mind is a Liar and the father of it. Everything, and that means all it says, is a Lie. Everything – that includes your problem. Do you hear?
The Rock of Gibraltar would not be affected by a handful of confetti being thrown at it. You, the CHRIST OF GOD, can lose no sense of substance when once you are cognizant of your true identity. The Secret Keys are given to you by the Master. The confetti of human thought will blow away.
Nothing ever happens to SUBSTANCE – regardless. There is no shortage in God – ever – only in the mind of man. Beyond thought, is something greater. There is a higher law which causes the “increase” to take place. Substance becomes a degree of observation – the place or point in mind where man has “watched” the “one hour” and perceived the miracle, which he can by thought neither show forth or put into words – but which is THERE and becomes HERE when it is necessary.
“In returning and rest shall ye be saved;
in quietness and in confidence shall be
your Strength.”
As your human consciousness, the consciousness that you are separate from God, is merged into the CHRIST CONSCIOUSNESS in which Jesus operated, then indeed is “mortality … swallowed up of LIFE” – and you are no longer under the curse of the law.
Yes, gradually you merge into the consciousness in which Jesus operated. The “curse of the law” departs. This does not in any way separate you from the world of everyday – only from the curse of the world. This sweeps you into the new heights of Observation. You are now seeing and hearing the things that ears could not hear, nor eyes see. It is as a stream of molten gold straight from the heart of God.
“They shall not hurt nor destroy in all MY HOLY MOUNTAIN.”
And where is the Holy Mountain? – the High Himalayas? The “Holy Mount” is within the individual – and has various and sundry heights, according to the degree of observation or the discovery of the SELF OF CHRIST. As we observe, we are not creating – but watching the appearance of something which already exists in the Mind of God. We let it come forth.
The degree of our observation is in direct ratio to our ability to “loose” the findings of the human thought.
It is wonderful to contemplate how this law when heeded, Destroys the foundations of evil. Where today is the purported gold of Croesus? Yet the substance from which it came remains intact – only the shadow or reflection has changed, disintegrated or disappeared entirely. Do you see why Jesus said: “Carry neither purse, nor scrip” – knowing that the CONSCIOUSNESS OF THE PRESENCE would care for all manifestation? This is not inviting indigence, carelessness, or endless waiting for the Mind of God to move in your direction. It is the recognition of the PRESENCE which sees the miracle, instead of being hypnotized by the manifestation, whether it be loaves and fishes or dollars which fluctuate daily. The “now you see it, now you do not” of the Prophet, putting his hand in his bosom and taking it out, is the perfect picture of the fluctuation of symbols. They change in value with the constantly changing mind of man.
Who by seeking shall find HIM? Man does not see God any more than he can see the air. He can only experience Him. Spirit, being like the wind that “bloweth where it listeth” comes into manifestation at a moment “ye think not.” God comes into being in a thousand ways as the Spirit passes through the temple-body – taking form and shape in a new design.
Where then, is disease, poverty? Where is the devil, created by walking “up and down and to and fro” in the appearance world? The very devil of accepted belief takes the form of disease or evil in you but does not affect the person near you. Why? Because he has not created him nor endowed him with power. It is wonderful when you see that you have created devils in your world, who may be even now trying to kill you. The disciples discovered they had power over them: “Even the devils are subject unto us.”
The human mind, with its power to create these chimeras called devils, inflates them with conscious thinking until they destroy him. Evil pictures are thrown upon the universe. Suggestion, hypnosis, produce a chimera which acts quickly, for its day is short. It is only as long as the race consciousness believes in it. The moment the LIGHT comes into play, you hear the piercing shriek of the devils, “Why have you come here to disturb us?” When RECOGNITION of the PRESENCE is made, the effects of suggestion and hypnotism of race thought cannot hurt or harm you.
“For NOW we live, if ye stand fast in the Lord.” The Christ consciousness is beyond polarity – the pairs of opposites. It is in no way affected by human thought.
HE BREATHED
“… He breathed on them, and saith unto them, Receive ye the Holy Ghost.”
From that instant of the Divine breath, they were able to do the works. He had entered through a closed door and made it plain to them that he was something other than a vaporous spirit – manifestation: – for he asked for food, and told Thomas to thrust his hand into his wounds. All this is the dimension of immortality coming “nigh unto you” – the secret Doctrine in all its simplicity – in all its loveliness of LIFE immortal. “Many that believed” is a sweeping statement. Does it include you? With the proof your lying human mind wants, goes the “no blessing” state of affairs.
When you have accepted the WORDS of Jesus Christ, you become “a peculiar people.” This does not mean a strange people affecting strange doctrines and robes in order to attract attention to your “Holiness.” You are peculiar because there is a radiance and joy that emanates automatically from you. You are peculiar because you are natural and filled with Light. It is wonderful when you see that all attempts to make people believe that a “holy” one – “called” for a special service is marked with the sign of hypocrisy. By their works, and not by their words or their long hair, shall ye know them. A haircut will not do the trick either. It takes something in the nature of BELIEF. That ought not to be too hard after the things of the human mind you have believed in and seen fail.
Millions of people preach and believe that the world is coming to an end, and have believed it for aeons of time – but this is the Planet of Jesus Christ, and it is not going to come to an end, but rather is being revealed as the Kingdom of Heaven. The only world that comes to an end is the world of the little one preaching hell and damnation. He finally meets it and is consumed by it.
“Receive ye the Holy Ghost” that is the subtle power within the WORD, which causes it to release the congested thought patterns called disease and confusion. You are imbreathed with this power the moment you can accept it, without question, without equivocation, without human reason. God exists without reason. He is a perpetual state of BEING and becoming through you. “And their eyes were opened” – and a wholly new world appeared before them. You already see the world that satisfies the Human Adam mind, but while you are looking at its failure and ugliness, suddenly your eyes are opened and you see a new world, a new heaven, appearing through the mystification of the human creation.
Will you then, “Come out from among them, and be ye separated”? You are in the world and not of it. You know how it is that the bee takes the honey from the poisonous flower, so does he who has been “breathed upon” take from the world that which is fundamental and real and leaves the poison of human belief and reason where he found it. There is no argument, no proselyting – no trying to convince anybody, for the sign is there. The Sign in which He conquers. IT is the assumption of the Presence within and without everything.
He that is “Breathed upon” is fused with God; he has slipped into that Glory he had before he took on all the miasma of John Smith, and for the first time he discovers that John Smith can and does function harmoniously. He ceases to worry about the weather, the conditions and the times, for he automatically adjusts to the manifestation in which he finds himself. This adjustment – this agreeing with the adversary, as it would seem – is the means of releasing reality from the source of ALL reality. He heals without an effort because he is past the place where healing is an action – it is a revelation – it is a showing forth of the LIFE which is imbreathed with the Breath of God.
From the Koran: “But they (mankind) have broken their religion among them into sects, each sect rejoicing in its tenents.”
There is Religion: “An awareness or conviction of the existence of a Supreme Being.” (Webster) And then there are “religions”- (sects) all having personal bylaws and beliefs, but hung onto the same basic teachings. Truth never changes any more than the laws of mathematics how it is taught is another thing. One thing is certain, the mathematician is going to deal with self imposed problems, and after he has set up a problem, he seeks to destroy it and get rid of it – whether it be in simple addition or death. The whole problem idea stems from the consciousness of separation. Jesus showed so plainly the only solution to an unsolvable problem from the relative standpoint was to merge with the ONE, the unformed substance – the Mind which held all manifestation in its grasp. At that point, the power generated through human hypnotism or thought-taking could be picked up or diverted until the clouds would literally be without rain.
Take no teaching from a man, except the fire of inspiration pours through him until the inner ear of you automatically makes the agreement. “If any of you lack wisdom, let him ask of God” – and hear God, and follow God, and you will know whether the doctrine be of man or of God. It is a foolproof LAW – if you ask of God your information will be in the nature of LIGHT and not in the illusion of man-made words. Then “any” Man (i-festation) may be used to give those words of God an audibility.
HE MADE DARKNESS HIS SECRET PLACE
We ignorantly worship God as made in the Image and Likeness of man. His capacities are limited and his mind is given to all the ugliness of human thought. “Who hath known the mind of the Lord?” The infinite reaches of His intelligence cannot be more than glimpsed by the finite mind. It is only when we begin to merge into the ONE that we discover what the “Eye hath not seen, nor ear heard” – reaches of LIGHT which defy all words.
“He made darkness his secret place; his pavilion round about him were dark waters and thick clouds of the skies.”
The wisdom of God, being foolishness in the eyes of man, is hidden from human thought. The Illumination of His Presence throws dust into the eyes of human reason. Man is blinded by the LIGHT of what he can neither understand nor yet believe. The wise and prudent cannot enter His pavilion.
God has made darkness His secret place. The LIGHT of His Presence is so intense it is unseeable to the eye relying on the human thought equation. It is or was reported that five miles above the earth is darkness, the veil of ether cannot be seen through – though the sun’s rays penetrate it. Something to consider! Man keeps on discovering new levels which neutralize the former discoveries. Watch!
“My sheep” those who have recognized the VISION will follow the instructions to the sheep – and instead of arguing and trying to set someone right, will “let the filthy be filthy still.” They will find other uses for pearls than casting them to dogs and swine.
The ceiling of human reasoning is reached by judging from appearances. It makes its deductions from hearsay. The moment a broadcast of evil is made, it is acted upon, accepted, and very shortly brought into manifestation after which the pattern is multiplied a thousandfold.
Recently a streetcar strike was held in a western city. No transportation on the streets except automobiles. It was surprising how many accepted the verdict and found they were unable to go anywhere. The general excuse was, “Well, I couldn’t go because there was no transportation.” And yet many of those people were studying to learn how to rid themselves and others of so-called incurable diseases.
“Who did hinder you?” What you accept from appearances is true to you, regardless, but to no one else. When we stop trying to demonstrate over conditions and things, there comes the consciousness and the willingness which takes shape and form after a manner unknown to human thought. You do not accept evil in any form regardless of the appearance. Presently you will find it does not exist even if it does exist, just as the lack of bread did exist and five thousand men testified to the lack – but ONE DID NOT. ONE with God is a majority is the basis from which Jesus operated. If He had not, we would have been minus any realization of God. The moment He became one with God, He disregarded any and all appearances and went through closed doors of human belief. It makes no difference if every other one of the ten thousand have fallen by a belief in disease, “it shall not come nigh thee” unless you give it a body and form and permit it power through acceptance.
Daily broadcasts of evil are always present, and you operate from that level and evil will result, or you do precisely what Jesus did and discover that literally “none of these things move me.” Nothing moves ME, the Christ – everything affects the Jesus (John Smith).
Do not go out to battle the midnight and storm of human belief when you refuse to accept appearances. It is not overcoming – it is recognition of God in whom there is no obstruction – a willingness to follow through, but not to “stand praying” in the old sense of the word – an acceptance of it all, an appropriation.
Cleopatra knew plenty of human strategy and so-called diplomacy – yet she could not handle the asp. A child can. Can you? Why? The asp that a child could handle with impunity took Cleopatra out of the picture. Be sure you are not playing with spiritual powers, trying to do tricks. “The … child shall play on the hole of the asp.” Can you?
You see why God is HID in darkness. Darkness begins at the limit of your human sight. In the relative sense of things, it is called ether – yet this great envelop of darkness called ether which scientists have discovered and which is apparently void of light, is easily penetrated by the light of the heavenly bodies. There is not much use trying to hold to the darkness of human ignorance any more. “I have a way ye know not of” – no use trying to find it. You have to discover it in operation, which you will do when you are willing to accept GOD and not the beliefs of man. If a man-made law can stop the action of the child of God, what can that child do with healing?
Gradually you release the words: “Judge not from appearances” (from the shell of human thought) and find they mean just what they say.
It says “JUDGE NOT” – regardless of what the ten thousand who are going to fall by them, say. “It shall not come nigh thee” because it cannot. You have not accepted it. Your illumination comes from another source. You keep silent before ME – and, likewise before the ten thousand who are functioning in the evil belief. You follow ME into the “darkness” of SPIRITUAL LIGHT and see through the whole thing. “He made darkness his secret place.”
The Unknown God whom ye ignorantly worship was declared to you, accompanied by thousands of proofs. If you must thrust your hands into His side to see, you are going to receive no blessings.
The “stigmata” which His body bore, has been reproduced by many people who have become so emotionally moved by His blessed Life, they have symbolically gone through the passions and found the “marks” visible on their bodies. It would do no more good to put your hand in the wounds made by the emotions of the human mind, than it would be to have put your hand in the wounds made by the nails in the flesh of Jesus. The blessing comes from recognition and not from regarding the manifestation. The signs that are to follow can do nothing else. They flow from consciousness through the walls of human belief, no matter what name or from what cause. Bread appears where there is not even wheat. Money appears where there is none. Life appears in the mass of physical corruption. Yet none of these things can be done to prove the TRUTH. They are proven because of the TRUTH; they are released because of recognition. The LIGHT shines in darkness and the darkness of human mind comprehends it not. It is there for those who wish to experience the darkness being dispelled.
“The ground whereon you stand is HOLY GROUND” – for it is a discovery and not something that has been redeemed from a curse of God – only the curse of human belief. Remembering “I come quickly and my reward is with me,” we disregard the appearances and enter into the “darkness” of HIS LIGHT. We are hidden in this darkness (to the human belief) of HIS LIGHT. We are “hid with Christ in God.” No human eye can detect or find us.
“He made darkness his SECRET PLACE!”
And this can be extended to the darkness that surrounds a given problem – and we suddenly discover HIM there instead of trying to inject Him with a hypodermic of affirmations. He is already there in the darkness – for it is written that “He made darkness his SECRET PLACE.” And now you know when Jesus disappeared from their sight where He went. He entered the darkness – or that place of Light which was so intense it blinded the human vision.
“And I will give thee the treasures of darkness, and hidden riches of secret places.”
It only takes a mustard seed in size. Have you that much?
HE OPENETH HIS HAND
“Thou openest thine hand, and satisfiest the desire of every living thing.”
With this overshadowing comes the peace that passeth ALL. An osmosis – absorption – a blending; into the ONE takes place and there is no longer question and answer, problem and solution.
“Thou openest thine hand, and satisfiest the desire of every living thing” becomes a reality. There is no limitation – no questioning whether the desire is good, bad, or indifferent – for from this elevation the desire is the shape of the idea sent straight from the heart of God, and is made alive by the pulsating heartbeat of the universe.
“Thou openest thine hand, and satisfiest the desire of every living thing” yet are you desireless, free from wanting and ready to move into a place of substance, out of the place of things and yet in the midst of them all. You are suddenly One. There is no more you and your problem, there is only you. You pass easily through the crowd of beliefs.
The Light universal keeps shining. As it intensifies, it absorbs the shadows of human belief; nothing matters, yet, everything does. It transform the Temple-body into a tenuous substance, through which it can shine forth, – assuming any attribute of God at will. Healing is not, then, some wonder projected through human thought, but rather the enveloping of the Golden Shadow. It is a natural blending with LIFE which rules out the narrow confines of health and strength in humankind. I AM suddenly submerged in a sea of LIFE – eternal, golden, and all redolent with the LOVE of God.
For the first time, the mystical becomes the intensely practical – the only real thing you have ever known. Sight becomes a capacity to peer through the dense midnight of thought, by means of the Light which projects its Golden Shadow from the “Mind which was also in Christ Jesus” and which you realize is the mind that is also in you.
No longer will you compromise with this power and put it through a thousand and one beliefs concocted by the mind of man. Instead, you permit it to take shape and form, even as the air takes the shape automatically of any vessel, yet never congeals or becomes set in that form, but lasts only for the moment of the duration of the desire.
“Thou openest thine hand, and satisfiest the desire of every living thing” – it is a carte blanche releasement of HIS Love, and it has to be received naturally and not as some special dispensation. It is as though the Golden Shadow has cleared away all obstruction between you and His Love, and you can hear, and really HEAR what is being communicated to the earth plane; now you can really know the full dimensions of His Love, and that all manifestation will take place, independent of your thought and without any effort.
As a sudden heavy rain falls upon a parched desert and is instantly absorbed, so does this descent of spirit come upon you. It instantly changes the nature of the desert and the very seeds already there begin to stir. Something is to take place – “the desert is to blossom as a rose” – because of the downpour of His Love, and because of the Recognition. You are being conditioned to a new dimension.
The Golden Shadow is the Golden Fleece which you have sought for so long and which has been guarded by the Gorgon, with her snaky locks of human devices, ways and means. Upon whomsoever this Golden Shadow rests, something – a quickening, takes place – without effort, and without any of the old ideas of healing and helping. It is entirely impersonal and natural and has nothing at all to do with human thought. Nothing can stay it, nothing can project it; it is a natural movement or urge in the mind of God passing through the temple-body (man) casting the Golden Shadow of Love and doing the things called “miraculous” by its revealing Light.
“Thou openest thine hand, and satisfiest the desire of every living thing.” Heaven and earth are full of thee – full, pressed down, and running over – there is not one empty vessel left, – even the borrowed ones are full. The Love of God keeps flowing until everything is satisfied. And all the while the Golden Shadow keeps revealing the intensely practical angle of it. It is not a mystical intangible thing, but something to be experienced and something to be handled with the hands and something that causes the wine of inspiration to flow through the body-temple with the rush of a pure mountain torrent. Health is absorbed into the LIFE of GOD, which knows no limitations.
“Thou openest thine hand, and satisfiest the desire of every living thing.” You must be ALIVE to participate in this benefit. You have to come out of the tomb of human thinking into the clean, fresh and almost fierce tides of LIFE. You have to be ALIVE in the recognition and the instant response to HIS Voice.
To human thought His word is almost unbearably stimulating, breaking its limitations. The Spirit refuses to be longer held in the narrow confines of the letter. The grandeur, the magnificence of pure Spirit leaves you speechless and bereft of all thought. “Let the earth keep silent before me and renew her strength” – the body, the temple, the earth of you is experiencing the renewing of self-revelation.
You have entered a new mansion where there are “singing masons building roofs of gold.”* “Beauty, then is the destiny” ** which begins to shape itself and put to flight the FATE of human thought.
Yes, “thou openest thine hand, and satisfiest the desires of every living thing.” Right now – stay there a moment.
“Not to desire is to have.” Can you hear?
* Shakespeare.
** Plato.
HE THAT LOSES HIS LIFE
“He that loses his life shall find it” – in the Universal Whole. When you come to the place where you are willing to merge your personal understanding with the Universal, then you are beginning to experience the “feel” of what it is both to lose your life and find it. The mathematician has long ago lost his book but has found the Science of Numbers and has gone on and on, delving into its infinite depths. When you let go of the idea of a personal life apart from God, and cast yourself into the Infinite Life, you will find the freedom for which you have been seeking so long.
When you accept the Presence as HERE and NOW, as an actuality instead of a theory, then and there and here and NOW you will begin to experience the great power within and without. Whereas before you were blind, NOW you can “see,” and see that everything is all right, and why it is all right. The only thing that has ever been wrong has been your viewpoint. You have looked at Life as something divided instead of as a whole, hence you have tried to use the Power and found that it could not be cut to suit the human measures. The EVER-PRESENCE is impartial and impersonal.
Remember this, and use It as freely and as naturally as you do the air and sunshine. The only time you seemingly notice the air is when it is difficult to breathe or when the supply seems to be getting low, otherwise you pay no attention to it. It has the greatest value in the world because it has no value. So with God – only we have strayed so long in the field of human belief that we have come to look upon HIM only at moments of so-called demonstration. Presently we shall find God – Good – more natural than evil, and will automatically accept Him as such.
“If you will continue to be lost in My will, living according thereto, great will be your reward, as the living virtue goes forth from your body; the Father within you healing, blessing, and saving a hungering misled humanity. Wheresoever you go and whatsoever you do you will be a living message, a living Bible seen and read of men. The Truth in you will conquer and continue to conquer, and to captivate the hearts of the multitude. They will awaken to the Christ within themselves; to Life eternal and all the desirable attributes of God, for there is nothing more than God and nothing less than Christ.”
Formerly, man thought it impossible to make this connection with God. Now the hour has come. Launch out into the deep waters, and be not afraid, it is “I” the Spirit within you that speaks. “Cast your burdens on the Lord, and He will sustain thee.” Your burden that you have carried so long – in the shape of a problem.
That is the thing you are to “cast on the Lord,” and bear away a blessing. “Heaven and earth are full of Thee.” Everything is full of the Lord and His love. The former beliefs and things are fast passing away – “behold I make all things NEW” – and the NEW Heaven and NEW Earth will be the new order, and the new law which will govern all with perfection and peace. The government shall be upon His shoulders. It is Wonderful! So “claim your right, and press your claim.”
The pure Stream of Virtue that proceeds out of you – the Awakened One – is the Word spoken with authority and sincerity, and left to accomplish its glorious mission.
“And it is done! Here and now, and if you will abide in Me and let My word abide in you, you will through constant praise and thanksgiving create such an atmosphere about you that your word, silent or spoken, will continue to bless and heal, and draw all joy, health, love, and life unto you.”
We are beginning to HEAR the Master say, “Go thou and do likewise.” It is no more a much-longed-for state of consciousness which comes with years of study. It is a command that we are ready to fulfill the moment we rise to accept it as possible. Too much time and thought are given to “getting ready” to receive the Christ, instead of “rising” and going forth with the glorious command, “Go thou and do likewise.” This command carries with it all the power necessary to “do likewise.”
The atmosphere of Love that the Christ Consciousness creates about you protects you from all the former fears and limitation, and opens a new way for you.
Begin to accept the words of Jesus as if addressed personally to you, and act upon them, and you will suddenly find yourself going into the Inner Shrine and there tasting the joys of the New Day. Begin to accept the Word of Christ as a direct word to you, and you will begin to receive the promises as directly made to you, and their fulfillment shall be swift and sure.
“I have blessed you! I have blessed you! I have blessed you! by the great Omnipotent, Omniscient, Omni-present Name and Nature of God. You are now the partaker; as it is written, ‘As he is so are We in this present world.’ My peace I give unto you, My peace I leave with you, let not your heart be troubled, neither let it be afraid. ‘Christ in you … and Christ in me will give you the victory … and from every adverse condition set you free.'”
You have just read something that is said to you, yes, it is for no one else but you – you the reader. Can you accept it? Do you believe that you are at this instant BLESSED with a downpour of blessing that drowns out of your life every evil and adverse condition? Are you beginning to see that it is necessary for you to “take” your good out of the universe. And that, in order to do this, you have first to recognize that it is an actuality? All the promises of God are made to you. To you the promises are made, but they do not amount to anything until you accept them. Can you begin to see the joy in losing your life and finding it in the Universal Whole? The little joys of the human life are so fleeting, and then, all of sudden, we find them all in their true interpretation in the Christ Life. It is Wonderful! Wonderful! Wonderful! “You are now a partaker in the Kingdom of Heaven as here and now.” Sounds too good to be true; that is the way everything about God sounds to the human mind. The human mind cannot grasp Goodness as a never-ending stream of substance pouring into expression, because it has not the capacity to accept this. “Arise thou that sleepest, and Christ shall give thee LIGHT.” LIGHT that is so full of substance it will reveal the tangible blessings unto you. “YOU ARE BLESSED.” Do you hear? Just now, as you read, YOU ARE BLESSED. Blessed with the great consciousness that recognizes GOD as PRESENT. The joy of ARISING (from the former beliefs and mistakes) and GOING to your Father has come to you. No matter how many mistakes you may have made – “ARISE” and accept the Glorious Truth – “thy iniquities are remembered no more.”
“As He is so are we in this present world.” Do you glimpse the wonderful revelation that is given in this line? Not as HE IS GOING TO BE, but as HE IS. As the Christ IS, as the Perfect manifestation IS, here and now. Do you begin to see what the gift Christ brought two thousand years ago really is? It is something more than words, and yet it is only words until it is addressed to you personally. Until you see that these things have to do with you individually they are nothing but passages from the Bible. It is Wonderful! Wonderful! Wonderful! As HE IS – do you hear? You had better look up “He” and see just what “HE” is. “As he is so are We in this PRESENT WORLD.” Right NOW, right here, and glory be to God. It Is So. And So It Is. Hidden away in a frame of human belief, this precious Truth awaits the coming of the Master. It awaits the one who can sense the real from the unreal. You are THAT one – you are perceiving its truth NOW, and it is becoming manifest to you. The sick, aged and worn-out body is beginning to show signs of awakening in HIS LIKENESS. It is Wonderful! Do not hurry nor get excited. It is all done in the twinkling of an eye; “When the last trump shall sound” – when you have sounded the note of Recognition.
And so the Recognition goes on. The Living Word becomes manifest.
When you are speaking the word; when you are feeding the hungry, or healing the lame, then you are really in Heaven.
“You are in Heaven, the Heavenly State of Consciousness, the Heavenly Jerusalem; in the spiritual state of Consciousness; teaching men on the material plane, in mortal consciousness that the kingdoms of the world have become the kingdoms of our Lord Jesus Christ.”
The day of teaching from the limited human consciousness is over. It is only a mental play that accomplishes nothing lasting, or worthwhile. When you have lost your life and found your life in Christ, you are teaching from the pure consciousness of Heaven, and this PURE WORD is interpreted to the human plane, and is heard and seen – “My word shall not return unto ME void.”
“Tarry awhile in Jerusalem” – the Four-Square symbolical city of Peace, where the Fourth Dimension Consciousness becomes a reality. “Be still, and know that I AM God,” not that I am going to be God, but that I AM God – so tarry a while in Peace. It is so wonderful for you to sit quietly in the blessings that are descending all about you, HERE and NOW.
“There is no ending to the blessings that are in the Storehouse for those who truly love the Lord, and will keep his Holy Word. New Mysteries are being revealed to the children of men every moment, and they are now ready to receive them, for they have become conscious of the Ever Presence of God right here in there very midst, manifested within and without. It is more than human tongue can tell, the Glories of His Righteousness and the Wonders of His Love; this mighty Holy Love that transcends all limitations and breaks down every thought of segregation, and other abominations that are not pleasing in the sight of God.”
All the things you have been seeking are yours when you accept the word as spoken to YOU – not to another. The storehouse holds all the unfulfilled promises of your life. Nothing has been lost – nothing can be lost, except the limitations of a personal life.
HEARING
“HAVING ears, ye hear not.” Again man is brought face to face with the fact that he is not properly hearing-that he is missing the voice and hearing only the noise and the sound of things coming together in the outer world. He can be so mistaken in the sense of hearing that if he were to close his eyes he could not tell whether a horse was approaching on a paved street or a couple of coconut shells were being tapped on a board. If he cannot differentiate between things as simple as these, how can he possibly rely on the sense of sound as he knows it? The fact that we are constantly accused of having ears and eyes which we do not use also posits that something important is being said. I once watched a Chinaman in a Shanghai native theatre enjoy, and apparently hear, one of his classics when such a bedlam was going on in the house that it would seem utterly impossible to hear the person sitting next to you without intently listening.
And yet the Chinaman was relaxed, making no conscious effort to hear through the din of crying babies, squeaky music, peanut and sweetmeat vendors. He was at a terrific point of attention, however, and all his power was pointed in one direction. It was like drawing the sun’s rays through a magnifying glass. A deaf woman once told me she could always hear anything evil said about her in her presence. She did not know that if she could hear evil she could hear everything else by the same method, i.e., attention. She was at the point of attention when it came to evil. In fact, she admitted that she “knew” she could always hear anything evil that was being said about her-and so she did. “The still small voice” must be heard from this point of attention to the Presence and not to the noise on the outside, otherwise you miss the word which is to be made flesh. “There were many things I could not tell you because of your unbelief”-many things which Jesus wanted to reveal but the hearing was so heavy by accepting the noise of the world that it could not hear the “still small voice” of revelation. A woman came rushing in one day, frightened almost into insensibility. “A fortune-teller told me I am going to be killed in four days.”
She had heard, as many people have heard, the death-sentence pronounced over them-“incurable, hopeless, helpless,” and thousands of other things that can only be heard by the hearing of the ear. It is not possible to hear these things from the standpoint of spirit, for they are founded on the failing wisdom of man-which is foolishness in the eyes of God. “If any of you lack wisdom, let him ask of God.” If he asks of God within himself he will have to hear with the hearing ear. He will have to hear past the noise and confusion of the outside world. The Voice will be eternally saying “I will,” but unless the hearing is at the point of attention it will hear the clanging noises of human belief. It is recorded that the “dead shall hear my voice and live,” and this not only means the physically dead but the mentally dead as well. “Not that which goeth in, but that which cometh out, defileth or maketh a man”—-that which you hear determines what will come out.
“Go unto this people and say, hearing ye shall hear and shall not understand; and seeing ye shall see and not perceive. For the heart of this people is waxed gross, and their ears are dull of hearing, and their eyes have they closed; lest they should see with their eyes, and hear with their ears, and understand with their hearts, and should be converted and I should heal them.” It is obvious from many scriptural references that there are two kinds of hearing-one that causes the heart to wax gross, heavy with misunderstanding, and the other which hears that which the ears dulled with false learning and judging from appearances cannot hear. To hear the “still small voice” of which so much is said the hearing must be of the heart and not of the ear from the human standpoint. “My sheep hear my voice” has nothing to do with a shepherd calling on the hillside. It is the inner hearing just as a wise dog is not misled or attracted by an imitation of his master’s voice, no matter how perfect the imitation. There is something in the “hearing” that detects the voice of ‘the shepherd, and it is just this thing which opens the doors to the spirit of the words of Life, which are otherwise dead letter.
The eighty-eight notes on a piano do not represent the sum total of sound-it extends to a point of infinity on both ends. Yet, because the heavy human hearing does not detect it, he says it does not exist. The universe is filled with music which remains inaudible to most of us because we are hearing with the human ear. The cause of so much failure in the field of Truth has been that most of us have been trying to hear the still small voice through the human ear, and, although it thunders down through the ages, the clamour of the human belief makes such a din with its unreality and false testimony that the “still small voice is inaudible,” or else it is interpreted through such limited, dulled senses that it is impracticable. “Hearing ye shall hear, and shall not understand,” showing how the ear can hear the word and yet not hear it. Hearing with the ear and not understanding, is hearing through the limited human sense. It is so far removed from the “God spake” that it cannot understand the “still small voice.” When you go within and shut your door you shall then know what the true sense of hearing is, for the “Father who heareth in secret shall reward thee openly.”
What is the hearing that the Father doeth? The shouting of the name of God has proven futile in the time of trouble. Loud speaking does not in any way attract the ear of the Divine. It only shows a gross lack of understanding of the Omnipresence of God as here, there, and everywhere, and makes of Him an enlarged auditory nerve at best. The Father hearing in secret, sensing, understanding, grasping that which is to be “established” on the earth-your earth, when you have gone within and shut the door. When you have shut the door of every human argument and every bit of human reasoning, and laid off the sandals of human understanding, and spoken to the Father with the same joyous abandon and freedom that you might speak to your human father-when you have done this the “Father who heareth in secret shall reward thee openly.” It does not say perhaps or maybe-it is definite and it is provable: “Shall reward thee openly.”
No matter what you were, did, or thought prior to the moment you went within and shut the door and spoke to the Father secretly. “Leave all and follow Me” means just that. You leave all—- all evil, fear, lack, limitation, and human reasoning just as you leave all your ideas about success and possessions and everything else that you have listed on the side of assets. You leave all, everything, and by leaving all you find all. It is glorious to contemplate that when the Father within says, “Leave all and follow Me,” He is asking that you leave the bondage to everything and follow the Me. When I say “bondage,” I mean just that. If a thing is binding you, if you cannot leave the bondage in it, you are still bound to it no matter whether you put it out of your immediate life or not. Many persons are controlled by things that they do not possess and which they feel they have put from their lives. To have an unsated longing for something that you have given up, and to imagine that because you have thrust it from you you are free from the bondage of that thing, is to mistake entirely the command, “Leave all and follow Me”-then you will find that you have left nothing except the bondage of it.
“The love of money is the root of all evil.” It is the love (bondage to it) of money, and not money, that is the root of evil. Money in itself is not more evil than food, clothing or anything else, but the bondage to it, whether it be much or little, is evil, and causes you to do all sorts of things either to get or hold it. A miser holding to the symbol while he starves is at the same point of expression as a beggar who is ready to commit any sort of crime to possess it. All extremes are evil-too much food will result in the same thing that too little will, and so on. Being bound to things and the love of them puts the limitation on them. Coming out into the Presence with the new-born sense of hearing, the way lies perfectly before you. The guiding influence is as a voice from behind thee which says, “This is the way; walk thou in it.” “This” is the way. There is that same note of definite direction, uncompromising instruction, contained in it, for, the Government being upon his shoulder, the instruction that is to come through the sense of hearing must be obeyed absolutely, and the human opinion must be put aside in order that the way may continue in peace.
If you salute any man you pass on the highway of life you are going against the instructions, “Salute no man you pass on the highway.” It is not an invitation to become unfriendly and unlivable-the saluting you are warned against is the exchange of opinions and beliefs and the “hearing” of some material information which changes your going on. Many a person would have been able to accomplish that thing set before him if he had not saluted some man on the way to his expression and heard something that spoiled his opportunity. An actress accustomed to giving a more than brilliant performance was one night told that a famous critic was in the audience, and had come with the express purpose of finding some flaw in her work. In the parlance of the street, she “went to pieces”-gave the worst performance of her career-and after the show she was taken home in a state of hysteria. She was informed that it had all been a mistake, and that the said critic had not been present that evening but the one before and had found nothing but praise for her work. What caused her to give such a terrible performance? Anything? Well, you answer it, and then you will see why we are to “salute no man as we pass along the way”-and more so is this true in regard to the revelations of the Christ teaching.
If you have not arrived at a point where you are past the state of arguing, you have not actually heard the word, and will be busy comparing different systems to find out which one contains God. No system contains God, yet they may all be contained in Him. The coal of fire placed on your lips shall also be placed on your ears. “Salute no man you pass on the highway of life.” He may be more interested in the personality of Jesus than in the Jesus-Christ. “Where does he live? Is he married? Any children-any money?” These are the eternal questions of the “man” you are warned against. He is eternally going out to see a person and not a principle, and he carries all filthiness that has accrued from the human hearing and the human “looking” at a person instead of “hearing a principle.” “I will hear what God will speak.” What a glorious resolution, and how hopeless it is to hear through the human understanding with its laws and limitations. But then, “I will hear what God will speak,” and if you are to do that it means that “your” speaking will have to cease and your human reasoning and understanding will have to give place to the new inspiration of the Almighty.
You are sure to hear something that will delight you, for it will carry with it the possibility of establishing it on the earth. When you begin to “make yourself as God”-which is what Jesus did, and could not escape doing if he worked from the premise, “In the beginning God”-then you shall begin to “feel” your way with the new senses, then shall you understand how the deaf shall hear. “Then shall the deaf hear”—–at the instant of recognition of the Divine capacity of hearing the limitations of the human ear fall away and man hears, and hears things that the human ear is incapable of ever knowing. “Eyes have not seen, ears have not heard . . . the things that are prepared.” They are already prepared for you when you can hear with the hearing that so completely transcends the human limitations that it breaks through the gates of Heaven and comes to the throne of the Presence. The changing sense of hearing and sight can only be attributable to the human limitations, since it is impossible to conceive of God with impaired vision or hearing, and the changeless Power is not subject to degrees of sound or distances. The reason hearing and sight change in the human sense is because they are limited to the human organism and can be easily deceived.
Shaking a sheet of steel on the stage produces an impression of thunder-and this on the sunniest June day-and so it goes. “Having ears, ye hear not.” As long as your hearing is stopped down to the physical instrument of hearing it is bound to be limited and faulty. “Then shall the dead hear the voice of God and live” gives us some sense of hearing and its power. The true hearing pierces every belief of the human kind, even death, and so Lazarus heard-not with the human ear, but with the spiritual hearing, and picked up his body and brought it forth. The establishing of himself again on earth took place because of this hearing. “Then shall the dead hear the voice of God and live” shoots through the walls of human belief and brings out the establishment of the thing on earth. When you begin to hear the “God spake” you shall begin to experience also the “establishing of the thing” or the “and it was done” state which instantly follows the hearing of the “God spake.” You cannot hear the “God spake” with the limited human senses, and God cannot hear the name, “Lord, Lord,” that is called to Him because it is merely a sound and has no power to “establish” itself.
“My sheep hear my voice”-and this My of the Father must come from the within that is cleansed of human reasoning, opinions, and beliefs. “He that is of God hearest God.” And when you hear God you are hearing the directing and governing Power of the universe, and surely then you are to experience the sure and certain joy which comes from the knowledge that “all things work together for good”-not perhaps, but actually work together. The overturning power of the Voice which speaks to the hearing ear keeps setting aside one limitation after another, one human belief after another, and causes the Lazarus to be established on the earth-though, if Jesus had “listened” to either Martha or Mary of the human sense testimony, he would never have spoken the word and caused the agreement in Lazarus to take place. Everything was against it-even Mary and Martha said, “If you had been here, our brother would not have died.” And when Jesus refused the opinion that Lazarus was dead, they still insisted that he was wrong and began to give all sorts of evidence to substantiate their human finding, hoping that Jesus would accept it as real and then perform a miracle.
But Jesus would have none of it-he would not “hear it” because he was hearing with the inner power, and when he heard the word of Life Eternal he called it to Lazarus, and, the agreement being made, he was “established on the earth” again. The invitation to “hear” is open to all-there is no monopoly of it. It is not given to those who have studied a certain system or followed a certain teacher or leader. It is given to any man who will throw off the cloak of human bondage sufficiently to be clad in the all-encircling Presence of God in His fullness. The promise stands: “If any man hear my words.” That is all you have to do: to “hear” with the understanding of the inner hearing. Not nearly so difficult if you do not preface this hearing with the belief that unless you have made elaborate preparations you cannot “hear” God. How about the child who is given the Kingdom of Heaven? Eventually, through the extension of the senses into the infinite reaches of God, through losing the limited personal sense of life and finding it in the Universal, does man come to the place of understanding, the place of “hearing” the statement: “Behold I stand at the door, and knock. If any man hear My voice and open the door, I will come in to him and sup with him and he with Me.” The first step in the becoming one with the Christ voice is to hear it. Many have tried to do this through the human sense of hearing, and have opened the door and nothing has entered.
“To him that overcometh will I grant to sit with me in my throne, even as I also overcame, and am set down with my Father in His throne.”
The beauty and love of Jesus, even at the last moment telling us of the human state that he also came through and making himself one with us showing that what was possible for him is possible for us, is the magnificent heritage that has to be accepted joyously. If you are to arrive at the stage which the human mind calls mastership, and come to that place where you are “set down with my Father in His throne,” it will have to be accomplished through the use of the extended senses as revealed to us through the teaching of Jesus. The only overcoming that actually takes place is the overcoming of the limitations of the human senses which judge from appearances and give forth the imperfect results thereby, their findings being imperfect, as well as their premises. Finally, beloved, hear this:
“He that hath ears, let him hear what the Scriptures say unto the churches.”
The voice and echo are one. Like prayer and answer.
I AM
“I AM here, I AM there, I AM everywhere.” I AM within all, within every fibre, nerve, and cell of your being. I AM in the inanimate as well as the animate – I AM everywhere.
I AM everything and everywhere; call upon ME and see if I will not open the windows of Divine substance. I AM THAT I AM – that particular I AM Consciousness which should come to this condition or situation to make its nothingness appear – to cause it to release the power that lies hidden there, and which has caused you to fear. I AM ALL IN ALL – I AM everywhere. No matter wither you go, into what locality, I AM there – I have gone before you, because I AM already there and always have been there. I have already caused myself to be so impressed upon you that you find everything already prepared before you arrive. You find everything answered before you ask. You find everything supplied before you need. It is well with you – do you hear? – irrespective of person, place, or thing. It is well with you, irrespective of teachings of any nature what-soever. I AM – I AM – I AM.
I am the lost word which is hidden within your consciousness, which IS your consciousness veiled over by a mystification of human senses. In judging from appearances you have lost true values, and have accepted shadows as realities. I AM the lost word, the Word before which the doors of the universe fly open – doors in the impassible walls of human obstacles; doors that lead out on highways never charted by the human sense because of its limitations. Doors that belong to the palaces of the kings, fly open at my coming, and the riches of that which is Caesar’s are laid before me – to take and do with as I like.
“I AM here, I AM there, I AM everywhere.” It is well. The new voyage on which you are about to embark is already prepared – all the minutest details have been taken care of.
Arise, take no thought; all these things shall be added to the unafraid one. Do you hear? You who read this page? You? The endless planning and trying to arrange things suddenly ceases. The government shall be upon his shoulders, the government of your life, and all is well. Only the personal attitude can keep you out of this beautiful, restful experience. Be not afraid: “It is I.” Why should you be afraid to accept your good here and now, instead of waiting for the harvest? Have I not told you over and over again, “Look again,” the fields are white, the labourers are few. Thrust in the sickle. Reap, you who read this page. You! Reap the fullness of life everywhere present. Not one thing shall be hidden from you.
When you come to recognize the Allness of Life, there will be no place for sin, disease, and death, and you shall find a new thing working in your members which will be above both health and sickness, a new consciousness which is not the result of evil overcome, but which is the out-picturing of the Spirit, which is of too pure eyes to behold iniquity.
The healed man is perhaps better than the sick man, but he is still swinging between something and nothing. If he wishes to stop the swinging between the pair of opposites he will have to move up to the place of recognition of the All-Presence, and there abide in a state of changeless bliss. His ability, then, will not be to demonstrate the word, but to bring the living presence of the word into visibility. This is your power; it is the power which was given to the child – in consciousness – the ability to accept the Good that has been prepared for him. Do you hear? I speak the word of healing for you at this moment.
There is but the NOW – it is NOW that I write. It is NOW that you read, and at this Divine instant of the All-Now I speak from out of these pages and say, “Rise up and walk; open your eyes and see the glorious Finished Mystery; open your ears and hear the things which human lips cannot utter; stretch forth your arm of strength and accomplish that which you will. Go your way into expression. It is well with you. Be whole; be free; be newly born.” You who are reading this page, do you hear? Do you hear? Do you hear? In the Glorious All-Now, it is well with you – rise and declare from the housetops your being. It is wonderful! It is wonderful! It is wonderful! Even the wrath of man shall praise thee – even the thing which has seemed so untoward shall rise and sing thy glory. The limited personal Jesus shall praise the Christ within your consciousness. You shall call it from the housetops of your being by telling it in secret to your soul – by pure recognition of the All-Presence in the All-Now.
Human language fails to express anything like the Joy of the All-Now, but between the lines you will find the Spirit that will accomplish this for you. Be still; the unuttered word is the Word of God which shall not, cannot, and has not the ability to return unto you void. For the Word of God is fulfillment pressing toward your consciousness for expression. The word which speaks it into existence is the actual recognition of the Presence everywhere.
“I AM here, I AM there, I AM everywhere.” To recognize this is to understand without further difficulty how it is that you can now reach out across the universe and touch ME in another being, and cause that being to take on the splendid sense of health, of happiness, and prosperity that you formerly tried to make happen by beseeching special favors of ME. The Sons of God shout for joy – you cannot help it – “Blessings, blessings, blessings, so many you cannot count them” – blessings so many – like the deluge of golden mist that fills the valley after a storm – you are filled with this invisible-visible substance, and the light from this consciousness causes all the evil shadows of human belief to recede. It is well with you. “Blessings, blessings, blessings, so many you cannot count them.” Do you hear? Do you hear? Not the cold human words, but the Spirit of that which sets aside every human law, however conceived or made. Blessings that come from the Grace of God pouring into expression into your life in the All-Now, in the All-Presence.
Be still outwardly, and shout for joy within until it has shattered the walls of your prison. Do you see? If you once glimpse the All-Presence in the All-Now you will begin to see that I AM not only here and there and everywhere, but I Am everything and partake of the nature of everything through this great Oneness. I AM everything and everybody; I AM ALL.
I speak to you , and for this reason comes this message into your hand. From this instant I AM into manifestation in your life as a real, living factor – not as a far-off God, but as the very life of your life, the great connecting-link between you and everything manifest on the earth. It is well; be not afraid. It is I.
I have many things to show you when you can be still. One by one the clamoring voices of argument, revenge, and resentment will have screamed themselves lifeless. That which can rend you must come out of you, even though you fall as one dead, and dead you will be to human babbling. This which can rend you sore must come out of you so that you can soar to new heights wich were impossible with the former baggage. Let go, give up, and call down into manifestation the blessing of the All-Now and the All-Presence. “I AM here (right while you are reading, right while I am writing), I AM there, I AM everywhere.” The coming and going of things is only in the human thought. Nothing passes away in the reality of the Real. There is nothing to be destroyed or hurt or made right.
When you have ascended into heaven and glimpsed the eternal, perfect harmony of that consciousness without beginning or ending, you will descend into the hell of your human thinking and bring with you the All-Presence, and see this hell self-consumed. You will see the fire of evil wiped out by the blaze of life. You will merely bring the recognition of that which is in heaven unto earth, or out into the manifest world, and see it change. You will see a whole city appear with the evaporation of a fog of human thinking and belief, and your heaven unfold before you out of the mystification of your human thought.
Right where you are is holy ground, for “I AM here, I AM there, I AM everywhere.” Unlatch latchets of your sandals; let go of the human reasoning or the how, why, when, and where; let go of all systems of Truth, and drink deep of the living water of inspiration wich is wordless and unutterable. I shall impress you with that which is.
“Stand and deliver” – “He who hears obeys.” “When the Son of Man cometh, shall he find faith on the earth?” You have to answer that for yourself. Perhaps you have already answered it in the negative for the rest of the world. But it has nothing to do with the rest of the world; it has only to do with your world. When the revelation cometh to you, when I come to you and speak, even as I AM speaking at this instant, shall that I find faith – recognition on the earth – in the manifest realm of your earth? While you are looking for evil in the world to overcome, you are making so much noise you can not hear Me as I stand at your door and knock. It is well; be not afraid; one day the awakening comes, and then you take your pearl of great price and run away and bury it in a field – in a new state of consciousness – and you tell no man about it. And you know why.
The deepening of consciousness takes place, and with it the glorious accompanying manifestation. Have I not said to you in many ways, “If a man lose his life he shall find it”? If you lose the personality, letting it be swallowed up in the I AM, then will you lose also all the human law pertaining to that personality; the problems of that personality will then be of no concern to you, for they will cease to exist. The personality is on the plane of cause and effect – the four months to the harvest – the “as ye sow, so shall ye reap”; but when you are lost in ME, you find your real life, the life everlasting. Literally some will find this and appropriate it, and be translated into the new and wonderous Spirit.
Remember, I have said unto you, “The last enemy that shall be overcome is death.” When you lose your limited personal sense of life in the all-life, you lose the sense of disease and evil, and without disease, death cannot come into manifestation. Hence the last enemy, the last belief in a power outside of the All-Presence, is swallowed up.
Death is swallowed up in Victory, in Life, and you shall say, “Whereas before I was dead, Now (the only) I AM alive.”
Take away the condemnation from your world, bathe it in the new Light of Love and Life.
When you cease to look for evil, evil will cease to manifest to you.
“KICK THE HELL OF RIGID THINGS FROM ‘NEATH YOU FEET AND LEAP THROUGH SPACE; AND SPACE SHALL HOLD YOU WITH THE THRILLING FLUX OF LIFE ASCENDING; AND HOLD YOU MORE COMPLETE IN EVERY PART THAN DID THE RIGID COILS YE FLUNG BEHIND YOU.”
The rigid coils of human thinking – the age old beliefs and laws that have seemed like the coils of a python, crushing the very life out of you! These shall finally be put from you by being divested of their power. There is that upward rising, that quickening, that going to the Father, which is the recognition which lift up to the Mount.
“Underneath are the everlasting arms”; the everlasting power is with you and in you and through you. The great changelessness of the Law of God – which is, “As above, so below; As within, so without.” No place can you go where I AM not. If you take the wings of the morning and fly to uttermost parts of the earth, there AM I; or into hell, there AM I. I only have to be recognized to set aflame the bush by the wayside. I have myriad ways of speaking to you – when the scales of a double universe have dropped from your eyes. I AM that I AM Do you hear? Nothing is hard to ME.
You who have struggled all night with the Angel shall at last have the bandage of human belief torn from your eyes, and you shall loose it and let it go. So many have tried this by first recognizing that the Angel had power which was working against them, and then, in trying to let go, found it practically impossible to do so. Do you not see that the only reason a problem has power is because you feed it constantly with your thought? The more your attention is upon it, the greater it becomes to you; then one day you recognize the startling fact that you are sustaining it like a parasite, which is mocking the meat it is feeding upon, and you take from it the nourishment of thought, and find that in so doing you have loosened the only hold it had upon you. Do you see? You who read this page? You?
In the spaceless and timeless centre of your soul you will see the nothingness of the dust of human existence – you will see that the thousand years have been but a day, and that you stand gloriously revealed to yourself, and it is this inner revelation which causes the human manifestation to come to higher and more perfect proportions and expression. The effect will take care of itself. The out-picturing of the state recognized within will automatically be made manifest. When the mind lets go of what is has been holding in the hand, the hand lets go and drops the article automatically, even though it was holding on with all might and main before. Do you see that the results that follow are the signs which follow, and which do not precede? When you are not looking for signs, for results, it will be because you are completely satisfied that the law of God never fails, and therefore any anxiety or thought you take regarding the outcome of the inner vision is totally wasted, and in many cases acts as a mist which obscures the truth which should appear.
I have passed you often on the highways of life, and you have failed to see or hear me, because you are eternally looking to the outward shell. Remember that I speak through any avenue that is free enough to let me into expression. I do not always come with purple and fine linen or the approval of a Church; I come in the manner in which you can best see me; but if you are hypnotized to the outside, to the appearances, then you will pass me by.
Fear not! When you are ready I will do the works through you. When you are ready to let go of the limiting sense of things about you, and the limiting personality with which you have identified yourself, you will see ME.
“I AM here, I AM there, I AM everywhere” – Blessings, blessings, blessings, so many you cannot count them.” Do you hear? You who read this page? You?
I AM THAT WHICH I DESIRE TO BE
DO YOU know the secret of life? Do you know the password which will open all closed doors? Do you know the thrill of real life? Would you like to feel continually as you do on some fine spring morning when the sun is just peeping through the rose and turquoise and flirting with a million diamond dewdrops?
YOU CAN.
Here is the password for you:
“I am that which I desire to be.”
One moment, please. Use no headstrong, blind and stubborn will power. Use no struggling, mental gymnastics, and contort your mind by vainly declaring so many words.
LISTEN:
You remember who “I AM THAT I AM” is, don’t you? It is the name of every living man. Because “I AM” has sent me. My name is “I AM.” Your name is “I AM.”
What did “I AM” send you here for, but to give expression to Himself; to give expression to love, beauty, holiness, harmony, happiness? Take your Bible down from the shelf and find out what the attributes of God are. They are peace, holiness, happiness, beauty.
Your means of communication with God is called prayer, and prayer is desire. Doesn’t it begin to look simple? You have your “I AM” and your meaning for “desire.” And since all good comes from God, who is good, then even your desires are in reality the “still small voice” seeking utterance in you – – yes, your very desires are (in reality in so far as they are good) the open lines of communication – – are the messages from God to you.
Did you ever desire to be that which you are not? Did you ever desire to be strong, well, happy and well supplied? Aren’t these all good desires? Where did they come from? From the base, so-called mortal mind?
You never stopped to realize, did you, that your desires are the embryonic formations waiting to be made manifest in the flesh? “Thy will be done” – – let thyself be manifested in me.
“As a man thinketh in his heart so is he.” What are you thinking? “Now are we the sons of God” – – NOW, in great glowing, vibrant letters. No matter what you were an hour or a minute or even a year ago – – “NOW are we the sons of God.” NOW – – think about the present possibility of the word – – NOW.
The pattern which moulds our desires is already cast for us “Sons of God.” Then desire to be what you are – – a child of the King. Are you acting to the full extent of your nobility? “Seek (in prayer desire) the Kingdom of Heaven (which is within) and all things shall be added.”
“All things are yours.” “You are that which you desire to be NOW.”
I AM THE LIGHT
“I am the Light of the world”—A light that “shineth in darkness and the darkness comprehended it not.” So is it with the I AM of you. Once discovered and identified as YOU, it brings a LIGHT unto this “world” of human thought-taking shadows. The moment this is established, you will begin to experience the automatic effect of light on darkness. You have for ages been trying to “bring” the light from some outside region–either up (in Heaven), or from some far-away place of mystery. From time to time you have apparently been able to do just this. But your success was so fleeting and irregular that it came under the heading of “miracle.” Yet, “I AM the Light of the WORLD” stands and until you discover and identify yourself with your I AM—the Father to whom Jesus immediately turned and associated Himself in Oneness—you will not be able to dispel much of the human-thinking darkness which you have drawn to yourself.
It is wonderful when the revelation of your Permanent Identity breaks over you. It is this identification with the FATHER, “I and My Father are One,” that gave Jesus Christ the power over the shadows of His Jesus consciousness. It was this nearness and naturalness of the Father within that made Him what He was; and it is this same consciousness which will change you and cause wonders to happen—miracles to the thought-clogged mentalities about you, but to you just revelations from the standpoint of your new plane of consciousness. The attempt to establish this new revelation is, of course, fraught with the limitation of a language, which is three-dimensional—and is trying to “utter the utter able WORD.” Yet by arranging its utter able words in inspired patterns, suddenly the unwritten or unuttered WORD becomes real. But first and above all, the question asked a hundred times in these pages, “Believes thou this?” must be answered by you. If, to the teachings of Jesus in their entirety, you cannot answer in the affirmative, then you are holding a reservation for some other than God Almighty, and have not yet recognized Him SUPREME.
It is futile to imagine that you can deny this omnipotence and hope to attain results with a divided allegiance. It is all or nothing. And it cannot be “all” on the three-dimensional, thought-taking plane on which we found ourselves, when Jesus Christ first came. “If you deny ME, I shall also deny you,” is quite normal reaction. When you throw a rubber ball against a wall, it returns to you with the force with which it was thrown. You are not surprised. If you deny the power of Jesus Christ as a reality, then when you call upon it, nothing responds; for you have already established the consciousness which does not believe in IT, and are only saying words. Be not like the heathen, who think by repeating many words to gain the ear of God. There is only ONE WORD and the moment that is felt-uttered, it breaks itself up into thousands of human words, depending upon the language in which you think.
A man may think in any language or several, but he only “feels” in ONE, the unspoken language of the heart-soul. So the universal language is the urge or sensing quality. The moment it is accepted in recognition, it is able to say, “I believe.” For it is not measuring by anything found in human consciousness. It is wonderful when this becomes true to you. For the moment it does, you begin to KNOW in the right sense of the word. It is not a “think-knowing,” but a “feel-knowing,” and this is not emotional or sentimental. It is something so well balanced and so free from all the sensations of the think-knowing as to be free from any curiosity or questioning. When this feel-know is touched, the manifestation will follow, either instantly or later—but at the precise moment when it should.
Imagine the cripple at the Temple gate ever dreaming of suddenly leaping and dancing, free and in perfect bodily condition. He could have been able to think about only as the “impossible”—yet it took place, and mark you, he had no time to study any “system” of Truth or hear any dissertations on the subject. He was able to “believe” or accept the gift, and the Father within answered for him, “Yea, LORD” in agreement, and came forth with full capacity to do that which he was called upon to do. The only reason anything can ever take place in you is because the Father consciousness within you has full capacity to accomplish it. Otherwise there would be no manifest results. If this Father consciousness were not already there, you could not implant it there by any amount of thinking, for it is entirely too fantastic for human thought to handle. You see then we are not trying to bring something new to you; not asking you to create a “new” consciousness, or to do something. We are merely calling attention to that which actually exists in you, and has always existed in you. It was through the discovery of this that Jesus, the carpenter, was able to do things that “Jesus, the Carpenter” could not do yet did. Whatever has been accomplished, at any time, above the line of human thinking, has been done through this same discovery, in a degree.
True this “Father” may be buried beneath centuries of human thinking, intelligence and findings. He may be covered with the deep incrustation of ” I have never seen it done, nor have I ever known any who has seen it done;” and to extricate the Father from this morass of beliefs seems a labor for a spiritual Hercules. If he approaches it through the limitation of the material, he finds his Augean Stables too much for him—and gives up in despair. Perhaps he then starts a long and tiresome study of it all—and yet, remember the WRETCH at the Temple gate, with a life filled with evil, suddenly releasing this Father? It thrills one to think that instead of all this human palsy-like movement of thought, the cripple was “suddenly” freed, and the entire manifestation of evil absorbed, transformed. The old body was not destroyed, nor gotten rid of—but the union of Father and Son released the perfect manifestation. Can you “believe?” Well, not until this, “I AM the Light of the WORLD,” becomes YOU. Until in a natural, normal state of mind you are able to accept this wonderful revelation. Over and over again you “try” to do this—but presently you SEE what it is, and then you dare to call upon the Father as naturally as you would call upon your human father were he in the next room. What would he do if you called upon him in the day of trouble? He would rush to help you in every possible way. So just as you know this to be natural—(it is what you and everybody else would expect) so must this calling on the FATHER within be natural, normal and easy. I must stress to you that it is EASY and NATURAL and NORMAL. You must not make an event of it.
Instantly when Jesus (the carpenter) called upon HIS Father, HE (Jesus) became Jesus Christ—“One with the Father.” And this elevation caused the Light to shine in the darkness, to illumine the human situation, and reveal the nothingness of the mortal or matter thinking-pictures. So powerful is this Light that no combination of laws, thoughts or opinions can or will stand against it. In the case of the cripple, we see it wiping out forty years of accumulated belief with the same ease as it might have brushed away a single thought. Do you “believe”? You cannot believe it with the human thought- taking process, for it is utterly impossible.
There is “so much to do” in your present situation before it is ready to manifest the new state of things, your poor mind is worn out trying to “dream”” about it all. If you do not watch you will find yourself saying: “Well, when I come (on earth) again, I will do so and so.” When you come again you come with all the limitations you take with you. For the experience of dropping off the body does not suddenly enlighten you. You remark how natural it all was to Jesus, and the human mind says as an excuse for its failure to experience fulfillment, health and joy here and NOW, “Oh, yes, but that was Jesus, and He had a special power,” and so you will set up a JESUS against His own admonition: “Call not Me good”—do not mistake who “doeth the works”—“Call not Me good.” And in further defense of the revelation He made it plain that anything He had ever done, and even greater works, were possible to YOU. Do you BELIEVE? You must answer this yourself.
We have seen that the cripple did not have time to think about his problem—he had been doing that for forty years—but suddenly he was able to believe, and in that one instant—in the “twinkling of an eye”—was he able to change his entire bodily manifestation. Yet all that took place was a showing forth of that which had always existed. It was that which had been created “in the beginning,” perfect and eternal in the heavens. It is wonderful. It makes your situation so possible of change. You are suddenly released from a straitjacket of human thinking, which has bound you, and crippled your capacities. No body could of itself be crippled or ugly or aged. It must have over it a bondage of hateful human thinking, which like unto many ropes and chains cut deep into the flesh and fester, in ugliness and discord. Break any of these cords or ropes of human thought and it experiences what the world calls “a healing,” but it is only an aperture through which the Light has come into being.
All this seems vague and hypothetical, yet in reality the moment the thought force is taken away from anything that thing comes to its natural form and shape again. Just as a soft rubber ball crushed in the hands will return to its normal, perfect symmetry the moment the fingers have released it. Break the thought on a given problem and the abnormal manifestations of that problem go out of the picture. Where do they go? The force that was formerly used to hold them in place is absorbed and picked up, and the moment this occurs the manifestation which was sustained by this force drops out of sight.
So you begin to see what it is to “Be still and know that I AM God,” and why Paul, in an impassioned moment, when he had cut through to this ONENESS, literally “screamed,” “Know ye not that ye are Gods,” trying to bring to the Greeks (who understand so well the “gods” and their alleged unlimited powers) just what it must mean to know what “Jesus” was revealing to the world. “Know ye not that ye are Gods?” was some question to ask the ancient Greeks who believed so strongly in the powers of their gods.
When Jesus asks you “Believest thou this?” you are confronted by the same thing. Do you believe it is possible for you to do the WORKS that HE did “and even greater works?” In other words, do you believe that “you are gods”? Many human minds have tried it and thought to set up a “human god,” only to have him fall in due season with all the trade-marked trappings of his reign. Yet the question stands. Will you do the works of Jesus Christ? Or will you still parry the question and make what you think are “modest” excuses? Are you afraid, or do you still want to “save your darling (personality) from the flames” of LIFE which will consume it in order that your Permanent Identity may be made manifest? It is wonderful when you begin to glimpse this Father-within consciousness as natural, normal and easy, and dare to “Call upon ME,” and instantly experience the change which the Light brings to the shadowy valley of thought in which you have been living all these centuries.
The coming of light to a shadow-world does no overcoming or setting aside of realities. What seemed so real and impossible to the Shadow Kingdom is no problem to the LIGHT. For instance, if it were possible for you to enter a two-dimensional kingdom and see it working, it would be one of length and breadth with no height, and everything would have to take place flat on the ground. Circumscribing a shadow with a square of darkness would not constitute any problem for you, but if the shadow-being had consciousness of it he would know this to be a wall over which he could not climb, and he would have a problem. This problem would be as real to him as yours is to you.
Then, entering this present kingdom with its consciousness of the third dimension, “height,” would instantly make nothing of all the problems of the two-dimensional. A wall of shadow is nothing to you. You will glibly say, “it only seems to be a wall.” But to the two-dimensional being, it is solid, made of the same substance of which he is composed, and has the same power to him as a wall of matter has to you. But you find a wall of shadow nothing. You use no force or effort on it, nor do you try to suggest ways and means of overcoming it. While the shadowy being complains of its reality, you are not concerned with its—to him—awful manifestation. But there is no way for this other to escape his prison, except he enters the third dimension. The moment he does this, he too, sees his prison nothing but a shadow, and smilingly walks through it. It has no bondage for him NOW.
Thus when Jesus came to your world, he found you bound by many prisons, all of them as imaginary and unreal as the shadowy wall to the shadow man. Yet even as the latter protested about the reality of his condition, so do you spend your entire life trying to overcome matter with matter. You can picture a wall so solid that nothing can penetrate it, and can back this up by the testimony of the entire race of your world. You can argue and wonder and speculate. Unless you accept the revelation of Jesus
I COME NOT TO DESTROY
“I come not to destroy, but to fulfill.” The I, when it is once discovered and recognized as the point where the invisible becomes visible, comes not to destroy but to fulfill the vacuum of human thinking. All evil is but the vacuum of belief——belief in a place or condition where God is not——-and the Presence of God does not come in any manner to destroy a vacuum but to fulfill it or make itself visible. Hell is a vacuum of burning beliefs which can only be dissipated by the recognition of the Presence. “If I make my bed in hell, thou art there” and where “thou art” is Heaven—–only this has to be recognized. The old firefighting which takes place in the minds of many leaves many scars and a heavy smell of smoke on the garments of those who participate in this battle.
The becoming aware of the Presence causes the vacuum and its imaginary power to be dissolved. Hell is the collective name for all evil——it is the burning, destroying imagination plus all the fear and judgment from outside appearances. Whether it be a toothache or an earthquake, both of them represent a vacuum in belief——a place where this Presence is apparently absent. Yet there is no such place possible except in the imagination. “Heaven and earth are filled with Thee,” and there is no possible place or condition into which one can enter when “I go before you and prepare the way” that is not eternally true and probable by the simple recognition of the Presence and the disregarding of the vacuum of imagination, no matter in what form It is showing itself. It is not your duty to be overcoming evil, in the generally accepted sense of the word, remembering that “he who taketh the sword shall perish by the sword.” Your overcoming will be the natural Recognition of the Presence——the manifestation can take care of itself—–and verily the hell of sickness and disease will vanish at the instant of this recognition.
“And his father, seeing him a long way off”——-the very recognition of the Presence will cause an instant uprising to take place and a movement toward the manifestation. It is wonderful when you begin to see that it is the natural thing taking place instead of the unnatural. So long have we been handling relative beliefs that they have become the order of things, governed by the laws of matter——-and God and His universe have become unnatural, occasionally and at best miraculous. What progress can you hope to make with such an intangible set of laws as the God laws viewed through the eyes of the relative? If it is not natural for the Presence to come into visibility by the Recognition, then is our preaching vain and we are hopeless indeed, for through what prayer or anguish will He respond? Can you imagine anything intelligent or satisfactory coming out of mathematics if we were the least uncertain as to whether the law of addition would work for certain people or not?
We know that any man who thirsteth can come to the Fountain and drink —-just as any man can use with impunity the law of mathematics—-but he must first recognize this law, honour and obey it with all his soul, mind, and body, if he is to get results from it. The Law then works quite naturally and the results do not surprise the man. He knew that the answer existed before he started, but through the glass darkly he could not see it. “I knew that these things were before I said `Thank you, Father.’ “So do you begin to understand that until the Power becomes as natural as the law of mathematics you will perpetually try to work it, and the results will be called “demonstration,” which word has come to mean something that is rare, unexpected, unnatural, almost impossible.
You cannot work with such a flimsy premise——-there is no hope in it. If your prayer cannot be answered with the same ease with which the mathematical problem can be answered, because it has always been answered, you cannot see the seeming miracles take place. “Awake, thou that sleepest, and Christ shall give thee light” is more and more becoming a command to awaken not to a new doctrine, but an awakening to a truth which does set free by showing you that you are already free. “Whom the Son sets free is free indeed”—–the Son in this instance indicates the point of consciousness within you where the invisible is being stepped down into the visible. If all this cannot be treated as the most natural, normal, unemotional event, it cannot take place with even regularity, and the Kingdom of Heaven will be an intermittent thing—-there will be no steady flow of the Power or the Presence. All commotion and excitement will be replaced by the deepest emotion—-the emotion of stillness.
“Be still and know that I Am God” is not a “working” of the Truth——it is the point of pure recognition and revelation and it is within every man. Do you begin to see the natural procedure that must take place before the Kingdom of Heaven can be revealed here and now? “I come not to destroy but to fulfill.” For the first time the thrill of Life coursing through the poor diseased imagination begins to fill everything full by making Itself visible. “Behold I stand at the door and knock” is the perpetual urge of the unseen or the unknown to be given a body and a form, but “ye would not.” “I come not to destroy” your body or temple, but to show you that I Am the Power which can pick it up or lay it down, which can cause the springs to rise in the desert, and the low places to be exalted and the rough places to be made smooth and the crooked places straight. Do you hear? Do you begin to feel the’ Presence and to understand what it is to recognize for a moment that nothing—-no, not anything —–is to be destroyed, but everything is to be fulfilled with the Love of God which only has to be recognized to change the imagination and shatter the belief that held it into its outline of ugliness? Even your enemy, your disease, your poverty, are not to be destroyed, but to be fulfilled—–to be filled with the substance of God—–and this seemingly impossible thing takes place by recognition of the Presence. Keep this naturally in your mind or else the importance of it will overthrow you.
Make it the most ordinary thing, remembering that the child has the gift of materializing his Father Christmas by accepting it as true, and that Jesus gave you the same formula to make God come into visibility in your life. Do not let any man whose breath is in his nostrils—-filled with the terrible intellect of evil—-take this precious simplicity from you. “The Wisdom of God is foolishness in the eyes of man”—–and the Wisdom which fulfills and does not destroy “anything in all my holy mountain” is past understanding or reason. “Search the Scriptures, for in them ye think ye have life eternal.” Little by little you will see just what is meant by this natural approach, this natural recognition. It will free you from all the surprise of manifestation.
When you come to the place of naturalness of the Presence, then the manifestation, whether instantaneous and outside of the order of man or not, will not surprise you—–it will cease to be a demonstration, something to be repeated with wonder and will be the Holy Presence lovingly showing you the way. “I am the way, the Truth, and the Light”——and when this comes a little more into the alignment of the natural and ordinary your way will be one of manifestation. All the impossible things will be possible, for you have gone out from among “them” whose chief business it is to tell strange and wonderful things—–you will be experiencing them and considering them as the natural out-picturing of the Presence. The fulfilling will begin its movement in you, and, after that, any measure you hold before it—–even the borrowed measures—- will be filled full. All the terrible warfare—-the hunting and fighting evil—-will be gone. The glorious “I come not to destroy but to fulfill” will be a living proof of the Presence in action.
“I come not to destroy” your disease or belief, but to fulfill the temple and the dark shadows of belief with light. No matter how they have crystallized into ugly, immovable gargoyles of hard and fast laws, they will melt out of the pictures. You do not care what becomes of them—-any more than the freed bird cares for its shell once it has spread its wings. That outline that was itself egg crumbles into the dust and is no more, even as the thin outline of your horrible problem crumbles into nothingness and is no more. The thing that made a bird an egg is completely filled with life, and as the “Lord is magnified within” it expands to the limit of the belief and shatters once and for always the belief in egg. So is it when you recognize the presence of this Power within you—it seems to expand as you become aware of it until it shatters the shell of belief which held the vacuum of your human thinking, and the place thereof is no more. Presently it shall not come into mind any more, and even shall not be remembered.
“The former things have passed away; they shall not come into mind nor be remembered any more.” Formerly we went out to battle with the thing called evil —-now we have reduced it to the vacuum of belief in the absence of God. No matter how rampant it may be, and how destructive in its manifestation, or how terrible in its dimensions—-it is in the final analysis the absence of God, and this absence of God can only exist in the imagination, for God is omnipresent. He is not omnipresent to the human belief. That is why Jesus could do nothing of himself, and why he immediately went to the Father within his consciousness. The transmutation of hell to Heaven is not a battle, but a revelation—–the moment you become aware of the Presence, the transmutation takes place.
The laws governing this are few. “Take your attention away from appearances”—–“secretly” (see that you tell no man)—–and the “magnifying of the Lord.” Having come to the place of acceptance of One God, the handling of belief ceases to be the handling of something real, and the attention formerly given to overcoming is turned full force into the fulfilling of the Law. As the borders of your tent of consciousness are enlarged to the point of naturalness of the Presence, you will see things happen which formerly were only entrusted to the special initiates and masters. When you awaken to the simplicity of the Christ truth you will see that you have suddenly arrived at the point of much of this. “Ho, every man” gives you your carte blanche to enter into the Holy of Holies—–your own Father consciousness—–and begin filling full the vacuums of the hell of your life. It is wonderful, it is thrilling, when you begin to walk with Me and talk with Me, for in some strange and glorious way I begin walking with you and talking with you—–yea, even walking in you and talking in you and revealing to you many things which can never be voiced by the human voice or conceived by the human thought.
I come to fulfill the thing called Heaven on earth and to reveal it all to the one who is ready to see the Presence of the One instead of the many. “Behold, I make all things new”—-I make all things new because the “fulfilling” is merely the revealing of the Presence —-and the Presence, even as the full-fledged bird breaking from its egg, is new and yet has absorbed its former self, so I make everything new. No more the pouring of new inspiration into the old human receptacles of human belief—-no more the patching up of the old garments with the new cloth—–but the wholly new revelation making itself manifest by the fulfilling of the Law. “I come not to destroy but to fulfill” will thrill you and relieve you of all the hateful warfare with evil that has been going on——it will bring you to a true understanding of the non-resistance of the Christ Mind within you and make you understand the height and depth and majesty of this Presence.
It is wonderful—–it is glorious——it causes the Hosannas to rise from the very centre of your being and magnify the Lord of Lords and Host of Hosts. Within this glorious fulfilling lies the freedom of the Sons of God—-the liberty of the free-born, the going into and possessing of the land. Yes ! there is a rest for the people of God—–a rest from the destroying of anything and a joyous expression of the fulfilling. It is amazing how many things will leap into expression at the coming of this understanding. “Behold, 1 come quickly and my reward is with me.” Believest thou this? Do you think it is so? Answer Me. Answer Me—-is it so? At the moment of recognition of the Presence “I come quickly” into manifestation, bringing my reward with Me. I do not come through the slow processes of human thinking —–the moment of recognition causes the fulfilling to take place and the reward is with Me always—-the reward for recognizing Heaven in the midst of hell. “Awake, thou that sleepest, and Christ shall give thee light.” “Awake and arise from the dead”—–the dead beliefs and appearances will fall away the moment you conceive the facts pertaining to “You do not need to fight—–set yourself and see.”
All the integrity of recognition of the Presence is brought to bear on this situation—–the conscious recognition of the Presence here, there, and everywhere. If there is anything in your life too terrible, or horrible, or awful to contain God, any person so terrible or degenerate not to be filled with His Presence, any place so void of His Presence as to be called hell, it is impossible for you to work from the basis of Omnipresence and hence you are shut out of the rich manifestation of Him. You may spend hours trying to force Him to enter into these situations from without. He will not enter a sick body and subsequently leave it well; He will not enter a sick business and leave it successful, nor will He enter hell and change it into Heaven. This is the old personal control method which is thought to cause things to happen by the “taking-thought methods of yore.” Unless He is always there, and always will be there, there is nothing you can do or leave undone which will cause this to take place.
Unless the Presence is everywhere it is nowhere as omnipresence, and the moment you see the naturalness of this wonderful Truth you will stop, once and for always, trying to control God, and start a very successful campaign of recognizing Him. All the condemnation and hateful resentment will fade out —-all the loathsomeness of evil will pass. “God is in His holy temple,” the whole earth is rejoicing, and His holy temple is the manifest world. Who are you to section it off into little patches called God-temples, excluding Him from anything that does not conform to your narrow ideas of the Universal? All the hell-holes and sumps of evil from which you have been drawing away your holy robes are eternally hidden in your consciousness, and will fester there until they are smashed to pieces by the recognizing of the Presence. It is glorious when this rushing, gushing Power, passing through the Universe “fulfilling” and not destroying, comes to be understood by you.
The whole creation of evil which has existed and been sustained by your thought falls to pieces. The surprise attack of it caves in-the Glory of the Risen Lord is being revealed and all flesh shall see it together. “I come not to destroy, but to fulfill”—-I come to fill the diseased body of your imagination full of the vibrant life which is even now searching the “;joints and marrow,” and in the twinkling of an eye restores the radiant sound sense of Life which man calls health to you. The most loathsome disease, then, is not something to be fought with; it is merely a shell outline held in the imagination, by the recognition of the Presence, it is shattered instantly and the place and design thereof is no more. You have suddenly stopped feeding it with your thought, and it, being only as old as your last thought about it, disintegrates and falls into the dust of oblivion instantly it is unfed. It is wonderful—–the way of oneness. “I come not to destroy”—-no, not even that most hateful problem you have been fighting with so unjustly for so long —-I come to fulfill. Do you hear?
If I destroyed your problem and left you nothing in return, where would you be? But with the revelation of the Presence which comes to “fulfill,” the line of imagination called evil, no matter however real, is automatically wiped out of the pictures. “I come not to destroy but to fulfill.” “Put up your sword” —–remembering always that “he who takes the sword shall perish by the sword”—–he who fights evil is still working with the two-power idea, and fails to see God standing in the midst of hell. He goes on fighting the flames, at last being consumed by them, because in that spot—-in that vacuum where he believes God is not—-only the fury of his belief can bum away. “Heaven and earth are full of thee”—-what else is there? Evil? Go dip seven times in the Jordan—-until all these theories of oneness and something else have been washed from you—- and then you will understand how it is that “I come not to destroy but to fulfill” is true, and what it means to recognize the Presence in the midst of your problem instead of trying to introduce it from the outside. Forget your wild ideas of destroying and begin the fulfilling.
Fill everything full to overflowing with the Presence and you will stand and see the flames of your hell fade into soft rose-coloured hues of Love. It is wonderful—–“Heaven and earth are full of Thee.” Where can you go from the Presence? Answer Me—-and, if you can at no time be out of the Presence, whatsoever you find in that Presence is yours. “Whatsoever things ye ask for in my nature that will I give unto you.” It must be natural, it must be normal, it must be up and beyond the place of demonstration into the very realm of manifestation-the place of “Before they call, I will answer.” “I come not to destroy but to fulfill.” Do you hear? Remember God is over all, even the stars, and that He came to fulfill—-not to destroy. “Call upon Me and I will answer.”
IF I BE LIFTED UP
“IF I BE lifted up I will draw all men unto me.” This “up” state of consciousness is the secret formula for materializing Heaven here and now. The Automatic Power immediately “draws” all manifestation into visibility. It might be likened unto a magnet drawing all things unto it. The quotation reads, “All Men unto me.” It says “all men,” or “all manifestation,” shall be drawn into alignment when the consciousness is “lifted up.”
The state of consciousness you are in eternally out-pictures itself, no matter whether it be good, bad, or indifferent, and so the “lifted up” state of consciousness immediately casts its shadow into the world of Relativity, or draws all things to it, thereby embodying itself.
Manifestation must be used when it appears, as was necessary with the symbolical manna. Attempting to hoard the substance shows a misunderstanding of the “drawing” power of being “lifted up,” and this cuts the manifestation off from visibility.
You have seen a toy magnet automatically collect bits of steel in close proximity to it the moment it is introduced into a new field; perhaps you have seen a terrifically powerful magnet pull great masses of steel and iron unto itself with the same ease, a magnet which is so strong that everything in the nature of iron immediately feels the “pull”?
“I Will Draw All Men (Manifestation) Unto Me.”
The drawing of all manifestation, which is referred to in the Law is quite as automatic and effortless as is the drawing of steel by the magnet. The state of consciousness to which you are lifted immediately embodies itself or draws unto itself manifestation. A strange way of escaping the bondage of the former state, and a simpler way than fighting against the limitations, and trying to get rid of them by the way of man.
“If I be lifted up I will draw all men unto me,” and yet how utterly impossible it is to be “lifted up” literally. Living and moving and having your being in the Presence which is everywhere precludes the possibility of being “lifted” anywhere. In the poverty of language we use these words to indicate various approaches to the same idea. Lifting up is merely another word for recognizing the Presence.
The being “lifted up” or the entering a New Mansion (consciousness) is something like going into a warm room. You partake of the nature of it automatically; in fact you become warm; you are one with it, and it is manifested in every particle of your body.
All these illustrations are inadequate to express the glorious Presence. They will suffice until such time as you can throw yourself off the wheel of conscious thinking unto Revelation.
“I will arise and go to my Father.” No outside preparations are made – no changing of clothes, no getting ready. The symbology is sincere and plain. “I will arise.” You will come to that place where you will “arise” from your present state of consciousness instead of “commencing-.to- begin-to-get -ready- to start” to do it. You will arise from the soiled and dirty robes of human belief. You will spend no time regarding the road, the possible obstacles thereon, what reception you will receive, for the moment you “arise,” or are lifted up, you begin to function in the new consciousness. It is something that is beyond human thinking and planning, for the “wisdom of man is foolishness in the eyes of God.”
The effortless nature of God shows how futile it is for a person to “try” to think a thing out. The more he tries to think evil out of the pictures, the more it persists in his mind. Humanly speaking, if you would have a person think about a thing, tell him definitely not to think about it; the perversity of the human mind will do the rest.
“In a moment ye think not” does not appear to be a response to thinking. The very thinking that tries to create something which it knows does not exist results in futility and weariness. If you cannot “believe,” then it is impossible for you to see. If you can believe, then nothing can stop the manifestation from coming into visibility.
There is a glorious radiance about the agreement that is made on the heights of the new consciousness and then dropped from mind. It is like the good seed which is cast deep into the ground. In due season (which, by the way, may be immediately) it will bear fruit a hundredfold. You will find it happening all the while. That which you have accepted, and “believed” and released into silence will come to pass. It Is the out-picturing of the law which says, “At a moment ye think not I come.” When the doubting, worrying, anxious thought is eliminated, and the agreement is rested in the secret place, it will burst into fruition unannounced. It is wonderful to contemplate the ways of this Glorious God Power.
All the puny efforts of the human thinking are put to flight the moment consciousness is touched. All the particles from the invisible are drawn into visibility, and the thing that you see and accept in the new consciousness takes body and form.
We cannot get rid of sickness by eternally having warfare over it. The being “lifted up” to the new state of consciousness will bring the healing forth as a natural state of that consciousness. You are, then, not performing a miracle. The miracle only appears so to the mind which is functioning on the mental plane. The functioning of the natural laws of the Consciousness to which you are lifted up seems like a never-ending stream of miracles.
Many marvel at the earning capacity of certain financiers. From the financiers’ point of view they are merely functioning naturally. It is not a miracle to them; it is a natural action of the law. So is it with the Awakened Man. He begins at once to “look again” and see. “Whereas, before I was blind, now I can see.” What can he see? Anything that he has not already seen? Wasn’t all he saw always there? Why did he not see it? You say he was blind. You say in his blind state of consciousness none of these things which you saw with ease were visible. They did not belong in the consciousness of a blind man, and yet they were there all the while. Now, then, suppose you consider this blindness from the symbolical standpoint. You realize in being lifted up the same thing happens to you, and you exclaim, “Whereas before I was blind, now I can see,” and what you see has been there all the while. You have created nothing. So is the teaching of the Master Jesus. He was able to see the Kingdom of Heaven here and now. Every time he explained anything he saw in this Kingdom, those who were “blind” thought they were seeing an unnatural law going into manifestation, which they called a miracle.
Remember that the conscious thinking has not seen nor heard, nor has it capacity to know, the things which are prepared for those who love the law. We can well imagine in this lifted-up consciousness how it was Jesus saw the finished mystery, the fields white, the hungry fed, and the sick healed.
The moment you are in a new state of consciousness, a new set of manifestations come into being. A man running along the road, say, six miles an hour is under certain laws which definitely affect him. He becomes fatigued; he soon comes to the end of his endurance; the road is rough, or the road is smooth, etc. These are all in the consciousness of the runner. Suppose he is picked up by a car going at sixty miles an hour. Instantly an entirely different set of laws come into play. He finds that he moves ten times more rapidly without expending a single bit of energy to do so. None of the limitations of the former state have to be overcome. He cannot possibly get out of breath, and cannot possibly feel fatigued. Rough and smooth roads are only slightly perceptible. The same thing happens when we go from one mansion to another.
So is it with the Power of Spirit. When a man “arises,” he immediately leaves all the laws of the former things behind. He does not overcome them. The new consciousness does not find that necessary. He is not a sick man made well, nor a poor man made rich. In the consciousness in which he is functioning these things do not exist neither as “has beens” nor “possibilities.”
No wonder Mary magnified the Lord within her. She had good reason to contemplate this Inspiration which we are told will lead into all things.
“The cattle on a thousand hills are mine.” Just what do you mean? Is it possible to make this symbolically true by affirming it? And yet it is so, in a certain state of consciousness. It is everlastingly true. The silly mind that tries to “claim” things in which it does not believe, and which it cannot handle, even if it possesses them, is thrown into a flurry of futility and confusion. Do you believe that the cattle on the thousand hills are yours?
You see, beloved, the reason for the oft-repeated commands, “Be still,” “Salute no man on the highway,” “See that ye tell no man.” What man is going to understand that the “cattle on a thousand hills are yours” when he knows definitely that you haven’t money enough to pay your next week’s lodging?
Running along the road at six miles an hour, stumbling and falling with fatigue, is a very good background for you tell about the wonders of the car which goes at sixty miles per hour and which expends none of your energy in doing so. It may be so, but it is a miracle. Miracles are best shown and not talked about.
The Lord’s Prayer has been recommended strongly for the simple reason we see that “Our” Father is in Heaven. Jesus cleared the whole mystery for us when he said, “The Kingdom of Heaven is at hand,” and even closer than at hand, being within us. If you can fulfill the prayer, recognizing that “Our Father is in Heaven, He will open your eyes and you will see.
It is wonderful, when we arrive at the understanding that life is not made up of the “getting” or “demonstrating” things. The servant (the body) has yielded himself to the Father, and is ready and willing to carry out the work that the Father has already done. It is a marvelous thing to experience the Lord’s Prayer.
The moment we recognize the Father in Heaven, the Kingdom begins to appear on earth, the word becomes flesh. For the Will of this Father is being done. It is wonderful. The mere asking for the “daily bread” is met with the opening of the hidden storehouses of substance. In this state of consciousness the old debts are wiped out. The old trespasses have faded into oblivion, for “I am of too pure eyes to behold iniquity.” The final recognition comes, for “thine is the glory and the power for ever and ever, amen.” Can you pray this glorious prayer as commanded by the Master? You, who read this line? It is so much more replete with manifestation, for it
lifts you up to consciousness, where all men are drawn unto you. The ennobling effect of this recognition of the presence of the Father within, as contrasted by the shouting “Money, money, money – health, health, health,” or some other group of words, is too evident for comment. What thinkest thou? What believest thou?
Do you begin to understand the glories that await you when you “arise and go unto your Father”?
As you walk in the Light you cast the shadow of Spirit which men call manifestation, or matter, and which is wholly dependent upon that state of consciousness. Take the consciousness away from it, and it immediately disintegrates. The real, then, is not the shadow, or matter, but the Spirit back of it.
Manna was cast into manifestation as long as there was a need of it, and a consciousness accompanying it. Mistaking it for substance, many tried to hoard it, only to find that it became worthless. Yet that same consciousness of manna is just as present today. It is wonderful when you begin to understand Spirit as reality. It will adjust all your values in life, and cause you to free the symbol. Health that is not used deteriorates and disappears; an inactive body, though it be healthy, will finally tell its own story. The Manna of the Day must be used.
The “temple not made with hands,” we are told, is “eternal in the Heavens.” What do you think about this kind of a body, as compared with the one which we have been travelling in? Do you begin to see vaguely the possibility of merging into this glorious manifestation which is eternal in the Heavens (consciousness), and which cannot perish or fade away, and which is not subject to the laws of human thinking?
The temple can at last be made a fit dwelling-place for the Lord. The temple not made with hands cannot be unmade by hands (human opinions, beliefs, or laws). It is wonderful to contemplate the truth of the glorious statement, “If I be lifted up, I will draw all men unto me.”
IF THINE EYE
“If therefore thine eye be single, thy whole body shall be full of light.”
THE SINGLENESS Of the eye is automatically taking place in these times. The double sight of evil and good is passing away. It is the day, the moment, when this subtle change is actually taking place with you, even as you read, – otherwise your eye could not have contacted this text. You may have come to scoff, but you will remain to pray, for this is given through inspiration, – and you, – yes you, the reader, have been caught up in a NEW revelation.
So strange and interesting that I place this on paper for you, and you alone. No matter where you are or who you are, it will reach you, – and from that moment a change will take place, – perhaps not so noticeable at first, but recognized within you, and then recognized by others, – a sort of transformation. An atmosphere, a something will envelop you, – apparently a nothing, – and yet a tremendous something. This sounds rather contradictory, but not to you, – for the moment you see – (and you are beginning at this instant to do just that) – you will know that “something” has happened, – just as I know while writing this to you. And I am writing it expressly for you.
No profane eye will see it. The Divine Light will so blind him that he will “try” to interpret it. And since he has nothing but three-dimensional words and ideas, he will circle around like a cat chasing its tail, – and presently will meow! and go to sleep. But you, – holding this book, reading this line, – you will and you are experiencing that unuttered revelation of SINGLE VISION now.
It is, – and I was going to say difficult, – to put on paper. But yet it isn’t. It is easy, – and beautiful, and simple, – and filled with LIGHT, – and IT IS FOR YOUR EYES ONLY.
I want to say something about “suddenly rising”, – not physically, – but “rising” into the NEW degree of LIGHT, – tearing away the veils of the old thought-patterns, And then you will experience the change within. I don’t know exactly what to say in words other than you will “straighten up” a little physically, – perhaps a lot, – but yet it isn’t physical, this thing I am mentioning. It is the consciousness that is coming through first, – and then the physical will begin its transformation.
You will not say a word to anyone, – he will feel something ‘different’ in your presence and will mention it, – and you will accept the fullness of the word spoken to you.
The “former thing” thought shall pass away. Well, let it go, – do not try to make it go. Do not do anything with it, because in this new accepted level you do not have to, – it has nothing to cling to.
And now the eye is becoming single, – and you are seeing through a person, a situation or a thing. Everything becomes transparent, – even the words you have been using, they are transparent, – and take shape and form when spoken with this NEW sight.
“The Word that shall not return unto you void” is the “word” of the WORD that shall not return unto you void.
The single eye, – the ALL-SEEING eye, – does not wonder or guess. It sees perfectly what is blocking the operation of Divine Law, – sees through closed doors. It’ becomes one with ALL LIFE, – one with the animal, the vegetable and the mineral kingdoms, – and so possesses all of them. It becomes one with the elements, – and hereby controls them as far as the beholder is concerned.
The single eye sees the uselessness of trying to heal people. It either heals or dismisses the thing that will not be healed, – for it speaks, seeing the evil for what it is worth, – at the same time not caring one way or the other. It will not tolerate argument, – is above all the chatter of the parrots and monkeys of human reasoning, even though they wear a cap and gown and have all the letters of the alphabet after their name. In a tin of alphabet soup you also get all the letters, – and they mean about as much when it comes to LIFE as do the letters of the wise.
“The wisdom of man is foolishness in the eyes of God.” Well, – do you still want to argue about that? Not decrying education or learning, – but just debunking what the dark human mind “finds” as real today.
So many wonderful instructions await the single eye. All the old worn-out cliches suddenly burst into bloom. The least word of Jesus becomes volcanic and you realize you have never heard it before, although you may have heard it a million times.
Having been blinded with the double sight, nothing could be accepted, – all things had to be “worked” out. Even the words of the Master were put through a dozen schools of thought and found to be difficult to understand and to put into practice, – although it says something about “little children and fools”, – but nothing about the “wise heads”.
Well, now, – and I mean right now, – that you have arrived at the place of the single sight, you are seeing through the whole chaotic morass of the human world words. Nothing matters any more because everything matters. You are careful about nothing because you are careful about everything. Even the crusts that are left from the banquet, – they will fill twelve baskets, – one for every month.
“Neglect not the gift that is within thee.” What? You didn’t know you had a gift? It is so written, and now that you see through the hellish old human beliefs, you discover it. Apparently you have neglected it, for in another place it very definitely says, “Stir up the gift that is within you”. Well, – you have your orders, – and now that you see the gift, it is up to you.
This seeing is going to change our lives. As I write this, I feel that subtle change creeping over me. Tomorrow, – for it is now midnight, – I will go forth conscious of a PLUS value in everything in my life, – just as you will go forth with a PLUS value in your life.
I am speaking this word for you, – and it cannot return unto me void, – it will accomplish that whereunto it is sent. This particular word at this particular instant, (no matter what the calendar says, it will be in the NOW), is entering into BEING within you. You will recognize it first by the singing of your soul – then the enlightened will see it a little, – but presently everyone will see the subtle change in you.
This is only the beginning of what is to come. “All flesh shall SEE it together.” We are entering the NEW day of the PRESENCE of JESUS CHRIST, – the second coming is here, – and we are “doing the works” because we do not do them. We do not go about looking for things to heal. The LIGHT is so strong and so visible-invisible that anything ready to give up its human thought will come to the cleansing fires within you and be consumed. And you will stand and see the Glory of the Lord passing through your body-temple.
So wonderful that I am speaking the word for you, – and incidentally for myself, – at this moment. I “saw you under the fig tree”, – and I have called you into the glorious union with ME. We have so much to accomplish by doing nothing. The more unlabored it is, the more certain it is to take place. I do not know you personally, any more than Jesus knew the Centurion’s servant, – but we do what He did, now that the “singleness” has taken place.
And of course we cannot discuss it with anyone. If we did, it would be like dissecting a body to discover life, – there would be no life in that body.
And so we are NOTHING, – and we do not care. It is so terrifically difficult to be something. We are nothing and know nothing because we are ONE, having all knowledge. It is utterly wonderful, – all this “double” talk that is so “single” when you can SEE with the single eye, – and you can !
Good Gracious! What have we been doing? We must “stir up the gift” by recognizing that we have it. Such a thrill! That lovely gift within us which does the works of the Master with such facility. It has been so choked by human thoughts and beliefs that it has been almost crowded out of existence. But there it is! – and so now you heal. You have walked right into that consciousness without effort. All of a sudden you can heal without trying to heal and without particularly wanting to heal. You heal because you cannot help it. You run up and down the ladder of expression, – and at any point to which you are lifted, you automatically draw all manifestation on that level unto you. Now you hear-see, do you not? It says YOU draw automatically ALL manifestation on that level unto YOU.
Do not try any funny business, – but then, you won’t, now that you see. Why should you when everything is revealed with this single eye? I said everything! Can you accept it? Of course you can.
You seem suddenly to be walking out of a condition. There is a sort of an indefinable nothing that has become terrifically something to you, – and you find yourself walking out of the present cloud of misunderstanding, no matter where it is, – just walking through it and out of it, as though you were walking through a fog to a mountain top.
I know you are glad that I am writing this to you. I am glad that I am writing it to myself, because. at times I wondered if I was getting anywhere. Then suddenly I discovered what I am now writing to you. The gladness of my soul welled up within me. It filled me, – and then ran over in such floods that one of these floods is reaching you at this moment and is engulfing you, – and that gladness I feel is welling up in you, and you will have an overflow which will engulf so many who need the purifying (simplifying) of the WORD.
Your GIFT, having been stirred up, is now on its way to expression. Perfectly amazing that this wonderful thing could have remained dormant so long. But here it is, – and in a short time it will be recognized as a reality to you, – and then to “them” SO now the words “tell no man”, but “show”, have something for us other than fear. We do not have to tell, – they will see when we are smiling and will not have to be told that we are happy.
Transformation and transfiguration and change into the perfection of spirit is taking place at this instant. Practically anything can happen now, – and all in the pattern of the Divine Destiny. It is very pleasant not to have to “work” for everything, – but to allow or “let” the expression through. It is nice not to “labor for the meat that perisheth”.
Now also do you know there is no lack in God, only in the mind of man, – so that is not too difficult to remedy. Now that you see, you cannot be fooled by the talking serpent of human thought.
And you are enveloped in silence, – that mightiest of powers, – the thing that can and will “take a city”, a new and lovely state of BEing. You do not have to be great, or to endeavor to make people believe in you. You are walking into the Power of Jesus Christ, just as you walk into the DAWN of a NEW DAY, and you keep walking until the dawn becomes HIGH NOON, – and with such ease.
Isn’t it interesting that at this point we do not try to do or to understand. We are just being told of something that IS taking place within, – which eventually will be physical.
We can now run a line through the “having eyes, ye see not”, – for we see. The eye is SINGLE, – and the WHOLE body is full of LIGHT! Yes, it is filled with the substance of LIFE, – and is emanating this LIGHT and LIFE all over the place. Anyone upon whom this LIGHT rests can, if he will, draw the virtue of recognition from you and be healed.
All this is just between us. I know I will catch a wave of joy that goes out of you as you read this revelation.
And now it is morning, – one o’clock, – OUR NEW DAY, with OUR NEW SINGLE EYE. It is Wonderful, – isn’t it?
THE IMMACULATE CONCEPTION
“SEARCH the Scriptures, for in them ye think ye have life eternal.”
Until the Scriptures yield up their symbology, they remain a rather tedious history of a decadent civilization. Once you become the principal actor, as it were, in the moving pictures of the sacred book you begin to understand the revelations of Jesus the Christ; how it was that he constantly spoke in parables because of the ignorance of the people, and how necessary it was for the people — even you and me — to release the blessed revelation from these stories into the present-day, practical, everyday living.
Who then has not written the psalms of desolation and the Psalms of Praise? Who then has not found all of the incidents of Job’s painful and triumphant existence shadowed forth in his own life? So also hidden in the various events is the actual power for those who have eyes to see — what the Scriptures say unto the Churches — unto your temples-bodies.
To the human thought the way of Jesus is the way of the Impossible, even the way of fantasy. Who believes in miracles as natural, normal things? They are classed in the unnatural and the impossible, and it is from this elevation we must approach them if we expect to understand their practical use in everyday life.
Everything that Jesus did is “impossible” to the human senses. The three-dimensional mind speaks from that mass of knowledge it gathers looking through the “glass darkly,” but it speaks truly as far as its limited vision is concerned. We know that a heavier-than-water body will sink in water, and that gravity, cohesion, adhesion, attraction, have a definite power which cannot be set aside, even temporarily, except with great effort. Yet everything that Jesus did was outside of all of these laws.
Many people are still trying to work in the three-dimensional-thought world with this new Power, and find it utterly incompatible and impossible, and so it is.
If the Christ Power could do only the possible there would be little use to bother with it, since you are daily doing what is possible. We are only interested in the teaching of Jesus Christ because of its doing the impossible.
If you cannot readily take off from this level you are still looking for miracles, and verily after you have seen one, and keep looking for them, you will not even be able to find ME. “Ye seek ME after the loaves and fishes and cannot find ME” – not because I AM not there, but because through the glass darkly you have glimpsed the impossible happen and are still treating it as a magic power, a worker of tricks, and a doer of legerdemain. If you cannot conceive that the IMPOSSIBLE is the field in which the Christ Power operates you will still be swinging between something and nothing. And it will be mostly nothing.
Hence all the deeper lessons tucked away in stories and parables deal with the doing of the impossible. The problem is clearly stated and worked out; the way out of every difficulty is clearly given. No one of the present day can enter into a situation which has not been fully and amply covered, explained, and proved nothing by the Jesus Christ Power.
“Search the Scriptures.” Do you hear?
Mary the Virgin was overshadowed by the Presence. The Annunciation was made. An impossible thing was to take place. She was to bring forth a Messiah, and this bringing forth had to be outside the offices of man. Instantly the whole proposition was put on the plane of the impossible — it just could not happen. Anyone could see and understand that. And Mary asked: “How can this be, seeing I know no man?” In other words, it was an impossible situation, and could neither be understood nor manifested.
Is this situation any different from what you are trying to do? Have you not arrived at an incurable state of a diseased or worn-out body and mind, or a hopeless state of waiting, or a half dead state of no expression? And are you not trying to bring out the impossible when you try to get rid of the incurable disease? When the annunciation-desire-is made to you of perfect health or substance being possible in your life, what does your mind echo? Yet where did you get the desire for the perfected state of health or expression? Why doesn’t everybody have the same desire; and, when you bring this state of perfect health or substance into manifestation (when you embody it), will it not be a Messiah to your world? Will it not save you from destruction by disease or limitation?
The Presence urging upon you constantly for expression stands at the door of consciousness – “Behold I stand at the door and knock, and if any man [that includes you] hear My voice and open unto Me, I will come into him and sup with him and he with Me.” This constant annunciation of the Presence, over-shadowing your consciousness – urging you to give it a body and form — results in the eternal immaculate conception taking place in you.
Instead of your desires being merely floating thoughts which have to be “worked” out, they become the annunciation of the Presence asking for permission to come in and sup with you. The Holiness of this eternal function puts a seal on the lips, and we find that as soon as Mary found that “nothing was impossible with God” she then “magnified the Lord within her.”
The questioning and wondering, the guessing and worrying about it all, were entirely dropped out of the scheme of her thought. If all things were possible to God, then the impossible thing would find a way and means of expression. The annunciation or the desire carries with it all the necessary ways and means of bringing itself into manifestation, but it needs the perfect cooperation or integrity of Mary. She is found to be the perfect exemplar of bringing forth the invisible, impossible thing and giving it a body and a form. She “pondered these things in her heart.” There seemed to be so little chance of the thing taking place through the thought of man. Also we see her in a very difficult situation as far as the actual affair was concerned.
Who was going to believe in the Immaculate Conception? Who would believe it today? Not many; and Mary would not have been more popular in her home town than she would be under like circumstances today. Hence the need for silence and the deep magnifying of the Power; the turning entirely away from the appearance, and the “letting” the Impossible become the Possible by is own way. “I have a way ye know not of”; hence, I can and will handle the manifestation. It is wonderful when you liken your desire with this glorious Immaculate Conception from the standpoint of symbology.
When you tell your desire, what do you find happens? Does anyone believe you are capable of bringing it out? Not one. Everyone knows that it cannot happen; for what you are trying to do is outside of the laws of man. Who believes that you can prosper yourself through your understanding of this overshadowing Principle? It is impossible and it cannot happen. Yet the Spirit is over-shadowing you with an endless stream of desires, all of which should find a body and form and go forth into expression, if you but followed the law of Mary.
“And Mary magnified the Lord within her.” She ceased to look to the ways and means, or to consider the almost hopeless situation that confronted her. “She pondered these things in her heart.”
The holiness of Life ! when you see, even for a moment, this glorious idea of the Immaculate Conception. Your desires are dignified with the joy of being possible because they are impossible to the reasoning of man. This very recognition of the Impossible as possible shows the first faint streaks of wisdom and acceptance in a power which is not dependent upon the limited laws of man.
The Spirit is overshadowing you now, even as it is overshadowing every other temple, body, urging upon it to open the “door” of expression and “let” ME in. The thief, the crook, the harlot, and the saint are all overshadowed with this glorious Presence, flooding them with desires, every one of which is a holy thing seeking a body and a form, but, because of the impossible nature of the desires as viewed through the “glass darkly” of the human thought, only distorted and ugly manifestations can get through. Every desire is holy and from God, and in its purest form is true and good, but, by the time it is put through the thick fog of human belief, that which comes out into manifestation is so far removed from its original urge as to be unrecognizable.
Life circumscribed by the human mind is a series of blasted hopes and desires, and yet it should be just the opposite by reason of the revelation made by Jesus.
“With God nothing is impossible.” WITH God? Or with God” Does it mean it is only true to a God separated from you or because you are with God? Do you recall that Jesus made Himself as God, and do you begin to see how the IMPOSSIBLE becomes the possible to the consciousness that is of the same substance or nature? “Awake, thou that sleepest, and Christ shall give thee light.” Jesus did not try to use a POWER to work things out on the plane of the Impossible; he found his true nature to be God, and to God all things were and are possible. The coming forth of this may have set aside or upset all the human beliefs regarding the situation, but that was of no consequence. So does an electrical storm many times set aside the best-laid plans of mice and men, and neither one nor the other can do anything about it, whether they like it or not. Jesus was not concerned with what the human thought would think or do about the situation. He made Himself as God, and from that Plane the Impossible became the Possible, and its coming into manifestation might be considered a miracle or a coincidence; it made no difference. Suffice to say, he knew that the human mind would dispose of it some way so as not to upset its own basis of life.
Presently the idea will be made clear to you. You will begin to see the plan of manifestation. The Overshadowing Presence announces that which is to take place in and through you. You have it as a desire, and the moment this is accepted in the clear Virgin mind (the mind which is not cluttered up with a lot of metaphysical teaching and beliefs) the silent announcing of its advent goes forth. The Wise Men from afar, seeing the star, come with their gifts. So with every desire that is immaculately conceived and brought forth according to the way of Jesus Christ – it draws everything to it that is necessary, instead of going out into the world seeking for its own. Every desire that you ever had, or ever will have, which is handled from this standpoint will be recognized and receive its gifts from the Wise Men. It is wonderful when the revelation of the Immaculate Conception takes place within you. You will feel the scales dropping from your eyes and the new day appearing. The old idea of getting an idea and then trying to remonstrate it, even in the face of the knowledge that it is absolutely impossible, falls by the board, and the Recognition of Presence shows forth definitely in results. “If I be lifted up [to the point of recognizing that my desire is the annunciation of the Overshadowing Spirit] I will draw all men unto me.”
Once you are lifted up, once you experience the eternal rightness of the Presence of God in and through all things, you will understand how the impossible — the Immaculate Conception, symbolically speaking — is taking place through you, and you are bringing into manifestation the Messiah which will save you from the difficulties into which the conscious-thinking has brought you.
The judging from appearances will completely fall away from you. Appearances will be ignored, just as they were by Jesus when he was bringing forth the “desire” which the Overshadowing Presence was urging him to set free. The battling with appearances only establishes them. The more attention you give to negative things, the more they increase. The case of a man with a great fear of knives kept him constantly on the qui vive, and enlarged the possibilities of something dire happening from this source. Why? Because in his attempt to rid himself of them he endowed them with all sorts of power which they did not possess. Millions of people do not think of “knives” in negative terms, and yet to this man they were the symbol of all that was evil.
Other people could live with them or without them. To thousands of people they were a necessity. You begin to understand how it is that you put a thing into the negative classification and work to get rid of it. You are only endowing it with the very thing you are working against. What is true of the knife is true of the man. Some person may work against another who is keeping him out of expression, or is dominating him. He holds him in the negative position, and at the same time tries to rid himself of this negative thing. It only increases. The knife and the man are the same thing. Putting things into the negative place of manifestation does not necessarily make them evil. “One man’s meat is another man’s poison” is proof of that.
So the recommendation of Jesus, “Judge not from appearances,” carries with it something deeper than “ignoring” evil as a realty. Ignoring the appearances as Jesus did was the result of an understanding of Power. He knew that the “thing” of itself had nothing to do with the reaction you were getting from it.
And so we find Mary, the symbol of that which brings forth what is most impossible of expression, and in a way entirely outside the laws of man, showing us by the Magnifying of the Lord within just how the desires are brought forth.
All the reports of the coming event given to the unbelieving world, will only raise up a Herod of disbelief and fear, and, though it may not touch you, it will cause you to do many things which would be entirely unnecessary had you bided the counsel of Jesus Christ: “See that ye tell no man,” but “show John.”
Beloved, you are overshadowed every minute of the day and night with this great Presence, and, as the Spirit moves on the “face of the deep,” an annunciation is made, a desire is born, and this desire must come through outside the human laws. The moment you give it the recognition and the full power to express in a “way ye know not of, ” at that instant it will find its means of expression. “Neither say Lo here! or, lo there ! for, behold, the Kingdom of God is within you” — the state of the consciousness of this Presence is in you, and that is the only place it can ever be felt, known, or experienced. The moment you recognize it there, you see it in everything, and the impossible thing, which has to be born outside the offices of man, comes through in a normal and natural way without disturbing anything. It is wonderful. “Is anything hard to ME?” Answer me. Your little problem fades away. You begin to see that hitherto you approached your desires as problems to be worked out, instead of the urge of the Great Spirit overshadowing you with Love. It is wonderful.
When you come to understand this great overshadowing of the Presence you will understand the eternal coming of spring in all its symbology, and your body shall be like a garden planted by the banks of a river, bringing forth its fruit in due season. What are you worrying about? Align yourself with this glorious thing called Life and the fluttering, fitful sense of things will pass, absorbed into even and beautiful patterns of rhythm.
Your desires will no longer come under the heading of something to be “worked out”; they will be the eternal annunciation. Remembering that the sparrow is just as precious as the eagle, you do not have to worry about your desires being so trivial in the scheme of world events.
Mary did not run into the streets and tell the world that she was going to bring forth a Messiah by other than the offices of man, she “pondered these things in her heart.” The heckling and arguing of ways and means, the pro-and-con standpoint, have nothing whatsoever to do with this revelation of Jesus Christ. It is, and therefore it Is. “Flee from that man whose breath is in his nostrils” is a good thing to remember always. “Agree with thine adversary quickly.” What difference does it make to you what he “knows,” thinks, or believes about the Truth? Let him have his way — don’t argue, don’t expose, don’t talk, don’t tell the glorious annunciation which has been made unto you. “My sheep hear My voice.” Do you?
Be still — even at this holy moment you are over-shadowed by the PRESENCE — it is urging upon you the new idea. Your desire is a holy thing, a thing of joy, a glorious inner revelation — an Immaculate Conception. “Praise God from whom all (not some) blessings flow.”
IMMORTALITY
“There is a path which the vulture’s Eye hath not seen.”
“MY SHEEP hear My Voice, – and I know them, – and they follow Me. I give unto them ETERNAL LIFE, – and they shall never perish. Neither shall any man pluck them out of My Hand.”
Immortality in the flesh hinges on the ability to hear, – not the hearing of the ear, but that subtle sixth sense which operates from a point in infinity.
There is much said about “losing your life and finding it”, – about “dying” and being “born again”. Death will continue to take place as long as there is a sense of separation from God, – as long as man refuses to lose his life, – his little John Smith concept of life, – lose it in the SEA of ALL LIFE.
Many are now discovering the ONE LIFE in everything, – that they are no more separated from the GOD LIFE than the islands are separated from the earth, although to man’s limited vision they appear to be. Man is taking his bucket of dirty water, his beliefs of and about a personal life, and throwing it into the SEA of PURE LIFE, – and the accumulated filth of the human mind is no more.
The personal life immediately starts deteriorating from the cradle, – and continues to do so until it becomes impersonal. This personal sense of life is bound by an idea of health, – that one must guard this fast fleeting thing against every sort of ravage engendered in the human mind. Thus, from his first moan, man is headed for dissolution.
Men have not believed in immortality for the simple reason they have never seen an immortal. This is really no proof, but it suffices the unbelieving. The blessings are to those who perceive it beyond the flesh-and-blood angle. You will never see anything that is not in your consciousness, – and it is hopeless to delude yourself by endeavoring to believe in something your consciousness does not accept.
Merely making a statement of and about a thing does not constitute an acceptance. Immortality in the flesh will not manifest because you declare it to be the truth. “My sheep hear My Voice”! But how can you hear if you do not believe?
And so you run hither and yon, – listening for a “voice”. But it is not there, – it is within you. “Whom to know aright is LIFE ETERNAL” !
In reality, health and wealth are human limitations of LIFE, – limitations of the brain-mind. God can be neither healthy nor wealthy, – for He is ALL LIFE.
When you “glimpse-hear” this revelation, you will have finished with health, – and then you LIVE. You will have lost your life, – your “health idea”, – and you will have found WHOLE LIFE, – that vibrant quality that is searching the “joints and marrow”, that is equal to anything it may be called upon to do. Hence the man conscious of LIFE can do what he could not do with a “health-wealth” consciousness. There are many instances of men, under the stress of emotion, – forgetting their limitations in the flesh, lifting objects many times their own weight without the least strain or struggle.
Of course you cannot do any of these things to prove it to anyone, for the very idea that it is necessary to prove it, indicates you do not believe. You will not work miracles before profane unbelievers any more than you would cast your pearls before swine. Actually, you do not care whether they believe or not, – so there is no argument. If you cannot show in your day-by-day living, – -of what avail is endless talk of and about the Deity, what He can do or is going to do for you? He isn’t going to do anything, – He has already done it, – and it is up to you to accept and believe in something beyond your own intellection.
What has been said concerning “health”, is also true of “wealth”. God is not rich. When there is only ONE, there can be no rich or poor, for opposites are produced by comparison. What man calls money is not substance, – it merely represents it. Money can and does become worthless over night. Its value changes almost daily, – but substance never changes. Your money never manifests above or below your consciousness of substance, – no matter what motions you make or do not make with the human body in an effort to bring it into visibility. It will be there when you speak the word of recognition, – for whatsoever you have in consciousness, you have in manifestation.
No explanation can be given for the HOW of all of this, – but you will see, – or you will not see. Perhaps you have thought it depended upon your efforts. God is effortless, – so how did this “effort” to survive come into the picture?
“Who told you that you were naked?” Try to explain this. How is it that you have tried, – and studied, – and worked, – and “prayed”, – and yet nothing has happened? Furthermore, nothing will happen. God is not a “jack-in-the-box” that jumps every time you attempt to tell Him a ‘pretty’ little story about the horrible things you are going through, – or the red hat you must have. His disregard for your “best” prayers is positively appalling.
With all the claptrap going on in your mind about what you must have and must demonstrate, you cannot hear My Voice, – the hearing of which will give you Eternal Life. Why not be done, then, with all human chattering, – and believe, – and hear, – and follow, – and you will never perish !
Why not shove off into deeper waters, – into depths you have not yet sounded! There is something out there for you. It is not written in any book, – but it is given unto you.
“This is Life Eternal, – to know ME”! ME–what do you mean ME? How can you know Jesus? You know all about Him and His story, – but yet you do not know Him because it is impossible to know Him with that little old intellectual ‘brain mind’.
This Immortality is an absorbing thing. It has been symbolized by the Phoenix Bird who arises from the ashes of its dead self, – clean, – and beautiful, – and new! And so will you have to die to the limited belief of John Smith, that “on you the second death will have no effect.”
“What?” “Is no one going to save my darling from the flames?” “Think of all the good I have done.” Well, why not think of all the evil you have done (most of it intentionally), – and then consult your scales. Not so pleasant, is it? I’ll wager you will be found wanting.
But why not come up HERE! – forgetting those things which are behind, – the “former things”. When you walk straight into the dawn of this new ONE thing called LIFE, they are all lost, – swallowed up in the NEW Glory.
There is no time to bury your dead father. Let those who believe in death bury their dead. “Let the filthy be filthy still.” You haven’t time to wait, – and it isn’t worth anything anyway.
When you hear, then will you hear, “I give unto them ETERNAL LIFE, – and they shall NEVER perish, – neither shall any man pluck them out of My Hand”.
NEVER is a long, long time to John Smith. Immortality within the limitation of John Smith would be unbearable, even if it were possible, which it isn’t. But when you come up HERE, you are transformed by the renewing of your mind, – sort of swallowed up in Immortality. Then the “impersonal-personal” life begins, – fraught with a thousand and one NEW capacities hitherto undreamed of by John Smith.
Do not look for signs. They always follow, – never precede. You are abandoned, – divinely indifferent to the appearances. “Ye shall reap in due time.”
Do you believe? I have a feeling you do. I AM speaking to you between these lines, – saying something so very important and thrilling to you. Can you HEAR ME? Do you remember when I said unto you, “Look again”, – and you looked through four months of time-space and days of hard labor, right into a new dimension? No physicist can explain it. In fact, no one can explain it because there are no words sufficiently comprehensive to convey what has taken place or been revealed.
Of course, anyone who would be so stupid as to argue about it would be just fooling himself. And granted that he had been inbreathed with the breath of life, he would lose it, – his breath would again be in his nostrils. “Where there is no vision, the people perish.” So if you will not SEE-HEAR, you will perish.
You may still have a hurdle or two to make, – and your horse may upset you. But you will get up, – dust your clothes, – and go on, – unless perhaps it is the water hazard. In this case, you may have to sit in the sun awhile, – which won’t hurt you a bit.
You are on a new highway now. “No man is going to pluck you out of MY hand.” It says NO MAN, no manifestation of evil belief, – is going to pluck you out of MY hand. You must HEAR-SEE this!
You have already spent forty years in the desert, – had a few signs, – complained a lot, – and after you crossed the Jordan, you discovered the whole trek could easily have been made in two weeks. This sounds rather foolish, doesn’t it? And so is it, – but since the thing called time is only a human-thought measure of the distance between two events, it does not make any difference. You have all of eternity, so shed no tears over a wasted youth or any other time element. When you had youth, you were not actually conscious of it. Not until you began to “age” did you remember that you once had “youth”, – and so you may have been inspired to write a poem about the ‘beauties’ of it all. Let others have all the “backward, turn backward, oh time in thy flight” they wish, – but we want none of it. We are glad to have passed through, into this NEW dimension, – into this NEW elevation, – which can be experienced, but never expIained.
And now you are sensing this subtle change, – this up-gush of LIFE taking the place of health. I said YOU, – not you and your “spiritual” adviser. It is the pearl of great price for which you will Sell or give away every human thought-thing you possess, and you will hide it in a field, – a new state of consciousness. And they will say to you, “Something has happened to you”. You could be facetious and reply in the vernacular of the street, “Are you telling me !” – but you won’t. You will just keep on shining and shining, – and presently they will not be able to see you, unless they can, – and then they will.
It is said the former things will pass away, – to be remembered no more, – nor come to mind. Not amnesia, – but just a SELF-revelation wherein you discover there is nothing worth remembering.
You may be driven into the wilderness, – the subconscious mind, – in order that you can clean up some old scores. But this will not hurt you either, and it will not – endure for long.
I think you had better come up HERE. Stop talking about how, – but just COME !
“Verily, verily I say unto YOU, – if any man keep My saying, he shall NEVER see death.” “And I know that His commandment is LIFE EVERLASTING.”
THE IMPATIENT DAWN
A beautiful bird beat its lovely wings against its cage, struggling in vain to gain its inborn freedom, – only to settle on its perch, – frustrated and defeated.
Had I been granted but one wish at that moment I would have opened the door, – freeing those lovely wings which so ached with the desire to fan the cool ethers.
And then I realized that all about me were men and women, locked in their cages of thoughts and beliefs, – far stronger than the bars imprisoning the bird.
Many doors had been opened, – religion, psychology, hobbies, work, – all of which had been tried, but still no surcease from the beating of the soul-wings against the hateful cage. Most of them had retreated to their perches, – dejected and frustrated, like the bird.
Then came Jesus Christ, – not as a teacher, but a Revelator of the New-old Dimension. The clear, crystal stream of His New-old consciousness flowed through the dark subterranean passages of human belief. With a thousand and one parables and illustrations did He give to the world the Power to arise into this plus-value of life.
Now and again the up-gush of His Revelation has broken through the ground of established beliefs and spurted high into the air, as a gusher coming from the center of the earth. Man has always explained the miracle by science or human reason, -or failing that, concluded he had been duped.
But the stream continued on its urgent way, nearer and nearer the surface, -diffusing a thousand and one religious and psychological doctrines. “The Voice crying in the wilderness” of human thought is now being heard through the confusing, difficult veils of theology which has made that which was “given unto a child” something beyond the reach of man.
Man proclaims that he believes in Jesus, but finds the miracles something ‘outside’ his ken. Jesus insisted on the naturalness of this new dimensional teaching, eschewing any personal claim to it, -dating it before Abraham.
And again, in every word and deed He showed it was not a special GIFT to any particular man, -nor could it be learned from books, -but is discovered within each one. The invitation is to EVERY man, good, bad or indifferent.
“If ye believe”, -and then follows a list of things which can only be classified under the heading of the Fourth Dimension, – entirely outside and beyond the capacities of the three-dimensional human thinking, which has a beginning and an ending.
Jesus is the first and the only Revelator who made good His every statement. In the vernacular of the streets, “He laid it on the table”, -proclaiming nothing He did not produce. When He said, “Receive your sight”, sight WAS, where blindness had existed as an incurable condition, -and likewise through the whole gamut of human difficulties, -indicating that we have been hypnotized by the findings of the brain-mind and by the “judging according to appearances”
All the world awaited His coming for eons of time, – and all the world looks back upon it as the most momentous and the only new and original event to ever take place.
With such startlingly simple statements as “I AM the DOOR”, He gave the Keys to the Kingdom, but men have rejected the simplicity of His teaching in favor of the findings of the microscopic human mind.
The Soul of you, -that Immortal BEing which will not die, – which cannot die, – stands pressing against the cage of human thought, even as the Impatient Dawn presses against the purple curtain of night, – waiting, – waiting, – waiting for the password.
“If any man hear My Voice”, – ah, that is it! If any man HEAR My Voice”, – -he will rend the temple veil. The Aurora of his Immortality will draw back the dark curtain of night and frighten the evil constellations of human beliefs into oblivion. They shall disappear as rain-drops falling upon a river. And Apollo, the Soul, will come forth, his flaming, prancing chargers breathing long rays of Light and Power which shall penetrate the darkest forests of human fears, – revealing a NEW heaven and a NEW earth. Diana, the negative subconscious embodiment, will fade, – all the brilliance and color drained from her by the understanding of LIGHT. She will vanish with her satellites, like a flock of sheep across yon mountain top, – and the Shining, NEW DAY will burst into expression.
The restless, prancing steeds of the Impatient Dawn of your NEW Day will no longer be held in check. You must ARISE and make the gesture of Life, – the gesture which is to reach through the paralysis of human thinking and limitations, – impelled by the awakened Soul of you which can no longer be confined in the prison-house of the beliefs of men.
That Impatient Dawn is pressing against the door of your awakened consciousness, – waiting to reveal to you the secret of your BEing, – waiting to lead you into your God-given heritage, – waiting, trembling on the very brink of SELF-expression.
IMPRISONED SPLENDOR
THE Imprisoned Splendor in every man is IMMORTALITY, – so magnificently released by Jesus in His SELF-resurrection.
In order to show man the nothingness of the ‘thought world’, He used Himself as a human guinea-pig, – submitting to the ways of human thinking. Thus day by day He built the inevitable tomb which would one day encompass Him and from which He was to come forth. When the tomb was completed, Jesus was apparently killed and placed therein. When it was closed, He was beyond any and all help from without, – anything that was to transpire from then on had to take place from within.
And so on the third day we find the stone of the human mind rolled from the entrance of the tomb, – and He arose from all dead beliefs. The Imprisoned Splendor, – IMMORTALITY, – came forth!
From the moment of birth man builds his tomb, following the cruel, hateful FATE pattern until he accepts the teachings of Jesus, – thus setting aside events which would have produced in harmony in His life.
Easter might be called the “Triumph of the Egg”, – taken from an ancient Pagan Rite. The symbology is perfect, – within the egg the perfect manifestation lies, wholly unseen and undiscovered. The moment the warmth of the mother bird penetrates the egg, gestation takes place, and moves along orderly with the creation of a NEW body, – a NEW form, – which presently will emerge from the tomb.
The awakening soul may experience a thousand Easters. Time after time an idea imprisoned in a hard shell of belief is resurrected, – and is set free by the warmth of the Love of God. Within the shell of every problem lies the Imprisoned Splendour, which if given an opportunity, will build its NEW and WONDERFUL expression with sufficient strength to break through the “tomb”, – in spite of all those about you who profess with their lips to believe, but are always looking for a sign. You, knowing “the signs follow, – they do not precede”, – will “tell no man”, and be content to stay within your tomb for three days, – coming forth independent of all opinions and beliefs.
This is no longer a metaphysical experimentation. Jesus went through it all to prove that every man has within himself the POWER of SELF-resurrection, the releasing of the perfectly created SELF from the grave clothes of dead beliefs we have been winding around it since the beginning.
A thousand commands are given to substantiate this lovely revelation, – “Arise !”, – “Awake !”, – “Come forth!”, – “Be born!”, – and “Reborn!”, again and again. All this is as nothing to the mind still endeavoring to prove the law to see whether or not it works. It will not work, – and will only “prove” what he knows to be untrue.
There comes a time in the life of every man when he discovers he is within the tomb of his beliefs which have become much more real and defiant than the stones of an actual tomb. Then if he does not go within and discover this Imprisoned Splendor and release it through the recognition of a power outside all human findings, he finds himself in “desolate places as a dead man”.
But you can have your Easter when you are still as death, – when you tell no man, – when you place the coal of fire upon your lips, – and let something beyond all human figuration take place. Then you SHOW JOHN. And why JOHN? Because JOHN was the “other disciple” who understood IMMORTALITY.
At the time of Jesus most of the tombs were sealed, – but the stone in front of His tomb was round, and a guard of Roman Soldiers was placed in front of it. The rolling stone which obstructs the tomb indicates there is always a way out, – the Roman Soldiers of public opinion is the only guard placed there.
It is reported that the soldiers fled when they perceived the soft flush of LIGHT of the Imprisoned Splendor of Jesus, – and so the hard fast opinions and beliefs of others flee when you awaken within your tomb.
Those who came to the tomb later found the grave clothes of Jesus neatly laid aside in two piles. He had left everything, – even the memory of the human ordeal. “The former things are passed away, -Behold! ALL things become NEW !”
The “other disciple” was the first to come. He SAW and BELIEVED. It is of him Jesus said, “If I will that he tarry till I come again, – what is that to thee?”, – revealing his immortality, which he accepted.
A dozen “Thomases” came and argued at the tomb, – “Was it the gardener?” – “Was it an angel?” – “Have they taken Him away?” – “Where have they laid Him?”, – not believing His WORDS nor His WORKS.
The reason Jesus descended to the level of human expression was to prove to EVERY MAN that he could, if he but believed, arise from his tomb of unbelief, – dissolving the human FATE patterns of karmic debt and the sins of the fathers, – into the DIVINE DESTINY OF IMMORTALITY, – revealing the WORD that was in the beginning with GOD, – the PERFECTLY CREATED IMAGE AND LIKENESS. In this Divine Destiny there is neither birth nor rebirth.
Are you “the other disciple”, “the man who was sent from God”, – or among the doubting. It is of no use trying to believe in Immortality so long as you bear witness to disease and mortality. But when you accept in its entirety the PURE REVELATION of Jesus, you release your Imprisoned Splendour, the transformation takes place, – and you are a BEING of LIGHT.
“And this is the record, – that God hath given to us Eternal Life.”
“Little children, let no man deceive you: he that doeth righteousness IS righteous.”
“Our Lord Jesus Christ hath abolished death, and hath brought LIFE and IMMORTALITY to LIGHT.”
IN A DREAM – IN A VISION
“Your young men shall dream dreams and your old men shall have visions.”
I have had many dreams and visions which were subsequently fulfilled. The only danger in speaking of the subject is the mistaken understanding in the meaning of the words. To think for a moment that every jumbled or passing dream has meaning is to also believe that every passing thought is an inspiration from God.
One can become so caught in the mystery of interpreting dreams as to become entirely bemused when a real meaningful dream or vision comes. The interpretation of a dream generally comes with the dream or soon after, so that the searching for “dream book” meanings to the symbols given is ridiculous. When the meaning is not forthcoming one has only to ask BELIEVING and the interpretation will come to light.
Of the hundreds of dreams and visions which carried through to manifestation, none were more interesting or more satisfying than the two following:
One night I dreamed the word “Trilogy” – it was so clear and spoken with such force that I awakened and jotted it down on a pad and went back to sleep. The next night the Word came again and this time with a quotation from the Bible – which was spaced so that it would make the titles of three books. “I Came – That Ye Might Have – Life More Abundant” – then sleep again. The third night I awakened again with the urge or command to write three books. At the time I was lecturing ten times a week but when the Power or revelation started on its way to manifestation nothing could stop it – and so in the five short weeks allotted me I found the three books completed. The dream or revelation had become manifestation.
Another night I dreamed the name “Mythra” – I looked it up and found it to be the name of the Assyrian Sun Goddess. The following night the image of a smoke grey Persian cat with a dark face came with the name. Six weeks later in going through the Pound with a friend I paused in front of one of the cages – and looking at me was the cat seen in the dream. I took her out of her box – she put her arms around my neck and fastened her claws into my coat collar. Neither the Attendant nor I could get them loose, and so she came home with me to with tawny K O, and Black Lilac – two cats and Jade green Gurli, the South American Parrot. They made a beautiful splash of color and animation when together.
It wasn’t long before we found Mythra to be a very unusual cat. She seemed to want to get under any cloth lying about and so Rose made her a little blanket which she accepted with glee – purring and looking up with her large emerald eyes. This led to other clothes and hats, until she was as beautifully furbished as a fashionable Night Club singer. This little bundle of Love brought hours of joy and entertainment into the home. Li’l Old Mythra, a dream come true.
IN HIM
Man lives in God yet he does not see God – for it is written that “no man shall see God and Live.” The moment he SEES the degree of God in which he lives, he discovers the nothingness of things and “dies” to them, only to arise to a higher degree of consciousness, and make new and more wonderful discoveries about the power called God. A fish does not see the water he swims in, and man does not see the air in which he lives – and he does not see God, but he sees the infinite manifestations of HIS Presence, and it is only when he comes to the NATURAL knowledge of ONENESS that he begins to assign to things their proper place. They become something to be USED and not possessed. The moment he begins to possess things, he transfers power into the manifestation which is only an illusion, and the illusion possesses him.
Heraclitus, the Greek Philosopher, believed all things were in a constant state of flow – and knew that man could not step in the same river twice. All things are in a constant state of change. The permanency of Spirit (the unseen) gives a solid basis for LIFE. Manifestation automatically takes care of itself. Every plant of the field was beheld in the mind of God before it appeared, revealing the fundamental truth that both seed and flower are at once in the mind of God. Manifestation is the shadow. All vegetation appeared before there was any rain, and before any man had time or idea of tilling the soil. So the tiller of the soil pauses, and as he pauses a moment, for a brief encounter with REALITY, he discovers a thanksgiving welling up in him.
He begins to see the “why” of “before you ask.” He begins to know the “substance” and the “evidence” of the unseen must be recognized if the reflection is to be cast into the manifest world.
When are YOU going to stop TRYING to demonstrate God, and let Him have His way instead of your mistaken concept?
Your part is the being Still – with your mind stayed on reality – not on manifestation.
IN THE BEGINNING
The Greeks went back to chaos. The Buddhists went back to the great nothingness, the great emptiness. The Christian goes back to “the VOID.” “The earth was without form and void.” From this point of the unformed, was all things made that were made to appear.
When the great Revelator, Jesus Christ, said, “Before Abraham was I AM,” He went back to a point beyond any form or shape of human thinking. He went back to the FATHER. The Father was not a man—but the great VOID out of which all things came into being. It is the glory I had with thee before the world of John Smith appeared.
As the child takes its bucket to the sea and brings .back the formless sea in the shape of the bucket, so Jesus inferred that “Whatsoever” He asked the Father—whatsoever shape o f consciousness He took to the FATHER, or SEA would be filled, or stepped down to a point of visibility. As the SEA which the child brings back in the shape of a bucket will only remain in that shape as long as the bucket holds it—so did Jesus know that when the thing was released in consciousness, it would return to the ONE again, to be reshapened anew by the ASKING consciousness.
There could be no begging the sea to get into the shape of the bucket—and hence, there could be no beseeching and affirming that the FATHER take the shape of health, or happiness, or money. The consciousness would have to present That shape to the FATHER— and that too, without the slightest question as to whether it were possible or not.
Any questioning as to whether it could or could not happen would only mar or destroy the shape of consciousness. Repetition would destroy the essential faith. Any beseeching and begging and treating would show the hypocrisy of man, endeavoring to impress God with his spirituality—as if God, who created you, is not well aware that you are pure spirit, and as if He did not know the “NEED” before you asked. Small wonder, then, that the instructions were after this fashion: “When yea pray, believe that yea RECEIVE.” This is not done at the insistence of will power. Any will power is an indication that you do not believe, but hope by the force of human thought to make God do something He has not already done.
When you enter into prayer after this fashion, it will be from RECOGNITION—-and not from the standpoint of hypocrisy which imagines it can do things with God. Psychology is not prayer.
Once a thing has taken shape and form, it is finished. Nothing can be added or taken from it, as it were. It cannot be reshapened any more than a vase, after it has come from the kiln, can be refashioned. Healing does not take place on the body —the new shape o f consciousness automatically brings with it the new shape o f manifestation.
No wonder, then, Jesus left all form behind and entered into the place of unformed Spirit. What He told the Father in secret was called from the housetop. He could do nothing with the “dead” child. “I go to awaken him.” Jesus was not an overcomer– -and yet today there are thousands trying to overcome sin, disease and death. Jesus left the pictures behind when He went to the Father with His shape of consciousness. No wonder, then, Lazarus came forth and was unbound of the grave clothes.
Beyond the picture of you, there is that from which you say you sprang, your father—and back of him, his father—and back of him, his father—but after you have played with this childish assignment long enough, you realize that back of the first so called father is THE FATHER. When we want to get into the flow of it, we will see what Jesus meant when He said: “Call no (not any) man your Father.” Now this takes on a definite meaning, for the various shapes and forms that you have called father are not THE Father—but manifestations of THE Father.
If you partake of the qualities of your personal father, you will have all his foibles and beliefs to handle. If the sea were to become the same quality as the water in the bucket which has been left to stand for months or years in the same shape, it would surely be dead.
We find, then, that going to the Father is going to the INFINITE SOURCE of all substance—and whatsoever Jesus asked was called from the housetops. “Call upon Me and I will answer you” takes on a different meaning. Dip your bucket into the sea and carry away the exact measure you have accepted as a reality—not what you hoped for—not what you tried to demonstrate— but what you ACCEPTED AS A REALITY!
Back of every manifest thing is that something, the Power, which is not subject to the laws of the manifest, but upon which the manifest thing is dependent.
Why, then, will man persist in taking thought and repeating words. A whole symphony is in a single note. A complete revelation could be in a single word, IF it were heard.
When you pray—it is not with words or argument, but with PURE RECOGNITION—and could you but wait a split second, you, too, could say with Jesus, “Thank You Father” for the finished thing, and the signs would automatically follow.
INCREASE
And Satan stood up against Israel and provoked David to NUMBER Israel.”
Notwithstanding the fact that Joab said to him “The Lord maketh a hundred times so many more as they be.”
But David insisted. He had to know to the last man and to the last bit of material just what he had to count on; disregarding the invisible increase which can and does “maketh a hundred times so many more than they be.” The whole revelation of Jesus Christ is based on the increase, sometimes ten and sometimes a hundred and sometimes a thousand fold – that is when the measure has not been stepped down to a certain quantity. If you only have a pint measure and you know it – what good to have a hundred times more liquid than will fill it. And so when you step your universe down to that which you can count and handle with your hands and circumscribe with the “human” knowledge – what good to pray for increase?
“Open ye gates of dawn and let the Lord pass through,” the inward flow of the Invisible Substance which maketh it a hundred or thousand times more than is evident on the surface. If you count your soldiers and find them to be materially less than those of your enemy, what is the natural conclusion? Defeat of course, and so with everything else in life. Trying to demonstrate wealth while you know positively that all you have is a certain limitation, is one of the quickest ways to frustration, and will result in the old cliche “well I never did think this thing worked.”
The wrath of God on David for his failure to accept the “Twelve legions of angels” or the increase (Look again the fields are white) is only the Light of God disintegrating the false law of Satan – (human thought).
“What have ye in your house? Three drops of oil – a handful of meal” – well disregard it at once and start pouring, and borrow measures not a few. What? with only three drops of oil? No – that question brings the wrath of God down upon your head which is merely the forsaking of you to your own devices.
With your mental eyes glued upon the manifest realm how are you to experience the increase? Where is it coming from and where are you going to put it if you only have a pint cup – which you positively know is all that you have?
“You (still?) say – it is four months to the harvest?” – is that what you say? Still professing to be a Truth Student? Your human eyes will never see it and you will never experience it until you have come fully to the acceptance of the Presence, here, there and everywhere – awaiting recognition. Then when you go forth, no matter if your enemy has a thousand and more soldiers than you – the invisible Presence will take care of all that “In a way you know not of.” Do not try to find out – only BELIEVE. Take your attention away from the manifestation “Be absent from the body and present with the Lord.”
“Faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.” Recognition of the Presence puts you in a “sense-feel” state of consciousness which can and does release the “twice as much as he had before” and will fill everything that is empty in your life – unless you insist that you only have a “pint” measure – then of course if the whole Niagara Falls passed over the cup you would only have a pint.
The moment you step yourself down to appearances you come under the law of judging from appearances which at best is a great limitation and which proves without a shred of doubt that you never did believe in God – that is the God of Jesus – but rather in a limitation of human thinking – a man god – with all his foibles and limitations.
Recalling again the “Satan stood up against Israel and provoked David to NUMBER Israel” – the next time you have a desire to count your limitations before entering into prayer, cast this idea from you with the blessed recognition that the “Lord maketh his people a hundred times more as they be.” Note the present tense of the verb – the Lord – the recognition of the Presence makes it take place in the present tense.
INTEGRITY TO INSTINCT
One day I came suddenly and silently from behind a huge evergreen tree and took by surprise a large beige colored bird.
I stopped suddenly fascinated by his actions. Instantly he hovered close to the brown earth, near a rock, and tried with all the slender force within him to simulate that thing. It was the only thing he knew how to do. I could see the blessed heart of him fluttering with fear, but he was remaining true to instinct and was doing the only thing he knew how to do at that moment, and that was enough. His fearful eye was watching me, the enemy, but something within him kept saying “stay on,” it is the only way.
I hastily withdrew to a secluded place where I could watch him. He was not deluded by this decoy but stayed on for five minutes, and then like a javelin thrown into the air, he rose and flew to freedom.
I was terribly impressed by it all. I remembered many times when I had not been true to my “instinct” – my knowledge, however small, that “I was born of God” and that I could call upon HIM – that I could – “having done all – stand” and see and hear and experience the Presence. But the human fear-thing was so great that I had often tried to use outside methods to help, and always with small success. “He shall cover thee with His feathers and under His wings shall thou abide” – and a thousand other lovely things – things of “instinct” to adhere to when the sudden thrust of the enemy comes unexpectedly.
IS THIS HE THAT SHOULD COME?
“Is THIS He that should come?” Eternally the question is asked as a long line of teachers, preachers, so-called Messiahs, books, and systems of Truth parades across the line of vision. The answer is, many tomes, “Yes, this is He,” only later to be turned into a bitter, “No, I was mistaken.” The eyes of the Seeker again scan the horizon, looking for another who apparently never comes.
“Is this He that should come, or look we for another?” has been asked since time began, and will continue to be asked until the individual ceases his looking for a Messiah – in the old sense of the word – and becomes aware that the glorious Revelation that the search is ended and that “HE that should come” has come. Until man stops looking for a Messiah who is to save the world, and turns within and gives a full and glorious recognition to the Christ, he will never find HIM.
When man awakens to the glorious truth that the HE that should come is the risen Christ in the midst of him, he realizes the eternal question is answered, and from that moment it is just a matter of recognition.
“Is this He that should come?” Yes, this is the HE that should come. This is the “HE” that has been standing in the midst of thee, knocking on the door of your consciousness, while you have been running hither and thither, looking for a personal teaching or system, and have denied the “HE that should come.” It is wonderful and glorious – it is self-revelation.
“Behold, I stand at the door and knock; if any man hear My voice and open the door, I will come in to him, and will sup with him, and he with Me.” This very Messiah that men have been seeking in the world of relative beliefs stands at the door and knocks, and awaits the recognition. A flood of light overtakes you, pours over you like a waterfall, covering the whole face of the earth. Light bursts forth and reveals the Kingdom of Heaven Here and Now – a real heaven and a real earth, for the first heaven and the first earth those imaginary states of consciousness, have passed away, and something living, tangible and real has come into manifestation. “Yet in My flesh shall I [yes, you] see God.” Yes, in this very flesh shall you see this God power in manifestation. And if you do, what do you suppose will happen to the appearances of disease and age, and all the limitations you have held about you, while you were dreaming of the first heaven and the first earth?
The Inner Lord, the Christ of which Jesus told us so much, and showed us so much, is asking you, “But whom do YOU say that I AM?” The answer is usually the same: “Some say that you are one, some another.” Some say that you are this teacher or that teacher; of this or that nationality; or a representative of this or that system. What of it? It is all talk of and about a subject until you can answer for yourself, “But whom do you say that I AM?” What are you going to do about it? How much longer are you going to deny ME, and get the reaction to this denial? Awake, thou that sleepest. Stop looking for a Messiah, and recognize the Presence within you. Fling open wide the doors of your consciousness, and LET this Glorious “He that should come” come in, and let HIM rise, and rise, and rise, with healing in His wings, and cover you with His floods of healing light and revelation. It is Wonderful!
Think of it, Beloved! All the revelation you expected to come from some Messiah will now come through the risen Lord, because you will have the Single Eye and Ear and be able to perceive and hear what the voice says through any avenue or channel. It is Wonderful! Until you “hear THE voice,” in the truest sense of the word, you only hear “a” voice, and mistake it always for the Messiah. “Is this He that should come, or look we for another?” is at last answered by the recognition of the Presence, and THEN the automatic power of this recognition starts to fulfill the Law; “If you ask anything in my name [nature], that give I unto you.”
When you hear the answer to your recognition of the Inner Lord, speaking with authority, “Behold, I AM HE that should come,” you experience a thrill of freedom and joy, and you begin to see that all things are possible to God. “The Lord thy God in the midst of thee is mighty.” Filled with the Light of this new day, you begin to “call upon ME,” and find that “I AM close at hand,” and ready to bless, to save, to heal. It is all glorious. “This is My beloved Son, in whom I AM well pleased,” is said of the body (embodiment), and you will find that your body begins to express “the” condition which causes the Father within to be “well pleased.”
This Inner Lord, this “He that should come,” speaking to your body, “Arise, shine; for thy light is come, and the glory of the Lord is risen upon thee,” causes you to experience a new sense of health, which is more in the terms of light than the old idea of human power.
There is no doubt that every man, no matter how low he may have dropped in the scale of human belief, has heard the “knock” at the door; but note that it is necessary to hear more than the “knock.” The knock is merely the urge of the power. It is necessary to “hear” within you – yes, you, the reader – and cease the useless “denying” the Christ within yourself and stop the endless seeking in another for the Truth. Until you can give the Glory to God, and recognize this Christ within you, you will not be able to hear the VOICE. You will always hear the voice of some person, and yet it says the still small Voice shall say, “Turn to the right,” “Turn to the left,” etc., and that all guidance will be given to you from within. Until you can accept your Divine heritage as a joint heir with Christ, you will be found eating the crumbs under the table of one of your supposed Messiahs, and yet in some strange, remote way resenting this humiliation that you have brought upon yourself.
The recognition of the Inner Lord does not bring a sense of arrogance or conceit. Contrary to this, it brings the first loverly sense of meekness and humility; and why not? You begin to realize that the fighting and excitement belong to those who are seeking things and fighting for them. You have become “meek,” because you know that the MEEK inherit the earth, and there is no question about it being a legitimate inheritance. It is wonderful, the floods of light that are pouring over you now, NOW that you have answered the question, “Is this HE that should come?”
“Greater is HE that is in you, than he that is in the world” – you may rest assured, Beloved, that the Christ within you is greater than any teacher, or lecturer, or preacher, who ever claimed to be the Messiah. Greater is HE that is in you, because that very HE is the point of contact between you and the Infinite God of all creation.
The HE that was in Jesus made Him what He was, and changed the carpenter’s son into a glorious Master. The HE that was in Him enabled Him to offset the beliefs of the millions about Him, One, with God, is a majority, and it was just this recognition of the Christ within that enabled Jesus to show forth the LAW, which set aside every human belief.
When the five thousand were in the desert, hungry and a great distance from food, they all testified to this situation as true. There was plenty of evidence of the lack of food, and apparently no way of getting it. There was plenty of proof of the impossibility of acquiring anything in the immediate time it was needed, and yet this volume of proof and testimony did not affect Jesus at all. One can stand against five thousand, if that one knows that “Greater is HE that is in you, than he that is in the world.” When you begin to see the Law as given to us by the Master Jesus, you begin to understand all the workings of the Law. “One, with God, is a majority,” over a million beliefs and proofs, however time-honored and reverenced.
It was the desire of Jesus to show this crowd of five thousand how it was possible for them also to become one with God; but most of them only saw the so-called miracle, and the next day they were looking for Him again; not seeking the light, but the loaves and fishes, showing how utterly they had misunderstood the revelation. “You seek ME after the loaves and the fishes and cannot find Me.”
Until a man has recognized the simple teaching of Jesus, and found the “HE that is to come” within himself, he will constantly be either building up or tearing down. He will, each year, get a new craze for another teacher or system, and each time he will turn many awry by telling them this is the “only” one. He has only heard the “knock,” and not the “Voice.”
“Verily, verily, I say unto you, He that heareth My word, and believeth on Him that sent ME, HATH everlasting life, and shall not come into condemnation; but is passed from death unto life!”
It were well if you read and re-read this statement, and note the tense of the verbs, and rejoice in the presence of the Almighty God. The Lord thy God in the midst of THEE (yes, you) is mighty. Do you hear? “My sheep hear My voice.”
“Is this He that should come, or look we for another?”
“The government shall be upon HIS shoulder and HIS name shall be called Wonderful, Counselor, the mighty God, the everlasting Father, the Prince of Peace, and of the increase of His government there shall be no [not any] end.” The heavens are pouring out floods of revelation upon you as you read, and upon me as I write. The WORD is going out, “I shall pour out My blessings on all mankind.” The richness of this Love has come to you, and “He careth for you.” Nothing else matters. If God, the Inner Lord, careth for you, then all is well with you. It cannot be other wise. The automatic working of this law may come through any channel or avenue, but the power of recognition lies within you.
It is not that anything must or will be done to you by any man, and yet any man may be the materialized evidence of what you have called for. It is Wonderful! “Is this He that should come?” Yes, this is HE that should come to unto you, with healing in His wings. The government of your life is upon the shoulder of this newly recognized (born) child, whose name is Wonderful, the mighty God. Do you begin to see how you can give up, and “lean on ME”?
“Beloved, NOW are we the sons of God.” But this NOW may be three thousand years away, or it may only be a moment away, or it may be NOW. All this depends upon your willingness to recognize the Lord within you as the HE that should come.
“The heavens declare the glory of God, and the firmament showeth His handiwork.” We can come whole-heartedly to the throne of Grace, and bear away the Blessings that are so freely given to us. We recognize ONE God of all, and His name is WONDERFUL. Yes, this is He that should come; it is the He that is the ONE (triumphant) against the five thousand, with their avalanche of belief and proof.
“Is this He that should come?” Arise, my Soul; adore thy Maker.
IT IS CONSUMMATED
One night about 2 A. M. I was awakened from a profound sleep. It was almost as if I had not been to bed at all, so complete was the awakening.
I got up – went into the bathroom and took a shower and went out into the garage where I had a box of soft clay.
I had been working for some weeks on the idea of embodiment – that is personifying the thing you are doing – and as a result of this had brought home a box of clay, attempting after a fashion to LET something take place through me – something which was entirely outside my ordinary capacities. My success had been more or less mediocre – not exactly disappointing – but not to flattering.
I took a handful of clay and found myself modeling a sort of crude cross – at the top of which I sketchily put in I N R I – (the jest which the clowning human mind had placed on the original cross – “Jesus the King of the Jews.”
Then the thought came to me to make a crucifix – but immediately I was startled by the idea of anything so terrific as molding a likeness of our Lord. I felt unworthy to attempt such a job – and sat holding the clay. Almost as if by magic I looked down and found my hands sort of closing in on a slender body – my fingers seemed to be modeling the clay almost unconsciously. A surprisingly beautiful body lay there. I looked at it with such tender affection that tears came to my eyes – and I realized that I had to lay it on the cross. Some way or other for a moment I sensed the fact that everybody had to crucify Jesus – the wonderful symbol of Materialized Spirit.
I fastened his hands to the arms of the cross and put my hand under His precious head – when suddenly the whole figure crumpled up and fell half away from the cross. In doing so the weight was almost entirely suspended by the left arm – and clay seemed more like rubber than anything else and the muscles of the back and chest came into being – it seemed as if the left arm would be torn from its socket – the head dropped on the breast and I knew “it was consummated.”
For a while I stared down at the thing that had happened and then I started to reach for some tools to work out more of the details on the unfinished hands and feet – but something restrained me and so I left it unfinished as it was.
The next morning when I saw it again I was glad I had not gone further but had left it as it had come through. God has wondrous ways which are past finding out – and past trying out. The restraining influence of the power flowing through a musician playing so much faster than his human mind can work, through all the intricacies, indicates what must and will take place in us when we will “Let that mind be in us which was also in Christ Jesus.”
“It is consummated” – the eventual giving up of all struggle and the entering into Heritage which awaits you will release many wonderful things through you.
A few days after the crucifix had been cast and some copies made of it – a friend found these lovely lines coming through about it.
“The man of sorrow walked his lonely path.
And then, his listening heart thrilled to:
“My Son”
No cruel deed, nor vicious wrath
Can harm “The One.”
– Andrea Higgin.
IT IS DONE
“FOLLOW ME.” At this stage of your ongoing it is “All or nothing.” Either you are going to “Follow ME,” or you are still carrying in your pack or “burden” some man-made ideas, beliefs or organizations. You are told to cast your “burdens” on ME —the burden of accumulated beliefs which have crystallized and become hard and fast shells that bind you. The history of your case, the history of your race, creed, etc., all the mistakes you have made and regretted, and above all, all your desires which have been unfulfilled—these are your burden.
So in your present shell you are bound. That shell is not capable of expressing the dreams of your soul. It has not the capacity nor the ability to do so. These vile bodies, shapes, patterns, must be “changed,” if that glorious Power or idea is to be expressed in you. If you could express your desires in your present consciousness or pattern you would have done so long ago. But a reckoning shows that you have spent years trying to make them happen. You could not literally give your desires a body because you are “barren.” There is not the inherent capacity in your present consciousness to accomplish the necessary steps to allow the new idea to come into manifestation. As a million volts of electricity cannot pass through a ten volt wire so the “Greater things than these shall ye do” cannot function in a consciousness which is set fast in the belief that these things are impossible.
“Follow me.” We have at least arrived at one point of understanding, which is that Jesus (the body-temple), did find a way out of the hard-fast patterns and beliefs that bound Him. “Follow Me.” You begin to follow this design set by Jesus Christ back into the realm of the “It is Done.” You believe this, don’t you? It is so stated in the LAW. But, remember, anything that is stated in the LAW is not true so far as the human consciousness is concerned. It is all foolishness, because it sets aside and overturns every belief of the human consciousness, and in so many words destroys its kingdom.
The best weapon the human consciousness has against the divine is derision. It laughs at the thought or the idea that a thing could happen before it is possible to happen, and it requires proof and demands that the shell of the egg be torn away in order to prove that the egg is changing form. Remembering this, we see the power of the SECRET doctrine, and why it is that you become as “dumb as an ox led to slaughter,” so far as discussing or telling anything pertaining to your ongoing, or your understanding of the Word. Jesus once, in a moment or religious fervor, told things so high and mighty and so outside of the law that “they laughed him to scorn”—so you see what is necessary in order that the “It is done” state of things may come to pass.
The “It is done” consciousness is the pure recognition of the Presence. It is entirely through with appearances and does not look for a sign. It does not need a sign for it has the urge-feel that enables it to “Go in and possess the Land.” It is all done the moment the acceptance is made. “Go in and possess the land,” the Consciousness of the New Idea. It is filled to the brim with a thrill that is pure bliss. No longer do you beg and beseech and wonder. Because of this recognition of the Presence, and the going unto your Father-consciousness, you are now at the point of going in and possessing the land that your fathers, etc. It is wonderful, wonderful, wonderful!
You see now that the WORD of God, passing through the Father-consciousness to you, is “quick and powerful and sharper than a two-edged sword,” and it is this word which shall decree a thing and “it shall come to pass.” You are told to “speak the word,” but it says the “WORD”; it does not say the words of the “man whose breath is in his nostrils.” It is a hook-up with the WORD, the Logos, the ONLY—and this WORD is sure of fulfillment. It cannot be spoken until you perceive the capacity of your Father-within to contact the God Almighty Presence, and thereby show forth the “It is done” state of things.
You are faced with a new deal. A lovely possibility of taking Jesus Christ at His WORD. His WORD IS THE WORD. Do you realize that it is because of “words” that we have had so much trouble? The fact that we have so many “words” about God instead of the WORD of God, is what makes all the confusion, and a thousand-and-one interpretations of the All-Presence. It accounts for all the Towers of Babel that are constantly being erected. Everybody who is still working on the “thought” way of attaining heaven is a builder of a Tower of Babel, because there is a diversity of opinions as to how it must be done; and after it gets piled high with word-bricks, the tower topples over onto the builders, and their many “tongues” cause such a jargon and fruitless confusion that the end is confounded misbelief.
“Gird up your loins” and arise into this NEW DAY, backed by the power and force of the Fatherhood-consciousness which is yours, the moment you recognize that you have within you this Father, and that by reason of your contact with Him, you make the complete Trinity, and the manifestation which is “before you ask,” comes into being. Yes, you shall “decree it and it shall come to pass.” Believest thou this? Believest thou that I AM able to do this unto you? Answer ME!
The healing of the temple (body) which you have sought so long can be made possible only when you perceive the “It-is-Done” state of consciousness. You can, no matter what the appearances are, accept your desire as “done” in consciousness. And the moment you come to that place you are nearing the thin partition which separates the unmanifest from the manifest, and in the “twinkling of an eye” all is changed. Then you find yourself exclaiming, “Whereas before I was blind, now-NOW-NOW I can see,” and you praise God from whom ALL blessings flow.
All these lovely things are happening to you as this book is being written. You do not yet know that it exists, because it has never come into your line of vision. But all this already exists, even though there is but half a page of the unfinished manuscript. Yes, it is complete and done, and is being recorded for this very moment when your eyes shall rest upon it and your heart exclaim, “My God and My Lord!”
The “It is done” state of consciousness takes from you all fear about results. “Even though You slay me, yet will I say You are God.” Even if you slay me I will recognize the Presence and the Power. And the “It is done” state of consciousness “stands and sees the salvation of the Lord.” It is wonderful, wonderful, wonderful! Praise God from whom all blessings flow.
The “It is done” state of consciousness, brought about by recognition of the Trinity-unity, has no apprehension or anxiety. It does not look back, and it does not wonder how, where, or when, this holy thing will take place. Everything is released and the freedom of mind gives the new idea an easy and natural means of expression. The more natural and simple it is, the more it is possible to you. The birth of a babe in primitive tribes takes place without much bother or attention. The mother performs all the obstetrics herself and is back about her work in a few hours. No one thinks anything about it other than that it is natural.
You remember what it takes to do all this? Do you believe? Can you put the seal of fire on your lips and SPEAK the WORD at the same time? You see that the Laws of God are past finding out by the human thought-taking consciousness, because it has nothing upon which to base its premise. It is hopelessly sunk. So what you are entering into is done, because you recognize this New Day and are beginning to glimpse the Father within who is the point of Contact with the Universal Whole.
JESUS AND MICHELANGELO
AN ARTIST RETURNS to his model, – a mathematician to his principle. What do you do when imperfections in daily life occur, – run to a person or to “ME”?
Michelangelo lifted an angel out of a block of marble. Where was the angel in the beginning, – in the marble or in Michelangelo? So conscious was he of the angel he perceived or conceived within himself that he could literally lift it out of a place or substance where there was no angel. Standing before a block of marble, what do you see?
Standing before a block of human thought and beliefs, what do you see, – a block or something out of which you will take an angel in the form of your unfulfilled desire?
If you were a Michelangelo, you would reach into the ‘block of solid marble’ and take whatsoever you would. How could he do it? One tap of the mallet at the wrong place would have marred the lovely features or the perfect lines of the body. Was Michelangelo doing it? Was Jesus doing it? Are you doing it? All three have the terrific limitations of the human-thought heritage.
What was it that controlled the chisel -and a somewhat crude one at that? What was it that let the “machine” (body) go only so far? Inspiration poured over and through him like a flood-tide, and he couldn’t do anything else. “When the Inspiration of the Almighty comes unto you …” BUT how can it pour through you when you try to harness everything with the steel armor of human beliefs.
So tender, so wonderful is this Love of God which says, – ‘”‘Beloved- (the beloved YOU) -NOW are we the Sons of God”. You -that funny, little old thing or that ‘great personage’, – YOU are called the “beloved”, – not a transient calling of the emotional nature, but by your CREATOR, the Power that brought you into BEing, – calling YOU the Beloved. “My sheep hear My Voice.”
When you hear it you become breathless, – not the breathlessness of the sprinter who has made his hundred yards with every organ in his body torn to pieces. No, not that, – but the “breathless adoration” when no organ of your body is moved by emotion or human sensation, – the state of consciousness which is above anything that the human body does. And what is the human body? Nothing but an unintelligent mass of atoms which has a thousand and one laws over it, – -all the false education of perhaps thousands of years.
How are you to do anything that is recommended by God through Jesus? How are you to “run and not be weary”? Suppose you could run and not be weary, – would it be a miracle or a natural law? Suppose you discovered the Life of God flowing through you, – is it to be circumscribed by the laws you have set up about John Smith? Will you say, “Yes, I know, but-“?
The mathematician, when he comes to an impasse, – what will he do? Go to the kitchen and tell the scullery-maid how hard he has tried and tried and tried, – and have her say “Creepers, sir, I’m that sorry for ya”? This would merely be an agreement with evil and leaves the problem still unsolved.
“Though you slay me, – yet will I say you are God.” Well, go ahead and slay me then. I know that two times two are four, – on that I stand and will stand. Rather refreshing to discover that the law of mathematics is not going to slay you.
“Why will ye doubt?” Come on, now, and answer.
What are you trying to do? Are you trying to BELIEVE? Then stand before a block of marble and try to “lift” out an angel, – -not some grotesque thing that might cause a sensation for a day, but a thing of beauty that uplifts everyone who looks upon it.
Why not stop “trying”. It is about as effective as a mosquito trying to kick an elephant over a cliff. It just will not “work”. Nothing “works” in God, there is no “work”. Haven’t you been told to “consider the lilies of the field, – they toil not, neither do they spin, – and yet ….” Very pleasant philosophy to the human mind. Can you accept it?
Suppose you got the idea that all you had to do was to shout or whisper words or affirmations or mantras to God, and this glorious power would do your bidding? Then what would you do? You would change the whole world to suit your stupid ideas.
I was so glad when I understood that “prayer” is NOT answered, – not that kind of “prayer”, – the kind of prayer that wants to fashion my world after the leprous ideas of many human beings. I am so glad that all the silly prayers that are said are not answered, – thank God for that ! Yet I am so thrilled to say that EVERY Prayer, – (I said PRAYER) IS already answered before it is uttered.
It is so wonderful, “Beloved”, – how you are moving into your NEW DAY, – how you are beginning to see and understand the lovely laws our Precious One gave to us. Every one of them are true, – and true, – and true !
What is the matter with us? Two thousand years in the desert of human limitations -and only now hearing what Jesus said, – and still we are trying all manner of “mumbo-jumbo”, – -the old cliches, – the same old pattern of life, running through the mill and into the sluice, into the spill-way or over the dam. So monotonous!
Here is the picture: You are born -amid a few or many exclamations. That soon passes -and you become a problem child. But if they can educate you and establish you in some profession, perhaps you will not disgrace the family name of Smith (or should we say ‘S-m-y-t-h’). Then you become a “so and so”, – or you are able to fall in line and obey the top sergeant who says-“Private First-class, you have a family to raise and a mortgage to incur and pay off”.
Well? Here we are! We have heard all sorts of things and have tried all sorts of things in an effort to “make” God give us the desires of our hearts. We have performed all manner of “stunts”, – we have repeated certain words, – we have even paid tribute to certain personalities. But still we did not “get” the thing we wanted. Is this right? This IS right !
And do you still want to say you have studied and worked and taken super-special lessons under Mr. Blank or Mme. Blah? Perhaps you even have diplomas from a dozen or more schools. Schools of what? From what school did Jesus, Michelangelo or Shakespeare graduate? And you, with all of your power and affirmations and diplomas, – are you going to put your fingers into the solid block of marble before you and take out an angel?
Why not stop all this foolishness and adhere to the only TEACHER, – why not turn to the only source of LIGHT -Jesus Christ? Must it be interpreted through another?
You may go into many cities-states of consciousness -and “meet a man”. Or you may sit in the paralysis of human thought. Or you may even play about in the tombs with the bones of dead men. But after you have paid your gold to a thousand and one “word-magicians”, you will return unto ME and discover that nothing ancient or modern has anything to do with YOU. YOU have to do with them.
Many will say, “If I had just known this before” Before what? NOW you know! Arise and walk! I AM here NOW, speaking to YOU, – not you and your teacher -but to YOU.
“For why will ye doubt?” Don’t you believe ME? Then why follow My Teachings through another. I AM the WAY, – your way. Why do you doubt ME, your INNER LORD? Are you still entranced by a personality who has grown gross and rich from selling My Garment?
Why do you think you can buy ME? I AM the free GIFT! Why will you sit before an empty “personality”? Why don’t you see what is back of it all, – and then you can sit before the Kamma Kura or a candle on the Shrine of Lourdes and get results. You can get it anywhere if you recognize ME.
HERE I AM! Do you BELIEVE? If you do not believe in ME, before what personality will you sit, – for “Besides ME, there is no other”.
What is all this about ‘working’, – when I said unto you, “Consider the lilies of the field, – they toil not, – neither do they spin”, – and yet Michelangelo stood before his “block of marble”.
Yes, I know you would like to be finished with your work, – but you have a NEW WORK to do, the releasement of the angel out of your block of marble. But perhaps you think it will be brought to you. You may be standing before your block of marble using some silly affirmations, perhaps like this: “God, I am rich”-“God, I am well”-but nothing happens. Why?
“You ask and have not because you would consume it upon your lusts,”-the lusts of glorifying a personality.
And still you continue trying. “If this teacher does not give it to me, I will go to another”, – and finally, after you have spent all your shekels, you come to ME with nothing to give, – but tell of what you have done and given.
Isn’t it about time you discovered you have made a “personality” rich, and received nothing but some pretty prayers or affirmations or aphorisms, – which, strange as it may seem, did not pay your rent or heal your body? Isn’t it about time you recognized ME -within you -the CHRIST of GOD?
Acknowledging and relinquishing our misconceptions may seem a bit difficult to the personality, but still YOU are the BELOVED of GOD. Accepting this, you move into your own sphere of LIGHT.
So now you know why Michelangelo could take the angel out of the block of marble. He could have taken a devil with the same ease. What would have stopped the sharp incisions of his chisel? What can stop the sharp incisions on your “block of marble”? Emotions? Beliefs? Teachings? Or just you, – that “precious” thing which cries out, “Who will save my darling from the flames”.
The answer is “Nothing”. If there is anything that the flames of revelation can burn, – let it burn. But how are you to emerge “without the smell of fire on your garments”? Review all the lessons you have had, – bring out your diplomas with their gold seals, and your “doctorate” degrees, – and see if they are the fire-proof material of Spirit.
And so there you are before your block of marble. What will you take out of it, – -an angel or a devil? -now that you are through with all the ideas you have gathered about how to do it from the outside? If the angel is not within you, it still remains the block of marble, – or else you will endeavor to copy Michelangelo. But a copy is no good. Why not bring out your own angel? Why not stop the trying -and LET that Mind be in you which was also in Christ Jesus? This is better than the mind of your teacher, isn’t it?
Notice the verb “LET”. And you also understand by now that when you consider the lilies of the field that neither toil nor spin, you will not interpret this to mean idleness or the working of magic. When you “toil not”, you may be more active than you have ever been, – your body may make a thousand more motions than it has ever dreamed possible, this time by the LIGHT which motivates a body which runs and is not weary.
“When the Inspiration of the Almighty is come unto you, it shall lead you into ALL things”, – not the inspiration of a teacher, or a lecturer, or a book, or yet any ancient doctrines, – but of the ALMIGHTY. ALL things? Yes, ALL things, – and by a way “ye know not of”.
And so you will arise, – ARISE and SHINE, – for you have discovered that your LIGHT IS come and the Glory of the LORD IS risen upon you.
And then you will understand how the hands of Michelangelo could go only so far and no farther, – and how the hands of you can go so far and no farther, – and that distance will be in the dimension of success.
When you can run and not be weary, then you can run, – the race being not to the swift, – but to YOU!
JESUS AND RED GERANIUMS
A NUMBER OF YEARS AGO, after a rather lengthy lecture period in Berlin, I decided to “get away from it all” for a while, and so arranged to vacation at Fuldaland, a number of miles from nowhere. Leaving the denser civilization behind, we struck off over the loveliest green country imaginable. On and on we went into the open, the houses becoming fewer, fields and hills stretching off to the skyline, and then a tiny village hove in sight
I had arranged through a friend to take lodging with a farmer family by the name of Krauz, composed of an old grandmother and grandfather. Their house was a long, low white building with a passageway from front to back which divided the stables from the house. Everything was under one roof, and when we entered, the odor of fresh milk and new hay greeted us. The house was spacious, and the aisle between the stable and the living quarters was as shining and clean as the streets of a Dutch village.
The old couple showed me to a large bedroom and sitting-room at the back of the house. It was fall, there was a tang in the air, and the grandfather had built a fire in the large porcelain stove which reached the ceiling. From the statuary and pictures, it was obvious that they were Catholics. The grandmother crossed herself as she passed the little home altar, and then they left me alone.
Through the small paned windows could be seen the rolling green fields. There were no hedges or fences of any sort, – and when I went outdoors, it seemed as if I were standing on top of the world. Here was peace, – and unobstructed beauty! A mile to the right the Rudolph Steiner School showed forth in a tapestry-like setting of colored trees. On a hillside a village girl tended some snow-white sheep. Clouds drifted in the clear blue, headed for some distant port, – and an air of contentment filled the place. Yes, – it seemed as if heaven had come down to earth!
The old couple explained that they were poor, meaning by that, they had no money. However, money did not play a very important part in their lives, as they had abundant food, clothing and shelter. There was an “exchange market” in the village, – and the housewives would exchange produce and poultry for coffee cakes and pies at the baker’s oven.
And so I “settled in”. Time seemed suspended. Of times I would find I had been sitting in a chair for several hours, in absolute silence. The only sound in the house was the ticking of the old clock and the lowing of the cattle, – and sometimes the soft, gentle voice of the grandfather as he tended them. There were only the three of us in the house, – and I finally began thinking of it as “the Stable”, – yes, “THE Stable”. And sometimes the old couple would come and sit with me for coffee, – and tell me about the pictures and statues in the rooms. And then they would tell about the Christ Child, – how it was that one day He would come into their home and heal them, for both of them suffered from old-age complications of a sort.
As the days grew colder, the grandmother brought her plants in, – little tin cans filled with geranium slips which would be ready to bloom when it was time to re-set them in the spring. Time was forgotten, and the three of us felt a “nearness”. Now they would come and sit with me for hours. Talking had virtually ceased, – we just sat there in a glowing sort of silence.
Then one morning the two of them came in with faces beaming, – bringing a tray of cake and coffee. I knew something wonderful had happened. The grandmother could contain herself no longer. “Look!”, she said, – “look, – the geraniums are all in bloom!” And when I looked around the room, there was a flash of red. The plants were literally covered with blooms, – although it was months before their time to bloom. “The Christ Child has come to this house”, she continued, – “He has healed us, father and me, – and He has come to you, too”.
Suddenly it seemed that the Heavenly Host was there. The old couple knelt at the altar, – I arose from my chair. There was no weight, no heaviness, – something was bearing me up, – just Light, – and more LIGHT! Around the room the geraniums were glowing, – and there was Silence in Heaven. The grandmother had placed one of the plants on the altar before the Christ Child, – where it glowed like a flame. And so during the three months’ sojourn in this unfenced land of beauty, the geraniums kept up their display. When the “Auf Wiedersehen” came, and I left to return to the noise of life, the old couple accompanied me to the door. We said our “Goodbyes,” – and as I looked back for the final farewell, the grandmother signaled me with a red geranium.
In London some weeks later, I received a letter written in the shaky handwriting of the grandmother. She told me of the peace that was still with them, and of the red geraniums in all their glory, closing with these sweet words, – “When again you come, the flowers will bloom”.
JESUS AND THE CENTURION
“And when Jesus was entered into Capernaum, there came unto Him a Centurion.”
Could anything be more dramatic than this drama which is about to be unrolled? The Centurion, – glorious in his crimson and gold, his shining helmet and breastplate, his glittering sword and his entourage of picked soldiers, – the epitome of temporal power and authority, – meeting the most Majestic Person ever to trod the globe, – the embodiment of Spiritual Power, – the Radiance and Light of His Presence outshining the highly polished metal of the Centurion.
And there they stand, – the Centurion beseeching Jesus. He who never asked favors of any man but ruthlessly possessed himself of any and all things he desired, speaks: “My servant lieth at home, sick of the palsy”. A Centurion, pleading the cause of a common servant ! Servants were cheap in those days, – they could be had for nothing and disposed of by a word from their lord and master.
And then our Precious One answers, as He always answers every sincere request made of Him: “I will come and heal him”.
But no, – the Centurion, standing in all his majesty, again speaks: “I am not worthy that thou shouldest come under my roof, – but speak the word only, and my servant shall be healed”.
Humility and absolute faith flooded through his words, “Speak the word only, and my servant SHALL be healed, – for I also (note the self-recognition) am a man of authority, and I say unto this man ‘Go’, and he goeth, – and to another, ‘Come’, and he cometh”. This was the kind of language Jesus could understand, – and the servant was healed in the self-same hour.
Jesus did not resent the gentle rebuke given Him by the Centurion, who called to His attention that He did not have to go anywhere physically to accomplish the blessings of the Omnipresent God. He stood there before this magnificent creature and said of him, – “I have not seen so great a faith, – no, not in all Israel”. This takes in rather a large territory, – including all of His followers and even His disciples.
But reaching far beyond this is the motive back of it all. Why was the servant healed? What was the connecting link between this ruthless warrior, this proud aristocrat of Imperial Rome, and a servant? The gulf in position and place is almost unbridgeable. Think it over. The Centurion had come a long way in his chariot, – putting himself out a great deal for a mere servant. And then it dawns upon us that the Centurion was possessed of something mightier than the sword or his legions of soldiers. He was possessed of LOVE. Yes, the Centurion came in LOVE, – the only thing which “never faileth”. What else could have happened but that the servant who was thus loved, be healed. “The measure ye mete”, – the measure, – the motive back of the contact, – determines the results.
You too, will discover the joy of finding such a faith in the Words of Jesus, if you approach Him with Love the next time you have a sick servant, and be unafraid to go many leagues, if necessary, to do it. If you do, your servant, (body or situation) will be healed in the self-same hour.
JESUS IN TWEEDS
Let this mind be in you, which was also in Christ Jesus: Who, being in the form of God, thought it not robbery to be equal with God: But made himself of no reputation, and took upon him the form of a servant and was made in the likeness of men: And being found in fashion as a man, he humbled himself and became obedient unto death, – even the death of the cross.”
THE DRAMATIC INSTINCT in man is so strong that whenever he mentions or thinks of Jesus, he automatically places Him in a theatrical background, so glorified as to set it completely apart from the remotest possibility of naturalness. He forgets that at the time of Jesus, flowing robes, purple, fine linen and long hair were the vogue of that time, just as sack suits and military haircuts are today.
There is no mention made of the robes of Jesus being outstandingly beautiful. True, there was the seamless robe, – not so much a comment on His clothes, perhaps, as an illustration of the wholeness of His teaching. In fact, Jesus asked the very pertinent question, – “What went ye out for to see”, – a fashion show, or to hear a revelation. It is more than possible that the rich young man mentioned in the Bible, as well as many others, were dressed in silks and brocades.
Have we, then, been caught in the very thing against which He cautioned us? Is this beautiful teaching and revelation given us by Jesus as a usable every-day pattern of life always to be wrapped in dramatics? Will we perpetually be an audience watching a drama?
The tendency to glamorize anyone in the limelight is common to all men. It has a tremendous financial urge back of it. But as with Jesus, so with all the idols of the stage, – sooner or later lots will be cast for the robes. The sport of the human mind is to build an idol, – and then attempt to discover its clay feet.
And again, the décor and background against which Jesus moved were natural and normal to the times.
Can you imagine Jesus in a tweed suit? At first the idea shocks the sensibilities. But suppose He was with us today, – or rather, suppose your consciousness was of such a level as to permit you to see Him today, – would you want Him to go about in flowing robes True, there is yet this practice in America, a thousand and one “prophets” and “teachers” have donned robes entirely out of keeping with the times, playing on the dramatic value, – and people have followed. But Jesus was of all things, natural and normal. He said definitely, “I live in the world, but not of it”. This did not set Him apart anymore then than it would now, for we find ample proof of His moving with the people, high and low. In fact, He was accused of being a friend of harlots and wine bibbers. Jesus was unafraid to live His life. He held no brief with hypocrisy and spiritual wickedness, gossip or scandal,
Can you imagine Jesus and His mother attending a wedding of a Hollywood star? Well, why not? They attended a wedding-feast in Cana, which from the record, was very spirited, to say the least, – not very much different from our present-day affairs.
There is no intent to take from the Glory of Jesus, – but rather to emphasize the fundamental Truth of His teaching. It is not difficult for one to bend the knees at the Name of Jesus, so great is our reverence for Him, – but just reverence for a dramatic or historical character is not sufficient. If Jesus ever was sad or disconsolate, it must have been when He asked the question, – “Have I been so long with you, and yet … ?” He did not want them to set Him aside or apart in any way whatsoever. He only wanted what every true teacher and revelator wants, – namely, that the students and followers absorb and use the teachings, rather than deify the teacher. He wanted them not only to do the works He did, but to exceed Him, – assuring them they could. “The works I do, ye shall also do, – and greater than these shall ye do.”
Until we take away the dramatic, emotional side of our acceptance of the beautiful Revelation, the whole endeavor is reduced to a fascinating story of a man, – and is of no practical use to us in every-day life.
You would laugh at the idea that every time you approached mathematics, you would have to put on a special garment of ancient origin and arrange yourself against a special back-ground of proper dramatic value.
We know that mathematics is not affected by race, color or creed. Neither is it more operative in one temperature than in another, nor is it more present in a magnificent university than in the little red school-house, or for that matter, the slums of a great city. All that is necessary is the recognition of the law of mathematics for the unfoldment from simple addition to the most complicated equation in relativity.
Talking of and about mathematics will not work out a problem, no matter how ever much you respect it. Unless you become a mathematician in one degree or another, nothing happens. And when you do, the stream of power comes through you, uses your body through which to express, – -proving the problem was already solved. Every mathematician knows the answers to all problems already exist, whether he is aware of the answer or not. But the recognition of it as passing through him enables him to arrive at the already established fact.
So with the Revelation of Jesus, – it is everywhere present, is no respecter of persons, is as available to the greatest criminal as to the most high priest. It is just as present in the worst hell-hole as in the lofty temple. Being everywhere, it is nowhere until it is recognized and “let” into manifestation, and it is of no value until this takes place.
Jesus, too, said the answer existed before the problem, – “Before you ask, I will answer, and while you are yet speaking, I shall give it unto you”, – and again, “Thank you, Father, I knew that this was done”, – in this latter instance, making concession to the mass-mind which believes something must be done. Yet He did not touch the woman who was healed in the crowds. She touched Him. The wonderful recognition in her came forth and met the perpetual agreement of His consciousness, and the answer, which always had existed, became a reality to her.
Jesus was not pleased with blood-sacrifice, – asking only the sacrifice of the human thought with its limitations and its terrific bondage. He was always looking for someone who could take it, – -always seeking a temple-body who would stand up to the point of equality with Him. That great unselfishness on His part is the God-Love within Him, and within us. He found it once in the Centurion who came boldly up to Him with recognition of the Power and who deigned to set himself on an equal level when it came to authority. “I have not seen so great a faith, – no, not in all Israel!” How would you like that to be said of you?
What do you suppose the widow’s mite meant to a Man who could with impunity feed five thousand? But it was important enough to be recorded. The motive of the widow was greater than the “measure” of the rich.
As long as we continue to imprison this beautiful revelation of Jesus in garb, books, teachers and temples, it will be nothing but another philosophy. Most of Jesus’ teachings were given out of doors, He went seldom in the Temple. When He did, He astounded them with His Light, – and they began the old roundelay, “How does this man speak, seeing- he has no learning”. They went even farther than this in the protection of their limited views of life and were glad to shout at Him when He was going through His greatest manifestation, – “He saved others, – Himself he cannot save”. Yes, and the derisive shouts, “Come down from the cross”. Had He done this, – and He could have, – He would have defeated the purpose of His teachings and we would still be awaiting the Messiah who would save the world. What world? Your world, of course, – the only world you know anything about.
A thousand religions have been hung upon Him, like barnacles on a ship. This is no diatribe against any of them, but nevertheless, there can be only ONE interpretation of the Truth that two times two are four. True, you can write it in Roman numerals or even signs, but the principle is ONE and remains unchanged and eternal, – regardless of opinions to the contrary.
Simpler than the laws of mathematics are the laws of Truth. A child can understand and employ them through the capacity of the unsullied mind which accepts and brings out that acceptance with apparent ease. When the child-like consciousness enters a thing; all the universe cooperates to bring it about, – all of which is foolishness to the adult mind whose greatest capacity is to commit adultery. It will endeavor to take away such beautiful laws from the child through false education. He learns to smile with tolerance or derision at the things he formerly believed possible, stumbling along through the morass of human life until finally he comes to an insurmountable hurdle. Then he may realize there is something greater than John Smith and all his intellection, plus that of all his text-books and teachers, – and perhaps he will “let go” and (‘let God” into expression through his body-temple and be saved. Saved from what? His own thought creation.
The Philistines did the same thing, and finally a giant named Goliath dominated that city (state of consciousness) so completely that it was faced with destruction. Then comes the point of LIGHT, David with his sling and five pebbles, – the five senses which had been extended into the consciousness of Cod, – marking the end of Goliath.
To be of any real worth, this law cannot be a will-o-the-wisp of imagination which works sometimes, any more than can the law of mathematics. “Having eyes, ye see not, – and ears, ye hear not”. Why? Because you are so blinded by the accepted appearances of your creating (your giant) that you know you are about to be destroyed by it.
It takes but one pebble, – but one sense extended beyond the human limitations, to do the trick. “Open your eyes!” You say they are open, and you are straining to see. But there is nothing to see on the outside, not yet, – the sight is within.
All the commands appear to be physical, to call for some physical action, – but unless they are heard, the physical remains helpless under the control of the limitations of its belief. When the hearing is extended to the point of acceptance, then the command becomes physical and you can and will “arise and walk”.
Jesus did not see five thousand loaves and two thousand fishes with his physical eyes, neither the fields white with grain, until He saw them within, then the consciousness was projected into the realm of manifestation.
I like to think of Jesus walking through the wheat-fields and along the beaches, sandals scuffed just as ours would be. He was so natural as to be a present possibility here and now. The glorious recognition of the Presence was always waiting to come forth at every turn of the road. He constantly endeavored to ensnare men with His love, – to awaken them to their own possibilities.
The “well done thou good and faithful servant” will not come through lip service, nor yet through sacrifice, – but through going forth and doing likewise, – stepping out on the waters of human beliefs. Every time we act from the consciousness of God within, we smash patterns of human beliefs, – and so the leper is healed or made clean. One of the old prophets showed the nothingness of human disease when he put his hand in his bosom and took it out white with leprosy, and with the same gesture, brought it forth clean. How did he do it? By thinking? Saying words? Mantras? Or following a human belief? What do you say?
Why are we awed at the thought of Jesus either in tweeds or in flowing robes? Is it a false sense of modesty? The hypocritical human mind is so humble and meek when it wants anything, – and so boastful and ugly when it seems to be sailing on calm seas.
“In ALL thy ways, acknowledge HIM, and He shall (not maybe, or perhaps) bring it to pass.)’ Is that good enough. It is entirely fool-proof, – there isn’t the “exception which proves the rule” to the human thought. There is one hundred percent delivery of the promise.
As you read the teachings of Jesus you will see there are no pastel shades, but pure, primary colors. When He makes an experiment in the laboratory of Life, He takes the ultimate in impossibility, – never some lesser gradation. He does not work with tints, nuances and shades of color, but makes His picture “contrasty” by the use of the primary colors. Such pictures as the one of a man being born blind, – not a case of faulty eye-sight or a blindness which had come upon a man, – but a case of blindness from birth. And again, a man dead four days, with the ugly picture of putrefaction and all the beliefs, or for that matter; the absolute knowledge of the human mind.
And the indifference of it all, – such a Divine indifference which freed reality from the self-hypnosis of human thought. “Whereas, before I was blind, NOW I can see.” Was it dramatic? Yes, very! But is it still the peculiar powers of one man? He has shown and said in a thousand ways that every man has the gift within him as a natural expression of Life flowing through his temple. Why will we continue to judge from appearances, following the stupid thought-pattern of saying, “I am sick but God will heal me”. Does God know sickness then? And if so, by what means can He destroy it?
Nothing is destroyed because we bring Christ Jesus down to earth. As a matter of fact, He is already here, but until we have the consciousness of it, we cannot live in His presence. This has nothing to do with the psychic disturbances that bring accounts of His appearing from time to time. When He appears it is because our consciousness is on the level of His, – and then He and much more will be made plain to us.
Jesus was not psychic, – but He had the Spiritual gift of Prescience which enabled Him to see all concerning the person into whose presence He came. And the lady at the well mistook this wonderful revelation as just another fortune-telling. She was so excited by the accounts of her private life that she did not hear, “If you had asked ME, I would have given you to drink of the Waters of Life, which if a man drink thereof, he will never thirst again”.
So now we have Jesus in tweeds, – going to a Hollywood wedding, just as He went to a wedding in Cana in flowing robes. We must take Him out of the “clouds” of human belief and recognize Him as the Elder Brother, born of the same Father, even as you and I, if we want to hear, “I have not seen such faith, – no, not in all Hollywood !”
He would probably be offered a movie contract. He was offered the kingdoms of the world if He would perform a certain ‘stunt’ that would amaze the groundlings, – such a little feat as turning stones into bread. And I am sure He would smile, – He has such a magnificent sense of humor.
Let us have Jesus natural and real, – honest-to-goodness reality. Let us drop the dramatic, emotional worship and “come boldly to the throne of grace” and bear away the Gift of Life Eternal.
Let us have Jesus in tweeds!
The End